fire

Smoke on the water

by Gareth February 11, 2009

On Monday there was a haze over the Canterbury plains. It looked like someone was burning scrub to the west. Today’s MODIS Image Of The Day shows the source. The image captured on Feb 8th shows that smoke travelled from the Victorian fires (red dots top left — click image to see larger version) across [...]

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Fires (which burn brightly)

by Gareth February 10, 2009

The sheer scale of the Victorian bushfire tragedy (over 170 dead at the time of writing: BBC coverage here) is apparent in this false colour satellite image from NASA’s Earth Observatory, captured on Feb 9th. Melbourne is at the top of the bay bottom left, and two large brown areas are the extensive burnt areas [...]

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The denial twist

by Gareth June 26, 2008

James Hansen [CV], the most outspoken climate scientist in the world, has been stirring up something of a furore. Invited by the Democrats to speak in Washington on the 20th anniversary of his famous 1988 testimony to Congress on the dangers of global warming, he used to opportunity to complain about the funding of climate [...]

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RTFR, Jack

by Gareth May 30, 2008

The old sea dog at the helm of our little flotilla of climate cranks has fired a broadside at the NIWA scientists involved in the preparation of this week’s revised climate projections for New Zealand. Yes, step forward Rear Admiral Jack Welch, who’s in fine bombastic form (perhaps he’s been taking lessons from Heartland’s J [...]

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Cool for cats

by Gareth May 4, 2008

The second climate forecast for the next decade has been published [Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector, Keenlyside et al, Nature, behind a firewall but available here], and the world’s media – and a fair number of blogs – have jumped all over its suggestion that there might be some regional cooling [...]

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Going up

by Gareth November 12, 2007

How much will sea level rise over this century? “Don’t know” is a good answer. “Not much” is looking like a bad answer that’s getting worse by the month. Last week a group of Northland Conservation Corps workers rode on a hikoi along Ninety Mile Beach to draw attention to the issue: Tutor Mike Wikitera [...]

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New energy and energy efficiency strategies announced

by Gareth October 11, 2007

Renewables are the key to New Zealand’s future energy needs, according to the government’s new energy strategy, published today [HTML, PDF]. No new thermal generation should be built over the next ten years, the government is going tell the power generation and distribution state owned enterprises. New generation capacity is expected to come from an [...]

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