Tag: Hansen

Leave fossil fuels undisturbed.

A recent Forest and Bird Newsletter contrasted the anticipated loss of 100 jobs in the Department of Conservation with the announced doubling of the number of people employed in the Ministry of Economic Development’s unit aimed at expanding the oil and minerals industries. The newsletter comments that some of those who will lose their jobs with DOC are expected to be people with strong scientific and technical experience who know what would be lost if mining or other destructive developments were to take place on conservation land.

Forest and Bird are right to be suspicious. The Minister for Economic Development has given ample evidence that in the thinking of the government the economic gain to be had from fossil fuel exploitation balances any environmental damage it causes. They have had to backtrack from the initial plan to open up some of the most highly protected conservation land for mining, but there’s every indication that they will continue to hover and find other opportunities to prize open land that ought to be left undisturbed, in order to extract fossil fuel from it. The same Forest and Bird newsletter set out the organisation’s hope to save the Denniston Plateau from a proposed new opencast coal mine which would destroy 200 hectares and increase New Zealand’s coal exports by up to 63% per year. And that would only be the beginning. The Australian company holds mining permits across the Plateau, which would generate an estimated 50 million tonnes of coal. Continue reading “Leave fossil fuels undisturbed.”

Global Climate Change: A Primer

Global Climate Change: A Primer may be a book for beginners, but those with an understanding of the issue will find interest in the wide-ranging exposition provided by geologist Orrin Pilkey  and his lawyer son Keith. Pilkey’s research area has been shorelines and coastal geology, with a special focus on barrier island coasts, and his previous book The Rising Sea, which I reviewed here, gave clear warning of the possible magnitude of sea level rise this century. This primer has been written to provide a brief and simple account for the layperson of the science of global climate change. The guided tour the authors provide is well managed in terms both of the straightforward language they use and the topics they select to survey.

Continue reading “Global Climate Change: A Primer”

Rebuilding on a rising tide

It’s been a shaky week in Christchurch and Canterbury. Another M6.3 shock hit the city on Monday afternoon — renewing the misery for many in the city’s eastern and seaside suburbs, but thankfully not adding to the death toll. Attention has now turned — with some force — to the question of which suburbs should be rebuilt, and an excellent feature by David Williams in last Saturday’s Press on sea level rise and its implications for the rebuilding of Christchurch should cause some pause for thought. Williams interviewed James Hansen during his visit to the city last month (shortly before I did, in fact), and uses Hansen’s views on sea level rise to kick off his discussion:

Hansen says a multi-metre sea level rise is possible this century if greenhouse gas emissions, caused by things such as coal-fired power plants, vehicle engines and agriculture, are not reduced.

Continue reading “Rebuilding on a rising tide”

Key contradictions

Gareth’s post on James Hansen’s talk at the University of Canterbury carried a link to a recent report that the Prime Minister supports the intentions of Solid Energy to develop the Southland lignite fields. The contrast between the warnings of Hansen and the bland assumptions of Key was painful.

Key speaks straight business as usual:

“At the moment companies like Solid Energy are growth companies and we want them to expand in areas like lignite conversion.”

“We know there is lots of resource there and we know they potentially have the capability [to convert lignite to urea or diesel] and so we will see how that progresses, but the briquette plant is a good starting point.”

Continue reading “Key contradictions”

Hansen in NZ: final roundup

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Here’s a high quality video of Jim Hansen’s talk at the University of Canterbury last month (excellent work by the audiovisual team at UC). Well worth watching, if only because it provides a succinct summary of Hansen’s current thinking. As Dr. Chuck Kutscher of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US said:

If you want to know the scientific consensus on global warming, read the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But if you want to know what the consensus will be ten years from now, read Jim Hansen’s work.

Hansen has also published his open letter to John Key (at HT here), with added observations on his time in New Zealand. I particularly enjoyed his heartfelt reference (in a footnote) to his minder, former Green Party leader Jeanette Fitzsimons:

[…] slave-driver Jeanette Fitzsimons unceremoniously routing me out of bed at 6 or 7 AM every day to get moving to the next town – not exactly a case of sipping piña colada on a beach.

See also: R0B at The Standard draws attention to a podcast of Hansen’s talk at Otago University, who notes that he described his meeting with Environment Minister Nick Smith as “a very unpleasant discussion”. With the recent news that John Key has given his support to lignite mining in Southland, it’s clear that the disconnect between reality and the New Zealand government is growing ever greater.

[Climate Show interview with Jim Hansen here. Hat tip to Jason Box for the Kutscher quote.]