Tag: Hot

Sharpening Antarctica’s image

I like Google Earth. I like looking down on my neighbours to see what’s going on behind their shelter belts, and because I like monitoring what’s going on at the poles, I have the National Snow & Ice Data Centre’s overlay switched on most of the time. It shows current sea ice extent, snow cover and so on. But when I swoop over Antarctica, the underlying images provided by Google are rather disappointing – low resolution and distorted. I was therefore very pleased to discover that a collaboration between NASA, the US Geological Survey, the National Science Foundation and the British Antarctic Survey has created a new map of the continent based on Landsat imagery. From NASA’s press release:

The map is a realistic, nearly cloudless satellite view of the continent at a resolution 10 times greater than ever before with images captured by the NASA-built Landsat 7 satellite. With the unprecedented ability to see features half the size of a basketball court, the mosaic offers the most geographically accurate, true-color, high-resolution views of Antarctica possible.

You can play with the map at the USGS site, but the interface is rather clunky. However, there are hints that the new map will be available for Google Earth before long. Can’t wait….

It’s not just the cows

It’s been a quiet few days chez Hot Topic, as the sun’s been shining (until today), the farm’s been calling and friends have been dining, but I can’t pass over this piece of news. A new web site called CARMA – Carbon Monitoring for Action – was launched last week [Science Daily ]. It pulls together information on carbon emissions from the 50,000 power plants around the world and the 20,000 companies that run them, and ranks countries, regions and cities on their emissions. So what happens when you have a look at New Zealand?

As you might expect, Huntly dwarfs the competition, credited with producing 7.6 million tons of CO2 per year, but if you click on the emissions intensity tab (far right) – the amount of CO2 per unit of power generated – a couple of Fonterra factories top the charts. Step forward Waitoa and Edendale – NZ’s most intense/least efficient emitters of CO2. Can’t be good for their performance on Fonterra’s internal “carbon account“. CARMA is a treasure trove of information, well worth a long look.

Chris hates Greenpeace

False balance time at the Herald. Last week they gave Greenpeace climate campaigner Susannah Bailey a chance to look at how certain sectors of the business community (Greenhouse Policy Coalition, Business Roundtable etc) are lobbying against current plans for an emissions trading scheme, this week they give NZ Climate “Science” Coalition science advisor Chris de Freitas space to express a different point of view. Bailey’s language was a deal more measured than de Freitas, who indulges in some vibrant green-bashing:

The fanatical name calling and personal attacks expose the strong ideological elements that drive global warming alarmist thinking. It’s as if the depth of passion is overcompensation for doubt and uncertainty. Why else would environmentalists squander so much effort trying to discredit individuals and organisations who disagree?

Warning: I’m about to squander some time trying to discredit de Freitas – whose grasp of the underlying science seems a little – how shall I put this – shaky for an associate professor in the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science at the University of Auckland.

Continue reading “Chris hates Greenpeace”

Blah, blah, blab, Blaby (*)

Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, a British Tory politician who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet during the 1980s, is visiting New Zealand as a guest of the Business Roundtable to give this year’s Sir Ronald Trotter memorial lecture. Lawson withdrew from the mainstream of Conservative politics in 1992 “to spend more time with his family” (coining that phrase as he did so), but in recent years he has reinvented himself as a climate sceptic, a vociferous opponent of the Kyoto protocol and a scourge of what he terms “eco-fundamentalists”. Clearly, the Business Roundtable has brought in a wise elder statesman to provide much needed context to the climate debate, to better inform its members about the need for emissions reductions. Sadly, Lawson is far more likely to serve up a rousing speech packed with half-truths, distortions, and advice so bad it amounts to dangerous folly, if reports in the Sunday Star Times and Dominion Post are to be believed.

Continue reading “Blah, blah, blab, Blaby (*)”

They would say that, wouldn’t they…

This week it’s the turn of the Greenhouse Policy Coalition to trumpet a report urging a go-slow on emissions trading. The GPC, of course, are the nation’s big emitters (NZ Aluminium Smelters, Holcim, Solid Energy, Fonterra etc), and they are lobbying hard on behalf of their members. The usual suspects (Business Roundtable, Business NZ) weighed in behind the report, while Greenpeace and the Business Council For Sustainable Development took the opposite view. Brian Fallow at the Herald provides an overview – but not much in the way of substantive criticism.

The report, The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme: How do we make it work? [PDF], by Alex Sundakov at Castalia, is pretty obviously a bit of special pleading on behalf of big emitters – primarily agriculture – and in that respect its conclusions are hardly surprising. These are the key suggestions (from the press release):

Continue reading “They would say that, wouldn’t they…”