Tag: National

Crankwatch

Wp-Content Uploads 2007 08 Homer-1Al Gore’s making most of the climate news at the moment. Winning a Nobel Peace Prize and having a British judge find nine “errors” in An Inconvenient Truth has generated a lot of copy, and more hot air. Others have done a lot of footwork on this story: Deltoid looks at the nature of the “errors” and RealClimate examines the underlying science, but New Zealand has its own band of stalwarts banging away. Former ACT MP Muriel Newman, who runs a web site titled the NZ Centre For Policy Research, not content with fulminating against “political indoctrination” in NZ schools, has now written to the president of the Academy Awards demanding that Gore’s Oscar should be removed:

“With the release of the British High Court judgement overnight that found that ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ was littered with nine inconvenient untruths, it is clear that Al Gore embellished the truth to create dramatic effect (see the High Court Judgement http://www.nzcpr.com/dimmock.pdf). Given that the Oscar Award was presented in the documentary category and not the drama category, the only appropriate action now is for the Academy to rescind the Award as it was clearly inappropriately classed as a documentary. The second Oscar for ‘Best Original Song’ is not affected by the Judge’s ruling. The truth, as inconvenient as it is to Al Gore, is that his so-called documentary contained critical distortions that are quite contrary to the principles of good documentary journalism. Good documentaries should be factually correct. Clearly this documentary is not.”

What a broadside. I’m sure the Oscar committee are quaking in their boots and rushing to consider such an urgent issue, raised by such an important and perceptive commentator. Set aside for a moment that “embellishing the truth for dramatic effect” is pretty much what film-making is all about, Muriel seems to have forgotten a few basic facts herself.

Continue reading “Crankwatch”

Another Friday roundup

NzmapI’m a sucker for pretty computer graphics, especially if they’re didactic. Today’s discovery is a superb Flash animation of the sea level history of Australia and New Guinea, lovingly prepared by Monash University‘s new SahulTime project [ABC coverage here]. From the web site:

The concept of SahulTime is similar to GoogleEarth, except that SahulTime extends each of GoogleEarth’s paradigms through a further dimension in time. Satellite-style images change to reflect coastlines, the icons are time-aware, and even photographs can can be taken through a timewarp to view reconstructed ancient landscapes.

You drag a pointer back along a profile of how sea level has changed over the last 100,000 years, and watch how Australia’s coastline changes, merging with New Guinea. Fantastic. Can we have one for New Zealand, please?

Meanwhile…

  • Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth has been passed by a UK High Court judge as fit to be seen by UK schoolchildren, but only with changes to the accompanying teacher’s notes to clarify nine scientific “errors”. News media are buzzing: a few samples – Herald, BBC, and Guardian (UK). The BBC’s environment correspondent provides some context, and Stoat (aka climate scientist and ice gambler William Connolley) looks at how serious the mistakes really are. The right wing roots of the court case are explained by Oil Change International, and one of the “expert” witnesses looks like it might have been the NZ CSC’s own Bob Carter. Not surprising then that former ACT MP Muriel Newman’s NZ Centre for Policy Research site is all over the issue – though she manages to find two extra bonus “errors” from somewhere. Read the judgement in full here. Real Climate’s original review supports the judge’s finding that AIT gets the basic science right.
  • New Scientist reports on a Canadian study that finds that to keep global temperature under the EU’s target of 2C above pre-industrial levels, cuts of 90% of emissions will be needed by 2050, much deeper than the 50% reductions already promised.
  • The new edition of popular computer game SimCity is to feature global warming, offering players high and low carbon energy options – sponsored by BP. A sign of the times….

New energy and energy efficiency strategies announced

Wp-Content Uploads 2007 08 WindturbineRenewables 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 expansion of wind and geothermal generation. The energy strategy is complemented by the new energy efficiency and conservation strategy (EECS) [web, PDF], designed to help homes, businesses and transport reduce their energy use.
Announcing the energy strategy, David Parker said (Scoop audio):

The government does not believe it is in the interests of the country for the SOEs to build any more base-load thermal generation. The government will be writing to the SOE generators to make it clear that it expects them to follow this guidance. We are also considering additional measures to ensure our message is loud and clear, for all generators, not just SOEs. Competitive neutrality between the private sector and SOEs is important.

In the transport sector, the government wants to encourage biofuels, greater fuel efficiency, and low-carbon vehicles. It foresees as much as 60% of the light vehicle fleet being electric powered by 2050. The strategy also call for the development of a domestic sea freight strategy, looking to build an integrated rail/sea freight system to reduce reliance on roads. [“Key points” press release]

In her speech launching the EECS, Jeanette Fitzsimmons said:

“This is an action plan to make a real difference to Kiwi families so that they can live in warmer, drier, healthier homes that cost less to heat; for business to become more competitive; and to save money and emissions in the transport sector. The strategy is set to deliver annual non-transport energy savings of 30 PetaJoules per year by 2025. That’s the same as the electricity used by 30 cities the size of Nelson in 2006 or 18 months of coal-fired production from Huntly, at 2006 levels. In transport, cumulative savings by 2025 will be around 4.8 billion litres of fuel.”

All good stuff, but someone should tell her officials that a PetaJoule is a bit more than 1015 Joules – as defined at the back of the strategy document. That should be 10 to the power of 15, a thousand trillion joules, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 joules. Either that, or Nelson is the most energy efficient town in the known universe. Mike Ward clearly doesn’t need to be mayor…

Reaction so far seems mainly positive. More from me when I’ve had a chance to read the strategy documents in detail.

ETS reaction #2

Wp-Content Uploads 2007 09 Nzets1Two very perceptive pieces of analysis over the last few days,and one deeply misguided one. Rod Oram in the Sunday Star Times takes a look at how nitrification inhibitors could be a major incentive for dairy farmers to get involved in emissions reductions sooner rather than later, and Colin James in the Herald rather gloomily acknowledges the realpolitik of international negotiations:

The odds are that humanity doesn’t think it matters, at least not enough to forgo significant amounts of its material gains or prospects. The odds are that humanity won’t really change its mind until (or if) climate change starts to have effects that cut significantly into material gains and prospects, the necessaries and luxuries of life, and people see it as the cause: that is, when it ceases to be a moral issue and becomes an economic one. That point has not been reached. So world politicians are likely to come up with a suboptimal arrangement to apply when the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012 and to implement it suboptimally. And so, if the climate change high priests’ measurements and predictions are right and warming isn’t offset by radical new technologies, there is a rough ride ahead.

On the other hand, Roger Kerr of the Business Roundtable in the Dominion Post, grudgingly admits that the ETS looks “responsible and moderate

The business of climate change

New York-based merchant bank Lehman Brothers have produced an excellent overview of the business and economics of climate change (PDF). If you have any interest in the economics of dealing with climate change, and want an informed overview of the drivers of political and commercial change, this is a very good place to start. I don’t agree with everything they have to say (they’re far too dismissive of electric vehicles, for instance – I reckon EVs have the potential be a disruptive technology), but the sectoral and country by country analysis of investment opportunities is fascinating, and their general take on the issue is very close to my own. From the conclusions:

The size of the carbon market globally, as measured by the value of permits issued, could, on a conservative estimate, be over $100bn by 2020 or thereabouts. This assumes that the United States, Japan, and China join the EU in moving to an emissions trading scheme covering around 50% of their total emissions. Annual turnover would be a multiple of that figure. This compares with the US Treasury market which currently stands around $2 trillion.

They put the chances of an international deal including China and India at 75% (up from 50% in an earlier report), and expect share prices to begin to track relative carbon intensity – with carbon-light companies doing better. Recommended reading.