sea

Is there life after breakfast?

by Gareth July 9, 2008

Morning Report is a breakfast fixture chez HT. As a way of keeping in touch with the news, it has no equal. By some strange whim of editorial decision-making(*), this morning they decided to give Bob “The Great Communicator” Carter a chance to trot out his “I am the balanced middle of this debate” line, [...]

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Hole in the ice

by Gareth July 3, 2008

The National Snow & Ice Data Centre in the US is issuing regular (monthly, though they might have to become more frequent soon) updates on the progress of this year’s Arctic melt season. Today they released their report for June, and like their earlier reports (accessed from the drop down menu top right on the [...]

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Love is hot, truth is molten

by Gareth July 2, 2008

It’s a bleak outlook for sexual equality in tuatara refuges in the Cook Strait. By the end of the century, their nesting sites could have warmed up enough to make all hatchlings male. Nature News reports on new, detailed modelling of how tuatara’s island homes will respond to climate warming: With the aid of computer [...]

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Mrs O’Leary’s Cow

by Gareth July 2, 2008

Did you know that all cows are carbon neutral? That all the fuss about forcing farmers into an emissions trading scheme is stuff and nonsense? You do now, thanks to the sterling efforts of the Carbon Sense Coalition, an Australian organisation. They issued a press release yesterday, news of which reached me via the Royal [...]

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Santa’s blues

by Gareth June 28, 2008

What’s a Christmas icon to do, when all the ice at the North Pole disappears in summer? This startling question is posed by the latest flush of media attention to events in the Arctic. First there was a National Geographic story on June 20th speculating that the North Pole would be ice free this summer [...]

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It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I don’t feel fine)

by Gareth June 13, 2008

For REM, it “starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane“, for us, it looks like diminishing Arctic sea ice is the sign. Over at Open Mind, the blogger formerly known as Tamino looks in some detail at the sea ice/rapid warming paper I linked to yesterday. His post makes for sober reading. David [...]

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Like takin’ candy from a baby

by Gareth June 12, 2008

Another day, another bet on sea ice. A few days ago, a regular reader of HT emailed to ask me if I could provide some support in a long series of comments to a post at Poneke! about the showing of Swindle. So I did (my contributions start here). And now I have another bet [...]

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Home thoughts from abroad

by Gareth June 10, 2008

Aunty Beeb has taken a look at New Zealand’s carbon ambitions. A report headlined “Attempting to ‘kick the carbon habit” gives a pretty good overview of the special problems – and advantages – that NZ has. There’s a decent plug for Grove Mill wines and their carbon zero status, plenty of room for the PM [...]

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Friday on my mind (once more)

by Gareth June 6, 2008

Before you ask, the picture shows the shell of a coccolithophore, and it’s in trouble. We’ve been adding a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and a good chunk of it has ended up in the oceans. The water is getting more acidic, and some sea creatures are finding it harder to build their [...]

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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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