Tag: The Daily Blog

TDB Today: through the looking glass into the world of climate denial

In my post this week at The Daily Blog — Investigating climate change deniers and their spin against global warming — I take a look at the PR campaign being run against action on climate change and one of their most important tactics, creating a smokescreen to hide the reality of climate change:

The resulting exchanges provide an object lesson in life through the looking-glass, that alternative world where warming isn’t happening, climate scientists are colluding in a giant hoax, and the poor old free market is being threatened by gangs of rampant watermelons — great wagon loads of fruit against freedom, leeks against liberty, and carrots against capitalism.

As seen on blogs everywhere, all the time, produced by the willing foot soldiers of climate denial.

TDB Today: WACCy weather and a warm year

WACCyweather

A classic case of WACCy weather in the northern hemisphere, seen here in a map from the excellent Climate Reanalyzer site, prompts me to discuss the 2013 global temperature numbers, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, and what sea ice loss is doing to northern hemisphere weather patterns in my post at The Daily Blog this week. We live in interesting times…

TDB today: 2014 – Won’t get fooled again

In my first post of the year at The Daily Blog, I abuse the lyrics to a great old rock song, and express general disbelief that new post-election boss will be any different to the old one.

We are living beyond our environmental and resource means. All our current prosperity and the ecosystem services that make it possible are being stolen from future generations. Delaying action is just making the final bill bigger, and the ultimate damage worse.
We face an existential crisis. If we screw this up, we screw up our entire civilisation, yet we have politicians of all stripes and ideologies who simply don’t take the climate problem seriously.

[The Who, of course]

TDB today: Tomorrow is being written in New Zealand’s mountains

TasmanGlacier 3

In a rather reflective last post for the year at The Daily Blog today — Tomorrow is being written in New Zealand’s mountains — I ruminate on the impact warming is having on New Zealand’s largest glacier. All pictures were taken last Sunday, from a little yellow boat bobbing on the growing terminal lake. A visit to Aoraki Mt Cook to see the glaciers is something everyone should do. It’s climate change writ large, and happening on our doorstep.

TasmanGlacier 2

TDB Today: The Climate Tectonics of the Age of Stupid

If you haven’t yet read Cindy Baxter’s summing up of the Warsaw climate talks, now would be a good time, because she provides the context for my ruminations at The Daily Blog today: The Climate Tectonics of The Age Of Stupid. Kicking the climate can down the road doesn’t cut it as a response to a major emergency:

The obvious clash between self-interest, self-preservation and political ideology is not new, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that the negotiations are taking place on a strange parallel planet. It’s a world where diplomatic contrivance trumps fact, expedience rules over reality. Keeping the process going is everything — even if it means that the goal you’re aiming at has shifted beyond reach.

And by some happy chance, The Age Of Stupid is being shown in my neck of the woods this week: at the Waikari Hall, 99 Princes St, Waikari, starting at 7-30pm – entry $10. There will be a discussion after the film, with the Hurunui District Council’s biodiversity advisor (and HT reader) Sonny Whitelaw fielding questions. I’ll be there to give her a hand…