Nano electric cars from India, 100 year old electric vehicles, the Petermann ice island floating down towards the Atlantic, heatwaves in the USA and snow in North Canterbury, and a bit of peerless chat about a larrikin Lord on his way to New Zealand. With added vegan cheese and the BFC (big fat cat). Yes Glenn and John Cook wax lyrical, while Gareth’s mind wanders off on his EU and US trip — The Climate Show is back with another rambling but perfectly essential distillation of climate and related news and commentary.
Watch The Climate Show on our Youtube channel, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, listen to us via Stitcher on your smartphone or listen direct/download from the link below the fold…
Follow The Climate Show at The Climate Show web site, and on Facebook and Twitter.
News & commentary: [0:01:20]
Our own cold snap & the NZ MetService blog coverage.
Looking chilly at Gareth’s house
Petermann ice island off Labrador.
Meanwhile… US East Coast heat wave — humidity was the stunning hallmark plus Climate Central & Jeff Masters.
Europe’s melting glaciers and summer river flows.
Lamb worst offender at generating greenhouse gases in US? “A report by the US Environmental Working Group suggests lamb, beef and pork generate the most greenhouse gases, use the most fertiliser, water and feed in the production process, and also tend to be higher in fat.”
“Green” and “Sustainable” coming back into fashion?
Climate Change and the media — BBC about to bite bullet on climate BS.
Debunking the sceptic, with John Cook of Skeptical Science [0:35:00]
The Breivik manifesto and the Monckton connection, & Norway terrorist is a climate change denier.
Monckton’s curriculum vitae at the UK Independence Party.
Monckton refuses to accept challenge from Barry Bickmore to debate in written form.
Solutions [01:10:00]
A Marlborough wine producer has slashed its annual heating bill by choosing to burn its own vine prunings to produce heat.
India is making electric cars… who knew?
A century of electric vehicles…
New documentary: Revenge of the electric car.
Japanese home fuel cell.
Thanks to our media partners: Celsias.co.nz, Scoop and KiwiFM.
Theme music: A Drop In The Ocean by The Bads.
great show….
Anyone know a ball park figure for the carbon footprint in switching our fossil fuel infrastructure to a sustainable one?
Huge question. You’d need to be more specific before I could even point you in the right direction…
Enjoyable as usual. I do hope Glenn and John keep the show turning over.
Don’t be knocking the vegan cheese! (BTW – my cat weighs 9kg. Can you top that?)
On the topic of Breivik, in 1500 pages of Far-Right nut-casery I was completely unsurprised that he managed to fit in a little ranting about the ‘climate conspiracy’. He also managed to cite Howard, Costello, and even Archbishop Pell with approval, according to the ABC.
Clearly, though, this approval is derived from their statements and actions on Islam and immigration – clearly Breivik is first-and-foremost an Islamaphobic racist kook.
But it was Social Democrats he chose to slaughter.
Now, if some hypothetical ELF ultra-extremist had shot more than 70 members of some Conservative youth league and cited Mann, Gore, and Pachauri with approval – even in passing in a prolonged rant – I doubt there’d be a lot of delicacy on the anti-environmentalist Right in gleefully using this to further their agenda and intimidate their critics (particularly within the Murdochracy – can you even begin to imagine Fox?).
What some contrarians – we’ve all encountered them – need to actually sit down and think about seriously is how it is that they frequently manage to sound so much like this –
Because this is, like Breivik, bat-shit crazy. Utterly contemptible. Always was, always will be. No-one benefits when such extremist wing-nuttery becomes somehow ‘acceptable’, and it’s an indicator of how weak the scientific case against AGW really is that so many resort to paranoiac ranting…
The BFC is somewhere north of 8kg. The vet wanted to put him on a diet, but how do you diet a cat who kills rabbits? Cut down his biscuits, and the bloody remains begin to pile up at the back door.
Glenn promises he’ll keep the show ticking over, and John will keep him in line.
Your BFC sounds just like my old BFC! We celebrated his 20th birthday a few years back with a byo “milk” and “bickies” party (your not getting any of mine!) and one of Mike P’s students (who is also an excellent singer) serenaded him. Ash loved to bring back a young rabbit, dragging it along like a tiger with it’s prey through the undergrowth.
Once he had gone the pukeko population exploded almost overnight! Now I like pukeko’s – but anyone who has had the experience of living next to a large population of them will know exactly what I mean when I say that the increase in their population wasn’t always viewed with pleasure. I often sighed “bring back Ash”.
Some weird weather alright. 3-4 days ago it got down to freezing point up here in the Bay of Islands, but today it was warm – just a shade under 19°C!
Damn! 19… could have done with that in Auckland today. Enamel paint takes an age to dry when it’s cold.
It reached 15.6ºC here today — a perfect spring day, only three days after a record snow fall… Weird’s the word.
Until tonight, we have had ice and snow at our place. I have slipped over a few times getting to my car which I have had to park down the hill. No matter. Tohight I had go to a function to celebrate the retirement of our Vice-Chancellor David Skegg. Not to be missed. Fortunately, the ice has now mostly gone. But it has been an exceptional freeze down here in Dunedin. Another climate extreme!
An early report that Wellington had its “coldest” day was completely inaccurate, as I quickly pointed out (not that TVNZ has responded yet, or the DomPost). Metservice gave the facts on a later blog entry. The Monday didn’t even rate a bronze medal, but it was the coldest day here since July 1995. I’m still expecting some Treadgold type to react to the original incorrect information…
Sorry to be Open Thready, but I would like to flag this report of a new study form the University of WA – ‘Setting the record straight almost impossible‘
I’ll post the concluding paragraph –