Category: Climate business

Solar wind sculptures

windturbine.gif Time to nail my colours to the tall thing. Submissions on Mainpower’s Mt Cass windfarm consent application close on August 1st, and I’m running out of time to get one in (being busy, and all that). The opposition is getting itself organised, with a web site to co-ordinate dissenters, including a very nice gallery of pictures. I know (and love) this sort of landscape. I live in it.

I have some sympathy for the guys running the site, because I organised/designed/published the “Dump The Dump” web site for opponents of the Kate Valley landfill scheme. We lost, despite generating a record number of opposing submissions. I even did a presentation to the consent hearing, and got a mention in the final judgement. I still think we could have defeated the dump if we’d taken the issue to Christchurch, rather than kept it local and “played by the rules”…

Continue reading “Solar wind sculptures”

Paint it, black

Paintitblack.jpg Interesting to see how one opinion poll can say different things to different people. Over the weekend, Fran O’Sullivan in The Herald referred to a survey commissioned by the NZ Institute of Economic Research (they of the mostly useless recent report on the economics of the ETS). Here’s what Fran noticed:

The detailed survey shows extraordinary ignorance by New Zealanders. It indicates only one-third of the country believes in climate change in the first place. Only 13 per cent strongly support the ETS, with less than half the country aware of the scheme’s existence until prompted by surveyors.

The usual suspects have been trotting out a similar take on the survey. But it seemed fishy to me (and to No Right Turn). The results don’t seem to square with other online polls on the subject. So I downloaded the survey results and had a look [PDF].

Continue reading “Paint it, black”

All together now

tintinsnowy.jpg It’s getting hectic down here in the Waipara bunker: articles to write, truffles to harvest – stuff is piling up, not least in a multitude of tabs in my web browser, items set aside as possible subjects for posts here. So here’s one of my infrequent omnibus posts to give me some room to move around the web…

Continue reading “All together now”

Whispering wind

windturbine.gif A bit more on wind, and some worthwhile weekend reading. The British government has announced that it is planning a huge expansion in the use of wind power, building up to 7,000 turbines at a cost of up to £10bn, and expects renewable energy to account for 15% of all energy use by 2020. The BBC reports the somewhat lukewarm reaction, but Fred Pearce in The Guardian is cautiously optimistic that this time they might mean business. Electric vehicles are an important part of the package.

The Economist provides the weekend reading: an excellent overview of the energy options available over the coming decades, and why they look like the next big business opportunity. The leader’s here, and the special feature starts here. The sections on wind, solar and electric vehicles are especially interesting. Joe Romm at Climate Progress isn’t too keen on their enthusiasm for nuclear power, but read the lot and make up your own mind.

For a laugh, I refer you to a column excoriating electric vehicles in The Guardian by Matt Master, who is “a writer and road tester for Top Gear magazine” and who amply demonstrates how ignorance only makes you look like a tosser. Perhaps he doesn’t read The Economist, which headlines its article on EVs “The end of the petrolhead”.

The denial twist

hansen.jpg James Hansen [CV], the most outspoken climate scientist in the world, has been stirring up something of a furore. Invited by the Democrats to speak in Washington on the 20th anniversary of his famous 1988 testimony to Congress on the dangers of global warming, he used to opportunity to complain about the funding of climate disinformation campaigns by fossil fuel companies [full text]:

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming. CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature. Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children.

Prosecuted for “high crimes against humanity and nature”. That’s a pretty radical view and not surprisingly the climate disinformers have been hard at work trying to rubbish the idea – and Hansen and his work.

Continue reading “The denial twist”