A big float story slipped under the HT radar a month ago. Luckily I noticed the NZ connection in a recent release from the Scripps Institute in California – designers and builders of many of the Argo float network – and so I bring you news of the completion of this ocean monitoring system and the big role played by NIWA and its research ship, the Kaharoa, in deploying the floats. Better late than never…
Category: Climate science
Friday on my mind
Meridian got the resource consent for its 176 turbine, $1.5bn Project Hayes wind farm on the Lammermoor Range, 70 km north west of Dunedin in Central Otago, but only on a split decision. Next stage: almost certainly the Environment Court. [Herald , The Press , Southland Times] Meanwhile:
- Brian Fallow follows up on fast following in the Herald, and gets it right.
- Desmogblog highlights an excellent NASA animation illustrating the sheer extent of this summer’s Arctic ice melt.
- Technology Review covers MIT’s Smart Cities group design for a folding, stackable, electric city car (and scooter).
- The Guardian [UK]reports on a list of the top 50 things to do to save the planet, drawn up by the Environment Agency [full list(PDF)]. Toppermost of the poppermost? Dramatically improve the energy efficiency of electrical goods. In the charts at number 2 (with a bullet)? Religious leaders to make the environment a priority for their followers.
- The Guardian [UK] also has an interesting feature on plans to collect solar energy in space (thus avoiding the losses caused by passage through the atmosphere) and then beam it down to earth via microwave or laser beams.
Formerly the weekend roundup
Saturday’s promised omnibus extension never arrived, in part because of the arrival of a big cat on my computer, so here’s a Tuesday update.
Weekend compendium
James Lovelock is the man who invented earth system science – or to give it the name he got from William Golding (the Lord Of The Flies man), Gaia. Very influential, in other words, and one of the gloomiest prognosticators of mankind’s future in a world where Gaia bites back through climate change. Rolling Stone has an excellent long profile of Lovelock, which includes this gem about some temporary employment during the 1980s:
He supported himself in part as a consultant for MI5, England’s top counterintelligence agency, where he developed a method to monitor the movements of KGB spies in London by using an ECD [electron capture detector, a device invented by JL] to track their vehicles.
Elsewhere:
- The UN Environment Programme’s fourth Global Environment Outlook Report (GEO-4) makes gloomy reading. The Press puts it on the front page with the headline Man’s ‘very survival at risk’. [Herald, BBC, Telegraph [UK], full report PDF]. Our ecological overdraft is going to make Gaia unhappy…
- She’s not helping out with CO2 like she used to either. The amount of our CO2 emissions mopped up by natural emissions is declining – which threatens to speed up warming as carbon cycle feedbacks kick in, a new study [PDF] finds. [BBC, Herald, Times [UK], CSIRO, Rabett Run, Stoat]
[This post will be updated/extended when I stop feeling gloomy…]
To boldly follow…?
The New Zealand Institute, the politically neutral think tank born of the “Knowledge Wave†conference, has been making waves of a different kind today with its new, and rather idiosyncratic take on how NZ should approach emissions reductions. The report, part of a series on climate change, is called “We’re Right Behind You†[PDF], and advocates a “fast follower†approach to emissions reductions – which apparently means reneging on our Kyoto commitments. The report recommends that:
…it seems appropriate and realistic for New Zealand to undertake to reduce its net emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 rather than by 2012. We recommend that New Zealand should seek to avoid the obligation to purchase carbon credits associated with the decision to delay achieving its Kyoto committment by 2012.
This effectively means withdrawing from Kyoto, and as you might expect this “considered analysis†has been welcomed by the big emitters. I was interviewed by one of the authors of the report back in June, before HT was published, and in a swift email exchange this morning I promised to read the report thoroughly before rushing to any judgement (unlike some). So, my timely (but not rushed) view of this contribution to the policy debate?