Envirologue by Dave Hansford

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Envirologue: Too Big to Fail – Why National will Never Act on Climate Change

244 Responses

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  • James Bremner, in reply to Bart Janssen,

    Bart,
    Are you serious? "...your thesis that continuing the current global economic model will benefit the developing nations is simply not borne out by evidence."
    That might come might come as a bit of a surprise to the 400 million Chinese that have been lifted out of poverty by the "current global model" which China began adopting in 1979 when the profit motive an international trade was unleashed in China. And thanks to that current economic model, between now and 2035 the middle class in Asia is projected to increase from its current level of 350 million to 3.5 billion. That is a hell of a lot of people positively impacted by "the current economic model". Due to this economic growth the IMF is projecting the poverty as we know it will be completely eradicated by 2030. That is amazing and something a leftie ought to be very happy about. But, no. If you had your way and implemented the CC policies, a lot of those people in developing countries would be kept down in poverty. I don't know that things would be quite as bad as they were during Mao's great leap forward, a previous piece of genius left wing thinking, but a lot of people would live a much shorter brutish life than they otherwise would.
    That would be the consequence of the policy you are supporting, but apparently you don't understand that.

    NOLA • Since Nov 2006 • 353 posts Report Reply

  • Alfie,

    Well lookee... Tim Groser is inviting public submissions on New Zealand's post 2020 climate change target.

    Russel Norman questions the government's approach to consultation.

    "The Government's consultation document is seriously flawed. It treats action on climate change as a cost, whereas, in fact, failure to take action is actually the cost," said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.

    "The New Zealand Treasury found that if New Zealand continues on its current trajectory of increasing emissions, the cost to taxpayers of even a modest 5% reduction target will be up to $52 billion. Reducing our emissions will lower this cost.

    "But beyond the fiscal cost of inaction, report after report has found that moving to a low-carbon economy is a major economic opportunity, yet this Government continues with its twentieth century mindset of seeing emission reductions as a cost.

    Submissions close on 3rd June.

    Dunedin • Since May 2014 • 1440 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Rowe, in reply to James Bremner,

    "Mate - ya dreamin'!"

    The rise in the wealth and middle class in China corresponds to a decrease of wealth and middle class in the West. All around the West the middle class is shrinking and trying to maintain their position by taking on ever larger amounts of debt. In the USA the manufacturing base has been gutted - leading to once well off and functioning places like Baltimore being complete basket cases. Similarly many small towns in NZ that had a functioning manufacturing base with jobs and vitality now are ghost towns you speed up through.

    So bully for China and a few Oligarch corporations - sucks for everyone else.

    Anyone who thinks poverty will be eradicated by 2030 by economic growth please up your meds now. http://www.wsj.com/articles/global-glut-challenges-policy-makers-1429867807

    And comparing left thinking to a vicious psychopathic dictator is just lazy. There are plenty of vicious psychopathic dictators running the world at the moment, economic, religious, political,left, right - doesn't matter when you are the one being screwed.

    Finally, if you think that enacting CC policies will mean peoples lives will be brutish and short you don't have to worry - no one is going to be enacting any CC policies. The Conservatives have won - everywhere! Rejoice! In the future you may even have enough gas to drive the Audi to the water queue.

    NZ • Since Apr 2015 • 27 posts Report Reply

  • Stamper Stamp,

    22 reasons why the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming alarmists are wrong:

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/12/22-very-inconvenient-climate-truths/

    But, you will ignore the evidence as usual; shoot the messenger, and generally continue to cry wolf.
    Well doomsters, 30 years later and doom is not over the horizon, and the good news is most folk have stopped listening to your message.

    Enjoy the inter-glacial - S S

    Auckland • Since Feb 2014 • 27 posts Report Reply

  • st ephen, in reply to Alfie,

    Those with an interest in public transport in Auckland might like to use this opportunity to make a submission, given that the transport sector is responsible for a big chunk of the increase in NZ's emissions. Building more roads is not the answer to Auckland transport issues and is certainly not the answer to mitigating emissions. From the consultation document it appears that the plan is to keep on building roads as Auckland spreads until...electric cars!

    dunedin • Since Jul 2008 • 254 posts Report Reply

  • Bart Janssen, in reply to Stamper Stamp,

    shoot the messenger

    Don't be silly, we just call you a troll and wait for the admin to kick you to the curb since you've stopped contributing anything other than recycled lies.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report Reply

  • tussock,

    Re: Thumper's intolerable bullshit. Mostly from

    https://www.skepticalscience.com/

    1: Global temperatures have been stable since bla bla bla. No they haven't. The escalator is a stupid trick and you are stupid for using it.

    https://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator500.gif

    That's also air temperature, where the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, long La Nina, melting icecaps, and recent solar minimum have acted to pump the air temperature gains into other heat sinks, almost all into the oceans.

    http://skepticalscience.com/graphics/Nuccitelli_OHC_Data_med.jpg

    2: CO2 output is exponential, temperature increase is stepped, that makes no sense, oh, wait, yes it does. It's expected to take centuries for air temperatures to actually equilibrate to CO2 levels, and the strongest effect on temperatures may be delayed by up to 40 years.

    3: CO2 in the air, bla bla, is both constantly turned into more of the radioactive isotope, and constantly exchanged with CO2 in the oceans and in plants, you dimwit. There's a carbon cycle, we're just shifting the balance point by digging up stable fossil fuels.

    4: The lifetime of CO2, see, if you understand there's a carbon cycle, why #3? Anyway, the lifetime we care about is when the balance point for the carbon cycle returns to normal, and it's a very long way off indeed with the primary sink of rock weathering. We aren't concerned with individual atoms of Carbon.

    5: Sinusoidal, you should look it up, it does not look like a hockey stick.

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/NH_Temp_Reconstruction.gif

    You can't just keep adding degrees of fit until your curve goes down, you have to have a mechanism for action, how does the temperature fall, why, what happens to the CO2 balance, why is all of science wrong?

    6: WTF? Yes, the CO2 absorbs heat and re-emits it, and the effect is indeed not linear but totally retains more heat anyway! Check out fucking Venus, the heat, it be retained.

    7: The laws of nature in the extreme past were lucky enough to have a less energetic Sun to be orbiting. Solar output increases by about 10% per billion years until it goes giant, so it used to be a good thing to have a great deal of CO2, back long before there was multi-cellular life and such.

    8: FFS. Sea level rise is accelerating, if you don't cherry-pick your time frame to hide that. The sources of it are measured and in agreement. It's expected to peak around 6-9mm per year, or 0.6-0.9m per century, at current temperatures, faster as we go higher and capable of reaching 2m+ per century, currently at 3mm/year and climbing.

    9 & 10: This thing which "has not been measured" is hilarious down at #17, where it's measurements are noted.

    11: The Antarctic ice pack is indeed increasing, because of all the melting ice off the land, fresh water being easier to freeze.

    12: The total water-ice surface is indeed roughly equal, because of all the melted northern sea ice. This is what warming does, how is it an argument against warming?

    13: The ARGO buoys do show warming in some reviews, are not the only measure available, and when combined with all ocean measurements made at the time they agree that the ocean is warming. You can't cherry-pick data like that, again ignoring the long-term trends.

    14: I don't even. That's cray-cray. You're saying the planet is measured to be warming from space, so there can't be a warming effect? I don't even.

    15: Nothing is actually a black body. Nothing. Black body radiation is a model that works more or less well for all sorts of things, including things it was never intended for, but it totally works for STARS! Which are plasma, and also not a "black body". YFI.

    16: HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Second LAW people, insulation cannot work because it's colder than your house and thus cannot, oh fuck off.

    For those confused, cold things emit heat too, just less of it. This was surprising to people in the 15th century, and is not surprising now.

    https://www.skepticalscience.com/Second-law-of-thermodynamics-greenhouse-theory.htm

    17: This is the thing there was no measure of back at #9-10, he's complaining that it's measure matches the CO2. Just, like, we're emitting CO2, that's what happens when you burn hydrocarbons. The temperature increases with the CO2 increase, but probably delayed a few decades.

    18: So? There's a study of things unrelated to climatology. Thanks.

    19: Yes, there is more cloud when it's hotter, we know, the models have such big uncertainties specifically because people are still measuring exactly how that works on average. New satellite and everything.

    But importantly, the way the air circulation works changes with a changing climate, the climate zones change size and grow, shifting the places that are dry and wet and it's hard to predict exactly what we'll end up with at each particular moment along the way. Models are "inconsistent" because they're honest about not knowing exactly.

    20: Hilariously, models are diverging from measured temperatures most greatly because we keep accelerating our production of CO2 from fossil fuels and pushing us off the high end of the predictions until they can be updated to model our new, even crazier output levels.

    21: Yes, it can't be predicted long-term. But by long-term, they mean predicting things centuries ahead. So the models only get 80 years or so before the uncertainty sort of explodes them. You can totally predict mean climates much further ahead for thousands of years, even make predictions out hundreds of millions of years to some degree, but actual climates and the rate of change between them at any point will vary.

    22: The IPCC is not doing the science, it's collating the science. Every other body that's attempted independent collation, even the Brothers one, found the same results. "Pal review" is a slur spread by a bunch of cranks who were doing pal reviews for each other's denier bullshit and assumed the "other side", composed of actual scientists, must be too. They were incorrect and remain so.

    Since Nov 2006 • 611 posts Report Reply

  • Brent Jackson,

    So what are his options now ? Never seen again. Pick one tiny bit and argue it vehemently. Or totally ignore your rebuttal and post some completely different totally debunked factoid.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 620 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson, in reply to Brent Jackson,

    My money is on the last option. Bait and switch, uses way less energy than trolling and the bycatch is seen as a bonus.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie, in reply to BenWilson,

    My money is on the last option.

    Speculating on the next move of a low-level climate troll? In Colombia they've taken it a few clicks up the evolutionary ladder.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

  • Rob Stowell, in reply to James Bremner,

    the 400 million Chinese that have been lifted out of poverty by the “current global model”

    Why do I always find myself chuckling when Communist China is used as absolute proof Neo-liberalism is perfect?

    Whakaraupo • Since Nov 2006 • 2120 posts Report Reply

  • Stamper Stamp, in reply to tussock,

    Hi Tussock – an impressive response, thank you.

    You may not be aware that the IPCC have admitted they don’t know what the future climate is going to be – just as well given they could not predict an 18 year flat-line of temperature while CO2 climbed from approx 350ppm to 400ppm.

    They stated the following in a rare feat of honesty:
    “In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled-nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001), Section 14.2.2.2, page 774
    Sort of says it all, doesn’t it.

    Enjoy the inter-glacial - S S

    Auckland • Since Feb 2014 • 27 posts Report Reply

  • Rob Stowell, in reply to Stamper Stamp,

    You may not be aware

    That your quote doesn't demonstrate what you think it does. Maybe you could do some courses in science - or logic?

    Whakaraupo • Since Nov 2006 • 2120 posts Report Reply

  • John Farrell, in reply to Rob Stowell,

    Who needs science and logic when you have religious convictions?

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 499 posts Report Reply

  • Bart Janssen, in reply to Brent Jackson,

    So what are his options now ?

    Woohoo Bingo!

    We now have the
    “Science is never absolutely certain so because there is always some doubt it must be wrong”

    Pity we still know who pays him to post this shit.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report Reply

  • Rob Stowell, in reply to Bart Janssen,

    we still know who pays him to post this shit.

    I'd really like this to be clarified.
    Stamper - can you please tell us what your job is?
    I'm ok with you posting this rubbish if you genuinely believe it. I'm sad to say I've met a few people who do - some of whom are cranky or cocky enough to spend their own time spreading misinformation.
    But if you are being paid to spread it you should tell us - it's a thing called 'being honest.' If you're not willing to be honest, you can be banned from posting, or we can simply stop responding (as most have.)
    So far you've ignored all such requests. Last chance?

    Whakaraupo • Since Nov 2006 • 2120 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson, in reply to Stamper Stamp,

    Sort of says it all, doesn’t it.

    No, it says very little, and is a very incomplete statement. I can, for instance, say with extremely high level of likelihood that the average temperature of the earth's surface will be between zero and 100 degrees celcius for the next million years. Chaotic systems can have unpredictable behaviour as they rove between their attractors, but you can certainly say that when you change underlying drivers of the systems, the overall averages change. The underlying nature of a system can change a lot without noticeable surface temperature change. For instance, a glass of water with ice in it will be, on average, about zero degrees celcius for the entire time it takes the ice to melt. But it's bogus to say that nothing changed in the glass and that on the evidence, it will always be zero degrees celcius. When the ice melts, the glass will rapidly rise to room temperature. And the room temperature will have a big effect on how fast the ice melts. Only by weighing the ice could you actually be sure of the heat energy state of the glass of water.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic, in reply to Rob Stowell,

    Stamper – can you please tell us what your job is?
    I’m ok with you posting this rubbish if you genuinely believe it. I’m sad to say I’ve met a few people who do – some of whom are cranky or cocky enough to spend their own time spreading misinformation.
    But if you are being paid to spread it you should tell us – it’s a thing called ‘being honest.’ If you’re not willing to be honest, you can be banned from posting, or we can simply stop responding (as most have.)
    So far you’ve ignored all such requests. Last chance?

    You gotta hand it to James Bremner for being open in spite of his blow-hardery. No such openness from Stamper – I’ve already asked him if he's a Big Oil shill and he’s only replayed the same broken record over and over again. If he won’t front up, maybe Russell could help make him.

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to Bart Janssen,

    Woohoo Bingo!

    We now have the
    “Science is never absolutely certain so because there is always some doubt it must be wrong”

    Next step: "What is truth, anyway?"

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Bart Janssen, in reply to Russell Brown,

    “What is truth, anyway?”

    So in a completely random side track. I work at PFR* one of our Crown research institutes and as much as I bitch and moan about the state of our CRIs I do get to work with some amazing folks.

    One of these Richard Newcomb (now our chief scientist) did some really lovely work with the people in our sensory group at PFR that has relevance for "THE TRUTH".

    Two papers in Current Biology, a journal which is sadly pay to view, looked at the ability of people to detect odours, the odours typically found in fruit. They found, as you might expect, different people can smell different odours with different sensitivity. Then they genotyped all the people and looked for and found evidence that the ability to detect some odours is a fairly simple genetic trait.

    In short, it is your genes that determine what you can smell.

    That means since your genes are different from everyone else's, how you perceive the world, in this case how you smell the world, is unique to you.

    Your truth is yours and yours alone.



    * as a complete aside one of the pictures on our website at the moment - the one with the blue light shining on some fruit swirling in water - is a machine called The Turbulator - which is bloody noisy and is right outside my office door!

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report Reply

  • Rich of Observationz,

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report Reply

  • Alfie, in reply to Bart Janssen,

    They found, as you might expect, different people can smell different odours with different sensitivity. Then they genotyped all the people and looked for and found evidence that the ability to detect some odours is a fairly simple genetic trait.

    Bart... I know this is slightly off-topic, but can I ask if this is the reason some people can smell asparagus pee and others miss it altogether?

    Dunedin • Since May 2014 • 1440 posts Report Reply

  • Bart Janssen, in reply to Alfie,

    I know this is slightly off-topic, but can I ask if this is the reason some people can smell asparagus pee and others miss it altogether?

    This is from memory but as I recall there are two things going on ...

    First only some people convert the compounds in asparagus into those really smelly compounds in urine. So only some people make the smell. The ability to produce smelly asparagus pee appears to be a fairly simple genetic trait.

    Second only some people can smell those asparagus pee compounds. Again it seems to be a fairly simple genetic trait.

    The fun thing is that both traits appear to be independent. So it is entirely possible to produce the smell and not be able to smell it yourself :). Or not ever produce yourself but if you walk into the loo after a producer ...

    Full disclosure I'm ... nah ... probably TMI

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson, in reply to Bart Janssen,

    Your truth is yours and yours alone.

    The smelling is subjective, but the smell is objective. More mind bending is "is there really such a thing as subjective truth"? Am I really imagining the smell of asparagus pee, or am I mistaken in my imagination, and that's really the smell of strawberries?

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • linger,

    Some smells are more objective (and objectionable) than others,
    but how we react subjectively depends on who they’re associated with:

    Congratulations, baby’s due;
    Your home will shortly reek of poo.
    But don’t your darling child rebuke:
    It helps to mask the stench of puke.

    ( The Right Time, series 1, episode 3)

    Tokyo • Since Apr 2007 • 1944 posts Report Reply

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