Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: No Friends of Science

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  • merc,

    As long as you don't start saying we descended from apes, you'll be fine, as for how we've played round with the cow gene pool over the years, well.
    Factoid, they eat the bulls they kill in the corrida, very tasty.

    Since Dec 2006 • 2471 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    Hardly. I don't know about meat, but I've done the maths on milk, and if farmers were required to pay for the cost of their emissions, and those costs were passed on to consumers, it would raise the price by 1.6 cents a litre - roughly 1%. That's not a big impact, and its hardly likely to lead to the serious health impacts you're insinuating.

    Oh bugger it. Could you tell the farmers I'm happy to pay 1% more for milk if that helps?

    But I should point out that your 1.6 cents/l=1% is clearly based on that poncy organic milk, which is $2.55/l retail? Typical lefty.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Curtis,

    Wait a couple of years and it will start retreating again.

    That Franz Joseph must be a part of the reactionary deniers.
    Climate Change Denial seems to be a shoe that fits quite a few.
    Since there is no shortage of pundits who wear it when it suits.
    Denial for the Little Ice Age , or the Medieval Warm period .
    Remind me again of the normal state of the earth since the continents have been in their current postions. The interglacial periods have been the "exception" to the normal climate of severe ice ages.

    Mann and his hockey stick seem to have dissapeared this time. No choice really , since the shoddy data collection forced him to lock up his sources from prying eyes.
    This is what Mann said:__ "likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years" and that the "1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year" of the millennium.__

    Dr Wegman,chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics and his experts had this to say
    Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported," Wegman stated, adding that "The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable."
    When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.

    Mann , was of course like Salinger, a lead author of the IPCC.

    None of the science from the current IPCC has turned up yet.
    Not going to make the mistake of letting the pscho babble that passes for predictions actually come under intense scrutiny like Mann and his hockey stick .

    The NY Times was able to compare the wording of the latest IPCC summaries only a week apart. Yes thats right a week is a long time in climate change
    In Northern Europe, climate change is likely to bring benefits in the form of reduced exposure to cold periods, increased crop yields, increased forest and Atlantic waters productivity, and augmented hydropower potential

    This is finally how it appeared, more dire of course:
    "In Northern Europe, climate change is initially projected to bring mixed effects, including some benefits such as reduced demand for heating, increased crop yields and increased forest growth. However, as climate change continues, its negative impacts (including more frequent winter floods, endangered ecosystems and increasing ground instability) are likely to outweigh its benefits."

    Salinger is not saying what he wrote a week back for Australia and New Zealand is more or less dire.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report Reply

  • Neil Morrison,

    Could you tell the farmers I'm happy to pay 1% more for milk if that helps?

    This is in jest I know but I think it's important to be clear that it's not the effect on our domestic economy but on our exports which is most important.

    Decreasing the competitive advantage of our primary industry exports may be a price we are prepared to pay but given how important those exports are to our standard of living, to our ability to import computers, it's a price we need to at least acknowledge.

    Farmers may only be 1% of the population but they make by far the greatest contribution to our wealth. If anyone is to blame for primary industry green house gas emissions it's the majority of NZers who benefit from those exports.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    Just want to clarify something I said about the Listener the other day. I still read 3/4 of every issue (eventually) and the quality of the columnists is very high. Diana Wichtel, for example, has got to be one of the funniest writers in the world, and I always get alot from the Music, CDs, DVDs, Film, Sport, Business, etc, contributors. In short, it's still the best mag in the country, for me. What irks is -

    a) the obviously dumbed-down editorial approach which now runs "self-improvement" stories for every cover.

    b) the editorials, which seem, frequently, to be just retreading standard chattering classes opinion, unencumbered by research or factual basis.

    c) the similarly weak contributions from one or two people who spend most of the time regailing us with pointless anecdotes about either their children or allegedly amusing confrontations with retail staff, and who seem to show a similar disdain for factual basis on the rare occasions that they tackle actual soicio-political issues; usually substituting the gleefully simplistic right-wing talking points of the self-important "common sense" brigade for any real information and insight. Such people do less good for public debate than if they just said nothing.

    That's my 2 cents.

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • JLM,

    Sue Kedgley and Garth George are on the Panel today! (Tues)

    Judy Martin's southern sl… • Since Apr 2007 • 241 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    'enjoy' him while he's still around

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • Mark Thomas,

    C4 accused of falsifying data in documentary on climate change

    -The Independent

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 317 posts Report Reply

  • Riddley Walker,

    looks like it was even more aptly named than expected.

    AKL • Since Feb 2007 • 890 posts Report Reply

  • hamishm,

    Real Climate is the place to find out the true horror of this programme

    Since Nov 2006 • 357 posts Report Reply

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