Key makes "peace" with actress

[James Deuce]

No topic of Global import is black and white and this one is less black and white than most. I'd say we know less about the Earth's climate than we do about the Moon's composition.

[Hitcher]

If you can find three busloads of members that will vote for that, fill yer boots.

So you were never involved with student politics then?

[short-circuit]

So you were never involved with student politics then?

Careful. Remember - the ball not the man.

[Winston001]

I'd just like to point out that I've never said that, and that while Al Gore IS a dupe, how does sending money overseas help change the climate?

Empirically, climate change is inevitable. How you adapt to it is the key, not how you try to prevent it. Canutism has no place in a rational world.

You are a bit of a enigma James. You seem to agree that we need to change our (carbon) energy intensive lifestyles and are doing your bit. Its not easy and I'm no more prepared to go back to the soil than anyone else.

But you also get sidetracked (IMHO) by Al Gore, carbon trading, and climatic inevitability. I understanding your frustration that you perceive dishonesty there although I think you are mistaken.

Couple of thoughts. Carbon trading - this is going to cost ordinary people a LOT of money - very unpopular = no votes in it = politically hot potato. So why are govts all over the world signing on in various ways? So they'll lose their political lives??? Or maybe, just maybe, they reluctantly accept hydrocarbon release is killing the planet....??

Climate change is inevitable. Well yes it is. And the world adapts. Manmade contributions amount to about 4% annually which sounds insignificant but over decades it all adds up. And since we've been buring coal and oil since the Industrial Revolution, thats a whole heap of extra carbon in the environment. Stuff that took 600 million years to build up, released in 150 years.

Pretty hard to ignore.

[CookMySock]

It is the domain of those of us Middle Aged and even more experienced to look around and "see" the "decay" in our society...

Don't you have anything interesting to do? Need a new bike project?

Steve

[James Deuce]

People aren't going to change the fundamentals of their lifestyle. The only way to do that is for Governments to impoverish their citizens. One of the few places that will work is NZ, because we pretty much roll over and take it.

If the US signs on for extensive Carbon Trading, expect Texas to become a World Super Power fairly quickly.

There is an underlying conceit, a fawning sense of self-importance, that underpins the propaganda of Superstitious Man-Made Climate Change advocates that simply needs a Taupo level eruption to correct. There are a vast array of catastrophic climate change mechanisms that exclude mankind's efforts.

Appeals to the ego of the self-righteous always create a dialectic in which superstition flourishs and rationality is subsumed. We'd be better people to prepare to receive 2 million people from low lying Pacific islands as citzens welcomed with open arms rather than refugees ghettoised by political inaction.

[mowgli]

Odd site. I will look at it in more depth but it seems at first blush a curious mix between science and spin. I could find several things on pages I browsed that are pretty close to clear bullshit, but the guy has decent scientific credentials, unlike many poster boys of the denier camp. I'll reserve judgement at the moment.

Didn't see him talking NWO, though. You may wish to check your tinfoil hat.

Try Transition Towns, then - their point is not about any of this being your fault and you being a bad person, but that change is inevitable, and we can use our collective genius to build a genuinely better world - if we try. Works for you?

The thing I like about that site is that it captures the differences in arguments for and against. Regardless of your personal view you can get a feel for why the other side feels the way they do.

No, he doesn't do NWO. In my post I took responsibility for that myself.

"Transition towns" could work as a bottom up distributed solution (every individual doing his/her part). But the way Kyoto and Copenhagen are going we're not looking at a bottom up solution. We're looking at a global system where revenue is sucked up from the bottom and used appropriately (tui anyone?) on our behalf by those who know best. It'd be like paying the shop to fix your bike and then fixing it yourself

[James Deuce]

It'd be like paying the shop to fix your bike and then fixing it yourself

Paying the bikeshop for a license to fix it yourself and then paying an hourly rate to the bikeshop whilst fixing your bike as well as buying parts at an inflated rate would be a better analogy.

[rainman]

The biggest source of methane on earth are termites. Oooops.

From the US EPA:

It is estimated that more than 60 percent of global methane emissions are related to human-related activities

Yet more bullshit.

Ferking hell, people, even the Office of the (National) PM's Science Advisory Committee says:

...there is a general agreement that the world is experiencing an overall warming trend...
The vast majority of the world’s climate scientists consider it very likely, based on several lines of evidence, that the current warming trend is of human origin and is associated with increased production of the so-called ‘greenhouse gases’ as a result of fossil fuel use, agriculture and deforestation...
the extent of human-induced global warming may be magnified by feedback effects that release even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as the world warms...
Accordingly, the collective wisdom of the scientific community is that action is needed now.

No topic of Global import is black and white and this one is less black and white than most.

True, but no reason to run interference for the denialist mob.

So you were never involved with student politics then?

Actually I was, I just grew up in a country that played fair.

Stuff that took 600 million years to build up, released in 150 years.

That's the nub of the issue, right there.

There is an underlying conceit, a fawning sense of self-importance, that underpins the propaganda of Superstitious Man-Made Climate Change advocates that simply needs a Taupo level eruption to correct. There are a vast array of catastrophic climate change mechanisms that exclude mankind's efforts.

Appeals to the ego of the self-righteous always create a dialectic in which superstition flourishs and rationality is subsumed. We'd be better people to prepare to receive 2 million people from low lying Pacific islands as citzens welcomed with open arms rather than refugees ghettoised by political inaction.

I'm more concerned about the 20 million Aussies, tbh, but help me out here: are you asserting that a belief that climate change is a) real and b) significantly influenced by the actions of mankind is inherently superstitious? If so, why?

Sure we have an overstated sense of our own self-importance - no more so than here in "Godzone" - but are you really arguing against the anthropogenic thesis purely on the basis that it would be arrogant to think we can change the world?

[Street Gerbil]

From the US EPA:
Yet more bullshit.

Ugh, EPA et al refer to the same 2007 IPCC report. I am too lazy to search for a study discrediting it, but pardon my French, IPCC is a purely political organization. On scientific matters it can be trusted about as far as an average human can toss a sperm whale.

[James Deuce]

superstitious? If so, why?

Sure we have an overstated sense of our own self-importance - no more so than here in "Godzone" - but are you really arguing against the anthropogenic thesis purely on the basis that it would be arrogant to think we can change the world?

No. I simply think that people suck and we're stupid enough to let the suckiest people of all make all the "important" decisions.

The radical "deniers" and the radical "accepters" are as bad as each other, and should be summarily removed from the airwaves.

The single most disappointing issue is that the educators with real knowledge and dawning understanding of the global and Solar System-wide systems that are intertwined in Geophysics have been labelled deniers because "people" are more prepared to believe banal superstition as advice from actors and actresses (professional liars). Most "people" would rather not listen to people with indepth knowledge of glaciers, gravity, tidal systems, vulcanology, electromagnetism and gravity because it's "too hard".

It's widely accepted that the Earth is in a cooling phase and that European Glaciation is precipitated by interupting the Gulf Stream. This happenes when the local upward variations in temperature allow icbergs to escape Hudson Bay and snuff the Gulf Stream out. Then glaciation increases rapidly around the globe as the glaciers covering Europe reflect heat back out into space. Then the glaciers retreat when we shift a bit closer to the Sun and you get floods like the Lake Missoula one 16,000 years ago as ice dams break, reducing the amount of ice on the planet's surface and changing the climate through reducing the albedo effect.

This process is usually caused by a slight variation in the Earth's orbit around the Sun. This process has happened quite often in the last 2 million years (if you're one of those useless evolution advocates) which is coincidentally about how long Homo Sapiens Sapiens family tree has been around.

None of that fits the Global Warming caused by mankind theory so we must ignore it and take advice from actresses. It's really frustrating. People give no credence to orbital fluctuations, solar flare activity, changes in local gravity (a theory gaining credence given the size of insects in the Triassic - they're too big to exist in a "1G' gravity field, their structure is unsupportable at that size and gravity), big giant volcanoes pouting reflective atomised sulphuric acid into the stratosphere which locally changes the albedo effect reflecting heat into space and interupting ocean currents changing climate and food chain composition thousands of miles away.

But Keisha Castle-Hughes has all the answers. Tui. Friggin. Advert.

[vifferman]

...are you asserting that a belief that climate change is a) real and b) significantly influenced by the actions of mankind is inherently superstitious? If so, why?

I believe that climate change is real: there have been HUGE climate changes throughout the Earth's history.
I also believe (as James said earlier) that we know too little about weather and climate to postulate a very simple theory that it's all due to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that that is due mainly to human activities.
However (but!) the way we are treating our planet isn't terribly nice and we could do more betterer, and if nothing else, all the bullshit that people are buying into, in typical sheep-lemming fashion means that we are starting to address some of the naughty habits we have.

Interesting that the global climate change industry has become very profitable for many people...

[rainman]

Ugh, EPA et al refer to the same 2007 IPCC report. I am too lazy to search for a study discrediting it, but pardon my French, IPCC is a purely political organization. On scientific matters it can be trusted about as far as an average human can toss a sperm whale.

Feel free to bring a more credible source for the line of bullshit you were peddling then.

People give no credence to orbital fluctuations, solar flare activity, changes in local gravity (a theory gaining credence given the size of insects in the Triassic - they're too big to exist in a "1G' gravity field, their structure is unsupportable at that size and gravity), big giant volcanoes pouting reflective atomised sulphuric acid into the stratosphere which locally changes the albedo effect reflecting heat into space and interupting ocean currents changing climate and food chain composition thousands of miles away.

But Keisha Castle-Hughes has all the answers. Tui. Friggin. Advert.

I don't believe that's true - most "convinced" people I speak to accept that there are a large range of factors that drive the "natural" climate cycle, but that the disturbances to this by human activities are significant. Because other factors exist doesn't mean that they are the only causes - as 0.5ms logical consideration should hopefully reveal.

And Ms Castle-Hughes, I'm sure, does not claim to have all the answers - but merely to care about the future sufficiently to get off her arse and try lobby this no-hoper government of ours to collectively grow a pair and do it's bit to find some solutions (adaptations, preventions, whatever). Rather than offer 10% conditional on everyone else doing 30-40%. Or pontificate here on how it;s all a grand conspiracy/plot by the evil govvermint to create the NWO/<insert pet denialist soundbite here >

Interesting that the global climate change industry has become very profitable for many people...

As the saying goes: "Fascinating. But irrelevant".

[The Pastor]

What the hell?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...ce-with-Keisha

So an uneducated actress who struck it lucky as a child and then proceeded to screw up every opportunity that lucky break created for her, now has the intellectual fortitude to enter a debate on climate change and expect an apology from the PM when he says what we're all thinking? She has an opinion, nothing more. We all know what opinions are worth.

It is the domain of those of us Middle Aged and even more experienced to look around and "see" the "decay" in our society, but this bullshit is up there on the bullshit-o-meter right next to the Toyota Prius.

I have a friend who worked for NIWA for many, many years. He manages Geophysical Surveys using many scientific disciplines and is trusted to coordinate the activities of civilian and military data collection efforts from below the sea to 100 miles out, to the very edge of space, across the resources of many countries.

As for the argument that the climate has never changed this quickly? Fairy tale. We have at least ONE episode called the K-T boundary where most plants and animals are represented by a thin, black line of carbon deposits. No one knows why, though there are many theories.

It was he who suggested the technique of using random unreferenced numbers in any Climate Change debate I entered into, just to demonstrate how much fun making stuff up is when people know no different. (Awesome fun until being completely busted by Badjelly.) He has maps on his wall at home, showing the results of the last big survey he worked on. Sea Level isn't uniform. There are "craters" in the surface of the sea, local distortions caused by magnetic field distortions, the make up of the water itself, tidal effects, and undersea activity. Some of these craters are 200m deep. Yet no one takes him seriously when he suggests that we simply don't have enough data to predict weather 48 hours hence, let alone long reaching climactic change as the result of human activity. To this end he suggested stepping up the efforts to collect more data to develop an empirically based model. More funding goes to lobby groups in the US who are pushing Al Gore's distorted message than goes into global climate data collection.

Point a bunch of Kiwis at some slappers on the telly though, and we're all "signing up" because of the "children". Won't somebody think of the "children".

As much as the Climate Change debate has been turned into a noble crusade, that changing the way society works fundamentally needs to happen to prevent us drowning in our own filth, we deserve EVERYTHING we get when we start listening and reacting to the scripted blitherings of a chick who rode a digital whale.

so you just want to hurt the earth and throw it away? we must act NOW if we wanna save it.

[Skyryder]

As for the argument that the climate has never changed this quickly? Fairy tale. We have at least ONE episode called the K-T boundary where most plants and animals are represented by a thin, black line of carbon deposits. No one knows why, though there are many theories.

The most accepted theory for the cause of the KT boundry is asteroid impact due to the high of level iridium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E2%80%93T_boundary

The evidence for the Alvarez impact theory is supported by chondritic meteorites and asteroids which have an iridium concentration of ~455 parts per billion,[6] much higher than ~0.3 parts per billion typical of the Earth's crust.[4] Chromium isotopic anomalies found in Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary sediments are similar to that of an asteroid or a comet composed of carbonaceous chondrites. Shocked quartz granules and tektite glass spherules, indicative of an impact event, are also common in the K–T boundary, especially in deposits from around the Caribbean. All of these constituents are embedded in a layer of clay, which the Alvarez team interpreted as the debris spread all over the world by the impact.

If true and the Alvarez theory seems conclusive that the sudden climate change was by asteroid impact then the speed of the current climate change is unprecedented and man made.

The other theory that has some credibility is the Deccan Trapps but generly this does not carry the same credibility as the impact theory

Either way once trapped methane starts riseing from the ocean floor in earnest, the cause of the climate change will be academic.

The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region "boils over," ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g., CO2, H2S) into the atmosphere, and flooding large areas of land. Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The air-methane mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%; as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions and conflagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide. Firestorms carry smoke and dust into the upper atmosphere, where they may remain for several years; the resulting darkness and global cooling may provide an additional kill mechanism. Conversely, carbon dioxide and the remaining methane create the greenhouse effect, which may lead to global warming. The outcome of the competition between the cooling and the warming tendencies is difficult to predict.

and with bit of good news I'm off for a break.

Stay sharp stay cool and most of all stay alive.

Skyryder