July 2017
– Extracts from “We are wasting the beautiful world we have been given”
– Extracts from Clive Hamilton’s “Defiant Earth: The fate of humans in the Anthropocene”
– Plastic Waste
– Extracts from Skating on Thin Ice, Economist 29 April 2017
– Generation Zero Launches Climate Act Initiative – NZ Climate Declaration
– North Island Main Trunk Line de-electrification
Social Impacts of Climate Change
Climate change, combined with a number of factors including groundwater extraction and other pressures from population increases, is already impacting people who live in areas vulnerable to sea level rise, drought, or ice melt, many of whom are poor.
Read MoreJanuary 2017
– Comment on moves towards reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
– The warming Arctic
– US Energy Production
– Traditional car industry and climate change
– Indian Firm makes carbon capture break-through
– To deal with climate change we need a new financial system
– (Un)Natural disasters: communicating linkages between extreme events and climate change
– This is not normal – Climate researchers take to the streets to protect science
– Nuclear weapons
– UN moves towards a ban on nuclear weapons
Climate Change and Sea Level Rise
Current predictions are that global warming will likely heat up the world’s lower atmosphere between 2°C and 6°C by 2100. These temperature rises may not seem significant, but for some components of earth/ocean systems, they have huge implications. One of these is the effect on the world’s oceans and land-based ice reservoirs that will cause accelerating sea-level rise.
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Climate Change and Primary Industry in New Zealand
The annual carbon dioxide equivalent of total global emissions is about 49 Gigatonnes (49 thousand million tonnes), using figures from 2010. Of this, ‘Agriculture’ produced about 11% (mostly as methane, but also N2O). Other ‘Land use,’ including carbon dioxide release from forest and peat burning, produced about 10%.
Read MoreSeptember 2016
– A new type of politics could help prevent climate disaster
– G20 will blow the Paris climate targets – report
– Soaring ocean temperature is “greatest hidden challenge of our generation”
– The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age
– Letter from UN Assn NZ requesting help on implementation of the goals and targets of UN Sustainable Development Goals
– Meeting Notice for ESR in Auckland on 20 October 2016
New Zealand Energy Security And Climate Change
This paper sets out the case for taking early and effective action to improve New Zealand’s energy security, and doing so in a manner which minimises New Zealand’s future greenhouse gas emissions
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Climate Change Mitigation – Rapid Change Needed To Restrict Global Warming To Below 2°C
The world’s climate is changing, but it remains possible to slow down the speed and extent of change if all countries, including New Zealand, play their part. Rapidly deploying the many different types of mitigation technologies and available measures and developing effective policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can also produce many additional benefits that offset their overall cost.
Read MoreThe Carbon Cycle – Towards Becoming Carbon Neutral
Early chemists believed that organic compounds were fundamentally different because they contained a vital force that was only found in living systems. In fact, the common elements in all organic compounds are hydrogen and carbon.
Read MoreEthical Issues and Climate Change
Human–induced climate change is widely regarded as one of the greatest – if not the greatest – moral challenges of the 21st century. Not merely does it raise numerous ethical issues, but many of these are profoundly difficult and take us to the limits of our moral imagination. Moreover, the ethical dilemmas posed by climate change arise at multiple levels – for citizens, scientists, policymakers, organisations, companies, nation-states, and the international community – and traverse many different areas of moral inquiry.
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