So what are Genesis Energy doing? Applying for consents to build 480 MW of gas-fired generation…
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/marlboroughexpress/4466940a6425.html

Surprisingly perhaps, Gerry Brownlee questioned this in parliament:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0804/S00236.htm

Trevor.

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Anyone who queries immigration gets slammed down as a racist. I’d prefer the discussion to be around ‘what should NZ’s population be?’ Sustainability can’t get out of the starting gates until we have a stable population at whatever level is appropriate.

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PS I’m not bemoaning immigration per se or immigrants just that I feel that the rewards are heavily skewed towards those who back the two main political parties… [and I'm not sure of that but it is my bet]

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Insidently

“An accurate
assessment of the magnitude of the impact of immigration on economic growth is likely to
be unattainable given existing data. A variety of theoretical economic models

Overall, it is equivocal whether there is enough robust evidence to support the claim that
immigration is always positive for per capita growth. This paper concurs with the
observations of the OECD, which stated “there is not sufficient or detailed enough data on
the behaviour of the New Zealand economy to give clear answers on the overall effects on
per capita incomes of existing residents�. While the evidence suggests small positive net
gains from migration, these do not necessarily stack up as an improvement in per capita
growth rates. Whether immigration is positive is also dependent on which particular group of
people governments are concerned about increasing the welfare of. If it is overall national
welfare then the evidence does suggest immigration is positive. But if this is achieved
through a lowering of the wages of native workers, albeit while potentially increasing returns
to the owners of capital, this distribution of benefit may not be seen as desirable.”
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/wp/2006/06-02/twp06-02.pdf

[and we all know about the things economists don't measure........ ]

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Population is an area where humans fail. It used to be taken care of by the sabre tooth tiger and bugs.
If you look at the UK experience the pop’n was about 40 million at WW2; now they are looking at 85 million and still saying migration is good. Bascially the slippery slope argument holds. People grow accustomed to new circumstances. The Japanese grow used to their cubby hole apartments but a toddler who stayed at my house and played on the lawn cried as she entered her own apartment in Japan. Meanwhile the old farts die out and the yuppies patronise dear old dad for feeling uncomfortable about change. Maybe dear old Dad saw things and heard stories from his father and grandfather Nipper didn’t.

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Howto Talk to a Climate Skeptic 101
There is no consesus:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/13/221250/49

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The only reason I say a 1 child policy is because in NZ’s case we would need to have a below replacement birth rate to offset the increase in population from imigration. You would also need a buffer for returning expat NZers if they decided to come back home in the event of global food insecurity making NZ a better prospect than other developed countries that rely heavily on imported food.
Because the population is still increasing in NZ I assume that the birth rate in NZ is already too high to offset imigration, because we still have emigration of NZ residents to places like Australia & the UK.

I’d be interested to know how many other countries are percieved to have populations below their carrying capacity.

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OK… I am back… DougT… no need for a 1 child policy. It takes about 2.2 or so to get full replacement (some children die or do not reproduce, some people choose 1 or no children) so even a 2 child policy limit actually reduces population.

The question remains: who do you listen to? There is not a singular AGW position and course of action.

Scientists don’t tell you WHAT to do, that’s politics… There is however, a pretty clear AGW position a strongly defined median which is QUIT YOUR B!T*#!ng and start doing something. There is a serious missed communication here, and it has to do with what you are listening to, vs what most scientists are saying. You are choosing to focus on a few (I can count them on my fingers and not run out) serious scientists who think that this is something we aren’t responsible for and cannot influence. You are completely discounting the massive amount of investigation and analysis that persuades the IPCC and the Greens and many others that there is a problem.

While both consider AGW to be a reality, Gore thinks it is in our power to prevent catastrophic AGW, whilst Lovelock does not.

If you choose the wrong guru, people will die. There is a huge opportunity cost between just those two choices, let alone the continuum of belief across the climate change issue.

Hot news flash… no “CHOICE” is required. Lovelock is talking about the consequences and likelihood of doing nothing, Gore is talking about the ability to do something… THAT WE SHOULD HAVE DONE DIRECTLY AFTER KYOTO!!! more than 10 years ago. Then it would’ve been much easier.

The problem is that the warming doesn’t stop easily. We probably have 2 degrees of warming locked in. If we work hard at it and knock the burn-it-all-now trolls back into their economic studies we can hold it there… and that gives us some chance to adapt, If we just ignore it and go on burning it all, we will see 3-4 or more degrees of warming. That is a descent into hell… that is where more than half the population of the planet doesn’t even SURVIVE, and possibly a realm in which we can make 95% of the SPECIES on the planet fail to survive. That’s the nature of the experiment. YOUR experiment, not ours.

Whatever you are arguing to do, Lovelock’s mitigation ideas do not rule out Gore’s reduction ideas. Mitigation of damage HERE is about where infrastructure is built and long term power availability measures… food production strategies and efficient shipping. Which is what we tend to argue for. I don’t see how this conflicts with reduction strategies which involve long-term power availability measures food production strategies and efficient shipping… or with peak-oil oriented strategies.

So lets try to understand what is the difference between you and us, because either it isn’t as large as we think, or there is some misunderstanding of what your position is.

The only thing I see you referring to is the “opportunity cost” of doing “something” which apparently puts more CO2 into the atmosphere. Since I don’t know what the something is, and I know that almost anything can be done without burning a lot more carbon, I need to hear more details of your plan.

The only thing that I am certain of is that if past is prologue and it is a right-wing sponsored effort, the beneficiaries will be banks and large businesses and the people who take it in the neck will be the same people as always take it in the neck no matter who is in power, the taxpayers.

respectfully
BJ

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I s’pose you could kill a whole lot of people.
or
Do what China did and have a one child policy.
or
Maybe you could try putting more effort into educating people about family planning, and birth control.

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>>reduce the human population. So why wouldn’t we pursue that?

How, exactly, do you intend to pursue that?

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samiuela

And you’d also know that ad populum is a logical fallacy.

Of course scientists will disagree. But they also must prove their theories. Until such time, we should acknowledge them for what they are – informed opinions.

I am in no rush to jump to conclusions.

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“we still have famine”, yes, but we have a lot LESS famine. You don’t seem to think the higher standards of living that have occurred *generally* worldwide have anything to do with lower growth rates at ALL?

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Maybe, but it’s interesting to note that in the late 50′s to early 60′s the global growth rate was dropping quite dramaticly (down to about 1.3% at its lowest) and there was alot of famine in poor countries. Then the green revolution happened, and rather than just feed the hungry it also feed the growth rate, and it increased to around 2.2% in a very short time.
The growth rate has been slowly dropping since that peak and is down to below the rate that it was at before the green revolution, and yet we still have famine.
There may be more people choosing to have smaller families, but there is the slight problem of sex being a fun thing to do when puberty hits, and some countries are heavilly influenced by religion, so birth control is a taboo subject in many schools. Horny kids and no birth control equals kids having babies.
I don’t think the lowering growth rate has much to do with choice, but more to do with Malthus’s theory.
Before you go saying “Not another Malthusian” I think the green revolution actually proved his point.
I would say that if a pandemic killed off a few billion people, the growth rate would start to increase again.

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I was under the impression that they were slowing due to people deciding to have less children than famine/war/pestilence.

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The rate is slowing because we are near the limit of growth.
The planet hasn’t got any bigger and we have inhabited pretty much all of it now.
There is no room left to expand, so we are pushing out the other species that do not directly support us. What we fail to understand is that we need them more than they need us.

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The *rate* of growth is slowing worldwide, not good enough?

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The only problem with countermeasures is that you don’t always know what the adverse effects may be.
The only countermeasure that we truely know will have no adverse effect on the environment is to reduce the human population.
So why wouldn’t we pursue that?

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I choose not to choose between Lovelock and Gore. I believe that we will need to prepare for a warmer climate, and its bigger storms, higher sea levels, changed weather patterns etc, because we have already let the genie out. However we should also take reasonable steps to avoid making it worse than it needs to be, such as using geothermal, wind and wave power rather than investing in 480MW of new gas generation as one of our SOEs intends.

Since many of the AGW countermeasures also are solutions to peak oil, why wouldn’t we pursue them?

Trevor.

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BP,

You wrote:
“The question is which scientists do you listen to? The reality is that very few are saying the same thing, which suggests to me the topic is far from “settledâ€?.”

The truth of the matter is that most climate scientists agree on the “big picture”, that is: the global average near-surface temperature is increasing as a result of increasing levels of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere. Most dissenting views come from scientists who are not experts in the field of climate science.

Have a look at the abstracts for the “Journal of Climate”, a major journal for publication of climate science:

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-archive

Unfortunately many of the abstracts are quite technical, but if you browse through publications from the last few years, you won’t find many articles questioning the main points of the issue (increasing temperatures as a result of increasing CO2 levels).

Where climate scientists tend to disagree is on the details. For example, there has been quite a bit of argument over the effect of global warming on tropical cyclone frequency and intensity (quite an important detail if you live in the tropics).

I think a lot of people have a fundamental mis-understanding of science. Argument and debate amongst scientists is the norm, and is a healthy sign. People often mis-interpret argument and debate as a sign that the big picture (e.g global warming) is uncertain, whereas if they stepped back a bit, they would find most of the debate is on the details.

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Maybe you need to listen to your own sense BP.

But your senses will work better once you pull your head out of your a*se.

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