by frog
Three quick things worth mentioning about the Herald Digipoll this morning:
One – there’s a large 13.8 per cent of voters who aren’t committing to any party yet. That suggests to me that the messages from the two largest parties who dominate the media discourse in note resonating yet with many voters. It also implies that this election is more open than the headline numbers suggest.
Two – Greens continue to draw very strong support from 18-24 year olds (17.6 per cent) which undermines the rather flimsy theory that the Greens no longer had youth support because their MPs have nearly all been around for three terms or more and are (surprise, surprise) older than they were.
Three – Without NZ First crossing the 5 per cent threshold or winning Tauranga it is looking increasingly like National or Labour will need either the Maori Party, the Greens or both to govern. National and Act can currently get their as a twosome, but only just; It can’t afford its support to slip much from its current high.
Published in Campaign by frog on Fri, May 30th, 2008
Tags: Frog, frogblog, green party, greens, Herald digipoll, New ZAealand, poll
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
17.6% from 18-24 year olds…..
Quick!..lets waste another $35,000 on a second “hoddie” day
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Why was that a waste? It kept a few politicians off the streets and occupied their minds for a bit. Would you rather they were off dreaming up new legislation?
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Undecideds on 13.8%? That’s not very high in historical terms (IIRC). That’s roughly the proportion who forget to get out of bed (or whatever) on voting day.
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Without Labour and or the Greens running an ‘MP vote National’ campaign, I wouldn’t be so sure about NZ1 crashing and burning.
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Hmmm
The last fairfax poll indicates that, even with the margin of error, National would be able to govern alone, even if all the undecideds got out of bed and voted Labour. If the split their votes between other parties their ability to govern alone would probably be greater.
What was interesting just now was a phone-call to the 12 18-24 year olds in my immediate whanau, the 9-3 opinion there was that voting was a waste of time as you get the same stuff whoever you vote for.
So if you get 17% of 25% of 20(ish)% you’ve got 0.85%, or slightly more than bugger all, to play with.
It is time for New Zealand to be energised by a party with innovation and revolution, not mediocrity through evolution.
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OutinFront, the digipoll is opt-in. It’s drastically different to registering yourself as undecided in a poll that contacts you unsolicited, because you’ve actually put in the effort to find and vote in the poll, thus it’s likely that the overall number coul be significantly larger.
Also, being undecided in MMP is very different to being undecided in FPP, as every party vote counts.
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Well Strings, I don’t think that is what people want, if the record of all the other dozens of other ‘radical’ parties is anything to go by.
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I personally think that Winston will grab Tauranga back; remember that Bob Clarkson is not standing again, and the National Party replacement is mediocre at best. In saying that, though, I don’t think New Zealand First will get much above 5%, unless the Labour vote collapses (and that is still possible; remember that Labour lost a lot of support in early 1996, only to regain it when Winston ran out of steam).
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Re the youth vote I have had some first hand experience of why it might be so high for the environmentalists.
From the age of about 5 there is a serious indoctrination programme within schools. My 8 year old has done the following topics this year so far:
- conservation
- endangered species
- global warming
- ethical business practice
- fair trade
- starting a business (a anomaly that will surely be corrected for next year’s 8 year olds)
- more global warming
- fossel fuels
all shot through with a large dose of global warming. Granted it all went way over his head, but I’m sure by the end of school some of it will sink in.
My favourite comment from one girl in the class was ‘are we all going to melt?’
Anyway, I would say if you could get 12 year olds to vote the environmentalists would cream it with 95% of the vote.
You need to hope that they don’t start teaching critical thinking in schools, or the environmentalists would be stuffed.
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john-ston said: … remember that Bob Clarkson is not standing again
Doesn’t that have to be an advantage to National in that electorate? Not many people were impressed with the “left testicle”, and even fewer have been with the 2 Oral Questions in Parliament and 3 media releases that “hard-working” Bob managed in the whole of 2007.
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Optimist,
you cant teach critical teaching skills in school – the christians and right would never allow it – it would leave them totaly without members – Natonal would be up in arms.
heres some critical thinking for you, in entirly valid form too…
IF [consuption continues or grows] THEN [we and those that come after us are screwed]
IF [consumption decreases] THEN [we are less screwed]
AIM [to be as less screwed as possible]
THEREFORE [decrease consumption]
i supose you could get into the whole epistimology and ontology of the matter but hey, if your an optimist then it still comes back to the same reality.
P.S. prehaps they are being taught that because they are, in the most part, objective facts and useful concepts/skills.
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sorry – maybe i should have added this …
IF [finite] THEN [not infinite]
IF [not infinite] THEN [limited]
IF [limited] THEN [depletable]
[finite]
THEREFORE [depleatable]
IF [depletable] THEN [#3 = applicable]
[depletable]
THEREFORE [#3 = applicable]
#3)
IF [consumption > renewal] THEN [shortfall]
IF [shortfall] THEN eventual [lack if resources]
IF [lack of reources] THEN [crash of society]
IF [crash of society] THEN [many die]
AIM avoid[many die]
THEREFORE avoid [consumption > renewal]
critical enough?
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Sapient how many thousand years of coal would you want in the ground before you would use any of it?
I think you may have a fundamental lack of understanding about how using resources gets you up a level in technology, so you can then afford to develop and use the next thing. There is a game called ‘Age of Empires’ which will teach you if you play it for a while.
Regarding ‘many die’, I can’t see how running out of coal (which I don’t think will ever happen because there is just so much and we won’t be using it for much longer) has anything to do with crash of society and many die. Presumably you are talking about a civil war?
It is the environmentalists that tell us that the planet can only support 1 billion people and many must die. This is defeatest, possibly genicidal thinking – dangerous and wrong. But here’s an offer: let the environmentalists be the first to make the ultimate sacrifice. If the planet seems a lot better after they are gone, then happy days. Maybe environmentalism is just another dealth cult?
So no, that is not critical thinking, that is reaching the required conclusion through tenuous leaps of logic. This is wishfuil thinking perhaps, but not critical.
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Optimist, how many thousand years of extra coal would you want in the air before you stopped using it?
Coal, oil power, and even certain types of gas power (and transport methods that run off them) are essentially the process of making energy by moving carbon (and similar compounds) from the geosphere into the atmosphere.
So, tell us- why are we wrong that society as-is is not sustainable? Where is the evidence that the planet can permanently support several billion people? Where is the evidence that we can continue to grow? Nobody is advocating genocide, but we are advocating lowering birth rates, lowering consumption, and using cleaner energy. I’d say that’s a pretty optimistic way of dealing with problems that could potentially crash society at some point, wouldn’t you?
Regardless of what clever ideas and technology we develop, as long as the inhabitable universe is finite, there is a point at which material growth (such as universal population and resource use) needs to stop. Society is only viable up to the point where it routinely consumes all the renewable production of its least renewable resource. We know we’ve passed that point with oil already, thus our current society will need to change in the long term, regardless of anthropogenic climate destabilisation.
It is also true that we can alternate resource use through different resources to achieve good results- but firstly, this is inefficient because it uses extra resources retooling your infrastructure constantly, and secondly, this still has the same problem- consumption has to be low enough, either through efficiency, control of demand, or population management, that by the time you’ve cycled through every viable resource, your first resource has renewed itself to the level it was at when you first started using it. Including oil, uranium, and similar materials that we use for modern power into this cycle means we need enough alternative fuels to last tens of thousands of years.
Given that there’s suspicion that oil production will soon or has already peaked, we need to have identified the next alternative resource now so that we can start retooling our infrastructure for it. If it’s not renewable power like hydro, wind power, solar power, and tidal power, what is it? Present your alternative.
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“Doesn’t that have to be an advantage to National in that electorate? ”
Toad, you have to remember that Bob Clarkson had a reasonably high standing and was well recognised in Tauranga, having funded and built a stadium himself, as well as being a developer of some note. His replacement candidate is a mere prosecutor, who does not have the same standing, nor level of recognition.
Let us also not forget that Winston didn’t lose by much in 2005, so as I said before, I can see New Zealand First getting back into Parliament on Winston’s coat-tails.
Also, about the debate as to why the Green Party does well among young people, I think the answer can be found in their policies toward students (things such as universal allowance and so on); compare that to the major parties that don’t have as favourable policies. Certainly, with such a tight election due, it could be tertiary students that again decide the balance of power.
In saying that, I am hearing through the grapevine that many tertiary students are looking at swinging to National. Even Craccum (Auckland Uni student magazine) has a more conservative angle than it used to.
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What chance has Winston got this year? Well. Labour has pulled the plug on Crown funding for the Tauranga regional land transport plan. From $70m in 07/08 to nought in 08/09. Clearly Labour don’t think they’ll be buying Winston a second time.
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Optimist
Just where did you come up with ONE billion people? Seriously now… cause I haven’t ever seen any estimate that low.
I think that the fundamental lack of understanding here is yours. It is after all, YOUR experiment with the atmosphere that threatens civilization. All we are telling you is to quit sh!tting where you eat… advice any cockie from the back of beyond would give you and no Greenies to be found.
Now you may not like it. Optimists seldom like the real world when it rears up and bites them, and they often moan “why me” and “why did god let this happen” and other laments after the event. Their primary goal, like that of the Master of the Titanic, is to go forward faster even though they (by their own claims) don’t know what is ahead.
Science is, in many ways, simply a refinement of our native ability to predict what is ahead. It is scientists NOT environmentalists, who are yelling bloody murder at the “business as usual” mob you seem to represent. True, evironmentalists are ALSO yelling bloody murder, but all that seems to do is make business-as-usual folks derisive and stupidly insistent on their right to destroy other people’s things.
We don’t need to use coal to “get to the next level” and this isn’t a game where we can press reset and start with a new planet if we wreck this one. We have all the technology we have and you CANNOT predict nor insist on a new technology to show up when you need it.
Nor can you morally take a mortgage on the house and saddle your kids with it if they cannot sell it or move out of it. I am looking at my daughter right now. She’s eight and she doesn’t appreciate the fact that people who like “business-as-usual” are taking away HER right to live.
That’s a moral consideration Optimist… it isn’t negotiable and it is one of the reasons I get so angry with trolls who aren’t willing to admit that there are limits to growth on a finite planet.
Any time you doubt the logic, go ahead and do the experiment. Put the bacteria in agar on the petri dish and close the lid… when the resources are gone and the waste has accumulated, it becomes a dead zone.
respectfully
BJ
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Optimist,
that applies to all resources, and its not just the amount of coal in the ground that matters. the fact of the matter is that the greater the rate of use of coal – and other highly carbon emitting substances – the greater the rate of climate change and the greater the rate of deforestation. these two, among many others, assit in the depeletion of our other resources and more specificly they decrease the regeneration rate of other resources – such as that little thing called food, oh, and oxygen, nothing important though.
So as afforementioned, it is not just the amount of coal in the ground but the effects of using that coal.
Contrary to what your perception of environmentalism may be, environmentalists are not – for the most part – misanthropic, many of them just wish to see that humanity – and all of earths life – survives for the greatist time possible at the greatist quality of life possible.
Even utilitarians such as myself see that by destroying that which supports us we are ultimitly bringing closer our end – i mean to say, if your diving, what rational person yanks out their air tube when they cannot possibly reach the surface in time?
As for the crash of society, it could come about in many forms, but to make it simple, our society relies on many many resources, most of which are severly limited, once the rate of gain of those resources (including recycling) drops below the level of demand society will have to A) go elsewhere to get them, an advantage of capitalism or the Bush ‘crusade’ or, when thats no longer possible, B) which is devolve society.
that and humans need food to live, decrease in food means decrease in humans, to sustain society at any given level there is a certain number of humans – at a certain productive level – that is required.
Age of Empires, a great game, i have spent many hours playing the series, though you should prehaps note that once you have hunted all the meat and harvested all the berries and mined all the gold, etc, your empire colapses. maybe you should play the game? be interesting to see if you can get past the first level, you see the main party of that game is something called ‘resources management’, heh?
Environmentalism isint defeatist, saying “ohwel, we are all going to die at this rate, why bother” is defeatist, environmentalists atleast assert themselves and try to change things.
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If you keep Sue Bradford out of the public eye the greens may have the opportunity to form part of the next government.
If she remains as a high profile part of the Greens organisation they are history.
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john-ston said: Toad, you have to remember that Bob Clarkson had a reasonably high standing and was well recognised in Tauranga, having funded and built a stadium himself, as well as being a developer of some note.
I do, indeed. But being a competent, or even exceptional, property developer or enrepreneuer doesn’t mean you have the skills to be a competent politician – as Bob has shown us. He’smade the right call – go back to what he does best.
As for his proposed successor, I don’t really know enough about him to comment.
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peters will win tauranga back..and could crack 5%..
and kevyn..you are totally wrong about labours’ attitude to peters..
..if you read clarks’ budget speech she could not have been more in praise of peters/nz first..
it was so fulsome..peters and co seemed to be squirming..
..whereas..in that same speech..she barely mentioned the greens..
clark/labour know peters will take back taurange..
..and they are quite comfortable/’welcoming’ about that..
they already know they can work with him..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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btw..i think peters loathes national more than clark does..
..from watching/commenting on questiontime..
..i see peters putting the boot into national on a regular basis..
and it’s more than ‘just politics’ with peters/national..
it’s deeply personal..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Yep, phil, looking at the agreement Peters signed with Labour they definitely only committed to the funding of the Harbour Bridge to prevent the toll going back on. The $60m in last years budget probably saw to that. Perhaps the MP for the Kopu Bridge should start a party?
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someone tell jeanette..!
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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bjchip I replied on my blog as the reply was wayyyy too long
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Sapient I don’t believe in the CO2 end of the world scenario – do you have another reason not to burn coal, or is that it?
The middle bit of your comment seems defensive, but I’m not sure what you mean.
I’m pleased you have played age of empires. Note that when you start, food and wood are what you need. As you move up the levels you start to use stone and gold. i imagine later game variants have uranium and coal. Not sure. At the begining the stone is useless to you, but after a while it becomes hugely valuable as your technology can take advantage of it. Later it is useless again as your technology has moved on. I’m generalising but you get the idea.
At some point you learn to farm and can grow your own food, etc. etc.
Environmentalists are as close to defeatists as anyone. Faced with 2000 years of coal in the ground they invent some silly reason why we can’t dig it up (first polution, then that we might run out, now the CO2 end-of-world theory). Nuclear power is no good because we might have an accident. Hydro is no good because we have to do massive earthworks. etc. etc. The only things left are hopelessly expensive or impractical. Therefore STOP USING ELECTRICITY EVERYONE!
Far from trying to change things for the better, that is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, defeatism taken to its absolute extreme.
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ireland’s reason was health:
Bituminous Coal Ban
lives saved by coal ban http://www.environ.ie/en/Environment/Atmosphere/AirQuality/BituminousC oalBan/
http://www.environ.ie/en/Environment/Atmosphere/AirQuality/BituminousC oalBan/
A ban on the marketing, sale and distribution of bituminous coal applies in sixteen towns and cities around the country (Dublin from 1990, Cork 1995, Arklow, Drogheda, Dundalk, Limerick and Wexford 1998, Celbridge, Galway, Leixlip, Naas and Waterford 2000, Bray, Kilkenny, Sligo and Tralee 2003).
The origins of the coal bans date from the start of the 1990s when the main air quality problem facing Ireland was the occurrence of “winter smog” (smoke and sulphur dioxide emissions) resulting from widespread use of bituminous coal in major urban areas, notably Dublin, leading to serious health effects for people.
Regulations were made in 1990 to ban the marketing, sale and distribution of bituminous coal in the Dublin area. Smoke and sulphur dioxide (SO2) levels showed considerable improvement once the ban was introduced and it was decided in subsequent years to extend the ban further in order to achieve and preserve good air quality in the selected areas.
In 2002, the Department and the Solid Fuel Trade Group Ltd. signed a negotiated agreement to reduce the sulphur content of all bituminous coal and petcoke and also provided for the extension of the ban on the marketing, sale and distribution of solid fuels. The agreement was the culmination of a consultation process commenced in 2001 on foot of the Public Consultation Paper “Potential National Ban on Bituminous Coal and Petcoke”.
In April 2006, the Department and the Solid Fuel Trade Group Ltd. signed a new negotiated agreement concerning further reductions in the sulphur emissions of bituminous coal and petcoke and the maintenance of existing limitations through smokeless zones on the marketing, sale and distribution of solid fuels. The new Agreement, which runs until the end of the fuel season in April 2008, locks in place significant environmental gains achieved by the first agreement through ambitious limits on sulphur levels in bituminous coal and petcoke.
Full text of the negotiated agreement can be accessed here.
Further information
Contact:
Air Quality and Climate Change Section,
Room 2.57,
Department of the Environment, Heritage & Local Government,
Custom House,
Dublin 1.
Telephone: 00 353 1 888 2472
Fax: 00 353 1 888 2014
E-mail: airquality@environ.ie
4,000 lives saved by Dublin coal ban
[Posted: Fri 18/10/2002]
By Deborah Condon
Almost 4,000 lives have been saved in Dublin, as a direct result of the ban on the burning of bituminous coal which was imposed in 1990, the results of a major new Irish study reveal.
The findings, which have just been published in medical journal, ‘The Lancet’, found that 359 lives have been saved annually since the ban.
The study was led by Professor Luke Clancy of St James’s Hospital in Dublin and also included researchers from the Dublin Institute of Technology, Trinity College, Dublin and Harvard University in Boston.
In the early 1980s, Professor Clancy observed a doubling in patients’ deaths associated with the smog episode of that time. As a result, he became a prominent anti-coal campaigner, however the ban on the burning of coal in Dublin was not imposed until September 1990.
According to the research, there have been, on average, 116 less respiratory deaths and 243 less cardiovascular deaths per year ‘directly attributable to the improvements in air quality as a result of the coal ban’.
“This is important research as it can now be used to save lives here and elsewhere. It proves beyond doubt that bituminous coal burning in the domestic setting can lead to illness and death”, said Professor Clancy.
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Climate Change Blog: Ban Coal, Save the Earth
26 Feb 2007 … Isn’t Asia polluting enough with thrie coal fired Energy Plants Now! This form of Energy needs to be banned to Protect The Global …
http://www.climateark.org/blog/2007/02/ban_coal_save_the_earth.asp – 40k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this
Housing News, August 1999
In response the Canterbury Regional Council proposed a ban on burning coal which was to take effect last October. A coal ban would affect 18 000 residents …
http://www.tpa.org.nz/housingnews/html/hn1999-08.html – 22k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this
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Hi Bjchip again
I hope the blog owners don’t mind these lengthly rants. Still a bit of debate never hurt anyone. Let me pick up on a few points.
The figure of the world being able to sustain only 1 billion people is from environmentalists. For example, the author of the book ‘A Short History of Progress’
http://savethehumans.typepad.com/weblog/2008/04/book-review-a-s.html
I don’t believe it either. It is a great book but total baloney in its conclusions.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘experiment with the atmosphere’, but if you mean the CO2 thing, as I said before I don’t believe that scam. Try another one.
Of course we don’t know what’s ahead. But if we can stuff this environmentalist thinking back into the bottle it could be a century of excellent progress, wonderful inventions and even more human happiness and fulfillment. We need to focus more on humans and less on this ‘environment’.
I agree that many scientists are yelling about global warming. Many environmental scienties. On research grants.
But I disagree that we don’t need coal. We need coal for energy. At the moment people are cold and miserable because they can’t afford their power bills. We need electricity to halve in price. With coal it could.
To the person who said that lives were saved by not burning coal, I say, what about all the lives lost from cold, or lives blighted from cold and misery? Who is sorting that out? Why not given them a choice – warm house or clean air – and see which way they jump. If you insist they give up coal, at least pay them to do it, or subsidise their electricity.
It is a shame that your 8 year old daughter has been indoctrinationed with this generational environmentalism. My 8 year old son has had the same at school. I suggest you adopt a cheery optimism as I do and patiently explain that it is all just theories and these same environmentalists have been wrong before.
There are limits to growth on this planet, within the technology we have, but no limits without limits to technology. Do you propose to limit technology to make your story sell-fulfilling?
I love the algae in the jar experiment. Just what exactly has this got to with humans on planet earth? Are you saying we are just a mould on a pristine planet, or that algae need to act smarter and up-skill themselves with technology?
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treesoftomorrow are you confusing coal fire power stations with burning coal in your fireplace? I absolutely agree that the latter is best avoided in cities if people can afford it. The former does not have much of a clean air issue.
CO2 argument – don’t believe it
clear air argument – not relevant to coal fire stations
others – ???
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humans may have th ability to develop great technology but ultimatly it is still bound by the laws of physics (but then again, they are just Theories)
- CO2 argument – i dont believe it
Umm, did you ever do math? the concept behind it is rather simple.
And yes, like the market, the natural ecosystem will adapt to change when that change is within certain limits, but, like the market, when it exceeds those limits it colapses.
further with the age of empires discussion, you will note that there is a limit to the amount of area you can farm and that over time those farms become much less productive and then become dust bowls. as for the resources, they are used at multiple stages, if you deplete them at one stage where its not necacary because you dont think you will need them latter you can not use them latter if you eventually do need them again. overall its a very well though out game, prehaps i should dust it off.
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Optimist
Check THIS instead of the straw-men you are consulting.
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/WEAP2/WEAP2.html
The fact of our CURRENT overpopulation is quite evident to anyone with a firm grasp of the laws of thermodynamics and the mechanisms of population overshoot. We are above our carrying capacity and you can posit all the fertilizer you can create from our natural gas supplies (Yeah… we use the one to make the other) and still fall short in terms of supplying the needs of the world without also assuming a star-trek transporter to move it from where it is grown to where it is eaten.
I don’t much like “optimists”, as they place an unwonted burden on our children, on MY children, to solve problems that we ourselves cannot solve. An immoral burden in that it is one that cannot be refused.
—————
Since I worked with those same scientists at NASA I also take quite personally the implied slur and insult against their character. They are as organized as a herd of cats and they go where they think the truth (NOT the money) is. That insult offered some people who I call friends and think well of, is pretty severe. It also betrays a COMPLETE ignorance of just who becomes a scientist and why. Research grants my *ss…
—————–
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘experiment with the atmosphere’, but if you mean the CO2 thing, as I said before I don’t believe that scam. Try another one.
I visited your blog where you tout the “swindle” and noted with some exasperation that the truth about it has not penetrated. The “swindle” is a well made pack of lies. It has already had to be altered to take out two of the more blatant howlers. The graph of the sunspots vs the temperature is (apparently) a fabrication and certainly not reflecting the actual data, not to mention leaving off the data after 1980 because in 2007 it was pretty damned clear from the subsequent data that the theory was broken.
No Optimist, you are going to have to do better than “dismiss” AGW as a problem.
It is also distinctly possible that the problem of ocean chemistry changes due to our intervention will prove even more difficult… and that one gets worse much faster if you burn coal instead of methane.
Due to our burning in the past 100 years, half the carbon sequestered over the past 40 million we are now on the brink of some very serious trouble.
Optimism is fine as long as it is about your personal choices. When you are making choices for MY kids however, it stops being OK. That is the nature of the ongoing experiment. That is why Optimism is not warranted in the face of the current situation. We can fight this one out too if you like. It is not good science to conduct any experiment without a control.
It is not good sense to start an experiment you cannot control.
The “Business-as-usual” case does both. Just how bad can it get?
Have the time, TAKE the time, to read “6 degrees”.
The IPCC posits 2, and that’s the lower limit of what is possible. It is also the UPPER limit of what economists who study this stuff trouble themselves to account for. Unfortunately the UPPER limit of the IPCC is 6+ degrees and the destruction can’t be measured in monetary form any more.
Once again. It is an EXPERIMENT. You don’t, by definition, know the outcome. Scientists who’s work it is to figure this out have come to a nearly unanimous conclusion (for scientists) about what the outcome is likely to be but, as you will undoubtedly point out, they cannot prove it.
Even I would say I don’t KNOW, but I understand the risk matrix.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg#
However, understanding that it IS an experiment, that there is no reset button to restart the game if we get it wrong, that we have no control planet to live on if we get it wrong, that the things we are doing to our planet are difficult for us to control even if we WANT to… is important.
I suggest that while you have taken the time to blog, you haven’t spent enough time studying the unpleasant bits. That’s OK for an optimist. It doesn’t suit me.
respectfully
BJ
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the greens must work in a confidence and supply bloc with the maori party.
the two parties are similarly aligned in enough policy areas to work together and foce the two main parties to accommodate them.
greengeek: i think you are mistaken about sue bradford. the vocal minority bleating in the media aside, i sense grudging respect for bradford. she has proven herself, in a number of campaigns, to be a tireless and successful politician.
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Optimist, Lives lost from cold, or lives blighted from cold and misery? What about lives lost from smog, or lives blighted from bronchitis, etc?
Your argument really falls to peices when you insist that people only be given two choices – warm house or clean air. Be civilised, give them a third option – warm house and clean air. Let them choose whether they want to krrp warm by using tons of coal, expensive electricity or this new fangled insulation. Or, like a shockingly huge proportion of New Zealand homeowners, do you think insulation is one of the wonderful inventions we can look forward to during this century of excellent progress. Sorry to disappoint you but insulation has already been invented, and you can even buy it at your local hardware store, so there’s no point looking forward to that particular door to even more human happiness and fulfillment being unlocked by some genius. It’s already happened, get up with the play.
Who is this human who doesn’t need an environment. Neil Armstrong when he was at work?
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As long as we are confined by the gravity-well we are in, to the single planet we are on, we are exactly the same as the bacteria in the jar.
Unlike the bacteria (how did this morph in to algae?) we have the ability to escape… some of us may even realize that we NEED to escape if we are to continue to grow. That would be one of the transforming technologies. Cheap Access To Space, or CATS. We don’t have it and we have companies who can game the system to prevent it, and who are making a lot of money because it isn’t there. A prototype SSTO was flying and was shelved in favor of a Lockheed sketch and powerpoint presentation… and Lockheed will pay penalties for non-performance and make 10x that money in its disposable boosters division.
The bacteria are one level of that experiment. There are other “sealed jar” experiments.
Overall however, this is just one big entry for the Darwin awards.
Burning more coal will just make it worse faster. A properly built house is warmed with a pittance of energy compared with what is used here. I live with rivers of water coming off the windows of this rental I am in. I can’t alter the house and the landlord can’t realistically be tasked for it.. What we need is more expensive electricity, more insulation and a battery powered vehicle that could get people from home to the train station or supermarket and back each day.
Not more coal.
BJ
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The Optomist wrote:
“Environmentalists are as close to defeatists as anyone. Faced with 2000 years of coal in the ground they invent some silly reason why we can’t dig it up (first polution, then that we might run out, now the CO2 end-of-world theory). Nuclear power is no good because we might have an accident. Hydro is no good because we have to do massive earthworks. etc. etc. The only things left are hopelessly expensive or impractical. Therefore STOP USING ELECTRICITY EVERYONE!”
Fortunately a number of groups don’t believe that “the only things left are hopelessly expensive or impractical” and are getting on with building wind farms, geothermal power plants and prototypes of tidal and wave powered generation.
See:
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/press/seagen-installation-comp leted/
This is a 1.2MW tidal flow system in Ireland.
A group has consent for a machine to harnass the tidal flow in Cook Strait.
Another group is looking at establishing a wave power farm using Pelamis machines here in New Zealand.
You say that coal-fired power stations don’t cost lives as they have pollution controls, but this ignores the risks associated with coal mining and processing, and the heavy metals and even radioactive materials in the coal have to be disposed of.
Trevor.
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Bruce Shepard expresses green views:
“A number of bloggers on this and the previous one have raised the issue that more productivity just means those who work work harder. The issue is that there is only so much we can produce? Wrong, we can produce plenty, the issue is what we value. When we eventually have enough of the things we need( and hey this is relative, as some think they need bentleys, others are happy with bikes) we MIGHT start to think about the things that are important, community, others, our spirituality, and then our life changes. You have all heard that the future is the service economy, and NZ is well on the way in this regard, well services consume human time, not resources to the same degree as producing a bottle ( glass) of beer, and better they result in humans meeting humans and building communitees.
One of my clients previously a senior rat race player, has redefined his life. He now has three criteria for working with people. He must be able to work in a tee shirt, he must trust and admire the people and understand their values and beleive that they have integrety, and they must be doing something that he believes is good. He now has almost as much income as he had before and he has found a new community of really decent people.
He also introduced me to a new term “afluenza?. For a while there he had caught it,now having shaken the bug he has found his freedom. It is freedom that makes you happy. He too is finacaially free. This is why I wrote these thought peices, the way to freedom and chioce is for better or worse, finacial freedom ( and the amount needed is actually not that much so long as you throw off afluenza), finacial litereracy, that is why the NZSA is going to run work place programmes, and thrift, that is why I must by now seem like a broken record.”
http://stuff.co.nz//blogs/stirringthepot/2008/05/28/vision-leadership- why-is-it-important-at-a-personal-level/
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The potential of wind-power is higher than many people imagine. Here is what one group has imagined:
http://www.skywindpower.com/ww/index.htm
Not ideal for New Zealand, but would suit a number of countries.
Trevor.
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Talking of insulation, why are most new houses built on a concrete slab with no underfloor insulation? I’ve been quoted $1600-$1800 for 40mm of polystyrene insulation under slab for a 30 square meter house, and I doubt that 70mm would cost much more. Yet most builders don’t even mention it as an option unless there is going to be a significant amount of underfloor heating.
Trevor.
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Bob Jones says when u do up a house u only put on one coat of paint not two as you only get paid for one (Jone’s on Property)…. does that answer your question?
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Trevor
If you are not actually heating from the slab, you can do all the insulating at the edges.. People build to cost more often than not, but consider the ground beneath the slab as thermal mass for the house. It IS that if the heat is not permitted to escape from underneath the house and insulation around the perimeter will do that quite handily. It’s cheap enough and you can even retrofit it if you like.
If you are heating the slab though, you want it to respond a lot quicker than that, and the thermal mass is a bit of a handicap.
respectfully
BJ
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Sapient
> further with the age of empires discussion, you will note that there is a limit to the amount of area you can farm and that over time those farms become much less productive and then become dust bowls.
Oh no the environmentalists even control the computer games!
This is just funny though isn’t it? The more you farm land the more productive it becomes – witness Marshlands in ChCh which has been a commercial garden for years, and no one wants to build on it because the land is ’so good’.
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Hi Kevyn – are you an environmentalist too?
> Optimist, Lives lost from cold, or lives blighted from cold and misery? What about lives lost from smog, or lives blighted from bronchitis, etc?
If these are bigger issues for more people than being cold, then I agree. At the moment our air is pretty clean, and it is the price of power that hurts.
> Your argument really falls to peices when you insist that people only be given two choices – warm house or clean air. Be civilised, give them a third option – warm house and clean air. Let them choose whether they want to krrp warm by using tons of coal, expensive electricity or this new fangled insulation.
Have as many options as you like, I think insulation is great too. But even insulated homes need heating.
Also the capital cost of insulation is too high for many of these people living in cold houses. Perhaps an environmentalist charity is in order, to help people insulate their homes?
> Who is this human who doesn’t need an environment. Neil Armstrong when he was at work?
I need the environment like I need my car. I don’t expect it to rule my life and start telling me how to wash the dishes or feed the cat. It seems like the environment runs everytihng these days.
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Bjchip I read your link. It was long. But come on! This is just laughable!
It has the same old peak oil graph which shows oil product declining (always next year) and even has coal declining.
There is at least 2000 years worth of coal in the ground here in NZ! Major oil finds are happening all over the world and at $100 a barrel we can almost turn dirt into oil.
The whole ‘end-of-resources’ thing just doesn’t have any credibility.
> I don’t much like “optimists?, as they place an unwonted burden on our children, on MY children, to solve problems that we ourselves cannot solve. An immoral burden in that it is one that cannot be refused.
I could say the same about environmentalists, except a generation earlier. Environmentalists place an unfair and unwanted burden on us AND our children (who live with us) to solve problems that don’t exist so that us and our children will be poorer and worse off than they would otherwise be.
Our children’s technology will be far in advance of ours. Let’s give them at least some challenges to claim their own.
> The fact of our CURRENT overpopulation is quite evident to anyone with a firm grasp of the laws of thermodynamics and the mechanisms of population overshoot.
What would you say is the population that this world can support? I’d say with current technology about 50 billion or so if we stopped eating meat. But from your point of view, is it 1 billion, 2 billion?
> Since I worked with those same scientists at NASA I also take quite personally the implied slur and insult against their character. … Research grants my *ss…
I work with computer scientists and they would very much resent the idea that the task expands to fit the time available. Still it is a well known fact with computer people. I’m sorry that you are offended, but there’s not much I can do about it. When there is money involved (and the sums being poured into global warming these days are immense) people will line up to do the research.
I also feel that people’s opinions tend to mirror their occupation. This is obvious with politicians – imagine a right winger working as a Labour politician. But it is also true with scientists. For example, how many environmental scientists hunt? How many oil rig workers drive a Prius?
Re the ‘Great Global Waming Swindle’ movie, what is your view on Al Gore’s masterpiece? Accurate? Does the fact that a british judge found a dozen errors in it alter your view? Does it really seem so incredible that the sun might affect the climate more than a trace gas?
> No Optimist, you are going to have to do better than “dismiss? AGW as a problem.
There are much bigger problems than global warming. I would say the fact that my newspaper sometimes gets wet is a bigger problem than global warming. I recently read that there has been no warming since 1998 and won’t be any until 2015. My newspaper gets wet at least 3 times a year.
> Due to our burning in the past 100 years, half the carbon sequestered over the past 40 million we are now on the brink of some very serious trouble.
That is the essense of the debate. As I said, I think this is simply a scam with only small elements of truth.
Let me ask you this question: if we made a bet that global warming is / is not a scam, what year would it be safe to say that we would know one way or the other, and one of us could collect on the bet? I have found the answer to this question correlates closely with the amount of environmentalism in the blood.
> The IPCC posits 2 [degrees of warming], and that’s the lower limit of what is possible. It is also the UPPER limit of what economists who study this stuff trouble themselves to account for. Unfortunately the UPPER limit of the IPCC is 6+ degrees and the destruction can’t be measured in monetary form any more.
The only way we are going to see a 6 degree rise in temperature is to move the measuing stations into people’s homes.
2 degrees is possible, and will certainly have an effect, but not necessarily negative overall. I do find the winters a little chilly at times. And my grandchildren are probably quite keen on the idea of being able to grow bananas in the back garden one day (if environmentalists let them live in a house wasteful enough to use land for a private back garden).
> Even I would say I don’t KNOW, but I understand the risk matrix.
Even I would say the same, but we are talking about different risks. The risk I see is that the environmentalists’ aversion to risk sends us back into the stone age just when things were starting to get interesting in civilisation.
Let’s just leave things for a decade or two and see how it goes. If environmentalists are right then the oceans will starting boiling about then. Hopefully our technology will have moved on a bit and any required solutions can be implemented without such massive costs.
I also watched your video – very entertaining.
My favourite quotes:
- “there is a handful of discenting scientists”
Have you heard of Copper Knickers?
- “you buy car insurance without being certain that you will have an accident”
It doesn’t require you do go back to the stone age, though.
At the end he says:
- even though it’s not likely….
- what you need to do do is spread the word
- likely to be the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced
So it is not likely that it is likely to be the greatest threat? I’m confused. This is the same mentality that banned lead solder from electronics in Europe and gave us all sorts of dodgy chemicals instead.
> I suggest that while you have taken the time to blog, you haven’t spent enough time studying the unpleasant bits. That’s OK for an optimist. It doesn’t suit me.
Well I’m not paid to do that, like many environmental and atmospheric scientists. But I’ve read quite a bit about it over the past 5 years. I’m pretty comfortable that it’s a scam.
The video rests largely on the idea that global warming will be a disaster. This is why we keep getting stories in the media about how bad even a small temperature change will be. The idea is to tell us that even though it is unlikely, the consequences are so bad that we should spend all our money fixing it now.
It is the height on conceit for humans to think they have any control over the climate when we are being blasted by something as powerful as the sun every day.
I found this link for you:
http://www.nineplanets.org/sol.html
>> The Sun’s output is not entirely constant. Nor is the amount of sunspot activity. There was a period of very low sunspot activity in the latter half of the 17th century called the Maunder Minimum. It coincides with an abnormally cold period in northern Europe sometimes known as the Little Ice Age. Since the formation of the solar system the Sun’s output has increased by about 40%.
Here’s a question. If the solar output changes, would that affect temperature on Earth? If not, why not?
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Ah! Thanks for the reply BJ. I’m beginning to see the picture. Insulating around the outside works if the material within the insulated volume stays put. However most of the houses I’ve lived in in Christchurch have had moving groundwater only a few feet under them, so this might defeat the insulation around the outside.
Trevor.
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Hi Bjchip
> As long as we are confined by the gravity-well we are in, to the single planet we are on, we are exactly the same as the bacteria in the jar.
Speak for yourself
As I said, we have technology breakthroughs, bacteria don’t.
> Burning more coal will just make it worse faster. A properly built house is warmed with a pittance of energy compared with what is used here. I live with rivers of water coming off the windows of this rental I am in. I can’t alter the house and the landlord can’t realistically be tasked for it..
But as an environmentalist, if you want any credibility, you should move out into an insulated house. You say you want insulation but the market signals you emit are that you don’t.
This is a bit like an environmentalist I met who lives miles out of Christchurch, while working in town, and justifies this by saying that if only they would build a railway, he would use it.
> What we need is more expensive electricity, more insulation and a battery powered vehicle that could get people from home to the train station or supermarket and back each day.
If even you aren’t willing to have decent insulation then we aren’t going to get very far. Either it isn’t as important as you say, or it is but no one cares.
One option would be for environmentalists to pay twice as much for electricity. I would support that.
Have you any idea how much of your environmental resources required to make batteries? Don’t read about it, it will just depress you.
> Not more coal.
We have plenty of coal, 2000 years worth as I keep saying. We just need to burn more of it. How are you going to make your electricity without coal?
Environmentalists need to grow a little patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the best hope of mankind is richer countries spending more on science to solve our problems. Making everyone poorer for an imagined threat is not the way to go.
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Optimist says:
“I also feel that people’s opinions tend to mirror their occupation. This is obvious with politicians – imagine a right winger working as a Labour politician. But it is also true with scientists. For example, how many environmental scientists hunt? How many oil rig workers drive a Prius?”
Look at how many property developers are active campaigners against any idea of limits (CO2, planning, population- migration, energy).
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# numbersix Says:
June 1st, 2008 at 6:50 pm
the greens must work in a confidence and supply bloc with the maori party.
the two parties are similarly aligned in enough policy areas to work together and force the two main parties to accommodate them.
………………………………….
The Queens chain was a pretty popular idea, but “force” away if you want force.
greengeek: i think you are mistaken about sue bradford. the vocal minority bleating in the media aside, i sense grudging respect for bradford. she has proven herself, in a number of campaigns, to be a tireless and successful politician.
………………….
It’s true that some people admire Sue Bradford, but others would see her as an over achieving politician: a person with strong leftist convictions who is bolting at the chance to get as much done while there is a window of opportunity. Sue belongs to a group who are defining environmental issues as a leftist cause and alienating people from the middle ground. [see the post above taken from Bruce Shepards blog (he's head of the Shareholders Assn)].
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It has the same old peak oil graph which shows oil product declining (always next year) and even has coal declining.
Well let’s see… Oil production worldwide has been in decline since 2006. IN SPITE of the price… So it was LAST year… you’d KNOW that if you’d studied the issue. I will provide only
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/5747962.html
http://tinyurl.com/6hgl44
Birol: … is, that we see a sharp decline in production from the existing oil fields, especially in the North Sea, the USA and many non-OPEC countries. Even here money should be invested, to slow down that decline. The third reason why we expect a risk for overall production is, that we looked at all oil exploration projects around the world: 230 alltogether, in Saudi-Arabia, Venezuela, the North-Sea, everywhere. Even if all those projects which are already funded will be implemented, the overall capacity they can bring for new oil production is too little.
Remember, peak-oil is about price as much as it is about supply… at first.
The USAGE of coal declining is a function of people’s willingness to try to live with acid rain, soot and the effect of extra CO2 that you are in such denial over. Chefurka didn’t say that there was a shortage of coal. Don’t go on implying that he did. Thirty years from now when the effects are so obvious that people proposing more coal power will be laughed out of town or simply shot. We’ve already burned the Anthracite… what is left is softer and dirtier. You’d KNOW that if you’ve studied the issue.
+++++++++++
Environmentalists simply observe the overshoot. The OBLIGATION to face challenges I place on them is not something I owe my children. Go ahead and tell your kids… “sorry kids, I fncked it up, now you have the opportunity to go fix it”. I really do not think they will think well of you for it and your attitude towards future generations is nothing but a feeble excuse for your own selfishness.
++++++++++++++++++++
What would you say is the population that this world can support? I’d say with current technology about 50 billion or so if we stopped eating meat.
At what standard of living/civilization? The alteration of the worlds diet to vegetarian is a pretty big concession regarding that standard of living, of a sort resisted bitterly if an environmentalist suggests it, and it violates the assumptions about our current standard of living that underpin the argument. While much of the world doesn’t eat a lot of meat already because it hasn’t GOT a lot of meat the knock-on effects of that scale of change to agriculture are hard to quantify. We might manage what we have on that basis. Barely. That change isn’t happening though. Nor would it until it is far too late. I’ll offer 4-6 billion on that basis. Without it, 3-4 billion.
What do you plan to do when you reach 50 billion? I suggest we start doing it now.
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As for the SCIENTISTS, they were in this game before anyone was funding the research and they will receive the same pay whether or not there is any. The fact that the task has expanded isn’t any part of their doing. It is a result of people tossing money at it BUT IT DOES NOT AFFECT THEI RESULTS OF THE RESEARCH!!!
Your repetition of the charge makes your own character plain. You’re not sorry, at least not in the sense of being contrite. You are purposely misleading.
++++++++++++++++++++
Comparing AIT to the Swindle is an interesting exercise.
You are aware of course, that the judge ruled that while parts of AIT might be “alarmist” (which was the purpose of the piece) it was “broadly accurate”. The only real howler in AIT is the claim that pacific islands had already gone underwater. The only evacuations I am aware of were owing to storm surges and these aren’t anything “new” for those islands. It is allowed in the classrooms. The FACT that the release of the Ice on Greenland and the WAIS could raise sea levels by an alarming amount isn’t false… the implication that it could happen in the next 10-20 years is.. but Gore is a professional politician… you can’t nail them down any more than you can nail a jellyfish to a tree. We will see 2 meters by the end of the century.
On the other hand, Wunsch took Durkin to court so that his opinions could not be taken out of context, and the claim about “vulcanism” producing more CO2 than humans had to be yanked.
Durkin has never had to defend his piece in court but if you look at the actual sunspot cycle and temperature graphs you’ll notice that they look NOTHING like anything of his. The curious cut-off of the data at 1980 when data was available to 2006 when Durkin was making the film is an interesting omission. I reckon that by the time a judge went through it on the same basis as Gore’s piece it WOULD be banned from classrooms.
Then there are some of the “arguments” one of which (your reference to the scientists motivations) I have already dealt with.
The business about CO2 being a 0.05% of the total.
First: Small does not equal insignificant. We’ll add a small amount of cyanide to the air you breath… I am sure it won’t affect you, it is so SMALL an amount relative to the amount of other things in the air…
Second: The CO2 cycle involves megatons of the substance being emitted AND ABSORBED. The lie by omission, of discussing the emission side but not the absorption that balances it, nor the effect on the ocean of absorbing it, is culpable.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080521105251.htm
Coal is one of the WORST things we can burn in terms of acidification.
Third: The “false dichotomy” that CO2 has to be either a forcing or a feedback. This is an argument that excludes the actual case that most planetary atmospheric chemistry provides both a forcing and a feedback in the greenhouse. That’s what most of the scientists accept and it is explicitly excluded by the swindle.
A) The fact that CO2 lags temperature increases by some 800 years in the 5000 that constitute the transition from ice-age to interglacial at the end of a Milankovitch induced ice-age tells us ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about what part the CO2 plays in the last 2500 years of that process.
B) The CO2 is up higher than it has ever been but we HAVE NOT seen an increase in solar activity to account for the rise in the CO2. It’s us. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of scientists who would dispute that it is human released CO2 that is driving the increase in CO2.
C) No Climate Scientist has ever dismissed the sun as an influence. It is included in all the models in some form. The problem with it is that it is not particularly predictable and its changes do not correlate that well with changes in temperature.. or CO2.
+++++++++++++++
When will we KNOW we have a problem? What degree of proof do you require. I would expect that the knowledge gleaned by 2050 would be sufficient to settle things. Depends on what constitutes the proof though.
+++++++++++++++
The only way we are going to see a 6 degree rise in temperature is to move the measuing stations into people’s homes.
And if the methane clathrates start bubbling up out of the ooze?
http://tinyurl.com/5nov4d
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,547976,00.html
Sorry mate… that’s just a “wrong” answer.
2 degrees is possible, and will certainly have an effect, but not necessarily negative overall.
Lets get a global perspective, shall we? I moved here because I have one of those. At a 2 degree increase China goes thirsty, The Western US goes thirsty. Coral reefs bleach and die, The ocean acidification wipes out fisheries and mass starvation is the rule. That’s just 2 degrees… what we’ve locked in ALREADY because the long view isn’t favored by people with money.
Two degrees is survivable, but the price of food goes up a lot. Drought features in the forecasts and the acidification of the ocean could push us over the edge anyway. Probably survivable, not desireable except from the point of view of someone trying to heat a badly built, planned and insulated house.
———————–
That’s it for today. I will continue to dissect your responses as I find the time. One thing more.
I won’t buy a house at a stupid price. I will buy when the market has come down and has a chance of starting back up.. not at the top… and the past 5 years have seen some very stupid prices for housing. The insistence of the finance minister on protecting the “property investor” class to the extent that my tax money is being used to pay their mortgage interest to banks in Australia, is not part of this discussion but it is the reason I haven’t already built a better house here. If you want to discuss here, just how stupid the government is you’ll likely find a lot more agreement than disagreement.
respectfully
BJ
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The combined effect of these settlements will reduce emissions of air pollutants that cause smog, acid rain and haze by more than one million tons each year
————
pollution optimist – are you talking about coal fired power stations in China? because you are ill informed or lying if you belief there arent health problems associated with them.
also there are many deaths from coal mining (even some in modern industrial captialist countries like NZ and Australia).
i suggest you read
Air pollution control for coal-fired power stations in Eastern Europe
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/01406701/1996/00000037/00000 005/art80135
and also
Coal Fired Power Station Ordered to Improve Pollution Controls by EPA
East Kentucky Power Cooperative, a coal-fired electric utility based in Winchester, Ky., will spend approximately $650 million on pollution controls and pay a $750,000 penalty to resolve violations of the Clean Air Act at its three plants, the Department of Justice and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today.
Today’s action is part of the EPA’s national effort to reduce harmful air emissions from coal-fired power plants across the country. Since 1999, the EPA and DOJ have reached settlements with 12 coal-fired power plants. The combined effect of these settlements will reduce emissions of air pollutants that cause smog, acid rain and haze by more than one million tons each year…………….
http://www.azom.com/news.asp?newsID=9126
“This agreement will reduce harmful air pollutants by more than 60,000 tons per year,? said Granta Nakayama, EPA assistant administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides can cause serious respiratory problems and exacerbate asthma conditions. This settlement will improve air quality and protect public health for the residents of eastern Kentucky and surrounding areas.?
——————
treesoftomorrow are you confusing coal fire power stations with burning coal in your fireplace? I absolutely agree that the latter is best avoided in cities if people can afford it. The former does not have much of a clean air issue.
CO2 argument – don’t believe it
clear air argument – not relevant to coal fire stations
others – ???
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ps i dont think coal should be burned in the fireplace (thats pretty industrial revolution britain… ), even solid energy, the mining company agrees. and they are doing a voluntary phaseout.
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This is exactly what defines your typical optimist: “…the world won’t be here in 2000 years, so we don’t have to worry. Just keep on trucking exactly the way we are”.
Personally I think we should use any and all technologies available today to develop renewable power resources. And keep developing new versions of such technologies.
We should also limit population to levels close to those that can be supported by the aforementioned renewable energy technologies.
Anything other than this is not optimism, simply blind shortsightedness and selfishness.
There is a lot of it about.
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The Optimist Says:
“How are you going to make your electricity without coal?”
Let me count the ways:
- hydro is still going strong. It is good for meeting peak demand, although we currently use it (in NZ) more as baseload generation.
- geothermal has been used for 50 years and is still going strong. Good for baseload.
- wind. Intermittant, but good for preserving the hydro and geothermal.
- wave. It won’t save the world, but New Zealand has a world-class wave resource. Intermittand, but varies more slowly than wind and is predictable up to about 3 days out, making it easier to integrate.
- tidal flow. Again, it won’t save the world, but Foveau and Cook Straits give us two excellent resources.
- Pressure Retarded Osmosis or other salinity gradient power systems. Potentially excellent baseload resource.
- photovoltaic solar power. Not ideal for New Zealand but could take some of the load, particularly for isolated islands.
- solar thermal. Again not ideal for New Zealand but able to supply power during the evenings as well as e.g. running air conditioning during the day.
- storage systems including pumped hydro storage, flywheel energy storage and vanadium flow batteries. Gives the option of meeting peak demands using power generated at off-peak times, particularly from intermittant sources. (Add hydrogen here if you want to.)
And if that isn’t enough, adapt the coal fired stations to take biomass.
I’m sure someone will come up with one I’ve missed
Trevor.
Options for other countries might include high-altitude wind power, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion systems, and Satellite Power Stations.
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High altitude wind – eg kites – could be very good indeed here. See recent New Scientist article here (behind a paywall, sorry). And there’s an NZr doing it.
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jh never mind the property developers, what about the poor would-be home owners, left out in the cold by the envionmentalists’ land squeeze. We don’t all want to live in 70 m2 apartments you know! Still it will be good for reducing the population – nowhere to put the kids.
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Hi Trevor,
I note that your power generations means are all either:
- small beer (minor, intermittent, etc.)
- or hydro
You didn’t mention nuclear, but that’s ok. We’ll work on that
Hydro as I understand it is not so good because environmentalists don’t like big earth works.
Coming back to my point, are you conceding that coal is the only short term option for us?
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Hi greengeek
I hope you turn off your computer between comments
> This is exactly what defines your typical optimist: “…the world won’t be here in 2000 years, so we don’t have to worry. Just keep on trucking exactly the way we are?.
Your typical optimist has other worries and certainly isn’t that bothered about what might happen in 2000 years. Star Trek has been and gone by then and we’ll all be in space.
If I can adopt a similar parody of environmentalists, “we have a small concern that the wheels might come off if we don’t make radical change and make everyone poorer and more miserable, so let’s do it just in case”
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Hi treesoftomorrow
> pollution optimist – are you talking about coal fired power stations in China? because you are ill informed or lying if you belief there arent health problems associated with them.
Of course there are, the question is, is the pollution worse than not having power? Obviously the decision has been made that it isn’t, so the power stays on. Just because there is a bit of black smoke doesn’t mean we should go back to the stone age.
Your mention of China is an extreme case anyway, the communist countries always seemed to have a particular way of filling the air with crap and the rivers with sludge. Democracies are much better.
I haven’t noticed widespread pollution in NZ due to coal fire power stations. Not enough to want me to turn the light switch off, anyway.
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Hello again bjchip,
Soon we will have all the issues sorted out I’m sure. I have completely forgotten the original topic and I’m heading away tomorrow so limited time.
But the numbers I have show oil production did not drop last year…do you have a spreadsheet with the data?
Oil is an odd thing because it is mostly controlled by a bunch of dodgy countries, mostly corrupt dictatorships. Western oil companies have very limited access to this oil, much of it is bound up in a cartel, and speculators and government stock policies have all sorts of effects on the market. I reckon the price is going to fall soon though, so watch out.
Definitely this Global Warming Swindle doco has got environmentalists heated up. It is good for the debate. I have to say your statement that Al Gore’s one is more accurate doesn’t fit with my view.
For example, Al Gore fails to mention that CO2 concentration follows temperature rather than the other way around. An important point I think.
Anyway it’s great being an optimist. I will sleep soundly tonight knowing that the goblins can’t get it.
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New Zealand’s electricity demand is around 7.2 GW peak and 40,000 GWH per annum. Most of the alternative resources are individually capable of supplying this much energy, although storage is needed to ensure that energy is available when needed. So when The Optimist described these as “small beer”, I thought that “there goes a real alcoholic”. But then I realised that The Optimist was probably refering to the cost. Most of these systems (except Hydro) are moduler, and can be expanded with another turbine or another generator for little more than the weekly tab at Bellemy’s
Trevor.
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toad Says:
May 31st, 2008 at 11:39 pm
> I do, indeed. But being a competent, or even exceptional, property developer or enrepreneuer doesn’t mean you have the skills to be a competent politician
are you suggesting that that is somehow a prerequisite for being re-elected?
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The Optimist Says:
June 1st, 2008 at 3:14 pm
> CO2 argument – don’t believe it
that’s okay. I don’t believe you really exist, either.
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The Optimist Says:
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:38 pm
> For example, Al Gore fails to mention that CO2 concentration follows temperature rather than the other way around. An important point I think.
Most previous warmings show co2 levels following warming. The current phase of warming shows co2 leading, and temperature increase following.
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> Your mention of China is an extreme case anyway, the communist countries always seemed to have a particular way of filling the air with crap and the rivers with sludge. Democracies are much better.
Australia and America (Poland and India) are all coal dependent, none are ‘communist’. Democracies (as in not Zimbabwe, Burma etc?) aren’t always so crash hot on clean air (think LA in the US or Rio in Brasil, Or parts of Mexico..)
> I haven’t noticed widespread pollution in NZ due to coal fire power stations. Not enough to want me to turn the light switch off, anyway.
Thats because largely we don’t use it. Huntly is our sole coal fired power station for electricity (marsden B didnt get approved and built, and Labour and Solid Energys West Coast coal fired power station seems to be dust at current).
No widespread coal power/no widespread coal pollution.
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Aha!!! Finally Russell gets into parliament. This might signal the beginning of the Greens waking up to how sizeable their vote could become if they improved their public profile.
Goodbye Sue! (I hope)
Hello real environmentalism (I hope!)
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sue wont be going unless the party goes, shes third on the list i believe – and then theres delahunty…
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On Campbell live: market forces deal to big cars. GM is considering pulling the plug on Hummer.
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>> GM is considering pulling the plug on Hummer
Indeed. And look – no socialism required….
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treesoftomorrow we really are going off into the weeds here. But I just drove through LA a few hours ago and the air seemed pretty clean to me. And that was on the motorway!
There is nothing wrong with being coal dependent – NZ really needs to head that way as we have heaps of coal and our electricity prices are far too high. I don’t think burning coal has much impact on air polution. This idea that we would rather be cold than have another coal fire power station is just silly. Put it to the vote, I say.
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The Optimist is trotting out the “There Is No Alternative” line again…
New Zealand does NOT need to head towards more coal-fired power stations. If you want to dispose of some of those heaps of coal, sell them to China or India and spare the lives of some of their miners, and use the foreign exchange to buy geothermal generation plant or other renewable technology.
Trevor.
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Hi optimist, My forte is systems analyis. I have no choice but to accept environmental arguments that can withstand critical analysis. I cannot accept environmental arguments that can be disproved or neither proved nor disproved to my satisfaction.
Did you go outside and take a deep breath before you wrote “At the moment our air is pretty clean”? Maybe that was a rainy or cloudy night. It’s definitely dirty air tonight, pungent. The entire length of the expressway. If there is a filter in the heater of my car it doesn’t work. Maybe the northeast is the “poor” part of town?
Insulation expensive? That’s a sad endictment of the cradle-to-grave mentality this country has been lumbered with. Hardly anybody can think past the cost at the checkout. And anybody who trusted the government to save their taxes for their pension is going into retirement without a good lump sim payout to fix the insulation problem before the move to fixed income makes them vulnerable to energy price inflation.
“I need the environment like I need my car.” Very good analogy. But try taking it a step further. Do you look after your car or do you just run it till it breaks then get another one? Now a thought just popped into my head…are you thinking that environmentalists are similar to car enthusiasts? I was going to say boy racers, but I think recreational hunters and fishermen fit that particular comparison better than environmentalists do.
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High-altitude wind power:
http://www.skywindpower.com/ww/index.htm
Essentially electric helicoptors flown like kites several kilometers high.
Not so good for a mountainous country, but I’m sure we could find some suitable areas, perhaps north of Auckland.
Trevor.
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Pressure Retarded Osmosis:
http://www.statkraft.com/pub/innovation/tecnology/osmotic_power/how_os motic_power_works.asp
This is one approach to extracting power from salinity gradients, i.e. where fresh water meets sea water. The likely power out is 1MW per cubic meter per second. New Zealand has lots of fresh water flowing into lots of sea. The Manapouri tailrace could generate around 500MW alone.
Trevor.
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The risk I see is that the environmentalists’ aversion to risk sends us back into the stone age
Who is exaggerating here? All that environmentalists propose is that there be a MARKET PRICE PLACED ON THE USE OF THE COMMONS. If you are familiar with the “tragedy of the commons” (Hardin) you must understand that there is a purely economic problem here. The invisible hand reacts perfectly to what it can feel. It cannot see, it cannot think ahead, it is a fncking HAND… and we have put no price on the future climate, the CO2 in the atmosphere, the acidification of the ocean, the disappearance of species or the exhaustion of oil and natural gas and fresh-water. All that stuff can be encompassed by business-as-usual for FREE…. it’s part of the commons, and as a result it is done in preference to ANY solution that costs ANYTHING no matter how inefficient it actually is to heat an uninsulated house with electrical resistance heating. Now it is starting to cost something owing to the price of electricity. If the carbon cost had been included in the price of that design however, NO UNINSULATED HOUSES WOULD EVER HAVE BEEN BUILT IN NEW ZEALAND AND NO RESISTANCE HEATERS WOULD BE SOLD… because the price signal would have told people how stupid it actually is to do things that way.
Greens want the market to WORK… we have no interest in throwing human civilization back to the stone-age and your exaggeration is just another way you mislead.
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The video rests largely on the idea that global warming will be a disaster. This is why we keep getting stories in the media about how bad even a small temperature change will be. The idea is to tell us that even though it is unlikely, the consequences are so bad that we should spend all our money fixing it now.
No… we say nothing about “all” our money. What we say is that we have to change. As for the disaster, the 2 degrees already “baked in” is quite bad enough. There’s two things about it.
First – if we don’t stop it turns into 3 and 4 and more degrees quite quickly… you suggested a couple of decades more delay… and that would easily put us at 3 degress.
Second – At just 2 degrees you will get drought, disappearance of the winter snow-pack in the Rockies and no water for LA and the productive areas of California… the entire Amerian West will become far less habitable. Similar issues face people in South America, India, China. Food supplies follow the disappearance of water.
Third – The melting of the ice of Greenland and the WAIS continues and accelerates with time… at the end of the century it is 2 meters (we can manage with some pain)… at the end of 150-160 years it is 7 meters or more, and in 300 it is ~ 15 meters and both Greenland and the WAIS are gone.
The only mitigating factor here is that the destruction of civilization due to the effects mentioned is likely to prevent “business-as-usual” from actually continuing all that much longer.
At 3 degrees the sea level is about 25 meters higher… Check conditions in the Pliocene for a reference point. The Amazon would dry out and eventually a fire would start. Indonesia burning is a foretaste of that particularly hellish outcome. It’d happen elsewhere too… Australia had a good example in 2003 near Canberra… have you heard the term “pyro-cumulo-nimbus” before? It would become familiar to those who still cling to language and civilization. Most of the planet would ALREADY be back to the stone age at this point.
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Well I’m not paid to do that, like many environmental and atmospheric scientists
Please get it through your head that the scientists are paid no matter what their research uncovers. Also, take note of this recently released by the NASA Inspector General:
Our investigation found that during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public through those particular media over which the Office of Public Affairs had control (i.e., news releases and media access)
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If the solar output changes, would that affect temperature on Earth?
Of course it does AND NO CLIMATE SCIENTIST IGNORES IT, but the questions to be answered are
“How much?”
“Has it been changing to drive the climate as we see the climate changing now?”
The way you are asking the question implies that you believe that climate science DOES ignore it, and that can only be because you haven’t been paying attention.
This provides a fair lot of links to the science that’s being done. I have not read all of them as *I* am not paid to do this either.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~dshindel/
The point is not the specifics, but that the science INCLUDES the solar forcings and does so in a scientific manner. Not by making up graphics, cherry-picking data and misleading people as “the swindle” does.
I’m done for today. The insulting and absurd arguments about my personal behaviour will be ignored. The global problem is what it is, and I am doing what you imagine I should do, but it takes the agreement of a bank and a seller of a house or property near the rail-line for me to be able to move and own. It takes ownership to be able to alter, build or renovate and insulate.
I don’t control the LAQC, the manner in which housing is built or financed or the way councils have interfered and seized control of the building process. I know what’s wrong with all that, and it has important results when its impact on the quality of housing stock in this country is considered, but it is beyond the scope of this post.
So far I have seen nothing to justify being an “Optimist”
respectfully
BJ
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I see that if I post in the morning before coffee my counting gets fuzzy
“Two things about it” should read “Three things about it” Sorry…. BJ
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The Optimist dismisses most renewable power generation sources because they are intermittant. This is just stupid. Individually, each renewable intermittant power source may have an availability of 30-50% (less for solar photovoltaic). However different locations and different forms have availability at different times, so that at any given time, there is a better that 30-50% chance that much or most of the renewable power sources will be able to generate. Diversity is the key here. This allows us to use our other generation less, including fossil fuels, biomass, hydro and geothermal. Given that hydro and geothermal already provide about 2/3 of our power, it is quite realistic to generate most of the other 1/3 from renewable intermittant sources.
To make it easier to generate the last bit and to make more efficient use of the intermittant generation when it is available or hydro and geothermal generation when it isn’t, we can add storage. There are several options:
Flywheel energy storage – good for high power but very short timeframes. Enough storage to allow a generator to be started or to get a turbine spinning if demand exceeds current supply, or for frequency regulation:
http://www.beaconpower.com/products/EnergyStorageSystems/flywheels.htm
Vanadium flow batteries – good for medium power and generation for a few hours, such as peak shaving or smoothing out the output of a wind farm or a tidal flow system:
http://www.vrbpower.com/
Pumped hydro storage – for when you want to store a lot of power and have the geology and the water. Normally used for supplying peak demand from off-peak power but could add to New Zealand’s hydro storage about 300%:
http://www.waikato.ac.nz/news/index.shtml?article=221
http://www.earth.waikato.ac.nz/staff/bardsley/download/EEA_conference_ pumped_storage.pdf
Trevor.
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