Anthropogenic sea-level rise
Not only is sea-level rise no longer linear, it was never going to stop at 2100
Te Muri access dictated drop-in location
Was it not for John Darrach’s 1880s activism, Saturday’s coffee-and-croissants drop-in day, in Mahurangi West’s former school, would have been held in Sullivans Bay. John Darrach was so exercised about the danger to the 23 Māori and 14 Pākehā children living at school-less…
Mahurangi West land restoration planting Sunday 11 July
Officially, the West is East, but in practice it is neither, nor is it in the Mahurangi hydrological catchment, it being in that of Te Muri. First planting day under the Mahurangi Land Restoration label appears to be an echo of the first under the $3 million Mahurangi Action…
Imperative for private-vehicle-free Te Muri future
Not everyone supports the proposed Te Muri crossing. Nor does everyone who supports the proposed Te Muri crossing, support every aspect of it. For example, many Mahurangi West people would have preferred that development of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail began…
$30 million Mahurangi action plan
$3 million over 5 years seemed, for a moment there in 2004, as though all the Mahurangi Harbour’s Christmases had come at once. Even in today’s money, $9.06 million is more than twice the 2004 amount, but nor, back then, does it mean that the Mahurangi’s sediment woes…
On the unspeakable ephemerality of beaches
Relying on economics to salvage a survivable climate is the 21st century equivalent of a standing down an army and leaving defence of the realm to wizardry. With the United States Senate summarily scuttling the Green New Deal, it might seem…
Near-certainty of 66-metre sea-level rise
Permanent ice sheets are a misnomer. Ages involving alternating glacial and interglacial periods are ephemeral, occupying only a small percentage of geological time. Humankind’s greatest—although certainly not in any laudatory…
Wasting storms of the grandparents
When Dr James Hansen published Storms of My Grandchildren nine years ago this December, he lambasted governments for greenwashing while doing nothing meaningful to curtail fossil-fuel use. But despite, by that time, having already seen his…
Odds against tomorrow without ultimate sacrifice
As if its bureaucrats needed any encouragement. Trump’s America now has its Environmental Protection Authority peddling the equivalent of Lisa Simpson’s Ignorital©. The agency requires its officials to lace their public utterances with phrases contrived to…
Paris climate accord not the half of it
Not all agree it’s a bad thing Trump’s made good on his campaign promise to pull the United States out of Paris. One climate researcher argues that the Trump circus could do less damage outside of the tent, than in it. But regardless, a bad-tempered…
Make Aotearoa egalitarian and great again
His timing is impeccable, and his mission merciful. Immediately mocked by the mainstream media, Gareth Morgan’s launch of a party dedicated to eliminating poverty and closing the inequality gap is a cause worthy of wholehearted support, even by…
Best understood by least represented
Cohort that best understands the enormity of anthropogenic global warming is that which is least represented in Parliament. It is also the age-group that is least enrolled, and votes least. But given the great gulf between the awful reality of global warming…
New unitary authority not going to plan
Len’s in danger of loosing it. As was all too apparent halfway through the term of Aotearoa’s first mayoral office to enjoy significant executive powers, Mayor Brown has bet the farm on a project for which he has little to show, come local body election year. Had...
Years of living dangerously leave beaches forlorn future
In the last year, the tide of public opinion has turned. Americans now largely accept global warming as a clear and present danger, largely as a result of the record-breaking drought that is affecting most of the United States. A record minimum Arctic…
Sea-level rise deregulated and developer-friendly
Water finds its own level. Or at least that is the received, and generally entirely useful, wisdom. Water in a hose, for example, can make a useful builder’s level. However, as anyone who has actually attempted to use one will likely attest, the odd bubble…
Democracy leadership and small islands visions
The ex-president of the Maldives is seeking to make sea-level rise a presidential election issue. Forced out of office at gunpoint in February, Mohamed Nasheed is in the United States promoting the documentary The Island President. On the…
Global warming gets chapter to itself
It is all the royal commission recommended and more. The recommendations made by the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance two and a half years ago, cite global warming, and sea-level rise in particular, as a significant…
Paleoclimate implications for human-made climate change
Paleoclimate data help us assess climate sensitivity and potential human-made climate effects. We conclude that Earth in the warmest interglacial periods of the past million years was less than 1°C warmer than in the Holocene. Polar warmth in…
Regional sea-level rise chapter revisited
North Carolina has gone one better. Aotearoa merely curtailed work on a national environmental standard on sea-level rise, in a calculatedly cynical strategy to oblige each local territorial authority to run its sea-level rise policies by a gauntlet of…
Sea-level rise powered by Google
A trillion Google searches gobbles a prodigious amount of energy. But before eschewing online searches, climbing into the car and driving to the library, a little perspective: At 0.2 grams per search, one trillion searches per year has a similar…
Sea-level rise means dredging up the future
Writers urging climate action invariably claim that, although the situation is dire, by acting now, warming’s worst consequences can be avoided. But it is probable that it is already too late to prevent total ice-sheet loss and sea-level rise of about…
World’s first city to rebuild beyond sea-level rise
On 29 October 1954, Wellington agreed to build the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Government’s decision had been contingent on Auckland City Council voting to effectively bury its aspirations for underground rail, on the previous day. Not only did…
Dr James Hansen unleashed on Auckland
Schoolchildren will assume that the crowds he addressed filled stadiums. In decades hence, when told Dr James Hansen lectured in Aotearoa in 2011, they will assume it was to Rugby World Cup-sized audiences. Thermal inertia in Earth systems allows the…
Better place for cathedral closer to Alpine Fault
The Alpine Fault doesn’t move 30 millimetres every year. It does on average, but the fault hasn’t ruptured since 1717. If goes anytime soon, nine metres of pent up horizontal movement could be released in an earthquake of a magnitude of more…
Planning for the new coast road
For most of its 4.5 billion years, Planet Earth has been ice-sheet-free. Ice ages, on the whole, have been kind to humanity. The last interglacial has heralded the era in which humans have prospered, and built civilisation after civilisation. But there’s…
Avoid ‘dredging’ with access code
Dredging, by definition, is a dirty business. Which is why the draft working paper addressing the issue uses the code access. While many will see this as inexcusable political correctness, it is actually entirely sound to define the objective, rather than just one...
High time to ramp up response
Blame it on that unabashed alarmist, Noah. For establishing the notion that humanity could be wilfully drowned and a fresh start would only be few months in an ark away. The sad fact is that not all the animals can be saved. Sure, the likes of the lions and…
Twin Streams floated their punt
Project Twin Streams features in the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance recommendations, and that is a promising sign for the Mahurangi. The 788-page report, which is eminently readable, is peppered with examples that…