Nuclear power – Even McKibben admits its necessity
Conflating climate action with antinuclear dogma, if unchallenged, will seal the fate of billions
Honest cop preferable to climate Pearl Harbor
Globally, writers are giving their best shot to the imperative of persuading the Glasgow conference parties that, this time, they must mobilise meaningful climate action. One such writer, the Guardian ’s re-wilding guru, George Monbiot, in his masterly eve-of-cop 26 article…
Climate action of the people, by the people for the planet
That government of the people, by the people, for the people, has perished from the earth, has placed all earth’s creatures in existential peril. All too foreseeably, the half-billion creatures and counting destroyed by wildfire this globally-heated Australian summer will later…
Faith in the 1% and fighting the 80
Photovoltaics have a huge future and have grown enormously, to about 1% of global energy use. Banking heavily upon it, Germany has plunged it’s poor into energy poverty, by shuttering nuclear, not because of the risk or impact on health, but to pander…
Forlorn futility of faith-based climate action
One person’s demagogue is another person’s saviour, and, for many, the Elon Musk credibility needle will have finally flicked from where it has been firmly stuck on f, to e. For most students, in this age of social-media-supercharged celebrity, learning…
Proposed zero-carbon bill submission
Comment on the proposed zero-carbon bill closes at 5 pm on 19 July. The following pro forma is provided by the Mahurangi Magazine in the earnest hope that the resultant legislation is exponentially more substantive than a zero-carbon-by-2050-target…
Thirty years later, what needs to change
Thirty years ago, while the Midwest withered in massive drought and East Coast temperatures exceeded 100°F, I testified to the Senate as a senior nasa scientist about climate change. I said that ongoing global warming was outside the range of natural…
Visiting Aotearoa for all the right reasons
Neither of New Zealand’s two main industries is currently sustainable. Its once-vaunted agricultural industry, a proud part of the green revolution, is now a climate delinquent, due to the white gold-rush. Tourism, which continues to outdistance dairy as…
Mahu youth has National munted
If the local Kids Voting result is any indication, New Zealand’s youthquake is going to visit most damage on National. Mahurangi College students, their Kids Voting coordinator has reported, gave the Labour Party a clear majority: 35% versus the National…
Last call for climate action commission
Dr Jan Wright’s last report is also her least likely to ruffle feathers. Until now, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s refreshingly evidence-based reports have probably unsettled more Green Party supporters than the balance of…
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…
Zero-carbon energy ultimate nuclear waste solution
In the last 6 years and 8 weeks of published measurements, global sea level has risen a whisker more than an inch. At least that is the raw, seasonally adjusted data from the incredible, and credible, Jason 2 satellite, however, the El Niño…
Nation with least need for nuclear has most to gain
Even the pro-nuclear-power Dr James Hansen doubts Aotearoa needs it: “You happen to be very fortunate and be very wealthy in terms of renewable energy.” But New Zealanders’ future prospects now directly depend upon an unprecedented international…
Short open letter to environmentalists
As conservation scientists concerned with global depletion of biodiversity and the degradation of the human life-support system this entails, we, the co-signed, support the broad conclusions drawn in the article Key Role for Nuclear Energy in Global Biodiversity…
Only with nuclear is there time to feed the world
Forty years ago this year, Band Aid released a single that in its first week became the fastest selling track in all time in the United Kingdom. Co-written by Bob Geldof, Do They Know it’s Christmas went on to sell more than three million copies, and led to…
Renewable energy, nuclear power and Galileo
Climate scientists have long warned of potential catastrophic effects of unchecked fossil fuel use. Public awareness of the climate threat has increased. Yet growth of carbon dioxide in the air, the main driver of climate change, has accelerated…
Not just century, warming moral issue of millennium
More mud, fewer oysters, and galloping foreshore erosion. This is the forlorn future faced by the Mahurangi Harbour. Just how muddy, how few oysters or fish, and how quickly higher and higher tides carve into soft unprotected shorelines depends…
Nuclear power fan-death phobia
It will shortly be four years shy of half a century. In November 1965, the United States president’s science advisory committee warned: “Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas at the rate of…
Storm sidestepped over fewer grandchildren
In one notable respect, he was not preaching to the converted. With the possible exception of the odd journalist, the 350 people who packed the 250-seat Auckland University lecture theatre on Thursday evening had been ready to hear everything…
Marcus Shipton says give nuclear a chance
I am not here to convince you Aotearoa needs nuclear power. I honestly don’t know the answer to that question, however I am convinced that the world needs it. The real reason I’m here is to urge you to challenge our dogma, in these challenging…
On the bus for thorium-powered future
It was a sobering statement. There’s not enough power available to electrify Auckland’s transport. Gary Heaven knows a lot about such things, given that much of his information technology work is for power utilities. The immediate discussion…
Yes-we-can clean energy ministerial
The green stars of the show are set to be the Arabs and the Koreans. South Korea is spending a greater percentage of its economic recovery stimulus on green initiatives than any country in the world. And the United Arab Emirates is investing heavily…
Sustainable energy without the hot air
Bill Gates puts it as well as anyone: “If someone wants an overall view of how energy gets used, where it comes from, and the challenges in switching to new sources, this is the book to read.” Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air was written by physicist…