Climate action
With three decades wasted, everything now has to be about climate
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…
Global warming mobilisation and 21st century Liberty ships
As a metaphor, the rms Titanic eclipses the First World War. In turn, World War One eclipses the 1918 Pandemic, which claimed possibly six times as many lives than ‘the war to end war’. The classic Titanic message is that the world’s largest ship, hyped as…
Mahurangi Magazine reprints the New Lynn speech
You know that at the last election, the one that we lost so badly, nearly one million people didn’t vote; more than 800 000 people—a fifth of the population—didn’t vote. Now you know, there are lots of reasons that people didn’t vote, and there were…
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…
Vision of being world’s best at everything
It should have happened overnight. Dr Gareth Morgan’s Million-Dollar Mouse campaign deserved to have been over-subscribed by lunchtime the next day. After all, the philanthropist is matching contributions dollar for dollar, and so is only seeking $350 000—the...
CO2 psychology not rocket science
As I said at the time, the psychology of climate change isn’t rocket science; it is far more complicated than that. At December’s Mahurangi Club, I shared a few ideas around psychology, climate change, and climate change denial. Here I will share a bit more…
Actions after election make history
It should probably start with the less-important issue. In this hypothetical ‘operation hymn sheet’, the leadership of the National and Green parties have been whisked away, their respective election celebrations still ringing in their ears, to a nice quiet place in...
Prime Minister asking for it but oblivious to criticism
New Zealanders have been told to put up or shut up: “Show me how you’d go faster? Show me how you’d do anything different?” Told by their Prime Minister, John Key, no less—in response to widespread incredulity that a ship with 1700 tonnes of…
Party-vote green growth for a richer Aotearoa
In Australia, the party is simply called Australian Greens, or The Greens for short. In Aotearoa it is ‘The Greens, The Green Party of Aotearoa/New Zealand’, which at 51 characters including spaces and punctuation is just one short of the 52-character maximum....
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…
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…
100% pure space mission or motorway madness
It would cost about 7% of the planned Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway. But rather than generate more greenhouse gases and trust to luck that its ministers will never have to face an international climate court, the government could fund an urgently…
No time to lose picking winners
Dogma continues to dog civilisation. An example is the market-forces mantra that governments should resile from picking winners, because they invariably get it wrong. Such dogma flies in the face of the wealth of examples of governments getting it gloriously and...
Shweeb and/or rail-saving trail-with-rail
Aotearoa must urgently re-invent its tourism model. Currently it is heavily dependent upon air travel, which will increasingly become cripplingly expensive thanks to peaked oil and user-pays for greenhouse gases. Aside from the obvious need for more…
Mahurangi not an island
It would be safer, to stick to the knitting. Despite its ever-increasing readership—3643 visits last month—there is no knowing what percentage of the Mahurangi Magazine’s visitors would prefer to not read about anthropogenic global warming and the imperative for...
No reason to distrust scientist as opposed to politician
Every catchment issue is set to become more acute. Scientists and economists are warning us with increasing urgency of impending environmental and social calamities—damage, ozone depletion, and energy depletion caused by humanity’s excesses. Politicians…
Advantage of green pure genius
The concept’s catching on like wildfire. Since Pure Advantage launched on Thursday evening, the number of registered supporters has shot to more than 1000—responding to the call: The greater our numbers, the greater our influence on business…
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…
Much-needed storms of our granddaughters
Dick Smith writes entirely eloquently. Which should mean that Dick Smith’s Population Crisis gets to be read by a usefully broad audience. It also helps that his just-published book, at 198 pages, is not too dauntingly lengthy, given the inherently daunting…
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…
Dick Smith to Murdoch: Be a Beaverbrook
In a recent book, Terri Irwin makes this perceptive comment: “In a hundred years, what difference is it going to make worrying about two acres of land. We need to focus on the real change that will make the world a better place for our children and…”
Emissions messiah misses agricultural greenhouse gases
On the face of it, New Zealanders have a light carbon footprint. Even Dr James Hansen, in his open letter to the prime minister, says that: New Zealand contributes relatively little to carbon emissions that drive climate change. Per capita fossil fuel emissions from...
Planet doomed but save the sea and sky
The phrase ‘save the planet’ grates for good reason. Nothing that humankind can currently throw at it, greenhouse gases included, can affect the existence of planet Earth. Even if every nuclear weapon were detonated simultaneously for good…
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…
Long past time for precautionary principle
Dr James Hansen’s lecture is slated to start at 6.30 pm. Or, if Thursday’s event’s Facebook page is to be believed, 6 pm. In 1988 when Dr Hansen warned congress that anthropogenic greenhouse gases were going to seriously raise average global temperatures, the...
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…
Think Mahurangi action act global
Every catchment issue is set to become more acute, despite the best intentions of the Mahurangi Action Plan. Stormier weather will wash ever more soil into the harbour, and higher tides will more vigorously churn and muddy its soft shoreline. Thanks, in…
Loss of holiday highway won’t be lamented
Labour’s Transport spokesperson Shane Jones is welcoming reports that the so-called ‘holiday highway’ from Pūhoi to Wellsford may be delayed, with completion of the $1.3 billion highway possibly pushed back to 2024. “There is no way Labour…
Make existing highway safer, concentrate on Christchurch
Christine Rose is emphatic that Christchurch comes first. Reacting to strong indications by the government this morning that the planned Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway will have to wait for Christchurch to be rebuilt, the Labour Party candidate for Rodney…
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…
Science ‘globalisation’ is the future
The greenhouse gas consortium is the centrepiece of a major New Zealand commitment to take its global citizenship obligations seriously with respect to those issues associated with climate change. It of course has multiple dimensions. As a…
Will to ensure Wilma not wasted
There were just nine apiece in Sullivans, Mita and the Pukapuka. Nine, where of a Mahurangi Regatta morning there would normally have been 90 or more vessels in each of the harbour’s weather‑favoured bays. Wilma maintained her tropical…
Time to submit to better transport
It can be done online, up until midnight Friday 28 January. Feedback is sought by the New Zealand Transport Agency regarding the indicative route of the Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway. Submissions that a motorway should not be built…
New Year’s resolution breeding obvious
By next New Year’s Day, the population will have just reached seven billion, yet propaganda abounds claiming that it’s not the approaching-seven-billion souls currently inhabiting Planet Earth, but the unsustainable lifestyles of a small proportion of the world’s...
Rodney seat shapes up as green transport battleground
Possibly not panning out exactly as the National Party planned. By freeing up the Rodney seat, Lockwood Smith stated he was facilitating more firepower to be directed to the defence of the planned Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway—his position as…
Billion-dollar motorway flyover
Takes just 3.43 minutes to ‘fly’ the preferred route. The New Zealand Transport Agency’s simulated flyover of the preferred route deserves high praise for vividly and dramatically illustrating the magnitude of what is involved in building a motorway…
Part 1 China and the Barbarians
Republished from original PDF I was in China when United States midterm elections caused some people to become more pessimistic about the fate of the planet and humanity. In contrast, I became more optimistic, for two reasons, both related to China. Here I explain the...
Future of Aotearoa is nuclear visits
Blanket-banned for nearly all the right reasons. In 1984, when nuclear warships were banned from visiting Aotearoa, the French military was to continue testing nuclear weapons beneath Moruroa and Fangatafoa for more than 11 years. And the…
Google and the Shweeb sounds of success
The first section would run to the Wilson Cement Works. In time, it could run between Snells Beach and the Mahurangi College. And then form a coastal ‘walkway’ from Waiwera to Warkworth. Largely unnoticed by New Zealanders, the Shweeb is set to…
Redeeming the once-was-smart grid
Once, it was internationally award-winning. Specifically, New Zealand’s national electricity grid was feted for its sophisticated wireless telecommunications control system that facilitated load balancing and real time response to operational…
Bridging energy chasm the Ayres rock
Most are utterly unrepentant. Free-market high priests appear more than happy for the subprime mortgage market to take the fall for the global economic downturn—all those folk with no business aspiring to home ownership, really! Other economists…
Other than motorway, what $2.3 billion buys
China has 3529 kilometres in use and another 6696 under construction. High-speed rail in Japan, however, with its similarly challenging terrain is probably a better guide for Aotearoa. But even at the relatively high Japanese rates, the cost…
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…
Ramp renewables but energy efficiency first
It doesn’t seem cheap. Filling the tank seems to cost a prince’s ransom, particularly for older folk who can remember doing it prior to the first oil shock. For a decade before 1973, four dollars would fill the tank of a Mini. But the oil shocks to date are nothing to...
Goodbye old motorway, hello new rail
It was an entirely reasonable expectation. That the best features of the constituent local bodies would be melded into the new region‑wide council. Len Brown’s announcement that he would “take onboard the Waitakere eco‑city concept” may…
Climate court-action is delaying the inevitable
Nobody should be above the law. Such platitudes will resonate with folk who welcome the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition’s latest bid to be noticed: Taking legal action against the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, in the name of the New...
Safety first trumps weak economics
A good deal of sense was talked in Auckland and Wellington yesterday. Auckland Regional Council listened to two options that put safety first, in quickly and affordably upgrading the dangerous highway between Pūhoi and Wellsford motorway, presented…
Political courage not political suicide
It was widely hyped as last chance for planet Earth. Then universally condemned as an abject failure. But the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen a year ago was neither of those things. And what it did produce, thanks to Barrack Obama, was the...
Mainstream media missing from wild new frontiers
As threats go, they don’t come much bigger. Asteroid collision, global thermonuclear war, nuclear winter, snowball earth all have the potential to render Homo sapiens sapiens extinct. But these threats have either a low, in some cases infinitesimally low…
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…
Magazine urges agency to build for future
The following submission is that of the Mahurangi Magazine, prepared by Cimino Cole, editor, with the support of John Timmins, publisher. The magazine thanks its many readers who have expressed support for the need to protect the harbourscape, and…
Motorway extension all right for some
Submissions on the proposed Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway close today. Unless the submission is from the pro– Pūhoi access group that met with the New Zealand Transport Agency Friday, which has until 16 August. The agency’s Amanda…
Marvelous place to stop the motorway
It may be a case of joining the wrong dots. Or even a case of joining dots that aren’t there. But the spectre of a motorway snaking up Mahurangi Harbour, to the east of Schedewys Hill, Windy Ridge and Pōhuehue, is threatening to swamp reaction to the potential loss of...
Regional council’s informal position
The Auckland Regional Council respects and commends the NZ Transport Agency’s concern over growth pressures arising from transport infrastructure, and the need to reinforce and recognize the regional growth strategy etc as signalled in the regional policy statement....
Mahurangi may need to take one for the team
It is clearly working. Expectations for increased property demand at Mahurangi West have been dashed. In line with the growth objectives of the district and regional plans, the NZ Transport Agency signalled that there would be no access to the planned motorway between...
Motorway: Think on
The agency has said what it thinks. Headed ‘What we think’, the New Zealand Transport Agency a month ago outlined its broad plans for a Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway, and invited feedback. Since then, the Mahurangi Magazine has published seven pieces on the proposed...
Fossil-fuel solutions stratospheric cost
‘Sofia’ has cost $1.3 billion. If built, the Pūhoi–Wellsford Motorway is estimated to cost $2.3 billion. Nine years behind schedule, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy has just begun studying the atmospheres of other planets, when the extreme...
Thinking a little beyond 26 July
The motorway consultation process is generating considerable debate in the area. Communities, understandably, are currently focused on what can be done between now and 26 July to influence those making decisions about the design of the proposed Pūhoi–Wellsford...
Never negotiate out of fear; never fear to negotiate
The raison d'être for this publication is the Mahurangi landscape. More specifically, the Mahurangi Magazine’s mission has been to help ensure that recognition of the harbourscape was a principal part of the Mahurangi Action Plan. And it is, although it appeared...
Smarter agency models gagging for it
The New Zealand Transport Agency must be immensely bemused. A community reacts in outrage to the prospect of being denied direct access to a proposed motorway, when it should be erupting in righteous indignation at the absurdity of…
Alternatives to the agency model
Predictably, all the ruckus is over the off and on ramps. An entirely refreshing idea has been suggested by Mahurangi West man Cluny Macpherson. Professor Macpherson contends that bus bays should be provided opposite Pūhoi and Mahurangi West. This would facilitate...
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…
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…
Mahurangi Harbour might dodge another bullet
Mahurangi’s first near miss was being by-passed by the Great North Road. To avoid being bogged down, early road builders preferred, where possible, keep to the high ground. By electing to run the highway along the Windy Ridge, the harbour was put just out of sight of...
Fossil fuel addiction Gulf of denial
Fully one-third of the Oval Office speech is about America’s addiction to fossil fuels. But while that is undeniably courageous, given the unforgiving mood of the wounded United States electorate, the reasons that President Barack Obama gives for that addiction being...
Global warming too late to stop now
The reality is slowly dawning. Everything that made the timely warnings difficult to accept, now makes it impossible not to. The awe personified in the prayer ‘my boat is so small and your sea is so wide’ made preposterous the notion that…
Climate camps and the world’s shortest year
And the prize for the most foolish first line goes to: “Climate change advocates will be buoyed by data which has emerged from the US today.” Admittedly, the New Zealand Herald is not alone in using the ludicrous phrase ‘climate change…
Energy and the dammed Mahurangi
Dam the Mahurangi River and generate electricity. Such a proposal would face fierce opposition. But what if the dam was already in place; built more than a century since. The dam, otherwise known as the Wilson cement works weir, is located almost…
Overreact now to Gulf invasion and war on a habitable climate
What we need is a decent nuclear accident, then they’ll vote Values. That was well before Chernobyl, in fact five years before Three Mile Island. And sadly, the self-appointed Values Party spokesman wasn’t being factious. Aside from the tragic state of mind that would...
Anthropocene ensures Holocene has had its day
Geology was one of Ronald Locker’s abiding passions. In his chapter Laying the Foundations, Jade River : A History of the Mahurangi’s author succinctly explains the processes that gave rise to the Mahurangi—how this landscape of outstanding natural beauty…
Matrix can help save landscape and planet
Saving the planet was once a euphemism for environmental prissiness. Much better to look after numero uno, one’s family, the community or, at a pinch, the local environment. But that has changed dramatically due to the diminishing window of opportunity to mitigate,...
Time to swipe the black card
It is a $2 million-demonstration of the power of packaging. Fully 11% of the SuperGold Card travel budget has been used on trips to Waiheke Island, apparently helping put the scheme $12 million over budget. Although any discount and concession scheme would have been...
co2 can come before and after warming
It’s a perfectly reasonable question. If, following ice ages, a rise in carbon dioxide followed global warming, why is the scientific consensus that the current rise is causing global warming? The short answer is that increased levels of carbon dioxide can both cause, and…
Global alliance news is as good as it gets
It may not always seem like it. Nevertheless, the editorial policy of the Mahurangi Magazine is for it be good-news publication. But that is good-news, as opposed to head-in-the-sand news, when it comes to inconvenient truths. The successful inaugural conference of...
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...
Media ineptitude and world awash with disinformation
Classical propaganda is instantly recognisable. It flutters to earth from an enemy aircraft or is plastered up in the form of clumsy government-printed posters in public places. But the art of the propagandist has become extraordinarily sophisticated, and civilisation...
Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen accord
Appearances can be deceptive. Copenhagen 18 December 2009, might not have looked and sounded like a turning point in history. But time determines what constitutes a moment in history, not the preconceived expectations of conference critics.…
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…
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…
Well-spotted that big riverboat wheel
Master mariner Melvyn Bowen warmed up his audience with a quiz: ”Where am I?” he asked of the dozen or so who turned out on Friday evening to hear from the commercial sail aficionado. The first image of the presentation was of Melvyn stood…
Commercial sail – the way it could be
After thousands of years powered by sail, commercial navigation switched over completely to fossil fuels. Since then, the revival of commercial sail has proved to be a curiously elusive goal. But the same reason electric cars are making a stampeding…
Meeting to form Transition Town Warkworth
No doubt you are aware of climate change. Maybe you have heard of peak oil. But what can you do? Peak oil and climate change will drastically change the way we live. Food, transport and energy costs are predicted to soar. Weather patterns…
Preventing climate confusion raining
Regular readers will be aware that my goal of a new page published every day has gone up in CO2. The reason is that I have an additional job, as a subeditor for Fairfax Media. Taking up a new job at 61 years has proved to be both exhilarating and exhausting. Some…
Low impact design that’s got to (be) smart
In a perfect world, economic drivers would be indistinguishable from environmental drivers. Readers of the Mahurangi Magazine will no doubt range from climate-change sceptics, all the way through to those in the we’re-already-dog-tucker…
The good news on good-news carbon
Tuesday’s Rodney Times carried an article that had Friends of the Mahurangi executive member Mike Neil highly encouraged: ‘Some good news on carbon, at last!’ Had I seen it? No, but I needed little excuse to put off completing some long-overdue administration chores...
Some capping and trading but an electric redemption
This piece was going to be titled: Too Little, Too Slowly—Pray it’s Not Too Late. But then it would have been doing the Labour government’s announcement on climate action a huge disservice. And it wouldn’t be doing any better than the New…
Atmospheric cost of printed telephone numbers
Updated 30 July 2011 The Sunday papers had arrived. As had the staggering bulk of the new Sydney telephone directories. The editor’s host lamented the bulk of the papers, and the contrasting lack of content: They’re all conjecture—I’m sure they print them on Tuesday....
Climate and the economy when green turns to grey
Everything that began with Marx, the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, 1917 and all that, petered out. Even World War II became just history. The choice facing western Europeans was no longer one of capitalism or…
Grasp opportunity for Climate Action Party of Aotearoa
A green economy won’t ward off an unsurvivable climate. In fairness, there is no longer any guarantee that it’s not already too late for any human intervention to prevent the onset of Hothouse Earth. Every additional day wasted increases the chance that…