What we are seeing with the planet melting down thanks to human pollution created since the Industrial Revolution right now is unprecedented…
This winter has confirmed what scientists had feared — the sea ice around Antarctica is in sharp decline, with experts now concerned it may not recover.
Earlier this year, scientists observed an all-time low in the amount of sea ice around the icy continent, following all-time lows in 2016, 2017 and 2022.
Usually, the ice has been able to recover in winter, when Antarctica is reliably dark and cold.
But this year is different. For the first time, the sea ice extent has been unable to substantially recover this winter, leaving scientists baffled.
‘Five-sigma’ event unfolding
Physical oceanographer Edward Doddridge has been communicating with scientists and the community about the drastic changes happening around Antarctica.
He said vast regions of the Antarctic coastline were ice free for the first time in the observational record.
“To say unprecedented isn’t strong enough,” Dr Doddridge said.
“For those of you who are interested in statistics, this is a five-sigma event. So it’s five standard deviations beyond the mean. Which means that if nothing had changed, we’d expect to see a winter like this about once every 7.5 million years.
“It’s gobsmacking.”
…What is happening across the planet is a death shroud of heat, a burning furnace that is but a glimmer of things to come.
You understand, it just gets worse from here on in.
60 000 died in Europe last year from heat, expect those numbers to start jumping dramatically from here on in.
Climate change was a theoretical issue that might impact us at the end of the century, the last 12months has shown how wrong we were.
Extreme catastrophic climate events will hit faster than our ability to rebuild, this will interrupt the agricultural cycle and cause enormous climate refugee issues.
National and ACT have promised to roll back any environmental policies that constrict Business making money and will keep their Farmer mates out from having to do anything.
Both Parties will trash public transport, both parties intend to remove healthy home requirements, both parties will see methane unleashed.
If they win, it will mean the Agricultural industry have managed to avoid any restrictions for quarter of a century.
Labour and the Greens have done bugger all but the pittance they have done will all be stamped out and a National and ACT Government, and you can’t claim that Labour and the Greens haven’t made some progress…
We are bending the climate curve
A drop in greenhouse gas emissions due to Covid-19 measures was sustained well beyond the end of movement restrictions and lockdowns, new data shows.
In fact, climate pollution continued to fall through all of 2022, with the December 2022 quarter delivering the lowest figure in at least nine years barring the period covering the first lockdown, Statistics New Zealand reported on Thursday. While the pace of the decline isn’t yet sufficient to meet New Zealand’s climate goals, it suggests we have well and truly bent the emissions curve and are on our (slow but steady) way to a net-zero economy.
The figures from Stats NZ are provisional and calculated using a different methodology than New Zealand’s official emissions reporting. But they offer a much quicker and more regular look at the country’s decarbonisation progress than the official annual tallies, which are released on a two-year lag. They also don’t include the carbon-sucking impacts of forestry.
…those tiny steps will be eliminated by National and ACT if they become the Government.
We are living in denial, National and ACT are the Parties of climate denial, they are the Parties who have done all they can to pretend global warming caused by man made pollution isn’t happening and if they win in October, just as the planet plunges into a climate change doom spiral,  they will be adding fuel to that fire rather than trying to stop it.
The good news is that the catastrophe speeding towards us from climate change will force us to work together whether we like each other or not.
Fortress Aotearoa is our only future. The inevitability of it by 2030 will demand co-operation amongst ourselves whether we want to or not.
Catastrophic Climate Change is coming whether you believe in it or not!
We are now in the age of consequences, and those consequences don’t give a fuck about your feelings.
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Yet we have no plan that will work to cut emissions, the closure of Marsden Point refinery was a major backwards step , as all we do now is import lower quality fuel with higher emissions overall.
There needed to be a transition from crude oil production into biofuels and hydrogen production. The only site to do it was Marsden point and now there’s no one there who could achieve this .
So we are a banana republic that simply imports fuel.
We don’t have any way of producing biofuels anywhere in Nz.
We also don’t have anywhere that can refine lithium, cobalt or recycle batteries
Air NZ imports its so called carbon zero bio jet fuel all the way from Norway which is madness.
No it wasn’t a bad step to close Marsden Point.
The world is changing to electric and NZ will be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century because the actual products themselves like cars and tools are going electric.
Even if ACT and Natz get in, they can not stop the inevitable change away from fossil fuels and if they try to, NZ will sink even further into the 3rd world abyss that Labour and Greens seem to have taken us into with their lack of action and stupidity on climate change.
NZ was already a junk yard for old cars being imported in and has been for years.
Rare is the day when I agree with saveNZ…on the face of it shutting down the Refinery was scary, but it will focus people on going electric. I run an EV car and battery mower, with multiple power tools on the same battery pack. Got cheap solar panels on a North facing roof. Even trades guys I know that hate my politics swear by the multiple battery pack/tool model now. They WILL get an EV double cab I assure you.
Fossil fuel is a one off resource, there is no round two or replenishment if you understand where FF came from, whereas the Sun will likely last for millions of years yet according to physicists, cosmologists and astronomers.
It is getting ugly. Mangawahi, Auck. West Coast beach residents, & the infilled Auckland Burbs that were flooded gave an indication of that. People need to get into survival mode as Martyn has said for a while now. Rain water tanks, learn basic food preserving techniques, buy local etc. etc.
Working together is a good idea but falls over when whoever sets the rules is unable to understand all the facts.
EV car battery s still need mining to get minerals to make these cars.
Aus could not care less about environment as they are making a fortune from mining and they are run by the Labour party .
I get it. Burning fossil fuels is wrecking havoc with the environment and the climate, an existential threat to us all, but perhaps those who point to virtue signaling have a point in the face of total global emissions. But we do what we can, yes? Makes us good global citizens, yes? We can’t simply ignore the science, can we? But spare a thought for the wider petrochemical industry. That is, just about every commodity: adhesives, air mattresses, ammonia (and all that fertilizer), antifreeze, antihistamines, antiseptics, artificial limbs, artificial turf, asphalt, aspirin, awnings, backpacks….and we’ve just started on the 2nd letter in the English alphabet.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/11/f68/Products%20Made%20From%20Oil%20and%20Natural%20Gas%20Infographic.pdf
In the late 70s/early 80s Brasil rolled out a bunch of policies that saw a fleet of 4 million cars driving on pure ethanol made from locally grown sugarcane by the late 80s. NZ’s current fleet is 4.5million cars.
Most ICM cars these days are factory equipped with flex fuel systems that can run on pure ethanol or a mix of ethanol/petrol. If they aren’t equipped it’s a relatively easy conversion…that means our existing fleet could be continued to be used rather than being replaced with new electric vehicles which are highly carbon intensive from the embodied energy it takes to make them.
Due to its annual/biannual harvest Sugarcane is a highly productive feedstock for ethanol, that is effectively carbon neutral. We can grow sugarcane here, just not well enough to compete economically on the global sugar commodities market which is why we don’t but a domestic market could be developed.
However sugarcane is not the highest yielding energy crop. Studies of Typha species in the 70s demonstrated the energy yeild from the starch found in Typha sp can be as high as 4 times that of sugarcane.
Typha is also proven to clean up nutrient pollution from waterways.
In NZ we have Typha orientalis or common Raupo. That pesky native wetland plant most farmers do their best to eradicate from their riverflats and waterways despite it being edible for stock. Imported Palm kernel anyone?
If NZ farmers were actually farmers and not brain dead over opinionated Nutrient Miners shackled to the corporate banking system you’d think they’d see this opportunity but no….. Fonterras sustainability manager’s response to this information back in 2007 was to call me a “fucking greenie” and hang up on me….. despite the fact such a strategy could make them not just be a leading dry milk powder supplier internationally but also an energy company domestically. They could be paying their members to produce both milk solids and a climate benign liquid fuel whilst cleaning up their impact on both climate and waterways.
Imagine if the Billions we shell out to multinational oil companies could be returned to our rural communities and that benefit was carbon neutral!
Climate change not only offers disaster, it actually offers opportunity.
Fortress NZ would not be that hard to achieve with some “out of the neoliberal box” thinking and a few policy tweaks.
Will that happen….clearly not. The problem with ethanol, is the technology to convert sugar and starch to fuel is as old as beer,wine and mead. You can’t patent it…therefore it’s not worth the research or investment…lols.
Like Lemmings off a cliff!
Enjoy your future!!
There is marginal benefit from ethanol over petrol.
https://www.axios.com/local/des-moines/2022/02/16/ethanol-worse-than-gasoline-climate-change-report
And worse if the land for growing crops came from taking down rain forest.
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