PS – BTW the planet is melting

13 Comments

1. So I suppose that “Greenland” will become green again, with a milder climate, as it had when the Vikings did their travels across to North America, and thus people can migrate there, for future lives, while their traditional habitats in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia will become uninhabitable (due to extreme heat and droughts). Siberia may also become milder and more fertile, so Chinese and Indians can look at migrating there, when it gets too hot, dry or flooded by higher sea levels where they traditionally live.

   That is how some people will see this, and what it means.

   I do not see many stop driving cars, the Neanderthal type brains that most have (evidently in part of their genes) does not seem to work the way it is necessary to realise the problem and change behaviour well enough in time, to avoid worse to come and happen.

   New Zealand and its government seem to be at the forefront of Neanderthal mentality, well, maybe it is even an insult to the Neanderthalers of past ages, to say this.

   Do nothing, have Paula Bennett talk drivel and divert attention, and simply walk away and refuse all media interviews. The strategy seems to be working, so far that is, with the media letting her off.

   1. Greenland was never green during the brief Viking period…check your history.

      1. “The descendants of the Vikings had persevered in their North Atlantic outpost for almost 500 years, from the end of the 10th century until the mid-15th century. The Medieval Warm Period had made it possible for settlers from Norway, Iceland and Denmark to live on hundreds of scattered farms along the protected fjords, where they built dozens of churches and even had bishops.”

         http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/archaeologists-uncover-clues-to-why-vikings-abandoned-greenland-a-876626.html

         Of course it was never “green” like the meadows in Britain or other places, but a temporary milder climate allowed some farming on the shorelines, which may have led to the naming of that land as “Greenland”.

         1. Yes Mike, but the whole of Greenland was never green as you suggest here “will become green again, with a milder climate, as it had when the Vikings did their travels across to North America, and thus people can migrate there”

            The truth is mate Greenland’s permanent “ice Shelf” is shrinking for the very first time and will be a “Florida of the north” one day with no human or animal or fish life left to enjoy and survive with a toxic un-breathable air with over 500ppm CO2 and increasing by the day then.

            Here’s it not as bad in 2014.

            http://www.livescience.com/44129-northeast-greenland-ice-sheet-melting.html

            We cant get blood out of a stone.

            1. And it was not increasing cold that destroyed the settlements: the introduction of sheep/goats/cows and grass pasture soon destroyed the meager topsoil. making in-arable land that had no chance of sustaining standard European agriculture long-term. Everybody knows that…

   2. Siberia may also become milder and more fertile

      It may also result in the release of methane trapped under the Siberian tundra;

      A vast expanse of permafrost in Siberia and Alaska has started to thaw for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago, marked in dark blue on the map. It is caused by the recent 3+°C rise in local temperature over the past 40 years – more than four times the global average. Peat bogs cover an area of a million square miles (or almost a quarter of the earth’s land surface) to a depth of 25 meters. Those in Siberia are the world’s largest.

      What was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometre across. All only in the past 3 or 4 years.

      This has the potential to release vast quantities of methane trapped by ice below the surface – billions of tonnes of methane. World-wide, peat bogs store at least two trillion tons of CO2. This is equivalent to a century of emissions from fossil fuels.

      Ref: http://www.planetextinction.com/planet_extinction_permafrost.htm

      Not a good scenario.

      1. We better stock up on those aerosol cans with “fresh, clean New Zealand” air that is being sold to the Chinese already, by “thrifty” business people charging a handsome price for this, like the news reported tonight.

         Clean air will become a rare commodity, I presume, so stock up now, so we can at least have enough oxygen to climb in our grave, when it is going to happen, the final count down.

      2. TRUE FRANK, SAME APPLIES TO Canada.

2. When David Bowie sang Five Years on his album Ziggy Stardust in the early 1970s he envisaged mass panic at the knowledge that the world only had five years left. Who in their wildest dreams would have imagined when it did come to pass people would be blase at best and say it wasn’t true at worst, and that the systems of society from government to business would actually do their best to avoid taking any action to stop it happening.

   1. Far worse than ‘do their best to avoid taking any action to stop it happening’: governments (including the NZ government, of course) put all their energy into promoting policies that accelerate the meltdown. So the meltdown accelerates. Absolutely insane!

      https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/vishop-extent.html

      And it’s ALL going to get a lot worse a lot faster as a consequence of continuous promotion of fossil fuel use and continuous promotion of consumerism.

      Daily CO2

      June 18, 2016: 406.92 ppm

      June 18, 2015: 401.69 ppm

      Up 5.23 ppm (versus 2005-20014 average of 2.11 ppm per annum)

      So not only do we have the highest ever (in human history) atmospheric CO2 but we are also raising it at the fastest-ever rate.

3. Very good article Martyn.

   All this while our stupid Government is idly planning to spend another $20 billion dollars on widening the roads south of Auckland to Tauranga for yet more bigger heavier trucks that will kill of rail as we know it in the past as the principal freight mover now will all be going by roads the NZTA if we have no rail road truck freight will n increase by 4.5 times the amount by 2040 so this Government are setting us all for extension they are committing genocide or crimes against humanity!!!!!

   You may also be interested in the National Freight Demands study released by the Ministry of Transport that examines New Zealand’s current freight demands and provides a forecast of future freight demands, and this spells serious problems for our regions without a rail service See this at;

   http://www.transport.govt.nz/research/nationalfreightdemandsstudy/

   • Statistics from NZTA report 370. 2008 “Promoting sustainability in N.Z.’s rail system.”

   • Total freight projected increases by 2040. 2.2 times. Pg 8.

   • Road freight – 1.6.

   • Rail freight – 2.9.

   • Coastal shipping – 3.7. – Pg 8.

   Without rail we will see road freight increase by 4.5 times of road freight at today’s levels which is totally unsustainable.

   We all need advocacy for us & our children’s future Health & wellbeing by voicing this lack of Government rail services & environmental health and wellbeing for our isolated community as other regions are ahead with public funding while we whither.

   WE HOPE WINSTON IS WATCHING THIS ISSUE AS HIS PARTY HAS AN EXCELLENT RAIL POLICY AND HE SHOULD USE THIS TO SAVE NORTHLAND RAIL TOO!

4. Is the planet melting faster than Paula Bennett’s chance at being PM?

   Maybe she has got something to worry about on both counts, then.

5. The latest data from the Japanese sensor confirms continuation of the unprecedented melt of 2016, with the current melt rate somewhat higher than a week ago.

   Many ‘interesting’ weeks until September.

   https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/vishop-extent.html

Comments are closed.