Posts by Terence Wood
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Hello Raymond,
Thanks for your thanks; and glad to hear the graphs were of some use to you.
With regards to the 'New Zealand can't do nothing' argument, your point is an interesting one and highlight's one of the dilemmas of living in a globalising world. All of a sudden we are faced with challenges (disease, terrorism, climate change etc.) which are truly international in scope, yet all we have to deal with them is the puny ol' nation-state. An entity which can, typically, only legitimately and successfully engage in meaningful action within its own borders. Now there are a number of ways of dealing with this dilemma, including those already in place such as the World Trade Organisation and elements of the UN. None of them work perfectly, but they point to ways which we can manage future problems (economist Joseph Stiglitz, for example, suggests that the EU take action via the WTO against the US because it's refusal to sign Kyoto is, in effect, an unfair trading practice.)
This is all long term stuff - in the short term, however, despite the fact that our own carbon emissions are trivial in the global scale of things, it does still matter what we do in New Zealand.
This is because, in almost every nation on earth, there are people - like you - claiming that "we can't do anything anyhow", and every time a country pays head to them, it undermines the causes of those folk in the rest of the world who do want to take action. On the other hand - if New Zealand were to take a bold stand, it would strengthen the claims of our fellow activists everywhere. Including the places it matters like Europe, the US and China.
That's why it’s important what we do.
cheers
Terence (p.s. also, I wouldn't worry about lies, damn lies, and statistics: those graphs are the result of peer reviewed articles with transparent methodologies, which can - and indeed do - get attacked if they are in error. In other words: they're pretty damn reliable).
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Thanks Matthew for the tip about the login bouce.
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Oh grief,
The one thing you could say for Garth George is that he makes the other climate change deniers look relatively intelligent. Or something.
Raymond:
Ok the climate has changed but it always has, it is not and never has been a static thing[.] Possibly human activity has caused this but the changes are with in the range of the last 1000 years and do not campare on the long view (millions of years)
Um, no. The current variations are not within the range of anything within the last 1000 years, they have now well exceeded even the medieval warm period. See here.
True, the climate has always changed and true their have been climate variations in the past that exceed what has thus far occurred. But these events were, well, you know significant. Crocodiles swimming at the poles anyone? A mile thick Ice Sheet over New York. We may not be looking at anything that dramatic at present, but on a planet with 6 billion plus people don't kid yourself that even much more minor temperature changes wont have catastrophic impacts.
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Hi Yamis,
that makes me feel a bit better actually, given that the forum that I'm soon to be charged with taking care of does the anoying bounce back thing. At least it will be constant with everyone else.
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I reckon I'd let my firends and family choose.
Afterall, they'll be the ones listening to it - not me.
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Like everyone else: thanks for the time and effort that has gone into this - it ought to be interesting.
With regards to the "when I log in to reply to a post, I get bounced back to the front page problem". If anyone comes up with a solution to that I would be interested to know about it.
cheers
Terence