Climate Conversation Group

Nineteenth century Maori village. Click for whole scene.

From Owen McShane’s newsletter Straight Thinking comes his article The Reactionaries and the Modernists – Maori at the Cross Roads, published in the National Business Review (behind a paywall) on 22nd August.
 
Owen presents the choice between modernism and tribalism as being Maori’s to make, but the consequences equally punish or reward the rest of us. The infiltration of our public decision-making by regressive, animist religious practices impedes our development.

Maori have a choice

One road will take Maori into a future in which they participate in the modern world, contribute to economic growth and development, and contribute to their own and their children’s wellbeing.

The other road leads them backwards into a Tribal World based on animist religious beliefs such as mauri, (the life force) and which regards science as the “latest force of colonization.” Read more… »

The first moments raised an enormous cloud of dust over the Christchurch city centre. Click for larger version.

In ordinary times, that people gather and lend their hand to help those in need is a comforting cliché. Then, when people remain during a time of earthquakes, tunnel into moving rubble to pull out survivors, from their own goodness bring hot drinks and food and treat the injured and raise an army of their fellows to help out people they’ve never met, they make an extraordinary tale that can nourish a nation for generations to come.

The Christchurch earthquakes raise in us a rare gamut of raw emotion. Seldom are we witness to events of such outrageous, capricious cruelty and it has been hard to watch as each day delves deeper into the city’s tragedies. Some of us have learned of surprising, unforeseen effects of earthquakes.

We knew of buildings shaking and toppling and the earth opening up to engulf the unlucky, but who imagined mud spurting from the solid ground, spewing like volcanoes or suddenly undermining the foundations of buildings or swallowing vehicles?

Then, after that misfortunate marvel, who suspected the black mud could set like concrete in just a few hours? What miseries it has caused.

The focus has been on the urban catastrophe. In surrounding farmland, the earthquake induced maybe a mild crease in the pasture, or caused perhaps the northern half of a shelter belt to be forever two metres east of the rest, or gave a railway track an alarming twist.

But in the city, similar minor movements of the earth created havoc with our puny buildings, roads and bridges. People were trapped or killed outright as their familiar, everyday buildings betrayed and crushed them.

We hear now tales of courage, kindness and steady compassion which inspire us with new zeal as New Zealanders. Fresh new zeal is just what the world needs, and New Zealand is just the place to find it. We’re a naturally retiring people, but when we treat each other like this, we cannot conceal from a watching world what’s truly in our hearts. Read more… »

Chris de Freitas takes aim at decision-makers who should know, but apparently don’t know, what they’re doing. If they don’t squirm on reading this stinging criticism, then surely they possess no conscience. Let us hope they’re strong enough to honestly re-evaluate their position. I’m posting his article in toto; crafted with the best possible reasoning, it deserves the widest possible circulation.

Published in Energy New Zealand, Sept 2009.
by Chris de Freitas

Bias or blindness… emission targets

THE KYOTO PROTOCOL, an icon of the global environmental movement, is soon to be replaced by a more radical international treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

What it will involve depends on the outcome of negotiations that begin this December in Copenhagen. In preparation, the Government has committed New Zealand to cut up to a third of current emissions by 2020.

The economic, social and moral implications are immense, since carbon taxes and tradable emissions alone cannot make such a massive reduction. Sweeping legislation restricting the use of oil, coal and natural gas would be required, along with far-reaching reforms in pastoral farming to cut methane release. Read more… »

If there was any doubt that extreme environmentalists actually want to rule the world more than heal the environment, it can now be dismissed.

For no less a personage than the “High Priest” of global warming, Al Gore, has just expressed a desire for “world governance” to drive plans to control mankind’s emissions of greenhouse gases. How long will it be before our parliament is rendered obsolete, since the UN makes all our important decisions anyway? For the good of the planet, of course.

Mark Morano, at Climate Depot, reported Gore made the comment on July 7, in Oxford, at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment.

Morano went on that Gore’s call for “global governance” echoes former French President Jacques Chirac’s comments on November 20, 2000, during a speech at The Hague, that the UN’s Kyoto Protocol represented “the first component of an authentic global governance.”

“For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance,” Chirac explained then. “From the very earliest age, we should make environmental awareness a major theme of education and a major theme of political debate, until respect for the environment comes to be as fundamental as safeguarding our rights and freedoms. By acting together, by building this unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance, we are working for dialogue and peace,” Chirac added.

Admirable sentiments. It’s just a pity he added the bit about “global governance”, since that’s the tyranny part; the part we must resist.

This man Gore is not only getting rich from trading carbon credits but he is also becoming dangerous to good order and freedom.

Christopher Monckton, at the Science and Public Policy Institute, is despondent about the uses being made of the global warming “crisis”. He fumes about the supranational aspirations of the United Nations and speaks darkly of a “fledgling World Government”. I recommend you download the pdf and read him directly; it’s not only a demonstration of excellent writing but also illuminates the situation.

Does he exaggerate in referring to international arrangements, through treaties, which aim to control our emissions of greenhouse gases, as “this constitutional monstrosity, [this] abnegation of life, this repudiation of liberty, this cancellation of the pursuit of happiness”? Read more… »

Completely OT: Auckland’s controversial Boobs on Bikes parade went ahead today, glorifying pornographer Steve Crow’s shameless self-promotion. More like Trollops on Trikes. Read more… »

by Roger Dewhurst

It is beyond dispute that Kyoto, emission trading, the fart tax, carbon credits and climate change legislation contribute nothing to the productive goods and services of this country. All the money spent in these areas is totally unproductive. Furthermore it all comes out of the pockets of the taxpayer and ratepayer.

Lawyers and accountants are setting up departments to advise on making money or saving money on these matters. Resource management consultants are in for their share too. Councils are appointing staff to ‘manage’ climate change and wringing their hands while removing yet more fleece from their ratepayers — Government bureacrats, too. Major companies are huddling together in meetings to work out how to persuade the government to load their climate change liabilities on to the taxpayer for a little while longer, reduce their liabilities, neutralize them or even make a profit out of the climate change scam.

There is even an academic department being set up to ‘advise’ on climate change and thus add to the rort on the taxpayer.

Vultures, all with their bloody heads buried in the carcase of the taxpayer. All these costs, for which there are no benefits whatever to the taxpayer, devolve on the taxpayer who, unknowingly, is paying lawyers and the like $300 per hour, $5 per minute or one dollar every twelve seconds, or more, which costs are finally paid in the increased cost of food, fuel and real goods and services.

Enough is enough; is there a political party which has the courage to draw a line under this rort?

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•  Roger Dewhurst is a geologist with qualifications in engineering geology and hydrogeology.