We know methane’s the NZ farming villain — now let’s measure it

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New Zealand’s first official space mission announces ‘mission control’

New Zealand’s first government funded space mission has taken a ‘giant leap’ with Auckland University’s Te Pūnaha Ātea-Auckland Space Institute announced as the permanent host of the New Zealand based mission control centre for a global methane tracking satellite.

“MethaneSAT is a really exciting opportunity to showcase New Zealand’s science and research expertise on the world stage, while making a significant contribution to climate change by mapping agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases. It’s great to see Auckland University, with the help of Rocket Lab, playing such a key role” says Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods. Continue Reading →

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Electric cars to save the world? Think again

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The spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction

As the world scrambles to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, the environmental impact of finding all the lithium required could become a major issue in its own right.

Here’s a thoroughly modern riddle: what links the battery in your smartphone with a dead yak floating down a Tibetan river? The answer is lithium – the reactive alkali metal that powers our phones, tablets, laptops and electric cars.

In May 2016, hundreds of protestors threw dead fish onto the streets of Tagong, a town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. They had plucked them from the waters of the Liqi river, where a toxic chemical leak from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine had wreaked havoc with the local ecosystem. … Continue Reading →

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We don’t trust the media

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Surprised?

MediaRoom: The latest findings on the public’s trust in NZ news make confronting reading, Plus RNZ rides high in new online audience numbers and Discovery starts cutting staff at Three

Less than half the New Zealand public now professes ‘overall trust’ in news media outlets, despite big rises in audience numbers during the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis. Continue Reading →

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Letters to the Editor

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Mother Nature’s mighty batteries

quill pen

25th April 2021

The World Climate Conference is spreading a Green Virus – they must be gagged for our safety.

The Biden-Boris green virus which infects most of the west has become a danger to Australia. PM Morrison has promised to sink a billion dollars in “hydrogen, CCUS (carbon capture use or storage), batteries and critical minerals” — to achieve “net zero”.

NONE of these green dreams will produce one light-bulb of new energy — they  will actually require massive inputs of energy and cash. Continue Reading →

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Has the ugly demand for ‘diversity’ reached New Zealand?

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Bryan Leyland has decades-long experience in electricity generation projects of all kinds. He applied to the NZ Battery Project to join its Technical Reference Group. This week he learned he had been unsuccessful. Their letter offered a summary of why he missed out. Continue Reading →

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We won the battle, lost the war – let’s win the war

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Battle of Guadalcanal 1942 – click to enlarge

It’s true that science offers no support to the warmsters, and their narrative has been a dismal failure in the halls of science, but those fraudsters have more or less triumphed in the battle for the corridors of power. However, we can be of good heart, since we will eventually win the war: truth always defeats ignorance. Always. Continue Reading →

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Recurring dreams of memes

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A reader observed

You do know that satellites do not measure the surface temperature? The data is subject to considerable manipulation.
You do know the surface thermometers are reliable and show Earth surface [sic] has warmed around 1.2C — depends on the start date.
You do know Christy and Spencer at UAH made a mess of it and had to be shown what to do?
You do know most of the energy is heating the oceans?
You do know you are wasting your time? It’s not a scientific problem any more, it’s a political problem. Trump has gone.

I respond for the umpteenth time

For 17 years this blog has answered these and related questions, but these new answers are not cut and pasted, they are created afresh. A NASA article last updated on 22 July, 2020, talks about the UAH satellite measurements: Continue Reading →

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