Youth organisation, Generation Zero, is releasing its candidate scorecards to Aucklanders on Wednesday 25th of September at 11:00 AM at a press conference.
The scorecards will be available on the website at generationzero.org.nz/localelections on Wednesday 25th of September.
The press conference will cover candidates responses to Generation Zero’s questions on: the Congestion Free Network, the Unitary Plan, urban cycling and climate change. The results are graded from ‘A’ to ‘E’ on local government election scorecards. Candidates who receive an overall score of ‘A’ will be available for media interviews after the conference.
Generation Zero’s work collaborating with Auckland Transport Blog on the Congestion Free Network follows on from our engagement with young people on the Draft Unitary Plan. Generation Zero believes this is an opportunity to assist Aucklanders to make informed decisions on who they want to represent their city.
Generation Zero will also release candidate scorecards in other centres around the country on the same day.
When: 11AM Wednesday 25th September
Where: Attendance by RSVP only to receive more information please email Ryan Mearns at ryan@generationzero.org.nz
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These people would doubt that the earth was round if they hadn’t actually gone around it. That is after all, still a theory.
Big ups to the guys for this, it is a massive effort.
When will the candidates themselves know the results?
Is this for all city mayors or for councilers as well.
I think having a scorecard with various scores is a good idea.
Sustainability did either a tick or not and gave the candidates no feedback about the reasons.
ahh that should say Sustainable Waikato http://www.sustainablewaikato.org.nz/
Anthropomorphic climate change has been dead since climategate and “hide the decline”. The scientific method involves forming a hypthesis, testing that hypothesis against evidence, then accepting or rejecting that hypothesis. In climate change’s case, the hypothesis was that temperatures would rise alarmingly along with CO2. Along with a bunch of other stuff, such as increased numbers of cyclones, and all the things listed at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm . The trouble is real world temperatures have been flat for the last 15 years, there are fewer cyclones, and every single prediction made by the climate alarmists has turned out to be wrong. It is long past the point where it is obvious the computer models were wrong, but climate “science” attracted some big money and the guys involved will want to hang on to it as long as they can.
All this was pretty predictable. If the Earth was prone to extreme climate change on the basis of tiny changes to the concentration of trace gases in the atmosphere, then it would have spun out of control millions of years ago and we’d look like Venus. But we haven’t… despite dramatic changes to all sorts of inputs over millions of years, we enjoy a pretty mild climate. That suggests that the feedbacks in the climate system tend to stabilise rather than destabilise temperature.
Climate science as practiced by the IPCC is the modern equivalent of Lysenkoism. As for Gen Zero, their transport work is generally pretty solid. But worrying about CO2 is just kind of retro, as if they’re stuck in the 90s.
Obi, For f*cks sake, You know nothing about this topic.
First sentence – “Anthropomorphic climate change has been dead since climategate and “hide the decline” The first clause is wrong. Climategate was nothing but hot air, and after every enquiry the scientists were exhonerated. Plus read the actual leaked emails and every scientific literate person would understand what they were reading and that it was just normal scientifically literate people talking to each other. There has been no decline in global temperatures. Third sentence “In climate change’s case, the hypothesis was that temperatures would rise alarmingly along with CO2.” – they are.
“The trouble is real world temperatures have been flat for the last 15 years” – They haven’t. http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
“every single prediction made by the climate alarmists has turned out to be wrong.” – again wrong. It’s tracking many of their predictions.
“It is long past the point where it is obvious the computer models were wrong” – no they aren’t.
“but climate “science” attracted some big money” – Yeah right. Tell that to poorly paid PhD candidates.
“If the Earth was prone to extreme climate change on the basis of tiny changes to the concentration of trace gases in the atmosphere, then it would have spun out of control millions of years ago and we’d look like Venus.” – No we are further from the sun, and have less climate gases. On average we get 15 degrees C above what we’d otherwise be. We’d need to get 475 degrees of greenhouse effect to be like Venus. There is large variation over the geologic record, but your hypothesis that it would spun out of control is based on zero evidence.
“But we haven’t… despite dramatic changes to all sorts of inputs over millions of years, we enjoy a pretty mild climate.” – and it has been much differnet in the past. There have been Ice Ages and hotter times. “That suggests that the feedbacks in the climate system tend to stabilise rather than destabilise temperature. ” – so your argument is that feedbacks are powerful, but yet you deny the feedbacks caused by humans could be powerful.
“Climate science as practiced by the IPCC is the modern equivalent of Lysenkoism.” – no it isn’t. Not at all. That is a great misrepresentation of the truth.
“As for Gen Zero, their transport work is generally pretty solid. But worrying about CO2 is just kind of retro, as if they’re stuck in the 90s.” – So that’s an argument now – climate change is retro.
Climate Change deniers give me the absolute shits.They regurgitate other moronic shit that some other cretin has written and they don’t have even half a brain to see the obvious bullshit in what they copy.
The heat content of the oceans (which is where 95% of the ocean and atmosphere stores its heat) has gone up 1×10 to the 23 joules in the last 20 years in its top 2000 metres, which to have done electrically at Genesis Energy’s great new day rate before the 10% early payment discount would only cost $938,528,000,000,000 for the 27.8 quadrillion kWh.
Obi I have just quantified it and you just gave us 938 trillion dollars worth of bullshit.
just because you have a picture of bicycle in your profile it doesn’t mean you can be rude, make comments without any back-up or reasoned argument and basically be an aggressive poster. there is a lot of information that is coming out lately that is starting to show that some of the climate change industry might not be as accurate as thought and might possibly need to be reviewed. you shouldn’t attack somebody’s comments in the manner that you have.
It’s not rude to point out someone that they are talking bollocks.
Famty, you are talking bollocks. (Hint there is no “climate change industry”)
why do you talk to me with so bad aggression. I will send a complaint to the admins. please don’t talk to me like that.
Rude, yes. But the arguments were reasoned and had references direct and indirect.
since when have the rebuttals that Mathew makes been reasoned and had references?
quote…..” Climate Change deniers give me the absolute shits.They regurgitate other moronic shit that some other cretin has written and they don’t have even half a brain to see the obvious bullshit in what they copy.”
this is a ridiculous response and shows absolutely no respect to the other posters. if this was somebody else posting this they would be banned.
It showed the level of respect that it deserved.
The rebuttal had about the level of respect that the original post did. The OP told blatant lies to the faces of all commentators, the rebuttal was barbarically blunt in its delivery of facts. Straight up lies need a straight up response.
“The OP told blatant lies to the faces of all commentators”
I assume that by “OP” you mean me, and not Patrick Reynolds.
I’m pretty much just regurgitating the main stream point of view here. The IPCC has been adjusting its predictions of temperature increase downward every time they release a report. They’re probably embarrassed that measured real world increases are lower than the lowest range of their previous predictions, but they’re not willing to abandon their alarmism quite yet because that would mean the end of the grants, the international conferences, and the supercomputers. Meanwhile the Greens have taken a hiding in recent elections in Australia and Germany, and surveys show that people just don’t care about climate alarmism any more. When is the last time a news magazine has had a climate change special edition? They used to be quite common.
We’re not going to wake up one morning to find that the climate change hysterics have admitted they were wrong. I suspect they’ll be around for a long time trotting out dodgy research (hockey stick anyone?) and warning us about all sorts of eminent disaster. Meanwhile, with the exception of the gullible fringe, people have just stopped listening.
In terms of language, I object to the term “climate change denial” which is so blatantly designed to equate sceptics to Holocaust deniers. That’s both nasty and desperate. Also your “told blatant lies to the faces of all commentators” mistakes a difference of approach to evaluating evidence with a matter of honesty. If you go around calling people who disagree with you “liars” then I’m guessing you get punched a lot. Although they might just burst out laughing at “to the faces” which is pretty overwrought.
Well you are welcome to ignore real science in favour of that produced by the oil industry. I’ll live here in reality, where saying things that are untrue because they suit your worldview is considered lying and where the 50 year half a degree predictions have actually happened and where we are staring down the barrel of bigger storms, bigger droughts, bigger floods, and 2 degrees over the next hundred years as all of the moderate positions have held for the last 20 years, where the north pole has less ice on it last year than anywhen in recorded history, and despite putting down more ice than any winter in 20 years is still less icebound than any year in the 60s, where the sea level is rising, and Antarctica is melting, and half of greenland melted 3 years ago, and where glaciers are receding rapidly and where snow line and tree lines are rising, and where treating carbon exactly the same way as we treat sewage or household rubbish and saying that there should be minimum standards for capture or treatment is an inherently smart thing to do even if the carbon weren’t driving warming.
But you can keep preaching the controversy, exactly like ‘creationists’ do. Try and point to radical viewpoints that overstate climate change and relate them to all relevant scientists, sticking your head in the sand, ignoring that burning oil and releasing this much CO2 is bad for hundreds of reasons not just one, and that climate change has been less of an issue in media because of some conspiracy rather than the Arab Spring and GFC taking a front seat as being more imminentand denying that small changes in temperature can have massive effects on local climates.
There they go again, regurgitating the same old tired, incorrect arguments. Quoting themselves like a snake biting it’s own tail.
“the global average temperature had decreased.” – wrong. http://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm
Now would the scientifically illiterate amongst you shut the f*ck up please?
Yeah sure, the money is in insisting that climate change exists, not in denying it. You look at the players with the interests in denying climate change they are a lot more powerful than the solar panel industry.
Also, I think you are grossly misintepreting the argument made. The theory is that CO2 increases will gradually increase the temperature of earth, the more CO2 the faster the increase, by raising this temperature we may eventually reach a ‘tipping point’ where radical change occurs. One such change would be ice melt desalinating the North Atlantic shutting down the thermoline conveyor, which would lead toan ice age as the north pole went through a drastic freeze, another would be the possible rapid desertification of Africa and central asia. Basically 2-3 years of drought would dry out the soil to the extent that it could never be replenished in a decade of regular rain, the arid area would then have less water circulation, becoming a desert. We have no idea what small changes will do and have simply been lucky that nothing has happened yet.
It is undeniable from the science that CO2 leads to temperature increases (the human effect is debatableof course).
It is undeniable that obvious temperature tipping points exist.
It is undeniable that if the temperature continues to change we will reach a tipping point.
That is what global warming is.
Manmade global warming is up in the air, but why do nothing when there are so many other advantages to doing something?
You’re a braver man than me obi! I thought of making some of those points but decided I didn’t want to be beaten up again. The other three topics (a CFN, the UP and urban cycling) are all legitimate issues, but CAGW is totally irrelevant in this context. Even the IPCC has backed off big-time in their latest report. Let me be quite clear: no-one denies that human activity has an impact on our environment, possibly including a small contribution to warming (but if so it’s so little as to be un-measurable).
I’ve never been prone to apocalyptic hysteria, and I don’t really understand the attraction although I think it excites some people to imagine they’re living in the final days of civilisation and it makes them feel important campaigning against it. Just in my life I’ve seen apocalyptic warnings by the Club of Rome people (who predicted that we would run out of all sorts of things); the overpopulation people; the peak oil people; the new ice age people; the nuclear winter people; the nuclear war people; the global warming people; and the climate change people and they have all been absolutely and completely wrong. Like those religious nuts who predict the world is about to end based on their bible research, they just ignore their mistake and move on to repeat the predict-fail cycle again with slightly different parameters.
The thing that has struck me about the climate change and environmental hysterics is the sheer hypocrisy of many of them. Like Al Gore and his home that uses more energy than a whole suburb of some towns. Or David Suzuki, who apparently carries a tin mug with him on aircraft so he doesn’t use a disposable cup, but ignores the huge number of miles he flies to support his life as an environmental celebrity. Or Jeanette Fitzsimons who chose to clear gorse on her property using petrol and a match.Or Gisele Bundchen who combines her environmental celebrity with her helicopter license. Or Julia Gillard who introduced Australia’s carbon tax but has now retired to a giant home she has bought by the sea. Some of the dirtiest people on the planet are celebrity environmentalists and Green politicians and I’m more than sick of being lectured to by them.
Like I said… I think Gen Zero have a useful contribution to make on transport issues, and urban issues in general. I just ignore the climate change thing, the same as I’d ignore a friend who was generally sound but believed in creationism.
Regurgitating old stuff down to the Al Gore and David Suzuki are hypocrites stuff. Oh my/. And some new stuff, a bit of hate for Julia GIllard because she has moved to a beachside suburb of Adelaide where strangely enough most house are pretty normal, but you say she had to become an ascetic nun. That makes perfect sense.
Now let’s see – overpopulation, peak oil, climate change are all happening as we speak. Add to that Ocean acidification. Draw down of groundwater supplies. Tropical forests being cut too fast. Damage to soils. etc, etc, etc.
You want some tipping point for some global catastrophe before you’ll believe whilst a slow motion train wreck is going on all around you, frog in a heated saucepan like?
The problem with understanding by drawing an analogy where there isn’t one to be drawn is that you will miss the important bits. Maybe you should have a read next week of the soon to be released IPCC report on the physical science basis of climate change (https://ipcc.ch/), instead of reading and regurgitating misinformation from dodgy sources
I think you’ve just cracked the quadrillion dollar mark.
“Now let’s see – overpopulation, peak oil, climate change are all happening as we speak.”
Malthus predicted all manner of dire consequences of overpopulation in 1798, mostly mass starvation. Now the population of the world is eight times greater, and pretty much the only people who starve are those that are being starved by their own government for political reasons. Ehrlich was predicting the same sort of apocalyptic famine caused by overpopulation in 1968. He was also wrong, although the failure of his predictions hasn’t stopped him claiming he was right. Or the media reporting his nonsense. You can’t be consistently wrong for over 200 years without people being a little sceptical and demanding solid evidence that this time you’re right. Similarly, people have been predicting that we’d run out of oil for over a hundred years now. You’d want some really good evidence before trusting people with such a long record of failure.
I like tropical rain forests, although I prefer to look at them from a distance because they’re full of biting insects. I also like healthy soil, clean air, and clean water. But if the planet pisses tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars on a trace atmospheric gas then we’re not going to be able to afford to make practical improvements to our environment. Or to solve the real problems that plague people and the planet, like diseases. Or poverty in the third world. Or public transport, if that is your thing.
Yes obi Bangladesh and the Philippines have had no problem lifting all of their citizens out of poverty with all those extra mouths to feed.
Well given that all of the problems that you just described are a spin off of an economy that allows us to spew poison into the atmosphere I struggle to read your comments without facepalming once or twice a sentence.
“are a spin off of an economy that allows us to spew poison into the atmosphere”
What poison are you talking about? CO2? Plants produce CO2 and we both exhale it, so it can’t be that. NZ has pretty low industrial emissions, and our vehicle emissions are pretty low as well. We have some of the best air in the world.
I vaguely recall a UN report from a couple of years ago that said Auckland had some of the worst air quality in the world. It was immediately a bit suspect, because our air was supposed to be worse than a lot of European cities where there is a thick haze most of the time. It turned out that the figures were a typo or something and soon corrected, but not before Green MP Gareth Hughes had dashed off a press release saying the government had to do something about it. When you looked in detail at Auckland’s air quality “problems”, the biggest issue was salt spray. Poison! In which case the solutions are obvious… Either concrete over the Hauraki Gulf. Or we could all move to Waiouru.
It’s just bizarre. Some places have dirty air, like Beijing or even London. We have excellent air quality. Why pretend that we need to concentrate on the problems that other people have, like we’re still a colony that can’t think for itself but has to be told what to do by a foreign “elite”? Why not concentrate on NZ issues?
Because I was obviously talking solely about New Zealand in this global problem. This is why no one respects climate change denialists. You refuse to accept anything and think that proving that something can’t be proven true, or isn’t true in every single case prove that it isn’t true at all.
The climate change theory is nonsense…back to transport.
Those ocean energy content graphs look pretty convincing until you notice the units and wonder why the Y axis isn’t showing degrees C change. Clicking on the link below to mean anomoly figures
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/index3.html#null
has temperature anomolies on the first three graphs.
Looking at the 0-100m average shows a 0.4 degree C range from the ~1967 low to the peak in 2003 and a fair bit of noise. Interesting that the peak coincides with the peak atmospheric temperatures also.
Looking at the change over deeper water, 0-2000m shows only a 0.1 degree change in average temperature.
There are plenty of people being paid a lot of money to interpret these statistics one way or another, accuracy, significance, timeframe, etc.
I’d rather stick to the transport discussion.
“There are plenty of people being paid a lot of money to interpret these statistics one way or another, accuracy, significance, timeframe, etc.”
Yeah, lots of people being paid to find an answer, and a few radicals being paid by the oil industry to disporve valid science.
Google the Great Global Warming Swindle for a different view.
Is it about oil companies swindling us out of the future?
err Matthew, if the earth is indeed getting warmer and warmer then why was there 60% more ice in the Arctic in August 2013 than in August 2012?
Oh good one, we have the anecdote used as data finally.
Have a look how much ice there is in 2013, then have a look at every year from 1960-1970 and you’ll see why we know that the earth is warming.
Geez Chris why does 1 year make a trend? Can’t you lot read frickin’ graphs? Do you not have contextualization neurons?
It was the 6th smallest August cover on record in 2013, as opposed to the 1st smallest in 2012.
As NASA says –
“The 2013 summertime minimum extent is in line with the long-term downward trend of about 12 percent per decade since the late 1970s, a decline that has accelerated after 2007. This year’s rebound from 2012 does not disagree with this downward trend and is not a surprise to scientists.
Yet we are to endure that question 1000 times more because they keep regurgitating the same old, tired tripe. Climate Change Deniers have the smallest, least creative brains on Planet Earth.
Let’s answer this with a graph: http://pic.twitter.com/YN6ULMkGQf
On George Wood’s twitter account. Notice his dumb comment exactly the same as Chris’s.
ie on the strength of George’s dumb question – don’t vote for him. He’s an idiot.
Having said that, I was (relatively) impressed with a couple of his votes on the Unitary Plan hearings who voted against Ann Hartley’s big density limiting amendment – the same one Cr Lee voted *for*. It will be interesting to see the scorecards for both of them.
Agreed, Wood seems to have moderated over the last 6 months, not sure if it is an election thing or not…
Voted against increasing minimum PRs in the MHZ too didin’t he?
Yep Chris, frozen solid.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11131502
Climate change or not it’s completely irresponsible to continue to burn fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow. For economic reasons and for health reasons. That’s the problem.
+1
Regardless of whether humans actually affect the climate or not, it has zero relevance to local body elections.
Disagree. If we are affecting the climate, we have a generation in which to fix it. Compact cities are key to the fix. As are good transport systems. Local body elections are the time to get people who care about these things in positions of power. The topic is entirely relevant.
A quick challenge to those who are sceptics re anthropogenic global warming. If you just read the sceptical literature you’ll have your opinions reinforced. If you start to read the scientific literature (no, not the articles linked to from sceptical blogs) you’ll find there is ninety-something percent agreement in the scientific community. How much agreement do you need to seriously consider an issue?
If you at least get to the point of considering that anthropogenic global warming is a 50/50 chance, then please consider the precautionary principle- that just because we can’t get 100% certainty, but the consequences are significant, then it is prudent to take action to reduce the risk….
Ari: local transport being a local responsibility and transport being a major emitter of greenhouse gases, climate change is a very relevant issue for local body elections.
Climate change denial: exactly the same thing as “smoking causes cancer” denial forty years ago. And spread by the same PR firms, by and large. These people hate science because it goes against their political beliefs that big business is good and government intervention is bad.
As I am not a climate scientist, it is beyond my abilities to interpret complex primary data and come to a conclusion on this. For this reason, I defer to the experts, in the same way that I defer to a doctors advice about complex medical matters. If 19 out of 20 doctors told me I had cancer I would listen to the advice of the 19, and take measures to address the problem.
I view it a bit like insurance -WeI don’t insure our house and contents in the belief that I will lose them all, we insure them just in case – as risk mitigation. I think climate change mitigation measures are best viewed the same way – just like buying insurance, you do it just in case it does go horribly wrong. Risk mitigation – if done right, a definite cost, but reduced risk of a disaster.
Agree. With the plus that that mitigation could actually result in a better place to live. a win win.
Hmmm CO2 absorbs heat, we know that for sure. without it we would be as cold as Mars. We know that we are accumulating more and more of it, now we have 400 ppm and rising. How hard is that to understand?
While I’m a little surprised at the number of climate change deniers in this thread, concerns about CO2 emissions are relevant to the values and interests of this blog and its community. There is very little tension between better public transport and urban design on the one hand and concerns about climate change on the other. Regardless of whether you are convinced about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the goals of this community will help reduce those emissions. Therefore there is little point in arguing amongst yourselves on the soundness of climate change concerns when you all want to achieve the same result.
The question is a really one of political communication. Will a focus on climate change help convince others of the need for better public transport and good urban design?
I do think Generation Zero have done a wonderful job promoting policy responses to climate change. More importantly though they have brought more people into their cause because they have shown how being carbon efficient can have positive effects in other areas, such as transport. So even if you disagree with them on the climate change aspect, I suggest you get on board with them regardless as they will help bring more people around to supporting your goals even if it’s for different reasons.
Climate science arguments aside, there’s reason to be suspicious about the motives of Kyoto-sceptic researchers when you look at who’s sponsoring them: Exxon Mobil, the Koch Brothers, and other parties associated with Big Oil.
There’s even more reason to be suspicious of the Koch Bros when they’re openly involved in electoral fraud in the States.