Gareth Renowden • Oct 20, 2011 •
Battling against rural broadband that resembled digital molasses (or the bunker oil being pumped out of the Rena), Gareth returns to NZ and joins Glenn Williams and John Cook to discuss drought in Tuvalu, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), floods and sea level falls, ocean cooling (that isn’t), solar towers of power and much, [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jun 26, 2011 •
The extraordinary sequence of extreme weather events during the last 18 months is probably the worst run of natural disasters since 1816, when a huge volcanic eruption at Mt Tambora cooled the earth enough to cause the famous “year without a summer“, according to a powerful blog post by Weather Underground founder Jeff Masters. He [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Mar 13, 2011 •
In an astonishing press release issued last week, the New Zealand Climate “Science” Coalition predicts that 2011 will be the “coolest year globally since 1956 or even earlier”. The C”S”C bases its prediction on the work of Australian “computer consultant and occasional travel photographer” John McLean. Hot Topic readers will remember McLean as the lead [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Feb 15, 2011 •
Jim Salinger’s spending the summer at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. This reflection on the lessons of Australia’s recent floods first ran in the Waikato Times at the beginning of the month, but I felt it deserved a wider audience and so with Jim’s permission reproduce it here. As I watch from my summer [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Feb 12, 2011 •
Something for everyone this weekend: a few podcasts to grab, ice news from both ends of the planet, interesting reading, and a great interview with Noam Chomsky. Audio first: Radio NZ National’s Bryan Crump interviewed Prof Jean Palutikof, Director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University in Queensland at the beginning [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jan 23, 2011 •
It is always a privilege to follow the development of a great man’s thinking, and the Australian public — or at least that portion of it that listens to the ABC’s AM news show (“sets the agenda for the nation’s daily news and current affairs coverage”) — was lucky enough to witness evolution in action [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • May 21, 2010 •
And so the party’s over, the tables in the ballroom at the Magnificent Mile Marriot Hotel in Chicago have been tidied up and the carpet vacuumed. The Monckton fan club have drifted away from their vigil in the shade of the trees on the sidewalk outside the lobby, and the speakers assembled from around the [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • May 17, 2010 •
U.S. writer Nikolas Kozloff aims to give a voice to the peoples of the Global South in his new book No Rain in the Amazon. At the same time, as indicated by the sub-title How South America’s Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet, he warns that what happens in the Amazon affects us all, wherever [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Apr 03, 2010 •
Northern hemisphere winter, that is — we’re still in a nice warm autumn down here. Before I disappear for a couple of days of hectic activity (vintage 2010 tomorrow, bottling the ‘09 on Monday), I just wanted to draw attention to a couple of articles I read over my Saturday morning toast (fine bread from [...] … Read More
Daniel Collins • Mar 16, 2010 •
El Nino means different things to different people. “The boy”, in Spanish, in weather-related circles it is the warm phase of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern. The cold phase is La Nina (“the girl”). To Venezeulans, El Nino means a little more: drought. But this year’s drought brought a blast from the past – bitter-sweet memories. Water levels … Read More