Ardern is an idiot. How could you not take sides when you are threatened by the Chinese Communist Party!

Equally idiotic is Pat Conroy and his bizarre comments about 'partnering' with the enemy. Not surprising I suppose, coming from a member of the government whose defence minister has said that climate change is a greater threat than Communism.

Whether or not it has been a good week for Australia remains to be seen. Will what has been talked about be put into action? More times than not these days, talk turns out to be just that.

Yes. However we could do much more to address the number one issue in the pacific, i.e., climate change! All while emphasizing the growth in coal-fired power in China.

For mine that means we need to transition away from coal and to MSR thorium (nuclear) and prices of just 1 cent PKWH! And 5 cents less PKWH than the best the renewables can do!

Moreover, we could start to mass produce SMR as MSR thorium with the whole setup contained in shipping containers that can be trucked or shipped to almost anywhere.

The few places that we could not reach, we could chopper them in. Some as gifts that keep on giving for decades to power space age desal and charge all the new electric vehicles, trucks, buses, boats, planes, tractors and cars.

A shipping container in the belly of a 747 could provide MSR thorium power to the new engines that would replace conventional jets where water as super heated steam would become the fuel, i.e., as catalytically cracked water molecule, hydrogen and oxygen, and the exhaust, pristine water vapour.

We really do need to crack on in this area so we can transition out of coal when the price we get for it falls below the cost of mining it not too far ahead in time.

Write to your minister to put the above case for me and our fellow Aussies. And failing it doesn't get past unpaid public servants get a petition up that will have to be read in the house. I'm housebound and unable to do this myself otherwise, wouldn't ask! TBC.
Alan B.

"New Zealand has a key role to play in securing stability in our region. It can't do that if it follows the advice of its Prime Minister!"

Australia and New Zealand will be nuked and we won't have countries to bother with if people listen to you.
You're not fighting for the interests of Australia, you're fighting for the interests of the royals, elites and bankers.

NZ doesn't have a 'key role' in anything. A big dairy and sheep farm. No defence. A burden to Australia.

A good week for Australia in the Pacific? As the man with the wooden leg said, that is a matter of a pinion.

Yes, we were there with the cheque book out and ready to dibble comparative pennies. And make some nice sounding speeches about families. But the real stuff like genuinely addressing climate change, we were AWOL!

To date the labor government has made the Morrison government look good! In almost every polly waffle they've annunciated. But are very obviously welded to coal as far out as the eye can see! And looking good on the world stage!

I don't think I'll live to see sanity prevail and a transition to nuclear as MSR thorium, regardless of the massive economic boost that transition would give to Australia. Just when it needs it most!

No, we will muddle along with the trillion plus debt around our neck like the flying Dutchman's Albatross. As interest payments take more and more of a very skinny federal budget, while every thing in sight gets progressively more and more expensive and the skyrocketing cost of coal fired energy, drives what's left of our manufacturing sector, offshore! To quote ttbn, Australia is rooted!
Alan B.

I have asked this previously but never got a reply. What are the people of the Pacific islands doing towards detrimental climate change i.e. rising sea levels ?
Are sea levels actually rising or are the mostly volcanic base islands subsiding ? Are the island communities curbing diesel generator use ? From what I have read islands appear/disappear at times. It just hasn't happened in recent history apart from an island between NZ & Tonga some 100 years ago.
Yes, large nations are causing utterly unwarranted pollution which has to affect global temperature but climate ? Well, I recall lots of reading about pre-history & various ice-ages etc but no mention of industrial activity. Perhaps there was upheaval so massive that nothing of any such civilisations is left. Atlantis may have been the most recent & if so the next one must be just about due no matter how much more tax we pay or how many billions we spend on that particular bandwagon !
I'm certain that creating huge underground voids & large-scale depressurisation of gas & oil chambers does have an impact that we're not yet appreciating but people demand first world commodities with one hand held out whilst writing complaints with the other hand, denouncing the manufacturers who please their every whim !
This planet has only one massive problem, the many stupid people chasing more than they need !

Indy recent evaluation of satellite data has shown that over 80% of Pacific islands including all atolls are growing. The only islands shrinking are some of less than 10 acre total area.

The corals, despite rubbish claims of global global warming harming coral, are doing their job of producing reefs. Fish & waves are doing their job of reducing this to sand, & pilling it up on the islands, increasing the area of these islands.

No inhabited islands are in any danger of disappearing.

Hasbeen

This has been proved by scientists (NZ university ones I believe).

I can't think why the people always telling us 'deniers' to listen to 'the science' do not listen to it themselves. I suppose hypocrisy goes hand in hand with lies.

I saw Ian Plimer the other night again asking why the 3% of man-produced carbon dioxide is more 'dangerous' than the 97% that is produced naturally. He has been asking the people calling themselves scientists that for years, but they have never come up with any answer, let alone one based on science.

Recent satellite images show that Fiji and several Island nations have lost some coastline to rising water.

While that loss may be just a couple of metres? What is scary is the large body of fresh water under Antartic ice only held back by a modest melting ice dam. When not if, that melting ice dam breaches, the oceans of the world will rise by an estimated 7 metres.

Even now some low laying islands have difficulty growing food and accessing fresh water due to inundation by rising seawater (salt water) levels. How many will completely disappear under 7 metres of seawater?

How many will lose their arable broad acre flat land and be left with just their mountians? 7 metres of water will see much of our coastline and 70% of our economy eliminated! And don't say you weren't warned!

Just doing what we've always done and expecting a different outcome, is not a solution nor is burying ones head somewhere warm and comfortable, an answer! But it is insane!

And easy for the, I couldn't care less, Hasbeens of this world to say, ho hum, I'm ok. When it's not affecting him or his.

If it was his island and his family? Rest assured he'd be screaming blue murder!

Or condemning the greens and other antinuclear brigade for foolishly standing four square in the way of carbon free (MSR thorium) nuclear power! And the huge economic boost that it alone can assure, with power prices as low as 1 cent PKWH!
Alan B.

Hasbeen. Coral just does not grow much above the low water mark or low tide!

So, in order for this claimed coral increase, so also there has to be an increase in the low water tidal mark/level! And only possible is the ocean water is rising with melt water!

I thought that engineers were renowned as logical and rational thinkers!?
Alan B.

Alan coral grows mostly strongly on the seaward side of any existing reef. Thus it expands the outer edge of such reefs.

If you have ever seen a reef you will find large chunks of coral torn off the edge of the reef & thrown up onto the reef flat, the low tide line by storms.

If you spend any time in the water you would see the "blues" & other small groper expelling clouds of ground coral taken in with their dinner of coral plops scraped & bitten off the reef.

I could show you reefs in various stages of maturity from well under water, to occasionally exposed, to drying a few feet on spring tides, to full atolls, all with in the Great Barrier reef.

After many years cruising the great barrier reef & much of the Pacific Islands, privately in my yacht, & a decade of running tourist reef trips, I have more actual experience of, & time on coral reefs than any marine biologist I met in any of the 3 organisations in Townsville.

Atolls are literally subsiding sea mounts & coral grows at the same pace as water rises or land subsides. Same applies to continental islands.
Just got an email with two photos showing another cause of rising sea level. One photo from 1970 shows thousands of slim people on the beac & other photo from 2021 shows thousands of obese people in the water. There you have it !
Some 8 or possibly more billion tonnes of shipping also contribute to a few millimetres of sea level rise as does land reclamation.

A part of Fiji has lost more than a couple of metres of shoreline but most of their shoreline and coconut grove. Now storm surges go right through houses once hundreds of metres onshore. To say nothing is happening here is to be willfully blind!

Moreover, the fix for us is too easy, will quite massively grow the economy and drive down debt via economic growth on steroids! If that were a bad outcome one could understand the buried head denials!

What's the matter with you people? Have a problem with money and wealth opportunities!?If we wait until the bottom drops out of the coal and gas market, we will have missed the boat!
Alan B.

Alan B.
Will the conservation movement allow artificial barriers on the reef ?

Alan all low atoll islands move on the reef flat. Always have & always will.
I built jetties on quite a few atolls in the PNG & Solomon islands, & a few further north. A while back, before Google down graded the quality of their satellite images of smaller pacific islands I took a look at many of them. These were grafted into the edge of the coral forming the base of the islands.

A couple on the windward side of an island are now isolated as the island has moved a few meters down wind, a natural process, that has occurred for millennia. I would say these are islands where a previous white planter has gone, as they would have easily maintained access to the jetty. The locals don't bother as they don't want to export 30 ton a month of copra.

On the other hand a couple are now inland on the down wind end of their island, as the island movement has enveloped them as it moved down wind on its base This is entirely natural, & familiar to anyone who knows coral reefs & their islands.

The same thing occurs to any coastline. Even the Famous White Cliffs of Dover are receding at feet a year in some places, & inches in others, but all are being worn by sea attack.

I was quite surprised to find the beach on the northern side of Island Head Creek had moved inland between 50 & 200 meters in just one summer. This was quite annoying as yachties had been planting coconuts a hundred or so meters in from the beach, & all had gone.

Of course it would have been more annoying if it had been a Gold Coast beach, with hundreds of homes gone with it. That will happen some time of course.

Hasbeen,
I have seen barge ramps changing the shape of coral islands by the changed currents around them. Also, every monsoon season many thousand tonnes of beach sand gets moved & as soon as the south easterlies start again all the sand gets put back.