Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, February 11th, 2010 - 18 comments
The Government and the secretive Iwi Leadership Group are looking at an option where no-one owns the foreshore and seabed. It’s often forgotten that the Ngati Apa case, which sparked the foreshore and seabed, contraversy was about big business. Ngati Apa wanted to have title over the seabed so it could undertake aquaculture, bypassing a […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, February 11th, 2010 - 26 comments
As I have mentioned before, Jeanette Fitzsimons is one of the very few members of parliament for whom I have the utmost respect. Yesterday she gave her valedictory speech, and showed us yet again what sanity, vision and compassion looks like. The core of the speech was this powerful message: Yet I have to say, […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:25 am, February 10th, 2010 - 84 comments
John Key is hell bent on carving up our most pristine National Parks for mining. No matter what. The areas most at risk are Kahurangi and Coromandel (rumour has it that Aspiring is a decoy to soften the blow). Well, these are amazing areas that do not derserve to be destroyed at the whims of […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, February 9th, 2010 - 63 comments
Consider these results from opinion surveys of experts different areas of research, I won’t tell you the areas of research just yet: In one, 97% of actively publishing experts agree with a statement (I’ll give you the statement below) concerning their field. In the other field, 46.5% of experts fully agreed with the statement, 27.9% agreed […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, February 7th, 2010 - 79 comments
Poneke’s weblog recently wrote a critical post about ‘climategate’ where he has had a look through the subset of selectively leaked pages of private correspondence thieved from the CRU at the University of East Anglia. His analysis didn’t bother to look at the science of climate change virtually at all, and what science was looked at was full of myths. Furthermore it wasn’t particularly original. Most appeared to have been cribbed from a number of climate change denialist sites and throughly debunked in part or as a whole by many other sites. It was hardly the type of original thinking that David Farrar at kiwiblog should have labeled as being
Poneke’s full post is a must read. It is also the sort of journalism that should be in the mainstream media.
Written By: - Date published: 9:05 pm, February 3rd, 2010 - 1 comment
I’m totally rapt with Lyn Collie & Briar March getting the recognition for their documentary “There once was an island”. Lyn talked about it on Nightline last night.
Written By: - Date published: 12:59 pm, January 29th, 2010 - 18 comments
The first half of an excellent piece by Kent Dunston of Save the Basin (which is opposing the construction of flyovers around the Basin Reserve by National): Back in the halcyon days of the Muldoon administration circa 1979 the then-National government embarked on a series of large-scale interventionist construction schemes called ‘Think Big’ that were […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, January 28th, 2010 - 60 comments
Steven Joyce has announced plans for a motorway from Puhoi to Wellsford at a cost of $2 billion ($1.4 billion in today’s money). The route is used by just 15,000 cars a day (and that has been falling the last few years) and is estimated (optimistically) to save just 15 minutes off the travel time. […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, January 27th, 2010 - 29 comments
Today my partner Lyn Collie will be at the world premiere at Festival International du Film Documentaire Oceanien in Tahiti of the documentary that she has been producing part-time all the time I’ve known her. My congratulations to both her, the director Briar March, and the many other people who have worked on this documentary since they started working on it in 2006 for getting it out and being seen.
Written By: - Date published: 6:51 pm, January 26th, 2010 - 44 comments
Today John Key admitted his mistake in two Ministerial portfolio appointments, as two long overdue changes were announced. 1) Chopper Tolley has rightfully been shuffled out of the Tertiary Education portfolio, which goes to Steven Joyce. Tolley’s record has been appalling, most infamously taking a chopper ride to get a “helicopter view” of the AUT […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, January 22nd, 2010 - 17 comments
In the Otago Daily Times on Wednesday, Gerry Brownlee confirmed he was personally pushing for a new road to be bulldozed through the middle of Fiordland National Park. “I’m personally supportive of it but it’s not something that the Government is actually considering at the present time. It’s something that sits out there as a […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:32 pm, January 16th, 2010 - 56 comments
When you get a cold snap in the local weather, it means that somewhere else got somewhat warmer. Weather is a case of local shifts in energy balances. Climate changes on the other hand are an overall shifting due to underlying changes in energy inflows and retention. You can really only see them looking at […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:36 am, January 16th, 2010 - 42 comments
Despite almost never agreeing with Fran O’Sullivan, I have respect for her. She comes from the ACT-right and her pieces reflect that but she argues honestly and intelligently, the latter in particular being in short supply in this country’s political discourse. So, I’m a bit saddened by her piece this morning: If Wellington was devastated […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:25 am, January 15th, 2010 - 30 comments
Today I thought I’d link to some of the amazing scenery Gerry Brownlee wants to bulldoze for his road through the middle of Fiordland National Park. This is a picture of the Hollyford Valley from Hollyford track’s gallery [hat-tip norightturn]. These guys look like they run a pretty cool guided touring business up the Hollyford […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, January 14th, 2010 - 90 comments
What a start to the new year. Gerry Brownlee has admitted he’s pushing for a road to be built through our most pristine National Park, Fiordland. The Southland Times reports: A long-mooted proposal for a road through pristine forest between Haast and the Hollyford Valley is again being considered by the Government. Economic Development Minister Gerry […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:37 pm, January 13th, 2010 - 24 comments
Written By: - Date published: 5:22 pm, January 11th, 2010 - 62 comments
This is just too funny. One of Ian Wisharts sources in AirCon which he quoted from ‘verbatim’ turns out to have been a kiddies resource from 1999 – which he still mis-interpreted. Gareth at Hot-topic has been tearing apart some of Wisharts recent posturing, and posted this comment Wishart, responding to some prodding, says this […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, January 9th, 2010 - 72 comments
Gareth over at Hot-Topic has written a delightful post “Popgun for hire: A$20,000 detailing one person who is making money off climate change. No it isn’t the scientists. It is our favorite Potty Peer – Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. Some of the CCDs have been saying that there is a “climate change industry” and […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:24 am, January 7th, 2010 - 132 comments
Steven Joyce has finally revealed the benefit/cost ratio for the billion dollar Transmission Gully project. A few weeks ago he was mocking Sue Kedgley for saying that the costs would outweigh the benefits and claiming that the BCR would be about 1.5 ($1.50 benefit for each $1 spent). It turns out Joyce was lying. There is just […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, January 6th, 2010 - 15 comments
The Kepler Telescope was launched into space and began transmitting data last year. It’s job is to find evidence of planets outside our solar system, especially Earth-like ones. It is the first telescope that will be able to detect such small planets on orbits in their stars’ habitable zones (where the temperature is right for liquid […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:03 pm, December 31st, 2009 - 64 comments
Well it is the end of 2009. So here are some final thoughts on the implications of the political shifts in the climate change debates this year. It has been marked from my viewpoint of an irreverable shift from arguing with CCDs (climate change deniers) to CCSs (climate change skeptics) which on the whole has […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:28 pm, December 30th, 2009 - 15 comments
With so much attention on climate change, and such a lack of concern, urgency and commitment to action from the current Tory government you would think it would be something labour would be working hard on, and be busy drafting detailed policy and vocally demanding action be taken. The Copenhagen climate summit was a cop […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, December 24th, 2009 - 15 comments
Reproduced with permission from Kotare – The Strategist This is the unspoken issue with climate change. What are the human impacts of climate change. Where will the wars happen? This study (h/t Crikey Creek) looks at the likely impact that rising temperatures, caused by climate change, will have on armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa… “this […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:08 am, December 23rd, 2009 - 12 comments
Poring around the nets while I’m on holiday is turning out to be quite interesting looking at summaries of science. I’ve been picking out some for discussion here. Here is a post from Knol with a summary on why Europeans are so pale. They discuss well-known ultraviolet / vitamin D linkage with the consequent diseases. […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 pm, December 22nd, 2009 - 65 comments
Information is Beautiful recently produced the image below summarizing the various arguments between about climate change. Click on the image to see the full version. hat-tip: Open Parachute
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, December 22nd, 2009 - 6 comments
There are always consequences to the type of mass unemployment that we’re starting to see in NZ at present. However there looks like being an unexpected one. Spontaneous abortion of male fetuses as a response to mass layoffs. The Economist science section has an article “Girls on top” that discusses this. According to Ralph Catalano […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, December 22nd, 2009 - 38 comments
Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo makes the case that the failure of our leaders at Copenhagen means the time has come to intensify the pressure on them, including through non-violent civil disobedience and direct action. Hat tip: Greenpeace blog.
Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, December 22nd, 2009 - 7 comments
Could making the surface of cars rough be a cheap and esay way to boost fuel efficiency, thereby saving oil and helping tackle climate change? The idea comes from the dimples on golf-balls, which hold a thin layer of air to the ball, lessening turbulence and drag. And, amazingly, it appears to work: [the full segment on […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:09 pm, December 21st, 2009 - 26 comments
Two protests today successfully highlighted the role of New Zealand’s agricutural industry and business community in contributing to climate change. The first protest involved a blockade of the NZ Stock Exchange entrance and resulted in nine arrests. In the second action two activists scaled the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, December 21st, 2009 - 25 comments
There have been some new results from the search for WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) at the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) in Minnesota. This showed up in The Economist science section last week with an excellent summary of what they were looking for and why in the post “An early Christmas present?. Around a […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, December 21st, 2009 - 90 comments
Text from John Darroch a couple of minutes ago: hey just hanging ten stories up the mfat building in welly protesting against fonterror 🙂 regarding climate change Nice one John – according to NZPA you’re only four stories up. Hope you get your point across and make it down safely! Great to see some action […]
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