Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, February 28th, 2021 - 28 comments
If we want to protect our environment and ourselves, we need to scale this back. And the easiest way to do that is give the river back: remove or massively scale back those consents, and let the rivers flow.
Written By: - Date published: 7:47 am, February 12th, 2021 - 39 comments
Managed isolation facility cleaners, who the country desperately relies on, are struggling to survive on low wages while performing an absolutely vital role.
Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, February 7th, 2021 - 93 comments
In this series so far I’ve examined three of the four terms in the Kaya Identity, population, economic intensity, and energy intensity. It can be conclusively shown that none of these factors can be reduced sufficiently to reduce CO2 emissions to zero – or even close enough to be useful. Let’s return to each one […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, February 2nd, 2021 - 24 comments
2023-2024 for a global rollout 0f the Covid vaccine will put stark lines of demarcation between which populations can trade and travel easily, and those who can’t.
Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, January 30th, 2021 - 34 comments
Over the past year I’ve outlined in the comments an alternative triplet political model to the standard left/right description that’s the usual default. It’s the default for a reason, it’s simple and most of the time it’s a ‘good enough’ approximation to reality, and nothing I’m going to suggest below is intended or expected to […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:26 pm, January 29th, 2021 - 22 comments
The world has been watching, mostly with amusement, as some redditors have brought a Wall Street merchant bank to its knees, by buying stocks in a company, GameStop who has seen better days and whose business model is antiquated.
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, January 28th, 2021 - 84 comments
It may be that we have heard publicly from John Banks for the last time. If so this will be a good thing.
Written By: - Date published: 7:23 am, January 26th, 2021 - 53 comments
New Zealand is the best-managed country in the world. And currently has one of the best economies.
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, January 23rd, 2021 - 24 comments
Revolt? Revolution? Pain in the ass? Depends, like comedy, on timing. And which side of history you end up on.
Written By: - Date published: 7:59 am, January 22nd, 2021 - 33 comments
Now that Donald Trump has more time to play golf and attend court there will be jockeying for leadership of the Republican Party, or what will be left of it once Trump’s new Patriot Party emerges. One early contender is Ted Cruz. There is a problem with him however, he is an imbecile.
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, January 20th, 2021 - 32 comments
Donald Trump’s final decision as President may be to pardon a number of people. There is speculation that the exercise of the Presidential prerogative of mercy may have a price attached …
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, January 19th, 2021 - 100 comments
A new political blog has appeared. But rather than involving a fresh presentation of new ideas in an attempt to engender debate this blog has three tired old has beens who are well past their use by date engage in some climate change denial and race baiting.
Written By: - Date published: 7:54 am, January 18th, 2021 - 63 comments
If we had seen our Prime Minister fall from power because three companies decided that their dominance in society should be used to bring her down, we would be outraged. Yet that pretty much just happened in the United States.
Written By: - Date published: 8:19 am, January 14th, 2021 - 109 comments
Over the past few days Twitter has suspended not only Donald Trump’s twitter account but 70,000 accounts world wide many associated with the propagation of Qanon conspiracies.
Written By: - Date published: 9:04 am, January 12th, 2021 - 87 comments
Parler, which attracted right wing extremists because of its refusal to apply any rules to what people said, has had its application banned by Google and Apple and Amazon has now refused to host its data. But it has also had all of user’s data downloaded and archived and made available to everyone, including law enforcement authorities. Think Dirty Politics but on industrial scale.
Written By: - Date published: 11:44 am, January 7th, 2021 - 43 comments
Short post to update on developments in Washington.
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, January 6th, 2021 - 66 comments
With crucial Senate run off races in Georgia and Congress meeting to receive the declared results of the US election and with Republicans determined to oppose the results at every turn the next couple of days will be very significant for America’s future. Update (lprent): The democratic senators from Georgia are called as victors. A riot pushed by an irresponsible President Trump happened at the Capitol building with people dead. Congress subsequently made a determined proclamation that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are confirmed a the newly elected president and vice-president. As for Donald Trump – goodbye to unstable rubbish..
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, January 6th, 2021 - 25 comments
Well after the emergence of a mutated Covid virus that is much easier to spread and faced with surging infection rates Boris Johnson has put England into a lockdown similar but not as strong as New Zealand’s original lockdown. But the question is, has he done too little too late?
Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, January 3rd, 2021 - Comments Off on The Tinkers
My all time favourite sci-fi author Vernor Vinge depicted in his Peace War Trilogy a counter culture that had adapted to unique set of circumstances to produce a high tech/low energy society. The back story involves the discovery of a new weapon. Vinge being a computer scientist himself (he taught in the field at San […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, January 1st, 2021 - 112 comments
Welcome to 2021. This is the year for the Labour Government to be brave. What should it seek to achieve this year?
Written By: - Date published: 2:41 pm, December 31st, 2020 - 65 comments
It’s hard to overstate the extraordinary merging of events in Europe that led to the Industrial Revolution exploding in the mid-1800’s. There was of course at least 200 years of prior scene setting, across the sciences, philosophy and political arena’s. In say the year 1600 the so-called Renaissance was really the project of barely a […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, December 30th, 2020 - 8 comments
A post reflecting on the history of the Parihaka settlement, how local Taranaki Iwi were treated appallingly by the Crown and the Government, and how the settlement amount paid is but a miniscule amount of the damage actually caused.
Written By: - Date published: 10:24 am, December 27th, 2020 - 13 comments
Donald trump has in the past couple of days issued a number of pardons to people including former members of his campaign team, Jared Kushner’s father, a group of contractors involved in the massacre of 14 Iraqi civilians including a 14 year old boy and Ben Carson’s best friend.
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, December 26th, 2020 - 171 comments
In a letter published in the Royal New Zealand College of Medical Practitioners journal Plan B academics have criticised the Government’s Covid elimination strategy because of the economic effects at the same time that recently announced growth figures show the economy grew in the past 12 months despite Covid.
Written By: - Date published: 8:37 am, December 23rd, 2020 - 22 comments
There is always plenty of bad news when it comes to nature in New Zealand, but this year has had an accumulation of good.
Written By: - Date published: 10:38 am, December 17th, 2020 - 21 comments
This short post reprises a comment on Kaya’s Identity a few weeks back. Kaya identity is expressed in the form: F = P . G/P . E/G . F/E Where: F is excess global CO2 emissions from human sources P is global population G is world GDP E is global energy consumption And: G/P is […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:38 am, December 14th, 2020 - 25 comments
Radio New Zealand is reporting that a deal on Ihumātao is imminent and that Cabinet is expected to sign off on the deal today.
Written By: - Date published: 7:19 am, December 13th, 2020 - 19 comments
With Brexit looming there is talk of unfinished customs software and the possibility of chaos around ports, the UK’s food supply being compromised, and potential skirmishes with France at fishing spots. And Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron are refusing to talk to Boris Johnson. Hang on England, this is going to get wild.
Written By: - Date published: 11:33 am, December 11th, 2020 - 10 comments
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff’s recently released budget proposal for Auckland Council contains some welcome proposals to address climate change. But of itself this budget will not go near to achieving Auckland’s goal of halving emissions by 50% in 2030.
Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, December 11th, 2020 - 62 comments
For those who don’t trawl through all the comments; a little personal background. I’ve been fortunate enough to have just finished up a 40 year career in technology and automation, most of it in heavy industry. Looking back it’s been one hell of an adventure, tough at times, but I’ve been one of those lucky […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, November 30th, 2020 - 25 comments
Australia is likely to have less of an issue with raging bush fires this year. La Niña is likely to give a break to the droughts with a wetter East Coast. Doesn’t stop record heatwaves as is happening at present. Climate change in action. What is also happening is equally predictable – the power systems get affected as well. Interesting to consider for similar climate issues here hitting our power.
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