Ha ha …less shit! same goes for bogus polls. On a positive note the PM has pushed the investigate button on the fuel cartel and hopefully after that the grocery cartel. Maybe Santa is coming after all, Wayne.
‘We are last generation that can stop climate change’ – UN summit
“We are clearly the last generation that can change the course of climate change, but we are also the first generation with its consequences,” said Kristalina Georgieva, the CEO of the World Bank. The bank announced on Monday that its record $100bn (£78bn) of climate funding from 2021-2025 would for the first time be split equally between projects to cut emissions and those protecting people from the floods, storms and droughts that global warming is making worse.
In recent years, just 5% of global funding has gone on protection, but 2018 has seen climate impacts hit hard, with heatwaves and wildfires in Europe and California and huge floods in India, Japan and east Africa. “We are already seeing the devastating impact of climate change,” Georgieva told the Guardian. “We strongly believe that action ought to go both on mitigation and on adaptation.”
It’s so simple. Livestock for meat and dairy products worldwide is responsible for almost 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second largest source of emissions after the fossil fuels industry.
There are straightforward actions you can do, starting today.
Drop meat and dairy.
Don’t believe me?
Then listen to George Monbiot.
He explains how the fate of the planet depends on the way we choose to eat.
Well Ed, I listened and didn’t hear a damned thing to back the claim that meat and dairy is responsible for ~ 15% of emissions.
How is the figure arrived at? Is it ~15% with all of the fossil inputs to agriculture added up and subtracted from the dairy/meat total? Because that’s the only way anyone can claim that meat/dairy is second to fossil in terms of emissions.
And my opinion of Monbiot as a wanker was just reinforced – the guy says he’s “almost vegan”…. it’s just venison he eats!
Anyway, look. Eat less meat or no meat. It’s not a bad thing to do. But don’t fucking kid yourself that being vegan will make a serious impact on AGW. It won’t.
Dropping fossil would curtail modern agricultural practices (no fossil inputs) that would in turn mean less “factory meat” getting produced/consumed.
But simply eating vegan does 5/8ths of fuck all in terms of fossil use, meaning 5/8ths of fuck all in terms of AGW.
It was posted by Robin Grieve, ACT Candidate for Whangarei.
He is the Chairman Pastural Farming Climate Research Inc.
He is a right wing politician, not a scientist.
It’s denialist nonsense.
“We know from taking samples of air trapped in polar ice that methane levels have grown by 150 percent since organised animal farming began in the early 1700s. By comparison, CO2 levels have grown by 35 percent. Methane levels have continued to rise over the decades, growing fastest through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, before slowing down in the 1990s, levelling off in the early 2000s, and increasing again from 2007.”
I reckon that physics doesn’t give a flying monkey’s fuck for where any CO2 comes from (eg – methane breakdown, bio-fuels, or fossil fuels).
If we want to arrest climate change, and maybe even see slight drops in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 occur, then we need to stop burning fossil. (ie, re- introducing to the earth’s systems CO2 that was removed from the earth’s systems hundreds of millions of years ago)
Agriculture can’t do what it currently does without fossil, so methane emissions would inevitably drop in concert with reductions in fossil use.
And like I say, if we want there to be any prospect that concentrations of CO2 will begin to come down, then we can’t swap out fossil fuel for bio fuel.
Sigh. OK, I’ll take the considerable time to respond to the denialist nonsense you’ve just sprayed around with just a half-dozen or so key presses that took just a few seconds.
Let’s follow some of the possible paths of that carbon atom from the air, absorbed into a plant.
It may stay as plant matter until it rots and is returned to the atmosphere as CO2, In which case, the only effect on global warming is a teeny-tiny reduction in atmospheric CO2 and consequent reduced warming for the brief time that carbon atom is part of a solid piece of plant, rather than floating in the atmosphere.
While it is plant matter, it may get eaten by a non-methanogenic animal, then emitted again as CO2. Again, negligible effect.
It may get eaten by a ruminant, and emitted as methane (as a substantial portion of the carbon atoms eaten by ruminants end up). In which case, that methane molecule adds to the current concentration of methane in the atmosphere. Yes, that methane molecule will eventually be broken back down to CO2 (on average around 10ish years), but while it is still methane it is massively more warming than CO2*. That extra heat the methane has trapped while it is still methane stays with us for a very long time. A while ago I ran the numbers, and an average cow in a paddock for a year emits so much methane it causes about the same warming as an average car driving around for a year (12000 km or so)
Methane concentrations have increased from around 775 parts per billion in pre-industrial times to around 1800 now, due entirely to human activities (not all of it is agricultural, industry and domestic use shares some of the blame). Because methane has a short lifetime, this increased methane concentration (and consequent warming) is entirely due to increased ongoing emissions, of which agriculture is a large part. So yes, even though the carbon atom in a molecule of methane belched by a cow originally came from atmospheric CO2, it still causes much more warming because it has been turned into methane by agricultural activity than if it had stayed as CO2. So it’s entirely proper to hold that agricultural activity accountable for the increased warming it causes.
*If you calculate how much warming you get over 20 years from a tonne of methane, it’s around 85 times more than a tonne of CO2. Over 100 years, it’s around the 25 figure used in the vid.
If you don’t trust Monbiot or me, then what about this study.
“Huge reductions in meat-eating are essential to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the food system’s impact on the environment. In western countries, beef consumption needs to fall by 90% and be replaced by five times more beans and pulses.
The research also finds that enormous changes to farming are needed to avoid destroying the planet’s ability to feed the 10 billion people expected to be on the planet in a few decades.
Food production already causes great damage to the environment, via greenhouse gases from livestock, deforestation and water shortages from farming, and vast ocean dead zones from agricultural pollution. But without action, its impact will get far worse as the world population rises by 2.3 billion people by 2050 and global income triples, enabling more people to eat meat-rich western diets.
The new research, published in the journal Nature, is the most thorough to date and combined data from every country to assess the impact of food production on the global environment. It then looked at what could be done to stop the looming food crisis.“
No-one can say meat and dairy is second to fossil in terms of emissions if the fossil inputs that are necessary for meat and dairy are left sitting in the meat/dairy total.
And if we all go vegan, we’re all going to suffer from malnutrition because of the effect that raised CO2 levels have on plant nutrition. (That article joe90 linked at 2.1.2 is well worth the read, and it’s worth noting that not one mention is made on the known effect that elevated CO2 levels have on plants and/or the obvious knock-on effect in relation to insect and bird and lizard numbers…)
You reckon a plant based diet is going to save us?
Looking at what insecticides, especially organophosphates, are doing, it’s gonna be goodbye food.
When asked to imagine what would happen if insects were to disappear completely, scientists find words like chaos, collapse, Armageddon. Wagner, the University of Connecticut entomologist, describes a flowerless world with silent forests, a world of dung and old leaves and rotting carcasses accumulating in cities and roadsides, a world of “collapse or decay and erosion and loss that would spread through ecosystems” — spiraling from predators to plants. E.O. Wilson has written of an insect-free world, a place where most plants and land animals become extinct; where fungi explodes, for a while, thriving on death and rot; and where “the human species survives, able to fall back on wind-pollinated grains and marine fishing” despite mass starvation and resource wars. “Clinging to survival in a devastated world, and trapped in an ecological dark age,” he adds, “the survivors would offer prayers for the return of weeds and bugs.”
heh – E.O Wilson apparently overlooked the fact that a plant based diet is increasingly a sugar based diet because of the effects of CO2 on growth…meaning those wind pollinated grains won’t have much sustenance, and that marine life will have cacked it along with terrestrial life because the phyto-plankton at the base of the marine food system also become junk under conditions of accelerated growth.
Thanks Ed. Husband a big meat eater and so me by default. Agreed today to cut it back to one red meat meal a week. Guess it’s a start. We walk and use public transport a lot too
Anyone seen any monarch butterflies lately? I have 2 large swan plants but not a sign of any eggs. I usually bring any eggs inside as soon as I see a butterfly around the plants, as the wasps will take the caterpillars almost as soon as they hatch. My daughter has got a small accidental swan plant forest but also no go for eggs, caterpillars or butterflies. Are they now extinct in Waiuku?
Where you have Asian Paper Wasps, you will have no Monarch caterpillars. Because they eat Milkweed (Swan Plant) monarchs used to be poisonous to our old predators. 2 new predators don’t give a toss about Milkweed poison, and gobble up everything in sight. At this time of the year it is the Paper Wasp. Later, as they grow bigger, the South African Praying Mantids will join in, and continue after the Paper Wasps stop collecting protein in late summer.
Sorry, but lean times for Monarch butterflies and many other insects here in NZ since these two monstrously mean and greedy predators became established.
Seen a couple of Monarchs but not many. We have swarm of them come through about January, so on that basis, would expect January 2019 to be when they start laying eggs.
Then the fun begins of squashing eggs to maintain a good caterpillar/plant ratio. Too many and it’s murder. Too few and not enough survive.
Lmao a ton of Milo Yiannopoulos docs dropped as part of his Australian lawsuit and honey, this grift is on its last legs pic.twitter.com/lBjYzNGCnE— K. Thor Jensen (@kthorjensen) December 2, 2018
They’re all loud mouthed nobodies sloganeering on the wingnut welfare circuit.
The limitless ocean of cash that flows through Wingnut Welfare’s rivers and tributaries is how the Right keeps their whole Pretty Hate Machine — publishing houses, magazines, websites, radio empires, teevee networks, op-ed forelock tuggers, think tanks, and a thousand free roaming pundits — propped up and purring in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are nothing but a mob lying, racist grifters and madmen.
And once you get your Wingnut Welfare card punch, baby, the world is your oyster!
I suspect that many of them are the same brush. Pseudonyms change, but the language style and logic doesn’t. We haven’t heard from Chuck lately, but a new arrival seems remarkably similar to me. Not the first time I have noticed such similar contributions under a different name.
Never trust a right-wing commentator!
Jack with the KSA setting their production limits.
Qatar announces it was withdrawing from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries “OPEC” effective 1 January 2019.— Qatar Petroleum (@qatarpetroleum) December 3, 2018
Odd. I never thought of either the Hosk or Leighton as left-wing wankers. Wankers, yes, but not left-wing. I s’pose it’s a matter of where you sit when looking at them.
The Project have done a number of stories on conservation, climate change, plastic in the oceans etc etc. Awesome that they are helping to increase awareness and help drive much needed change.
If BM’s spinning out calling him names, cause that’s all BM can manage in defence of poison ivy and her lack of conservation, then he’s sure struck a nerve.
Good job Jesse, thanks for caring about the planet among other things.
Do his perspectives on the environment make him a ‘Left-wing wanker’ or does being a ‘Left-wing wanker’ mean he has the views he does about the environment?
And if he is a ‘Left-wing wanker’ does that make his views any less or more worthy than, say, yours?
Or are you pissed off that someone is prepared to address some bullshit? I’ve seen some saying that the people who worked in Barry’s office should have shut up and tolerated what they saw as bullying. The ruling classes don’t seem to like it when the empire strikes back.
That reads to me like a criticism of himself. If only he were that self aware. Du Fresne openly seeks to change things, and no topic does he cover even-handedly.
In the last sentence he betrays the most ultra conceit of ultra right wing thought:
The proper purpose of journalism (is) to give ordinary people the means to make their own decisions about what’s in their best interests.
I’m puzzled … should people make decisions that are not in their best interests, or have other people do it for them?
Or maybe you missed this:
One of the best definitions of journalism that I’ve read comes from The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. It defines the purpose of journalism as “to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies and their governments”.
Maybe that definition of ‘best interests’ works better for you?
That’s a better definition but not the one Du Fresne rests upon, nor one he himself subscribes to because right wing thought bases itself above all else upon personal responsibility and the rights of the individual over strength of community and the good of society.
I think if you leave people to it unfortunately they will make decisions in their own best interests rather than a common good. Hands off government the type which Du Fresne promotes (even though he as a journalist should not be promoting it) contributes to this.
Fair enough, left wingers tend to put the interests of the collective ahead of individuals. At the extremes the history of both viewpoints is terrible.
My take is that both viewpoints co-exist in a mutual balance; both speak to vital human realities that work best when they listen to each other.
Some years back a new cafe opened in Belmont on the Shore called ‘Little and Friday’. It became the place to go if you wanted to be seen by the right (pronounced raite) people at least for a while. Sure enough Maggie turned up one day only to find the cafe was full and there were no tables left. She had a hissy fit because no-one saw fit to get up and offer her their table so she flounced out to the tune… oh, they’re all left wing haters anyway.
Which addiction did you switch from @ Ed?
It’s obviously something less destructive than the last one and I ‘spose a couple of days ban given by the Voice of Reason is really going to teach ya a lesson, so na-na nana-na, and so there!.
There are learnings to be had going forward
perhaps I should have added a /sarc, but you know…..puzzling can be really cathartic.
Hopefully you’ll stick around on this venue, whereas sometimes I wish they’d do me a favour and ban me for life so that I can watch and not be tempted to comment
Pissed off at being bullied by other oil producing states? The Saudi’s have been on their case for ages, so I guess there’s a bit of payback. They can set their own price and undercut the others if they are out of OPEC.
Have to say, our risk managed sussoighty is now becoming ridiculous.
4am on a trip from Tearenga ta Orcas: many notifications of a slip in the Karangahake Gorge and a suggestion to take an alternative root …. oops route. A couple of substantial boulders blocking a lane as I passed.
12 hours later and a cast of tens of hiviz specimens later on the return journey, the very same boulders were sat where they fell causing some more major traffic problems.
Heavy earthmoving equipment on standby, though seemingly incapable of just shuvelling the shit away into a fast moving river, much as Mother Nature had/ and had done over decades.
I almost tried to leap for some anti-bacterial sanitising cream to wash off a bit of dust as we waited for the Green Go sign.
Christ! and people used to slag off Ministry of Works and Dev employees during the journey towards the neoliberal alternative over leaning on a shovel.
Please don’t fart people. There’s the potential for toxic and flammable gases that could cause serious injury to bits of the body we shouldn’t speak of
I would think that they would have to ensure the original site of those boulders was stable before shoving them into the river. The use of heavy machinery and the subsequent movement of boulders hitting the riverbed might result in further uncontrolled slips.
This is not really a good example of H&S rules applied unthinkingly, it is an example of what H&S rules are intended to achieve – a minimisation of harm.
“Poland generates 80% of its electricity from coal and the UN summit will take place in a coal mining town, Katowice. The Polish government has also allowed two coal companies to sponsor the summit.”
The Interim Climate Change Committee's report on Action on agricultural emissions: Evidence, analysis and recommendations was finally released today, and as you might guess from the title, it is recommending that we actually act, rather than let farmers keep ...
On Sunday July 7, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter announced their intention to review the Ministry of Health’s Funded Family Care policy and repeal Part 4Aof the 2000 NZ Public Health and Disability Act. These are festering injustices ...
Agriculture is our biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for 48% of the total. It follows that meeting any credible emissions reduction target requires cutting agricultural emissions, most likely by having fewer cows. But National thinks people shouldn't be ...
How scummy is the UK Home Office? This scummy:The Home Office lied to EU member states to remove victims of human trafficking and modern slavery in breach of European law, according to whistleblowers. Legal experts have said the practice is ...
Belle is a lovely fifteen year-old border collie who belongs to our friends and neighbours at Bryan’s Beach, Michael and Judy Corboy. Belle, in her old age, can hardly see or hear, but – as a constant participant at social ...
“We wuz robbed!” is the classic cry of the disappointed losers of a closely contested sporting contest – it is very much to the credit of the Black Caps that we heard no such sentiment from them following the stunning ...
The Youth Parliament is being held this week, and some of the youth MPs are campaigning for a lower voting age:Molly Doyle, 17, is one Youth MP who wants this to change. She is part of a non-partisan campaign run ...
Up till now, Australia has made its living by digging up coal and exporting it to other countries, destroying the global climate in the process. But now they have a new option: exporting solar power:The desert outside Tennant Creek, deep ...
Later this month, thousands of people are expected to march to parliament as part of the #HandsOffOurTamaraki movement. At its heart, the movement is about preserving whānau and demanding that the state stop removing children from their whānau, hapū and iwi. ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh The recent statements made by the former FARC commander, Carlos Lozada (legal name Julian Gallo), where, from his seat in Congress, he praised the Colombian Army demonstrate how low the farianos have sunk. Lozada began by ...
A Woman’s Place is on the Podium was a public meeting in London on 10 July to discuss women’s sports and the impact of transwomen competing against women. The venue was sold out with a packed hall of 750 people. ...
Last month I talked about the no-fly movement: people who refuse to fly or limit it to absolute necessity to avoid destroying the climate. Now, that movement has a somewhat surprising new member: Dutch airline KLM:Dutch airline KLM has launched ...
In the 1960's, humanity faced a terrible threat: global thermonuclear war. Nuclear weapons were uniquely destructive and dangerous, and if more countries got them, the logic of MAD and the pre-emptive strike would put us on a hair-trigger to destruction. ...
An occasional series where I will ponder allegations of anti-Semitism directed at the British Labour Party and its members.In this case, we are thinking about an allegedly anti-Semitic image shared by a Labour Party member. Its origins appear to be ...
Matariki has been and gone, but this year we saw a couple of op-eds arguing that it should be a public holiday, replacing the foreign monarch's fake birthday. And now, New Zealand Republic - a group which campaigns for an ...
The discussion on the quality of economic advice, which we reported last week, has spilled over into a discussion about whether so many senior appointments should be of non-New Zealanders. Recall I discussed the failure to develop career paths within ...
When Nicky Hager revealed US footage of the Operation Burnham raid, obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act, one of the obvious questions was whether Ministers had seen it - and in particular, whether they'd been told that it ...
Northern Ireland is the Alabama of the UK: a backwards region where women and gay people are denied fundamental rights. But Westminster has just decided to fix that:MPs have voted resoundingly to extend same-sex marriage and access to abortion to ...
There's a problem with "synthetic cannabis", and not just the one you think. It's the name.We're in the midst of a wave of news stories that link synthetic drugs to serious harm, through deadly road accidents and accidental overdoses (which ...
Ranjit Kauri, The Dancing Maharani and Other Stories, Swansea, Head and Heart, 2019, £6.99; reviewed by Don Franks Working people are not the same country to country. Our struggles for a better life take place in surroundings of very different ...
Let's Do Them! All Jacinda Ardern has to do to clinch the 2020 General Election is frighten the bejesus out of the electorate by describing in the most graphic terms imaginable what will happen to all the positive beginnings her ...
It may be that we have all misinterpreted the somewhat surprising “bromance” between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. It has been all too easy to assume that it is Kim who is cosying up to Trump rather than the ...
by Michael Roberts So the full circle is completed. The corrupt pro-business conservative New Democracy party in Greece that was ousted by the anti-capitalist Syriza party in 2015 has been returned to office in yesterday’s general election, with an outright ...
When the Australian government passed a series of new spy laws over the last few years, they pinky-promised that they wouldn't use them to spy on journalists and subvert freedom of the press. They lied:The anti-encryption laws passed by the ...
From 1975 to 1989, the spy agencies of South America's right-wing military dictatorships cooperated in Operation Condor, a joint campaign of extermination against the continent's left. Roughly 400,000 people were imprisoned, 30,000 disappeared, and 60,000 murdered - kidnapped, tortured, executed, ...
When she was standing for office, Jacinda Ardern promised she would take abortion out of the Crimes Act. And to be fair, there was some early action on that, with an immediate referral of the issue to the Law Commission ...
When the government introduced the Zero Carbon Bill, people rightly asked what they planned to do to reduce transport emissions, which basicly had no policy at all other than the ETS. Today, they responded, announcing a "feebate" system which would ...
At almost every level, the problem with medicinal cannabis is a lack of good information. In the US, FDA regulations make it hard to research. Most doctors aren't familiar with what research there is and most patients don't know either. ...
Redline is critical of Corbyn for his political weaknesses, but he’s no anti-Semite. There is no substance to the McCarthyist witch-hunt being run by the right wing, and the pro-Israel lobby inside and outside the Labour Party in the UK. ...
The government's billion trees program is the sort of policy which could make a real difference to our emissions and the fight against climate change. But climate scientist Jim Salinger isn't convinced:The Forestry Minister Shane Jones' one billion trees won't ...
Last month the government was celebrating another surplus. Meanwhile, children are starving:One in five children are living in households where putting food on the table is a struggle, according to a new report from the Ministry of Health. It found ...
Show Me The Money! The alternative to state funding of infrastructure is, of course, to fund it by taking on massive amounts of private debt. On this issue, at least, Auckland mayoral challenger, Tamihere, has some solid points to make. ...
If we are to avoid making the earth uninhabitable, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to practically nothing over the next decade. But that will still leave us with the problem of the carbon we have already emitted, which ...
Former Waikato DHB CEO Nigel Murray allegedly misused public funds, spending more than $120,000 of public money on unjustified travel. He was forced to resign and the Serious Fraud Office began an investigation. But despite the SFO finding that the ...
Jeremy Corbyn, we are told, is being advised – not least by his deputy (as well as by some of his would-be successors) – that he must come “off the fence” on the Brexit issue if he wants to bolster ...
The End of Life bill has been read a second time and is now heading for the House for further debate. Personally, I support the proposal. I don't ever epect to take advantage of the Bill's provisions myself, but as ...
Before the substantive issue which this column is about – whether there has been a deterioration in the economic advice given to the government – a paragraph about the budget leaks.read more ...
Below is a translation of the editorial in the June 24 round of weekly workplace bulletins issued all over France by the revolutionary workers’ organisation Lutte Ouvriere. Last Saturday, 8,000 people took to the streets of Belfort (eastern France) to ...
Why hasn't Parliament followed the lead set by our local authorities and declared a climate emergency? The answer is the National Party:The Prime Minister’s admission that she is open to the idea of declaring a climate change emergency is nothing ...
Back in May the government released its Zero Carbon Bill. While much of the bill was welcome, there was one big exception: it contained a secrecy clause, requiring the Climate Change Commission to maintain secrecy over practically everything it does. ...
by Phil Duncan This past week has marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Stonewall Inn riots in Christopher Street, New York, the event generally regarded as kicking off the gay liberation movement. Quite a few articles have ...
Southland - land of coal-burning dairy farmers - has become the first region in the country to explicitly vote against declaring a climate emergency. Their reason? They didn't want to "devalue" the word "emergency". Its an argument addressed powerfully in ...
New Zealand has a problem with police chases: officers going after fleeing drivers like rabid dogs, without any consideration for proportionality or public safety, often with fatal results. And according to an in-depth article in the Guardian today, the UK ...
Welcome to another heaping helping of research publications related to climate change drivers and mechanisms, the effects of climate change and how we might yet grope our way into systems approaches to dealing with the mess we're making, despite ourselves. ...
Holly Lawford-Smith is a senior lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Melbourne. She’s currently writing a book about radical feminism. This article appeared on Feminist Current Academics should be standing together in defence of universities’ fundamental values: the ...
The Otago Daily Times has an in-depth article about the future of wind energy in New Zealand, and it is looking bright:The news that wind will play the leading role in New Zealand’s energy future was put up in lights ...
If the sight of schoolkids striking for a future has been filling you with hope, good news: they want you to join them on September 27:Students will take to the streets again demanding action on climate change, and this time ...
The People's "Friend": In this masterpiece of revolutionary propaganda, the homicidal political psychopath, Jean-Paul Marat, has been transformed by Jacques-Louis David, the French Revolution's most accomplished artist, into a martyred hero of the ordinary people of Paris. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, ...
The principle of one person, one vote doesn’t apply for local elections. In fact, you don’t even need to be a person to have voting rights. Welcome to the ratepayer roll. While the ratepayer roll accounts for less than 1% ...
I have been working my way through a 47,000 document tranche of declassified US government communications related to Argentina and the “Dirty War” of 1976-83. I grew up in Argentina in the period leading up to the March 24, 1976 ...
To express concern about foreign ownership and control in New Zealand is often to invite accusations of xenophobia and economic illiteracy. It is worthwhile, therefore, to rehearse the grounds for that concern, and to explore the various forms it can ...
It must be a day ending in Y because the Guardian - remember when it used to be a good paper1 - is running another spurious story about Corbyn's leadership being threatened over anti-Semitism.The headline the Guardian runs is: "MPs tell ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Jun 23 through Sat, June 29, 2019 Editor's Pick When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: 'Hope is contagious'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and ...
When people slate the current Government for taking too long on certain issues, or not getting everything right, just check the outrage and quit helping National manufacture consent for their decade of Disaster Economics and much more. Bill couldn’t ...
Robots could soon replace many low-skill jobs, such as President of the United States. US Presidential hopeful and doomsday prophet Andrew Yang went to extreme lengths to make a point in the first round of Democratic primary debates today, replacing ...
More people have died in the shower this year than will die in a KiwiBuild home. KiwiBuild home owners are experiencing a surprise windfall this month, as the price of their houses have begun to rise dramatically, due to growing ...
First way – the state, Keynesian demand management, the working class as the base of support. Second way – free-market, reduce the scope of the state and cut taxes, relative indifference to social justice. Third Way – well that's the ...
E15 is a London-based housing campaign that arose from the eviction of a group of young working-class mothers from a homeless hostel in 2013. Cat Wiener, through her work with the Revolutionary Communist Group, helped get Focus E15 up and ...
Going Upstairs: If we accept the LGBTQI+ community’s untrammelled right to advance their understanding of love, then we must also accept Israel Folau’s right to articulate his own simplistic and inadequate interpretation of the Christian religion.ONE OF THE FIRST things ...
So, some Labour MPs and peers have written Corbyn a letter complaining about the re-admission of loudmouth MP Chris Williamson, who had been suspended over allegations he made anti-Semitic comments.Never mind the Guardian's typically biased headline that Corbyn is facing ...
When the NZDF was asked to release US information on Operation Burnham which would have revealed how the villagers died, they refused, claiming that the US objected. So, Nicky Hager and Deborah Manning requested it in the US, under that ...
Statistics New Zealand has released a new report on New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions, with a sectoral breakdown shown how much is caused by different sectors of the economy. The data is crystal clear: half our emissions are caused by ...
Another day, another IPCA report finding police misbehaviour, this time in relation to police beating a suspect in Huntly in 2017. But despite a finding that officers used excessive force, the police as usual refused to prosecute their own. But ...
The State Services Commission has released its report into Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf's handling of treasury's budget security failure. And it is not good:Outgoing Treasury secretary Gabriel Makhlouf was "clumsy", unreasonable and fell "well short" of expectations in his handling ...
David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill passed its second reading in Parliament last night, 70 - 50. Which means now the real struggle for consensus over amendments begins. Pretty much everyone who voted for it agrees it needs changes ...
Compare And Contrast: One of the reasons so many powerful forces combined to oust the Third Labour Government was its obvious determination to move beyond progressive rhetoric and embrace progressive action. When assessing the behaviour of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ...
A new digital platform aims to make it easier for small businesses to access services from multiple government agencies, leaving them more time to focus on their own priorities. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash ...
Million-dollar start to gun collection eventsPolice Minister Stuart Nash says a solid start has been made to the gun buyback and amnesty after the first weekend of community collection events. “Gun owners will walk away with more than ...
Police Minister Stuart Nash has praised Police and gun owners after the first firearms collection event saw a busy turnout at Riccarton Racecourse in Christchurch. “Police officers and staff have put a tremendous effort into planning and logistics for the ...
Seventy-eight new Police constables are heading out to the regions following today’s graduation of a new recruit wing from the Royal New Zealand Police College. Police Minister Stuart Nash says the record high number of new Police officers being recruited, ...
The Department of Conservation continue to repeat the same old story about attacks on staff and how it is affecting their role in protecting our precious wildlife. NZ herald https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12249704 ...
The government's silence on the fact that the country's second-largest milk processor is on the brink of becoming 25% Chinese Government owned has been deafening. ...
School Strike 4 Climate NZ welcomes the coalition Government’s endeavour to take action on reducing agricultural emissions but is disappointed at the weak stance that the Government has taken on the issue. ...
The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has issued a formal warning under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (AML/CFT Act) to seven reporting entities within the Regus Management Limited (RNZML) designated business ...
The Northland Regional Council (NRC) has voted to exclude all GM/GE precautionary provisions in its regional plan, despite years of community engagement showing support for such protection. There is a sense of betrayal following the way the NRC Chairman ...
New Zealand’s ‘mission-driven’ charities working in international aid are showing early signs of changing the way they work, in particular prioritising building the capacity and resilience of local communities to do their own development. ...
Teachers will have to wait until 11 September for pay increases won as part of their collective agreement negotiations settled in June, according to an update sent to schools today from Novopay. ...
July 16 (BusinessDesk) - Energy Minister Megan Woods says the government “won’t die in a ditch” if its goal of 100 percent renewable electricity generation isn't reached by 2035. ...
The Electricity Networks Association (ENA) is welcoming the Government’s response to the Interim Climate Change Committee (ICCC) Report released today. Graeme Peters, chief executive of the ENA, said one of the key recommendations, endorsed by the ...
An article* published this month in the Journal of Health Organization and Management raises questions over the way health board members are elected and whether the boards are even needed. ...
NZEI Te Riu Roa's kindergarten teacher members will vote on a proposed settlement to their collective agreement after four days of negotiations with the Ministry of Education and kindergarten employers. ...
Vector has today welcomed the ICCC’s report on Accelerated Electrification . Vector agrees that accelerating the electrification of transport and process heat will play a major role in reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Initiatives to ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is calling on the Porirua City Council to cancel its underwriting of a proposed Canadian-led privately owned adventure park slated for public land after a similar project created a huge liability for Christchurch ...
Youth climate change campaigners Generation Zero welcome the Interim Climate Change Committee’s (ICCC’s) reports: Accelerated Electrification and Action on agricultural emissions ; which were finally released by the Government today, almost three months ...
Fish & Game New Zealand notes the announcement today that the Government and the intensive agriculture leadership have reached a ‘historic consensus’ and are exploring using a formal sector-government agreement instead of bringing agriculture ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee’s report on Accelerated Electrification was released today by the Minister for Energy and Resources, Hon Dr Megan Woods. ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee’s report Action on agricultural emissions was released today by the Minister for Climate Change, Hon James Shaw and the Minister of Agriculture, Hon Damien O’Connor. ...
Please find attached embargoed copies of two media statements from the Interim Climate Change Committee http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1907/Embargoed_Interim_Climate_Change_Committee_Accelerated_electrification_MEDIA_STATEMENT.pdf ...
Greenpeace Executive Director, Dr Russel Norman, has reacted with disbelief that the Government’s latest climate proposal includes an option for dairy to voluntarily deal with their emissions over the next six years. ...
This week’s “Youth Parliament” is an expensive waste of time that promotes taxpayer-funded junketeering, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . “We shouldn’t be training kids on the joys of the trough,” says Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones admitted on Q+A tonight that the state of New Zealand’s infrastructure planning is “dismal” and the government needs to get on with building “rather than writing more reports about it.” ...
DairyNZ has released its submission on the Zero Carbon Bill and is calling on the Government to revise the methane target in the Bill to one that does not put at risk New Zealand’s world-leading dairy sector. Farm profit could ...
July 15 (BusinessDesk) - Foreign Minister Winston Peters will have bi-lateral meetings with two of US president Donald Trump's most hawkish defence and security advisers in a five day trip to Washington D.C. ...
Youth climate change campaigners Generation Zero are calling for Members of Parliament to show political courage as the Zero Carbon Bill goes through the crucial Select Committee process. ...
Annual net migration was provisionally estimated at 50,200 (± 800) in the year ended December 2018 compared with 52,600 in the previous year, Stats NZ said today. ...
New Zealanders have the opportunity to contribute to the government’s Review of Retirement Income Policies, including questions around Superannuation and KiwiSaver. Submissions are now open for the Review, being run by the Commission for Financial ...
Yesterday at Mataatua Marae the Tamaki Makaurau Electorate of the Māori party congratulated Rangi Mclean who was appointed to the Vice president Tāne role of the party nation-wide executive. ...
The funding crisis facing the disability sector has become more urgent following the disturbing news that the Ministry of Health will not increase contract prices for providers this year, the New Zealand Disability Support Network said today. ...
The growing number of working poor is an alarming indicator that the regulatory Minimum Wage does not cut it said Closing the Gap spokesperson Peter Malcolm. ...
Historic hui gives overwhelming agreement for a Māori Inquiry The inquiry into state run Oranga Tamariki will be led by whanau, kaimahi and Māori leaders. ...
Drug infiltration into our maximum security prisons is putting prisoners and staff at unnecessary risk, and one tool that would be of huge benefit is a full body scanner. ...
The Socialist Equality Group is hosting a protest rally in Cuba Street, Wellington (at the intersection with Left Bank) on Sunday 14 July at 2:30pm to oppose the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, and to ...
Simon Shepherd: The National Party proposed its own medicinal cannabis scheme last year. Its Health Spokesperson, Michael Woodhouse, says it shouldn’t have been ignored. So I began by asking him what his problem is with the government’s proposed regime. ...
Countries around the world are also dealing with medicinal cannabis. Britain legalised it last year, but the uptake has been slow. Neurologist Professor Mike Barnes wrote the report that convinced UK lawmakers it was a good idea. He's coming here ...
Simon Shepherd: Green MP Chloe Swarbrick’s name has become synonymous with drug reform, so following years of campaigning for safe, public access to medicinal cannabis, what does she think of the government’s new plan? Well, Chloe Swarbrick joins me ...
Social Credit is calling for a Government enquiry into the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board over it's handling of the Sarah Preece attack in 2017 and its subsequent report. ...
An overwhelming response sees Māori from across the country pouring into Māngere today. The call for action came from Māori leadership concerned with the practice of tamariki removals by the state. Whānau, experts, and highly skilled Māori from ...
Responding the announcement of a $2.37 million loan from the Provincial Growth Fund to a Northland berry farm, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says: “Why couldn’t this business get a loan from the bank? If no bank was ...
Multicultural NZ is delighted to congratulate former Gisborne Mayor, Meng Foon, who has been appointed as New Zealand’s Race Relations Commissioner. ...
Award-winning broadcaster, Waatea has been selected by North Island Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency to exclusively livestream the historic Māori-led Inquiry on Oranga Tamariki. ...
“The Peace Movement sends an urgent call to Winston Peters to reject any US demands for New Zealand participation in patrolling the Persian Gulf and Straits of Hormuz. New Zealand should have nothing to do with any war on the ...
More than 50 senior non-commissioned officers from militaries in the Asia-Pacific Region gathered this week in Auckland for a conference hosted by the New Zealand Army. ...
The addition of an absurd Treaty of Waitangi clause in the Plant Varieties Act raises the question whether “Maoridom” will claim royalties on new plant varieties, Hobson’s Pledge spokesperson Casey Costello said today. ...
What are we going to do about District Health Boards? News this week that the Government is looking at a further bail-out of cash-strapped Boards to help reduce their deficits has raised afresh questions about the sustainability of the current ...
Legal proceedings were filed in the Wellington High Court this week to have certain blocks of land at Shelly Bay returned to the ownership of Taranaki Whānui iwi. The land in issue is currently the proposed site for a high ...
Heart Kids, the only charity which supports families of heart children, acknowledges the fear and distress of families who have voiced their concern over paediatric cardiac services in New Zealand. ...
Amnesty International has released a scathing report into the United States’ response to gun violence, a report that New Zealand policy-makers can learn from. In Scars of Survival: Gun Violence and Barriers to Reparation in the USA, survivors of gun ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s contentClimate change Zane Small (Newshub): Jacinda Ardern defends ‘laughable’ ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Options for getting agriculture into ETS unveiled, leading academic savages billion trees programme, and OIO approves Westland Milk sale. A historic day for climate change policy in New Zealand, with agriculture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sumeet Walia, Senior Lecturer and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, RMIT University What better way to build smarter computer chips than to mimic nature’s most perfect computer – the human brain? Being able to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney Debates about constitutional change in Australia inevitably raise the poor success rate of referendums. Only eight out of 44 attempts have ever succeeded ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Whitehouse, Bennett Chair of Autism, Telethon Kids Institute, Univeristy of Western Australia, University of Western Australia Therapies given to infants before they receive a diagnosis of autism may lead to important ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Fobert, Research Associate, Flinders University Clownfish achieved worldwide fame following Finding Nemo, but it turns out these fish don’t do so well in the spotlight. Our research, published in Biology Letters, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Pollack, Associate Professor, University of Sydney Someone we know recently told us about a team-building event that proved anything but. The chief executive who arranged it loved mountain biking. So he ...
Oskar Howell travels to Otorohanga to interview Danielle Hawkins, author of When It All Turns to Custard, over a delicious two-course home-cooked lunch. ...
Dreamed of traveling long term, but at a loss about how to afford it? Here’s how Kristin Hall and her partner managed it (spoiler: involves a lot of brown rice and cabbage).*Scroll to the end for an important note about ...
Daniel Ziffer’s rollicking account of Australia’s Royal Commission into banking is a jaw-dropping laundry list of scandals, heartbreaking stories, and ‘gotcha’ moments.The Haynes Commission was set up in 2017 to inquire into and report on misconduct in the Australian banking ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harry Hobbs, Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney Queensland Deputy Premier Jackie Trad has announced that the state will begin a conversation about a pathway to treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mair Underwood, Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology, The University of Queensland Months after a public breakup with her husband, the politician Barnaby Joyce, Natalie Joyce made news when she displayed her “new” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brittany Huber, Postdoctoral researcher, Swinburne University of Technology Most (80%) Australian parents worry children spend too much time with screens. But what children are doing on and off screen matters more than ...
A local photographer has posted emails from Warner Brothers NZ requesting they work “unpaid” on Married At First Sight NZ. A wedding photographer has posted emails from Warner Brothers NZ on Reddit after the production company requested that they work for ...
How ANZ Bank fought for more than three years to keep its role in New Zealand’s biggest Ponzi scheme quiet and stop a regulator telling out-of-pocket investors the details. ...
Sam Brooks reviews Mean Mums, the new sitcom from Three that manages to make putting a great show together look easy.When it premiered as part of Three’s Pilot Week last year, I called Mean Mums the winner of the bunch. Nearly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Last week on this podcast we talked to Ken Wyatt about the government’s plan for a referendum – hopefully this parliamentary term – to recognise ...
Imagine if we treated our native birds with as little care as we do our precious fish stocks, writes ecologist Stella McQueen.Earlier this year, 900 at-risk native mudfish were relocated to make way for a wastewater development. But despite a ...
For when toast or cereal just doesn’t cut it, but you don’t have the time or inclination to do any actual cooking, try this. If I ever cook rice (or grains of any kind) for dinner, I often make extra to ...
For their latest ageing episode, Hilary Barry joins the On the Rag team to talk wrinkle creams, menopause and why people still think she is Jeremy Wells’ mum. This month’s episode of On the Rag is all about ageing. Time ravages ...
The Auditor-General's investigators are to look into the National Party's complaints about taxpayer funding being used to underwrite KiwiBuild homes. ...
Its rolling slate of cringey jokes and meaningless trivia is a familiar sight wherever there’s a captive audience – but what the hell is Giggle TV? Johnny Crawford looks into the tweet-stealing, wife joke-telling phenomenon.If you’ve spent any time in ...
COMMENTARY:By Yamin Kogoya in Auckland More than 50 years of “torture” has been inflicted on the Papuan people by the Indonesian government. With the complicity of Western governments, great fear has been put in the hearts and minds ...
It’s landlords who are finding themselves out in the cold as property managers begin to walk away from clients who haven’t insulated their rentals, reports Don Rowe.Two weeks after the first of New Zealand’s healthy homes deadlines, property managers are ...
Event date and time: Friday, July 26, 2019 – 17:00–18:30JOIN US for this Pacific Media Centre‘s smorgasbord “launch” mid-winter fono and celebration for: + Two new documentaries on climate change and media freedom + The ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Tuesday’s contentForeign affairs and trade Barry Soper (Newstalk ZB): US ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Monday’s contentOranga Tamariki, state care of children, adoption Bonnie Sumner (Newsroom): Māori ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Senior research fellow, Southern Cross University Humans’ distant ancestor Australopithecus africanus had a unique approach to raising their young, as shown in our new research published today in Nature. Geochemical ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joyce Y.M. Nip, Senior lecturer, Department of Media and Communications; Department of Chinese Studies, University of Sydney As China grows more powerful and influential, our New Superpower series looks at what this ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trent Yarwood, Infectious Diseases Physician, Senior Lecturer, James Cook University and, The University of Queensland This year’s flu season is off to an early start, with 144,000 confirmed cases so far in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Todd Denham, PhD Candidate, School of Global, Urban & Social Studies, RMIT University Governments are looking to fast rail services to regional cities to relieve population pressures in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zsuzsanna Csereklyei, Lecturer in Economics, RMIT University Wholesale prices in the National Electricity Market have climbed significantly in recent years. The increase has coincided with a rapid increase in the proportion of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Koa Whittingham, Psychologist and Research Fellow, The University of Queensland Bluey is a ground-breaking Australian children’s television series and the most downloaded show in ABC iView history. Since premiering in October 2018, ...
Daily Review 03/12/2018 
The Interim Climate Change Committee's report on Action on agricultural emissions: Evidence, analysis and recommendations was finally released today, and as you might guess from the title, it is recommending that we actually act, rather than let farmers keep ...19 hours ago
On Sunday July 7, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter announced their intention to review the Ministry of Health’s Funded Family Care policy and repeal Part 4Aof the 2000 NZ Public Health and Disability Act. These are festering injustices ...20 hours ago
Belle is a lovely fifteen year-old border collie who belongs to our friends and neighbours at Bryan’s Beach, Michael and Judy Corboy. Belle, in her old age, can hardly see or hear, but – as a constant participant at social ...23 hours ago
Later this month, thousands of people are expected to march to parliament as part of the #HandsOffOurTamaraki movement. At its heart, the movement is about preserving whānau and demanding that the state stop removing children from their whānau, hapū and iwi. ...2 days ago
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh The recent statements made by the former FARC commander, Carlos Lozada (legal name Julian Gallo), where, from his seat in Congress, he praised the Colombian Army demonstrate how low the farianos have sunk. Lozada began by ...3 days ago
A Woman’s Place is on the Podium was a public meeting in London on 10 July to discuss women’s sports and the impact of transwomen competing against women. The venue was sold out with a packed hall of 750 people. ...3 days ago
An occasional series where I will ponder allegations of anti-Semitism directed at the British Labour Party and its members.In this case, we are thinking about an allegedly anti-Semitic image shared by a Labour Party member. Its origins appear to be ...6 days ago
7 days ago
1 week ago
Welcome to another heaping helping of research publications related to climate change drivers and mechanisms, the effects of climate change and how we might yet grope our way into systems approaches to dealing with the mess we're making, despite ourselves. ...2 weeks ago
The People's "Friend": In this masterpiece of revolutionary propaganda, the homicidal political psychopath, Jean-Paul Marat, has been transformed by Jacques-Louis David, the French Revolution's most accomplished artist, into a martyred hero of the ordinary people of Paris. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, ...2 weeks ago
The principle of one person, one vote doesn’t apply for local elections. In fact, you don’t even need to be a person to have voting rights. Welcome to the ratepayer roll. While the ratepayer roll accounts for less than 1% ...2 weeks ago
I have been working my way through a 47,000 document tranche of declassified US government communications related to Argentina and the “Dirty War” of 1976-83. I grew up in Argentina in the period leading up to the March 24, 1976 ...2 weeks ago
Image Credit: Blog Writing Tips. I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the ... 2 weeks ago
When people slate the current Government for taking too long on certain issues, or not getting everything right, just check the outrage and quit helping National manufacture consent for their decade of Disaster Economics and much more. Bill couldn’t ...3 weeks ago
Robots could soon replace many low-skill jobs, such as President of the United States. US Presidential hopeful and doomsday prophet Andrew Yang went to extreme lengths to make a point in the first round of Democratic primary debates today, replacing ...3 weeks ago
More people have died in the shower this year than will die in a KiwiBuild home. KiwiBuild home owners are experiencing a surprise windfall this month, as the price of their houses have begun to rise dramatically, due to growing ...3 weeks ago
3 weeks ago
Statistics New Zealand has released a new report on New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions, with a sectoral breakdown shown how much is caused by different sectors of the economy. The data is crystal clear: half our emissions are caused by ...3 weeks ago
3 weeks ago
A new digital platform aims to make it easier for small businesses to access services from multiple government agencies, leaving them more time to focus on their own priorities. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash ...23 hours ago
The Department of Conservation continue to repeat the same old story about attacks on staff and how it is affecting their role in protecting our precious wildlife. NZ herald https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12249704 ...16 mins ago
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Options for getting agriculture into ETS unveiled, leading academic savages billion trees programme, and OIO approves Westland Milk sale. A historic day for climate change policy in New Zealand, with agriculture ...2 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sumeet Walia, Senior Lecturer and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, RMIT University What better way to build smarter computer chips than to mimic nature’s most perfect computer – the human brain? Being able to ...2 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Whitehouse, Bennett Chair of Autism, Telethon Kids Institute, Univeristy of Western Australia, University of Western Australia Therapies given to infants before they receive a diagnosis of autism may lead to important ...3 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Fobert, Research Associate, Flinders University Clownfish achieved worldwide fame following Finding Nemo, but it turns out these fish don’t do so well in the spotlight. Our research, published in Biology Letters, ...3 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Pollack, Associate Professor, University of Sydney Someone we know recently told us about a team-building event that proved anything but. The chief executive who arranged it loved mountain biking. So he ...3 hours ago
The government is proposing a new road safety strategy called Road to Zero, aiming to cut road deaths by 40 percent in the next decade. ...3 hours ago
Oskar Howell travels to Otorohanga to interview Danielle Hawkins, author of When It All Turns to Custard, over a delicious two-course home-cooked lunch. ...4 hours ago
Highland dancing's lone male competitor, Angus Hendry, dominated the sport's national championships in Marlborough. ...4 hours ago
Auckland's lava caves offer a glimpse of volcanic activity on this planet and others - but they may be at risk. ...4 hours ago
Jacinda Ardern’s comments jar with advice over extending ACC cover to mentally injured terror attack victims. ...4 hours ago
Dreamed of traveling long term, but at a loss about how to afford it? Here’s how Kristin Hall and her partner managed it (spoiler: involves a lot of brown rice and cabbage).*Scroll to the end for an important note about ...4 hours ago
Daniel Ziffer’s rollicking account of Australia’s Royal Commission into banking is a jaw-dropping laundry list of scandals, heartbreaking stories, and ‘gotcha’ moments.The Haynes Commission was set up in 2017 to inquire into and report on misconduct in the Australian banking ...4 hours ago
The latest immigration figures paint a picture of headaches and heartbreaks. ...4 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harry Hobbs, Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney Queensland Deputy Premier Jackie Trad has announced that the state will begin a conversation about a pathway to treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ...15 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mair Underwood, Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology, The University of Queensland Months after a public breakup with her husband, the politician Barnaby Joyce, Natalie Joyce made news when she displayed her “new” ...15 hours ago
The number of residency applications are outstripping the Government's lowered planning targets by thousands. ...15 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brittany Huber, Postdoctoral researcher, Swinburne University of Technology Most (80%) Australian parents worry children spend too much time with screens. But what children are doing on and off screen matters more than ...16 hours ago
A local photographer has posted emails from Warner Brothers NZ requesting they work “unpaid” on Married At First Sight NZ. A wedding photographer has posted emails from Warner Brothers NZ on Reddit after the production company requested that they work for ...16 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Yau, Adjunct professor, College of Healthcare Sciences, James Cook University The Administrative Appeals Tribunal recently granted a woman with multiple sclerosis the right to have a sex therapist paid for under ...16 hours ago
How ANZ Bank fought for more than three years to keep its role in New Zealand’s biggest Ponzi scheme quiet and stop a regulator telling out-of-pocket investors the details. ...17 hours ago
Sam Brooks reviews Mean Mums, the new sitcom from Three that manages to make putting a great show together look easy.When it premiered as part of Three’s Pilot Week last year, I called Mean Mums the winner of the bunch. Nearly ...17 hours ago
Imagine if we treated our native birds with as little care as we do our precious fish stocks, writes ecologist Stella McQueen.Earlier this year, 900 at-risk native mudfish were relocated to make way for a wastewater development. But despite a ...18 hours ago
The Overseas Investment Office has approved the sale of the cash-strapped Westland Milk dairy co-operative to a foreign buyer. ...18 hours ago
Consumer inflation increased on the back of higher petrol prices and rents in the past three months. ...18 hours ago
For when toast or cereal just doesn’t cut it, but you don’t have the time or inclination to do any actual cooking, try this. If I ever cook rice (or grains of any kind) for dinner, I often make extra to ...18 hours ago
For their latest ageing episode, Hilary Barry joins the On the Rag team to talk wrinkle creams, menopause and why people still think she is Jeremy Wells’ mum. This month’s episode of On the Rag is all about ageing. Time ravages ...19 hours ago
Can the Government forge consensus on how to hold farmers to account for their climate impact? ...20 hours ago
The Auditor-General's investigators are to look into the National Party's complaints about taxpayer funding being used to underwrite KiwiBuild homes. ...20 hours ago
Its rolling slate of cringey jokes and meaningless trivia is a familiar sight wherever there’s a captive audience – but what the hell is Giggle TV? Johnny Crawford looks into the tweet-stealing, wife joke-telling phenomenon.If you’ve spent any time in ...20 hours ago
COMMENTARY: By Yamin Kogoya in Auckland More than 50 years of “torture” has been inflicted on the Papuan people by the Indonesian government. With the complicity of Western governments, great fear has been put in the hearts and minds ...21 hours ago
COMMENTARY: By Bryan Kramer in Port Moresby Yesterday, I returned from Tari Electorate in Hela Province following a one day trip to assess the situation following the horrific killing of 23 women (two of whom were pregnant) and nine ...1 day ago
Napier Port is seeking to raise up to $234 million in next month's partial share float. ...1 day ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Senior research fellow, Southern Cross University Humans’ distant ancestor Australopithecus africanus had a unique approach to raising their young, as shown in our new research published today in Nature. Geochemical ...1 day ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might ...1 day ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trent Yarwood, Infectious Diseases Physician, Senior Lecturer, James Cook University and, The University of Queensland This year’s flu season is off to an early start, with 144,000 confirmed cases so far in ...1 day ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yvette Selim, Interim Deputy Director, Anti-Slavery Australia, University of Technology Sydney With China’s western-most province of Xinjiang being turned into a mass internment camp, last night’s ABC Four Corners program reported on ...1 day ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Koa Whittingham, Psychologist and Research Fellow, The University of Queensland Bluey is a ground-breaking Australian children’s television series and the most downloaded show in ABC iView history. Since premiering in October 2018, ...1 day ago
Ha ha …less shit! same goes for bogus polls. On a positive note the PM has pushed the investigate button on the fuel cartel and hopefully after that the grocery cartel. Maybe Santa is coming after all, Wayne.
‘We are last generation that can stop climate change’ – UN summit
“We are clearly the last generation that can change the course of climate change, but we are also the first generation with its consequences,” said Kristalina Georgieva, the CEO of the World Bank. The bank announced on Monday that its record $100bn (£78bn) of climate funding from 2021-2025 would for the first time be split equally between projects to cut emissions and those protecting people from the floods, storms and droughts that global warming is making worse.
In recent years, just 5% of global funding has gone on protection, but 2018 has seen climate impacts hit hard, with heatwaves and wildfires in Europe and California and huge floods in India, Japan and east Africa. “We are already seeing the devastating impact of climate change,” Georgieva told the Guardian. “We strongly believe that action ought to go both on mitigation and on adaptation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/03/we-are-last-generation-that-can-stop-climate-change-un-summit
Act now.
Like these heroes from Australia.
It’s so simple. Livestock for meat and dairy products worldwide is responsible for almost 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second largest source of emissions after the fossil fuels industry.
There are straightforward actions you can do, starting today.
Drop meat and dairy.
Don’t believe me?
Then listen to George Monbiot.
He explains how the fate of the planet depends on the way we choose to eat.
Well Ed, I listened and didn’t hear a damned thing to back the claim that meat and dairy is responsible for ~ 15% of emissions.
How is the figure arrived at? Is it ~15% with all of the fossil inputs to agriculture added up and subtracted from the dairy/meat total? Because that’s the only way anyone can claim that meat/dairy is second to fossil in terms of emissions.
And my opinion of Monbiot as a wanker was just reinforced – the guy says he’s “almost vegan”…. it’s just venison he eats!
Anyway, look. Eat less meat or no meat. It’s not a bad thing to do. But don’t fucking kid yourself that being vegan will make a serious impact on AGW. It won’t.
Dropping fossil would curtail modern agricultural practices (no fossil inputs) that would in turn mean less “factory meat” getting produced/consumed.
But simply eating vegan does 5/8ths of fuck all in terms of fossil use, meaning 5/8ths of fuck all in terms of AGW.
Have you seen this Bill, what do you reckon?
It was posted by Robin Grieve, ACT Candidate for Whangarei.
He is the Chairman Pastural Farming Climate Research Inc.
He is a right wing politician, not a scientist.
It’s denialist nonsense.
Why is it denialist nonsense?
From a layman’s point of view, it’s rather convincing.
https://www.niwa.co.nz/publications/wa/water-atmosphere-1-july-2010/qa
http://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-inventory-1960-2014-130-111523
“We know from taking samples of air trapped in polar ice that methane levels have grown by 150 percent since organised animal farming began in the early 1700s. By comparison, CO2 levels have grown by 35 percent. Methane levels have continued to rise over the decades, growing fastest through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, before slowing down in the 1990s, levelling off in the early 2000s, and increasing again from 2007.”
https://www.niwa.co.nz/publications/wa/water-atmosphere-1-july-2010/qa
http://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-inventory-1960-2014-130-111523
What do I reckon?
I reckon that physics doesn’t give a flying monkey’s fuck for where any CO2 comes from (eg – methane breakdown, bio-fuels, or fossil fuels).
If we want to arrest climate change, and maybe even see slight drops in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 occur, then we need to stop burning fossil. (ie, re- introducing to the earth’s systems CO2 that was removed from the earth’s systems hundreds of millions of years ago)
Agriculture can’t do what it currently does without fossil, so methane emissions would inevitably drop in concert with reductions in fossil use.
And like I say, if we want there to be any prospect that concentrations of CO2 will begin to come down, then we can’t swap out fossil fuel for bio fuel.
Sigh. OK, I’ll take the considerable time to respond to the denialist nonsense you’ve just sprayed around with just a half-dozen or so key presses that took just a few seconds.
Let’s follow some of the possible paths of that carbon atom from the air, absorbed into a plant.
It may stay as plant matter until it rots and is returned to the atmosphere as CO2, In which case, the only effect on global warming is a teeny-tiny reduction in atmospheric CO2 and consequent reduced warming for the brief time that carbon atom is part of a solid piece of plant, rather than floating in the atmosphere.
While it is plant matter, it may get eaten by a non-methanogenic animal, then emitted again as CO2. Again, negligible effect.
It may get eaten by a ruminant, and emitted as methane (as a substantial portion of the carbon atoms eaten by ruminants end up). In which case, that methane molecule adds to the current concentration of methane in the atmosphere. Yes, that methane molecule will eventually be broken back down to CO2 (on average around 10ish years), but while it is still methane it is massively more warming than CO2*. That extra heat the methane has trapped while it is still methane stays with us for a very long time. A while ago I ran the numbers, and an average cow in a paddock for a year emits so much methane it causes about the same warming as an average car driving around for a year (12000 km or so)
Methane concentrations have increased from around 775 parts per billion in pre-industrial times to around 1800 now, due entirely to human activities (not all of it is agricultural, industry and domestic use shares some of the blame). Because methane has a short lifetime, this increased methane concentration (and consequent warming) is entirely due to increased ongoing emissions, of which agriculture is a large part. So yes, even though the carbon atom in a molecule of methane belched by a cow originally came from atmospheric CO2, it still causes much more warming because it has been turned into methane by agricultural activity than if it had stayed as CO2. So it’s entirely proper to hold that agricultural activity accountable for the increased warming it causes.
*If you calculate how much warming you get over 20 years from a tonne of methane, it’s around 85 times more than a tonne of CO2. Over 100 years, it’s around the 25 figure used in the vid.
If you don’t trust Monbiot or me, then what about this study.
“Huge reductions in meat-eating are essential to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the food system’s impact on the environment. In western countries, beef consumption needs to fall by 90% and be replaced by five times more beans and pulses.
The research also finds that enormous changes to farming are needed to avoid destroying the planet’s ability to feed the 10 billion people expected to be on the planet in a few decades.
Food production already causes great damage to the environment, via greenhouse gases from livestock, deforestation and water shortages from farming, and vast ocean dead zones from agricultural pollution. But without action, its impact will get far worse as the world population rises by 2.3 billion people by 2050 and global income triples, enabling more people to eat meat-rich western diets.
The new research, published in the journal Nature, is the most thorough to date and combined data from every country to assess the impact of food production on the global environment. It then looked at what could be done to stop the looming food crisis.“
Whole article here.
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-reduction-in-meat-eating-essential-to-avoid-climate-breakdown
Yeah Ed, you’re missing the point.
No-one can say meat and dairy is second to fossil in terms of emissions if the fossil inputs that are necessary for meat and dairy are left sitting in the meat/dairy total.
And if we all go vegan, we’re all going to suffer from malnutrition because of the effect that raised CO2 levels have on plant nutrition. (That article joe90 linked at 2.1.2 is well worth the read, and it’s worth noting that not one mention is made on the known effect that elevated CO2 levels have on plants and/or the obvious knock-on effect in relation to insect and bird and lizard numbers…)
You reckon a plant based diet is going to save us?
Looking at what insecticides, especially organophosphates, are doing, it’s gonna be goodbye food.
When asked to imagine what would happen if insects were to disappear completely, scientists find words like chaos, collapse, Armageddon. Wagner, the University of Connecticut entomologist, describes a flowerless world with silent forests, a world of dung and old leaves and rotting carcasses accumulating in cities and roadsides, a world of “collapse or decay and erosion and loss that would spread through ecosystems” — spiraling from predators to plants. E.O. Wilson has written of an insect-free world, a place where most plants and land animals become extinct; where fungi explodes, for a while, thriving on death and rot; and where “the human species survives, able to fall back on wind-pollinated grains and marine fishing” despite mass starvation and resource wars. “Clinging to survival in a devastated world, and trapped in an ecological dark age,” he adds, “the survivors would offer prayers for the return of weeds and bugs.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html
if you want to hold onto your free views
http://archive.li/e3bx6
heh – E.O Wilson apparently overlooked the fact that a plant based diet is increasingly a sugar based diet because of the effects of CO2 on growth…meaning those wind pollinated grains won’t have much sustenance, and that marine life will have cacked it along with terrestrial life because the phyto-plankton at the base of the marine food system also become junk under conditions of accelerated growth.
Ed does the world bank ‘funding’ come with interest repayments?
Are the WB seeking profits ?
Thanks Ed. Husband a big meat eater and so me by default. Agreed today to cut it back to one red meat meal a week. Guess it’s a start. We walk and use public transport a lot too
Yes that’s a great start. And a massive cut back.
Every little bit helps.
Good luck.
Your reminders have been part of us making the decision
Anyone seen any monarch butterflies lately? I have 2 large swan plants but not a sign of any eggs. I usually bring any eggs inside as soon as I see a butterfly around the plants, as the wasps will take the caterpillars almost as soon as they hatch. My daughter has got a small accidental swan plant forest but also no go for eggs, caterpillars or butterflies. Are they now extinct in Waiuku?
Oh no! That’s awful.
We had them here in Wgtn a couple of months ago. Haven’t seen any lately.
There are lots of them here up in Whangarei
Where you have Asian Paper Wasps, you will have no Monarch caterpillars. Because they eat Milkweed (Swan Plant) monarchs used to be poisonous to our old predators. 2 new predators don’t give a toss about Milkweed poison, and gobble up everything in sight. At this time of the year it is the Paper Wasp. Later, as they grow bigger, the South African Praying Mantids will join in, and continue after the Paper Wasps stop collecting protein in late summer.
Sorry, but lean times for Monarch butterflies and many other insects here in NZ since these two monstrously mean and greedy predators became established.
Seen a couple of Monarchs but not many. We have swarm of them come through about January, so on that basis, would expect January 2019 to be when they start laying eggs.
Then the fun begins of squashing eggs to maintain a good caterpillar/plant ratio. Too many and it’s murder. Too few and not enough survive.
Dude’s had his fifteen, and he’s done.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/12/newly-released-documents-show-milo-yiannopoulos-serious-financial-debts/
Milo was always a loud mouth slogan.
It was inevitable really
They’re all loud mouthed nobodies sloganeering on the wingnut welfare circuit.
The limitless ocean of cash that flows through Wingnut Welfare’s rivers and tributaries is how the Right keeps their whole Pretty Hate Machine — publishing houses, magazines, websites, radio empires, teevee networks, op-ed forelock tuggers, think tanks, and a thousand free roaming pundits — propped up and purring in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are nothing but a mob lying, racist grifters and madmen.
And once you get your Wingnut Welfare card punch, baby, the world is your oyster!
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2017/05/wingnut-welfare-its-simple-little-system.html
Way to splash every outspoken right commentator with the same brush
I suspect that many of them are the same brush. Pseudonyms change, but the language style and logic doesn’t. We haven’t heard from Chuck lately, but a new arrival seems remarkably similar to me. Not the first time I have noticed such similar contributions under a different name.
Never trust a right-wing commentator!
I think you mean anyone who disagrees with you
And how many thousands of times have we read that pathetic cop-out?
Right commentary, glitzy, sleazy and dishonest with a promise of violence; the recipe for the wingnut gravy train.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DtdcJsGU4AU5uqB.jpg
Jack with the KSA setting their production limits.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/qatar-withdraw-opec-january-2019-181203061900372.html
Newshub Exclusive: National MP Maggie Barry hit with fresh bullying allegations
1 hour ago
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/12/exclusive-terrifying-national-mp-maggie-barry-hit-with-fresh-bullying-allegations.html
Jesse Mulligan: Maggie Barry’s secretly recorded comments about me sign of a bigger issue.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/12/jesse-mulligan-maggie-barry-s-secretly-recorded-comments-about-me-sign-of-a-bigger-issue.html
Who on earth is Jesse Mulligan?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Mulligan
He’s a Left-wing wanker.
…with multiple platforms. But hey, you’ve got Leighton and the Hoskey….
No one but the converted takes any notice of the guy.
He’s a cock smoker of the highest order.
Who? Leighton or the Hosk?
The left-wing wanker.
Odd. I never thought of either the Hosk or Leighton as left-wing wankers. Wankers, yes, but not left-wing. I s’pose it’s a matter of where you sit when looking at them.
You use both ‘wings’ don’t you BMmer.
Coq Seemore BMmer?
That was awesome, good on Jesse for responding.
The Project have done a number of stories on conservation, climate change, plastic in the oceans etc etc. Awesome that they are helping to increase awareness and help drive much needed change.
If BM’s spinning out calling him names, cause that’s all BM can manage in defence of poison ivy and her lack of conservation, then he’s sure struck a nerve.
Good job Jesse, thanks for caring about the planet among other things.
That from BM is some of the worst forumming I’ve ever seen.
Ikr, he’s super meow’s over it.
Is maggie wanting to be leader?
Is this putting a bit of a spanner in the works?
The plot thickens…..
Time for me to hit the hay, nitey nite MB 🙂
Ah to smoke a nice cock, particularly with a fine cognac on the side. Happy Days BuMmer.
Do his perspectives on the environment make him a ‘Left-wing wanker’ or does being a ‘Left-wing wanker’ mean he has the views he does about the environment?
And if he is a ‘Left-wing wanker’ does that make his views any less or more worthy than, say, yours?
Or are you pissed off that someone is prepared to address some bullshit? I’ve seen some saying that the people who worked in Barry’s office should have shut up and tolerated what they saw as bullying. The ruling classes don’t seem to like it when the empire strikes back.
I have no time or interest in what left-wing media people have to say.
https://karldufresne.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-purpose-of-journalism.html?fbclid=IwAR2DLLIc-17zgGGXX2MVJn_ZdTd9LfVZAd9F8KLW2KtKpXisCIBtwgcFdGY
I would have thought that left wing MSM folk would have had a sort of curiosity value, like any other rare species.
Pointless and irritating because you can’t trust a word they write/say.
Far better to just ignore and treat as garbage.
Not the leftie ones: reuse and recycle 😉
That reads to me like a criticism of himself. If only he were that self aware. Du Fresne openly seeks to change things, and no topic does he cover even-handedly.
In the last sentence he betrays the most ultra conceit of ultra right wing thought:
I’m puzzled … should people make decisions that are not in their best interests, or have other people do it for them?
Or maybe you missed this:
One of the best definitions of journalism that I’ve read comes from The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. It defines the purpose of journalism as “to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies and their governments”.
Maybe that definition of ‘best interests’ works better for you?
That’s a better definition but not the one Du Fresne rests upon, nor one he himself subscribes to because right wing thought bases itself above all else upon personal responsibility and the rights of the individual over strength of community and the good of society.
I think if you leave people to it unfortunately they will make decisions in their own best interests rather than a common good. Hands off government the type which Du Fresne promotes (even though he as a journalist should not be promoting it) contributes to this.
Fair enough, left wingers tend to put the interests of the collective ahead of individuals. At the extremes the history of both viewpoints is terrible.
My take is that both viewpoints co-exist in a mutual balance; both speak to vital human realities that work best when they listen to each other.
Whoever he is he gave a rather good précis of Maggie Barry’s useless tenure as Minister of Conservation.
He’s on the wireless wally.
Heard an amusing story about sweet Maggie today:
Some years back a new cafe opened in Belmont on the Shore called ‘Little and Friday’. It became the place to go if you wanted to be seen by the right (pronounced raite) people at least for a while. Sure enough Maggie turned up one day only to find the cafe was full and there were no tables left. She had a hissy fit because no-one saw fit to get up and offer her their table so she flounced out to the tune… oh, they’re all left wing haters anyway.
Which addiction did you switch from @ Ed?
It’s obviously something less destructive than the last one and I ‘spose a couple of days ban given by the Voice of Reason is really going to teach ya a lesson, so na-na nana-na, and so there!.
There are learnings to be had going forward
Bit puzzled by what you mean here?
[See mod note here: /open-mike-03-12-2018/#comment-1557978. TRP]
perhaps I should have added a /sarc, but you know…..puzzling can be really cathartic.
Hopefully you’ll stick around on this venue, whereas sometimes I wish they’d do me a favour and ban me for life so that I can watch and not be tempted to comment
Yup, Mongolian rock is a thing.
Can anyone please tell me why Qatar just pulled out of OPEC?
Pissed off at being bullied by other oil producing states? The Saudi’s have been on their case for ages, so I guess there’s a bit of payback. They can set their own price and undercut the others if they are out of OPEC.
Have to say, our risk managed sussoighty is now becoming ridiculous.
4am on a trip from Tearenga ta Orcas: many notifications of a slip in the Karangahake Gorge and a suggestion to take an alternative root …. oops route. A couple of substantial boulders blocking a lane as I passed.
12 hours later and a cast of tens of hiviz specimens later on the return journey, the very same boulders were sat where they fell causing some more major traffic problems.
Heavy earthmoving equipment on standby, though seemingly incapable of just shuvelling the shit away into a fast moving river, much as Mother Nature had/ and had done over decades.
I almost tried to leap for some anti-bacterial sanitising cream to wash off a bit of dust as we waited for the Green Go sign.
Christ! and people used to slag off Ministry of Works and Dev employees during the journey towards the neoliberal alternative over leaning on a shovel.
Please don’t fart people. There’s the potential for toxic and flammable gases that could cause serious injury to bits of the body we shouldn’t speak of
I would think that they would have to ensure the original site of those boulders was stable before shoving them into the river. The use of heavy machinery and the subsequent movement of boulders hitting the riverbed might result in further uncontrolled slips.
This is not really a good example of H&S rules applied unthinkingly, it is an example of what H&S rules are intended to achieve – a minimisation of harm.
“Poland generates 80% of its electricity from coal and the UN summit will take place in a coal mining town, Katowice. The Polish government has also allowed two coal companies to sponsor the summit.”
WTF?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/03/we-are-last-generation-that-can-stop-climate-change-un-summit