That’s the trees, but the it’s the whole ecosystem. Stoats, rats and other predators are decimating the wildlife populations too.
When you take key elements out of an ecosystem the whole thing is affected and not necessarily in ways that nature can accommodate well. Evolution is a thing, and where species have co-evolved, you get climax forests and stable systems. When you introduce elements that intervene in that outside of the evolutionary processes, you potentially get collapse. If even we thought that evolution will sort that out over the next centuries or millenia this is not something we want happening in the age of climate change.
Those Northland forests could be protected with the knowledge and skill we have now. Political choices from National mean they’re not.
Trapping could reduce numbers enough to save the forest, sure. It’s not lack of traps or knowledge that’s the problem, it’s funding. Personally I’d prefer trapping over poisoning (including job and small business creation in the context of kaitiakitanga) but we have the poisoning tech too.
Trapping could reduce numbers enough to save the forest, sure. It’s not lack of traps or knowledge that’s the problem, it’s funding.
How many thousands of people out there minding how many millions of traps?
Should we give them guns and ammo to shoot the pests if they see any?
It’s not funding either, it’s actual physical capability. If we want to eradicate the pests that were introduced then it’s going to have to be a major concerted effort across the whole country over a short period of time and make sure we get the whole damn lot of them. And the chances are that we’d miss some which means that in a few short years we’d bee doing it all again.
Me, I’m hoping that our scientists will develop a way to sterilise them all. Then we may have a chance to eradicate them. Unfortunately, this governments been cutting research through the stupidity of competition.
We’re never going to eradicate those pests on the mainland (at least not in the foreseeable future). In order to save the forests, we don’t need eradication, we just need to keep the numbers down low enough for species and systems to thrive above reproduction level.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time around trappers and in country more difficult than Northland forests. It takes surprisingly little to control a population in a given area. DOC and other govt organisations will have the research on this, but often even just having trap lines every x kms that get checked once a month can bring populations down enough for bird species to increase. You need to do extra in mast years. 1080 every decade or two if you have to. That research would have been done with a close eye on budgets (ie what’s the least amount of trapping we can do for the most effect), so giving them a decent budget instead of a minimal one would increase benefit substantially.
Put together small teams of people who are self employed, who love spending time in the bush, let them live in the forest with a caretaking contract so they can do other work there too. They can make a living from the possum fur and a bounty on the stoat and rats. Huge potential. We already have volunteer networks in NZ doing trapping, so co-ordinate and increase that eg DOC or Landcare or whoever put in the lines and registered volunteers who are already in the area (trampers, fishermen, climbers etc) do the line checks. These aren’t difficult things, they just need vision and funding.
my auntie was a possum trapper, one of my cousins partners and another cousin are full time possum trappers in the deep south, I have been a part time possum trapper – it is hard work.
It can be done but you have to be very fit, smart, dedicated and basically not have any qualms about killing stuff.
Could be that those qualities are in abundance out there with the not-employed – but it ain’t a video game and it is hard work even on easy country let alone hills.
Yeah, the biggest obstacle after funding and will is that we don’t have the same numbers of young guys coming through who go out and learn the trade. I guess I envisage us as a population having more physical lives in a post-carbon world, so may as well start now 🙂
At least some of the people I know that do it love being in the bush. I think that would be key. Getting to live in the wilderness would be a pretty big attraction.
That’s one of the major reasons we now have the luxury of pest free islands and some of our native birds haven’t become extinct.
It would be nigh on impossible to cover the Northland forests with traps, due to the number needed and there would be large chunks of area you wouldn’t be able to access on foot creating permanent reinfestation spots.
I’m not a great fan of 1080, but it is pretty effective in restoring bird populations where it’s used appropriately.
The comparison with the 50s is not that useful because how, where and when 1080 is used has changed so much.
Spread of pests is complex. Possums and deer will spread faster and more where you open up areas with tracks and roads. Some of it is just time. It takes time for a population to expand out of its range.
If you 1080 every 3 or 4 years in the same place, those areas end up with a low levels of pests. We only do 1080 on a tiny fraction of the DoC estate, so it could clearly be increased by a lot.
“It would be nigh on impossible to cover the Northland forests with traps, due to the number needed and there would be large chunks of area you wouldn’t be able to access on foot creating permanent reinfestation spots.”
You do selected ridgelines, and you do the line once a month. I don’t know Northland but I’m guessing it’s not harder than country down south.
1080 is useful, but it’s also got problems. I think it’s a mistake to rely on it as the main approach indefinitely across all native ecosystems (and increasingly across farmland).
I think that was the issue with possum trapping historically is that trappers would do the easy country all the time. It got rid of some possums, but the issue was that it wasn’t getting conservation benefits on the whole as there was plenty of country that still wasn’t getting pest control. I’ve been involved in pest control work and bait lines are about 50-100m apart with each bait station on the line about the same distance apart.
With bait stations you only have to check/refill every six months, and they contain a couple of hundred pellets in each one – I’m not sure how many rats/possums that kills, probably a lot. And you get complete coverage of an area so long as they’re laid out in a grid over the land.
With trapping, I’m assuming we’re talking leg-hold traps you’re only targetting possums as they’re the only thing of value. Rats are at least as big a problem as possums and they’re missed out. DoC does have the new Goodnature self-reseting traps that can kill 24 rats before they need a new gas cannister. That could be a way forward. Have they been used successfully in a large area like a Regional Park? Not sure.
In a post carbon world, 1080 is probably not possible (using helicopters). Or maybe if helicopter use was prioritised for critical things like conservation we could carry on for another 50-100 years, who knows. In the long term I think we’re looking at only being able to manage pests in critical areas and close to population centres where people can access on foot using basic traps. The rest of the country might be unmanageable. Hope I’m wrong, but that could be the reality.
Any reason you can’t put out kill traps for the mustelids and rodents at the same time as doing the possum line? The Goodnature traps sound good, and I’m sure if there was more of a will there would more tech like that developped.
Let people live in the parks. It changes the ratios hugely.
Yeah that would be a good way to work it. The Goodnature people happened to be the right people (industrial designers) looking at the problem of an archaic trap that DoC was using – the Doc 200 trap is still in use and it looks as if it was designed in the 1800s. The company got some grants a long the way, but it doesn’t appear it was targetted research. So yeah I think we’re just scratching the surface really without proper research funding.
I’m with you on having people living in Forests, Parks. The european approach has been to lock these places these up and people are only allowed to look, not touch. Contrary to what native cultures do, which is to actually live in the environment.
In a post carbon world, 1080 is probably not possible (using helicopters).
In a post carbon world you’d probably shift to using airships for the aerial drops of 1080. Bio-fuel and helium would mean that they’d still be practical.
There are some pretty interesting regulations around experimental aircraft above a trivial mass. Additionally, with airships the basics are easily done, but the control issues are pretty severe (especially for smaller blimps). Large sail area compared to mass/momentum. Sort of sucks in windy mountainous terrain.
It’s definitely a feasible idea – I immediately went to a sort of blimp roomba, dropping 1080 on a regular GPS run and returning to an automatic hopper station to refill/refuel. Payload a few times the size of a helicopter.
Whether that works for anyting approaching NZ weather and terrain, on the other hand… that’s what R&D is for 🙂
Great idea Pat. As Gareth says, who has the balls to sell and action an idea. It would cost Gareth and Key so are they for it?
The top 10% have the power to block and humiliate any possible proposers. And yet 90% of the people would benefit as would the Economy.
Deceitful fucks. Is all I call it DT. Peters said same thing it’s deceitful.
He sells assets and tells the nation it will be used for, then doesn’t give too shits about sticking to his promises and does what the fuck he likes.
Imagine if an agent sold your car for 5k, had instructions to use the money for another car but spent half the money on himself and only paid a deposit on the car you wanted.
When are these jerks hitting the road to campaign.
Now Bennetts admitted she lied about the sally visit.
Oh come on, time for a snap election or the dissolution of parliament , governor general stepping in. this has become absolutely ridiculous. Bordering insighting anarchy and civil unrest.
I bloody sick of this, and ready to act I can assure you.
The troops are advancing into NATO member Lithuania for the operation, but are heading in the general direction of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, a clear message that the operation is a simulation of a NATO invasion of Russian territory.
Anyone would think that the West wanted a war with Russia.
Oh, and then there’s this bit:
The biggest concern among NATO officials is the involvement of Poland’s “territorial army,” a makeshift paramilitary force built of gun club members and soccer hooligans. Two brigades of such forces are to “assist” in the operation.
National 48% (down from 50)
Labour 29% (up from 28)
Greens 12% (up from 10)
NZ First 9%
Maori Party 0.7% (down from 1.1)
Conservative Party 0.7% (up from 0.3)
ACT Party 0.3% (down from 0.7)
Other 0.6% (up from 0,2)
Polling was done between 28th of May and 2nd of June, the MoU announcement part way through so can’t take much from that.
Preferred Prime Minister:
John Key 39%
Winston Peters 12% (up from 10)
Andrew Little 7%
Colmar Brunton has frequently had LAB + GR at the low to mid 40’s several times recently, this poll basically returns to that recent ‘norm’ after the prior poll went a bit low on the LAB/GR block:
This poll, together with the last 3 Roy Morgans reinforces my hunch that the latest (April 2016) Colmar Brunton was a bit of an Outlier / Rogue.
All 10 of the Reid Research and Colmar Brunton Polls carried out since May 2015 have placed the Oppo Bloc ahead of the Govt … except for the April 2016 CB which swung from a 2 point Oppo lead in February to a 5 point Govt lead in April. The other 4 polls since February (3 RMs / 1 RR) have all placed the Opposition Bloc ahead by between 2 and 8 points.
All of which means … I await the next Colmar Brunton with interest.
This latest poll just solidifies that result i.e. LAB + GR are sitting at low to mid 40s.
Low to mid forties this far out is all good . if it starts to shift to the mid 40s and higher in the new year we might see key go for an early election.
The finer print of the poll separates the results into pre and post MoU, and post MoU it shows Labour support increasing by 5.2%, Greens dropping by 3.5%, Nat increasing by 1.9% and NZF dropping by 4.1%. So pretty much break even between Lab/Gr and Nat post MoU. NZF took a big hit though. Shown on page 9 of the report:
the big Australian storm hit Tassie today, more loss of life, catastrophic floods, evacuations. As in the Sydney storm, rescue crews are saying that too many people are doing daft things which diverts workers away from other work to rescue them. I wonder if this is an emerging extreme weather phenomena. People getting caught out more because of the severity, more people not knowing what are good decisions, and just a higher percentage of wrong place wrong time.
They need something like an electronic anti-rescue beacon bracelet. If something happens to them while adventuring during an extreme weather event no-one has to come to the rescue if shit goes south.
very much like the geezers in their four wheel drives. Innit?
I would assume that the security and first emergency team is privately employed. Each team comes with their own first response team. At the end of the day the guys that do the sport will not care, and at this level of skill and danger you need a specialised team to do rescue work.
Not really. Pretty sure the 4WD dudes were just regular people, not extreme sportspeople. And they didn’t go out to adventure in an extreme weather event that was a civil emergency, they got caught out by a fairly normal weather pattern (just like motorists and the NZTA elsewhere that day)
Sorry weka, but I wouldn’t have called the weather pattern that day fairly normal, and somewhere “regular people” would have prudently gone. What happened was pretty much to my reading of the forecast. What happened elsewhere, like on Crown Range was resolved from a personal safety perspective within minutes. There’s absolutely no comparison there.
RIght, but just a fairly normal storm for Central. Not a climate change extreme weather event like Australia has just experienced?
The sub thread is that I commented that extreme sportspeople who intentionally go out to play during a civil emergency could cede their right to rescue services that are needed elsewhere (I support their right to play). Sabine then said it was the same as the 4WD dudes. I think the situations are completely different, for multiple reasons, some of which I’ve explained. I don’t really need to rehash the 4WD situation (you and I will probably have to agree to disagree on their degree of idiocy and culpability there, my main point in the past has been that they shouldn’t be charged for the rescue). I was just clarifying that that was a normal weather even for May in Central.
Sorry, and thanks for the clarification. I took your comments to mean conditions were benign.
But in the same way that those conditions weren’t unusual for Central Otago, the south east coast of Australia is very exposed to high energy air masses from Coral Sea interacting with stuff from Southern Ocean. That’s how the sandstone cliffs along that coast have formed. They are relatively infrequent events, so the bold build their mansions out onto the sand dunes….
What is common between the two situations is inappropriate decisions people make in the actual or possible danger, as you pointed out in your original post. And the difficulty the same people have in taking responsibility for their poor decisions. It’s intriguing that the same people tend to inhabit the right of the political spectrum.
It’s this disconnect that makes meaningful discussion on pre-emptive actions to avert climate change almost impossible. I await the awarding of the Darwin Award to a denier for demise due to climatic events.
It does seem like a good opportunity to talk about changing risk assessment in a climate change world. I think there is the modern problem of people taking risks because they have 4WDs and cell phones, risks they wouldn’t have taken back in the day. And people who think they know how to do something because they’ve read about it on the internet and we live in a culture where you learn how to use tools from reading a Mitre10 tutorial instead of in the past when we learnt from people who knew how to actually do things. All that is a potent mix for people doing stupid shit.
When I read through some of the Sydney reports the emergecny crews were saying again and again how often they had to go and rescue people from stupid situations when they were needed elsewhere. We’ve always had people who do stupid or ignorant things (been there myself), but I think the numbers are greater now. And more people are less experienced at dealing with nature.
I remember floods and snow storms from the 60’s to 80’s, and they were real rippers, like delivering milk and bread in a jet boat, and Invercargill under water. People took responsibility for themselves and helped others, and got on with it.
Today it’s all the fault of someone or something, come and rescue me. The media narrative around Global Warming feeds this to an extent by narrowing what is “normal” and defining events with statistical return periods of 50 years as abnormal. And since weather records in this part of the world are so short, only a couple of hundred years, we have no idea what the extremes are on a millennial scale.
I’m not saying that global warming isn’t a very real thing, but that the appreciation and respect of our weather’s variability and power is being eroded responsibility put to “someone else”
And since weather records in this part of the world are so short, only a couple of hundred years, we have no idea what the extremes are on a millennial scale.
Wrong. Those are just the day by day records of weather. But any exceptional weather is pushed into the geology and the living organisms. That is literally what causes flood plains and erosion. Normal weather doesn’t do that much. Exceptional weather does.
We have accurate climate records for extreme weather about the last 20 thousand years for most of the world with an accuracy down to about a 20-50 year level depending of area, and moderately inaccurate for about the last couple of million years. It gets pretty inaccurate (ie about 50k years) after that.
Basically we haven’t seen anything like this since the Eocene about 34 million years ago, and we only have an accuracy in the order of 100k years then. This looks freakingly fast climate change.
Get used to it. At the current rate we’re looking at about 6 degrees C this century. That is something that we last saw happen over 250k years – more than 34 million years ago…
Get used to it. At the current rate we’re looking at about 6 degrees C this century. That is something that we last saw happen over 250k years – more than 34 million years ago…
As far as I can tell, we are going to beat 2 deg C warming over the pre-industrial baseline, in the next 10 years.
If Global Dimming particulate solar shielding effects disappeared, we would already be there.
And now we are consistently over 400ppm CO2, we have basically gone back 15M years. During the mid Miocene. And the temp then was way hotter than 2 deg C over the pre-industrial baseline.
The thermal inertia of the system means we won’t feel the full heat of today’s 405ppm for half a generation. Fun times.
a. we don’t have enough full time emergency staff to cope with the increase of natural emergencies, and all services are having a hard time finding volunteers.
b. we don’t have a population that is prepared to a. look after themselves in case of an emergency or b. be able to volunteer and help the emergency services.
c. check for auckland – i.e. emergency shelters – we will be told where to shelter when the emergency is ongoing – does that make you feel safer? The same can be said for anywhere else in NZ>
As i said in another thread, these are not free services, we are not well prepared here or anywhere else on the planet
I am not saying this to be uppity or aggravating, but as I have stated it before, we – the civilians – are pretty much fucked if we were to have a proper storm/flood/tsunami etc.
As for idiots needing saving …..we don’t need a storm for that, we already have them on any given sunday, see last discussions we had.
I’m pretty much on board with all that. I expect a certain amount from civil defence but generally assume they will be overwhelmed by a big event. If it’s s traumatic event like a quake expect some of them to be traumatised too.
I am curious about the number of people in Sydney that got into trouble and how many were just caught out and how many were trying to save possessions or thought they’d just get through that bit of flood so they didn’t have to spend a night away from home, that kind of thing.
Great. Hollywood has decided it will make a film about the Persian poet, mystic and scholar Rumi to address Muslim stereotypes in film, by casting Euro-Americans in the lead roles (not that that will be the limit of their imperialism).
“Politicians keep saying they are concerned but their actions, or lack of them, drown out their words. Any one of the analyses of how the latest budget failed the reef is enough to confirm this. Perhaps most astonishing in this shameful chapter in reef guardianship, the federal government tried to cover up what was happening by removing reef-related observations from a UN report.”
Perhaps it’s because of the sheer size – and therefore enormous potential – of their country, but Australians have always demonstrated a harder-edged nationalism than have Kiwis. And that tendency has become even more apparent in recent years, when they ...
Current member of the National Party, List MP Alfred Ngaro, has declared he has an intent towards the possibility of setting up a Christian-oriented “values” party. Simon Bridges initially denied discussion, but we all know his denials are really never ...
Australians went to the polls over the weekend, and have apparently re-elected the shit party to government. It was unexpected, but I guess that's what happens when you have a media landscape utterly dominated by a highly partisan monopoly. Meanwhile, ...
Back in 2017, Taiwan's highest court ruled that violated “the people’s freedom of marriage” and “the people’s right to equality”, and gave the legislature to enact a marriage equality law. And over the weekend, just one week before the deadline ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, May 12 through Sat, May 18, 2019 Editor's Pick 12 excuses for climate inaction and how to refute themUsing moral ...
While abortion laws in New Zealand are likely to be liberalised, in the US abortion rights are being rolled back. This article from Feminist Current looks at the way the anti abortion movement is reframing its arguments. by Karen Jolly ...
by Sean Kearns It appears that even in Britain, where a lot of unions remain affiliated to Labour, the working class itself is less attached to Labour. The bureaucratic leaderships keep unions chained to Labour, the workers are just not ...
In October 2013 I wrote about “Valuing Xero in one hour“, and (although it had a bug) came up with a forecast that justified the then $2.2 billion valuation of Xero with a Weighted Average Cost of Capital of 18%. ...
Climate Change Minister James Shaw has announced the latest decisions in the government's programme to tweak the Emissions Trading Scheme to make it actually discourage pollution rather than subsidise it. There's a commitment to begin auctioning units from late next ...
Dunedin will play host to the New Zealand Minerals Forum at the end of the month, where the companies who dig up New Zealand and destroy our natural environment for private profit will conspire on how to pillage more effectively ...
Earlier in the year, National helped failed Green leadership candidate Vernon Tava set up a "teal" astroturf party, sustainablenz. It seems to have sunk without a trace, without even registering a logo with the Electoral Commission, let alone applying for ...
Those with a progressive agenda (and yes, I count myself as one) have been frustrated by our own inability and reluctance to engage head-on in the most important argument in political discourse – the role, function and objective of government.read ...
There is a story of a little old lady who woke up after a close election and was told that the result was a ‘hung parliament’. She responded that she did not know what that meant, but it sounded like ...
In a major decision, the UK Supreme Court has ruled that that country's spies are not above the law:Government security decisions will in future be open to challenge in the courts after judges ruled that a secretive intelligence tribunal could ...
‘Cheating by university students paying ‘ghostwriters’ to write essays for them is totally unacceptable and requires a nationally co-ordinated response’, says the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union. ...
ECan has just declared a climate emergency, becoming the first local authority in New Zealand to do so. But what does it mean? Their declaration included this:Environment Canterbury declares a climate emergency and commits to continue to: robustly and visibly ...
An investigation by the Privacy Commissioner has found that WINZ systematically misused its powers, conducting intrusive and illegal searches into beneficiaries' lives in violation of both the Social Security Act and Privacy Act. Searches like this:“In one instance, a beneficiary ...
I love the National's Library's Papers Past archive. I've used it many times for work and sometimes just for fun. The one thing I never thought I'd be able to do is vanity-search on it. And yet, here it is: ...
Bolton has never conceded that invading Iraq was a mistake, in fact he considers it to this day still as a roaring success. His history in public life is that of an unrepentant, ignorant thug of a politician, a persona ...
A big myth in this country is that we are all equal under the law. If someone commits a crime, they get prosecuted, regardless of who they are. We already know that that's a myth when it comes to race ...
Hate speech’ laws are being considered in New Zealand. We believe it is important to defend free speech. This is an important issue that the left should take up. If you’d like to be a part of the Left Network ...
One of the criticisms of the government's Zero Carbon Bill is that it is toothless: the independent Climate Change Commission can set budgets and advise on plans, but has no power to implement anything. Greenpeace for example wanted the Commission ...
(fire, California)Some time ago Jeanette Fitzsimons described our action on climate change like a car driving rapidly to a precipice while the occupants argue about whether they should maybe change down a gear. If we are to continue with this ...
“Business as usual” is always the catch-cry of those who are happy with the way things are. “Let’s not change anything” makes sense to those who are doing well and see no reason to run any risks in case that ...
KYOTO, Japan, May 13 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday an update to its methodology used by governments to estimate their greenhouse gas emissions and removals. Governments are required to report their national greenhouse gas ...
The Tertiary Education Union Te Hautū Kahurangi welcomes the pre-budget announcement of $197 million for the reform of vocational education saying it’s a step in the right direction. ...
As Donald Trump surveys the current state of his relationships with China, Iran and North Korea, with all of whom he has recently engaged in a somewhat confrontational way, even someone as resistant to self-doubt as the US President might ...
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being prosecuted for corruption. So how is he planning to avoid it? A law granting him immunity would not survive judicial scrutiny. So, he plans to remove that scrutiny entirely:The new far-reaching bill would ...
Last week I highlighted an odious secrecy clause in the government's Zero Carbon Bill, which unnecessarily exempted information from the Official Information Act, undermining transparency and accountability. The government's Equal Pay Amendment Bill is back from select committee today, and ...
Earlier today Redline reached a total of 600,000 views since we began in June 2011. This is a modest total, but not bad for a hardcore marxist blog at the arse-end of the world, and based in perhaps the most ...
Why is MBIE so supportive of the oil industry, why do they come up with outrageous estimates of the value of the oil industry to New Zealand, and why do they see environmentalists as a threat to be suppressed by ...
So, its on. On May 29, the day before Labour's "wellbeing budget", the centrepiece of its political year when it tries to send a good news message about what its doing, the teachers are going on strike. They've been overworked ...
My wife grew up in suburban London – not an environment that was conducive, one might think, to developing an interest in wild life. But her father was a bird lover and he helped her, too, to develop a love ...
“You just need a sense of humour”. I heard this patronising and unhelpful advice from a panellist at an Autism New Zealand Conference many years ago. What about access to education and services, understanding, financial and other support?These words came ...
The Giddens Project has its origins in my association with 'Third Way' politics during my time as a member of the New Zealand parliament between 1990 and 2008.read more ...
by Jon Flanders Once again this year I traveled to Cuba on a delegation that visited many interesting sites on the island, once of them being the huge May Day march in Havana. Cuba celebrates May Day as a national ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, May 5 through Sat, May 11, 2019 Editor's Pick Proposal to spend 25% of EU budget on climate change Schoolchildren ...
Film review by Don Franks All is not true but lots is good in the Shakespeare movie now showing in Wellington. In “All is true” , Ben Elton’s script combines, happily to this viewer, the little that’s known of historical Shakespeare ...
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below. This post has separate sections for: Climate Change, Climate Change Impacts, Climate Change Mitigation, and Other Papers. Climate change mitigation Climate change communicationClimate change and educational attainment in ...
There's a strange thing about having songwriters as longtime friends. On the one hand there are years when you're mates getting in the same scrapes; they're smoking your weed and you're drinking their riders; you're all fitfully growing up, not ...
Just look at all the houses they own. Parliament's Register of Pecuniary Interests was released yesterday, showing all the pies our MPs said they have their fingers in. And their favourite pie is houses. NewsHub has a list here, and ...
Last week, the UK Parliament became the first in the world to recognise the seriousness and urgency of the environmental situation by declaring a climate emergency. And last night, Ireland followed suit:Ireland has become only the second country in the ...
Two developments over the past week or so demonstrate how serious is the existential crisis we now face, in terms of the damage we are doing to our planet, and how far we are from facing up to our responsibilities. ...
This is a fascinating interview – and not only because it is a highly respected independent journalist, Aaron Maté, interviewing his highly respected mental health expert father, Dr. Gabor Maté. It is fascinating because it is objective and adult ...
At the core of a successful economy is ‘trust’. Buy a can of beans and your decision depends on trusting a whole chain of suppliers. Admittedly, you also trust that the law is working in your favour too; it usually ...
A new 23-country survey conducted by the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project found that America has the highest percentage of climate denial among first-world nations, behind only Indonesia and Saudi Arabia in all the countries surveyed. A total of 13 percent of Americans responded that ...
by Don Franks Way back in the bad old days before cell phones and computers, I helped a fellow car factory militant campaign for a union position. My mate belonged to what was then called the Engineers Union, at that ...
Writing in The Spinoff, former National Minister Wayne Mapp argues that a good first step to meeting the targets of the Zero Carbon Act would be to end fossil fuelled cars. He's right (and I've talked at length about how ...
Yesterday the government announced its Zero Carbon Bill, which would establish a framework for long-term emissions reductions. The most controversial aspect of the Bill is its agricultural targets: for the first time, farmers will face an explicit responsibility to clean ...
This week, TVNZ’s Sunday programme led with a feature about sperm donation. Specifically, about a ‘freelance’ sperm donor, going by the name Tauranga Tony. Real name Tony Ross, he has donated sperm to a number of women. Quite a large number, ...
Shortly after being elected, Labour promised to be "the most open, most transparent Government that New Zealand has ever had". I've commentedrepeatedly on how Labour is failing to meet that promise in its behaviour over parliamentary written questions. And ...
Something odious about the Zero Carbon Bill: it expands the Climate Change Response Act's existing secrecy clause to cover "the Climate Change Commission, in respect of the performance of its functions or exercise of its powers under Parts 1A to ...
Press Release by Speak Up For Women Wellington, 8 May 2019 Speak Up For Women NZ says the sacking of a gender critical British tax expert in the United Kingdom serves as a warning of what is to come if ...
This is a media release from ipbes Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report ...
Improving the safety of all road users is the focus of a new public consultation document on the issue of drug driver testing. Plans for public consultation on options to improve the drug driver testing process have been announced by ...
Police Minister Stuart Nash says calling a cop suddenly got a whole lot easier with the launch of a ground-breaking new service for non-emergency calls. “The single non-emergency number ‘ten-five’ is designed to provide better service for the public and ...
Frontline Police numbers have been boosted with today’s deployment of 77 new officers to the regions.Police Minister Stuart Nash today congratulated the recruits of Wing 325 who graduated at a formal ceremony at the Royal New Zealand Police College. ...
One of the biggest IT projects ever undertaken in the state sector has successfully passed its latest hurdle with the transition of more than 19.7 million taxpayer accounts from one Inland Revenue computer system to another. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash ...
The first nationwide snapshot of the consumption of restricted drugs indicates the prevalence of methamphetamine use in New Zealand, says Police Minister Stuart Nash. “The first quarterly analysis of the nationwide wastewater testing programme reinforces the coalition government’s determination to ...
The spectre of trout farming has reared up from the murky shadows of the previous National government’s treaty deals. Māori owners of Lake Rotoaira near Turangi are reported to be backing an attempt to allow trout farming. ...
Our education system is a slowly unfolding disaster. Too many kids leave school without basic literacy and numeracy skills. In 2014, the Tertiary Education Commission found about half of Year 11 students achieved the international reading and numeracy benchmarks. ...
Free speech or hate speech? When do words go too far? We debate whether New Zealand needs new hate speech laws with ACT leader David Seymour and Labour MP Louisa Wall. ...
The Hauraki Gulf Forum, the statutory body tasked with progressing integrated management of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, today recommended two significant goals for the important and much-loved marine park. ...
“I was very disappointed that last night all my Minister could do when confronted with the reality of teaching, was to mouth the same old clichés and platitudes. ...
The Sensible Sentencing Trust say the Children’s Commissioner is guilty of riding the ‘Colonialism’ bandwagon by blaming racism and colonialism after Oranga Tamariki removed a child from its mother’s care. Children’s Commissioner Judge Andrew ...
The New Zealand Geographic Board Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa (NZGB) is inviting submissions on proposals to create dual Māori–English names for 16 sounds and inlets in Fiordland. The NZGB says restoring traditional Ngāi Tahu names alongside ...
Few of us want to think about something happening to us that might impact on our ability to make sound decisions. The reality is, we can’t predict what’s going to happen in life that may impact on our health or ...
Former retired Probation officer Tom Hemopo and Māori Climate Commissioner, Donna Awatere-Huata are due to give evidence this afternoon at the Māori Prisoner’s Voting Inquiry at the Waitangi Trbunal in Wellington. ...
May 20 (BusinessDesk) - The National Party proposes ambitious new trade targets for New Zealand's relations with both China and the United States in a foreign affairs discussion document released this morning for public consultation. ...
Christchurch Central Labour MP Dr Duncan Webb has been criticized by the NZ Jewish Council for his promotion of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement directed at Israel. ...
The highly publicised case of Nicky Stevens who died in 2015 while in the legal care of the Waikato DHB is to be put before the Prime Minister next week. ...
New Zealand's first shelter dedicated to housing pets affected by family violence is being built. Pet Refuge will provide a temporary safe haven for pets, while their owners escape abuse. The initiative comes as new research from Women’s Refuge reveals ...
Forest and Bird, The Tree Council and the Waitakere Ranges Protection Society are dismayed but not surprised at the recent attacks on the scientific credibility of the Auckland Council Monitoring Report that describes the increased spread of kauri ...
Kiwibuild is turning into a corporate welfare racket, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union in response to news that none of the seven Kiwibuild homes marketed in Christchurch have sold, and therefore the Government is likely to pay out the ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s budget later this month could have contained an additional $6 billion in spending without costing taxpayers a single cent more, Social Credit Party Leader, Chris Leitch told the party’s Canterbury Regional conference ...
New Zealand’s specialist sexual violence service sector is heartened to hear today that the government has demonstrated its commitment to the Well-Being of its citizens by announcing a significant injection of money into the work the sector undertakes ...
The spectre of trout farming has reared up from the murky shadows of the previous National government’s treaty deals. Māori owners of Lake Rotoaira near Turangi are reported to be backing an attempt to allow trout farming. ...
The Aotearoa Legal Workers’ Union (ALWU) launches today to advocate for all legal workers and to improve working conditions for junior lawyers in the legal sector. ...
Tammy Ngawhika has recently achieved her dream of becoming a homeowner, together with her four children. She attained her goal through Progressive Home Ownership. Progressive Home ownership is one of the KiwiBuy products the Government is being ...
The National Network of Stopping Violence Services today welcomed the Ardern Government’s Family Violence and Sexual Violence Package announcement, part of its Wellbeing Budget. ...
A distressed and traumatized grandmother from the Rodney Electorate will meet with Rodney Electorate MP Mark Mitchell on Monday, May 20, 10am at the Rodney Electorate Office, Tamariki House, 7 Tamariki Avenue, Orewa. The Rodney Electorate MP has been ...
Over 400,000 New Zealanders say they would definitely seek out medicinal cannabis products when they become widely available from 2020, according to a large independent survey and the first of its kind, just released. ...
The so-called “ Christchurch Call ” summit in Paris on Wednesday, led by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron, marked a significant escalation of the drive by governments throughout the world to censor ...
A new nationwide Curia Market Research poll shows the gap between supporters and opponents of euthanasia is narrowing, and that many people withdraw their support when asked to consider some of the details involved in the End of Life Choice ...
The recently published article by TVNZ is yet another piece of over sensationalised journalism that drives a wedge into New Zealand society. International Students are an integral party of what makes New Zealand a diverse and unique country in the ...
Simon Shepherd: Minister for Children Tracey Martin, Thanks for your time this morning. So, we’ve seen this jump in the number of newborn Maori babies being taken from their parents in the last three years. Is that because it’s a ...
Recently I was talking with a group of people about the growing issue of internet harassment, and in particular, gender based online abuse. We talked about how online violence directed at women is a symptom of deep-seated gender inequality, and ...
Former Hawke’s Bay woman Lou Hutchinson, who has this week been setting up action group Whanau First in response to a meeting she staged in Raglan on Sunday to challenge Oranga Tamariki child removal strategies, said she’s not surprised by ...
New Zealanders with an interest in the outdoors are being invited to have their say on legislation that helps them access nature throughout the country. ...
Mayor Supports Random Roadside Drug Testing South Taranaki District Mayor Ross Dunlop urges the Government to take immediate action on the introduction of random roadside drug testing. Mayor Dunlop makes the call for action after reading the coroner’s ...
Fish and Game New Zealand welcomes the decision by Environment Minister David Parker to appoint a formal investigator to assess Otago Regional Council’s performance of their RMA functions in relation to freshwater management. ...
PRESS RELEASE “Tanzania has been at the forefront of cleaning up their environment of plastic waste in recent years” says Stuart Batty, Honorary Consul for the United Republic of Tanzania . The Government have announced that Effective 1 June 2019, ...
Forest industry leaders say the pre-Budget announcement by Forestry Minister Shane Jones of additional regional resources for Te Uru Rākau is potentially of great benefit to regional New Zealand. ...
Eight Regional Councils, in partnership with their Territorial Authorities and others, have applied for and will receive $14 million of co-funding from the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) to obtain, LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) elevation datasets. ...
"The latest opinion poll results are in, and 55% of New Zealanders want a New Zealander as our next head of state, only 39% want the next British monarch. This is the third poll in the past three years showing ...
KFC is off the menu this weekend as hundreds of Fast Food workers employed by Restaurant Brands and members of Unite Union take strike action this weekend. ...
The Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) who conduct drug tests on blood samples for a range of government organisations is supporting the introduction of a roadside saliva (oral fluid) test for drug-impaired drivers. ESR forensic toxicologist ...
Today, we celebrate sexual and gender diversity in our communities and welcome the fact that more people than ever are free to identify their gender and love whom they choose. We welcome the progress that has occurred, both in Aotearoa ...
Māori screen organisation Ngā Aho Whakaari says Māori screen practitioners are having to wait until the end of the year for decisions to be made about the promised overhaul of the Māori Media sector in the review being conducted by ...
Up to 120 PSA and E tu union coordinators, contact centre workers and administrators at Access Community Health will be walking off the job from 9:00am as part of a nationwide walk-off. ...
Auckland Action Against Poverty is calling on the CEO and deputy CEO of the Ministry of Social Development to resign following a report by the Privacy Commissioner, which found that the Ministry was unlawfully breaching beneficiaries’ privacy. The report ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucy Deng, Staff Specialist Paediatrician, National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance; Clinical Associate Lecturer, Children’s Hospital Westmead Clinical School, University of Sydney About 4.1 million Australians are under-vaccinated, meaning they’ve received ...
By RNZ Pacific Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare is coming under increasing pressure from his own MPs to switch the country’s political allegiance from Taiwan to China, report local news media. Solomon Islands is one of 17 nations ...
The legislation was introduced by the National government in May 2017 but has languished without progress ever since - it’s the oldest non-members bill yet to receive a first reading by a long way ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Cameron, Research Fellow, University of Sydney Polls had predicted a narrow win for Labor in this election, so what explains the Coalition victory? Data from the Australian Election Study (AES), based ...
Dr Bryce EdwardsThe stars seem to be aligning in favour of the establishment of a socially conservative Christian-based political party, making it more than just a vague possibility. However, some big hurdles remain in place before the National Party ...
After being lobbied to take a stand on scientific terms, the prime minister’s chief science adviser attempted to find out who makes the call on whether or not to approve an application by a majority-Malaysian-owned company to mine at the ...
A Taranaki couple threw in their high-flying careers to bring people together through the joys of good baking.Tucked down an alleyway off New Plymouth’s main street, just a stone’s throw from the famous Len Lye Centre, you’ll find Billow Bakery ...
Broadcasting legend Elizabeth Alley reviews Loving Sylvie, the gorgeous, ephemeral new novel by Elizabeth Smither.A bride is rowed across a grey-green lake to her wedding. She rehearses her new name, “Sylvie Grace Taverner,” as the waters lap the boat. There’s ...
If the wellbeing budget is going to do something about the long-term productivity of the country, it must address the growing gap between digital haves and have-nots, writes Grant Thornton’s Helen Fortune.Many fear that increasing digitisation and automation will result ...
In a series of posts on social media, it is claimed that the touring players targeted a group with ‘homophobic slurs, limp wrists and high pitched voices’.Several members of The Crusaders rugby team have been accused of homophobia following an ...
Tof Eklund reviews Lovestruck, a free-to-play treasure trove of romantic queer gaming content.Voltage’s Lovestruck does not, at first glance, look particularly queer-inclusive. Created in 2017 to unify four otome (‘women’s romance’) mobile games, this game hub now houses at least ...
The Australian left will need to do a far better job of connecting with voters – and what they really care about – if they’re ever going to regain power, writes Australian political historian Geoffrey Robinson.The Australian election result was ...
The National Party has put the relationship with the United States front and centre of its foreign policy, saying it's a relationship that will be prioritised. ...
Katie Meadows reviews Catch-22, George Clooney’s bleak and boring TV adaptation of the classic novel.Even if you are not familiar with Joseph Heller’s 1961 satirical novel, you will be familiar with its title — a catch-22 at its most technical is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen G Bosi, Senior Lecturer in Physics, University of New England Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to ...
The government is investing more than $7.7 million in upgrading the SuperGold card website and an app, plus $600,000 on digital literacy training for seniors. ...
By Marija Taflaga of the Australian National University in Canberra The man that has “always believed in miracles” has just delivered one for the Liberal party. It’s not clear at the time of writing if the government will have ...
May 20 – 26 is macular degeneration awareness week. The subject is a personal one for Grant Thompson and his daughter Donna, who have both been diagnosed the condition which can lead to blindness.“I thought I just needed new glasses, ...
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 contentGovernment Colin James: Ardern: transformation now or a ...
National leader Simon Bridges says he is happy to give Alfred Ngaro "the space" to explore setting up a Christian values party, but National will stand a candidate in Botany. ...
National leader Simon Bridges says he is happy to give Alfred Ngaro "the space" to explore setting up a Christian values party, but National will stand a candidate in Botany. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Brynn Hibbert, Emeritus Professor of Analytical Chemistry, UNSW We measure stuff all the time – how long, how heavy, how hot, and so on – because we need to for things ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katinka van de Ven, Research Fellow, Drug Policy Modelling Program, SPRC, UNSW Most media reports would have you believe steroid users are predominantly young men suffering a “crisis of male ego” who ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Green, Lecturer, UNSW Can the design of a climate change message change someone’s beliefs? Absolutely, and with a surprisingly powerful correlation. My research found climate change messages that spark fear and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karyn Healy, Researcher, The University of Queensland School bullying can have serious consequences for victims including depression, psychosis, self-harm and suicide. With increasing evidence of harm, a groundswell of school anti-bullying programs ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Stanley, Adjunct Professor, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney Melbourne is growing faster than most cities of similar size in developed countries. Population ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Albo, or Plibersek, or whoever it turns out to be the next Labor leader, might have had a lucky accident. ...
Simon Bridges has been damping down rumours that National Party list MP Alfred Ngaro could split off and set up a Christian values party. Watch live as he speaks to Morning Report. ...
Another KiwiBuild development backed by taxpayer money is failing to generate buyer demand - prompting more calls for Labour's flagship programme to be dumped. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Scott Morrison wins re-election in Australia, major boost in funding for sexual violence services, and stories around Alfred Ngaro party continue to swirl.Few saw it coming, but Australian PM Scott Morrison ...
Auckland today hosts delegations from Los Angeles and Guangzhou in its annual tripartite meeting for economic opportunities between the three cities - at a delicate time of division between the Chinese and US over trade. ...
Auckland's growth pains and urgent needs are well known. But, Rupert Hodson of Beca asks, are we responding as urgently and comprehensively as we should for such a 'crisis'? ...
Wastewater testing provides an objective, standardised way of assessing levels of drug usage, and that has manifold benefits, writes Brent Gilpin of ESR.There are suggestions from time to time that wastewater drug testing is an erosion of our civil liberties and ...
While curbing the proliferation of extremism and terrorism through social media is understandably a priority, it is really the visible tip of a much larger regulatory iceberg, writes Dr Peter Thompson. ...
If the government doesn’t include a comprehensive solution for Māui dolphins in this Threat Management Plan, it will be game over, writes Livia Esterhazy of WWF-New ZealandOnce great flightless birds roamed Aotearoa’s forests. Before humans arrived, moa only had one predator, ...
The Coalition win in Australia has dealt a blow to the hopes of more than 800 refugees stuck on Pacific Islands, writes RNZ Pacific’s Johnny Blades.Refugees in Australia’s offshore processing centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island had ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison’s spectacular win, against all expectations, is attributable to a potent mix of his strengths and Labor’s weaknesses. Morrison, it turns out, was made ...
Daily Review 07/06/2016 
Perhaps it’s because of the sheer size – and therefore enormous potential – of their country, but Australians have always demonstrated a harder-edged nationalism than have Kiwis. And that tendency has become even more apparent in recent years, when they ...5 hours ago
Current member of the National Party, List MP Alfred Ngaro, has declared he has an intent towards the possibility of setting up a Christian-oriented “values” party. Simon Bridges initially denied discussion, but we all know his denials are really never ...5 hours ago
Australians went to the polls over the weekend, and have apparently re-elected the shit party to government. It was unexpected, but I guess that's what happens when you have a media landscape utterly dominated by a highly partisan monopoly. Meanwhile, ...9 hours ago
New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations National President JamesRanstead argues student voice is crucial in the Reform of VocationalEducation ...9 hours ago
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, May 12 through Sat, May 18, 2019 Editor's Pick 12 excuses for climate inaction and how to refute them Using moral ...2 days ago
While abortion laws in New Zealand are likely to be liberalised, in the US abortion rights are being rolled back. This article from Feminist Current looks at the way the anti abortion movement is reframing its arguments. by Karen Jolly ...2 days ago
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below. This post has separate sections for: Climate Change, Climate Change Impacts, Climate Change Mitigation, and Other Papers. Climate change An example of principal component analysis application on climate change ...2 days ago
by Sean Kearns It appears that even in Britain, where a lot of unions remain affiliated to Labour, the working class itself is less attached to Labour. The bureaucratic leaderships keep unions chained to Labour, the workers are just not ...3 days ago
In October 2013 I wrote about “Valuing Xero in one hour“, and (although it had a bug) came up with a forecast that justified the then $2.2 billion valuation of Xero with a Weighted Average Cost of Capital of 18%. ...3 days ago
Those with a progressive agenda (and yes, I count myself as one) have been frustrated by our own inability and reluctance to engage head-on in the most important argument in political discourse – the role, function and objective of government.read ...3 days ago
I love the National's Library's Papers Past archive. I've used it many times for work and sometimes just for fun. The one thing I never thought I'd be able to do is vanity-search on it. And yet, here it is: ...4 days ago
Bolton has never conceded that invading Iraq was a mistake, in fact he considers it to this day still as a roaring success. His history in public life is that of an unrepentant, ignorant thug of a politician, a persona ...5 days ago
(fire, California)Some time ago Jeanette Fitzsimons described our action on climate change like a car driving rapidly to a precipice while the occupants argue about whether they should maybe change down a gear. If we are to continue with this ...5 days ago
Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons headquarters in The Hague. Image credit: Prensa Latina Ready Syria to Cooperate with Organization Against Chemical Weapons Multinational bodies, like ... 6 days ago
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, May 5 through Sat, May 11, 2019 Editor's Pick Proposal to spend 25% of EU budget on climate change Schoolchildren ...1 week ago
Improving the safety of all road users is the focus of a new public consultation document on the issue of drug driver testing. Plans for public consultation on options to improve the drug driver testing process have been announced by ...4 days ago
The spectre of trout farming has reared up from the murky shadows of the previous National government’s treaty deals. Māori owners of Lake Rotoaira near Turangi are reported to be backing an attempt to allow trout farming. ...46 mins ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucy Deng, Staff Specialist Paediatrician, National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance; Clinical Associate Lecturer, Children’s Hospital Westmead Clinical School, University of Sydney About 4.1 million Australians are under-vaccinated, meaning they’ve received ...40 mins ago
A little-known piece of 1990s legislation should give the Zero Carbon Bill's doubters pause. ...41 mins ago
By RNZ Pacific Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare is coming under increasing pressure from his own MPs to switch the country’s political allegiance from Taiwan to China, report local news media. Solomon Islands is one of 17 nations ...1 hour ago
The legislation was introduced by the National government in May 2017 but has languished without progress ever since - it’s the oldest non-members bill yet to receive a first reading by a long way ...1 hour ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Cameron, Research Fellow, University of Sydney Polls had predicted a narrow win for Labor in this election, so what explains the Coalition victory? Data from the Australian Election Study (AES), based ...2 hours ago
The government has proposed further changes to the emissions trading scheme. ...2 hours ago
Medicinal cannabis firm Cannasouth is poised to become NZX's first initial public offering in two years. ...2 hours ago
3 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McGreevy, Professor of Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare Science, University of Sydney In the first edition of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin mentions dogs 54 times. He does so ...3 hours ago
After being lobbied to take a stand on scientific terms, the prime minister’s chief science adviser attempted to find out who makes the call on whether or not to approve an application by a majority-Malaysian-owned company to mine at the ...3 hours ago
A Taranaki couple threw in their high-flying careers to bring people together through the joys of good baking.Tucked down an alleyway off New Plymouth’s main street, just a stone’s throw from the famous Len Lye Centre, you’ll find Billow Bakery ...4 hours ago
The National Party is accusing the Environment Minister David Parker of washing his hands of investigations into firefighting foam contamination. ...4 hours ago
Broadcasting legend Elizabeth Alley reviews Loving Sylvie, the gorgeous, ephemeral new novel by Elizabeth Smither.A bride is rowed across a grey-green lake to her wedding. She rehearses her new name, “Sylvie Grace Taverner,” as the waters lap the boat. There’s ...4 hours ago
Kiwi Property has reported a strong full year underlying profit, as it continues to reinvest in its Auckland retail and office properties. ...5 hours ago
Tof Eklund reviews Lovestruck, a free-to-play treasure trove of romantic queer gaming content.Voltage’s Lovestruck does not, at first glance, look particularly queer-inclusive. Created in 2017 to unify four otome (‘women’s romance’) mobile games, this game hub now houses at least ...6 hours ago
Katie Meadows reviews Catch-22, George Clooney’s bleak and boring TV adaptation of the classic novel.Even if you are not familiar with Joseph Heller’s 1961 satirical novel, you will be familiar with its title — a catch-22 at its most technical is ...7 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen G Bosi, Senior Lecturer in Physics, University of New England Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to ...7 hours ago
By Marija Taflaga of the Australian National University in Canberra The man that has “always believed in miracles” has just delivered one for the Liberal party. It’s not clear at the time of writing if the government will have ...9 hours ago
The New Zealand Bankers' Association is calling for a rethink of the Reserve Bank’s bank capital proposals to avoid hurting the economy. ...10 hours ago
The country's largest power company, Genesis Energy, is easing off its plan to stop using coal completely by 2030. ...10 hours ago
It's not building materials and labour costs making new homes cost so much in New Zealand. Bernard Hickey analyses a new report. ...11 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Brynn Hibbert, Emeritus Professor of Analytical Chemistry, UNSW We measure stuff all the time – how long, how heavy, how hot, and so on – because we need to for things ...12 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katinka van de Ven, Research Fellow, Drug Policy Modelling Program, SPRC, UNSW Most media reports would have you believe steroid users are predominantly young men suffering a “crisis of male ego” who ...12 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Green, Lecturer, UNSW Can the design of a climate change message change someone’s beliefs? Absolutely, and with a surprisingly powerful correlation. My research found climate change messages that spark fear and ...12 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karyn Healy, Researcher, The University of Queensland School bullying can have serious consequences for victims including depression, psychosis, self-harm and suicide. With increasing evidence of harm, a groundswell of school anti-bullying programs ...12 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Stanley, Adjunct Professor, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney Melbourne is growing faster than most cities of similar size in developed countries. Population ...12 hours ago
Anna Rawhiti-Connell gives her selection of the delights of the Auckland Writers' Festival. ...12 hours ago
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Scott Morrison wins re-election in Australia, major boost in funding for sexual violence services, and stories around Alfred Ngaro party continue to swirl.Few saw it coming, but Australian PM Scott Morrison ...12 hours ago
Auckland today hosts delegations from Los Angeles and Guangzhou in its annual tripartite meeting for economic opportunities between the three cities - at a delicate time of division between the Chinese and US over trade. ...13 hours ago
Auckland's growth pains and urgent needs are well known. But, Rupert Hodson of Beca asks, are we responding as urgently and comprehensively as we should for such a 'crisis'? ...14 hours ago
While curbing the proliferation of extremism and terrorism through social media is understandably a priority, it is really the visible tip of a much larger regulatory iceberg, writes Dr Peter Thompson. ...14 hours ago
The Coalition win in Australia has dealt a blow to the hopes of more than 800 refugees stuck on Pacific Islands, writes RNZ Pacific’s Johnny Blades.Refugees in Australia’s offshore processing centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island had ...14 hours ago
For the people who think nature should be left to sort itself out, forests in Northland are on the verge of collapse from possum damage,
http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/stopforestcollapse
That’s the trees, but the it’s the whole ecosystem. Stoats, rats and other predators are decimating the wildlife populations too.
When you take key elements out of an ecosystem the whole thing is affected and not necessarily in ways that nature can accommodate well. Evolution is a thing, and where species have co-evolved, you get climax forests and stable systems. When you introduce elements that intervene in that outside of the evolutionary processes, you potentially get collapse. If even we thought that evolution will sort that out over the next centuries or millenia this is not something we want happening in the age of climate change.
Those Northland forests could be protected with the knowledge and skill we have now. Political choices from National mean they’re not.
Just another day in John Key’s neo-liberal nightmare.
We have become a cruel, selfish, uncaring and selfish nation under his wretched leadership.
DOC’s funding being cut and nature dies.
What knowledge and skill?
And don’t say traps because traps aren’t enough. If they were we would have sorted out the pests decades ago.
Trapping could reduce numbers enough to save the forest, sure. It’s not lack of traps or knowledge that’s the problem, it’s funding. Personally I’d prefer trapping over poisoning (including job and small business creation in the context of kaitiakitanga) but we have the poisoning tech too.
How many thousands of people out there minding how many millions of traps?
Should we give them guns and ammo to shoot the pests if they see any?
It’s not funding either, it’s actual physical capability. If we want to eradicate the pests that were introduced then it’s going to have to be a major concerted effort across the whole country over a short period of time and make sure we get the whole damn lot of them. And the chances are that we’d miss some which means that in a few short years we’d bee doing it all again.
Me, I’m hoping that our scientists will develop a way to sterilise them all. Then we may have a chance to eradicate them. Unfortunately, this governments been cutting research through the stupidity of competition.
We’re never going to eradicate those pests on the mainland (at least not in the foreseeable future). In order to save the forests, we don’t need eradication, we just need to keep the numbers down low enough for species and systems to thrive above reproduction level.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time around trappers and in country more difficult than Northland forests. It takes surprisingly little to control a population in a given area. DOC and other govt organisations will have the research on this, but often even just having trap lines every x kms that get checked once a month can bring populations down enough for bird species to increase. You need to do extra in mast years. 1080 every decade or two if you have to. That research would have been done with a close eye on budgets (ie what’s the least amount of trapping we can do for the most effect), so giving them a decent budget instead of a minimal one would increase benefit substantially.
Put together small teams of people who are self employed, who love spending time in the bush, let them live in the forest with a caretaking contract so they can do other work there too. They can make a living from the possum fur and a bounty on the stoat and rats. Huge potential. We already have volunteer networks in NZ doing trapping, so co-ordinate and increase that eg DOC or Landcare or whoever put in the lines and registered volunteers who are already in the area (trampers, fishermen, climbers etc) do the line checks. These aren’t difficult things, they just need vision and funding.
my auntie was a possum trapper, one of my cousins partners and another cousin are full time possum trappers in the deep south, I have been a part time possum trapper – it is hard work.
It can be done but you have to be very fit, smart, dedicated and basically not have any qualms about killing stuff.
Could be that those qualities are in abundance out there with the not-employed – but it ain’t a video game and it is hard work even on easy country let alone hills.
Still, the possums have to go.
Yeah, the biggest obstacle after funding and will is that we don’t have the same numbers of young guys coming through who go out and learn the trade. I guess I envisage us as a population having more physical lives in a post-carbon world, so may as well start now 🙂
At least some of the people I know that do it love being in the bush. I think that would be key. Getting to live in the wilderness would be a pretty big attraction.
Full respect to you and your family for that commitment.
Helluva a lot more than I do for saving the forest.
Need a sexually transmitted disease that induces sterilization.
pretty good possibility – and farmers are unlikely to screw this one up.
lol hey hey there farmers aren’t THAT bad and remember they only love animals when it is really cold…
The news item I saw a few years ago was looking at that type of thing – yes.
Quite a few years ago and in the meantime we can use the tools we have to hand.
Hi weka, amen to trapping over poisoning.
No animal should die in such a cruel painful way as 1080 poison.
Put a bounty on possum ears $2, $4,$10…
There is enough money, just a lack of priorities.
A helicopter and buckets of 1080.
That’s one of the major reasons we now have the luxury of pest free islands and some of our native birds haven’t become extinct.
It would be nigh on impossible to cover the Northland forests with traps, due to the number needed and there would be large chunks of area you wouldn’t be able to access on foot creating permanent reinfestation spots.
And we’ve been dropping 1080 since the 1950s. In that time the pests have spread throughout NZ.
I’m not a great fan of 1080, but it is pretty effective in restoring bird populations where it’s used appropriately.
The comparison with the 50s is not that useful because how, where and when 1080 is used has changed so much.
Spread of pests is complex. Possums and deer will spread faster and more where you open up areas with tracks and roads. Some of it is just time. It takes time for a population to expand out of its range.
If you 1080 every 3 or 4 years in the same place, those areas end up with a low levels of pests. We only do 1080 on a tiny fraction of the DoC estate, so it could clearly be increased by a lot.
“It would be nigh on impossible to cover the Northland forests with traps, due to the number needed and there would be large chunks of area you wouldn’t be able to access on foot creating permanent reinfestation spots.”
You do selected ridgelines, and you do the line once a month. I don’t know Northland but I’m guessing it’s not harder than country down south.
1080 is useful, but it’s also got problems. I think it’s a mistake to rely on it as the main approach indefinitely across all native ecosystems (and increasingly across farmland).
I think that was the issue with possum trapping historically is that trappers would do the easy country all the time. It got rid of some possums, but the issue was that it wasn’t getting conservation benefits on the whole as there was plenty of country that still wasn’t getting pest control. I’ve been involved in pest control work and bait lines are about 50-100m apart with each bait station on the line about the same distance apart.
Are trap lines done the same as bait lines?
Trappers doing the easy country is a management issues, it’s solvable.
With bait stations you only have to check/refill every six months, and they contain a couple of hundred pellets in each one – I’m not sure how many rats/possums that kills, probably a lot. And you get complete coverage of an area so long as they’re laid out in a grid over the land.
With trapping, I’m assuming we’re talking leg-hold traps you’re only targetting possums as they’re the only thing of value. Rats are at least as big a problem as possums and they’re missed out. DoC does have the new Goodnature self-reseting traps that can kill 24 rats before they need a new gas cannister. That could be a way forward. Have they been used successfully in a large area like a Regional Park? Not sure.
In a post carbon world, 1080 is probably not possible (using helicopters). Or maybe if helicopter use was prioritised for critical things like conservation we could carry on for another 50-100 years, who knows. In the long term I think we’re looking at only being able to manage pests in critical areas and close to population centres where people can access on foot using basic traps. The rest of the country might be unmanageable. Hope I’m wrong, but that could be the reality.
Any reason you can’t put out kill traps for the mustelids and rodents at the same time as doing the possum line? The Goodnature traps sound good, and I’m sure if there was more of a will there would more tech like that developped.
Let people live in the parks. It changes the ratios hugely.
Yeah that would be a good way to work it. The Goodnature people happened to be the right people (industrial designers) looking at the problem of an archaic trap that DoC was using – the Doc 200 trap is still in use and it looks as if it was designed in the 1800s. The company got some grants a long the way, but it doesn’t appear it was targetted research. So yeah I think we’re just scratching the surface really without proper research funding.
I’m with you on having people living in Forests, Parks. The european approach has been to lock these places these up and people are only allowed to look, not touch. Contrary to what native cultures do, which is to actually live in the environment.
In a post carbon world you’d probably shift to using airships for the aerial drops of 1080. Bio-fuel and helium would mean that they’d still be practical.
we should start using them now – where can you get them? can you build them?
There are some pretty interesting regulations around experimental aircraft above a trivial mass. Additionally, with airships the basics are easily done, but the control issues are pretty severe (especially for smaller blimps). Large sail area compared to mass/momentum. Sort of sucks in windy mountainous terrain.
It’s definitely a feasible idea – I immediately went to a sort of blimp roomba, dropping 1080 on a regular GPS run and returning to an automatic hopper station to refill/refuel. Payload a few times the size of a helicopter.
Whether that works for anyting approaching NZ weather and terrain, on the other hand… that’s what R&D is for 🙂
Draco the world is almost out of recoverable helium.
[citation needed]
helium is a bit of an issue, but for a drone airship dropping 1080 there’s no reason to not use hydrogen.
I just have the (incorrect) Hey hey my my lyric “and once they’re gone, they won’t come back…” going round my head about this…
Morgon Foundation gets it…..
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/201803600/gareth-morgan-calls-for-tax-reform
watch the attacks now.
Great idea Pat. As Gareth says, who has the balls to sell and action an idea. It would cost Gareth and Key so are they for it?
The top 10% have the power to block and humiliate any possible proposers. And yet 90% of the people would benefit as would the Economy.
“who has the balls to sell and action an idea?”….. labour/green coalition perhaps
Nice article on Stuff about the slush fund . TV3 picked it up.. Shocking. Pitch fork time. Seriously.
Link?
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/asset-sales-cash-used-as-govt-slush-fund–peters-2016060713#axzz4AsLB1NRV
Bugger, so many news links, it was newshub surprisingly not stuff nor has Herald picked it up yeti.
The most beautiful woman in NZ the lovely Sam Hayes did a opening on TV3 news about Bill and his lies about our asset sales money.
Paraphrasing Blinglish:
Well, we didn’t have to borrow that money to pay for things…
How much has he borrowed so far due to the tax cuts?
And, of course, no government ever has to borrow money as they can, and should, just create it.
Deceitful fucks. Is all I call it DT. Peters said same thing it’s deceitful.
He sells assets and tells the nation it will be used for, then doesn’t give too shits about sticking to his promises and does what the fuck he likes.
Imagine if an agent sold your car for 5k, had instructions to use the money for another car but spent half the money on himself and only paid a deposit on the car you wanted.
When are these jerks hitting the road to campaign.
and in the news today…National Gov caught in a lie (yet again)……and in other news……
LMFAO, you were so right, then appears..
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/bennett-owns-up-to-misinformation-2016060719#axzz4AsLB1NRV
Now Bennetts admitted she lied about the sally visit.
Oh come on, time for a snap election or the dissolution of parliament , governor general stepping in. this has become absolutely ridiculous. Bordering insighting anarchy and civil unrest.
I bloody sick of this, and ready to act I can assure you.
If it wasn’t so damaging it would be funny….it certainly defies belief that they haven’t been dismissed as the bad joke they are ….as yet.
Surprise surprise, billy and johnny doing what they do best.
Wow 167 mil for membership for two international banks. Nice work if you can get it.
30,000 Troops Kick Off NATO’s Largest Eastern Europe War Game Ever, Will Practice Invading Russia’s Kaliningrad
Anyone would think that the West wanted a war with Russia.
Oh, and then there’s this bit:
Someone invited the gun nuts along for the ride.
One News Colmar Brunton poll for June 2016:
National 48% (down from 50)
Labour 29% (up from 28)
Greens 12% (up from 10)
NZ First 9%
Maori Party 0.7% (down from 1.1)
Conservative Party 0.7% (up from 0.3)
ACT Party 0.3% (down from 0.7)
Other 0.6% (up from 0,2)
Polling was done between 28th of May and 2nd of June, the MoU announcement part way through so can’t take much from that.
Preferred Prime Minister:
John Key 39%
Winston Peters 12% (up from 10)
Andrew Little 7%
http://colmarbrunton.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/160607-ONE-News-Colmar-Brunton-Poll-report-28-May-2-June-2016-prelim.pdf
Doesn’t the Colmar-Brunton poll always have National 4+ percentage points above their actual support?
Yes
Trend is good. National down 2 Labour+Greens up 3.
Colmar Brunton has frequently had LAB + GR at the low to mid 40’s several times recently, this poll basically returns to that recent ‘norm’ after the prior poll went a bit low on the LAB/GR block:
Swordfish from a few weeks back:
This latest poll just solidifies that result i.e. LAB + GR are sitting at low to mid 40s.
Low to mid forties this far out is all good . if it starts to shift to the mid 40s and higher in the new year we might see key go for an early election.
I think the election is 14 months out any way.
The finer print of the poll separates the results into pre and post MoU, and post MoU it shows Labour support increasing by 5.2%, Greens dropping by 3.5%, Nat increasing by 1.9% and NZF dropping by 4.1%. So pretty much break even between Lab/Gr and Nat post MoU. NZF took a big hit though. Shown on page 9 of the report:
http://colmarbrunton.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/160607-ONE-News-Colmar-Brunton-Poll-report-28-May-2-June-2016-prelim.pdf
the big Australian storm hit Tassie today, more loss of life, catastrophic floods, evacuations. As in the Sydney storm, rescue crews are saying that too many people are doing daft things which diverts workers away from other work to rescue them. I wonder if this is an emerging extreme weather phenomena. People getting caught out more because of the severity, more people not knowing what are good decisions, and just a higher percentage of wrong place wrong time.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-07/woman's-body-found-latrobe-tasmania-major-flooding-wreaks-havoc/7483726
Some people had a great time doing daft things.
http://www.redbullcapefear.com/
They need something like an electronic anti-rescue beacon bracelet. If something happens to them while adventuring during an extreme weather event no-one has to come to the rescue if shit goes south.
very much like the geezers in their four wheel drives. Innit?
I would assume that the security and first emergency team is privately employed. Each team comes with their own first response team. At the end of the day the guys that do the sport will not care, and at this level of skill and danger you need a specialised team to do rescue work.
Not really. Pretty sure the 4WD dudes were just regular people, not extreme sportspeople. And they didn’t go out to adventure in an extreme weather event that was a civil emergency, they got caught out by a fairly normal weather pattern (just like motorists and the NZTA elsewhere that day)
Sorry weka, but I wouldn’t have called the weather pattern that day fairly normal, and somewhere “regular people” would have prudently gone. What happened was pretty much to my reading of the forecast. What happened elsewhere, like on Crown Range was resolved from a personal safety perspective within minutes. There’s absolutely no comparison there.
and no comparison with extreme sportspeople either.
What was out of the ordinary about the weather that day?
The storm was forecast, a heavy snow warning for Otago high country, and it looked like shit from late the day before.
They have also almost admitted that the poor conditions where the reason they went up there, for the challenge.
RIght, but just a fairly normal storm for Central. Not a climate change extreme weather event like Australia has just experienced?
The sub thread is that I commented that extreme sportspeople who intentionally go out to play during a civil emergency could cede their right to rescue services that are needed elsewhere (I support their right to play). Sabine then said it was the same as the 4WD dudes. I think the situations are completely different, for multiple reasons, some of which I’ve explained. I don’t really need to rehash the 4WD situation (you and I will probably have to agree to disagree on their degree of idiocy and culpability there, my main point in the past has been that they shouldn’t be charged for the rescue). I was just clarifying that that was a normal weather even for May in Central.
Sorry, and thanks for the clarification. I took your comments to mean conditions were benign.
But in the same way that those conditions weren’t unusual for Central Otago, the south east coast of Australia is very exposed to high energy air masses from Coral Sea interacting with stuff from Southern Ocean. That’s how the sandstone cliffs along that coast have formed. They are relatively infrequent events, so the bold build their mansions out onto the sand dunes….
What is common between the two situations is inappropriate decisions people make in the actual or possible danger, as you pointed out in your original post. And the difficulty the same people have in taking responsibility for their poor decisions. It’s intriguing that the same people tend to inhabit the right of the political spectrum.
It’s this disconnect that makes meaningful discussion on pre-emptive actions to avert climate change almost impossible. I await the awarding of the Darwin Award to a denier for demise due to climatic events.
It does seem like a good opportunity to talk about changing risk assessment in a climate change world. I think there is the modern problem of people taking risks because they have 4WDs and cell phones, risks they wouldn’t have taken back in the day. And people who think they know how to do something because they’ve read about it on the internet and we live in a culture where you learn how to use tools from reading a Mitre10 tutorial instead of in the past when we learnt from people who knew how to actually do things. All that is a potent mix for people doing stupid shit.
When I read through some of the Sydney reports the emergecny crews were saying again and again how often they had to go and rescue people from stupid situations when they were needed elsewhere. We’ve always had people who do stupid or ignorant things (been there myself), but I think the numbers are greater now. And more people are less experienced at dealing with nature.
I remember floods and snow storms from the 60’s to 80’s, and they were real rippers, like delivering milk and bread in a jet boat, and Invercargill under water. People took responsibility for themselves and helped others, and got on with it.
Today it’s all the fault of someone or something, come and rescue me. The media narrative around Global Warming feeds this to an extent by narrowing what is “normal” and defining events with statistical return periods of 50 years as abnormal. And since weather records in this part of the world are so short, only a couple of hundred years, we have no idea what the extremes are on a millennial scale.
I’m not saying that global warming isn’t a very real thing, but that the appreciation and respect of our weather’s variability and power is being eroded responsibility put to “someone else”
Wrong. Those are just the day by day records of weather. But any exceptional weather is pushed into the geology and the living organisms. That is literally what causes flood plains and erosion. Normal weather doesn’t do that much. Exceptional weather does.
We have accurate climate records for extreme weather about the last 20 thousand years for most of the world with an accuracy down to about a 20-50 year level depending of area, and moderately inaccurate for about the last couple of million years. It gets pretty inaccurate (ie about 50k years) after that.
Basically we haven’t seen anything like this since the Eocene about 34 million years ago, and we only have an accuracy in the order of 100k years then. This looks freakingly fast climate change.
Get used to it. At the current rate we’re looking at about 6 degrees C this century. That is something that we last saw happen over 250k years – more than 34 million years ago…
As far as I can tell, we are going to beat 2 deg C warming over the pre-industrial baseline, in the next 10 years.
If Global Dimming particulate solar shielding effects disappeared, we would already be there.
And now we are consistently over 400ppm CO2, we have basically gone back 15M years. During the mid Miocene. And the temp then was way hotter than 2 deg C over the pre-industrial baseline.
The thermal inertia of the system means we won’t feel the full heat of today’s 405ppm for half a generation. Fun times.
Want more economic growth, people?
Another day at the office with their own safety/rescue crews.
not infallible though presumably.
a few things that i have raised before
a. we don’t have enough full time emergency staff to cope with the increase of natural emergencies, and all services are having a hard time finding volunteers.
b. we don’t have a population that is prepared to a. look after themselves in case of an emergency or b. be able to volunteer and help the emergency services.
c. check for auckland – i.e. emergency shelters – we will be told where to shelter when the emergency is ongoing – does that make you feel safer? The same can be said for anywhere else in NZ>
As i said in another thread, these are not free services, we are not well prepared here or anywhere else on the planet
I am not saying this to be uppity or aggravating, but as I have stated it before, we – the civilians – are pretty much fucked if we were to have a proper storm/flood/tsunami etc.
As for idiots needing saving …..we don’t need a storm for that, we already have them on any given sunday, see last discussions we had.
I’m pretty much on board with all that. I expect a certain amount from civil defence but generally assume they will be overwhelmed by a big event. If it’s s traumatic event like a quake expect some of them to be traumatised too.
I am curious about the number of people in Sydney that got into trouble and how many were just caught out and how many were trying to save possessions or thought they’d just get through that bit of flood so they didn’t have to spend a night away from home, that kind of thing.
Great. Hollywood has decided it will make a film about the Persian poet, mystic and scholar Rumi to address Muslim stereotypes in film, by casting Euro-Americans in the lead roles (not that that will be the limit of their imperialism).
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/06/jalaluddin-al-rumi-film-muslim-stereotypes-gladiator-david-franzoni
“Politicians keep saying they are concerned but their actions, or lack of them, drown out their words. Any one of the analyses of how the latest budget failed the reef is enough to confirm this. Perhaps most astonishing in this shameful chapter in reef guardianship, the federal government tried to cover up what was happening by removing reef-related observations from a UN report.”
we could replace the word ‘reef’ with ‘river’……….
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jun/07/as-a-worker-on-the-great-barrier-reef-im-ashamed-to-look-my-children-in-the-eye
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2016/jun/07/great-barrier-reef-diving-in-the-stench-of-millions-of-rotting-animals-video