Daily Review 10/03/2017

44 comments on “Daily Review 10/03/2017 ”

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1. Gristle 1

   10 March 2017 at 8:11 pm

   Raf Manji to stand against Browlee in Ilam. http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/326335/chch-councillor-to-take-on-senior-minister-in-ilam

   Is Raf a credible threat to Browlee? He certainly has made a strong and ethically based presence on the council.

   Do Labour and Greens help fan the fire by having low key campaigns here?
   • mickysavage 1.1

     10 March 2017 at 8:23 pm

     Wow I’m sure both parties would have jumped at the chance to have him as a candidate.
     • mauī 1.1.1

       10 March 2017 at 10:38 pm

       Yep wow, could that be an interesting three horse race now for Ilam. I can’t help but feel he might be losing quite a few votes by not attaching to Labour though.
       • James 1.1.1.1

         10 March 2017 at 10:47 pm

         Or he might get more for not being associated with them.
         • mauī 1.1.1.1.1

           10 March 2017 at 11:02 pm

           I don’t agree, I assume most electorate voters are influenced along party lines so they’re likely to see who the candidates are for those two major parties and that will be front of mind for them.

           That’s a big disadvantage for an independent I reckon who has to catch up through name recognition alone.
   • Antoine 1.2

     10 March 2017 at 11:24 pm

     I would vote for Raf over Brownlee in 1 second if I was in ChCh
2. Punkscience 2

   10 March 2017 at 8:25 pm

   I had a great poo today. It’s probably surfing out the Manukau right now.
3. mickysavage 3

   10 March 2017 at 8:42 pm

   Congratulations to Action Station and Laura O’Connell Rapia for the billboard that appears in this post’s photo.

   Hopefully there will be many more …

   If you feel like contributing then go to https://medium.com/actionstation/nick-smith-thinks-you-wont-notice-the-extra-poo-in-your-water-eb3bf4c8d5c3#.ug32rfoc2
   • weka 3.1

     10 March 2017 at 8:46 pm

     That’s a great billboard. Can anyone say where it is and the implication of the location?
     • mickysavage 3.1.1

       10 March 2017 at 9:02 pm

       Middle of Wellington I think Manners Street. Maybe they should have chosen the middle of Hamilton …
4. JC 4

   10 March 2017 at 9:19 pm

   http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/326343/record-rain-causes-slips-and-power-outages

   Finally…. after several days coverage.. Phil Goff put the Elephant out there….

   Can’t quickly find the quote, but he mentioned that dirty C word on Checkpoint earlier…
   paraphrased, he said something along the lines that “Auckland” was likely to see more events like this as a result of Climate Change!
   And that things may need to change to address this…

   Odd that this is the first mention of CC, and it comes from Local Government..

   Meanwhile don’t even consider what’s happening over the pacific..

   http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa-pruitt-idUSKBN16G1XX

   Perhaps an Open Mike Topic but pretty busy over there with other agendas….
   • marty mars 4.1

     10 March 2017 at 9:54 pm

     Yep. I have found it strange that Auckland is about to have water shortages amongst the rain they are getting. I know the reason that they are stating but really? Silt? Haven’t they mitigated against that in the past. These wild card events are really showing we are not far away from disaster anywhere imo – our basic infrastructure is suspect.
     • weka 4.1.1

       10 March 2017 at 10:08 pm

       Yep.

       How ready are you feeling locally marty?
       • marty mars 4.1.1.1

         10 March 2017 at 10:20 pm

         We have our own couple wee hydro plus lots of individual systems but seweage systems including storm overflow is bad with old pipes and multi year discharges into the sea via creeks which cause tdc no swimming signs to go up. Excessive irrigation for dairy is fucking the rivers now and drying them early. Fuck they even want to mess with te waikoropupu springs!!!

         Our community is pretty strongish ie pretty self reliant if we had to be but the hill is vulnerable to blocking. We get rain and flooding and slips.

         I think we may be a 5 out of 10 in a good day but water is one of our major issues now.
         • weka 4.1.1.1.1

           10 March 2017 at 11:17 pm

           5 out of 10, hadn’t thought of a scale before, that’s good.

           I reckon anyone within cooee of the Alpine Fault needs to be thinking about water and future proofing to back up centralised systems.

           Sewerage into the sea is going to be interesting too. Lots of people are surprised at how many towns and villages have such old septic systems that used to work when populations were lower but now are stretched. Good opportunity to replace them with something resilient rather than just with something to meet 2017 code. Unfortunately I don’t think many are thinking that way yet, although I assume more people in your area are.
     • Antoine 4.1.2

       10 March 2017 at 11:29 pm

       Thats the nature of living in New Zealand. We don’t have enough wealth to proof our system against all contingencies. (In fact no country does, but with our low population density and sometimes full-on weather conditions, it is particularly notable here.) Squeezing out that last 1% of reliability is a very expensive business…

       A.
       • weka 4.1.2.1

         10 March 2017 at 11:42 pm

         It’s not the last 1% of reliability that is at stake though and no-one is suggesting that we build to zero risk. Problem is that we’re mostly not even having the conversation. FFS, NZ doesn’t even have a proper Tsunami warning and evacuated system in, 6 years after Chch. We’re still building houses in firespots. We’re not replanting forests. We’re pulling water out of the water table and pumping it into the air instead of repurposing land to drought-proof it. NZ is one the best placed countries in the world to future proof against CC and we’re fucking it up badly.
         • Antoine 4.1.2.1.1

           10 March 2017 at 11:55 pm

           These are good things to work on

           A.
     • lprent 4.1.3

       11 March 2017 at 12:27 am

       These wild card events are really showing we are not far away from disaster anywhere imo – our basic infrastructure is suspect.

       Pretty much. That is always the case. You simply can’t massively safety proof infrastructure for the highly unexpected, it simply costs too much. In this case the Ardmore treatment plant is getting more suspended silt in the water, and that is off the largely protected by bush Hunua catchment.

       It is a trade-off between engineering costs and susceptibility to damage / disruption of services. However I’d expect that somewhere, there are a few engineers going over recent (ie last few decades) of weather reports and silt levels to reassess / check the risk.

       Yep… http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/326322/auckland-risks-worst-water-crisis-in-20-years

       Auckland mayor Phil Goff said if tonight’s rainfall put more pressure on the city’s largest water treatment plant, the way water was managed at Ardmore would need to be reassessed.

       He said this week’s storm might be called a one-in-100 year event, but if it was to become more common as a result of climate change, then new measures would need to be taken.
       • Antoine 4.1.3.1

         11 March 2017 at 12:36 am

         It would be nice if more of this stuff was done pre emptively rather than after the fact. Perhaps it is but we just dont hear about it
         • lprent 4.1.3.1.1

           11 March 2017 at 12:52 am

           It is done regularly. I don’t know specifically for Auckland, but it is typically done in a cycle every 5-10 years for most city infrastructure. But risk levels are assessed pretty much on past events. In this case we are seeing a level of silt generation that hasn’t happened since at least since the felling stopped in the Hunua catchment in the 1930 & 40s.

           To get that level of erosion, there has to have been some pretty severe rain that completely flooded the surface and caused a rapid and massive runoff. Sufficient to have substantially cut its way through the vegetation and into the catchments surfaces and creek banks that fill the catchment dams. I’d guess that there are some pretty big slips in the catchment now.

           But it takes a very abnormal rapid and sustained downpour to achieve that level of runoff. Otherwise we’d see it more often. And I am (unfortunately) very confident that we will be.

           But the same kinds of issues happen elsewhere in the infrastructure. I wouldn’t go and do a lot of harbour swimming for a week through most of the older suburb beaches when the sun reappears on Monday onwards
   • weka 4.2

     10 March 2017 at 9:57 pm

     Not just CC, but CC in NZ where the infrastructure can’t cope. And here now, not some mythic might be future.
     • Antoine 4.2.1

       10 March 2017 at 11:26 pm

       It doesn’t seem to be out of the normal historical range to me, given the information in the article.

       This could readily have happened without CC.
       • Antoine 4.2.1.1

         10 March 2017 at 11:28 pm

         Ah on the other hand, another story says “Niwa says the extreme weather experienced this week is ‘off the chart’ and has well exceeded what would be considered a one in 100 year event.” So I don’t know which is right now.
         • weka 4.2.1.1.1

           10 March 2017 at 11:38 pm

           Probably better to go with Niwa’s assessment over your own reckons 😉

           “This could readily have happened without CC.”

           That’s not the point though. The point is that we know CC is happening, that it’s already causing more extreme weather events than normal, and that this will increase exponentially if we don’t do something urgently to mitigate it. Trying to figure out if any one event could have happened without CC is like trying to argue about whether icebergs are green or blue when you’re on the deck of the Titanic.

           My own view is that all weather is now affected by CC, and what’s useful about looking at individual events is not to debate about CC reality, but to assess how infrastructure will hold up. Patently NZ is not ready (we’re getting multiple examples often now). Worse, we have a govt taking us in the wrong direction, so we’re not even trying to adapt that well let alone mitigate.
           • Antoine 4.2.1.1.1.1

             10 March 2017 at 11:54 pm

             > what’s useful about looking at individual events is not to debate about CC reality, but to assess how infrastructure will hold up

             Agree totally, but then every time an extreme weather event happens, you jump to say that it’s caused by CC, which is kinda undercutting your good intention above.

             A.
             • weka …

               11 March 2017 at 12:41 am

               I don’t think that is what I do. I think what I do is say, here’s an extreme weather event again, we need to talk about CC. That’s really only a problem if you’d rather talk about the colour of the iceberg.
               • Antoine …

                 11 March 2017 at 12:58 am

                 I think if you frame that way you’ll get less derailment from people fixated on iceberg colour 😀
                 • weka …

                   11 March 2017 at 8:32 am

                   And yet here you are talking about iceberg colour.
                   • Antoine …

                     11 March 2017 at 9:13 am

                     OK I’m going to stop talking about iceberg color now!

                     (Here’s a green one tho: https://tinyurl.com/jzd5n8p)
                   • weka …

                     11 March 2017 at 9:22 am

                     Yeah I doubt that somehow. You believe what you believe.
             • One Anonymous Bloke …

               11 March 2017 at 7:05 am

               every time an extreme weather event happens, you jump to say that it’s caused by CC

               Not this lackwit drivel again!

               The answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be..

               Kevin E. Trenberth, senior scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, in the journal Climatic Change.

               Got it?
               • Antoine …

                 11 March 2017 at 7:15 am

                 So what does Kevin say the _right_ question is?
               • Antoine …

                 11 March 2017 at 7:19 am

                 Also, the ‘warmer and moister’ thing holds globally but may not hold in every local area. Some areas may actually end up being drier than before.

                 A.
                 • One Anonymous Bloke …

                   11 March 2017 at 7:55 am

                   To illustrate, here’s a global atmospheric water vapour time series animation from NASA.

                   The local drought conditions you mention are another example of weather that responds to changes in the climate. Got it?

                   As for the “right question”, attribution is a challenging process, but don’t worry, no-one is expecting you to do anything.
5. James 5

   10 March 2017 at 10:55 pm

   http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/03/labour-will-not-win-this-election-prof-claire-robinson.html

   Labour will not win this election – prof Claire Robinson.

   Gee you don’t need to be a professor to work that out.

   On the bright side she reckons labour will win 2020 hands down.
   • One Anonymous Bloke 5.1

     11 March 2017 at 8:14 am

     Bill English cannot lose.

     In other news, I have a bridge going cheap. Any offers?
   • Anne 5.2

     11 March 2017 at 9:36 am

     Easy to counter that game playing from Nat apologist, Madam Robinson.

     Setting aside the pathetic attempt to infer “desperation” by some childish Nat apologist staff member.
     • james 5.2.1

       11 March 2017 at 10:47 am

       Yeah – she disagrees with Anne – she must be a Nat apologist.
6. lprent 6

   11 March 2017 at 1:08 am

   Interesting. The mobile version just got upgraded yesterday. The development crew say as a result of a speed audit that they’ve speed it up a lot.

   It does seem to be somewhat faster. Quite a lot faster on my S7 edge, and better but not significiantly faster on the HTC one mini.

   After extracting the iPhone 7 plus from the reluctant hands of its owner, it appears to be very fast on that. However I can seldom get my hands on that… No points for comparison.

   I need to reintroduce mobile mode for the tablets (when did that disappear?) The iPad 2 (?) and Tab A just show the desktop version.

   Anyone else notice a speed improvement in the last couple of days?
   • Carolyn_nth 6.1

     11 March 2017 at 8:45 am

     Yep. Much better than earlier in the week on my macbook and on my pc laptop.
     • lprent 6.1.1

       11 March 2017 at 3:36 pm

       I think that is due to the statcounter problem that I was muttering about in OpenMike.

       https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11032017/#comment-1308685

       There shouldn’t have been any change to the desktop. But you’re right. I’m at work right now getting routed via Austrialia, and it is still faster on the desktop.

       It is odd that I got two speedups in the same 24 hour period.
   • weka 6.2

     11 March 2017 at 9:23 am

     Last night on the phone it didn’t seem any faster. This morning on the laptop, way faster.
     • lprent 6.2.1

       11 March 2017 at 3:40 pm

       There shouldn’t have been any change to the desktop program.

       But.. But.. Ah! I just looked in Simple History and the plugin got pushed in 15 hours ago. About midnight, and probably just before I tested it.

       Try the phone today. First load will be slow due to getting updated files. The subsequent ones are pretty fast.

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