Open mike 15/01/2020

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, January 15th, 2020 - 63 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:

Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

63 comments on “Open mike 15/01/2020 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Jenny How to get there 1
    15 January 2020 at 7:19 am

    Visit Australia, see the climate destroying politicians. Visit the amazing disappearing Great Barrier Reef, wonder at the world's biggest new coal mine. Join the interactive online campaign to blame the Greens for the bush fires.

    AUSTRALIA WILDFIRES: PM URGES TOURISTS TO KEEP VISITING AMID ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

    Cathy Adams, The Independent, 8 Jan. 2020

    The Australian prime minister has urged tourists to continue visiting the country despite the deadly wild fires that have so far killed 26 people.

    “Australia is open, Australia is still a wonderful place to come and bring your family and enjoy your holidays,” Scott Morrison told local reporters on Kangaroo Island in the state of South Australia, which has been particularly badly hit by the blazes…..

    https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/australia-wildfires-travel-advice-safe-scott-morrison-state-emergency-a9275291.html

    Be photographed comforting a singed koala.

    Fun for all the family

    • Jenny How to get there 1.1
      15 January 2020 at 7:35 am

      The politics around the Australian bush fires is almost beyond parody.

      The absurdity of extreme Australian bush fire politics is totally out of hand

      Shannon Molloy, NZ Herald, 13 Jan, 2020

      …..I wrote a story on Wednesday about the volume of misinformation and bizarre conspiracies about the bushfires circulating online…..

      …..An academic I spoke to explained how some of these theories begin and spread, but the bulk of the story was devoted to the views of a decorated firefighter named Drew.

      Drew sought to "myth bust" some of the common ones, including environmentalists blocking backburning efforts and that climate change plays no role longer, hotter and more unpredictable seasons.

      For that effort, I was accused by many of inventing the firefighter – that he doesn't exist and is a character in my own warped narrative – because I didn't include his last name.

      I didn't, at his request, because he anticipated a flurry of abuse and trolling from certain groups. He was right…..

      …..My favourite email was from one climate change denier kindly described me as a "soy boy f****t" in bed with environmentalists to push some leftie agenda.

      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12300104

      Add to this the hypocrisy of the right, ‘to not politicise the bush fires’.

    • Ross 1.2
      15 January 2020 at 7:46 am

      There have been worse bushfires in Australia which have usually led to a commission of inquiry. The current bushfires will result in a commission of inquiry but it is not clear what, if anything, will be learnt that was and is not already known.

      http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Commission-Reports/Final-Report.html

      • aj 1.2.2
        15 January 2020 at 10:44 am

        There have been worse bushfires in Australia which have usually led to a commission of inquiry.

        There have been bushfires that have resulted in a higher number of fatalities….

        FIFY

        • Ross 1.2.2.1
          15 January 2020 at 1:17 pm

          aj

          Yes, you are correct. I was focused on people. I’m not sure what you’re focused on. Houses, perhaps? 🙂

          • McFlock 1.2.2.1.1
            15 January 2020 at 1:48 pm

            No, you're not actually focused on people. You're focused on immediate mortality in order to minimise the current fires' overall impact on people.

            For example, did the fires you think were "worst" have people collapsing from the smoke 200 miles away?

            • Ross 1.2.2.1.1.1
              15 January 2020 at 2:23 pm

              McFlock

              That was the impressive thing about the devastating 2009 fires. It was the first time in recorded history that such large fires produced absolutely no smoke.

              • McFlock …
                15 January 2020 at 2:56 pm

                you dodged the question:

                For example, did the fires you think were "worst" have people collapsing from the smoke 200 miles away?

                Feel free to say "no". Feel just as free to say that you have no fucking idea – that would be an equally plausible response.

                Or feel free to say "yes" and provide a link to prove it.

                • Alice Tectonite …
                  15 January 2020 at 4:06 pm

                  McF: Ross is "ignoring a few facts", obviously didn't bother with the article I posted up thread that counters the sort of stuff Ross is peddling.

                  Anyway, a summary from that article:

                  Of course, Australia has a long history of bushfires. But several factors make eastern Australia’s recent crisis different to infamous bushfires in the past.

                  First is the enormous geographic spread of this season’s fires, and second, the absence of El Niño conditions typically associated with previous severe fires.

                  Thirdly and most important, these fires were preceded by the hottest and driest conditions in Australian history.

                  (source)

                  Worth a read IMO, written by a couple of ANU scientists (one climate, one bushfire).

                  • McFlock …
                    15 January 2020 at 5:44 pm

                    Yeah, he's interpreting "worst" in pretty much the only possible way (immediate bodycount) that lets him argue that there have been, like, two "worse" fires in 200 years. Both in the last 40 years. So AGW is therefore not a problem. It'd be funny if it weren't so damned tragic.

                    • Ross …
                      15 January 2020 at 6:31 pm

                      AGW is therefore not a problem.

                      Those are your words.

                      I did make the point that there was a commission of inquiry into the 2009 bushfires. I very much doubt anything new will be learnt from the latest fires that wasn’t already known.

                    • Psycho Milt …
                      15 January 2020 at 6:50 pm

                      Those are your words.

                      It's funny how everyone commenting here who has a few clues comes to the same conclusion about your comments, at which point you disavow any intent of having meant it. I wonder if there's a word to describe what you're doing?

                    • RedLogix …
                      15 January 2020 at 7:18 pm

                      @PM

                      Not necessarily. I've seen this sort of conversation here many times, at least part of it must arise because when conservatives comment here they know they must walk on eggshells. Hence they tend to prevaricate and hedge their bets more than if they felt free to be forthright. It leads to clumsy communication and often comes across as disingenuous. Hell even I laid that exact charge at Wayne the other day.

                      It doesn't help that we tend to automatically assign conservatives the worst of motives without pausing to read them carefully. Done it myself often enough.

                    • Ross []
                      16 January 2020 at 8:21 am

                      I’ve never hedged my bets. Many commenters here have criticised Israel and their occupation of Palestine but funnily enough I’ve never had the urge to label them anti-Semitic.

                    • McFlock …
                      15 January 2020 at 8:52 pm

                      Even if those six words are a scurrilous misinterptretation of your actions, is the rest of the comment fair?

                    • Ross []
                      16 January 2020 at 8:21 am

                      About as unfair as you can get. 🙂

                    • McFlock …
                      16 January 2020 at 2:04 pm

                      so in what ways other than immediate bodycount have previous fires been "worse"?

                    • Alice Tectonite …
                      16 January 2020 at 4:06 pm

                      @McF

                      Bodycount is a particularly poor measure IMO, as the Aussies actually learnt from 2009 fires.

                      Arguably the greatest change to bushfire management since Black Saturday, at least in terms of community preparedness and response, has been the shift in messaging to emphasise that leaving is the safest option.

                      (Whittaker 2019)

                      Suspect that discouraging stay & defend is a significant part of why the number killed by the current fires is much lower than Black Saturday. I wonder if something like number of buildings burned might give a better idea of severity? (Particularly when comparing between fire seasons where evacuate/stay messaging has been different.)

                      @Ross

                      How about explaining your stance on climate change a bit more? You deny that you're a denier while pushing lines/points frequently made by deniers. You then refuse to elaborate, which just invites the obvious conclusion …

                      Ref.: Whittaker, J., 2019. Ten years after the black Saturday fires, what have we learnt from post-fire research?. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 34(2). link

                    • McFlock …
                      16 January 2020 at 4:18 pm

                      yeah, but gotta give Ross a chance to demonstrate he isn't resting his entire case just on bodycount.

                  • weka …
                    16 January 2020 at 5:29 pm

                    thanks for that Alice, I hadn't seen the connection with the absence of El Nino before.

      • Exkiwiforces 1.2.3
        15 January 2020 at 1:26 pm

        The problem is with the Royal Commissions into the Bush Fires over here in Oz, a lot of the recommendations between the States and the Fed's don't get enacted for what ever reason, and some cases the States and local councils don't always enacted some of the recommendations either.

        The big problem we are facing at the moment is the fire season weather you are in the Sth or Eastern parts of Oz or like me in the Nth NT is getting longer, the fire environment/ conditions are getting more extreme aka crown fires hence the poor koala getting smash this fire season, more running fires due to the lack or no moisture in the soil which also effects fire management in cooler seasons aka burn off or traditional fire management practices and the ember attacks are getting more dangerous etc etc.

        With all the above adding in with CC, the current set up of the Rural Fire Services, inaction from the Fed's down the local councils if you have one over CC etc. The whole system of Fire management and Fire Fighting is a train wreck waiting to happen. This being the yr its happen for the Southern, Western and Eastern States on the conditions that we faced last Nth NT fire season and going on current rainfall for our Northern Australia Monsoon Season atm we are going to be up shit creek again this coming fire season.

        I did submit a piece to be posted here on "The Standard" on last yrs Northern NT Fire Season from my POV on the ground as a resident in the Darwin's rural as we come under the townie firies and as a bush firey out at the NT Bush Fires Dundee Brigade.

  2. Herodotus 2
    15 January 2020 at 8:02 am

    Climate Change

    So we have an every increasing NZ population why allow this to continue when we are one of the highest per capita emissions? We have been told by

    In total, these changes are estimated to reduce net migration by 20,000-30,000. Without these changes there would be up to 10,000 more houses needed and up to 20,000 more vehicles on our roads annually.

    so over a 50k increase in immigration in the last year has required an additional 20,000+ houses and added 40,000 more vehicles to the road.

    https://www.labour.org.nz/immigration

    Who is to make the effort to reduce these GHG when we have policies like this Tourism with MBIE forecast an increase of 37.1% from 2017 to 2024.

    https://www.mbie.govt.nz/assets/5c05b7bfce/nz-tourism-forecasts-2018-2024-report.pdf

    And we wonder why NZ is increasing its GHG emissions. These are not samples of leading the way – Perhaps just a nod and smile to make us feel better as the world turns 😱

    [edited formatting to make it clearer who was saying what – weka]

    • weka 2.1
      15 January 2020 at 10:07 am

      Population is very difficult to talk about on the left, because it's tied to immigration and that debate has often had racism woven through it. Trad lefties also seem to hold the position that perpetual growth is possible (and desirable?). I see that as a consequence of philosophies that are grounded in human justice without being built on ecological justice. This is changing but too slowly imo.

      If we decouple population from immigration for a minute, and just look at population as an ecological issue, then it gets easier to see and talk about. Any given landbase can only sustain so much life. If we want food, water, shelter and modern lifestyle, those all come from what nature provides and this is where the accounting should begin. If we're not growing food and other resources in our local watershed we are expecting to extract them from someone else's. That may be done fairly and sustainably, but not under the perpetual growth economics we currently use. We are depleting most things, but outsourcing that so it is less visible. Looking at what each landbase in NZ could potentially sustain is a useful way to reframe population issues.

      When I bring this up the most common response I get is that we have plenty of land and could easily support far more people. But no-one can produce the actual accounting for that, it's just an assumption people have. I remain unconvinced, because in addition to the food and resources, we also need to do habitat restoration and carbon sequestration to prevent the climate and ecological crises. We also need a buffer for future weather events that will take out sometimes large parts of ecosystems (fire, flood, wind, drought).

      Ditto tourism, which is a huge problem that NZ is likewise not ready to face.

      • Sacha 2.1.1
        15 January 2020 at 11:50 am

        If we stop exporting so much of what we produce from the land, NZ can feed many more people here. But then we need other, more sustainable, forms of foreign-sourced income..

        • weka 2.1.1.1
          15 January 2020 at 12:33 pm

          true, but then if a really large % of land is in dairy and other export livestock, and we convert that to cropping, there are GHG emissions associated with the plough farming, and with the presumed increase in population. Regenag/organics takes more land.

          That freed up land still needs to also be used for reforesting and increasing biodiversity, climate mitigation, and climate buffer, so I'm wary of the idea that it becomes easily available for food growing for lots more people, especially when we take into account climate change affecting the growing of crops. My main point here is that few are looking at the overall picture (from a sustainability pov) and we're basing our political debate on some distinct assumptions rather than data and analysis.

          Do we need as much foreign-sourced income as we currently have?

          • Sacha 2.1.1.1.1
            15 January 2020 at 12:45 pm

            We do not need any more land to grow food for ourselves – much less, if anything. That applies to crops, not just animals.

            And the overall design of the economy is a larger question as you say.

            • weka 2.1.1.1.1.1
              15 January 2020 at 12:59 pm

              I'm talking about how big a population NZ can sustain. Obviously there is an upper limit, but no-one knows what it is. Instead we assume that there is plenty of land, but that assumption is based on information from utterly unsustainable systems.

              I get what you are saying here. If 90% of NZ ag is export, and we freed up that land for our own food production then there'd be heaps of land. But, how many people could be fed, clothed, sheltered and so on, taking all the other ecological issues into account?

              • Sacha …
                15 January 2020 at 2:16 pm

                Yes. Our energy and transport systems would be earlier bottlenecks than food. And I’m saying 90% of crops are already exported as well. Someone may have actual data. 🙂

              • pat …
                15 January 2020 at 8:06 pm

                NZ population in 1800 was estimated to be between 100,000 and 200,000….by my calculations (rough) NZ land mass could support just over 4 million at pre industrial revolution stocking rates…it would be reasonable to expect some premium due to technological advance but I'd suggest that premium wouldnt be terribly large so I suspect we are already over carrying capacity at current population of 5 million (and growing)

                • weka …
                  15 January 2020 at 8:35 pm

                  what were you factoring in to your calculations pat? Is that food or all resources (allowing for some imports)?

                  • pat …
                    15 January 2020 at 8:41 pm

                    calculated on world population pre industrial revolution (relatively stable at around 1 billion) and habitable land area…if you apply those factors to NZ we end up with a population of a little over 4 million.

      • McFlock 2.1.2
        15 January 2020 at 1:21 pm

        The reason I think we have plenty of land is because we're the 167/194 lowest population density in the world, almost all our land is highly productive for food (agricultural or pastoral) as opposed to being arid or otherwise inappropriate, and we have the 9th largest EEZ around us.

        I'd even go so far as to say we have such abudance that we have an obligation to help feed the world (just not with dairy).

        That said, the precise "population limit" we have is a sliding function of priorities: what level of pollution are we willing to emit, are we controlling food and (especially) water exports, are we managing stock/crop, arable land, other land use demands, waterways, transport infrastructure towards certain priorities, and so on. So by some models we have already exceeded our limit. By most global models, we're nowhere near.

        Then there is the question of demographics – if we have stable population level, what if we get top heavy in age, like Japan? We'd have to put our foot on the immigration throttle for a bit, just to provide services and food for those less able to supply themselves. Just like at the other end, we need to plan schooling around birth bubbles as they get older.

        Might be interesting to see if there is a government department that integrates all these questions in one place – what population changes do we expect, and what level is sustainable according to different priorities. They all do forward planning on their own patch, but not sure if anyone has the big picture.

        • RedLogix 2.1.2.1
          15 January 2020 at 2:54 pm

          As a footnote to that; interestingly NZ is one of a small handful of developed nations with a flat demographic pyramid.

          Almost all the other more developed regions, with the notable exception of Argentina and a few others, have an inverted pyramid.

          But otherwise yes, most of what your saying here makes good systems sense. My only quibble, and I may be out of date on this, is around the fertility of our soils. We don't have large river basins or loess soil plains with millions of years of accumulated minerals in them … NZ imports much of it. And that's been challenged already IIRC.

        • weka 2.1.2.2
          16 January 2020 at 9:23 am

          Coincidentally I ended up in a convo yesterday about NZ fishing stocks. Looks like we are at our limit already in terms of take.

          Afaik the NZ government bases all its work on the fossil fuelled economy. I'd be incredibly surprised if they were doing work on how much food and other resources we can grow using regenag for NZ use relative to population size.

          Likewise global assessments, although there are better acknowledgements of the value of small, local growers.

          I'm using the term sustainable here in its green sense. Not the sense that's been appropriated into the mainstream. So sustainable is about how a system can by and large keep itself healthy and functional, in perpetuity, without producing pollution and without extracting materials/resources from other systems in ways that deplete those other systems.

          NZ's ecological footprint is something like 2.5x what the planet can sustain. We are a long way off sustainable.

    • bwaghorn 2.2
      15 January 2020 at 11:25 am

      Lowering immigration wont change emmisions you realise ? Sure those people wont show up on our spreadsheet but they'll still be somewhere causing roughly the same emmisions.

      • Sacha 2.2.1
        15 January 2020 at 11:51 am

        We are only responsible for our emissions. Every other nation is the same.

      • Herodotus 2.2.2
        15 January 2020 at 8:02 pm

        We have no control of what other countries do. Someone immigrates here our GHG increase as we now require 0.4 of a house and 0.8 additional cars does the other country have a corresponding reduction ?

        nz has undertaken to reduce in total GHG emissions, not per capita. So we have added GHG outputs where does the corresponding reduction from within NZ come from ?and it has to be within NZ not a corresponding offset from another country

  3. mac1 3
    15 January 2020 at 8:22 am

    Weasel words.

    “I can reveal that I believe it probably would’ve been four embassies,” Trump said.”

    As Washington Post political editor James Downie writes, you can't fact check beliefs.

    "According to The Washington Post Fact Checker, in President Donald Trump's first year, he uttered almost 2,000 "false or misleading" claims. In 2018, he nearly tripled his total from the previous year, adding 5,689 more false or misleading claims. And his 2019 total was more than the two previous years combined – 7,725 as of mid-December."

    He continues. "But now the president has a way around facts: beliefs.

    In an interview with Fox News, Trump-friendly host Laura Ingraham asked the president what attacks Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani had been planning against US citizens and facilities. "I can reveal that I believe it probably would've been four embassies," Trump said."

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/118756206/trump-has-a-new-way-around-facts-in-the-killing-of-iranian-general?cid=edm:stuff:dailyheadlines&bid=1248454770

  4. Sanctuary 4
    15 January 2020 at 10:18 am

    Is magic Radio the new Whaleoil? Every fricken wingnut's sob story or conspiracy theory is laundered through there and into the lazy ass MSM…

  5. Exkiwiforces 5
    15 January 2020 at 10:56 am

    This was on the giggle box last night during the news and was quite interesting.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-15/growing-algae-to-brew-greener-beer/11720484?section=good-news

    • Dennis Frank 5.1
      15 January 2020 at 2:33 pm

      Cool, eh? Early days yet. I don't rate their chances of selling lime-green beer tho. Okay, that's not necessarily implied in the story – probably just me looking at the pictures & jumping the gun, huh? 😎

  7. Sanctuary 7
    15 January 2020 at 11:50 am

    Hui all, for those of you interested in UK politics, this is compulsory reading…

    https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/13/the-center-blows-itself-up-care-and-spite-in-the-brexit-election/

    • Dennis Frank 7.1
      15 January 2020 at 1:47 pm

      You're right. It's a superb analysis. Even though I can't accept the primary thesis (equating centrism & neoliberalism) everything else rings true. 👍🏻

      • RedLogix 7.1.1
        15 January 2020 at 3:08 pm

        "Centrist" has become a spit word for some around here, yet in my view it has little to do with specific labels or political ideology. I see it more as an orientation that's primarily interested in negotiating agreements across competing interests and getting shit done.

        But yes I agree at first glance the analysis is pretty compelling; the breakdown of centrist consensus, the weakening of national identity and the impact of uncontrolled globalisation has seen a fracturing of our societies in ways we never quite expected.

        It also neglects a rather salient point, that while people tend to vote progressive in their 20's and 30's … accumulated life experience tends to shift them as they get older. If we imagine that all we need for a truly utopian liberal society to emerge is to wait for the bastard boomers to all die off … we're in for a disappointment.

      • Ad 7.1.2
        15 January 2020 at 3:41 pm

        We've always had internal conflicts between the equivalents of "carers" and "administrators" in Labour.

        Now we can stop with all this endless Why Labour Lost wank and get to the business of winning government in one of the last social democrat governments in the world.

        • RedLogix 7.1.2.1
          15 January 2020 at 4:28 pm

          Yup. 'Caring and fairing' are perfectly fine as personalised goals; but operating (administering) complex moderns societies demands a lot broader competency than this, and voters damn well know it at a gut level.

    • Ad 7.2
      15 January 2020 at 3:05 pm

      Sanctuary, before you do any more commentary on why any party of the left loses, do yourself a favour and join one, and fight to win the 2020 election.

      The experience will do you a lot of good.

  8. joe90 8
    15 January 2020 at 1:51 pm

    Fucking nazis aren't even trying to hide their herrenrasse goals.

    https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/1217104704032911365

  9. joe90 9
    15 January 2020 at 2:14 pm

    Any apologies from the morons who swallowed republican ratfucker's lies and then regurgitated them in their entirety?

    While it is true that the former secretary of state’s emails garnered the most attention thanks to James Comey, the Berkman Klein Center devoted an entire section of their report to an exposé titled, “Dynamics of Network Propaganda: Clinton Foundation Case Study.” They documented how the false allegations in Peter Schweizer’s book, Clinton Cash, were legitimated, not just by right-wing media, but by the New York Times and later by major outlets like the Associated Press and the Washington Post.

    Even after Trump won the election, he and his enablers in right-wing media wouldn’t let the story go. In an obvious attempt to win the president’s favor after recusing himself from the Russia investigation, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed U.S. Attorney John Huber to look into the allegations about the Clinton Foundation.

    According to the Washington Post, Huber found nothing.

    A Justice Department inquiry launched more than two years ago to mollify conservatives clamoring for more investigations of Hillary Clinton has effectively ended with no tangible results, and current and former law enforcement officials said they never expected the effort to produce much of anything.

    John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, was tapped in November 2017 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look intoconcerns raised by President Trump and his allies in Congress that the FBI had not fully pursued cases of possible corruption at the Clinton Foundation and during Clinton’s time as secretary of state, when the U.S. government decided not to block the sale of a company called Uranium One.

    As a part of his review, Huber examined documents and conferred with federal law enforcement officials in Little Rock who were handling a meandering probe into the Clinton Foundation, people familiar with the matter said. Current and former officials said that Huber has largely finished and found nothing worth pursuing.

    [,,,]

    Beyond getting the story wrong so many times, it is important for those who colluded to be held accountable because we are now witnessing the same group of people spread conspiracy theories about other Democrats. Peter Schweizer is the one who initiated the whole Biden/Burisma lie in his book, Secret Empires. Just in case Biden isn’t the Democratic nominee, he is about to publish a book this month titled, Profiles in Corruption, that will attempt to smear the rest of the 2020 presidential candidates.

    Keep in mind that Schweizer is president of the Government Accountability Institute, which was founded by Steve Bannon and is funded by the Mercer family. He is also senior editor-at-large for Breitbart News. Jane Mayer summarizes what we learned about the Bannon-Schweizer method of collusion from Joshua Green’s book, Devil’s Bargain.

    Bannon designed the [Government Accountability Institute] as a means of transmitting partisan dirt-digging to the mainstream media. He realized that, though mainstream reporters were suspicious of partisan opinion, they were open to damning facts about public figures, regardless of the sourcing. He set out, with Schweizer, to produce material that would generate mainstream coverage, and right-wing outrage.

    https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/13/hillary-clinton-has-been-exonerated-again/

  10. sumsuch 10
    15 January 2020 at 11:20 pm

    I expect no one will respond at this late hour. Mike Williams blowing like a bull on RNZ's holiday conversation at 4 concentrated on Law and Order. It quickly came clear it was down to poverty, which the convict advocate had helped produce as the chief promoter of Labour in a previous career. 84: War on Maori.

    Not an election winner. Despicable.

    But this is the age of the talkers (Sanders, Trump), despite the NZ political scene. If it isn't a Savage it'll be a fascist.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.