Earth Just Experienced The Hottest June Ever Recorded
The heat wave continues.
Last month was the hottest June ever recorded, according to both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This marks the 14th month in a row that global heat records have been broken. It’s the longest streak of record-breaking temperatures since reporting began in 1880.
Global average temperatures in June were 0.9 degrees Celsius hotter than the average for the 20th century. These temps broke the previous record, set last year, by 0.02 degrees Celsius.
The planet is well on track to surpass 2015 as the hottest year ever recorded.
That’s what (relatively short) modern records show, proxy records don’t agree.
“reconstructions based on only the longest records (R2 and R3 networks) indicate that single 30- and 10-yr periods of similar or slightly higher temperatures than in the late twentieth century may have occurred during the first half of the millennium”
“The reconstructed twentieth-century warming cannot be explained by natural variability alone using GISS-E2-R. In this climate model, anthropogenic forcing is required to produce the rate and magnitude of post-1950 warming observed in the Australasian region. These paleoclimate results are consistent with other studies that attribute the post-1950 warming in Australian temperature records to increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.”
What can we, as everyday citizens do to help halt global warming? Reduce consumerism? Live sustainably? I’m getting more and more concerned! We live a lot out of our garden, don’t eat two animals a month, try not to buy any processed food, by that I mean canned goods such as tomatoes, sardines etc. Our last car lasted at least ten years, we fix things when we can instead of buying new and nearly all our clothing is sourced from recycling shops, as is a lot of our furniture. I get really angry at this throwaway society that has a constant need to replace things every six months or so. I know people that have four TV’s in their home. It’s ludicrous.
Great list of things you are doing Ffloyd. What do you mean by the two animals thing?
I think it’s a good question, what do we do when we’ve practically reduced our consumption as much as possible and can’t do a lot more without without societal change? I’m looking at driving a lot at the moment, thinking through what it will be like to not be able to drive whenever I want. It’s unlikely there will public transport where I live to replace that so it means considering being less mobile. I think about how prior to the mid 90s and cheap Japanese imports we didn’t all have cars, so how did that work? What can I change about my life and expectations so that I drive less but still feel good about my life? This is my particular challenge because I already don’t drive a lot and am very dependent on my car because of disability.
The frustration about what other people are doing… I try and take the opportunities to have micro conversations with people in ways that don’t get their backs up eg at the moment there are lots of opportunities to talk about CC because of the unusual mild winter. I’m going to think now about how to bring consumerism into that conversation, so thanks for bringing that up.
Having The Standard as a place where it’s ok to talk about CC is very import to me sanity wise re the level of ignorance elsewhere but I also thing there are more people wanting to change that need encouragement. How to focus on those people.
here we have hitching posts, rides listed on net and various email lists, friends, friends of friends and so on. Very little public transport so community has to help when help needed.
Two animals thing. Yes a bit obscure, just saying that we don’t eat much meat but know people that consume way more than nutritionally needed. If we could reduce meat and dairy consumption to a nutritional minimum and encourage more vegetarianism,would it follow that we could reduce herds and would this be beneficial to our environment?
If we could reduce meat and dairy consumption to a nutritional minimum and encourage more vegetarianism,would it follow that we could reduce herds and would this be beneficial to our environment?
Ffloyd, your goal is not to stop global warming. It is to develop and support a self supporting home, family community situation which is going to withstand the turmoil and upset of the next 50 years.
Halting* global warming seems like not only a worthy goal but an imperative one. The most important one. Fortunately preparing for living with the reality of global warming can be part of that, because there are big overlaps in what is required.
*by which I mean doing everything we can to limit the human contribution from now on (mitigation).
Doing everything we can would mean being willing to face prosecution, court action, unelectability, unpopularity, increased unemployment and loss of property including businesses, investments, homes and cars.
Tell me, how many Green MPs have taken air flights in the last 7 days? Most of them?
Clearly, we’re not seriously talking about ‘doing everything we can’ are we.
Lanth’s position is still very sensible. If you are already a bottom 50% burner on the NZ scale of things, then sit back, enjoy your life, burn carbon sensibly, gradually prepare for a tougher future, because nothing we do in NZ is going to shift world CO2 concentrations by more than 1ppm.
I think that people reading that will also take away these messages,
1. there is no point in trying to mitigate, because no-one else is. So le
2. it’s ok to criticise other people’s carbon consumption while not changing.
3. we are stuck and cannot change, therefore why bother trying.
4. NZ is special and doesn’t need to change as much as other places.
To my mind all those are defeatist. I don’t see any reason why we should stop working on mitigation. Doing what Lanth is doing en masse guarantees us runaway climate change.
As you know I have a different political position on climate change to you.
My view is that the more people are distracted by quarter measures, the more their anxiety is relieved by pretend and extend non-solutions, and the more political parties get away with lying to the nation as to our true climate predicament, the less effective change will be possible.
It’s good to hear you describing your political position clearly 🙂
I would see Lanth’s position as a quarter measure so I have to admit I don’t fully get it yet. But I do think it’s useful to change to explain your thinking behind what you do.
Lanth (if you’ll excuse me pretending to know what your thoughts are Lanth…) clearly suspects the severe extent of the climate change crisis we are in. He also clearly suspects that nothing effective will be done about it. So why should he give up his minor comforts of life when he is already a low emitter (by western standards).
And he’s not one of the ones running around claiming that 2 degrees C warming is avoidable.
“And he’s not one of the ones running around claiming that 2 degrees C warming is avoidable.”
I don’t understand the relevance of that bit. Are you saying that because some people are ignorant or in denial it’s ok for the aware people to not do as much?
“So why should he give up his minor comforts of life when he is already a low emitter (by western standards).”
Because, it leads the way and increases the chance of change. Because the situation is so serious and urgent that everyone needs to be reducing. In NZ I mean that literally. Because saying that others need to change first is a losing strategy.
btw, I agree about the thing about using Lanth as an example Maybe we could change it to a generic position without having to second guess his position further?
cv you have given up and pretend care now and you want the rest of us to agree with you so you will feel better. You are wrong and misguuded. Giving up is weak and part of the problem but who cares right?
Given up? No dude, definitely not given up. But I ain’t pretending that a tea spoon is going to successfully dig through a mountain of greenstone. Neither am I going to keep up the typical left wing moaning about how stupid and uncaring Kiwis are, how biased the Granny Herald is, how incompetent National’s Ministers are, how NZ suddenly turned to shit end of 2008 etc. etc.
and you want the rest of us to agree with you so you will feel better.
You said yourself that you advocate for trump even though he is a denierLiar and if elected will do nothing or worse to help people prepare. You have given up mate.
Do I need to repeat myself? I think Trump will be a better POTUS for NZ because he will be less likely to start a neocon led military confrontation with China and Russia in the Pacific, he will shitcan the TPP asap, and he probably won’t be asking NZ troops to help out in more middle east regime change wars because oil and gas pipelines.
Also there isn’t even 5 ppm difference between coal digging Trump and pro-Saudi free trader Hillary Clinton.
Given all of this, I think Trump remains the better POTUS for NZ.
Read this analysis as me “giving up” if you like but that’s solely your own imagination.
Fair enough you are consistent. I don’t trust trump and probably never will based on his history and personality. I think he is bad bad news for everyone. You disagree, all good. I am a left person you are not I’m pleased in some ways that we have very different views.
I think that’s more likely under an impulsive, ego-driven blowhard that it is under someone who, at worst, wants to continue with business as usual.
2) No TPP
In direct contradiction to his VP’s free trade wishes. Even if Trump opposes it, he’d sacrifice it for a “deal” at the first opportunity. Expect TPP under Trump.
3) No NZDF supporting wars of regime change.
At odds with Trump’s repeated desires to project US power through the use of allies in NATO and beyond.
If Trump is for real and intends to actively govern, expect instability and demands for NZ to do more overseas.
If Trump wants to just be a figurehead with the VP doing most of the work, expect the TPP but at least it’s unlikely there’ll be a war in the South China sea.
Why can’t one be dependent on the other? Sometimes it is the will of the people that can change things. We are doing our best to live in a way that has little detrimental impact on our earth (husband has just had live worms delivered by courier) just thought I ‘d throw that in there , we live in a small village so don’t use car much, don’t buy what we don’t need (except for wine) but hey, you gotta draw the line somewhere.
Cool! I’m in the process of doing some major downsizing too, over the next year. Lots of benefits from that process already. It just seems to make sense.
From zerohedge these are some excerpts from a book by David Stockman……
“The baby boom generation which started with so much promise when it came of age in the 1960s has ended up a colossal failure. It has turned America into a bloody imperial hegemon abroad and a bankrupt Spy State at home.
Like the generation she represents Hillary Clinton has betrayed her grand ideals over a lifetime of compromise, expediency, self-promotion and complacent acquisition of power, wealth and fame. She thinks war is peace, deficits don’t matter and that the Feds serial bubble machine is leading the nation back to prosperity.”
I see strong parallels to our own country in this ( and it is only fair to confess that I am a baby boomer ).
Fair comment about Clinton.
The politicians who sold our countries to corporations however were 1 generation higher …Thatcher, Douglas and Reagan.
What Blair, Clinton and Clark failed to do was reverse the changes when the boomer generation came to power.
They lacked the courage to change, they lacked the strength to change and they had benefited personally from the changes so they pulled up the ladder.
Nope, they were the ones with the money when this property boom kicked off.
Also it’s all the baby boomers who are copping shit, do you think it would be acceptable to blame all Maori for being over represented in all the bad statistics?
I think Labour and National should have done more to keep a lid on property prices or at the very least pressured councils to keep land supply up.
Problem is a booming property market is good for the government of the day, people employed, people buying stuff, people making money, this equals happy voters.
As has been stated countless times before, Auckland has a 6 year supply of land waiting to be built on and there are 20,000 unoccupied dwellings in Auckland.
Added to you last sentence Kevin, lousy planning and profligate use of land have created problems that don’t afflict much of the world that didn’t aspire to quarter acre paradises that depend on vehicle ownership.
Yep – supply is not the problem.
Developers will manage the supply (despite re-zoning or SHA requirements) to maximise return (aka price).
If Developers make a mistake and transiently appease demand, the Banks will step in and Blacklist developments for lending to protect existing arrangements – just like with Sydney multi-tenancies ( the same Banks ! )
RNZ yesterday had good exposure of the SHA developers reticence at providing the “affordable” component. Will always be time managed to maximise return.
The Supply/Demand mantra is a a tale.
For those who are interested, I won’t be fixing the search until the weekend.
I’ve just spent a couple of hours going through my hacked up version of the Percona Sphinx plugin version 0.4 code from 2009 that got the backend engine to work the way that we needed it to do with the screen interface. However their code had some major use of deprecated features of PHP back in 2009, and which now simply don’t work in PHP 7 (which is why you get the blank screen).
The backend produces stuff like…
AH01071: Got error 'PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function mysql_real_escape_string() in sphinxsearch_frontend.php:676
Stack trace:\n#0 sphinxsearch_frontend.php(210): SphinxSearch_FrontEnd->insert_sphinx_stats('test')
#1 wordpress-sphinx-plugin/sphinxsearch.php(188): SphinxSearch_FrontEnd->query()
#2 plugin.php(291): SphinxSearch->posts_request('SELECT SQL_CALC...')\n
#3 query.php(3544): apply_filters_ref_array('posts_request', Array)
So far I have seen about 15 deprecated and/or removed features.
The current version, Percona 3.9.8, has a whole lot more customisation points with callbacks and no longer insists on running the sphinx serach engine and removes some of the rigidity reasons why I had to hack their code in the first place.
For instance, their original code ran the search pretty much when each comment got made. But we get so many comments, that what it meant was during the day the sphinx was being asked to run continuously. I prefer simply running the deltas about every 4 minutes during the day (and 15 minutes overnight).
It also didn’t provide good support for changing options in the search box or for changing the layout of different types of elements (comments / posts) in the results.
But since my code is embedded, I’ll have to extract my code and make it a plugin on top of their plugin which runs on top of the sphinx search engine…. Weekend job.
The “Predator Free by 2050” announcement is such a FARCE. It is nothing more than an excuse to drop 1080 all over the valley in the Kaharangi National Park this week, apparently the initiative starts this week, loolz.
One wonders if they will leave the poison unattended in the paddock. while they go back and forth in the chopper like last time. Soon the local paper will be issuing warnings again, not to hunt or fish up the valley, and the animals will come down out of the park, their insides fried, just like last time, the bird song will fade away for a number of months, just like last time.
The rat plague of biblical proportions seems to make a return every couple of years. Someones making money from the 1080
I’m all for a predator free NZ, but lets start with ‘Poison Ivy’ who appears to be an anti environmentalist posing as a gardener. A nasty nasty piece of work that one.
In 2010, a petition by anti-1080 activists found 93 per cent of Westland residents were opposed to the poison, based on canvassing of 1500 people.
1080 poison is banned by most of the world.
The timing of this announcement is just an excuse for more poison to be dropped. Bring back the trappers, start up some trapping workshops, train the public to become more active with pest control and ditch the 1080 it’s doing more harm than good around here. Come and live by a national park for a month during the drops and you will understand.
Anyone need some work? After the drops they send people in to make sure no 1080 pallets are visible from the walking tracks, bloody farce, winter is the preferred drop time, less tourists to notice the damage, don’t want to poison the tourists, let’s poison the locals instead. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11472942
that Herald link is interesting. Apparently it’s the powder/residue from the hoppers that is the problem. NZ has a pretty lax culture around poison application, this instance looks entirely preventable. I hope those two women have success with ACC, but there should be wider consequences including for the regional counil (and DOC if it was involved) and the contractor.
“The rat plague of biblical proportions seems to make a return every couple of years.”
Beech mast seed spikes and the consequential rise in mouse then stoat/rat numbers is a pretty well understood phenomenon. I’d be interested to know if it’s happening more often and whether that’s a climate change issue.
That’s probably true. But it’s also true that beech masting and rat/stoat spikes as a result is a real thing. I remember it from before it was part of the modern 1080 push, and I saw it in the bush as well. It’s a sad day that we can no longer rely on pretty basic research to tell us about such things. I find the issue so polarised now that I don’t trust any source of information that’s coming from DOC, the govt, allied groups, or the people opposing. Which doesn’t mean they’re all untrustworthy, just that it’s too hard to tell now.
We know plants have started acting strange – fruiting, flowering etc at non-normal times. I worry a bit about a real antartic weather front blanketing everywhere with snow at the wrong time of year, destroying a lot. Another long term adaption area I think.
We’ve essentially got two options:
1. Use 1080 to protect our environment as it is while causing some minor damage
2. Let our environment evolve around the imported pests which is going to mean that a whole lot of native flora and fauna will go extinct
No one’s calling on the Government to do anything in response to the news that someone’s making money from selling 1080. Your interpretation seems knee-jerky.
The commenter did appear to be calling for the government to do something about it. In any case, unless something is being inferred by commenting that someone is making money from 1080, it’s just a random, irrelevant fact, like “Someone is making money from groceries.”
Key is encouraging all New Zealanders to join the drive to kill millions of small mammals. Become a small-mammal killer, New Zealanders, invest in the killing of small mammals, cheer on the killing of small mammals, come on, Kiwis, show some guts! This will define us, this will make us great on the World Stage.
“Taonga”, lost sheep? You’ll have a view on kiore then. That rat is taonga for tangata whenua and it’s a small mammal. Key’s calling for the destruction of a taonga species. Very un-New Zealander that.
Pretty crude attempt at avoiding the question Robert.
You are well aware no doubt that Kiore are a destructive introduced mammal and although they do have a cultural value to some Iwi, there is by no means a widespread agreement that they should be left to flourish and plunder the species that were there before them.
You will also be aware that kiore is now very restricted in habitat because they have been largely eaten by the other small mammals that were introduced by humans later. Their future survival is in fact only guaranteed in places where the later small mammals are excluded.
So with that red herring out of the way…straight answer thanks – do you want introduced mammals not to be killed and allowed to go on to wipe out the species that were here before them?
“Crude”, lost sheep? I thought nuanced, but okay, you addressed my point quite well. Not to my satisfaction, but that’s not required. You make the point that kiore have been controlled to a significant extent by Rattus rattus and/ or Rattus Norvegicus, along with various mustelids, though Rattus exulans have not been stoately eradicated; that’s not weasely done by any means – so, I guess I can infer from your comment that you support the use of a better predator to control a mammilian pest, and would therefore support Tim Flannery’s proposal to introduce the Papua NewGuinean eagle Harpyopsis novaeguineae to our forests. They scoop possums out from their hidey-holes and deal to them most efficiently and don’t eat anything else, promise. You for that idea, or not? Straight answer.
No. (Straight enough?)
Introducing a further predator to resolve the issue of introduced predators is as daft an idea as you are intending it to be!
I support the retention of the native natural heritage that has evolved in Aotearoa over the millennia.
In order to achieve that goal I support the killing of the mammalian predators that were introduced by man over the last few hundred years.
Straight answer (yes or no will do as I answered you above) – do you support the killing of those predators Robert?
I don’t support “killing” as the primary control of any unwanted organism, lost sheep. Much of the state of affairs we humans find ourselves in presently arrises from our adoption of the “kill what we don’t like” philosophy and I believe the way out of the mess is to change that mindset. The general consensus here (by my reckoning) is that the proposal to rid New Zealand of mammalian predators is a nonsense and that it cannot be done. As I agree with that opinion, I’m enjoying poking holes in what is to me a pretend proposal, and have no compunction about doing that. I’ve worked on rodent-free islands, and seen how well the plants, insects and birds recover once the predators have gone. I’ve also been on offshore islands where rats and stoats have returned, after the blitz. They breed quickly, those wee mammals. The idea that the whole of NZ could be rid of rodents is, to my mind, preposterous and spending vast fortunes on a destined-to-fail idea seems to me foolish, given there are far more pressing issues that require funding. You, lost sheep, say you believe the goal is achievable. Care to explain how it might realistically be done? I’m genuinely interested.
You say you believe the goal is achievable. Care to explain how it might realistically be done? I’m genuinely interested.
Absolutely it is technically achievable.
We already do have one technique that is well proven as being capable of achieving eradication over large area’s. Aerial Poison.
Within the last couple of years there is clear evidence building of a second method that can achieve eradication. C02 Powered traps.
Looking forward there are promising lines of further development in poison and traps, and then there are many possibilities opening up with genetic methods.
So no issues on whether it could be done, but given the effort, cost and combined social will required to do so, I’m not bold enough to say it will be done.
My starting point is this: Many citizens are willing to support this goal and attempt to achieve it, and every step towards this goal is a gain
If we set out with a goal of a 100% Predator Free NZ, and in the end only achieve 50% that will still be a great achievement and Aotearoa will be a far better place for our descendants to live because of that.
If we achieve 100%, then I hope you are still around so I can remind you no great advancement would have ever occurred if those with the vision gave up because of the negativity of the nay-sayers!
Straight answer? So back to you… ‘I don’t support “killing” as the primary control of any unwanted organism…. and I believe the way out of the mess is to change that mindset.’
I am genuinely interested in exactly what you mean by this?
Are you proposing controlling introduced predators, and if so, how?
Aerial poisoning does not achieve eradication over large areas, where there are adjacent ‘large areas’. It’s doable on a small island, but mainland New Zealand? There’s no example to show that can be done. In fact there are innumerable examples of re-infestations in situations where there’s no wide stretch of water protecting the cleared area. It’s theoretical. You believe it’s do-able, I believe it isn’t. Precedence is in my favour (there is none). Therefore, your claim,
“every step towards this goal is a gain” is wrong, as those steps are futile, in regard the final, illusory goal of total eradication, imo. That energy and funding would be better spent elsewhere. A 50% eradication would be a waste of money. That 50% would rapidly re-infest the cleared land, rendering the effort pointless. If you think even for a moment about climate change and the demands that’s going to make on us and our resources, you’ll join me in saying the attempt is nothing more than a pipe-dream. Your ” if those with the vision gave up because of the negativity of the nay-sayers!” is not a useful statement either; the same could be said of those who say building a ladder to the moon isn’t do-able. The money wasted in building the tallest ladder possible, would be wasted. Those with that vision, should give up.
As to my “killing” comments, I’d invite you to picture a paddock on any farm in New Zealand and try to imagine what you are not seeing; the complex, diverse, multides of organisms that were there prior to “our” re-purposing of that space into food-producing land. Where have those organisms gone? We killed them, in order that we could run our two or three favourites: grass, cows, whatever. It’s that way of doing business that has at its core, killing other organisms, that I don’t support. It’s easy to “what if” using specific examples of troublesome creatures, but the general principle, don’t employ killing as the default interaction with the rest of creation, is my advice. Am I proposing controlling organisms, including introduced ones? Yes, by cultural methods modelled on successful natural processes. It’s a long and complex story and probably not suitable for this thread, unless you’re super-keen 🙂
‘It’s a long and complex story’
Just to keep it short then, just give me a very brief outline of a ‘cultural method modelled on successful natural processes’ that would prevent rats and Mustelids from exterminating Mohua from the Eglington Valley?
I don’t think there are any Mohua left in the Eglinton. edit, ah, google tells me they’ve been reintroduced. Good for them. The Eglinton would be a relatively easy valley to do pest control in without using 1080. Can’t eradicate pests there for the reasons that Robert has stated. In that sense there is no one step closer. With the tech we have currently we should be moving towards optimal control not eradication.
@Robert,
I agree on the eradication bit. It’s madness.
A 50% eradication would be a waste of money. That 50% would rapidly re-infest the cleared land, rendering the effort pointless. If you think even for a moment about climate change and the demands that’s going to make on us and our resources, you’ll join me in saying the attempt is nothing more than a pipe-dream.
But we know that control does work and increases native species, so that seems worth some effort. I’d prefer that we didn’t use 1080 or minimised it to extreme need.
In terms of CC, any reason we can’t have people living in the bush doing the control via trapping?
The lost sheep@ 2:33pm, your answer is provided by weka@2:46.
Weka, yes to trappers where there is purpose beyond eradication, which won’t happen anyway. Trapping for food and fibre, why not?
@ Weka / Robert.
If trapping worked and was cost effective for multi-species control, we’d be using it. Why wouldn’t we?
But over large areas and/or difficult terrain it simply isn’t, whereas aerial poison is.
‘Optimal control’ over even large areas of NZ would be a major improvement on the present situation, and as I implied above, if that’s where we get to then I’d be happy with that.
But the big point to consider is that over time ongoing control is far more expensive, and far less successful than eradication. That is why those who are thinking long term think it worth aiming for the ability to eradicate.
How far each of us thinks we should actively protect our unique natural heritage, or allow it to degrade, is of course largely a subjective call based on our personal values….and obviously we differ in that respect.
There is also an increasing emphasis on the long term economic value of conserving what we have that is unique, and certainly I know that has been a major factor in the Nats support for this project.
I do find it disturbing that someone in your position Robert should be so reluctant to express any commitment to serious predator control, but happily, National, Labour, and The Greens are all reflecting both my personal values and the building public determination to achieve this goal, so I can’t see any reason why the momentum won’t keep gathering.
I’ve spent many decades working towards this aim, so very happy indeed with how things are shaping.
Serious predator control and predator eradication are two very different beasts, Lost Sheep. An almost-success in the latter is not a success at all, when the predators flood back in, as they are biologically programmed to do. It’s all or nothing and as I believe “all” is impossible, I support other approaches. Localised efforts for specific gains can be valid. A pan-Aotearoa eradication of predatory mammals is a nonsense, in my view. Next topic, wilding pines 🙂
An almost-success in the latter is not a success at all, when the predators flood back in, as they are biologically programmed to do
If your goal was eradication, but you feel short, why would you just give up and let predators flood back in and take the situation right back to where you started from? Where do you get that presumption from? It would be stupid in the extreme!
Wilding Pines? If i took your logic i might argue that you need to eradicate them completely or not at all, as there would be no value in just eliminating most of them and then keeping them under optimum control.
I wouldn’t argue that of course. Bugger all would ever improve if everything had to conform to that standard.
I think you are close to getting it, Lost Sheep. “Almost eradicate then maintain” isn’t a reality, when it comes to rats, mice, stoats and possums, all of which are very, very mobile. They run, they climb, they swim; there’s almost nowhere they can’t quickly return to. Any stalling of a total eradication programme would result in a return to the original state of infestation, imo. It’s all or nothing, unless you are planning on building some very, very good fences, which, as you know, can nevertheless be breached. Your “optimum control” is reliant on so much and very vulnerable to forces such as economic downturn and adverse climatic conditions; if/when there’s a Global Financial Crisis and a Global Warming Crisis, it’ll be game over for any programmes that aren’t basic “protect and feed the people”. What do you reckon the chances of either of those things happening before 2050, Lost Sheep? High, Very High or Extremely High? Same for wilding pines.
You’ve shown your true colours in 7.0 above Robert, and your ongoing attitude of trying to find every straw man reason why it can’t work speaks clearly of someone who simply has no enthusiasm for the conservation of our natural heritage.
Luckily, those of us who are not willing to stand by and see your cute and fluffy small mammals slaughter our natural heritage have a far more determined resolve.
And zero chance of everything coming down to merely ‘protect and feed the people’.
Unless those tackling the challenges of climate change adopt the kind of fatalistic and negative attitudes you are displaying to conservation…
I think you’ve missed the central point lost sheep. ‘Eradicate’ isn’t possible with the technologies we have now (or that are emerging). So lots of people are arguing against National’s proposal, because it doesn’t make sense. That’s not the same as saying don’t do pest control.
Robert has explained why working towards eradication when eradication is a nonsense doesn’t make sense. Unless you can remove all of the species, they will keep expanding into the newly vacated niche. This is basic ecology. So the issue isn’t one of eradication, it’s about controlling populations sufficiently to enable ecosystem and species health. Robert has said that he supports this.
(the obvious exceptions to that are island sanctuaries and mainland pest-proof fenced areas).
He’s also pointing out the realities of CC etc, and that having big, high tech dependent plans and systems going into a resource depleted future is not a good strategy.
Let me put this another way. The only chance that native species and ecosystems have of surviving the age of CC is if humans become predators and use low tech, low carbon methods to harvest unwanted species.
My true colours, Lost Sheep?
I’ll pass that on to my team that manages Te Wai Korari wetland here in Southland. It’s 6 hectares of harakeke wetland we bought to prevent it being turned into dairy pasture, and developed waterways to assist native fish in spawning and planted native plants to give extra shelter to the fernbirds and bittern there. I’m the chairman of the group that I initiated 15 years ago, so they’ll be a little puzzled, I guess, by your view. I’ll think too, of your message as I walk past the native plantings I’ve done over those 15 years, alongside of the estuary and up several of the creeks that flow through the village and into the estuary. When I get home, I’ll shush the grey warblers, tui, bellbirds, brown creepers and other native birds that flit about the kotuku, kowhai, kahikatea, rimu, totara and tarata-tree lined creek in my forest garden and share your view with them, though they’ll not understand what I’m saying, mostly. The giant kokupu swimming in the spring I re-formed from it’s mud-filled state 25 years ago, when I converted the gorse covered hectare I’ve lived on since then, into a mixed forest garden, won’t know what I’m on about either, but no matter. They’re safe in their spring, though the kotare take them if they can. Predators, those kingfishers! I’m pretty keen on native flora and fauna and have a number of other projects underway to recreate habitat for them all. I like to be involved with projects that are realistic and do-able. Pie in the sky’s not really my scene, especially when it’s nothing more than deception-politics 🙂
Kiore travelled across the Pacific to New Zealand in the canoes of Polynesian seafarers, the ancestors of Māori. These hardy rodents found plenty to plunder in their new home – and became a threat to many native plants and animals.
Mahi nga kai – kiore taste good and doubtless kept early travellers alive. An animal that aided you in surviving during a major shift like that could easily become revered as a taonga, and did, in this case. Better though, to ask those whose ancestors were involved in the transfer. I doubt kiore arrived unnoticed, tucked away in the bowels of a waka. They’d have been purpose-brought for their value as a food stuff, imo.
They’d have been purpose-brought for their value as a food stuff, imo.
Perhaps but live meat requires more food than simply carrying enough vegetables. That said, meat does provide nutrients that vegetables don’t and doesn’t keep as well.
And there escape into the natural environment does indicate that they were actually stowaways.
Almost, if not all the remaining Kiore are in Ngāi Tahu territory, and although there is a range of opinion regarding their taonga status or not, generally Ngāi Tahu have been very active supporters of mammal eradication efforts.
Of particular note was the fierce debate within Iwi around the clearance of Taukihepa / Big South Cape Island by aerially applied Brodifacoum in 2006.
However, after the positive results became apparent over the next few years, debate died away, and subsequently Iwi eradicated rats on all the other tītī Islands.
Tuakihepa and Putauhinu across the water (I’ve spent weeks there, counting titi burrows), didn’t have a kiore problem. Their rats were ship rats, a totally different beast altogether. The important factor there was do-ability; those islands are small. Te Wai Pounamu and Te Ika a Maui are not. On that note, do you remember the accidental dumping of Brodifacoum into a bay near Kaikoura when a truck crashed, and the accidental dumping of the same chemical into a lake in South Westland from a helicopter? Multiply those mistakes by the factor needed to cover the whole country and you’ve got a serious environmental violation, right there 🙂
Watch out Robert someone might say you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a New Zealander for that scorn.
Why not make it an Olympic event get the black singlet brigade into it. Maybe give people a house if they are good small mammal killers. This would help some into a house, kill the vermin, build survival skills and community – if it was a top town thing.
I’m all for a predator free NZ, but lets start with ‘Poison Ivy’ who appears to be an anti environmentalist posing as a gardener. A nasty nasty piece of work that one.
Seriously? Whatever you’re taking, reduce the dose.
In 2010, a petition by anti-1080 activists found 93 per cent of Westland residents were opposed to the poison, based on canvassing of 1500 people.
So what? That word “national” in national parks, and that acronym “DoC” in DoC land, mean that the personal opinion of someone living in Westland is irrelevant.
1080 poison is banned by most of the world.
Because most of the world has in its conservation areas a lot of mammals that it doesn’t want killed. In our conservation areas, we’re happy to kill off anything that ever sucked a tit (also possums), so 1080’s a great poison for us to use.
Bring back the trappers…
We totally should – as well as dropping shitloads of 1080.
A bounty places a value on the existence of possums. They have been tried before in New Zealand but failed to reduce possum numbers. During the era when bounties were in existence, possum populations continued to expand in Coromandel and Northland as hunters deliberately introduced the pest to those areas in order to have a local population to ‘farm’.
The doc method when I contracted for them was effective. By memory we got $32 ha to for a first round knock down to 5% trap catch in the monitor.
They just needed to sharpen up their time management around getting in the plotters and paying.
It would not have been much more work to leave set and forget poison for rats etc.
We and most hunters trap in what we called a rolling front (ie starting at one end and leap frogging trap lines as the stop catching) instead of trying to cover the whole block at once. depending on the type of country one man can manage 120-250 traps all though 250 is to much if you want to recover the fur
“So what? That word “national” in national parks, and that acronym “DoC” in DoC land, mean that the personal opinion of someone living in Westland is irrelevant.”
1080 gets used far more widely than just in National Parks (or conservation estate).
And all areas where it is used are bordered with non-use areas and that affects locals.
And, National Parks are for everyone, so it’s completely valid for people who spend time in them to object to 1080.
For reference, my own position is that we should be using other tech and keeping 1080 for areas that are too hard to manage any other way, or for periodic ‘top up’ drops (eg 15 year cycles), instead of the increasingly ubiquitous use that is happening now. I also think that the people who object to 1080 need to organise and come up with realistic alternatives. Protesting isn’t enough.
Don’t the possums build resistance to 1080. The small percentage that don’t die, breed. Do they change the formula or accept 97% or whatever kill rate.
So doing the same thing each year becomes less and less effective, so diversified solutions that mix it up are better.
For reference, my own position is that we should be using other tech and keeping 1080 for areas that are too hard to manage any other way…
I used to live in South Westland – just about every bit of forest in there falls into that category. It’s up to the people who want use of 1080 stopped to propose an alternative that would actually work.
Why do you say that about South Westland? My memory of somewhere like Haast is that it’s relatively accessible. If there is road access and ridges, then you can trap, bait etc. Too difficult is some of the really steep places like the Gulliver Valley, although those places still have valley floor access, so if we are talking control rather than eradication, that’s doable.
And let’s not forget that the Gullier Valley steep slopes is where the last of the Fiordland Kākāpō were found, so it’s possible that those places are less ammenable to mustelids anyway.
In “too hard to manage any other way,” I’m thinking of the number of square kilometers of it rather than accessibility. It would be possible to control pests via traps and bait across that much land area, but only in the sense that it’s possible to build roads using shovels instead of machinery – possible, but hugely expensive and just not worth it.
It depends on what the goal is. If it’s to get rid of possums, I agree. If it’s to control them enough to put the bird and other species a jump above replacement rate, then that’s a different thing. Because then you’re talking about finding the sweet spot between keeping labour costs low and being effective.
Government departments have done research on that sweet spot for some species at least, so it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out in different locations. Maybe the trap line only needs to be done once month, or every few months. Do a big push every few years, and then keep on top of it periodically. It’s going to vary from place to place, but all of that is just a matter of organising a good system.
The solution to the large area is to let people live there. Lots of people would love to live in the bush if they were allowed and could make a living. That requires some cultural change eg DOC have this idea that people shouldn’t live in National Parks unless they’re supporting tourism. But hunters and trappers could be given blocks and occupancy rights in various forms.
Let’s not forget that there are also a lot of people already doing pest control voluntarily. Again plenty of people that would maintain a stoat line if it meant they could live in that valley and go climbing or whatever.
Lots of useful ideas and lots of shortcomings to that general debate too (which I know reasonably well, although not that specific book).
One is how to reconcile the theory with the reality of species extinction and how that affects the ecosystem.
I think it also works better when looking at plants (native bush will replace gorse) than animals (in the NZ situation stoats will reign supreme).
I also think that putting humans back into the food chain is important. We’re top level predators and should act as such (i.e we should be harvesting possum, deer, stoats etc).
If we will get a post today full of condescension, and my favorite line – if you don’t vote h.r.c then you’re voting for trump? Funny how that feels just like the texan presidents line,” if you’re not with us, you’re against us.”
I wonder if the calls will go out for h.r.c. to be recalled. I mean she can’t win an election, just look at the numbers, and she can’t unify the party. Under current right thinking on the left, that is the death knell right?
Obviously a loser who needed bucket loads of money, and the whole establishment to rig the election for her. Well done them, it worked!
My hope, if they keep her, and I think they will. Is that can keep the whole dirty tricks campaign going, and rig the presidential election. Because God knows she won’t get in other wise.
One final point, don’t blame bernie supporters if they don’t get behind her. It’s her job to get them to vote, and the blame game just makes you look condescending and arrogant. And the other thing, with the Libertarians at 13%, you can’t blame the Greens either. Who will the left blame, blame the anarchist, because we want fair, open, and honest elections, so we must be the scum to blame, I mean – is it not obvious?
So supporters of this demagogue, good luck. God bless, and I hope you know what you are in for supporting another corporate morte canard.
Word circulating is that all 700 Bernie delegates will be stripped of their convention credentials and barred from all official convention events now that they are no longer needed.
Only reports on twitter so far. Also hundreds of Sanders delegates have walked, and Sanders supporters are staging a sit in of the convention media centre.
Do you want links to those as well because it didn’t happen otherwise?
about 150 sour loosers walked out with a bit of black cloth in front of their faces and the remaining 1600 Sanders Delegates are busy having a good convention with Bernie Sanders.
ahhh, tarty little children throwing away their marbles cause no one wants to play with them.
Hi Sabine, that’s the true arrogance of an establishment loyalist you are showing there. Treating the rebels like little immature kids while the serious grown ups at the big table with the champagne flowing and food served keeping cheering the status quo on.
Yes, Sanders capitulated and yes, the DNC establishment and the Clinton empire has won. But rubbing your hands with glee at the crushing of a dissident force by the establishment machine doesn’t really become you.
[Adding “establishment” and “loyalist” to the mod bin. They’re meaningless terms of abuse as they are being currently used in this debate. TRP]
let me guess you are talking about the 150 delegates that tied black gags around their mouth, left the convention and occupied the media tent?
And they are somehow more representative then the other 1600 delegates that stayed in the convention and are having a ball/
oh dear.
Support that warmongering woman, Sabine, I don’t care. But you of all people understand how the establishment careerists have screwed Sanders – the one left wing candidate who can actually beat Trump – yet here you are dissing his supporters and backing the pro-Clinton crowd like the rest of the establishment.
No, I am raising it with you. Don’t avoid the issue now that you have shown yourself as an establishment loyalist happy to see the dissident political movement sidelined and crushed.
Don’t co-opt the interests of people you encourage bigotry against just to promote your own narrow self-interested point scoring. Even if your hero trump does it.
Nothing I said was sexist or homophobic, douchebag. “Drama queen” implies neither gender nor sexual orientation, except through your own blinkers.
The collection container for the products of a redundant device that was invented by men to “cure” imaginary problems in parts of women they didn’t understand in the slightest and is, in fact, harmful.
I consider ‘douchebag’ to be sexist. But I agree with you McFlock about CV’s coopting politics he hates to further his own agenda that is anti-those politics. He’s probably being ironic, but it still comes across pretty fucked up.
I think that running as a Democrat carries an obligation to support whoever the party ultimately chooses. It would be out of character for Bernie to ignore that obligation and also counterproductive – those who are keen to see the back of him would welcome any action of his that could be construed as devious or dishonest. So unless something unforeseen happens, I think Bernie will now focus on getting his people into congress. Bringing about real change is a long haul struggle, and Bernie’s not getting the nomination is a setback within a broader context.
Bernie is old Olwyn. 75 this year. He’s got a few more senate years left in him, maybe. If he was going to make his move and take a stand, this was the year, this was the month.
As for the obligation to follow the rules of the Democratic Party. In at least some way I think that responsibility was thoroughly negated by the rule breaking behaviour of the Democratic Party itself.
In at least some way I think that responsibility was thoroughly negated by the rule breaking behaviour of the Democratic Party itself. I agree, but rule-breaking is always more costly to the good than the wicked. I know Bernie is old, but I still think he will do what he can to render the movement as useful as possible within the time he still has. There is more to it than a bid for becoming the Democrat’s candidate for the presidency, although I myself would have taken heart from it had he won.
I think Bernie needs to become the Greens candidate (on the condition that the Greens are not on the ballot in marginal states), and take his whole movement with him.
I will add – I think that we have very little time left to take really strong political action before things start to go seriously topsy turvy. And in all honesty, its already starting on the rocky road there.
I agree with you about the urgency of the situation. I do not have the kind of “on the ground” knowledge to make a judgement as to whether or not Bernie should break ranks and stand as a Green, although it seems likely that he would have done that by now if he was going to. Looking at the ructions that are currently going on in UK Labour, building up the numbers in congress may actually prove more useful than having the presidency with more opponents than supporters on deck with you.
Do you mind Colonial, 75 is not old these days. Not giving my age but I can remember where I was when George VI died and Liz 2 was crowned, and when Kennedy was shot in Dallas. and I still do work (part time) for one of my old clients
75 is the modern 60/65 these days.
I think Mr Sanders might be best advised, in sporting parlance, to keep warmed up. Julian Assange is promising much more material to come which will embarrass Clinton, she may be facing death by a thousand cuts, whoever is feeding this stuff to the public seems to be timing it to maximise harm, she may even have to withdraw from the presidential race ultimately as a result of her own silly decisions, and that may be a good thing, or a bad thing, who knows?
the sad thing is that they are all flawed and bad choices.
Bernie Sanders should have stayed and run as an independed, and he would be the next president.
Hillary Clinton is Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump is Donald Trump. Both are products of their ego’s, of their money and their influence.
In saying that, were i to vote in the US i would vote for Hillary and if only because I like having sex without getting pregnant every time i look at a bloke.
And while some may say that Trump loves himself some women, he also does not care enough about them to not have their bodily autonomy curtailed re abortion, access to female centric healthcare and access to reproductive healthcare.
And his running mate Mr. Pence is one of the more militant ‘pro lifers’ or rather forced birthers that would at the same time force a women to carry the child of her rapist while granting full visitation rights to the rapist while also cutting food stamps and medicaid to the children.
So while some may be all manly about the issues that don’t affect them, and who could blame them, in the words of the imortal Trump ‘she bleeds out of her you know what” these things matter greatly to women. Especially those that don’t want to be reduced to live a live of Gloriavale.
So there is no winning here at all. As for the ones that say Mr. Kaine VP nominee for the Democrats is pro life, that is true, he has however not enacted nor sponsored legislation that would force a women to under go a vaginal ultrasound, or a 72 hour waiting period, or a closing down of all planned parent hood clinics and so on and so on.
So maybe just maybe, some of the blokes take of their blinkers in regards to issues that impact women more then man and then may realise that this is precisely what will decide this election.
How to become a millionare in Auckland through property.
Naturally, it’s all about him.
No support from anyone in his life other than right at the beginning.
Did it all himself. apparently.
So he “paid” a 20% deposit on his first investment home (the rules now require 40%), but actually he only had a 5% deposit and borrowed the rest. Is that even legal?
And happened to be on the lucky side of the bubble – that bubble is now ready to pop.
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Transforming New Zealand: Brian EastonBrian Easton will discuss the above topic at 2/57 Willis Street, Wellington at 5:30pm on Tuesday 26 February at 2/57 Willis Street, WellingtonThe sub-title to the above is "Why is the Left failing?" Brian Easton's analysis is based on his view that while the ...
Salvation Army’s State of the Nation 2025 report highlights falling living standards, the highest unemployment rates since the 1990s and half of all Pacific children going without food. There are reports of hundreds if not thousands of people are applying for the same jobs in the wake of last year’s ...
Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Correction: On the article The Condundrum of David Seymour, Luke Malpass conducted joint reviews with Bryce Wilkinson, the architect of the Regulatory Standards Bill - not Bryce Edwards. The article ...
Tomorrow the council’s Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee meet and agenda has a few interesting papers. Council’s Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport Every year the council provide a Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport which is part of the process for informing AT of the council’s priorities and ...
All around in my home townThey're trying to track me down, yeahThey say they want to bring me in guiltyFor the killing of a deputyFor the life of a deputySongwriter: Robert Nesta Marley.Support Nick’s Kōrero today with a 20% discount on a paid subscription to receive all my newsletters directly ...
Hi,I think all of us have probably experienced the power of music — that strange, transformative thing that gets under our skin and helps us experience this whole life thing with some kind of sanity.Listening and experiencing music has always been such a huge part of my life, and has ...
Business frustration over the stalled economy is growing, and only 34% of voters are confidentNicola Willis can deliver. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, February 12 are:Business frustration is growing about a ...
I have now lived long enough to see a cabinet minister go both barrels on their Prime Minister and not get sacked.It used to be that the PM would have a drawer full of resignations signed by ministers on the day of their appointment, ready for such an occasion. But ...
This session will feature Simon McCallum, Senior Lecturer in Engineering and Computer Science (VUW) and recent Labour Party candidate in the Southland Electorate talking about some of the issues around AI and how this should inform Labour Party policy. Simon is an excellent speaker with a comprehensive command of AI ...
The proposed Waimate garbage incinerator is dead: The company behind a highly-controversial proposal to build a waste-to-energy plant in the Waimate District no longer has the land. [...] However, SIRRL director Paul Taylor said the sales and purchase agreement to purchase land from Murphy Farms, near Glenavy, lapsed at ...
The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been a vital tool in combatting international corruption. It forbids US companies and citizens from bribing foreign public officials anywhere in the world. And its actually enforced: some of the world's biggest companies - Siemens, Hewlett Packard, and Bristol Myers Squibb - have ...
December 2024 photo - with UK Tory Boris Johnson (Source: Facebook)Those PollsFor hours, political poll results have resounded across political hallways and commentary.According to the 1News Verizon poll, 50% of the country believe we are heading in the “wrong direction”, while 39% believe we are “on the right track”.The left ...
A Tai Rāwhiti mill that ran for 30 years before it was shut down in late 2023 is set to re-open in the coming months, which will eventually see nearly 300 new jobs in the region. A new report from Massey University shows that pensioners are struggling with rising costs. ...
As support continues to fall, Luxon also now faces his biggest internal ructions within the coalition since the election, with David Seymour reacting badly to being criticised by the PM. File photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate ...
Not since 1988 when Richard Prebble openly criticised David Lange have we seen such a challenge to a Prime Minister as that of David Seymour to Christopher Luxon last night. Prebble suggested Lange had mental health issues during a TV interview and was almost immediately fired. Seymour hasn’t gone quite ...
Three weeks in, and the 24/7 news cycle is not helping anyone feel calm and informed about the second Trump presidency. One day, the US is threatening 25% trade tariffs on its friends and neighbours. The reasons offered by the White House are absurd, such as stopping fentanyl coming in ...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Wherever you look, you'll hear headlines claiming we've passed 1.5 degrees of global warming. And while 2024 saw ...
“The ACT Party can’t be bothered putting an MP on one of the Justice subcommittees hearing submissions on their own Treaty Principles Bill,” Labour Justice Spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
The Government’s newly announced funding for biodiversity and tourism of $30-million over three years is a small fraction of what is required for conservation in this country. ...
The Government's sudden cancellation of the tertiary education funding increase is a reckless move that risks widespread job losses and service reductions across New Zealand's universities. ...
National’s cuts to disability support funding and freezing of new residential placements has resulted in significant mental health decline for intellectually disabled people. ...
The hundreds of jobs lost needlessly as a result of the Kinleith Mill paper production closure will have a devastating impact on the Tokoroa community - something that could have easily been avoided. ...
Today Te Pāti Māori MP for Te Tai Tokerau, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, released her members bill that will see the return of tamariki and mokopuna Māori from state care back to te iwi Māori. This bill will establish an independent authority that asserts and protects the rights promised in He Whakaputanga ...
The Whangarei District Council being forced to fluoridate their local water supply is facing a despotic Soviet-era disgrace. This is not a matter of being pro-fluoride or anti-fluoride. It is a matter of what New Zealanders see and value as democracy in our country. Individual democratically elected Councillors are not ...
Nicola Willis’ latest supermarket announcement is painfully weak with no new ideas, no real plan, and no relief for Kiwis struggling with rising grocery costs. ...
Half of Pacific children sometimes going without food is just one of many heartbreaking lowlights in the Salvation Army’s annual State of the Nation report. ...
The Salvation Army’s State of the Nation report is a bleak indictment on the failure of Government to take steps to end poverty, with those on benefits, including their children, hit hardest. ...
New Zealand First has today introduced a Member’s Bill which would restore decision-making power to local communities regarding the fluoridation of drinking water. The ‘Fluoridation (Referendum) Legislation Bill’ seeks to repeal the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Act 2021 that granted centralised authority to the Direct General of Health ...
New Zealand First has introduced a Member’s Bill aimed at preventing banks from refusing their services to businesses because of the current “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Framework”. “This Bill ensures fairness and prevents ESG standards from perpetuating woke ideology in the banking sector being driven by unelected, globalist, climate ...
Erica Stanford has reached peak shortsightedness if today’s announcement is anything to go by, picking apart immigration settings piece by piece to the detriment of the New Zealand economy. ...
Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. The intention was to establish a colony with the cession of sovereignty to the Crown, ...
Te Whatu Ora Chief Executive Margie Apa leaving her job four months early is another symptom of this government’s failure to deliver healthcare for New Zealanders. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Prime Minister to show leadership and be unequivocal about Aotearoa New Zealand’s opposition to a proposal by the US President to remove Palestinians from Gaza. ...
The latest unemployment figures reveal that job losses are hitting Māori and Pacific people especially hard, with Māori unemployment reaching a staggering 9.7% for the December 2024 quarter and Pasifika unemployment reaching 10.5%. ...
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Despite being confronted every day with people in genuine need being stopped from accessing emergency housing – National still won’t commit to building more public houses. ...
The Green Party says the Government is giving up on growing the country’s public housing stock, despite overwhelming evidence that we need more affordable houses to solve the housing crisis. ...
Before any thoughts of the New Year and what lies ahead could even be contemplated, New Zealand reeled with the tragedy of Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming losing her life. For over 38 years she had faithfully served as a front-line Police officer. Working alongside her was Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson will return to politics at Waitangi on Monday the 3rd of February where she will hold a stand up with fellow co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. ...
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The Government is doubling down on outdated and volatile fossil fuels, showing how shortsighted and destructive their policies are for working New Zealanders. ...
Green Party MP Steve Abel this morning joined Coromandel locals in Waihi to condemn new mining plans announced by Shane Jones in the pit of the town’s Australian-owned Gold mine. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to strengthen its just-announced 2030-2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement and address its woeful lack of commitment to climate security. ...
The Government’s commitment to get New Zealand’s roads back on track is delivering strong results, with around 98 per cent of potholes on state highways repaired within 24 hours of identification every month since targets were introduced, Transport Minister Chris Bishop says. “Increasing productivity to help rebuild our economy is ...
The former Cadbury factory will be the site of the Inpatient Building for the new Dunedin Hospital and Health Minister Simeon Brown says actions have been taken to get the cost overruns under control. “Today I am giving the people of Dunedin certainty that we will build the new Dunedin ...
From today, Plunket in Whāngarei will be offering childhood immunisations – the first of up to 27 sites nationwide, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. The investment of $1 million into the pilot, announced in October 2024, was made possible due to the Government’s record $16.68 billion investment in health. It ...
New Zealand’s strong commitment to the rights of disabled people has continued with the response to an important United Nations report, Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston has announced. Of the 63 concluding observations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), 47 will be progressed ...
Resources Minister Shane Jones has launched New Zealand’s national Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals List, documents that lay a strategic and enduring path for the mineral sector, with the aim of doubling exports to $3 billion by 2035. Mr Jones released the documents, which present the Coalition Government’s transformative vision ...
Firstly I want to thank OceanaGold for hosting our event today. Your operation at Waihi is impressive. I want to acknowledge local MP Scott Simpson, local government dignitaries, community stakeholders and all of you who have gathered here today. It’s a privilege to welcome you to the launch of the ...
Racing Minister, Winston Peters has announced the Government is preparing public consultation on GST policy proposals which would make the New Zealand racing industry more competitive. “The racing industry makes an important economic contribution. New Zealand thoroughbreds are in demand overseas as racehorses and for breeding. The domestic thoroughbred industry ...
Business confidence remains very high and shows the economy is on track to improve, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis says. “The latest ANZ Business Outlook survey, released yesterday, shows business confidence and expected own activity are ‘still both very high’.” The survey reports business confidence fell eight points to +54 ...
Enabling works have begun this week on an expanded radiology unit at Hawke’s Bay Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital which will double CT scanning capacity in Hawke’s Bay to ensure more locals can benefit from access to timely, quality healthcare, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. This investment of $29.3m in the ...
The Government has today announced New Zealand’s second international climate target under the Paris Agreement, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand will reduce emissions by 51 to 55 per cent compared to 2005 levels, by 2035. “We have worked hard to set a target that is both ambitious ...
Nine years of negotiations between the Crown and iwi of Taranaki have concluded following Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill passing its third reading in Parliament today, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “This Bill addresses the historical grievances endured by the eight iwi ...
As schools start back for 2025, there will be a relentless focus on teaching the basics brilliantly so all Kiwi kids grow up with the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to grow the New Zealand of the future, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “A world-leading education system is a key ...
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Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today visited Otahuhu College where the new school lunch programme has served up healthy lunches to students in the first days of the school year. “As schools open in 2025, the programme will deliver nutritious meals to around 242,000 students, every school day. On ...
Minister for Children Karen Chhour has intervened in Oranga Tamariki’s review of social service provider contracts to ensure Barnardos can continue to deliver its 0800 What’s Up hotline. “When I found out about the potential impact to this service, I asked Oranga Tamariki for an explanation. Based on the information ...
A bill to make revenue collection on imported and exported goods fairer and more effective had its first reading in Parliament, Customs Minister Casey Costello said today. “The Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill modernises the way in which Customs can recover the costs of services that are needed ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Stone, Principal Research Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock Having dense breasts is a clear risk factor for breast cancer. It can also make cancers hard to spot on mammograms. Yet you ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University Last week in Europe, the United States sent some very strong messages it is prepared to upend the established global order. US Vice President JD Vance warned a stunned Munich ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allan Fels, Professor Allan Fels, Professor of Law, Economics and Business at the University of Melbourne and Monash University., The University of Melbourne Australia is creeping towards adding a divestiture power to its Competition and Consumer Act. Under such a law, ...
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The purpose was to establish the facts and provide an independent assessment of government agency activity in relation to allegations that personal data may have been misused during the 2023 General Election. ...
Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster said he is carefully reviewing the referrals raised in the two reports. That work will be done in the context the Privacy Act and the need to ensure individuals’ rights to privacy is protected and respected. ...
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Duncan Sarkies’ latest novel, Star Gazers, is about the collapse of democracy in a society of alpaca breeders. Here are some things his intensive research revealed. 1 How greed works, psychologicallyYes, I guess I already understood greed, but I could never understand why people who already have everything they ...
The proposed cuts would see only two full time Telehealth data and digital roles, and one Planning, Funding and Outcomes (PFO) role remain, reduced from 17 Telehealth support roles (including vacant roles). Roles proposed to be cut include Telehealth ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is calling for Ministers to end funding for Te Kurahuna programmes and workshop grifters that have received millions in taxpayer funding, despite the Government’s supposed focus on cutting costs. ...
By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist, in Avarua, Rarotonga More than 400 people have taken to the streets to protest against Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown’s recent decisions, which have led to a diplomatic spat with New Zealand. The protest, led by Opposition MP and Cook Islands United Party ...
In the second episode, Brynley Stent and Kura Forrester unearth some truths about dating on a dance floor in South Canterbury. Bryn & Ku’s Singles Club is a brand new documentary series for The Spinoff following award-winning comedians and friends Brynley Stent and Kura Forrester as they embark ...
The first half of a billion-dollar pipe that will drastically reduce wastewater overflows in the Auckland isthmus is now in operation. As I biked south, I thought about all the poo sloshing beneath my wheels. Tubes of it disgorging from U-bends, into wastewater pipes laid under our streets that become ...
🚐 The vulnerability continues as the pair head to the Hunt Ball in South Canterbury in search of a rich farmer, before getting some sage relationship advice from Brynley’s Dad and Oma. ❣️ Bryn & Ku’s Singles Club follows comedians Brynley Stent and Kura Forrester as they head out on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joel Garrett, Lecturer in Exercise Science and Physiology, Griffith University Australia’s love affair with the major football codes – the Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL) – is well documented. However, one aspect that stands out to many observers, ...
The White Lotus is back for season three. Here’s what we made of episode one. The third White Lotus season rinses and repeats – and thank God for that. Turns out there is enough comedic and dramatic juice in resort-set ensemble satires on privilege in the modern world, ...
Founder, journalist and author Tim Burrowes joins Duncan Greive to discuss a torrid decade in Australian media and whether there are reasons to be optimistic amid the carnage. Tim Burrowes is the author of a book and a Substack called Unmade, which are truly essential guides to media in ...
The self-appointed apostle says he could be to Christopher Luxon what Elon Musk is to Donald Trump, and his track record speaks for itself.Who is New Zealand’s answer to Elon Musk? The Herald’s tech insider, Chris Keall, put the question to his LinkedIn acolytes the other day. “If Luxon ...
The last good thing at the supermarket is gone. Mad Chapman mourns the Cadbury mini egg cartons. When life is overwhelming and it feels like every story around you is a bad news story, there are a few things that can be relied upon to instil a sense of calm, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Parker, Honorary Professorial Fellow, Melbourne CSHE, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock Judges in Australian courtrooms have a lot of power. They can decide on someone’s guilt and the punishment for it, including lengthy prison time. But what if they get ...
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The most important news.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/june-2016-hottest-month_us_578f07f9e4b0f180da639fdf
That’s what (relatively short) modern records show, proxy records don’t agree.
“reconstructions based on only the longest records (R2 and R3 networks) indicate that single 30- and 10-yr periods of similar or slightly higher temperatures than in the late twentieth century may have occurred during the first half of the millennium”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00781.1
“The reconstructed twentieth-century warming cannot be explained by natural variability alone using GISS-E2-R. In this climate model, anthropogenic forcing is required to produce the rate and magnitude of post-1950 warming observed in the Australasian region. These paleoclimate results are consistent with other studies that attribute the post-1950 warming in Australian temperature records to increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00781.1
What can we, as everyday citizens do to help halt global warming? Reduce consumerism? Live sustainably? I’m getting more and more concerned! We live a lot out of our garden, don’t eat two animals a month, try not to buy any processed food, by that I mean canned goods such as tomatoes, sardines etc. Our last car lasted at least ten years, we fix things when we can instead of buying new and nearly all our clothing is sourced from recycling shops, as is a lot of our furniture. I get really angry at this throwaway society that has a constant need to replace things every six months or so. I know people that have four TV’s in their home. It’s ludicrous.
Watch this film.
‘Tomorrow
It was at film festival and provides lots of solutions.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NUN0QxRB7e0
Looks interesting but doesn’t appear to be available in NZ.
If you live in Wellington, it’s on at film festival there
Cool!
Great list of things you are doing Ffloyd. What do you mean by the two animals thing?
I think it’s a good question, what do we do when we’ve practically reduced our consumption as much as possible and can’t do a lot more without without societal change? I’m looking at driving a lot at the moment, thinking through what it will be like to not be able to drive whenever I want. It’s unlikely there will public transport where I live to replace that so it means considering being less mobile. I think about how prior to the mid 90s and cheap Japanese imports we didn’t all have cars, so how did that work? What can I change about my life and expectations so that I drive less but still feel good about my life? This is my particular challenge because I already don’t drive a lot and am very dependent on my car because of disability.
The frustration about what other people are doing… I try and take the opportunities to have micro conversations with people in ways that don’t get their backs up eg at the moment there are lots of opportunities to talk about CC because of the unusual mild winter. I’m going to think now about how to bring consumerism into that conversation, so thanks for bringing that up.
Having The Standard as a place where it’s ok to talk about CC is very import to me sanity wise re the level of ignorance elsewhere but I also thing there are more people wanting to change that need encouragement. How to focus on those people.
here we have hitching posts, rides listed on net and various email lists, friends, friends of friends and so on. Very little public transport so community has to help when help needed.
Nice one marty. I think where you live is leading the way on many of these things.
Two animals thing. Yes a bit obscure, just saying that we don’t eat much meat but know people that consume way more than nutritionally needed. If we could reduce meat and dairy consumption to a nutritional minimum and encourage more vegetarianism,would it follow that we could reduce herds and would this be beneficial to our environment?
Yes, it would. Massively so in fact.
Ffloyd, your goal is not to stop global warming. It is to develop and support a self supporting home, family community situation which is going to withstand the turmoil and upset of the next 50 years.
Halting* global warming seems like not only a worthy goal but an imperative one. The most important one. Fortunately preparing for living with the reality of global warming can be part of that, because there are big overlaps in what is required.
*by which I mean doing everything we can to limit the human contribution from now on (mitigation).
Doing everything we can would mean being willing to face prosecution, court action, unelectability, unpopularity, increased unemployment and loss of property including businesses, investments, homes and cars.
Tell me, how many Green MPs have taken air flights in the last 7 days? Most of them?
Clearly, we’re not seriously talking about ‘doing everything we can’ are we.
Lanth’s position is still very sensible. If you are already a bottom 50% burner on the NZ scale of things, then sit back, enjoy your life, burn carbon sensibly, gradually prepare for a tougher future, because nothing we do in NZ is going to shift world CO2 concentrations by more than 1ppm.
I think that people reading that will also take away these messages,
1. there is no point in trying to mitigate, because no-one else is. So le
2. it’s ok to criticise other people’s carbon consumption while not changing.
3. we are stuck and cannot change, therefore why bother trying.
4. NZ is special and doesn’t need to change as much as other places.
To my mind all those are defeatist. I don’t see any reason why we should stop working on mitigation. Doing what Lanth is doing en masse guarantees us runaway climate change.
As you know I have a different political position on climate change to you.
My view is that the more people are distracted by quarter measures, the more their anxiety is relieved by pretend and extend non-solutions, and the more political parties get away with lying to the nation as to our true climate predicament, the less effective change will be possible.
It’s good to hear you describing your political position clearly 🙂
I would see Lanth’s position as a quarter measure so I have to admit I don’t fully get it yet. But I do think it’s useful to change to explain your thinking behind what you do.
Lanth (if you’ll excuse me pretending to know what your thoughts are Lanth…) clearly suspects the severe extent of the climate change crisis we are in. He also clearly suspects that nothing effective will be done about it. So why should he give up his minor comforts of life when he is already a low emitter (by western standards).
And he’s not one of the ones running around claiming that 2 degrees C warming is avoidable.
That ship so sailed. Early or mid 1980s I think.
“And he’s not one of the ones running around claiming that 2 degrees C warming is avoidable.”
I don’t understand the relevance of that bit. Are you saying that because some people are ignorant or in denial it’s ok for the aware people to not do as much?
“So why should he give up his minor comforts of life when he is already a low emitter (by western standards).”
Because, it leads the way and increases the chance of change. Because the situation is so serious and urgent that everyone needs to be reducing. In NZ I mean that literally. Because saying that others need to change first is a losing strategy.
btw, I agree about the thing about using Lanth as an example Maybe we could change it to a generic position without having to second guess his position further?
How does your support of trump who lies about CC fit with that?
I justify that by saying that there isn’t even 5 ppm difference between coal digging Trump and free trading pro-Saudi Clinton.
cv you have given up and pretend care now and you want the rest of us to agree with you so you will feel better. You are wrong and misguuded. Giving up is weak and part of the problem but who cares right?
Given up? No dude, definitely not given up. But I ain’t pretending that a tea spoon is going to successfully dig through a mountain of greenstone. Neither am I going to keep up the typical left wing moaning about how stupid and uncaring Kiwis are, how biased the Granny Herald is, how incompetent National’s Ministers are, how NZ suddenly turned to shit end of 2008 etc. etc.
Why on Earth would I need you to feel better?
You tell me.
You said yourself that you advocate for trump even though he is a denierLiar and if elected will do nothing or worse to help people prepare. You have given up mate.
Do I need to repeat myself? I think Trump will be a better POTUS for NZ because he will be less likely to start a neocon led military confrontation with China and Russia in the Pacific, he will shitcan the TPP asap, and he probably won’t be asking NZ troops to help out in more middle east regime change wars because oil and gas pipelines.
Also there isn’t even 5 ppm difference between coal digging Trump and pro-Saudi free trader Hillary Clinton.
Given all of this, I think Trump remains the better POTUS for NZ.
Read this analysis as me “giving up” if you like but that’s solely your own imagination.
Now THAT is an accurate analogy to shuffling chairs on the titanic.
Edit- potus doesnt care about nz not even slightly.
Of course POTUS doesn’t care about NZ in the slightest; the three points I raised aren’t about caring for NZ, but they are very helpful to us
1) No superpower military conflict in the Pacific
2) No TPP
3) No NZDF supporting wars of regime change.
Fair enough you are consistent. I don’t trust trump and probably never will based on his history and personality. I think he is bad bad news for everyone. You disagree, all good. I am a left person you are not I’m pleased in some ways that we have very different views.
I think that’s more likely under an impulsive, ego-driven blowhard that it is under someone who, at worst, wants to continue with business as usual.
In direct contradiction to his VP’s free trade wishes. Even if Trump opposes it, he’d sacrifice it for a “deal” at the first opportunity. Expect TPP under Trump.
At odds with Trump’s repeated desires to project US power through the use of allies in NATO and beyond.
If Trump is for real and intends to actively govern, expect instability and demands for NZ to do more overseas.
If Trump wants to just be a figurehead with the VP doing most of the work, expect the TPP but at least it’s unlikely there’ll be a war in the South China sea.
Why can’t one be dependent on the other? Sometimes it is the will of the people that can change things. We are doing our best to live in a way that has little detrimental impact on our earth (husband has just had live worms delivered by courier) just thought I ‘d throw that in there , we live in a small village so don’t use car much, don’t buy what we don’t need (except for wine) but hey, you gotta draw the line somewhere.
Yep. What you are doing is both mitigation and adaptation. No reason we can’t do both.
Good dtuff. By the end of the year we will be in a tiny house, 4 of us. This is anothrr way to build resilience – downsize and reduce.
Cool! I’m in the process of doing some major downsizing too, over the next year. Lots of benefits from that process already. It just seems to make sense.
From zerohedge these are some excerpts from a book by David Stockman……
“The baby boom generation which started with so much promise when it came of age in the 1960s has ended up a colossal failure. It has turned America into a bloody imperial hegemon abroad and a bankrupt Spy State at home.
Like the generation she represents Hillary Clinton has betrayed her grand ideals over a lifetime of compromise, expediency, self-promotion and complacent acquisition of power, wealth and fame. She thinks war is peace, deficits don’t matter and that the Feds serial bubble machine is leading the nation back to prosperity.”
I see strong parallels to our own country in this ( and it is only fair to confess that I am a baby boomer ).
Fair comment about Clinton.
The politicians who sold our countries to corporations however were 1 generation higher …Thatcher, Douglas and Reagan.
What Blair, Clinton and Clark failed to do was reverse the changes when the boomer generation came to power.
They lacked the courage to change, they lacked the strength to change and they had benefited personally from the changes so they pulled up the ladder.
I’m not and I don’t care or blame baby boomers for anything.
This baby boomer finger pointing is horse shit and who ever is promoting it should get done for inciting hatred.
Especially the media, people need to start complaining and taking action against some of these news outlets.
You don’t blame the top 10% baby boomers for the massive Auckland house price rise of the last 15 to 20 years?
Nope, they were the ones with the money when this property boom kicked off.
Also it’s all the baby boomers who are copping shit, do you think it would be acceptable to blame all Maori for being over represented in all the bad statistics?
You don’t blame the country’s economic leadership of the last 15-20 years for it? Most of these people were born in the 50s.
I think Labour and National should have done more to keep a lid on property prices or at the very least pressured councils to keep land supply up.
Problem is a booming property market is good for the government of the day, people employed, people buying stuff, people making money, this equals happy voters.
Nothing to do with land supply.
As has been stated countless times before, Auckland has a 6 year supply of land waiting to be built on and there are 20,000 unoccupied dwellings in Auckland.
Greed and selfishness still rules.
Added to you last sentence Kevin, lousy planning and profligate use of land have created problems that don’t afflict much of the world that didn’t aspire to quarter acre paradises that depend on vehicle ownership.
Yep – supply is not the problem.
Developers will manage the supply (despite re-zoning or SHA requirements) to maximise return (aka price).
If Developers make a mistake and transiently appease demand, the Banks will step in and Blacklist developments for lending to protect existing arrangements – just like with Sydney multi-tenancies ( the same Banks ! )
RNZ yesterday had good exposure of the SHA developers reticence at providing the “affordable” component. Will always be time managed to maximise return.
The Supply/Demand mantra is a a tale.
For those who are interested, I won’t be fixing the search until the weekend.
I’ve just spent a couple of hours going through my hacked up version of the Percona Sphinx plugin version 0.4 code from 2009 that got the backend engine to work the way that we needed it to do with the screen interface. However their code had some major use of deprecated features of PHP back in 2009, and which now simply don’t work in PHP 7 (which is why you get the blank screen).
The backend produces stuff like…
AH01071: Got error 'PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function mysql_real_escape_string() in sphinxsearch_frontend.php:676
Stack trace:\n#0 sphinxsearch_frontend.php(210): SphinxSearch_FrontEnd->insert_sphinx_stats('test')
#1 wordpress-sphinx-plugin/sphinxsearch.php(188): SphinxSearch_FrontEnd->query()
#2 plugin.php(291): SphinxSearch->posts_request('SELECT SQL_CALC...')\n
#3 query.php(3544): apply_filters_ref_array('posts_request', Array)
So far I have seen about 15 deprecated and/or removed features.
The current version, Percona 3.9.8, has a whole lot more customisation points with callbacks and no longer insists on running the sphinx serach engine and removes some of the rigidity reasons why I had to hack their code in the first place.
For instance, their original code ran the search pretty much when each comment got made. But we get so many comments, that what it meant was during the day the sphinx was being asked to run continuously. I prefer simply running the deltas about every 4 minutes during the day (and 15 minutes overnight).
It also didn’t provide good support for changing options in the search box or for changing the layout of different types of elements (comments / posts) in the results.
But since my code is embedded, I’ll have to extract my code and make it a plugin on top of their plugin which runs on top of the sphinx search engine…. Weekend job.
Sorry folks.
mate all good – no sorry necessary, thank you for everything.
The “Predator Free by 2050” announcement is such a FARCE. It is nothing more than an excuse to drop 1080 all over the valley in the Kaharangi National Park this week, apparently the initiative starts this week, loolz.
One wonders if they will leave the poison unattended in the paddock. while they go back and forth in the chopper like last time. Soon the local paper will be issuing warnings again, not to hunt or fish up the valley, and the animals will come down out of the park, their insides fried, just like last time, the bird song will fade away for a number of months, just like last time.
The rat plague of biblical proportions seems to make a return every couple of years. Someones making money from the 1080
I’m all for a predator free NZ, but lets start with ‘Poison Ivy’ who appears to be an anti environmentalist posing as a gardener. A nasty nasty piece of work that one.
In 2010, a petition by anti-1080 activists found 93 per cent of Westland residents were opposed to the poison, based on canvassing of 1500 people.
1080 poison is banned by most of the world.
The timing of this announcement is just an excuse for more poison to be dropped. Bring back the trappers, start up some trapping workshops, train the public to become more active with pest control and ditch the 1080 it’s doing more harm than good around here. Come and live by a national park for a month during the drops and you will understand.
Anyone need some work? After the drops they send people in to make sure no 1080 pallets are visible from the walking tracks, bloody farce, winter is the preferred drop time, less tourists to notice the damage, don’t want to poison the tourists, let’s poison the locals instead.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11472942
Hows that 1080 factory going?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/80636881/1080-factory-given-West-Coast-Regional-Council-investment-still-not-making-1080-three-years-later
that Herald link is interesting. Apparently it’s the powder/residue from the hoppers that is the problem. NZ has a pretty lax culture around poison application, this instance looks entirely preventable. I hope those two women have success with ACC, but there should be wider consequences including for the regional counil (and DOC if it was involved) and the contractor.
“The rat plague of biblical proportions seems to make a return every couple of years.”
Beech mast seed spikes and the consequential rise in mouse then stoat/rat numbers is a pretty well understood phenomenon. I’d be interested to know if it’s happening more often and whether that’s a climate change issue.
It’s a matter of propaganda, imo. Panic stations, everyone, rat plague ahead, buy my story, buy my product FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY!!!
That’s probably true. But it’s also true that beech masting and rat/stoat spikes as a result is a real thing. I remember it from before it was part of the modern 1080 push, and I saw it in the bush as well. It’s a sad day that we can no longer rely on pretty basic research to tell us about such things. I find the issue so polarised now that I don’t trust any source of information that’s coming from DOC, the govt, allied groups, or the people opposing. Which doesn’t mean they’re all untrustworthy, just that it’s too hard to tell now.
Maybe it is now a regular reaction from nature to cc
Possibly tied into El Nino and La Nina cycles too?
Yep
We know plants have started acting strange – fruiting, flowering etc at non-normal times. I worry a bit about a real antartic weather front blanketing everywhere with snow at the wrong time of year, destroying a lot. Another long term adaption area I think.
Trapping didn’t work which is why 1080 was brought in and even that’s not working.
Which just proves that those people don’t actually know why 1080 is used.
We’ve essentially got two options:
1. Use 1080 to protect our environment as it is while causing some minor damage
2. Let our environment evolve around the imported pests which is going to mean that a whole lot of native flora and fauna will go extinct
“Someones making money from the 1080”
Indeed.
Someone’s making money from the groceries I buy, too. What’s the government going to do about it, I’d like to know!!?
No one’s calling on the Government to do anything in response to the news that someone’s making money from selling 1080. Your interpretation seems knee-jerky.
The commenter did appear to be calling for the government to do something about it. In any case, unless something is being inferred by commenting that someone is making money from 1080, it’s just a random, irrelevant fact, like “Someone is making money from groceries.”
If a Government Minister was making money from 1080, it’d be very pertinent to the discussion.
Key is encouraging all New Zealanders to join the drive to kill millions of small mammals. Become a small-mammal killer, New Zealanders, invest in the killing of small mammals, cheer on the killing of small mammals, come on, Kiwis, show some guts! This will define us, this will make us great on the World Stage.
You would rather see the introduced small Mammals live and completely wipe our taonga native species Robert?
“Taonga”, lost sheep? You’ll have a view on kiore then. That rat is taonga for tangata whenua and it’s a small mammal. Key’s calling for the destruction of a taonga species. Very un-New Zealander that.
Pretty crude attempt at avoiding the question Robert.
You are well aware no doubt that Kiore are a destructive introduced mammal and although they do have a cultural value to some Iwi, there is by no means a widespread agreement that they should be left to flourish and plunder the species that were there before them.
You will also be aware that kiore is now very restricted in habitat because they have been largely eaten by the other small mammals that were introduced by humans later. Their future survival is in fact only guaranteed in places where the later small mammals are excluded.
So with that red herring out of the way…straight answer thanks – do you want introduced mammals not to be killed and allowed to go on to wipe out the species that were here before them?
“Crude”, lost sheep? I thought nuanced, but okay, you addressed my point quite well. Not to my satisfaction, but that’s not required. You make the point that kiore have been controlled to a significant extent by Rattus rattus and/ or Rattus Norvegicus, along with various mustelids, though Rattus exulans have not been stoately eradicated; that’s not weasely done by any means – so, I guess I can infer from your comment that you support the use of a better predator to control a mammilian pest, and would therefore support Tim Flannery’s proposal to introduce the Papua NewGuinean eagle Harpyopsis novaeguineae to our forests. They scoop possums out from their hidey-holes and deal to them most efficiently and don’t eat anything else, promise. You for that idea, or not? Straight answer.
No. (Straight enough?)
Introducing a further predator to resolve the issue of introduced predators is as daft an idea as you are intending it to be!
I support the retention of the native natural heritage that has evolved in Aotearoa over the millennia.
In order to achieve that goal I support the killing of the mammalian predators that were introduced by man over the last few hundred years.
Straight answer (yes or no will do as I answered you above) – do you support the killing of those predators Robert?
I don’t support “killing” as the primary control of any unwanted organism, lost sheep. Much of the state of affairs we humans find ourselves in presently arrises from our adoption of the “kill what we don’t like” philosophy and I believe the way out of the mess is to change that mindset. The general consensus here (by my reckoning) is that the proposal to rid New Zealand of mammalian predators is a nonsense and that it cannot be done. As I agree with that opinion, I’m enjoying poking holes in what is to me a pretend proposal, and have no compunction about doing that. I’ve worked on rodent-free islands, and seen how well the plants, insects and birds recover once the predators have gone. I’ve also been on offshore islands where rats and stoats have returned, after the blitz. They breed quickly, those wee mammals. The idea that the whole of NZ could be rid of rodents is, to my mind, preposterous and spending vast fortunes on a destined-to-fail idea seems to me foolish, given there are far more pressing issues that require funding. You, lost sheep, say you believe the goal is achievable. Care to explain how it might realistically be done? I’m genuinely interested.
You say you believe the goal is achievable. Care to explain how it might realistically be done? I’m genuinely interested.
Absolutely it is technically achievable.
We already do have one technique that is well proven as being capable of achieving eradication over large area’s. Aerial Poison.
Within the last couple of years there is clear evidence building of a second method that can achieve eradication. C02 Powered traps.
Looking forward there are promising lines of further development in poison and traps, and then there are many possibilities opening up with genetic methods.
So no issues on whether it could be done, but given the effort, cost and combined social will required to do so, I’m not bold enough to say it will be done.
My starting point is this: Many citizens are willing to support this goal and attempt to achieve it, and every step towards this goal is a gain
If we set out with a goal of a 100% Predator Free NZ, and in the end only achieve 50% that will still be a great achievement and Aotearoa will be a far better place for our descendants to live because of that.
If we achieve 100%, then I hope you are still around so I can remind you no great advancement would have ever occurred if those with the vision gave up because of the negativity of the nay-sayers!
Straight answer? So back to you…
‘I don’t support “killing” as the primary control of any unwanted organism…. and I believe the way out of the mess is to change that mindset.’
I am genuinely interested in exactly what you mean by this?
Are you proposing controlling introduced predators, and if so, how?
Aerial poisoning does not achieve eradication over large areas, where there are adjacent ‘large areas’. It’s doable on a small island, but mainland New Zealand? There’s no example to show that can be done. In fact there are innumerable examples of re-infestations in situations where there’s no wide stretch of water protecting the cleared area. It’s theoretical. You believe it’s do-able, I believe it isn’t. Precedence is in my favour (there is none). Therefore, your claim,
“every step towards this goal is a gain” is wrong, as those steps are futile, in regard the final, illusory goal of total eradication, imo. That energy and funding would be better spent elsewhere. A 50% eradication would be a waste of money. That 50% would rapidly re-infest the cleared land, rendering the effort pointless. If you think even for a moment about climate change and the demands that’s going to make on us and our resources, you’ll join me in saying the attempt is nothing more than a pipe-dream. Your ” if those with the vision gave up because of the negativity of the nay-sayers!” is not a useful statement either; the same could be said of those who say building a ladder to the moon isn’t do-able. The money wasted in building the tallest ladder possible, would be wasted. Those with that vision, should give up.
As to my “killing” comments, I’d invite you to picture a paddock on any farm in New Zealand and try to imagine what you are not seeing; the complex, diverse, multides of organisms that were there prior to “our” re-purposing of that space into food-producing land. Where have those organisms gone? We killed them, in order that we could run our two or three favourites: grass, cows, whatever. It’s that way of doing business that has at its core, killing other organisms, that I don’t support. It’s easy to “what if” using specific examples of troublesome creatures, but the general principle, don’t employ killing as the default interaction with the rest of creation, is my advice. Am I proposing controlling organisms, including introduced ones? Yes, by cultural methods modelled on successful natural processes. It’s a long and complex story and probably not suitable for this thread, unless you’re super-keen 🙂
‘It’s a long and complex story’
Just to keep it short then, just give me a very brief outline of a ‘cultural method modelled on successful natural processes’ that would prevent rats and Mustelids from exterminating Mohua from the Eglington Valley?
I don’t think there are any Mohua left in the Eglinton. edit, ah, google tells me they’ve been reintroduced. Good for them. The Eglinton would be a relatively easy valley to do pest control in without using 1080. Can’t eradicate pests there for the reasons that Robert has stated. In that sense there is no one step closer. With the tech we have currently we should be moving towards optimal control not eradication.
@Robert,
I agree on the eradication bit. It’s madness.
A 50% eradication would be a waste of money. That 50% would rapidly re-infest the cleared land, rendering the effort pointless. If you think even for a moment about climate change and the demands that’s going to make on us and our resources, you’ll join me in saying the attempt is nothing more than a pipe-dream.
But we know that control does work and increases native species, so that seems worth some effort. I’d prefer that we didn’t use 1080 or minimised it to extreme need.
In terms of CC, any reason we can’t have people living in the bush doing the control via trapping?
The lost sheep@ 2:33pm, your answer is provided by weka@2:46.
Weka, yes to trappers where there is purpose beyond eradication, which won’t happen anyway. Trapping for food and fibre, why not?
@ Weka / Robert.
If trapping worked and was cost effective for multi-species control, we’d be using it. Why wouldn’t we?
But over large areas and/or difficult terrain it simply isn’t, whereas aerial poison is.
‘Optimal control’ over even large areas of NZ would be a major improvement on the present situation, and as I implied above, if that’s where we get to then I’d be happy with that.
But the big point to consider is that over time ongoing control is far more expensive, and far less successful than eradication. That is why those who are thinking long term think it worth aiming for the ability to eradicate.
How far each of us thinks we should actively protect our unique natural heritage, or allow it to degrade, is of course largely a subjective call based on our personal values….and obviously we differ in that respect.
There is also an increasing emphasis on the long term economic value of conserving what we have that is unique, and certainly I know that has been a major factor in the Nats support for this project.
I do find it disturbing that someone in your position Robert should be so reluctant to express any commitment to serious predator control, but happily, National, Labour, and The Greens are all reflecting both my personal values and the building public determination to achieve this goal, so I can’t see any reason why the momentum won’t keep gathering.
I’ve spent many decades working towards this aim, so very happy indeed with how things are shaping.
Serious predator control and predator eradication are two very different beasts, Lost Sheep. An almost-success in the latter is not a success at all, when the predators flood back in, as they are biologically programmed to do. It’s all or nothing and as I believe “all” is impossible, I support other approaches. Localised efforts for specific gains can be valid. A pan-Aotearoa eradication of predatory mammals is a nonsense, in my view. Next topic, wilding pines 🙂
An almost-success in the latter is not a success at all, when the predators flood back in, as they are biologically programmed to do
If your goal was eradication, but you feel short, why would you just give up and let predators flood back in and take the situation right back to where you started from? Where do you get that presumption from? It would be stupid in the extreme!
Wilding Pines? If i took your logic i might argue that you need to eradicate them completely or not at all, as there would be no value in just eliminating most of them and then keeping them under optimum control.
I wouldn’t argue that of course. Bugger all would ever improve if everything had to conform to that standard.
I think you are close to getting it, Lost Sheep. “Almost eradicate then maintain” isn’t a reality, when it comes to rats, mice, stoats and possums, all of which are very, very mobile. They run, they climb, they swim; there’s almost nowhere they can’t quickly return to. Any stalling of a total eradication programme would result in a return to the original state of infestation, imo. It’s all or nothing, unless you are planning on building some very, very good fences, which, as you know, can nevertheless be breached. Your “optimum control” is reliant on so much and very vulnerable to forces such as economic downturn and adverse climatic conditions; if/when there’s a Global Financial Crisis and a Global Warming Crisis, it’ll be game over for any programmes that aren’t basic “protect and feed the people”. What do you reckon the chances of either of those things happening before 2050, Lost Sheep? High, Very High or Extremely High? Same for wilding pines.
You’ve shown your true colours in 7.0 above Robert, and your ongoing attitude of trying to find every straw man reason why it can’t work speaks clearly of someone who simply has no enthusiasm for the conservation of our natural heritage.
Luckily, those of us who are not willing to stand by and see your cute and fluffy small mammals slaughter our natural heritage have a far more determined resolve.
And zero chance of everything coming down to merely ‘protect and feed the people’.
Unless those tackling the challenges of climate change adopt the kind of fatalistic and negative attitudes you are displaying to conservation…
I think you’ve missed the central point lost sheep. ‘Eradicate’ isn’t possible with the technologies we have now (or that are emerging). So lots of people are arguing against National’s proposal, because it doesn’t make sense. That’s not the same as saying don’t do pest control.
Robert has explained why working towards eradication when eradication is a nonsense doesn’t make sense. Unless you can remove all of the species, they will keep expanding into the newly vacated niche. This is basic ecology. So the issue isn’t one of eradication, it’s about controlling populations sufficiently to enable ecosystem and species health. Robert has said that he supports this.
(the obvious exceptions to that are island sanctuaries and mainland pest-proof fenced areas).
He’s also pointing out the realities of CC etc, and that having big, high tech dependent plans and systems going into a resource depleted future is not a good strategy.
Let me put this another way. The only chance that native species and ecosystems have of surviving the age of CC is if humans become predators and use low tech, low carbon methods to harvest unwanted species.
edited.
My true colours, Lost Sheep?
I’ll pass that on to my team that manages Te Wai Korari wetland here in Southland. It’s 6 hectares of harakeke wetland we bought to prevent it being turned into dairy pasture, and developed waterways to assist native fish in spawning and planted native plants to give extra shelter to the fernbirds and bittern there. I’m the chairman of the group that I initiated 15 years ago, so they’ll be a little puzzled, I guess, by your view. I’ll think too, of your message as I walk past the native plantings I’ve done over those 15 years, alongside of the estuary and up several of the creeks that flow through the village and into the estuary. When I get home, I’ll shush the grey warblers, tui, bellbirds, brown creepers and other native birds that flit about the kotuku, kowhai, kahikatea, rimu, totara and tarata-tree lined creek in my forest garden and share your view with them, though they’ll not understand what I’m saying, mostly. The giant kokupu swimming in the spring I re-formed from it’s mud-filled state 25 years ago, when I converted the gorse covered hectare I’ve lived on since then, into a mixed forest garden, won’t know what I’m on about either, but no matter. They’re safe in their spring, though the kotare take them if they can. Predators, those kingfishers! I’m pretty keen on native flora and fauna and have a number of other projects underway to recreate habitat for them all. I like to be involved with projects that are realistic and do-able. Pie in the sky’s not really my scene, especially when it’s nothing more than deception-politics 🙂
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/kiore-pacific-rats
Are you sure that they’re taonga?
Mahi nga kai – kiore taste good and doubtless kept early travellers alive. An animal that aided you in surviving during a major shift like that could easily become revered as a taonga, and did, in this case. Better though, to ask those whose ancestors were involved in the transfer. I doubt kiore arrived unnoticed, tucked away in the bowels of a waka. They’d have been purpose-brought for their value as a food stuff, imo.
Perhaps but live meat requires more food than simply carrying enough vegetables. That said, meat does provide nutrients that vegetables don’t and doesn’t keep as well.
And there escape into the natural environment does indicate that they were actually stowaways.
Kiore were kept in captivity long after Maori arrived here. Escapes would have been common. They were brought here on purpose.
Almost, if not all the remaining Kiore are in Ngāi Tahu territory, and although there is a range of opinion regarding their taonga status or not, generally Ngāi Tahu have been very active supporters of mammal eradication efforts.
Of particular note was the fierce debate within Iwi around the clearance of Taukihepa / Big South Cape Island by aerially applied Brodifacoum in 2006.
However, after the positive results became apparent over the next few years, debate died away, and subsequently Iwi eradicated rats on all the other tītī Islands.
Tuakihepa and Putauhinu across the water (I’ve spent weeks there, counting titi burrows), didn’t have a kiore problem. Their rats were ship rats, a totally different beast altogether. The important factor there was do-ability; those islands are small. Te Wai Pounamu and Te Ika a Maui are not. On that note, do you remember the accidental dumping of Brodifacoum into a bay near Kaikoura when a truck crashed, and the accidental dumping of the same chemical into a lake in South Westland from a helicopter? Multiply those mistakes by the factor needed to cover the whole country and you’ve got a serious environmental violation, right there 🙂
Watch out Robert someone might say you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a New Zealander for that scorn.
Why not make it an Olympic event get the black singlet brigade into it. Maybe give people a house if they are good small mammal killers. This would help some into a house, kill the vermin, build survival skills and community – if it was a top town thing.
I’m all for a predator free NZ, but lets start with ‘Poison Ivy’ who appears to be an anti environmentalist posing as a gardener. A nasty nasty piece of work that one.
Seriously? Whatever you’re taking, reduce the dose.
In 2010, a petition by anti-1080 activists found 93 per cent of Westland residents were opposed to the poison, based on canvassing of 1500 people.
So what? That word “national” in national parks, and that acronym “DoC” in DoC land, mean that the personal opinion of someone living in Westland is irrelevant.
1080 poison is banned by most of the world.
Because most of the world has in its conservation areas a lot of mammals that it doesn’t want killed. In our conservation areas, we’re happy to kill off anything that ever sucked a tit (also possums), so 1080’s a great poison for us to use.
Bring back the trappers…
We totally should – as well as dropping shitloads of 1080.
Bring back the trappers
They never went away. Bounties, on the other hand…
Yeah its a tricky one, would increasing the bounty but putting in an end date work or would that just make people not bother?
That’s also an issue if the state imposes predator-free on communities without their agreement.
The doc method when I contracted for them was effective. By memory we got $32 ha to for a first round knock down to 5% trap catch in the monitor.
They just needed to sharpen up their time management around getting in the plotters and paying.
It would not have been much more work to leave set and forget poison for rats etc.
How many traps is that per hectare roughly?
We and most hunters trap in what we called a rolling front (ie starting at one end and leap frogging trap lines as the stop catching) instead of trying to cover the whole block at once. depending on the type of country one man can manage 120-250 traps all though 250 is to much if you want to recover the fur
“So what? That word “national” in national parks, and that acronym “DoC” in DoC land, mean that the personal opinion of someone living in Westland is irrelevant.”
1080 gets used far more widely than just in National Parks (or conservation estate).
And all areas where it is used are bordered with non-use areas and that affects locals.
And, National Parks are for everyone, so it’s completely valid for people who spend time in them to object to 1080.
For reference, my own position is that we should be using other tech and keeping 1080 for areas that are too hard to manage any other way, or for periodic ‘top up’ drops (eg 15 year cycles), instead of the increasingly ubiquitous use that is happening now. I also think that the people who object to 1080 need to organise and come up with realistic alternatives. Protesting isn’t enough.
huh look at that, we agree on something
Don’t the possums build resistance to 1080. The small percentage that don’t die, breed. Do they change the formula or accept 97% or whatever kill rate.
So doing the same thing each year becomes less and less effective, so diversified solutions that mix it up are better.
Yeah I was wondering about resistance too. Diversity is always good.
For reference, my own position is that we should be using other tech and keeping 1080 for areas that are too hard to manage any other way…
I used to live in South Westland – just about every bit of forest in there falls into that category. It’s up to the people who want use of 1080 stopped to propose an alternative that would actually work.
Why do you say that about South Westland? My memory of somewhere like Haast is that it’s relatively accessible. If there is road access and ridges, then you can trap, bait etc. Too difficult is some of the really steep places like the Gulliver Valley, although those places still have valley floor access, so if we are talking control rather than eradication, that’s doable.
And let’s not forget that the Gullier Valley steep slopes is where the last of the Fiordland Kākāpō were found, so it’s possible that those places are less ammenable to mustelids anyway.
In “too hard to manage any other way,” I’m thinking of the number of square kilometers of it rather than accessibility. It would be possible to control pests via traps and bait across that much land area, but only in the sense that it’s possible to build roads using shovels instead of machinery – possible, but hugely expensive and just not worth it.
It depends on what the goal is. If it’s to get rid of possums, I agree. If it’s to control them enough to put the bird and other species a jump above replacement rate, then that’s a different thing. Because then you’re talking about finding the sweet spot between keeping labour costs low and being effective.
Government departments have done research on that sweet spot for some species at least, so it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out in different locations. Maybe the trap line only needs to be done once month, or every few months. Do a big push every few years, and then keep on top of it periodically. It’s going to vary from place to place, but all of that is just a matter of organising a good system.
The solution to the large area is to let people live there. Lots of people would love to live in the bush if they were allowed and could make a living. That requires some cultural change eg DOC have this idea that people shouldn’t live in National Parks unless they’re supporting tourism. But hunters and trappers could be given blocks and occupancy rights in various forms.
Let’s not forget that there are also a lot of people already doing pest control voluntarily. Again plenty of people that would maintain a stoat line if it meant they could live in that valley and go climbing or whatever.
Bats, btw, our special, precious, unique native bats, are small mammals.
Our bats have almost been made extinct by other small mammals. The bats themselves have caused how many extinctions of other species?
Bats have also suffered enormous population decline through the destruction of their habitat by the alpha mammal.
The New Wild -Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation
Fred Pearce
https://www.amazon.com/New-Wild-Invasive-Species-Salvation/dp/0807033685
Free your minds.
Lots of useful ideas and lots of shortcomings to that general debate too (which I know reasonably well, although not that specific book).
One is how to reconcile the theory with the reality of species extinction and how that affects the ecosystem.
I think it also works better when looking at plants (native bush will replace gorse) than animals (in the NZ situation stoats will reign supreme).
I also think that putting humans back into the food chain is important. We’re top level predators and should act as such (i.e we should be harvesting possum, deer, stoats etc).
Portia Boulger, the legend. Speaking truth to power.
I wonder now that h.r.c got the nod.
If we will get a post today full of condescension, and my favorite line – if you don’t vote h.r.c then you’re voting for trump? Funny how that feels just like the texan presidents line,” if you’re not with us, you’re against us.”
I wonder if the calls will go out for h.r.c. to be recalled. I mean she can’t win an election, just look at the numbers, and she can’t unify the party. Under current right thinking on the left, that is the death knell right?
Obviously a loser who needed bucket loads of money, and the whole establishment to rig the election for her. Well done them, it worked!
My hope, if they keep her, and I think they will. Is that can keep the whole dirty tricks campaign going, and rig the presidential election. Because God knows she won’t get in other wise.
One final point, don’t blame bernie supporters if they don’t get behind her. It’s her job to get them to vote, and the blame game just makes you look condescending and arrogant. And the other thing, with the Libertarians at 13%, you can’t blame the Greens either. Who will the left blame, blame the anarchist, because we want fair, open, and honest elections, so we must be the scum to blame, I mean – is it not obvious?
So supporters of this demagogue, good luck. God bless, and I hope you know what you are in for supporting another corporate morte canard.
Word circulating is that all 700 Bernie delegates will be stripped of their convention credentials and barred from all official convention events now that they are no longer needed.
That would throw many bernie supports straight into trumps hands, they can’t be that stupid.
I’m not willing to think they would support trump that way, I know I never would.
However, if they do, it’s something to talk about, until then it’s pure speculation.
link or it did not happen.
Only reports on twitter so far. Also hundreds of Sanders delegates have walked, and Sanders supporters are staging a sit in of the convention media centre.
Do you want links to those as well because it didn’t happen otherwise?
i answered that below.
about 150 sour loosers walked out with a bit of black cloth in front of their faces and the remaining 1600 Sanders Delegates are busy having a good convention with Bernie Sanders.
ahhh, tarty little children throwing away their marbles cause no one wants to play with them.
Hi Sabine, that’s the true arrogance of an establishment loyalist you are showing there. Treating the rebels like little immature kids while the serious grown ups at the big table with the champagne flowing and food served keeping cheering the status quo on.
Yes, Sanders capitulated and yes, the DNC establishment and the Clinton empire has won. But rubbing your hands with glee at the crushing of a dissident force by the establishment machine doesn’t really become you.
[Adding “establishment” and “loyalist” to the mod bin. They’re meaningless terms of abuse as they are being currently used in this debate. TRP]
Curiously, it’s a close mirror-image of the Republican Convention last week.
Overall the contesting and protesting is good for the Republicans, good for the Democrats, and good for democracy as a whole.
it is. i don’t have an issue with it.
let me guess you are talking about the 150 delegates that tied black gags around their mouth, left the convention and occupied the media tent?
And they are somehow more representative then the other 1600 delegates that stayed in the convention and are having a ball/
oh dear.
And the Anderson’s Bay branch of the Democrats, lol
who are the anderson’s bay branch of the democrats?
I was flippantly alluding to CV’s own little “so loyal to the party you’ll try to burn it down” escapade with NZLabour
ah who cares.
Support that warmongering woman, Sabine, I don’t care. But you of all people understand how the establishment careerists have screwed Sanders – the one left wing candidate who can actually beat Trump – yet here you are dissing his supporters and backing the pro-Clinton crowd like the rest of the establishment.
oh well you should raise your complaint with Bernie Sanders. Not with me.
https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/758073231748259840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
No, I am raising it with you. Don’t avoid the issue now that you have shown yourself as an establishment loyalist happy to see the dissident political movement sidelined and crushed.
dude, he lost a vote.
chill the fuck out.
McFlock, sabine can speak for herself.
I was only speaking for myself and to a goddamn drama queen. “dissident political movement sidelined and crushed” my arse.
Don’t use sexist, transphobic language McFlock.
You’re a disappointment under pressure, as usual.
Don’t co-opt the interests of people you encourage bigotry against just to promote your own narrow self-interested point scoring. Even if your hero trump does it.
Nothing I said was sexist or homophobic, douchebag. “Drama queen” implies neither gender nor sexual orientation, except through your own blinkers.
Firstly drama queen. Now douchebag?
Geeezus McFlock. You can’t even stop yourself when you try.
The collection container for the products of a redundant device that was invented by men to “cure” imaginary problems in parts of women they didn’t understand in the slightest and is, in fact, harmful.
Seems to suit you.
I consider ‘douchebag’ to be sexist. But I agree with you McFlock about CV’s coopting politics he hates to further his own agenda that is anti-those politics. He’s probably being ironic, but it still comes across pretty fucked up.
@Weka I did have another think on it, but I still disagree about d-bag depending on context.
If the use is all “ew, woman bits”, as it used to be, then I agree. But really the thing only exists because of ignorance and sexism.
Yes. dear.
I think that running as a Democrat carries an obligation to support whoever the party ultimately chooses. It would be out of character for Bernie to ignore that obligation and also counterproductive – those who are keen to see the back of him would welcome any action of his that could be construed as devious or dishonest. So unless something unforeseen happens, I think Bernie will now focus on getting his people into congress. Bringing about real change is a long haul struggle, and Bernie’s not getting the nomination is a setback within a broader context.
Bernie is old Olwyn. 75 this year. He’s got a few more senate years left in him, maybe. If he was going to make his move and take a stand, this was the year, this was the month.
As for the obligation to follow the rules of the Democratic Party. In at least some way I think that responsibility was thoroughly negated by the rule breaking behaviour of the Democratic Party itself.
In at least some way I think that responsibility was thoroughly negated by the rule breaking behaviour of the Democratic Party itself. I agree, but rule-breaking is always more costly to the good than the wicked. I know Bernie is old, but I still think he will do what he can to render the movement as useful as possible within the time he still has. There is more to it than a bid for becoming the Democrat’s candidate for the presidency, although I myself would have taken heart from it had he won.
I think Bernie needs to become the Greens candidate (on the condition that the Greens are not on the ballot in marginal states), and take his whole movement with him.
I will add – I think that we have very little time left to take really strong political action before things start to go seriously topsy turvy. And in all honesty, its already starting on the rocky road there.
I agree with you about the urgency of the situation. I do not have the kind of “on the ground” knowledge to make a judgement as to whether or not Bernie should break ranks and stand as a Green, although it seems likely that he would have done that by now if he was going to. Looking at the ructions that are currently going on in UK Labour, building up the numbers in congress may actually prove more useful than having the presidency with more opponents than supporters on deck with you.
“Bernie is old Olwyn. 75 this year.”
Do you mind Colonial, 75 is not old these days. Not giving my age but I can remember where I was when George VI died and Liz 2 was crowned, and when Kennedy was shot in Dallas. and I still do work (part time) for one of my old clients
75 is the modern 60/65 these days.
I think Mr Sanders might be best advised, in sporting parlance, to keep warmed up. Julian Assange is promising much more material to come which will embarrass Clinton, she may be facing death by a thousand cuts, whoever is feeding this stuff to the public seems to be timing it to maximise harm, she may even have to withdraw from the presidential race ultimately as a result of her own silly decisions, and that may be a good thing, or a bad thing, who knows?
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/26/politics/julian-assange-dnc-email-leak-hack/
the sad thing is that they are all flawed and bad choices.
Bernie Sanders should have stayed and run as an independed, and he would be the next president.
Hillary Clinton is Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump is Donald Trump. Both are products of their ego’s, of their money and their influence.
In saying that, were i to vote in the US i would vote for Hillary and if only because I like having sex without getting pregnant every time i look at a bloke.
And while some may say that Trump loves himself some women, he also does not care enough about them to not have their bodily autonomy curtailed re abortion, access to female centric healthcare and access to reproductive healthcare.
And his running mate Mr. Pence is one of the more militant ‘pro lifers’ or rather forced birthers that would at the same time force a women to carry the child of her rapist while granting full visitation rights to the rapist while also cutting food stamps and medicaid to the children.
So while some may be all manly about the issues that don’t affect them, and who could blame them, in the words of the imortal Trump ‘she bleeds out of her you know what” these things matter greatly to women. Especially those that don’t want to be reduced to live a live of Gloriavale.
So there is no winning here at all. As for the ones that say Mr. Kaine VP nominee for the Democrats is pro life, that is true, he has however not enacted nor sponsored legislation that would force a women to under go a vaginal ultrasound, or a 72 hour waiting period, or a closing down of all planned parent hood clinics and so on and so on.
So maybe just maybe, some of the blokes take of their blinkers in regards to issues that impact women more then man and then may realise that this is precisely what will decide this election.
I don’t think HC is embarrassable.
Abby Martin talks about her illegal arrest at the DNC. And also about the mass arrest at the conference.
Straight from the front page of the NZHerald:
How to become a millionare in Auckland through property.
Naturally, it’s all about him.
No support from anyone in his life other than right at the beginning.
Did it all himself. apparently.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11681336
Can I say the obvious:
he got help every month the mortgage was due by sucking money off the poor.
And of course the less obvious:
how much did this pyramid scheme rely on the income off his wife?
are all the mortgages paid in full?
if not, than he is only a millionaire of debt.
a paper millionaire but probs cash poor.
the bank however owns his arse every day of the year until he has paid off all his mortgages or sold his houses to pay one or two in full.
No, there is multiple millions of debt still to pay.
He is cash poor – but still gets to skite that he’s a millionaire.
He has already sold a couple of houses – one to put more equity in, and one to simply “pay” himself a salary.
If only people knew how he is using people.
Such people are worse than tow-truck drivers.
yep, thats what i thought, a millionaire on paper with not a steak nor salad in the fridge.
“Such people are worse than tow-truck drivers.”
Nah mate he makes tow-truck drivers look like saints. *cough, splutter, tiny piece of bile in my mouth*
So he “paid” a 20% deposit on his first investment home (the rules now require 40%), but actually he only had a 5% deposit and borrowed the rest. Is that even legal?
And happened to be on the lucky side of the bubble – that bubble is now ready to pop.
The Herald as usual celebrates people with no sense of society.
These characteristics are sociopathic
“I support a Royal Commission into the number of Royal Commissions which have had their recommendations ignored by successive governments” – Celeste Liddle on Twitter.
Australia desperately needs a Human Rights Act. Under currently legislation there is no freedom of speech and no protection of whistle blowers. Authoritarian government rules over all.
Didn’t they recently make whistleblowing about conditions in the refugee camps a crime? Last aussie pm, or the one before.
Yes they did, and the doctors for refugees are now contesting that in court. It is a long shot however because, as I point out above, Australia is the only western power now without any formal legislation protecting human rights.
For those who want to see Bill Clinton’s
speech at the DNC:
Is it full of the usual lies?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ6oY4dMeYo
it is,
he forgot to mention the day Hilary Clinton bit of the head of babies before going ahead offering burned meat to baal.
You have seen this haven’t you?
Another day under National, another pest
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/cropping/82524279/straw-infested-with-pea-weevil-potentially-distributed-across-north-island
hmm, where did that come from?