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.
“I support a Royal Commission into the number of Royal Commissions which have had their recommendations ignored by successive governments” – Celeste Liddle on Twitter.
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.
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Introduction Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) has revolutionized the field of translation by harnessing the power of technology to assist human translators in their work. This innovative approach combines specialized software with human expertise to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of translations. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the ...
In today’s digital age, mobile devices have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Among the vast array of portable computing options available, iPads and tablet computers stand out as two prominent contenders. While both offer similar functionalities, there are subtle yet significant differences between these two devices. This ...
A computer is an electronic device that can be programmed to carry out a set of instructions. The basic components of a computer are the processor, memory, storage, input devices, and output devices. The Processor The processor, also known as the central processing unit (CPU), is the brain of the ...
Voice Memos is a convenient app on your iPhone that allows you to quickly record and store audio snippets. These recordings can be useful for a variety of purposes, such as taking notes, capturing ideas, or recording interviews. While you can listen to your voice memos on your iPhone, you ...
Laptop screens are essential for interacting with our devices and accessing information. However, when lines appear on the screen, it can be frustrating and disrupt productivity. Understanding the underlying causes of these lines is crucial for finding effective solutions. Types of Screen Lines Horizontal lines: Also known as scan ...
Right-clicking is a common and essential computer operation that allows users to access additional options and settings. While most desktop computers have dedicated right-click buttons on their mice, laptops often do not have these buttons due to space limitations. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on how to right-click ...
Powering up and shutting down your ASUS laptop is an essential task for any laptop user. Locating the power button can sometimes be a hassle, especially if you’re new to ASUS laptops. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on where to find the power button on different ASUS laptop ...
Dell laptops are renowned for their reliability, performance, and versatility. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or just someone who needs a reliable computing device, a Dell laptop can meet your needs. However, if you’re new to Dell laptops, you may be wondering how to get started. In this comprehensive ...
Two-thirds of the country think that “New Zealand’s economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful”. They also believe that “New Zealand needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”. These are just two of a handful of stunning new survey results released ...
In today’s digital world, screenshots have become an indispensable tool for communication and documentation. Whether you need to capture an important email, preserve a website page, or share an error message, screenshots allow you to quickly and easily preserve digital information. If you’re an Asus laptop user, there are several ...
A factory reset restores your Gateway laptop to its original factory settings, erasing all data, apps, and personalizations. This can be necessary to resolve software issues, remove viruses, or prepare your laptop for sale or transfer. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to factory reset your Gateway laptop: Method 1: ...
“You talking about me?”The neoliberal denigration of the past was nowhere more unrelenting than in its depiction of the public service. The Post Office and the Railways were held up as being both irremediably inefficient and scandalously over-manned. Playwright Roger Hall’s “Glide Time” caricatures were presented as accurate depictions of ...
Roger Partridge writes – When the Coalition Government took office last October, it inherited a country on a precipice. With persistent inflation, decades of insipid productivity growth and crises in healthcare, education, housing and law and order, it is no exaggeration to suggest New Zealand’s first-world status was ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – In 2022, the Curriculum Centre at the Ministry of Education employed 308 staff, according to an Official Information Request. Earlier this week it was announced 202 of those staff were being cut. When you look up “The New Zealand Curriculum” on the Ministry of ...
Chris Bishop’s bill has stirred up a hornets nest of opposition. Photo: Lynn Grieveson for The KākāTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate from the last day included:A crescendo of opposition to the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill is ...
Monday left me brokenTuesday, I was through with hopingWednesday, my empty arms were openThursday, waiting for love, waiting for loveThe end of another week that left many of us asking WTF? What on earth has NZ gotten itself into and how on earth could people have voluntarily signed up for ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past week’s editions.State of humanity, 20242024, it feels, keeps presenting us with ever more challenges, ever more dismay.Do you give up yet? It seems to ask.No? How about this? Or this?How about this?Full story Share ...
Determining the hardest sport in the world is a subjective matter, as the difficulty level can vary depending on individual abilities, physical attributes, and experience. However, based on various factors including physical demands, technical skills, mental fortitude, and overall accomplishment, here is an exploration of some of the most challenging ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Asia Pacific Report Chief Mandla Mandela, a member of the National Assembly of South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, has joined the Freedom Flotilla in istanbul as the ships prepare to sail for Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. Mandela is also the ambassador for the Global Campaign to Return to ...
Pacific Media Watch Journalists who report on environmental issues are encountering growing difficulties in many parts of the world, reports Reporters Without Borders. According to the tally kept by RSF, 200 journalists have been subjected to threats and physical violence, including murder, in the past 10 years because they were ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra BagzhanSadvakassov/Upsplash, CC BY-SA Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022. ...
ACT's Rural Communities and Veterans spokesman Mark Cameron responds to cancellations and protests of ANZAC Day commemorations in Wellington. He says, "These pitiful attempts to detract from ANZAC Day are not at all indicative of the feelings of mainstream ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University American and Australian stretcher bearers working together near the front line during the Battle of Hamel in 1918.Australian War Memorial While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership ...
Pōneke based peace activists staged a silent protest at the ANZAC day service to highlight New Zealand’s complicity in war and genocide, and urge the government to take concrete steps to stop the genocide in Palestine. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magdalena M.E. Bunbury, Postdoctoral Researcher, James Cook University Burial with a horse at the Rákóczifalva site, Hungary (8th century AD).Sándor Hegedűs, Hungarian National Museum, CC BY How do we understand past societies? For centuries, our main sources of information have been ...
Amanda Thompson doesn’t really do Anzac Day. But what she does do is remember the people she knew who had a lifetime to remember stuff they didn’t really want to, because of a war they didn’t ask for. And she does make Anzac biscuits.First published in 2021.All my ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Willis, Postdoctoral Researcher, CSIRO Xavier Boulenger/Shutterstock In the two decades to 2019, global plastic production doubled. By 2040, plastic manufacturing and processing could consume as much as 20% of global oil production and use up 15% of the annual carbon ...
With our collective remembrance, and steadfast belief in our common humanity, we strengthen our hope and resolve to do what we can to foster dialogue and understanding, and to heal divisions in our pursuit of peace. ...
Principal reasons for the opposition is the loss of the public’s democratic right to have “a fair say” and the vital need for a government free from corruption, said Casey Cravens of Dunedin, president of the New Zealand Federation of Freshwater ...
Never mind the scoreboard – in the 2000 Bledisloe Cup decider, the real trans-Tasman battle was won before kickoff.First published in 2016. The dawn of the new millennium was a dark time for the All Blacks. Their final game pre-Y2K was a 22-18 loss to South Africa in the ...
I’m on the wrong side of 40, I never pursued creative work and now my job is killing my soul. Help! Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,May I start with the least original conversation opener you’re likely to hear around the motu at the moment, particularly in Wellington: ...
“Never again - No AUKUS” was the message of the wreath laid at this morning’s national ANZAC Day commemorative service at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park this morning by the Stop AUKUS group. ...
Until this month, Auckland swimmer Hazel Ouwehand had never met a qualifying time in an Olympic event for a New Zealand team, even as a junior. Now she’s very likely off to the Paris Olympics after swimming well under the qualifying standard in the 100m butterfly twice – both in ...
While Anzac Day has experienced a resurgence in recent years, our other day of remembrance has slowly faded from view.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand. Original illustrations by Hope McConnell.First published in 2022.The high school’s head girl and ...
Australian and New Zealand volunteers fought together in the Waikato War, yet still its place in the Anzac tradition is unacknowledged by our defence forces or Returned Services Association.First published in 2018.When I was a boy cub I attended Anzac Day services in the South Auckland suburb of ...
A poem by Wellington writer Tayi Tibble.Hoki Mai She kisses him goodbye with her eyes still wet and alight from their last swim in the Awatere river. At the train station celebration, she leads the Kapa Haka but her voice keeps breaking under and over itself like waves. ...
A poem from Bill Manhire’s 2017 book of verse Some Things to Place in a Coffin.My World War I Poem Inside each trench, the sound of prayer. Inside each prayer, the sound of digging. Image courtesy of Auckland War Memorial Museum. ...
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There are three books I have wolfed down in one sitting over the last two years. Colleen Maria Lenihan’s gorgeous and sad debut Kōhine, Noelle McCarthy’s memoir Grand about becoming her mother and then unbecoming her, and now Hine Toa, a staunch yet gentle self-portrait by living legend Ngāhuia te ...
Asia Pacific Report Students and activist staff at Australia’s University of Sydney (USyd) have set up a Gaza solidarity encampment in support of Palestinians and similar student-led protests in the United States. The camp was pitched as mass graves, crippled hospitals, thousands of civilian deaths and the near-total destruction of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James B. Dorey, Lecturer in Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong Australian teddy bear bees are cute and fluffy, but get a look at that massive (unbarbed) stinger! James Dorey Photography Most of us have been stung by a bee and we ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Roberts, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong Aussie~mobs/FlickrVictor Farr, a private in the 1st Infantry Battalion, was among the first to land at Anzac Cove just before dawn on April 25 1915. Victor Farr ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Gregory Moore I had the good fortune to care for the sugar gum at The University of Melbourne’s Burnley Gardens in Victoria where I worked for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra BagzhanSadvakassov/Upsplash, CC BY-SA Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Ong ViforJ, ARC Future Fellow & Professor of Economics, Curtin University Just when we think the price of rentals could not get any worse, this week’s Rental Affordability Snapshot by Anglicare has revealed low-income Australians are facing a housing crisis like ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University American and Australian stretcher bearers working together near the front line during the Battle of Hamel in 1918.Australian War Memorial While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracey Holmes, Professorial Fellow in Sport, University of Canberra When the news broke last weekend that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive to a banned drug in early 2021 and were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympic Games six months later ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cally Jetta, Senior Lecturer and Academic Lead; College for First Nations, University of Southern Queensland Australian War MemorialAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people, as well as sensitive historical information ...
RNZ News Melissa Lee has been ousted from New Zealand’s coalition cabinet and stripped of the Media portfolio, and Penny Simmonds has lost the Disability Issues portfolio in a reshuffle. Climate Change and Revenue Minister Simon Watts will take Lee’s spot in cabinet. Simmonds was a minister outside of cabinet. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University laurello/Shutterstock Some reports and popular books, such as Bill Gammage’s Biggest Estate on Earth, have argued that extensive areas of Australia’s forests were kept open through frequent burning by ...
Analysis - Christopher Luxon framing the demotion of two ministers as the portfolios getting "too complex" is a charitable way of saying they weren't up to the job. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra With Jim Chalmers’s third budget on May 14, Australians will be looking for some more cost-of-living relief – beyond the tax cuts – although they have been warned extra measures will be modest. As ...
Analysis: Melissa Lee has lost the media portfolio and her spot in Cabinet after multiple failed attempts to find solutions for a media industry in crisis. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister announced Lee would be losing her spot in Cabinet along with her media and communications ministerial portfolio. The job ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Wilmot, Senior Lecturer, Film, Deakin University Among the many Australian who served during the second world war, there is a small group of people whose stories remain largely untold. These are the Muslim men and women who, while small in number, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Saunders, PhD Candidate, University of Canberra There has been much analysis and praise of Justice Michael Lee’s recent judgement in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against Channel Ten. Many people were openly relieved to read Lee’s “forensic” and “nuanced” application of law ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathy Gibbs, Program Director for the Bachelor of Education, Griffith University zEdward_Indy/Shutterstock Around one in 20 people has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It’s one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood and often continues into adulthood. ADHD is diagnosed ...
The Fairer Future coalition of anti-poverty groups say Whaikaha must be properly funded going forward, and that to argue that poor financial management of the new Ministry is a red herring by the Prime Minister. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is today congratulating Hon. Paul Goldsmith on his appointment as Minister for Media and Communications and urges him to rule out state intervention in the private media sector. ...
Asia Pacific Report The West Papuan resistance OPM leader has condemned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden, accusing their countries of “six decades of treachery” over Papuan independence. The open letter was released today by OPM chairman Jeffrey P Bomanak on the eve of ANZAC Day ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits and quirks of New Zealanders at large. This week: writer and one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2024, Lauren Groff.The book I wish I’d writtenIf I wish I’d written a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Fechner, Research Fellow, Social Marketing, Griffith University mavo/Shutterstock Imagine having dinner at a restaurant. The menu offers plant-based meat alternatives made mostly from vegetables, mushrooms, legumes and wheat that mimic meat in taste, texture and smell. Despite being given that ...
“Three Strikes is a dead-end policy proposed by a dead-end government. The Three Strikes law ignores the causes of crime, instead just brutalising people already crushed by the cost of living.” ...
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The most important news.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/june-2016-hottest-month_us_578f07f9e4b0f180da639fdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK7NV2YheGk
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozDeQTB0LIs
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37uh0BcvSXo
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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr8frG_OJH4
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?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT__i9txay4
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?