Another mass shooting in the US – symptom of a dysfunctional society?
Add to the above:
“As one of the world’s wealthiest societies, the US is what Alston calls a “land of stark contrasts”. It is home to one in four of the world’s 2,208 billionaires.
At the other end of the spectrum, 40 million Americans live in poverty. More than five million eke out an existence amid the kind of absolute deprivation normally associated with the developing world.
The symptoms of such glaring inequality include:
• Americans now live shorter and sicker lives than citizens of other rich democracies;
• Tropical diseases that flourish in conditions of poverty are on the rise;
• The US incarceration rate remains the highest in the world;
• Voter registration levels are among the lowest in industrialised nations – 64% of the voting-age population, compared with 91% in Canada and the UK and 99% in Japan.”
Isn’t it about time this country took a more neutral and independent line on the world scene – keeping our distance from both the US and China (just as dangerous a country to get into bed with, imo). Looking inwards for our own prosperity and not going ‘cap in hand’ to the altar of ‘world trade’?
We must distinguish ourselves from US centeric interests if we are to thrive once the economic power shift to the East is complete.
When trade commenced in the Petro-Yuan it took just two months before 12% of trade was conducted in PY in preference to the previous standard of the Petro-dollar.
A smart country would read the writing on the wall and react now while it is easier to reposition, but yes both dangerous.
Isn’t it about time this country took a more neutral and independent line on the world scene – keeping our distance from both the US and China (just as dangerous a country to get into bed with, imo). Looking inwards for our own prosperity and not going ‘cap in hand’ to the altar of ‘world trade’?
Yes it is. Being totally dependent upon other countries is bad for a country as it leaves them vulnerable to the actions of those countries.
The NRAs current president in the US who got given the position with the help of the gun lobby is a man who has admitted under oath to being a Traitor to the US and to selling guns to people listed as terrorists by the US. The only reason he is not in Jail is the case against him fell apart because most of the evidence had to be tossed out as it was freely given by him to a congressional hearing under an immunity deal.
That is the sort of man you have running the NRA in the US and able to legally bribe their politicians to ignore the call of the majority of their voters for gun control.
Hansen is absolutely one of the good guys, but neither do I buy into the stupid totalitarian idea that any individual is omniscient.
Critically there are three things coming together which will bring renewables into a new focus:
1. PV is now being installed at utility scale (> 50 MW) at prices under 3 cents/kWhr, well under any fossil fuel generation. In Australia 60% of all new generation is PV or wind. The economics have now tilted permanently in renewable’s favour; and the smart money in town is now chasing the opportunities as illustrated above.
2. Storage technologies are coming online as engineered reality; pumped storage is one example. The other which is up and running can be seen here:
3. Smart distribution technologies are gaining more traction, allowing generation and consumption to be better matched both temporally and spatially. A global HVDC super-grid will eventually resolve this issue permanently:
So the technology is there or getting there. And the price signals are improving. We even have engineers and technicians and what not to design and build and develop whatever might be required.
And we have something over 20 years at our current rates of emissions to get it all developed, built, and up and running to (perhaps) avoid 2 degrees of warming.
I don’t think there’s much in the way of “omniscience” required to figure that no matter the amount of will power, it just ain’t possible to hard boil an egg in an open pan of water in 30 sec flat. (That being the basic situation we’re facing in terms of time with AGW and possible tech roll outs)
The history has many striking examples of what happens when a new technology reaches a tipping point; crucially where it become 3 – 10 times cheaper or better than the one it replaces.
While the first cars where marketed in the early 1890’s, in the decade from about 1902 to 1912 horses literally vanished from large Western cities as cars totally replaced them.
The first commercial mini-computers became available around the late 60’s, but suddenly from 1980 onwards they penetrated everywhere. To the point now where modern business gets nothing done without them.
Mobile phones came into use in the early 90’s, but the advent of smartphones in the mid-2000’s literally exploded their penetration to every corner of the planet.
Electric cars are on the cusp of the same transition.
In hindsight the transition always looks obvious, but what no-one anticipates in advance is how fast and how comprehensive the process can be.
Sure. But none of those instances or examples even begin to approach the sheer scale of whats required in terms of engineering in the face of AGW (if the idea is to swap out carbon while we just carry on). And none of those things were subject to the time constraints we’re looking at.
You talk of electric cars. But it would have to be electric cars and shipping and aviation and most of the world’s electricity generation plus whatever of the world’s 80% of energy needs, not covered above, that aren’t currently “vectored” through electricity.
And all in something like 20 years assuming no increase in emissions from present levels (they’re actually going up every year).
As I commented – it’s like saying you’ll take an egg and hard boil it in 30. Nice idea. Doesn’t stack up.
late edit on a mistaken assumption contained in your comment about efficiency and cost driving change. Steam was never cheaper or more efficient than water as a source of energy for mills. And yet…
RedLogix did not claim it would cure climate change.
The comments were limited to electricity generation, electricity networks, and electricity storage.
The other comments were illustrations of technological change, not as contributions to alleviating climate change.
Electricity storage, networks and generation are going to have to encompass most of the 80% of energy we use that isn’t from a zero or low carbon source.
That aside, I didn’t think for one second that RL was making any claim to having stumbled on “a cure for” climate change. But I’m pretty sure he was alluding to the possibility of techno fixes that would see us making no more contribution to global warming. Which, by the way, is feasible, just not in terms of 2 degrees of warming (avoidance of).
That’s a pretty solid response Bill; the numbers are daunting, and hard to argue with given our current position. In very rough terms the ‘big three’ contributors to fossil CO2 are in order of magnitude (IIRC):
1. Electricity
2. Transport
3. Steel and concrete
The first is 100% solvable relatively quickly within two decades, the second can be dramatically improved. The third contribution from steel and concrete are going to be the difficult one, as at present we don’t have a lot of good alternatives I’m aware of. (Other than engineered timber which I like a lot, but has limits.)
Over the past two centuries fossil fuels have served an extraordinary purpose in moving the vast majority of the human population out of absolute degrading poverty and slavery, to on average, a modest standard of living and welfare. Turning the clock back on that is simply not an option.
In solving one problem, we have uncovered another; we are hard up against the limits of what fossil carbon can do for us.
The deep choice we face is this; do we press on down the technological/industrial path in the expectation we can transition off fossil carbon in time, or do we abandon that direction for an entirely unknown destination with wholly unknown risks? And to what extent is this choice conflated with the idea that such a crisis might offer a chance to ‘smash capitalism’?
Just to be clear for you; the un-reconstructed hippie in me still has a place in my heart for the kind of eco-technic forest garden low energy low consumption vision as patented by the 70’s. The fact that we could imagine it means something. Yet the big wide world out there never seemed to conform to our dreams did it?
We are facing a problem that we can’t roll out technical solutions for in the time we’ve left ourselves before hitting 2 degrees of warming. And things are going to get ugly and not a little frightening.
Slashing energy consumption needn’t mean dawdling back to some “sackcloth” past.
I think most of us can agree that a hell of a lot of utter shit is manufactured and distributed and that a lot of energy is used in the process. We could knock all that on the head.
Most people are also aware than many jobs are pretty pointless; that if they do serve a point beyond just keeping people occupied and in thrall to generating profit for some-one or other, then that point has never been elucidated. So, given those pointless jobs also consume a vast amount of energy, we could quite painlessly knock all those jobs on the head too.
So far, I’m not seeing any downside 🙂
But sure (and this seems central to inaction on AGW) the economy we have would be shredded if we took those steps. So we need to imagine and develop new ways to do stuff, or we’ll just stupidly knacker ourselves because one idea of what an economy ought to be was biting the dust.
I’m still not seeing any inevitably looming “sackclothed” downside.
In fact, with all that human potential freed up and a world of possibility…
The flip side is a world of bugger all possibility arriving with an economy biting the dust at the point it can no longer withstand the impacts of climate changes and AGW.
A lot of good points well made Bill, especially when you address the gross waste and inefficiency of much of our current economic activity. But then again this isn’t a unique feature of 21st century life; we’re just doing it on a grand scale our ancestors had no access to.
I’m not the only one here who has often mused that politics is an insufficient level of analysis; it’s only a small part of the story. It goes much deeper than this; it strikes at exactly what makes us human and why we behave in these apparently contradictory, self-destructive ways.
It’s entirely impossible to imagine a world for instance, where Arrhenius’ discoveries in the 1890’s would have immediately led to a rational, logical and eminently sensible cessation of fossil fuel use. People just are not like that. And we cannot, should not, try and imagine we can force them to be.
What we can do is encourage us to understand ourselves and observe all the ways we fuck things up. And then help each other, one painful step at a time to do better. I think that’s all I have to say for the moment … thank you for an interesting conversation Bill.
Steam was never cheaper or more efficient than water as a source of energy for mills.
An interesting proposition. The engineering answer is that water mills, while efficient in one sense, had strict scalability limits which horribly constrained their range of application. Nor of course was a water mill ever going to be of much use to drive a locomotive or ship.
The thing is, fossil carbon in all it’s forms came with so many immediate advantages, unprecedented energy density, portability and storage qualities … that once discovered we were never NOT going to exploit them.
And we have … to a remarkable extent. The world is a totally different place to 1818. You really don’t want to go back there, for the average person … most people … life was very hard indeed. And given this enormous progress it’s very understandable that so many people really didn’t want to accept that it came with limits, that there would come a time when this geological genie that literally popped out of the earth, might come with a cost.
There is no perfect solution here; there are risks whatever we do. But my sense is that the world is reaching a point where it is looking to build on what we have already achieved, and mass adoption of renewables will be part of that mix.
I’m not arguing against non-carbon sources of energy in terms of research, development of roll-out.
I’m simply pointing out some obvious time restraints that impact any notions around a switch to non-carbon energy happening alongside maintaining what we have, and continuing to do as we do. There’s a bin marked “false hope” for that garbage.
Industry of the early 1800s ran on water, and had no problem in terms of up scaling. (Add another wheel. Build a bigger wheel. Construct more water channels etc).
Social control and power, rather than engineering efficiency or market signals, drove the switch to coal fired steam engines.
I don’t know how “nasty, brutish and short” life really was for those in 1818 not caught up by industrialisation (as opposed to those who were). But I know that however bad or good it was,it’s probably going to look really fcking desirable from the vantage point of humanity experiencing starvation at the continental level when sea level rise wipes out the 20-25% of global food production that occurs on deltas within the space of current human lives.
“I don’t know how “nasty, brutish and short” life really was for those in 1818 not caught up by industrialisation (as opposed to those who were). But I know that however bad or good it was,it’s probably going to look really fcking desirable from the vantage point of humanity experiencing starvation at the continental level when sea level rise wipes out the 20-25% of global food production that occurs on deltas within the space of current human lives.”
Social control and power, rather than engineering efficiency or market signals, drove the switch to coal fired steam engines.
I don’t think so. Social control and power long pre-existed your pre-industrial water powered Eden of 1800; it’s not the child of capitalism or technology, rather a great-great-grand ancestor eons old.
What is true is that as we have developed more technically complex societies, at least from the invention of agriculture onward, our personal relationship with the societies we live in has clearly intensified. And that relationship, even as it brings us benefits, often falls short of any imagined ideal.
There isn’t a simplistic binary response to what your saying here; yes the Industrial Revolution brought a great deal of change, social chaos and misery. But arguably at the end of it, the average individual was a lot better off and politically a great deal freer than at the beginning.
But what I can emphatically say is that the steam engine was not invented as some infernal tool of an evil Illuminati (or whatever), hell-bent on enslaving the human race to it’s nefarious elitist dreams. It works as a metaphor in the Lord of the Rings, but Sauron is not an actual person.
We’re holding a conversation on at least two levels simultaneously here; the obvious one is about the technology options in front of us. The other is deeper and harder to grasp. Tolkien’s directly addressed it in his Hobbit narrative; his revulsion and horror of the mechanised death of WW1, contrasted with an idealised conception of the pre-industrial Hobbiton. Yet in the end, despite it’s charm and nostalgia, even Tolkien knew Hobbiton was a fantasy; it had it’s own internal contradictions and flawed beings.
On the switch to coal, I read an interesting theory years ago that argued the Romans should have developed coal/steam power, but their supply of slaves made it pointless for them to develop alternatives. So possibly not a coincidence that steam power was developed in a nation with one of the weakest monarchies at the time.
I’m not suggesting there was any pre-industrial water powered Eden of 1800. (The switch from water to steam occurred well into the 1800s btw) Neither am I daft enough to believe that power struggles don’t date back to “way back when”.
Andrea Malm has a very good book laying out the various arguments and looking at the historical record. It’s called “Fossil Capital – the rise of steam power and the roots of global warming”.
I recommended it to Carolyn Nth the other day.
Some “snapshots”.
Watt and his business partner failed to make money selling steam engines to mills in Watt’s lifetime because they were expensive and inefficient in relation to water.
Rural populations routinely abandoned the water powered mills they worked in (why wouldn’t they?) Mill owners then enslaved unpaid children from orphanages to make up the short fall (they ran away too.)
Relocating mills to centres like Manchester and running them on steam, not only accessed a larger pool of itinerant labour, but after a couple of generations, city kids knew no different – had no memory or experience of rural life and were therefore more “amenable” to factory life..
There were also bullshit arguments between owners of various workshops and mills over who should pay what in terms of upkeep for the infrastructure required to “tap” a river. Coal fired steam engines sidestepped that conflict.
An interesting argument; it certainly points to the idea that in order to become disruptive a new technology does need to be at least 3 -10 times better than what it’s replacing … something near enough isn’t sufficient to negate the sunk costs of the existing infrastructure.
The engineering response would be two words: Bessemer Process. In order for a steam engine to be efficient it needs to operate at temperatures and pressures that Roman era metals simply could not sustain. The introduction of the Bessemer process in the 1850’s produced for the first time large amounts of high quality, low cost steel with predictable qualities.
@ Bill. Which is why the early steam engines were relatively slow to gain wide acceptance. It was only when decent steel came along for the boiler tubes did the equations tip dramatically in their favour.
Much of what we think of as technological advances are in reality built on the back of advances in materials, a branch of engineering that never gets enough credit for what it contributes.
@McFlock – Steam seems simple. the Greeks made little whirligigs that seemed to be “steam powered” but that understanding is simply ignorant. Using escaping steam as a form of “jet power” is NOT how steam engines work. The early “steam engines” of the industrial age did not actually produce very much power in comparison to their cost and slow speed.
The reason is that “steam” is compressible. And because of that it actually exerts very little force on a cylinder. What made the modern “steam engine” was the accidental realization that spraying a little cold water into a cylinder full of steam caused the steam to immediately collapse… and the VACUUM created in the cylinder has a thousand times more force than the steam can possibly exert. Its Vacuum that drives a steam engines cylinder, not the pressure of steam.
But to discover this, you need to have not only sophisticated metallurgical skills, you also have to understand just what a vacuum is, and how to calculate the force of the vacuum on the materials of the engine so that you can design an engine that can withstand those forces… and, that means you need to be able to measure and quantify such parameters as ductility, tensile strength, elasticity, as well as be able to measure and control very high temperatures with precision to produce materials with reliable properties… and that means you need to have thermometers, and the maths to calculate altitudes, air pressure, and more.
For example, the Romans routinely created vacuums whenever they tried to pump water out of mines in stages longer than 10 metres. But they had no idea they were creating vacuums. They had no idea WHY the water would not go higher in a pipe than 10 metres no matter how hard you tried to pump it. They just understood they had to break pumping systems down to 10 metre lengths. And then pump again from there.
They could not understand the vacuum because they lacked the intellectual tools. Have you ever tried to do advanced calculations using Roman numerals and no concept of zero? The Romans had no concept of the modern idea of science that would have allowed them record and quantify and correlate the physical world around them in such a way as to build a cohesive scientific picture of the laws of nature.
Knowing a steam jet makes something go around is meaningless unless you know also why it makes it go round. A good example of this phenomena is gunpowder. Serendipitously inventing a formula of something that goes BANG! is not remotely as powerful as knowing WHY gunpowder explodes.
The former is a just a recipe you follow without understanding. it offers you nothing but the gunpowder, which is why all you got was gunpowder for another 1000 years.
The latter offers you the capability of creating countless other chemicals, with countless other applications, because you have a theory of chemistry you can employ to make a multitude of compounds.
Great explanation around the importance of steam condensers in the process.
The other intellectual tool the Romans were missing was any inkling of thermodynamics. That really didn’t come along until Carnot formulated the first proper efficiency calculations for steam engine around 1824:
@Bill – mate, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to the early industrial revolution.
“…Industry of the early 1800s ran on water, and had no problem in terms of up scaling. (Add another wheel. Build a bigger wheel. Construct more water channels etc)…”
Wrong to the point of laughable, because you completely fail to account for the cost of distribution. Water wheels require water. If you have a mine in need of pumping nowhere near a river, then even the biggest fucking water wheel in all existence is of absolutely no use to you. Grinding flour at a riverside mill might be cheaper than using a steam powered plant to do so, but by the time you factor in the costs of shipping the grain to the water mill and then back to the markets, it is hopelessly inefficient compared to a steam powered mill. That is because the cost of transporting manufactured goods overland to the markets that wanted them doubled every few miles. Steam engines are far more flexible, you assemble one in the place where the people are and with a hey nonny-nonny your flour mill is in business.
The first most critical requirement for steam power was for pumping water out of coal mines. Beginning in the mid 15th Century Great Britain ran out of ready sources of wood for domestic fuel use. Remember, at this time wood was an especially important strategic resource, essential to naval shipbuilding for example and the main source of construction material before the industrial manufacture of bricks. The price of wood soared, and by the end of the Tudor age much of Great Britain was completely deforested. Unlike the Mediterranean basin Britain had a lot of readily accessible coal seams near the surface, so the British switched to coal for most domestic fuel use. The amount of coal shipped to London from Newcastle grew by 3000% between 1550 and 1700, and the increase in the volume of coal mined between 1556 and 1606 exceeded the growth rate of coal mined at the height of the early industrial revolution.
As surface coal seams were exhausted, mines went deeper and new technologies were needed to pump out water. As I noted in my post to McFlock, early steam engines were very inefficient. 80% of the energy is wasted in a Newcomen engine and they used a lot of coal. But they also allowed mining at much greater depths, and advances in design by Watt and John Smeaton rapidly improved their efficiency, and over the next 150 years steams engines became dramatically more efficient and economical.
I have never heard anyone suggest that the industrial revolution could have been achieved with the steam engine, so i guess your argument has novelty. But only the novelty of the kind reserved for the prefix of a silly hat at the fancy dress shop.
We probably agree that the Industrial Revolution in Britain was predicated upon cotton, yes? (ie, it was the cotton industry that grew far faster than other manufacturies of the time)
And whatever you’re opinion of me may or may not be in terms of knowing what I’m talking about, the historical record shows that paper mills, cotton mills and other factories requiring power were overwhelmingly powered by water.
You want to argue with the historical record, (presumably on the basis that it’s laughable) then have at it.
In relation to your comments on transportation costs etc.
Do you have any idea about the extensive canal networks that used to criss-cross Britain’s industrial heartlands? (Some are still used). Or the sheer availability and accessibility of places with a high head of water in Britain? (It was no accident that mills were built at the foot of the Highlands and throughout Lancashire). Or of the number of solid flowing rivers passing though major centres of population? (I think most British cities are located on major rivers)
As late as 1826, calculations on the comparative costs of running a mill on coal or water, “including as costs associated with water rent to the landlord, outlays on dams and sluices, expenses for transporting raw materials and a manager between mill and market”…the steam engines coal consumption meant that water was more cost effective.
You want to talk of mines and coal for domestic heating purposes going as far back as Elizabethan times? That has nothing whatsoever to do with what initially powered the industrial revolution.
Now. You want to call me a clown? Fine. Me and history both.
But in that case, what hat is it you reckon you should be grabbing for yourself from the fancy dress shop?
The industrial revolution began as the result of a confluence of numerous technological, economic and political drivers. The need for cheap energy (coal) as a substitute for depleted wood supplies was an important early driver of the chain of events that led to the industrial revolution. Cotton had nothing to do with that – the explosion of inventions that transformed cotton from a rare and expensive textile into a cheap, mass produced one post date the beginnings of the industrial revolution.
the fact that the early transitional stages of the industrial revolution were powered by water more than steam (due to the inefficiencies of early steam power) does not negate the central point that coal extraction with the aid of steam power was a major trigger of the chain of events the culminated in the industrial revolution. Remember, your claim is that the move to steam power was driven by a need for “…Social control and power…” rather than any economic imperative.
Your choice of Manchester is highly illustrative of this process. Your are completely wrong in your statement “…Relocating mills to centres like Manchester and running them on steam…” Manchester became an important early centre of textile production (the reason for the supply of cheap cotton is whole other series of intertwined events) due to the abundance of water to power the early mills and, in the form of the River Irwell, to provide efficient transport to the growing port of Liverpool and the sea (which, BTW, is another example of the inefficiencies of land transportation). But Manchester then EXPLODED as an industrial hub because it is close to the cheap coal fields of Northern England and Wales and local sources of iron ore, essential to making steam engines and other machinery. Oh and your claim that “…Watt and his business partner failed to make money selling steam engines to mills in Watt’s lifetime because they were expensive and inefficient in relation to water…” is simply not true. Watt lived to be 83 and became extremely wealthy and his steam engines were wildly popular. I would be interested to know where you got this particularly egregrious piece of mis-information from!
The canal system also post dates the industrial revolution. When you think about it, it stand to reason that a canal system wouldn’t be built unless there was a need for it – in other words, a need to transport goods and commodities in large quantities – large quantities made possible by the explosion in manufacturing made possible by the industrial revolution. Again, the story of the first “proper” canal in the UK illustrates my points well. The Sankey Canal (opened 1757) was built primarily to transport coal to Liverpool. Secondly, water transport was by far more efficient than carts, reinforcing my earlier point about transport costs.
The bold claim was that “… Steam was never cheaper or more efficient than water as a source of energy for mills…” and that “…Social control and power… …drove the switch to coal fired steam engines…” Bold claims require strong evidence. You’ve not provided any.
I was actually thinking of the 18th century static engines rather when the technology matured (‘brick’ phones rather than iphones). But of course those were to respond to very specific problems without nearby water power. Necessity, motherhood, and all that.
@ Sanctuary The need for cheap energy (coal) as a substitute for depleted wood supplies was an important early driver of the chain of events that led to the industrial revolution
The historical record is clear. Water (a ‘free’ energy source following initial outlay) was cheaper than coal, and preferred by factory owners in the first 1/4 to 1/3rd of the 1800s over coal driven steam engines.
You can find some presentations by him in English on youtube if you care to search.
From the back jacket of the book.
Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy—but rather superior control of subordinate labour. Animated by fossil fuels, capital could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours, as it continues to do today. Sweeping from nineteenth-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China…
Bold claims require strong evidence. You’ve not provided any.
I’ve provided the source more than once, and that source offers a thorough, fully footnoted exploration of what drove manufacturing from water power to steam power. Do yourself a favour and read it instead of throwing idiotic accusations, assertions and ad homs around a thread, aye?
edit. And the canal system in Britain was going into decline by the second half of the 1800s (because rail). Their development hardly then post dating the industrial revolution as you assert.
The one thing about even burning dirty fuels like coal to create the electricity to power electric cars is that in a lot of cases it is still slightly cleaner than using petrol and diesel-powered engines. When it comes to cars used in big cities due to the amount of time a lot of them sit around at a traffic light or stuck in traffic jams with their engines idling there is a very large amount of fuel they burn wastefully, while the majority of the power generated at a power station is being used and little wasted.
Your quote immediately above with the term “never been wrong” is strongly absolute. Especially absent any clarifying nuance you didn’t feel need to provide.
And the original quote at 3.1 does of course has a few different ways to look at it; feel free to explain why you chose to use it, and the impeccable pristine meaning you intended to convey, and I so stupidly missed.
1. Being wrong once in a while builds character.
2. If your predictions are sufficiently broad, your chances of error diminish.
3. Is the “trouble” a problem for Hansen or us?
Actually we can, or indeed should have, but for the idiot reforms of the National Party which broke the system up. We already have a substantial hydro generation base, and the key to using it intelligently is to minimise using it except to meet demand when other renewables are not available.
But to do that would require a commercially integrated generation/distribution system that for ideological reasons we’re not allowed to have. Which is why NZ is the ‘not so lucky’ country.
Also doesn’t help that a few great wind farm (both large and small) proposals were fought tooth and nail by a few locals, so they were stopped.
The South Australia grid innovations have impressed our firm. Sure hope that the Tesla storage system holds up in a good storm – it’s an important precedent.
I can’t see it RL. The scheme needs two lakes at differing heights, preferably close together. Can’t be much like that in NZ without using up land that’s already being used. Huntly has heaps of lakes but IIRC they’re nearly all on the same level.
Sorry I wasn’t clear; from an energy perspective not using already stored energy in a hydro lake, is the same as actively adding to the storage, if you can substitute with other renewables elsewhere.
All that any pump hydro or storage system does is to time shift the net generation; ie moving the excess of PV generation from the daytime, to the evenings where the demand is.
You get a similar result in say NZ if you stop using the existing run of river hydro during the daytime (effectively topping up the storage) by switching to wind or pv during the day, then running the hydro harder in the evenings drawing down on what you haven’t used during the daytime.
It requires some planning and solid technical integration, and as a concept has engineering limits … but entirely doable.
They do that already don’t they RL? Our hydro is mostly on waterways so they are limited in how much they can control the flow.
Cheap storage of power has been the number one obstacle since electricity was first discovered. When you look at how the world has progressed with everything else it’s quite surprising they haven’t cracked it yet.
Some of the lesser options are quite simple but (presently) defeated by practical economics. When we have a shower in the morning the water cylinder is reheated from the grid before the sun is high enough in the sky to generate much solar energy. For the homeowner with solar panels the cost of getting a sparkie in to install a timer on the water cylinder can eat up the potential savings.
There’s plenty of potential in Otago for pumped storage. Hawea and Wanaka could work but with constraints around the natural level of Wanaka. The Waipori scheme could easily be made to work “backwards” along with the small schemes fed from the high lakes like Onslow. But any hydro dam could be configured to “recycle” water, or in effect energy.
One aspect that’s been glossed over in the video that RL put up in the OP was the efficiency of the undertaking. Wiki says 70 – 80% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity and then you’d have transmission losses on top of that. But probably still worthwhile.
Also had a quiet chuckle at Australia striving to meet “a goal of 20% renewable”. We are very fortunate in that regard.
Good catch on the relatively low in/out efficiencies. Fortunately when the marginal cost of your input energy is almost zero, anything over 60% will do.
Incidentally I instigated and commissioned a modest 300 kW hydro using a couple of existing pumps run backwards on a water supply system some years back. The in/out efficiency was never better than 62% but it just didn’t matter; the payback of the project was well under 10 months.
But otherwise yes, with our mountainous geography there must be more than a few decent pumped storage locations around. Fiordland is essentially one giant opportunity full of hanging glacial valleys with solid rock … albeit with obvious issues around it’s National Park status. The tramper in me would have to fight it boot and ice-axe 🙂
Economic efficiency and return on investment could be another thing however. Also there’s return on investment for the developer / promotor to factor in, along with entrenched utilities, the consumer just being the mug who’s paying for it.
I can see some of the dedicated hydro schemes being suitable but I’m not convinced you can do it with most dams. Dams are on river systems, start pumping it back up again and you interfere with the habitat and environment downstream of the dam. Realistically you’d want to pump from dam to dam, like what the aussies are doing, or at least catchment to dam and pumping distance would surely be an issue there (?).
70-80% efficiency is very worthwhile if they can achieve that. For large scale solar they can now buy panels for around NZ60c per watt. Allow annual generation of 1000watts per watt, lifetime of 25 years and your generation cost is 2.4c kW/hr. Installation, land and other plant would probably double that for the final cost but 30% on top for dam storage is still peanuts, doesn’t add much at that level. I thought it would be much less efficient.
But to do that would require a commercially integrated generation/distribution system that for ideological reasons we’re not allowed to have.
Actually, to do it requires power being turned back into a government service. Commercialisation won’t do it fast enough and there’d have to be all sorts of regulations around connection to get the smart-grid working. Easier and cheaper just to have the government do it.
Agree Tony with your analogy of the current state of the global health system.
I was chemically poisoned over 25yrs ago in a workplace ‘accident’ in Canada and found out the ‘hard way’ that the global governments and medical fraternity did not know anythuing about the dangers of chemical exposures to the human bieng.
This publically funded group were the one that saved my life; jion thisn group. https://www.ciin.org/
Here a a library of evidence of the exposures we continually face and fornuse in litigation proceedings.
Chemical Exposure and Human Health
A Reference to 314 Chemicals with a Guide to Symptoms
by Cynthia Wilson
The classic MCS sufferer’s volume on the known health effects of chemical exposures. Written by Cynthia Wilson, the founder and Executive Director of Chemical Injury Information Network, it remains the most valuable source of chemical information written by a lay person about the health hazards from everyday chemical exposures. The sections on Symptoms and Potential Causes, Sources of Exposures and the Chemical Directory are priceless.
The book was originally priced at $55.00 and is no longer in print. 345 pages $25.00 plus $5 s/h Used but unscented copies.
Since 1993 I have lived mostrly outside of the whole medical system, – living on the age old method of first listening to my body and responding to the signals it sends me to respond to it. No medical Doctor could even contemplate doing this nor could they physically carry this out unless 100% monitoring of my system and brain functions.
Some claiim that a monitor can be placed on our body but still they do not treat the systoms with any thing else than thiose toxic invasive prescription medications who I was found to have “adverse medical reations to”.
No toxic ‘prescription medications’ are used today in my life long slow recovery from almost certain death after the workplace accidental exposures to well documented chemical toxic soup I was exposed to without a workplace adequate ventilation during the six month place accident/incident that affected over 40 workers on that worksite during that time and several have since died who were medically documented very healthy proir to the accident.
We need to look at our own woeful agency called OSH ‘Occupational Safety and Health and re-train the medical community in “toxicology” as we now live in a toxic chemical soup daily nowdays and it is getting worse by the day.
I unapologetically post yet another Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez video. She is a rising star, and unlike the morbidly aged senior house democrats (Americans really need to talk about the age of their representatives. Maxine Waters is 79. Nancy Pelosi is 78. Senator Dianne Feinstein is 85. The average age of the top four house democrats is I think 76 years old) she is young and in touch with her district.
Sam Seder basically dissects the default position of hostility the establishment MSM has towards left wing change agents (TL,DR – anyone outside the establishment is treated as a freak and interviewed with an air of condescending cynicism with an aim to write them off using gotcha tactics. You hear this style ALL.THE.FUCKING.TIME. from establishment toadies like Guyon Espiner and Susie Ferguson).
The lesson for the NZ Labour party is how easy it is to deal with the ambient passive aggressiveness of the establishment media IF YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING BELIEVE IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM.
Interesting Ocasio-Cortez when asked what she would replace ICE with argues that the purpose of a border agency is to ensure “safe passage”. I’m curious what she means by this. By itself this seems an inadequate definition of what a border is about, surely there is more to a border than handing out coffee, donuts and a ‘welcome to the USA pack’ to anyone who cares to turn up.
The good news is that Mexico is likely to elect a strongly left-wing govt:
Hopefully this will turn the country around and lead millions of migrants to head back to their homeland. Maybe Mexico will finish up build a wall to keep out hordes of fleeing Americans. 🙂
(I’m thinking of an American couple I met at Tocumen Airport last week, who were doing exactly that. They’d just purchased a new home in Ecuador specifically to get away from the “fear which saturates America”.)
The point of the interview wasn’t to interrogate Ocasio-Cortez in order to allow voters to better understand her beliefs and satisfy your curiosity. Poppy Harlow missed a couple of opportunities to pin Ocasio-Cortez down on potentially interesting answers because she wasn’t listening to Ocasio-Cortez’s answers – she was looking for an opening to attack Ocasio-Cortez based on a tired establishment narrative.
Poppy Harlow approached the interview from a well worn position of establishment superiority with a well worn interviewing template designed to serve a well worn agenda.
It is reflexive, non-thinking, lazy and complacent journalism informed by ambient hostility to anti-establishment thinking.
Sam Seder’s commentary is entirely about how the only new information that came out of this interview was for those viewers intuitive enough to perceive the meta data of the interview.
It does really matter what she thinks of ICE. It is not as if becoming a congresswoman confers the power of the government on that person. The US, irrespective of who is the next president, or the president after that, is not suddenly going to have an open border policy. That would be true even if Ocasio-Cortez became president.
What she will be a fresh face for her district with the sort of appeal of the PM.
Look at Obama. The process of becoming president, and making the inevitable compromises that involves, mean you can’t do a sharp U turn in the overall direction of government. He did end the Iraq war, but wasn’t able to decisively win the Afghan war. He did do Obama care, but with huge compromises.
Perhaps a better example of a revolutionary president is Trump. He did pull out of TPP (which had not come into force anyway). He has done a tax package but that is standard fare for a Republican. There is a lot of things he can’t do. He can’t unwind Obama care.
What he has done is change the overall tone of the Presidency (for the worse). It will be changed back at some point. Obama had the rhetoric, but what else?
None of this is to say Ocasio-Cortez can’t make a difference. She can. But she can’t start a socialist revolution, not in the US. Even the most radical president (in the sense of ushering in big government), Franklin Roosevelt did not turn the US into a socialist paradise.
FDR was against a “socialist paradise ” in a 1913 essay.
“The very reason why we object to state ownership, that it puts a stop to individual initiative and to the healthy development of personal responsibility, is the reason why we object to an unsupervised, unchecked monopolistic control in private hands. We urge control and supervision by the nation as an antidote to the movement for state socialism. Those who advocate total lack of regulation, those who advocate lawlessness in the business world, themselves give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be the deadening movement toward unadulterated state socialism.”
It is said that Roosevelt was something of a patrician, and that much of his social activism came from his wife. But he legislated strongly against monopolists, while our local Gnats (and some others who should be ashamed) bow before them as abjectly as any Persian peasant prostrated themselves before their satraps.
Thanks for this, Sanctuary – and definitely no need for any apologies. I had a quick look and decided it is a Must View in full later when there are fewer distractions as at the moment.
Coincidentally I had just read a Guardian article that had popped up in my ‘you may be interested in this’ list. This is an article by one of their Australian columnists, Van Badham entitled “The future of the left is bright if it looks like Jacinda Ardern and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes”
IMHO the article provides a refreshing view of the rise of Ardern and Ocasio-Cortes and is well worth reading. As a taste, it concludes with this:
“Strong men” of the right are now lining up governments from Italy to Turkey to the USA. The times of the now are ones in which we can construct majorities of a diversity they cannot – and do not wish to – represent. We can hope the influence of Jacinda Ardern and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes spread, or we can ensure that it does. The stakes for the marginalised remain life and death.
The article contains much more, however, particularly on Ardern and NZ; and this is just one of a number of comments that I found interesting from someone looking from the outside in:
Observe, also Ardern – who is Pakeha, not Maori – meeting the British queen wearing a Kahu huruhuru: a Māori feathered cloak “bestowed on chiefs and dignitaries to convey prestige, respect and power”. It was a demonstration of a status conferred, and not stolen, and a representation of a New Zealand unafraid to show pride in its indigenous past even as it engaged in diplomatic pleasantry with its colonial one.
This really is shocking. Practically giving away public land for a song and taking away the amenity of neighbouring houses and apartments with sweetheart deals for a developer, while creating a monopoly for boat owners and high prices.
Similar lack of thinking and deregulation happened in the CBD in the 1990’s, they let these developers do what ever they like with little planning, which has resulted in both owners, developers and banks losing confidence in the integrity of the process and two decades of CBD growth being stopped due to leaky building and values being wiped out by neighbouring builds that are poorly planned in relation to existing buildings, and lack of public walkways and public areas for existing residents to enjoy the city.
Nobody wants to buy an apartment and have the amenity halved by the council doing a dirty deal with someone and allowing though their ‘relaxed’ RMA interpretations which has been taken to mean anything goes and be as greedy as you can, by environmental lawyers and the courts to wreck surrounding amenity at any time.
If you get your views wiped out and the apartment buyers continually get screwed either through leasehold (Princess wharf) or Body corporate charges (everywhere) that are designed as a rout or through lack of regulation in surrounding developments (wiping out views/light at the stroke of a council pen).
Even the banks know apartments are not good investments, they are very reluctant to lend on apartments unless a person has at least 30% deposit. Banks know that the value can be wiped out at any time by the lack of regulation that has developed around apartments and central city and anywhere apartments spring up, from outrageous charges, to bad building design and techniques to lack of planning in preserving existing apartment amenities.
Even the banks will not approve of wiping out exisiting housing values in the area to help some sort of Phil Goff rout. Where is the public transport and who pays for it? So far not much interest in making the developers pay the public transport costs for more people and instead it goes to the ratepayers who in many cases are being screwed over by bad developers and having to share ever more with the pathetic services offered.
How can you sell marina land for $5million for 200 apartments & a Marina? Is obscene and against the so called public living around the waterways that should be driving more people to live in those areas.
When one or two apartment blocks are allowed to steal amenity and devalue everyone else then nobody wants to live there and banks don’t want to lend there, the opposite of what the council should be wanting!
They fit nearly 9 million into London and they do that through very strong planning laws to protect neighbouring amenity which includes things like privacy (an unknown concept in NZ RMA) and making it difficult for greedy people to get planning through so people feel they can trust their housing is protected. London prior to the worst of the neoliberal dogma believed in social housing being part of new builds of apartments.
NZ has gone to the opposite degree and now we leaky building, chaos and a lack of trust in the NZ planning and building process due to the profit and deregulation model being the favoured way to develop here. Cheap and deregulated building with high profits and a rip off after service with lease hold and Body corps and future surrounding developments.
Good apartments are selling well still. Crappy ones will lower in value, just as they did in 2005-2010.
Most of them are right next to ferry terminals. Taxpayers and ratepayers pay for them.
The need for more housing across Auckland completely overrides the need to protect sight lines, unless they are very well bedded down into the Unitary Plan, such as the Mt Eden sight line.
The biggest sale of public land for apartments that I am aware of is the Wyndham Quarter, and through Wyndham tank farm. Half of those storage tanks will be gone within 2 years to make way for the Americas Cup. Then they go straight into apartments. They are designed to be 5 metres minimum above expected sea level rise in the coming century. Those apartments start at over $1.5m
All of this looks like Panuku doing its job: getting the market to build good quality houses in Auckland at low risk to public funding.
@AD – Clearly does not work that way. Look at London, and Europe, good density planning to protect existing rights means there is integrity in the system. That is not the NZ way, and we are getting boom and bust. Soon there will be a bust, because we develop Ponzi style, the only reason there is no bust is due to immigration. But if they keep that up, we have Asian poverty.
Also ordinary people can’t afford good apartments. You think like a Natz supporter aka you don’t think teachers and nurses and police should be able to afford a good apartment, let alone one on the waterfront.
Thinking like that would be ok if you were a Nat, but you are supposedly Labour supporting the ordinary person and not much from the Greens either on this.
Hence Labour policy, not good for ordinary people. Who now have that petrol tax on top of the fact the apartments springing up for the wealthy earners only or for Ponzi speculation.
Whatever an ordinary person is, they will not be buying seaside apartments. The whole of Auckland needs more apartments of all kinds, but you won’t find seaside Kiwibuild apartments and nor would any logical person expect to. There are a few exceptions – such as the Metlifecare apartment blocks in Titirangi over looking the Manukau Harbour, and the Orakei retirement village (now condemned). But in reality it has and will always be the case that a really good beachfront view is beyond the means of anyone except the very rich. And no government is going to change that.
You just need a good cold drink of reality.
There may well be a property bust. We’ve had one in 2007, 1997, 1987, and 1977. So who knows. So far pretty good.
It’s noteworthy the Hobsonville marina land is leased by the council, presumably at market rates with a regular rent appraisal. It makes no commercial sense to sell land that’s bringing in a rental income which would surely be exceeding the cost of borrowing. It’s also an inflation proofed income.
There was similar issue over the sale of the freehold land at Bayswater, which sold for less than $5 million. The reason why the price for the freehold title was so low is because the marina already had a 105 year registered lease on the property with very low rent. The existence of the lease meant the freehold title basically had no value except to the marina owner.
The Bayswater community is divided on the issue of apartments. Most people recognise that some apartments would be ok, but that 120 or so is too many.
In terms of the sale and retained values of the proposed apartments at Baywater, with a freehold title they will be more attractive to would be purchasers.
I watched it (for free!) on Snagfilms (another recommendation; it also has a category Climate Change & the Environment and much other interesting stuff): https://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/alive_inside
Is it a rush to forget, or are so imbued with a 24hr news cycle we can’t see the tree for the woods?
Just a reminder that the Palestinian “Great Return Marches” have not stopped. Israel is still shooting people, who at their most stupid do throw stones. Like a stone will be effective against a well dug in and heavily armed military force intent on killing unarmed civilians.
Mind you, in the worlds biggest open air prison – the occasional rock is all the future you have, that, or a bullet.
Stuff: Renters are being warned to expect landlords to want better rental returns from their investment properties, in the absence of capital gains. “This can’t continue. If property investments aren’t “washing their faces”, something will have to be done”
Gee here’s an idea. Stop buying existing homes for capital gain. Invest in businesses that actually manufacture or produce something. Help grow the economy instead of just shuffling more money from renters to landlords.
Help grow the economy instead of just shuffling more money from renters to landlords.
Well if you own the house you’ll be cutting out your bastard landlord (who provides the equity you don’t have, pay the rates and insurance you don’t want to pay and get the maintenance done you either don’t know how to do, or can’t be arsed doing) ….. and shuffle the money direct to the bank.
The vast majority of us bastard landlords are ordinary working kiwis who lived through a succession of rip-offs and betrayals by our local stock market and finance industry from the 70’s onwards. That burned off so much trust, we just cannot believe anymore.
For the past ten years we’ve been looking for an alternative commercial investment that would provide a better cash flow; but without finding something that we had much confidence in. In the end I took the hard way out and went overseas, working high stress 70 – 80 hr weeks in crazy remote places to pay the mortgage down.
There are of course enough bad landlords, and bad tenants, to create plenty of angry stories; but really much of the resentment directed at landlords is misdirected. We’re only one component of a much larger problem with many, many components.
Well more power to you; but I am puzzled. Unless you were fortunate enough to inherit or be given a free house, I assume you spent some decades paying down a mortgage to a bank.
In which case why are you so concerned about ‘shuffling money from renters to landlords’, but apparently quite pleased you shuffled even more money to a bank?
I’m not trying to attack you personally here, I’m genuinely curious about the apparent contradiction between the two attitudes.
(who provides the equity you don’t have, pay the rates and insurance you don’t want to pay and get the maintenance done you either don’t know how to do, or can’t be arsed doing)
Capitalists never provide anything – they just steal from everyone else.
Fair enough DtB, if you promise never to give me any of you money, I promise never to let you live in one of the homes I built. That way you don’t have to put up with me stealing from you, and I don’t have the risk of you trashing the place.
If you need a tent for the wintertime, I have a few old ones left over from my early tramping days that should still keep the worst of the rain off. You’re welcome to hang onto it 🙂
1. All the capital was actually provided by the community. It can be no other way. The raw resources belong to the community. The processing of the wood and the glue and the nails were done by the community.
2. Rent that you demand for living in the house is what’s paying for it thus you didn’t even provide the financial capital.
Despite these two facts yet you get to call the house yours because of the capitalist system we have that makes such theft legal.
That argument really does have a problem with boundaries. Why stop and wood, glue and nails? What about that nice laptop you’re typing on? Obviously it too belongs to the ‘community’ and your monopolization of it is also theft. My turn with it now thank you. (What historically happens at this point degenerates very rapidly into mass murder … but I’ll get to that below.)
The other obvious point to be made is that all that nice collectivist materials (steel concrete and some wood actually) didn’t magically leap into the form of homes all by themselves. It took a number of hard years of planning, funding, and high pressure work to achieve. At a number of points we could have easily lost the lot.
And finally what you completely miss is the notion of reward for risk. While classic marxism recognises physical labour as the ONLY unit of value, it completely excludes any sense of achievement beyond a pedestrian shoveling of shit for a living. It’s blind to the idea that if you undertake virtually anything worthwhile in life, it innately engages with risk of failure. Unless that risk is compensated for, everyone avoids that possibility and little of new value is ever created. Exactly as observed in ALL the historic marxist experiments.
Here’s the thing; your argument clearly identifies me as the soviet equivalent class of kulaks; modestly successful farmers who through their skill, entrepreneurial risks and hard work, had accumulated just a little more than the other miserable peasants in the villages. Remind yourself of the consequences of that policy:
While clearly I’m a kulak, absolutely I’m not one of the 50 or so hyper-wealthy who have more combined wealth than half the world population. Again you’ve failed to draw a boundary between pretty ordinary working people like me, and the clear-cut outliers whose excess wealth really is a problem.
The devil is in the detail here; clearly the kind of extreme inequality as embodied by the hyper-wealthy has a corrosive impact on society. But as with Stalin, you’ve targeted us kulaks first because we’re the soft, visible target for populist resentment. Very quickly it degenerates to the condition where if you have achieved anything of value and someone else looks on with envy … it’s off to the gulag with you buster. Yes inequality is a very real and deep problem; but this is the worst possible solution.
I realise quite well you don’t intend for this to be to consequence of your marxism. We probably share a lot of the same motivations, we’ve both inhabited this socialist space for many years now. But if you think that somehow your version of marxism would turn out any better than all the catastrophically failed versions that have gone before … well I politely suggest you”re wrong. There is absolutely no apriori reason to think that you or any other neo-marxist would not behave exactly as everyone else did when thrust into that long collectivist nightmare … with deceit, betrayal and cruelty.
About 18 years ago I had the chance to work and travel in Russia for a period. Burned into my memory are shards of the soviet horror; my pathetic words can do no justice to some of the things I saw … and that in their removed, diluted form. As I said above, we share much in common, you’re intelligent and interesting, and have always behaved impeccably here which is why I’m attempting to respond in kind. But you need to think about the boundaries.
Good morning Corin from the Q&A show on tv1 on today .
I don’t think it is fair that the transgender people should be treated any diffidently from Ladys if people are not affecting anyone negatively than they deserve to be treated with respect full stop some people should get a life and stop being so judgemental Eco Maori knows how this type of behavior can affect ones life.
Peter Gluckman putting fluoride in OUR water is a no brainer lets get on with it and save our mokopunas teeth there is a wealthy organisation that will lose money when we put fluoride in all water supply’s.
With China influence in Our politics I agree with Bryce Edwards there is know evedince to back this hype from ———– theres a old saying don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
What about Big business lobbing groups they have a major influence on Our political landscape thats whom we can thank for shonky.
Ka kite ano P.S Who can we trust on the GE debate these big company’s flogging this horse can not be trusted one thing I see with Democracy is this system pits two groups against each other and this is not a good thing one group will do anything to get in power and the humane lefty’s find it immoral to stoop to those low levels . ???????????????
Newshub Nation Lisa that is one phenomenon of the western society charging people / countrys higher interest rates who are the ones who can least afford to pay it and wealthy people countrys very low interest whats with that ??????????????????????????????.
Chris Labour is right to step in and stop these loan predators not Sharks they don’t deserve the name of one of Tangaroas beautiful creatures this problem affects some of Our Pacific Island cousin the most because some are innocent and vulnerable to deceit with loans as they don’t know how the systems work yet.
Loyd Why is Nigel Far here flogging the british exit bandwagon the Queen does not have his views on this subject I say Britain pulls out of Europe than that vacuum of influence will be fulled by America so look across the Atlantic and see if you the common people want a society like trump is ruining . Ana to kai ka kite ano
This is why Eco Maori fights of all of Papatuanukus creatures they are the foundations that support Humans life another link that supports my view that capitalism is the destruction of Papatuanukus environment and wildlife and eventually humans
links below .
Newshub on tv 3 Many thanks to all the American tangata for protesting trumps immigration policy’s he is just using this to bolster his support who care who he hurts in the process .
There are many ways one could save on fuel price rising like get a car that has a motor less than 2 ltr a manual car uses less fuel to service your car regularly check tyre presses fortnightly catch a ride to work with work m8s bus trains its not the end of Papatuanuku .
Those extreme sports shots of wahine gives Eco Maori A sore face ka pai Mana wahine the more publicity wahine get the better its is for te mokopuna’s future is.
We don’t need people like this who think just because he new the people/ sandflys who raped and terrified Louise Nicholas when she was a teenager to get into the police commissioners and have them spread the dumb———-views on the rest of the sandflys just because he is waving his tangata whenua card you know my view its not whom you are its what you do that counts to Eco Maori Ana to kai ka kite ano
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Professors Janet Hoek and Richard Edwards, Emeritus Professor Phil Gendall, Jude Ball, Dr Judith McCool, Anaru Waa, Dr Becky FreemanRecent media reports have presented conflicting evidence on youth vaping in NZ. While some NZ school principals report concerns about increasing vaping on school grounds and confiscating vapes, ASH Year ...
“America the Beautiful!”, staunch defender of democracy, freedom and… a whole lot of despotic tyrants that play nice with what is called “the Washington Consensus.” America is indeed capable of immense good, but like any Nation, and most assuredly any aspirant to the mantle of Empire, great, immense evil. All ...
Image credit:The beginner’s guide to blogging I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is ...
1080 is used to control pests in NZ. Its use is contested by a noisy few. A new report claims high levels of 1080 in rats washed up on a beach. Flora and Fauna of Aotearoa (F&F) won’t name the laboratory that did their testing. It has sparked a hunt ...
What Kind Of Empire? The thing for Kiwis to decide is what kind of empire they want to belong to. The kind that, while offering its own citizens democratic rights, demands absolute obedience from its “friends”? Or, the kind that, while authoritarian at home, takes a relaxed attitude to the ...
It hasn't been a good week for the Conservatives, pollwise. All major recent polls are showing their lead shrinking.Comparing each pollster's current (between 29/11 and 22/11) and previous most recent poll.Com Res - Conservative lead down 3 points.You Gov - Conservative lead down 1 point.Kantar - Conservative lead down 4 ...
Within quick succession, Countdown maths wizard and twitterer Rachel Riley, alleged comedian David Baddiel and prominent lawyer Andrew Julius have all expressed very similar opinions / ideas:
These #3billboards are going round London today, organised by ex-Labour people, horrified by what their party has become. Their principles haven’t changed, they’re ...
So, there have been a bunch of bad polls out for Labour, and even the Leftie's friend, Survation, have recently given the Conservatives a rip-snorting 11% lead. You Gov's much vaunted MRP poll - which pretty much nailed the result in 2015 - is currently predicting a comfortable majority for ...
The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to declare a climate emergency:The European parliament has declared a global “climate and environmental emergency” as it urged all EU countries to commit to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The vote came as scientists warned that the world may have already crossed ...
Pure Fear: Worse than Heroin, this drug’s addictive power was terrifying. People under its influence didn’t drift off to Elysium. Nor did it persuade inadequate individuals that they could conquer the world. No, this drug – pure crystal methamphetamine, “P” for short – unlocked the gates of Hell itself. It ...
As the rate of measles infection, and of deaths, continues to climb in Samoa, antivaccination activists infectious disease proponents seem intent on doubling down on their claims about vaccination. (Check pretty much any news-media FB post about measles & you’ll see exactly what I mean.) Unfortunately, some of them have ...
Samoa are experiencing a devastating measles epidemic. It is possible that 2-3% of the population will ultimately be infected by the time it is over. Hopefully the mass immunisation campaign currently under way can mitigate some of this, for many it is too late. The first question many people ask ...
Meghan Murphy is a Canadian writer and journalist She runs the Feminist Current website which she founded in 2012. She was a keynote speaker for the Feminism2020 conference in Wellington this month. When Massey University cancelled the original venue booking Feminism2020 was hosted in Parliament by MP David Seymour. Meghan ...
Text and photos by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Colombia has lived through one week of protests against the economic measures taken by president Duque. What looked like a protest that would fizzle out after its first day on November 21st is still going strong. Part of the reason for the continuance ...
Around a million billion pass through you each second, almost all originating from our sun, but few of them are likely to interact with you enroute. I was reading in a physics magazine earlier in the week about the nature of neutrinos. These are extremely numerous elementary particles, but only ...
By Pallab GhoshThere’s value in covering new research advances, even when the underlying science is unsettled. But there are also risks.The recent announcement that scientists discovered water on the planet K2-18b, 110 light years away, prompted a media swoon. News stories, including a piece written by me, billed ...
I wrote this review a couple of years ago when I was still in the process of getting my head around the politics of transgenderism, and specifically the claim that intersex conditions lend support to the notion that sex is ‘socially constructed’. Since writing this review I have come across ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzHow much does our use of air travel contribute to the ...
Minor planet/asteroid (2309) Mr. Spock is named not for the character in Star Trek, but for a cat that was itself imperturbable, logical, intelligent and had pointed ears. In a preceding blog post I introduced one of my favourite asteroids, (2472) Bradman, and also mentioned (6581) Sobers amongst a few ...
Today the death toll from measles in Samoa rose to 32. All but four of the dead were less than 5 years old. Absolutely terrible, heartbreaking, news. That statistic alone should be enough to give the lie to the common claim by antivaccination activists plague enthusiasts that “measles is a ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh It is late here in Bogotá, almost 11.30pm on Monday the 25th of November as I write this. The day began full of hope with yet more massive marches throughout the country, a mix of the International Day of Non-Violence Against Women and the National Strike. ...
Anti-fluoride activists are rubbing their hands in glee over what they claim is “yet another study” showing fluoride harms the brains of children. But their promotion relies on IQ relationships which the paper’s authors acknowledge disappearing when outliers or other factors are considered. And they completely ignore other relationships ...
The feature below is the conclusion of A History of Economic Thought, whose author was a leading Marxist economist in Russia in the early 20th century, Isaac Ilyich Rubin. The book arose from a course he ran at Moscow University following the Russian Revolution. First published in Russian in 1929, ...
There are many thousands of asteroids with formal names, some humdrum but other more noteworthy (depending on your predilections). One of my favourites, the name of which I was involved in suggesting, is (2472) Bradman, named for the Australian cricketing great. As a minor planet (synonym: asteroid) spotter, I have ...
Tory manifesto: big on austerity, low on promise, non-existent on delivery. The Tories: the party so big on ambition they couldn't be arsed writing a manifesto. MLK: "I have a dream!"BJ: "I'll just have a nap." Labour: Broadband!Tories: Narrow minds! Labour have hope, dreams and ambition. The Tories will save ...
The Ministry of Health has announced that “people under the age of 50 travelling from New Zealand to Samoa, Tonga, Philippines and Fiji” are now on the list of national priorities for MMR vaccination. Given the outbreaks of measles in Samoa, Tonga, Philippines and Fiji, the Ministry of Health is ...
Hong Kong has been protesting for six months for, demanding democracy, human rights, and an end to police violence. Today, they went to the polls in district council elections - a low-level of government with virtually no power, similar to community boards in New Zealand. But while the positions themselves ...
Text and photos by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh On Friday 22nd of November a curfew came into effect and troops were deployed on the streets, here in Bogota. It was the first time since September 1977 that a curfew had been imposed on the city. The decision was a cynical pre-planned ...
Meanwhile, while the government is planning to restore voting rights to prisoners, National is promising to turn our prisons into US-style slave-labour camps:The Opposition is proposing compulsory education, training or employment for prisoners who are serving sentences of two years or more. [...] On Sunday, National Party Leader Simon Bridges ...
Excerpts from Being and Being Bought, by Kajsa Ekis Ekman Spinifex Press, 2013. Ekman, a Swedish journalist and critic, brings together a Marxist and feminist analysis of prostitution and surrogacy in this groundbreaking book. This is the second part of a synopsis and brief commentary of the book by Daphna ...
Dalmeet Singh ChawlaIn 2008, psychologists proposed that when humans are shown an unfamiliar face, they judge it on two main dimensions: trustworthiness and physical strength. These form the basis of first impressions, which may help people make important social decisions, from who to vote for to how long a ...
Claas Kirchhelle, University of Oxford; Adam Roberts, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and Andrew Singer, Centre for Ecology & HydrologyAntibiotics are among the most important medicines known to humankind, but we are running out of this crucial resource. Decisive action is needed if we are to retain access to ...
Things That Make You Go - Hmmmm: “All right. Let me come at this another way. I’m guessing that what you’ve got in that box contains names, dates, bank account numbers – all the details you need to put Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern squarely in the cross-hairs. So, the first ...
Coasters Turn Out In Droves: It’s precisely the widening gulf between those with actual experience of things like guns, chainsaws and drilling machines, and those who regulate their use, that accounts for the angry crowd at Greymouth’s Messenger Park on Sunday, 17 November 2019. In the rarefied atmosphere where decisions ...
There are perennial arguments about the circumstances of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and in particular whether more than one shooter is required by the evidence (such as the Zapruder film). Those who know little about physics frequently claim that the sharp backwards motion of JFK’s head as ...
Apparently, some people enjoy washing their cars. Each to his or her own, I suppose. I mean, some people like duck shooting, some people follow Coronation Street, and some people’s idea of a good day out is to sit on a grass bank at Seddon Park and watch cricket all ...
Last week we learned that New Zealand First had apparently tried to enrich itself from public office, with a dodgy forestry company linked to a number of NZ First figures sticking its hand out repeatedly for government money. Today in Question Time Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had his ...
Finally, governments seem slowly to be beginning to act on climate change. But its not enough. While they're publicly signing up to targets, they're planning to destroy the world by continuing fossil fuel extraction:The world’s nations are on track to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas ...
Stuff has begun interviewing NZ First's secret donors, and it turns out that its as bad as we expected. They start with racing industry figure Garry Chittick, who is predictably grumpy about NZ First's coalition choices. Meanwhile, I'm looking at the list of pork NZ First has effectively given its ...
Stag At Bay: Twelve years ago, Winston Peters was still robust enough to come back from the political crucifixion which his political and media enemies had prepared for him. In his seventies now, the chances of a second resurrection are slim. We should, therefore, prepare for the last gasp of ...
Satellites pass over NZ all the time (literally). Here I focus on the 187 Planet Labs ‘Dove’ Earth-imaging satellites, and I show that one can determine in advance where they will be, enabling scientists on the ground to correlate their environmental and other data collection with opportunities to get imaging ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First spokesperson for Primary Industries, Mark Patterson, has called for awareness to be raised and more stringent biosecurity checks to be put in place for African Swine Fever (ASF), a widespread virus that is uncontrolled in most of Asia and a serious ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Human Rights A critical step has been taken to end gender based violence against women and girls in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for Human Rights Jenny Marcroft MP has welcomed the passing of the first reading of the Crimes (Definition of Female ...
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones says it's time to recognise market forces haven't led to the expected reduction in Māori smoking rates and try a new approach. The Party had recently invoked the agree to disagree clause in their Coalition Agreement with the Labour Party, and will not support ...
Live from the Whanganui Opera House, on the final day of the 2019 Labour Party Conference, Jacinda Ardern announced the largest investment in school property in 25 years. ...
The Coalition Government will be banning foreign donations to political parties and candidates, ahead of next year’s general elections. Legislation will be introduced to Parliament and passed under urgency – emphasising the need for such restrictions to safeguard our democracy. The bill introduces a new requirement that party secretaries and ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones opened Taipā's $19 million bridge recently, improving transport infrastructure in the Northland region. The two-lane bridge is 107m long with a 2.5m-wide shared walking and cycling path, and will reduce the congestion that the old one-lane bridge was notorious for. The project had also included ...
The Overseas Investment Office have rejected the application of Mercury Agriculture LP, which is 92 per cent controlled by Canadian interests, to purchase more than 2000 hectares of South Canterbury and Otago land. Mercury wanted to buy 2000ha at Rangitata, 1494ha near Ashburton, 816ha near Cromwell and 212ha near Temuka. ...
This weekend was Labour's 103rd Party Conference! We welcomed over 500 of our Labour whānau in red to Whanganui, where we reflected on the last two years in Government, and looked ahead to 2020 and beyond. We know the long-term challenges facing New Zealand won't be tackled overnight, but we're making ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced that the Provincial Growth Fund will invest $9.6 million to seal the final unsealed section of State Highway 43 from Stratford to Taumarunui. The Minister said sealing the 12-kilometre gravel section of the highway – also called the “Forgotten World Highway” - through ...
Former Finance Minister and former chair of the Tax Working Group, Sir Michael Cullen, has voiced his support for New Zealand First’s decision to oppose the planned increase in tobacco excise tax. In an interview with The Weekend Collective, he said that increasing the price was no longer effective in ...
Māori are natural storytellers. On the marae we use stories to tell our history, to teach the next generation life lessons and to let people know, in our most creative of ways, who we are and where we have come from. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First has invoked the ‘Agree to Disagree’ provisions of the Coalition Agreement because it cannot support the announced 11.46 percent increase in the tobacco excise from 1 January 2020. “Studies show that the automatic tobacco excise increases are having less effect ...
Taupō-based company Geo40 has made a breakthrough in extracting near battery-grade lithium from geothermal fluid which its says could be a gamechanger. Its chief executive John Worth said the earth mineral was highly prized, with battery-grade lithium selling for US$10,000 (NZ$15,600) a tonne. Geo40 was founded in 2010 to find ...
Crown research institute AgResearch Ltd, as part of its Future Footprint plan, had intended to relocate top scientists and support staff — particularly those focused on sheep genetics and genomics — from Invermay to Lincoln. However, those plans seem to have been shelved at the request of the Coalition Government. ...
Ten engineering firms in Southland are receiving a total of $2.13 million in Provincial Growth Fund funding to lift productivity and create new jobs. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced in Invercargill that the 10 engineering and manufacturing firms would receive funding to assist them with buying equipment that ...
The number of new residents to New Zealand is the lowest it has been in nearly two decades and it has earned the ire of the immigration industry. The industry alleges that 'Trump-style extreme vetting' is being put in place aimed at keeping a lid on immigration numbers. June Ranson, ...
The Royal New Zealand Air Force is one step closer to modernising its fleet after the United States State Department recently approved the sale of five new C-130J Hercules aircraft to New Zealand. Arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, in Fort Worth, Texas, will provide the aircraft, but as a "foreign military ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones wants to create a log barging facility at Hicks Bay and turn the area into a Special Economic Zone. The move would be part of protecting New Zealand's forests from being depleted by India and China, he said. It follows his announcement last week to strengthen ...
New Zealand First supports the changes recommended by the Winter Grazing Taskforce to improve animal welfare outcomes through the winter months, and the establishment of a pan-sector action group to implement them. New Zealand First Primary Industries Spokesperson Mark Patterson says the report highlights areas of concern about the animal ...
Former prime ministers Helen Clark and Sir John Key, formerly from the Labour and National parties respectively, have joined forces in support of New Zealand First’s plan to relocate Auckland's port to Whangārei. While Ms Clark and Sir John spent their political careers on opposite sides of the political divide, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is in Japan for the Foreign Ministers' meeting of the G20 grouping of countries as one of nine "invited" countries. He has used the opportunity to cast a spotlight on the plight of Pacific countries, calling out countries which still offered subsidies or Government assistance to ...
It's been a great week of progress: we've celebrated Children's Day, we've made communities safer with 1800 new police, and we've seen almost 90% of eligible schools take up Government funding to scrap school donations - taking pressure off the families of more than 416,000 students. ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Forestry The Government will further strengthen New Zealand’s wood processing sector as part of our focus on ‘value over volume’ in our forestry industry, Forestry Minister Shane Jones says. Minister Jones will today meet with forestry representatives in Northland to signal new measures to help the ...
New Zealand First are celebrating the announcement of an investment of $3.5 million into five new trapping devices. These are a range of bait and trap devices, all designed to be left unattended for long periods of time. NZ First conservation spokesperson Jenny Marcroft says that this latest development will ...
Jenny Marcroft, Spokesperson for Conservation New Zealand First is proud to announce the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) has allocated $3.5 million to develop innovative predator control approaches which will reduce the need for repeated 1080 use. $19.5 million of PGF funding was announced for Predator Free 2050 Limited in February ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Police New Zealand First is proud to have delivered on a key Coalition Agreement commitment to adding 1800 new frontline police, with the graduation of Recruit Wing 332 in Porirua today. Law and Order Spokesperson Darroch Ball says increasing police numbers and boosting their resources was one ...
Clayton Mitchell, Spokesperson for Consumer Affairs The ‘wheel clamping’ Bill that will cap clamper fees to $100 passed its third readinginParliament today. New Zealand First welcomes The Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill to combat predatory wheel clamping behaviour in what is currently a largely unregulated business. Cowboy clampers are: gouging ...
Jenny Marcroft, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First welcomes the passage of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill through its first reading in Parliament. “Today’s progress takes serious action on the mental health and addiction crisis the country is facing,” says New Zealand First Health Spokesperson Jenny Marcroft. “The re-establishment ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries Today the Government announced the delivery of the promise to protect New Zealand interests by applying a new National Interest Test to the sales of our most sensitive and high risk assets to overseas buyers. This further strengthening of the Overseas Investment Act will ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced further support as the Government of Samoa responds to a serious measles outbreak. “New Zealand will deploy a further 18 vaccination nurses, bringing the total to 30 working in Samoa over the next ...
The Coalition Government is delivering on its promise to protect New Zealanders’ interests by applying a new national interest test to the sales of our most sensitive and high-risk assets to overseas buyers. Under current Overseas Investment Act (OIA) rules, assets such as ports and airports, telecommunications infrastructure, electricity and ...
Rt Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First Allegations raised this morning by Stuff Limited / Fairfax concern a party matter but I am confident that New Zealand First has operated within electoral laws, now and for the last 27 years. Declarable donations were declared to the Electoral Commission. Our ...
The chairman of the Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy (UNISCS) working group, Wayne Brown, has hit back at critics of his group’s recommendations to relocate the Ports of Auckland cargo operations to Whangarei’s deepwater port of Northport. The working group's recommendation to close Auckland waterfront to all but cruise ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says new appointments to DHBs represent a significant changing of the guard, with 13 new chairs including four Māori chairs. Today 76 appointments have been announced to complement elected board members, as well as eight elected members appointed as either chair or deputy chair. Four ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Fletcher Tabuteau, is travelling to Germany, Poland, Austria, and Spain next week to bolster New Zealand’s political and trade relationships in Europe. While in Spain, Mr Tabuteau will represent New Zealand at the 14th Asia-Europe (ASEM) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Madrid. “New Zealand strongly supports ...
“I’ve spoken to Minister Faafoi, who has apologised for his poor handling of this issue,” Jacinda Ardern said. “I have confidence in Kris as a hardworking and effective Minister, but this should have been dealt with in a much clearer manner, and I’ve made my views on that very clear ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters met with Tongan Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pohiva Tu'i'onetoa in Wellington today. The pair signed a Statement of Partnership setting out joint priorities for cooperation out to 2023. “We welcomed Prime Minister Tu'i'onetoa on his first visit to New Zealand as Prime Minister. Tonga ...
The Minister of Police Stuart Nash says his sympathies are with the family of a man who died after being shot by Police in Kurow. “Initial reports are that Police were called by a family member to help the man who was threatening to harm himself,” Mr Nash says. “However ...
Healthier waterways, better productivity and farmer wellbeing are front and centre in a new project involving more than 1000 Southland farmers and growers. Minister of Agriculture Damien O’Connor today announced that the Thriving Southland Change and Innovation Project is the first region-wide extension programme supported by the $229 million Sustainable ...
Work to look after nature and restore freshwater quality in Te Hoiere/Pelorus River catchment is getting a significant boost, thanks to new Government funding support Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage announced in Canvastown today. “Every New Zealander should be able to swim in their local river without getting sick, and ...
Eight Queen’s Counsel have been appointed under a process that includes the new criterion of a commitment to improving access to justice, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. “The new criterion was included this year. It emphasises that excellence and leadership in the profession can be seen through a wider, community ...
Onslow College in Wellington will get 20 new classrooms for more than 400 students, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. The much-needed investment will relieve growth pressure the school has been experiencing for some time. Seven existing classrooms which have deteriorated over time will also be replaced, bringing the total ...
More than 250 young New Zealanders will add international experience to their education, thanks to the latest Prime Minister’s Scholarships for Asia (PMSA) and Latin America (PMSLA), Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. This round of scholarships supports 252 recent graduates or current students to undertake study, research or internships ...
Consumers will benefit from a more competitive, transparent retail fuel market as a result of changes the Government will be making in response to the findings of the Commerce Commission’s study of the fuel sector. “We accept the Commission’s findings and, as the Prime Minister has said, we’re ready to ...
Five new cancer medicines have now been funded this year, meaning thousands of people have more treatment options PHARMAC has today announced that it has approved two new medicines for funding – fulvestrant for breast cancer and olaparib for ovarian cancer. This follows earlier decisions on advanced lung cancer treatment alectinib, ...
The Minister of Local Government, Hon Nanaia Mahuta says the Government will consider making changes to local electoral legislation before the 2022 elections to fix the problems that have arisen where elections are settled by a coin toss. The Minister says the recount process in the Murupara- Galatea ward at ...
New Zealand will sign up to new international maritime regulations to reduce ship emissions and lift air quality around ports and harbours, Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter announced today. Subject to completion of the Parliamentary treaty examination process, New Zealand will sign up to Annex VI of MARPOL, an ...
New legislation to transform our urban areas and create sustainable, inclusive and thriving communities will tomorrow be introduced to Parliament, Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford said. “The Urban Development Bill gives Kāinga Ora-Homes and Communities the tools it needs to partner with councils, communities, mana whenua and private developers to ...
Today’s launch of He taonga te Tamaiti: Every child a taonga: The Early Learning Action Plan 2019-2029 provides the foundation for long-lasting changes to early learning, Education Minister Chris Hipkins says. “Early learning will be one of the Government’s top education priorities going into 2020,” Chris Hipkins said. ...
Major decisions made by the Government will now be considered under a climate change lens, Minister for Climate Change James Shaw announced today. “Cabinet routinely considers the effects of its decisions on human rights, the Treaty of Waitangi, rural communities, the disability community, and gender – now climate change will ...
Education Minister Chris Hipkins today announced the appointment of Māori education specialist Dr Wayne Ngata and Business NZ head Kirk Hope to the Board of the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC). Dr Alastair MacCormick has been reappointed for another term. “Wayne Ngata, Kirk Hope and Alastair MacCormick bring a great deal ...
The next phase of the Pike River Re-entry project is underway, Minister Responsible for Pike River Re-entry Andrew Little says. “Fresh air will be pumped into the Pike River Mine drift this week, following acceptance of the plan for re-entry beyond the 170m barrier by New Zealand’s independent health and ...
New Zealand consumers will have greater certainty about their insurance cover when they need to make claims as a result of proposed government changes. “Insurance is vitally important in supporting consumers and businesses to be financially resilient when unexpected events happen,” Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Kris Faafoi said. ...
The Crown is providing an opportunity for the hapu of Ngāpuhi to rebuild its framework from the ground up for collective negotiations to deal with its historical Treaty claims, Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little and Minister for Māori Development Nanaia Mahuta announced today. The Crown is also ...
A Bill enabling referendums to be held with the 2020 General Election has passed its third reading. Justice Minister Andrew Little says the Act is important for upholding the integrity of New Zealand’s electoral process. “The Government has committed to holding a referendum on legalising recreational cannabis at the next ...
The first release of public information on the two referendums to be held at next year’s General Election was made today with an informative new Government website going live. Additionally, the draft Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill has been released, showing the strict controls on cannabis that will apply if ...
The Government is taking action to protect New Zealand from foreign interference in our elections by banning foreign donations to political parties and candidates, Justice Minister Andrew Little announced today. Legislation will be introduced to Parliament this afternoon and passed under urgency. “There’s no need for anyone other than New ...
Governments and tech companies are holding a two-day workshop, hosted by YouTube/Google in Wellington, to test the Christchurch Call Shared Crisis Response Protocol. The workshop aims to refine and strengthen the response in the event of a terrorist attack with online implications. Companies, governments, civil society experts and NGOs will ...
The new independent Cancer Control Agency has formally opened today, delivering on the Government’s plan to improve cancer care in New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister of Health David Clark marked the occasion by announcing the membership of the Advisory Council that will be supporting ...
Small businesses who deal with government departments are set to be paid faster and have improved cash flow as a result, under a new strategy released today. The Government is backing recommendations from the Small Business Council (SBC) and has agreed to implement three initiatives immediately to support business and ...
The Education and Training Bill 2019, introduced in Parliament today, proposes the biggest education changes in decades and is an important step towards improving success for all our learners, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said. “The Bill’s rewrite of education legislation is long overdue. Indeed one Education Act, parts of which ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio will travel to Bali to represent New Zealand at the 12th Bali Democracy Forum that will be held on the 5-6 December. “The Forum is a valuable opportunity for Asia-Pacific countries to share experiences and best practice in building home-grown democracy and fostering ...
A package of new and expanded technology and other tools will encourage responsible camping and help communities and local councils better manage freedom camping this summer, Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis announced today. “Our Government has been investing to improve the freedom camping experience for everyone because we want to support ...
The government is laying the groundwork to understanding our genes – work that can help us tackle some of our biggest health challenges, like heart disease and diabetes, says Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods. $4.7 million has been invested in the Genomics Aotearoa Rakeiora programme. The programme will ...
Nearly every state schools will receive a capital injection next year valued at $693 per student to bring forward urgent school property improvements, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. The one-off cash injection is the first project to be announced from the Government’s infrastructure package ...
The Government has decided to bring forward major investments in New Zealand’s infrastructure to future proof the economy. “Cabinet has agreed to a significant boost to infrastructure investment. I have directed the Treasury to help bring together a package of projects that can be brought into the Government’s short and ...
It is a great pleasure to be with you today in Whanganui. Like the Prime Minister I grew up with the TV clip of Selwyn Toogood booming “What do you say Whanganui, the money or the bag?” to an unsuspecting ‘It’s in the Bag’ audience. For those under the age ...
New Zealand’s newest Great Walk, the Paparoa Track, was officially opened in Blackball today by the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage alongside the family members of the Pike 29 and Ngāti Waewae. Local mayors and MP for the West Coast Hon Damien O’Connor were also in attendance. “Paparoa National Park ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark turned the first sod of earth on the infrastructure works for the new P-8A Poseidon fleet at RNZAF Base Ohakea today. “The Coalition Government’s investment in Ohakea will ensure the Royal New Zealand Air Force can manage, maintain and task the new fleet efficiently ahead ...
Civil Defence Minister Hon Peeni Henare today announced the establishment of the new National Emergency Management Agency from 1 December 2019. The National Emergency Management Agency will replace the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management. It will be an autonomous departmental agency, hosted by the Department of the Prime ...
New Zealand tertiary students with top grades and a passion for space will once again be offered the opportunity to work with the world’s best and brightest at NASA, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Recipients of the New Zealand Space Scholarship are nominated by the Ministry of Business, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced further support to Samoa in the wake of an ongoing measles outbreak in the country. Additional medical supplies and personnel, including a third rotation of New Zealand’s emergency medical assistance team (NZMAT), further nurse vaccinators, intensive care (ICU) specialists and Samoan-speaking medical professionals, will ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says new data showing a sharp drop in the number of people who can’t afford to visit their GP is a sign of real progress. One year after the Government made it cheaper for about 600,000 Kiwis to visit their doctor, results of the New ...
Hell’s bells it’s Gone By Lunchtime, with Annabelle Lee, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire shooting the breeze on Kris Faafoi, Jason Kerrison, Winston Peters, NZ First donations, a cannabis referendum, and the year to come.Just when you thought politics was tucking under the duvet for Christmas, along comes the guy ...
Tis the season for hangovers, so we convinced some of New Zealand’s most experienced consumers of food and/or drink (OK, Spinoff staff and a bunch of chefs/hospo people) to share their tried-and-true culinary remedies.A hangover is a very individual thing. For some, it manifests as a splitting headache and extreme ...
Before Britain’s Got Talent: Champions hits our screens tonight, let’s take a fond look back at some of the show’s weirdest and most wonderful acts.Place your hands on your Golden Buzzer, because Britain’s Got Talent: The Champions kicks off this weekend. Champions is BGT bigger and better than it’s been before, ...
Following the raging success of the 2018 non-goat ethical Christmas gift guide, here for you today – responsibly wrapped in reusable gift wrap – is the 2019 list of ethical, sustainable, socially conscious, or charitable gift ideas to satisfy all kinds of family members and budgets.Budget Category: ‘Can we pay ...
Lime brought e-scooters to Auckland and changed the way we travel in less than a year. Now, the council is replacing it and Wave with three new contenders. Josie Adams goes to the Lime warehouse to say goodbye to the original scooters.In a warehouse in Eden Terrace, almost a thousand ...
Analysis - The government's first crack at cannabis legislation runs into trouble, a foreign donations bill is rammed through Parliament and a select committee refuses to listen to former NZ First officeholders. ...
Dr Ben Jansen is Oceania's leading prescriber of cannabis medicines, and a co-founder of the Hemp Foundation.org.nz “I’d like to thank the Labour Party and Chris Woodney. Thanks to his policy remit at Labours national conference, and Labours full support, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Soong, Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education Practice, School of Education, University of South Australia Australian 15 year olds were around three and a half years behind their counterparts in China in maths, according to the OECD’s latest results for education systems ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dimitri Perrin, Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology More than a year ago, the world was shocked by Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui’s attempt to use CRISPR technology to modify human embryos and make them resistant to HIV, which led to the birth ...
Cabinet minister Kris Faafoi has apologised to the Prime Minister for his messages to Jason Kerrison regarding an immigration case, but will not lose his job. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders University The decision to merge the Department of Communications and the Arts with Transport, Infrastructure and Regional development (dropping the “Arts” entirely) ends a year in which Australian politics has been deeply confused over its ...
A historic referendum on independence has been completed in Bougainville. Johnny Blades of RNZ was there. People in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville have voted in an historic independence referendum. The long-anticipated referendum is the ultimate provision of 2001’s Bougainville Peace Agreement, which followed a brutal, protracted ...
Dairy farmers had some Xmas cheer this week, as dairy giant Fonterra told them the forecast payout would be the fourth-highest-ever, at the mid-point of its farmgate milk price range. The $7.30kg/ms means the cash payout for the season will reach $11.2bn, a rise of about $400m from the earlier forecast. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Syme, PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of Queensland When you find dinosaur skeletons, how can you tell how old the dinosaur was? Like, if the skeleton is from a child dinosaur or an adult dinosaur? – Henry, aged 8. ...
The Council of Licenced Firearms Owners (COLFO) has had to clarify the law with Police and receive their reassurance that while the amnesty for ammunition was not extended to 20 December, Police will act as if it has been. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 We Are Here: An Atlas of Aotearoa by Chris McDowall & Tim Denee (Massey University Press, $70)Superlative ...
This week a petition with more than 15,000 signatures was presented at parliament to Nicola Willis, MP and opposition spokesperson for Early Childhood Education. Also attending were Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick and Hon Nikki Kaye. ...
It’s that time of year again when, for the third year running, a new A Christmas Prince movie is released. Sam Brooks was in front of a TV screen for the latest instalment’s debut on Netflix last night, and here catalogues the many stupid, wild, and wildly stupid things he ...
One of the most highly rated members of Jacinda Ardern’s Cabinet is under pressure over assurances given in relation to an immigration case. How bad could it get, asks Toby Manhire.There has never been a New Zealand prime minister more engaged with contemporary homegrown music than Jacinda Ardern. She’s forever ...
Kris Faafoi, Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media; Minister ofCommerce and Consumer Affairs;Minister of Government Digital Services; Associate Minister forHousing; MP for Mana.The latest allegations of a corruption scandal involving a Cabinet minister suggests this government is far too loose when it comes to providing access to power ...
The National Party cannot credibly critique the Government’s hikes to fuel tax while it refuses to commit to reversing these hikes, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “Simon Bridges has lambasted ...
Newspaper staff were among those to express dismay and fury during the frenzy of denunciations that followed publication of an ill-considered cartoon about Samoa and the measles epidemic. The Spinoffrecorded their reactions under the heading ODT cartoonist infuriates his colleagues with Sāmoa measles epidemic ‘joke’. It also reproduced the ...
New Zealand Police Association condemns comments made by People Against Prisons Aotearoa following the fatal police shooting of an armed man who had made threats of suicide. ...
A new poem by Harry Ricketts. The Writing Life You want to write.You want to be published.You want to be read. You want to be a cult figure.You want to be reviewed.You want to write. You want to win prizes.You want to be anthologised.You want to be read. You want to be taught in schools ...
As Christmas is near, it’s time to set the record straight on some of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of employment law that apply to the festive season. ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Kris Faafoi immigration case Fiona Connor and Tova O’Brien (Newshub): ‘I’m on it bro’: Messages show Kris Faafoi offering help to ...
The Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta has announced changes to prevent Māori wards being voted down by referendums are off the table, saying she believes such a change is not possible within the coalition. ...
It’s officially the festive season, and what does that mean? An office Secret Santa with a budget of $20 and you’ve picked your boss. Instead of settling for a bottle of average wine and a ribbon, follow our essential guide on what to get those unique workmates.At last year’s Secret ...
The shooting of a suicidal man in Southland shows that police armament is dangerous, says criminal justice group People Against Prisons Aotearoa. The shooting comes just over a month into the controversial trial of heavily armed police teams in 3 regions ...
The Prime Minister should deal urgently with reports Cabinet Minister Kris Faafoi offered to help a friend over an immigration case, National Party leader Simon Bridges says. ...
The families of top former All Blacks are likely to donate their loved ones’ brains to research so the effect of head impacts in sport can be studied. ...
A woman who went on a Tinder date with the man who murdered Grace Millane tells her story, and issues a warning to other women to trust their instincts when something doesn’t feel right.First published on Newshub.co.nzI went on a date with Grace Millane’s killer while her body lay in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gottfried Lechner, Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Telecommunications Research, University of South Australia, University of South Australia Satellites are becoming increasingly important in our lives, as they help us meet a demand for more data, exchanged at higher speeds. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terry Goldsworthy, Associate Professor in Criminology, Bond University According to the latest figures, homicides in Australia are at historic lows and compare well against international trends. So what do the trends tell us and why is the homicide rate in Australia declining? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy O’Rourke, Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture, The University of Queensland Welcome to the next article in our Designing Hospitals series, where we explore how architecture and design shape our hospitals and medical centres. Today, we look at what Indigenous people tell ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results are bad news for Australian students, parents, employers and policymakers. Pretty much everyone. Australian 15-year-olds are now below the OECD average in mathematics, and our results in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Clode, Senior Research Fellow in Creative Writing, Flinders University It is only mid-November but we have to walk early to avoid the heat. A northerly wind picks up clouds of dust and pollen, sending dirty billows across the paddocks. The long ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Changes coming to fuel market, anti-vaxxer arrested in Samoa, and banks told to hold more capital.New recommendations to increase competition in the fuel market have been made by the Commerce Commission, reports the NZ Herald. Their conclusion is that it isn’t competitive ...
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias. ...
An alliance of top researchers is trying to keep New Zealand ahead of complex health challenges from overuse of antibiotics, threats to freshwater quality and emerging infectious diseases. ...
The birthplace of the Labour Party is once again at the forefront of a new movement, this time harnessing the power of the collective to step away from coal towards a low carbon future.Blackball is a small place with a huge history. This week the town, 29 kilometres from Greymouth, ...
Life expectancy is increasing all the time, and now actuaries and retirement experts say young people need far more information on what they’ll need to do with their money if they live to 100. Don’t worry, we’re here to help. The message from the Retirement Income Interest Group of the New ...
German politician Joschka Fischer has had a remarkable career. From street violence and helping to set up the Green party, he matured into the foreign minister and vice-chancellor of a united Germany, serving until 2005. His understanding of power politics led him to support the use of force in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison said it with a straight face, and repetition for emphasis. “I’m very pleased, very pleased, with the performance of all of my ministers,” he declared on Thursday. This ringing if unconvincing universal endorsement ...
PARENTS AROUND THE WORLD PLEA FOR URGENT CLIMATE ACTION 222 parents groups from 27 countries have released a heartfelt joint plea calling on negotiators at this year’s UN climate summit – COP25 – in Madrid to push for ambitious and urgent ...
Government proposals to overhaul insurance contract laws should make the whole process of taking out insurance easier and simpler to understand for consumers, says Financial Advice New Zealand. ...
Despite New Zealand First lobbying hard at the Cabinet table, the Finance Minister says the case to move Auckland's port operations north has not yet been made. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Tomnay, Assoc. Professor / Director of Centre for Excellence in Rural Sexual Health, University of Melbourne Around one in six Australian women have had an abortion by their mid-30s. These women come from all age groups and demographics: some are mothers ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roslyn Petelin, Course coordinator, The University of Queensland Reports this week about the demise of the Apostrophe Protection Society may have been greatly exaggerated. The Apostrophe Protection Society was set up in 2001 in the UK by retired journalist John Richards with ...
Today the Court of Appeal released their decision to allow Helen Milner (The Black Widow) to have the last remaining body samples of the husband she murdered, in an attempt to prove her innocence by trying to see if he had an underlying heart condition. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Pearse, Lecturer, Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney Federal Labor this week commemorated a dubious anniversary – a decade of climate policy failure. And it pointed the finger of blame squarely at the Greens. Labor claimed that had the Greens ...
The recent statement by Simon Tyler on behalf of the National Provident Fund and the Government Superannuation Fund, that environmental and social goals must be balanced with financial risk and reward, displays conceptual confusion about the role of ethical ...
A bill designed to deal with terrorists returning from overseas has hit its latest speed bump as human rights groups raise concerns that it could be used to stifle press freedom. ...
Open Mike 30/06/2018 
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Another mass shooting in the US – symptom of a dysfunctional society?
Add to the above:
“As one of the world’s wealthiest societies, the US is what Alston calls a “land of stark contrasts”. It is home to one in four of the world’s 2,208 billionaires.
At the other end of the spectrum, 40 million Americans live in poverty. More than five million eke out an existence amid the kind of absolute deprivation normally associated with the developing world.
The symptoms of such glaring inequality include:
• Americans now live shorter and sicker lives than citizens of other rich democracies;
• Tropical diseases that flourish in conditions of poverty are on the rise;
• The US incarceration rate remains the highest in the world;
• Voter registration levels are among the lowest in industrialised nations – 64% of the voting-age population, compared with 91% in Canada and the UK and 99% in Japan.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/01/us-inequality-donald-trump-cruel-measures-un
Isn’t it about time this country took a more neutral and independent line on the world scene – keeping our distance from both the US and China (just as dangerous a country to get into bed with, imo). Looking inwards for our own prosperity and not going ‘cap in hand’ to the altar of ‘world trade’?
We must distinguish ourselves from US centeric interests if we are to thrive once the economic power shift to the East is complete.
When trade commenced in the Petro-Yuan it took just two months before 12% of trade was conducted in PY in preference to the previous standard of the Petro-dollar.
A smart country would read the writing on the wall and react now while it is easier to reposition, but yes both dangerous.
Yes it is. Being totally dependent upon other countries is bad for a country as it leaves them vulnerable to the actions of those countries.
The NRAs current president in the US who got given the position with the help of the gun lobby is a man who has admitted under oath to being a Traitor to the US and to selling guns to people listed as terrorists by the US. The only reason he is not in Jail is the case against him fell apart because most of the evidence had to be tossed out as it was freely given by him to a congressional hearing under an immunity deal.
That is the sort of man you have running the NRA in the US and able to legally bribe their politicians to ignore the call of the majority of their voters for gun control.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12080025
Hooton making things up….surely not? (I was daft enough to believe this for a few hours which is maybe Hootons agenda…mud sticks)
Looks like the ‘lucky country’ may get lucky twice from it’s mining boom:
One analysis I read suggested there may be literally thousands of such sites all over the outback, with a staggering potential.
Meanwhile…
James Hansen.
Hansen is absolutely one of the good guys, but neither do I buy into the stupid totalitarian idea that any individual is omniscient.
Critically there are three things coming together which will bring renewables into a new focus:
1. PV is now being installed at utility scale (> 50 MW) at prices under 3 cents/kWhr, well under any fossil fuel generation. In Australia 60% of all new generation is PV or wind. The economics have now tilted permanently in renewable’s favour; and the smart money in town is now chasing the opportunities as illustrated above.
2. Storage technologies are coming online as engineered reality; pumped storage is one example. The other which is up and running can be seen here:
https://www.aalborgcsp.com/projects/366mwth-integrated-energy-system-based-on-csp-australia/
3. Smart distribution technologies are gaining more traction, allowing generation and consumption to be better matched both temporally and spatially. A global HVDC super-grid will eventually resolve this issue permanently:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/lets-build-a-global-power-grid
So the technology is there or getting there. And the price signals are improving. We even have engineers and technicians and what not to design and build and develop whatever might be required.
And we have something over 20 years at our current rates of emissions to get it all developed, built, and up and running to (perhaps) avoid 2 degrees of warming.
I don’t think there’s much in the way of “omniscience” required to figure that no matter the amount of will power, it just ain’t possible to hard boil an egg in an open pan of water in 30 sec flat. (That being the basic situation we’re facing in terms of time with AGW and possible tech roll outs)
The history has many striking examples of what happens when a new technology reaches a tipping point; crucially where it become 3 – 10 times cheaper or better than the one it replaces.
While the first cars where marketed in the early 1890’s, in the decade from about 1902 to 1912 horses literally vanished from large Western cities as cars totally replaced them.
The first commercial mini-computers became available around the late 60’s, but suddenly from 1980 onwards they penetrated everywhere. To the point now where modern business gets nothing done without them.
Mobile phones came into use in the early 90’s, but the advent of smartphones in the mid-2000’s literally exploded their penetration to every corner of the planet.
Electric cars are on the cusp of the same transition.
In hindsight the transition always looks obvious, but what no-one anticipates in advance is how fast and how comprehensive the process can be.
Sure. But none of those instances or examples even begin to approach the sheer scale of whats required in terms of engineering in the face of AGW (if the idea is to swap out carbon while we just carry on). And none of those things were subject to the time constraints we’re looking at.
You talk of electric cars. But it would have to be electric cars and shipping and aviation and most of the world’s electricity generation plus whatever of the world’s 80% of energy needs, not covered above, that aren’t currently “vectored” through electricity.
And all in something like 20 years assuming no increase in emissions from present levels (they’re actually going up every year).
As I commented – it’s like saying you’ll take an egg and hard boil it in 30. Nice idea. Doesn’t stack up.
late edit on a mistaken assumption contained in your comment about efficiency and cost driving change. Steam was never cheaper or more efficient than water as a source of energy for mills. And yet…
RedLogix did not claim it would cure climate change.
The comments were limited to electricity generation, electricity networks, and electricity storage.
The other comments were illustrations of technological change, not as contributions to alleviating climate change.
Electricity storage, networks and generation are going to have to encompass most of the 80% of energy we use that isn’t from a zero or low carbon source.
That aside, I didn’t think for one second that RL was making any claim to having stumbled on “a cure for” climate change. But I’m pretty sure he was alluding to the possibility of techno fixes that would see us making no more contribution to global warming. Which, by the way, is feasible, just not in terms of 2 degrees of warming (avoidance of).
That’s a pretty solid response Bill; the numbers are daunting, and hard to argue with given our current position. In very rough terms the ‘big three’ contributors to fossil CO2 are in order of magnitude (IIRC):
1. Electricity
2. Transport
3. Steel and concrete
The first is 100% solvable relatively quickly within two decades, the second can be dramatically improved. The third contribution from steel and concrete are going to be the difficult one, as at present we don’t have a lot of good alternatives I’m aware of. (Other than engineered timber which I like a lot, but has limits.)
Over the past two centuries fossil fuels have served an extraordinary purpose in moving the vast majority of the human population out of absolute degrading poverty and slavery, to on average, a modest standard of living and welfare. Turning the clock back on that is simply not an option.
In solving one problem, we have uncovered another; we are hard up against the limits of what fossil carbon can do for us.
The deep choice we face is this; do we press on down the technological/industrial path in the expectation we can transition off fossil carbon in time, or do we abandon that direction for an entirely unknown destination with wholly unknown risks? And to what extent is this choice conflated with the idea that such a crisis might offer a chance to ‘smash capitalism’?
Just to be clear for you; the un-reconstructed hippie in me still has a place in my heart for the kind of eco-technic forest garden low energy low consumption vision as patented by the 70’s. The fact that we could imagine it means something. Yet the big wide world out there never seemed to conform to our dreams did it?
I’m not really into hippy stuff.
We are facing a problem that we can’t roll out technical solutions for in the time we’ve left ourselves before hitting 2 degrees of warming. And things are going to get ugly and not a little frightening.
Slashing energy consumption needn’t mean dawdling back to some “sackcloth” past.
I think most of us can agree that a hell of a lot of utter shit is manufactured and distributed and that a lot of energy is used in the process. We could knock all that on the head.
Most people are also aware than many jobs are pretty pointless; that if they do serve a point beyond just keeping people occupied and in thrall to generating profit for some-one or other, then that point has never been elucidated. So, given those pointless jobs also consume a vast amount of energy, we could quite painlessly knock all those jobs on the head too.
So far, I’m not seeing any downside 🙂
But sure (and this seems central to inaction on AGW) the economy we have would be shredded if we took those steps. So we need to imagine and develop new ways to do stuff, or we’ll just stupidly knacker ourselves because one idea of what an economy ought to be was biting the dust.
I’m still not seeing any inevitably looming “sackclothed” downside.
In fact, with all that human potential freed up and a world of possibility…
The flip side is a world of bugger all possibility arriving with an economy biting the dust at the point it can no longer withstand the impacts of climate changes and AGW.
A lot of good points well made Bill, especially when you address the gross waste and inefficiency of much of our current economic activity. But then again this isn’t a unique feature of 21st century life; we’re just doing it on a grand scale our ancestors had no access to.
I’m not the only one here who has often mused that politics is an insufficient level of analysis; it’s only a small part of the story. It goes much deeper than this; it strikes at exactly what makes us human and why we behave in these apparently contradictory, self-destructive ways.
It’s entirely impossible to imagine a world for instance, where Arrhenius’ discoveries in the 1890’s would have immediately led to a rational, logical and eminently sensible cessation of fossil fuel use. People just are not like that. And we cannot, should not, try and imagine we can force them to be.
What we can do is encourage us to understand ourselves and observe all the ways we fuck things up. And then help each other, one painful step at a time to do better. I think that’s all I have to say for the moment … thank you for an interesting conversation Bill.
Cheers
Steam was never cheaper or more efficient than water as a source of energy for mills.
An interesting proposition. The engineering answer is that water mills, while efficient in one sense, had strict scalability limits which horribly constrained their range of application. Nor of course was a water mill ever going to be of much use to drive a locomotive or ship.
The thing is, fossil carbon in all it’s forms came with so many immediate advantages, unprecedented energy density, portability and storage qualities … that once discovered we were never NOT going to exploit them.
And we have … to a remarkable extent. The world is a totally different place to 1818. You really don’t want to go back there, for the average person … most people … life was very hard indeed. And given this enormous progress it’s very understandable that so many people really didn’t want to accept that it came with limits, that there would come a time when this geological genie that literally popped out of the earth, might come with a cost.
There is no perfect solution here; there are risks whatever we do. But my sense is that the world is reaching a point where it is looking to build on what we have already achieved, and mass adoption of renewables will be part of that mix.
I’m not arguing against non-carbon sources of energy in terms of research, development of roll-out.
I’m simply pointing out some obvious time restraints that impact any notions around a switch to non-carbon energy happening alongside maintaining what we have, and continuing to do as we do. There’s a bin marked “false hope” for that garbage.
Industry of the early 1800s ran on water, and had no problem in terms of up scaling. (Add another wheel. Build a bigger wheel. Construct more water channels etc).
Social control and power, rather than engineering efficiency or market signals, drove the switch to coal fired steam engines.
I don’t know how “nasty, brutish and short” life really was for those in 1818 not caught up by industrialisation (as opposed to those who were). But I know that however bad or good it was,it’s probably going to look really fcking desirable from the vantage point of humanity experiencing starvation at the continental level when sea level rise wipes out the 20-25% of global food production that occurs on deltas within the space of current human lives.
“I don’t know how “nasty, brutish and short” life really was for those in 1818 not caught up by industrialisation (as opposed to those who were). But I know that however bad or good it was,it’s probably going to look really fcking desirable from the vantage point of humanity experiencing starvation at the continental level when sea level rise wipes out the 20-25% of global food production that occurs on deltas within the space of current human lives.”
aint that the truth!
Social control and power, rather than engineering efficiency or market signals, drove the switch to coal fired steam engines.
I don’t think so. Social control and power long pre-existed your pre-industrial water powered Eden of 1800; it’s not the child of capitalism or technology, rather a great-great-grand ancestor eons old.
What is true is that as we have developed more technically complex societies, at least from the invention of agriculture onward, our personal relationship with the societies we live in has clearly intensified. And that relationship, even as it brings us benefits, often falls short of any imagined ideal.
There isn’t a simplistic binary response to what your saying here; yes the Industrial Revolution brought a great deal of change, social chaos and misery. But arguably at the end of it, the average individual was a lot better off and politically a great deal freer than at the beginning.
But what I can emphatically say is that the steam engine was not invented as some infernal tool of an evil Illuminati (or whatever), hell-bent on enslaving the human race to it’s nefarious elitist dreams. It works as a metaphor in the Lord of the Rings, but Sauron is not an actual person.
We’re holding a conversation on at least two levels simultaneously here; the obvious one is about the technology options in front of us. The other is deeper and harder to grasp. Tolkien’s directly addressed it in his Hobbit narrative; his revulsion and horror of the mechanised death of WW1, contrasted with an idealised conception of the pre-industrial Hobbiton. Yet in the end, despite it’s charm and nostalgia, even Tolkien knew Hobbiton was a fantasy; it had it’s own internal contradictions and flawed beings.
On the switch to coal, I read an interesting theory years ago that argued the Romans should have developed coal/steam power, but their supply of slaves made it pointless for them to develop alternatives. So possibly not a coincidence that steam power was developed in a nation with one of the weakest monarchies at the time.
I’m not suggesting there was any pre-industrial water powered Eden of 1800. (The switch from water to steam occurred well into the 1800s btw) Neither am I daft enough to believe that power struggles don’t date back to “way back when”.
Andrea Malm has a very good book laying out the various arguments and looking at the historical record. It’s called “Fossil Capital – the rise of steam power and the roots of global warming”.
I recommended it to Carolyn Nth the other day.
Some “snapshots”.
Watt and his business partner failed to make money selling steam engines to mills in Watt’s lifetime because they were expensive and inefficient in relation to water.
Rural populations routinely abandoned the water powered mills they worked in (why wouldn’t they?) Mill owners then enslaved unpaid children from orphanages to make up the short fall (they ran away too.)
Relocating mills to centres like Manchester and running them on steam, not only accessed a larger pool of itinerant labour, but after a couple of generations, city kids knew no different – had no memory or experience of rural life and were therefore more “amenable” to factory life..
There were also bullshit arguments between owners of various workshops and mills over who should pay what in terms of upkeep for the infrastructure required to “tap” a river. Coal fired steam engines sidestepped that conflict.
@ Mc Flock
An interesting argument; it certainly points to the idea that in order to become disruptive a new technology does need to be at least 3 -10 times better than what it’s replacing … something near enough isn’t sufficient to negate the sunk costs of the existing infrastructure.
The engineering response would be two words: Bessemer Process. In order for a steam engine to be efficient it needs to operate at temperatures and pressures that Roman era metals simply could not sustain. The introduction of the Bessemer process in the 1850’s produced for the first time large amounts of high quality, low cost steel with predictable qualities.
@ Bill. Which is why the early steam engines were relatively slow to gain wide acceptance. It was only when decent steel came along for the boiler tubes did the equations tip dramatically in their favour.
Much of what we think of as technological advances are in reality built on the back of advances in materials, a branch of engineering that never gets enough credit for what it contributes.
@McFlock – Steam seems simple. the Greeks made little whirligigs that seemed to be “steam powered” but that understanding is simply ignorant. Using escaping steam as a form of “jet power” is NOT how steam engines work. The early “steam engines” of the industrial age did not actually produce very much power in comparison to their cost and slow speed.
The reason is that “steam” is compressible. And because of that it actually exerts very little force on a cylinder. What made the modern “steam engine” was the accidental realization that spraying a little cold water into a cylinder full of steam caused the steam to immediately collapse… and the VACUUM created in the cylinder has a thousand times more force than the steam can possibly exert. Its Vacuum that drives a steam engines cylinder, not the pressure of steam.
But to discover this, you need to have not only sophisticated metallurgical skills, you also have to understand just what a vacuum is, and how to calculate the force of the vacuum on the materials of the engine so that you can design an engine that can withstand those forces… and, that means you need to be able to measure and quantify such parameters as ductility, tensile strength, elasticity, as well as be able to measure and control very high temperatures with precision to produce materials with reliable properties… and that means you need to have thermometers, and the maths to calculate altitudes, air pressure, and more.
For example, the Romans routinely created vacuums whenever they tried to pump water out of mines in stages longer than 10 metres. But they had no idea they were creating vacuums. They had no idea WHY the water would not go higher in a pipe than 10 metres no matter how hard you tried to pump it. They just understood they had to break pumping systems down to 10 metre lengths. And then pump again from there.
They could not understand the vacuum because they lacked the intellectual tools. Have you ever tried to do advanced calculations using Roman numerals and no concept of zero? The Romans had no concept of the modern idea of science that would have allowed them record and quantify and correlate the physical world around them in such a way as to build a cohesive scientific picture of the laws of nature.
Knowing a steam jet makes something go around is meaningless unless you know also why it makes it go round. A good example of this phenomena is gunpowder. Serendipitously inventing a formula of something that goes BANG! is not remotely as powerful as knowing WHY gunpowder explodes.
The former is a just a recipe you follow without understanding. it offers you nothing but the gunpowder, which is why all you got was gunpowder for another 1000 years.
The latter offers you the capability of creating countless other chemicals, with countless other applications, because you have a theory of chemistry you can employ to make a multitude of compounds.
@ Sanctuary
Great explanation around the importance of steam condensers in the process.
The other intellectual tool the Romans were missing was any inkling of thermodynamics. That really didn’t come along until Carnot formulated the first proper efficiency calculations for steam engine around 1824:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_L%C3%A9onard_Sadi_Carnot
@Bill – mate, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to the early industrial revolution.
“…Industry of the early 1800s ran on water, and had no problem in terms of up scaling. (Add another wheel. Build a bigger wheel. Construct more water channels etc)…”
Wrong to the point of laughable, because you completely fail to account for the cost of distribution. Water wheels require water. If you have a mine in need of pumping nowhere near a river, then even the biggest fucking water wheel in all existence is of absolutely no use to you. Grinding flour at a riverside mill might be cheaper than using a steam powered plant to do so, but by the time you factor in the costs of shipping the grain to the water mill and then back to the markets, it is hopelessly inefficient compared to a steam powered mill. That is because the cost of transporting manufactured goods overland to the markets that wanted them doubled every few miles. Steam engines are far more flexible, you assemble one in the place where the people are and with a hey nonny-nonny your flour mill is in business.
The first most critical requirement for steam power was for pumping water out of coal mines. Beginning in the mid 15th Century Great Britain ran out of ready sources of wood for domestic fuel use. Remember, at this time wood was an especially important strategic resource, essential to naval shipbuilding for example and the main source of construction material before the industrial manufacture of bricks. The price of wood soared, and by the end of the Tudor age much of Great Britain was completely deforested. Unlike the Mediterranean basin Britain had a lot of readily accessible coal seams near the surface, so the British switched to coal for most domestic fuel use. The amount of coal shipped to London from Newcastle grew by 3000% between 1550 and 1700, and the increase in the volume of coal mined between 1556 and 1606 exceeded the growth rate of coal mined at the height of the early industrial revolution.
As surface coal seams were exhausted, mines went deeper and new technologies were needed to pump out water. As I noted in my post to McFlock, early steam engines were very inefficient. 80% of the energy is wasted in a Newcomen engine and they used a lot of coal. But they also allowed mining at much greater depths, and advances in design by Watt and John Smeaton rapidly improved their efficiency, and over the next 150 years steams engines became dramatically more efficient and economical.
I have never heard anyone suggest that the industrial revolution could have been achieved with the steam engine, so i guess your argument has novelty. But only the novelty of the kind reserved for the prefix of a silly hat at the fancy dress shop.
@ Sanctuary.
We probably agree that the Industrial Revolution in Britain was predicated upon cotton, yes? (ie, it was the cotton industry that grew far faster than other manufacturies of the time)
And whatever you’re opinion of me may or may not be in terms of knowing what I’m talking about, the historical record shows that paper mills, cotton mills and other factories requiring power were overwhelmingly powered by water.
You want to argue with the historical record, (presumably on the basis that it’s laughable) then have at it.
In relation to your comments on transportation costs etc.
Do you have any idea about the extensive canal networks that used to criss-cross Britain’s industrial heartlands? (Some are still used). Or the sheer availability and accessibility of places with a high head of water in Britain? (It was no accident that mills were built at the foot of the Highlands and throughout Lancashire). Or of the number of solid flowing rivers passing though major centres of population? (I think most British cities are located on major rivers)
As late as 1826, calculations on the comparative costs of running a mill on coal or water, “including as costs associated with water rent to the landlord, outlays on dams and sluices, expenses for transporting raw materials and a manager between mill and market”…the steam engines coal consumption meant that water was more cost effective.
You want to talk of mines and coal for domestic heating purposes going as far back as Elizabethan times? That has nothing whatsoever to do with what initially powered the industrial revolution.
Now. You want to call me a clown? Fine. Me and history both.
But in that case, what hat is it you reckon you should be grabbing for yourself from the fancy dress shop?
The industrial revolution began as the result of a confluence of numerous technological, economic and political drivers. The need for cheap energy (coal) as a substitute for depleted wood supplies was an important early driver of the chain of events that led to the industrial revolution. Cotton had nothing to do with that – the explosion of inventions that transformed cotton from a rare and expensive textile into a cheap, mass produced one post date the beginnings of the industrial revolution.
the fact that the early transitional stages of the industrial revolution were powered by water more than steam (due to the inefficiencies of early steam power) does not negate the central point that coal extraction with the aid of steam power was a major trigger of the chain of events the culminated in the industrial revolution. Remember, your claim is that the move to steam power was driven by a need for “…Social control and power…” rather than any economic imperative.
Your choice of Manchester is highly illustrative of this process. Your are completely wrong in your statement “…Relocating mills to centres like Manchester and running them on steam…” Manchester became an important early centre of textile production (the reason for the supply of cheap cotton is whole other series of intertwined events) due to the abundance of water to power the early mills and, in the form of the River Irwell, to provide efficient transport to the growing port of Liverpool and the sea (which, BTW, is another example of the inefficiencies of land transportation). But Manchester then EXPLODED as an industrial hub because it is close to the cheap coal fields of Northern England and Wales and local sources of iron ore, essential to making steam engines and other machinery. Oh and your claim that “…Watt and his business partner failed to make money selling steam engines to mills in Watt’s lifetime because they were expensive and inefficient in relation to water…” is simply not true. Watt lived to be 83 and became extremely wealthy and his steam engines were wildly popular. I would be interested to know where you got this particularly egregrious piece of mis-information from!
The canal system also post dates the industrial revolution. When you think about it, it stand to reason that a canal system wouldn’t be built unless there was a need for it – in other words, a need to transport goods and commodities in large quantities – large quantities made possible by the explosion in manufacturing made possible by the industrial revolution. Again, the story of the first “proper” canal in the UK illustrates my points well. The Sankey Canal (opened 1757) was built primarily to transport coal to Liverpool. Secondly, water transport was by far more efficient than carts, reinforcing my earlier point about transport costs.
The bold claim was that “… Steam was never cheaper or more efficient than water as a source of energy for mills…” and that “…Social control and power… …drove the switch to coal fired steam engines…” Bold claims require strong evidence. You’ve not provided any.
I was actually thinking of the 18th century static engines rather when the technology matured (‘brick’ phones rather than iphones). But of course those were to respond to very specific problems without nearby water power. Necessity, motherhood, and all that.
Also a fair point about the legacy of Newton.
@ Sanctuary
The need for cheap energy (coal) as a substitute for depleted wood supplies was an important early driver of the chain of events that led to the industrial revolution
The historical record is clear. Water (a ‘free’ energy source following initial outlay) was cheaper than coal, and preferred by factory owners in the first 1/4 to 1/3rd of the 1800s over coal driven steam engines.
The transition to coal, as I wrote earlier in response to RL is the subject of “Fossil Capital – the rise of steam power and the roots of global warming“, by Andreas Malm (Lund University)
You can find some presentations by him in English on youtube if you care to search.
From the back jacket of the book.
Bold claims require strong evidence. You’ve not provided any.
I’ve provided the source more than once, and that source offers a thorough, fully footnoted exploration of what drove manufacturing from water power to steam power. Do yourself a favour and read it instead of throwing idiotic accusations, assertions and ad homs around a thread, aye?
edit. And the canal system in Britain was going into decline by the second half of the 1800s (because rail). Their development hardly then post dating the industrial revolution as you assert.
The one thing about even burning dirty fuels like coal to create the electricity to power electric cars is that in a lot of cases it is still slightly cleaner than using petrol and diesel-powered engines. When it comes to cars used in big cities due to the amount of time a lot of them sit around at a traffic light or stuck in traffic jams with their engines idling there is a very large amount of fuel they burn wastefully, while the majority of the power generated at a power station is being used and little wasted.
“The trouble with Hansen is he’s never been wrong”.
As with OAB apparently.
The quote has multiple interpretations. Slow clap for picking the least nuanced of them and making an insult out of it. Well done, bravo.
Your quote immediately above with the term “never been wrong” is strongly absolute. Especially absent any clarifying nuance you didn’t feel need to provide.
And the original quote at 3.1 does of course has a few different ways to look at it; feel free to explain why you chose to use it, and the impeccable pristine meaning you intended to convey, and I so stupidly missed.
1. Being wrong once in a while builds character.
2. If your predictions are sufficiently broad, your chances of error diminish.
3. Is the “trouble” a problem for Hansen or us?
A fat lot of good It’s done him.
In that case I must have a whole lot more ‘character’ than I probably know what to do with.
Great post Red….lots of good info. Party Vote Green and all of this will continue apace.
Awesome project.
We’re across a few of the wind farms in South Australia.
Lucky might be the right word for it redlogix, it looks a good scheme and likely not one we’d be able to do on any decent scale.
Longer term I can see Aus running large scale desalination plants from renewables, they might even be able to work the two in together.
Actually we can, or indeed should have, but for the idiot reforms of the National Party which broke the system up. We already have a substantial hydro generation base, and the key to using it intelligently is to minimise using it except to meet demand when other renewables are not available.
But to do that would require a commercially integrated generation/distribution system that for ideological reasons we’re not allowed to have. Which is why NZ is the ‘not so lucky’ country.
Also doesn’t help that a few great wind farm (both large and small) proposals were fought tooth and nail by a few locals, so they were stopped.
The South Australia grid innovations have impressed our firm. Sure hope that the Tesla storage system holds up in a good storm – it’s an important precedent.
I can’t see it RL. The scheme needs two lakes at differing heights, preferably close together. Can’t be much like that in NZ without using up land that’s already being used. Huntly has heaps of lakes but IIRC they’re nearly all on the same level.
Sorry I wasn’t clear; from an energy perspective not using already stored energy in a hydro lake, is the same as actively adding to the storage, if you can substitute with other renewables elsewhere.
All that any pump hydro or storage system does is to time shift the net generation; ie moving the excess of PV generation from the daytime, to the evenings where the demand is.
You get a similar result in say NZ if you stop using the existing run of river hydro during the daytime (effectively topping up the storage) by switching to wind or pv during the day, then running the hydro harder in the evenings drawing down on what you haven’t used during the daytime.
It requires some planning and solid technical integration, and as a concept has engineering limits … but entirely doable.
They do that already don’t they RL? Our hydro is mostly on waterways so they are limited in how much they can control the flow.
Cheap storage of power has been the number one obstacle since electricity was first discovered. When you look at how the world has progressed with everything else it’s quite surprising they haven’t cracked it yet.
Some of the lesser options are quite simple but (presently) defeated by practical economics. When we have a shower in the morning the water cylinder is reheated from the grid before the sun is high enough in the sky to generate much solar energy. For the homeowner with solar panels the cost of getting a sparkie in to install a timer on the water cylinder can eat up the potential savings.
There’s plenty of potential in Otago for pumped storage. Hawea and Wanaka could work but with constraints around the natural level of Wanaka. The Waipori scheme could easily be made to work “backwards” along with the small schemes fed from the high lakes like Onslow. But any hydro dam could be configured to “recycle” water, or in effect energy.
One aspect that’s been glossed over in the video that RL put up in the OP was the efficiency of the undertaking. Wiki says 70 – 80% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity and then you’d have transmission losses on top of that. But probably still worthwhile.
Also had a quiet chuckle at Australia striving to meet “a goal of 20% renewable”. We are very fortunate in that regard.
Good catch on the relatively low in/out efficiencies. Fortunately when the marginal cost of your input energy is almost zero, anything over 60% will do.
Incidentally I instigated and commissioned a modest 300 kW hydro using a couple of existing pumps run backwards on a water supply system some years back. The in/out efficiency was never better than 62% but it just didn’t matter; the payback of the project was well under 10 months.
But otherwise yes, with our mountainous geography there must be more than a few decent pumped storage locations around. Fiordland is essentially one giant opportunity full of hanging glacial valleys with solid rock … albeit with obvious issues around it’s National Park status. The tramper in me would have to fight it boot and ice-axe 🙂
In terms of raw efficiency it’s hard to beat modern batteries, Tesla claim in – out efficiencies above 90% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall
Economic efficiency and return on investment could be another thing however. Also there’s return on investment for the developer / promotor to factor in, along with entrenched utilities, the consumer just being the mug who’s paying for it.
I can see some of the dedicated hydro schemes being suitable but I’m not convinced you can do it with most dams. Dams are on river systems, start pumping it back up again and you interfere with the habitat and environment downstream of the dam. Realistically you’d want to pump from dam to dam, like what the aussies are doing, or at least catchment to dam and pumping distance would surely be an issue there (?).
70-80% efficiency is very worthwhile if they can achieve that. For large scale solar they can now buy panels for around NZ60c per watt. Allow annual generation of 1000watts per watt, lifetime of 25 years and your generation cost is 2.4c kW/hr. Installation, land and other plant would probably double that for the final cost but 30% on top for dam storage is still peanuts, doesn’t add much at that level. I thought it would be much less efficient.
Actually, to do it requires power being turned back into a government service. Commercialisation won’t do it fast enough and there’d have to be all sorts of regulations around connection to get the smart-grid working. Easier and cheaper just to have the government do it.
Agree Tony with your analogy of the current state of the global health system.
I was chemically poisoned over 25yrs ago in a workplace ‘accident’ in Canada and found out the ‘hard way’ that the global governments and medical fraternity did not know anythuing about the dangers of chemical exposures to the human bieng.
This publically funded group were the one that saved my life; jion thisn group.
https://www.ciin.org/
Here a a library of evidence of the exposures we continually face and fornuse in litigation proceedings.
Chemical Exposure and Human Health
A Reference to 314 Chemicals with a Guide to Symptoms
by Cynthia Wilson
The classic MCS sufferer’s volume on the known health effects of chemical exposures. Written by Cynthia Wilson, the founder and Executive Director of Chemical Injury Information Network, it remains the most valuable source of chemical information written by a lay person about the health hazards from everyday chemical exposures. The sections on Symptoms and Potential Causes, Sources of Exposures and the Chemical Directory are priceless.
The book was originally priced at $55.00 and is no longer in print. 345 pages $25.00 plus $5 s/h Used but unscented copies.
Order online or by mail here – https://www.ciin.org/books.html
https://www.ciin.org/news_ott.html
Since 1993 I have lived mostrly outside of the whole medical system, – living on the age old method of first listening to my body and responding to the signals it sends me to respond to it. No medical Doctor could even contemplate doing this nor could they physically carry this out unless 100% monitoring of my system and brain functions.
Some claiim that a monitor can be placed on our body but still they do not treat the systoms with any thing else than thiose toxic invasive prescription medications who I was found to have “adverse medical reations to”.
No toxic ‘prescription medications’ are used today in my life long slow recovery from almost certain death after the workplace accidental exposures to well documented chemical toxic soup I was exposed to without a workplace adequate ventilation during the six month place accident/incident that affected over 40 workers on that worksite during that time and several have since died who were medically documented very healthy proir to the accident.
We need to look at our own woeful agency called OSH ‘Occupational Safety and Health and re-train the medical community in “toxicology” as we now live in a toxic chemical soup daily nowdays and it is getting worse by the day.
Thanks for that link @CleanGreen.
I unapologetically post yet another Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez video. She is a rising star, and unlike the morbidly aged senior house democrats (Americans really need to talk about the age of their representatives. Maxine Waters is 79. Nancy Pelosi is 78. Senator Dianne Feinstein is 85. The average age of the top four house democrats is I think 76 years old) she is young and in touch with her district.
Sam Seder basically dissects the default position of hostility the establishment MSM has towards left wing change agents (TL,DR – anyone outside the establishment is treated as a freak and interviewed with an air of condescending cynicism with an aim to write them off using gotcha tactics. You hear this style ALL.THE.FUCKING.TIME. from establishment toadies like Guyon Espiner and Susie Ferguson).
The lesson for the NZ Labour party is how easy it is to deal with the ambient passive aggressiveness of the establishment media IF YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING BELIEVE IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM.
Interesting Ocasio-Cortez when asked what she would replace ICE with argues that the purpose of a border agency is to ensure “safe passage”. I’m curious what she means by this. By itself this seems an inadequate definition of what a border is about, surely there is more to a border than handing out coffee, donuts and a ‘welcome to the USA pack’ to anyone who cares to turn up.
The good news is that Mexico is likely to elect a strongly left-wing govt:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-30/mexico-election-amlo-leads-the-polls/9925238
Hopefully this will turn the country around and lead millions of migrants to head back to their homeland. Maybe Mexico will finish up build a wall to keep out hordes of fleeing Americans. 🙂
(I’m thinking of an American couple I met at Tocumen Airport last week, who were doing exactly that. They’d just purchased a new home in Ecuador specifically to get away from the “fear which saturates America”.)
Interesting times.
“… I’m curious what she means by this…”
The point of the interview wasn’t to interrogate Ocasio-Cortez in order to allow voters to better understand her beliefs and satisfy your curiosity. Poppy Harlow missed a couple of opportunities to pin Ocasio-Cortez down on potentially interesting answers because she wasn’t listening to Ocasio-Cortez’s answers – she was looking for an opening to attack Ocasio-Cortez based on a tired establishment narrative.
Poppy Harlow approached the interview from a well worn position of establishment superiority with a well worn interviewing template designed to serve a well worn agenda.
It is reflexive, non-thinking, lazy and complacent journalism informed by ambient hostility to anti-establishment thinking.
Sam Seder’s commentary is entirely about how the only new information that came out of this interview was for those viewers intuitive enough to perceive the meta data of the interview.
The points on the cynical narrowness of the the media are well made; and I agree the interview cast little light on any actual policy.
Still the phrase “safe passage” is interesting one and we’ll need to look elsewhere to find out what the details are.
It does really matter what she thinks of ICE. It is not as if becoming a congresswoman confers the power of the government on that person. The US, irrespective of who is the next president, or the president after that, is not suddenly going to have an open border policy. That would be true even if Ocasio-Cortez became president.
What she will be a fresh face for her district with the sort of appeal of the PM.
Look at Obama. The process of becoming president, and making the inevitable compromises that involves, mean you can’t do a sharp U turn in the overall direction of government. He did end the Iraq war, but wasn’t able to decisively win the Afghan war. He did do Obama care, but with huge compromises.
Perhaps a better example of a revolutionary president is Trump. He did pull out of TPP (which had not come into force anyway). He has done a tax package but that is standard fare for a Republican. There is a lot of things he can’t do. He can’t unwind Obama care.
What he has done is change the overall tone of the Presidency (for the worse). It will be changed back at some point. Obama had the rhetoric, but what else?
None of this is to say Ocasio-Cortez can’t make a difference. She can. But she can’t start a socialist revolution, not in the US. Even the most radical president (in the sense of ushering in big government), Franklin Roosevelt did not turn the US into a socialist paradise.
My first line should have read “it does not matter…”
“Even … Franklin Roosevelt did not turn the US into a socialist paradise.”
No, but he moved it in the right direction, just as you moved ours in the wrong direction.
FDR was against a “socialist paradise ” in a 1913 essay.
“The very reason why we object to state ownership, that it puts a stop to individual initiative and to the healthy development of personal responsibility, is the reason why we object to an unsupervised, unchecked monopolistic control in private hands. We urge control and supervision by the nation as an antidote to the movement for state socialism. Those who advocate total lack of regulation, those who advocate lawlessness in the business world, themselves give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be the deadening movement toward unadulterated state socialism.”
http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1160845
He was POTUS thirty years later when New Deal legislation saved american capitalism from the effects of the Great Depression.
It is said that Roosevelt was something of a patrician, and that much of his social activism came from his wife. But he legislated strongly against monopolists, while our local Gnats (and some others who should be ashamed) bow before them as abjectly as any Persian peasant prostrated themselves before their satraps.
Thanks Sanctuary – will watch this evening. If it is as good as it sounds it will be going further up the chain of command. 🙂
Thanks for this, Sanctuary – and definitely no need for any apologies. I had a quick look and decided it is a Must View in full later when there are fewer distractions as at the moment.
Coincidentally I had just read a Guardian article that had popped up in my ‘you may be interested in this’ list. This is an article by one of their Australian columnists, Van Badham entitled “The future of the left is bright if it looks like Jacinda Ardern and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes”
IMHO the article provides a refreshing view of the rise of Ardern and Ocasio-Cortes and is well worth reading. As a taste, it concludes with this:
“Strong men” of the right are now lining up governments from Italy to Turkey to the USA. The times of the now are ones in which we can construct majorities of a diversity they cannot – and do not wish to – represent. We can hope the influence of Jacinda Ardern and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes spread, or we can ensure that it does. The stakes for the marginalised remain life and death.
The article contains much more, however, particularly on Ardern and NZ; and this is just one of a number of comments that I found interesting from someone looking from the outside in:
Observe, also Ardern – who is Pakeha, not Maori – meeting the British queen wearing a Kahu huruhuru: a Māori feathered cloak “bestowed on chiefs and dignitaries to convey prestige, respect and power”. It was a demonstration of a status conferred, and not stolen, and a representation of a New Zealand unafraid to show pride in its indigenous past even as it engaged in diplomatic pleasantry with its colonial one.
This really is shocking. Practically giving away public land for a song and taking away the amenity of neighbouring houses and apartments with sweetheart deals for a developer, while creating a monopoly for boat owners and high prices.
Similar lack of thinking and deregulation happened in the CBD in the 1990’s, they let these developers do what ever they like with little planning, which has resulted in both owners, developers and banks losing confidence in the integrity of the process and two decades of CBD growth being stopped due to leaky building and values being wiped out by neighbouring builds that are poorly planned in relation to existing buildings, and lack of public walkways and public areas for existing residents to enjoy the city.
Nobody wants to buy an apartment and have the amenity halved by the council doing a dirty deal with someone and allowing though their ‘relaxed’ RMA interpretations which has been taken to mean anything goes and be as greedy as you can, by environmental lawyers and the courts to wreck surrounding amenity at any time.
If you get your views wiped out and the apartment buyers continually get screwed either through leasehold (Princess wharf) or Body corporate charges (everywhere) that are designed as a rout or through lack of regulation in surrounding developments (wiping out views/light at the stroke of a council pen).
Even the banks know apartments are not good investments, they are very reluctant to lend on apartments unless a person has at least 30% deposit. Banks know that the value can be wiped out at any time by the lack of regulation that has developed around apartments and central city and anywhere apartments spring up, from outrageous charges, to bad building design and techniques to lack of planning in preserving existing apartment amenities.
Even the banks will not approve of wiping out exisiting housing values in the area to help some sort of Phil Goff rout. Where is the public transport and who pays for it? So far not much interest in making the developers pay the public transport costs for more people and instead it goes to the ratepayers who in many cases are being screwed over by bad developers and having to share ever more with the pathetic services offered.
How can you sell marina land for $5million for 200 apartments & a Marina? Is obscene and against the so called public living around the waterways that should be driving more people to live in those areas.
When one or two apartment blocks are allowed to steal amenity and devalue everyone else then nobody wants to live there and banks don’t want to lend there, the opposite of what the council should be wanting!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12079411
They fit nearly 9 million into London and they do that through very strong planning laws to protect neighbouring amenity which includes things like privacy (an unknown concept in NZ RMA) and making it difficult for greedy people to get planning through so people feel they can trust their housing is protected. London prior to the worst of the neoliberal dogma believed in social housing being part of new builds of apartments.
NZ has gone to the opposite degree and now we leaky building, chaos and a lack of trust in the NZ planning and building process due to the profit and deregulation model being the favoured way to develop here. Cheap and deregulated building with high profits and a rip off after service with lease hold and Body corps and future surrounding developments.
Good apartments are selling well still. Crappy ones will lower in value, just as they did in 2005-2010.
Most of them are right next to ferry terminals. Taxpayers and ratepayers pay for them.
The need for more housing across Auckland completely overrides the need to protect sight lines, unless they are very well bedded down into the Unitary Plan, such as the Mt Eden sight line.
The biggest sale of public land for apartments that I am aware of is the Wyndham Quarter, and through Wyndham tank farm. Half of those storage tanks will be gone within 2 years to make way for the Americas Cup. Then they go straight into apartments. They are designed to be 5 metres minimum above expected sea level rise in the coming century. Those apartments start at over $1.5m
All of this looks like Panuku doing its job: getting the market to build good quality houses in Auckland at low risk to public funding.
@AD – Clearly does not work that way. Look at London, and Europe, good density planning to protect existing rights means there is integrity in the system. That is not the NZ way, and we are getting boom and bust. Soon there will be a bust, because we develop Ponzi style, the only reason there is no bust is due to immigration. But if they keep that up, we have Asian poverty.
Also ordinary people can’t afford good apartments. You think like a Natz supporter aka you don’t think teachers and nurses and police should be able to afford a good apartment, let alone one on the waterfront.
Thinking like that would be ok if you were a Nat, but you are supposedly Labour supporting the ordinary person and not much from the Greens either on this.
Hence Labour policy, not good for ordinary people. Who now have that petrol tax on top of the fact the apartments springing up for the wealthy earners only or for Ponzi speculation.
Whatever an ordinary person is, they will not be buying seaside apartments. The whole of Auckland needs more apartments of all kinds, but you won’t find seaside Kiwibuild apartments and nor would any logical person expect to. There are a few exceptions – such as the Metlifecare apartment blocks in Titirangi over looking the Manukau Harbour, and the Orakei retirement village (now condemned). But in reality it has and will always be the case that a really good beachfront view is beyond the means of anyone except the very rich. And no government is going to change that.
You just need a good cold drink of reality.
There may well be a property bust. We’ve had one in 2007, 1997, 1987, and 1977. So who knows. So far pretty good.
It’s noteworthy the Hobsonville marina land is leased by the council, presumably at market rates with a regular rent appraisal. It makes no commercial sense to sell land that’s bringing in a rental income which would surely be exceeding the cost of borrowing. It’s also an inflation proofed income.
Hard to escape the conclusion that someone is building up a favour bank with public land.
There was similar issue over the sale of the freehold land at Bayswater, which sold for less than $5 million. The reason why the price for the freehold title was so low is because the marina already had a 105 year registered lease on the property with very low rent. The existence of the lease meant the freehold title basically had no value except to the marina owner.
The Bayswater community is divided on the issue of apartments. Most people recognise that some apartments would be ok, but that 120 or so is too many.
In terms of the sale and retained values of the proposed apartments at Baywater, with a freehold title they will be more attractive to would be purchasers.
In the absence of a dedicated Post for Weekend Reading & Watching I’d like to highly recommend this movie (78 min): Alive Inside.
It is largely (but not solely) about care for elderly in rest homes (in the US) who are suffering from dementia.
It won the Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and also featured at the New Zealand International Film Festival in 2014: https://www.nziff.co.nz/2014/wellington/alive-inside/
I watched it (for free!) on Snagfilms (another recommendation; it also has a category Climate Change & the Environment and much other interesting stuff): https://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/alive_inside
It reminds of another inspiring documentary Young@Heart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young@Heart_(film)
Happy watching! You won’t regret it …
Is it a rush to forget, or are so imbued with a 24hr news cycle we can’t see the tree for the woods?
Just a reminder that the Palestinian “Great Return Marches” have not stopped. Israel is still shooting people, who at their most stupid do throw stones. Like a stone will be effective against a well dug in and heavily armed military force intent on killing unarmed civilians.
Mind you, in the worlds biggest open air prison – the occasional rock is all the future you have, that, or a bullet.
Great post Red….lots of good info. Party Vote Green and all of this will continue apace.
Good stuff from ABC Comedy, In response to an increasingly trump/may like Aussie government
Property investors having a moan.
Stuff: Renters are being warned to expect landlords to want better rental returns from their investment properties, in the absence of capital gains. “This can’t continue. If property investments aren’t “washing their faces”, something will have to be done”
Gee here’s an idea. Stop buying existing homes for capital gain. Invest in businesses that actually manufacture or produce something. Help grow the economy instead of just shuffling more money from renters to landlords.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/105079172/pressure-goes-on-investors-to-ensure-properties-pay
Help grow the economy instead of just shuffling more money from renters to landlords.
Well if you own the house you’ll be cutting out your bastard landlord (who provides the equity you don’t have, pay the rates and insurance you don’t want to pay and get the maintenance done you either don’t know how to do, or can’t be arsed doing) ….. and shuffle the money direct to the bank.
The vast majority of us bastard landlords are ordinary working kiwis who lived through a succession of rip-offs and betrayals by our local stock market and finance industry from the 70’s onwards. That burned off so much trust, we just cannot believe anymore.
For the past ten years we’ve been looking for an alternative commercial investment that would provide a better cash flow; but without finding something that we had much confidence in. In the end I took the hard way out and went overseas, working high stress 70 – 80 hr weeks in crazy remote places to pay the mortgage down.
There are of course enough bad landlords, and bad tenants, to create plenty of angry stories; but really much of the resentment directed at landlords is misdirected. We’re only one component of a much larger problem with many, many components.
I own my mortgage free house, so I don’t have a landlord (or to use your vulgar description “bastard landlord”).
Well more power to you; but I am puzzled. Unless you were fortunate enough to inherit or be given a free house, I assume you spent some decades paying down a mortgage to a bank.
In which case why are you so concerned about ‘shuffling money from renters to landlords’, but apparently quite pleased you shuffled even more money to a bank?
I’m not trying to attack you personally here, I’m genuinely curious about the apparent contradiction between the two attitudes.
Capitalists never provide anything – they just steal from everyone else.
Fair enough DtB, if you promise never to give me any of you money, I promise never to let you live in one of the homes I built. That way you don’t have to put up with me stealing from you, and I don’t have the risk of you trashing the place.
If you need a tent for the wintertime, I have a few old ones left over from my early tramping days that should still keep the worst of the rain off. You’re welcome to hang onto it 🙂
1. All the capital was actually provided by the community. It can be no other way. The raw resources belong to the community. The processing of the wood and the glue and the nails were done by the community.
2. Rent that you demand for living in the house is what’s paying for it thus you didn’t even provide the financial capital.
Despite these two facts yet you get to call the house yours because of the capitalist system we have that makes such theft legal.
That argument really does have a problem with boundaries. Why stop and wood, glue and nails? What about that nice laptop you’re typing on? Obviously it too belongs to the ‘community’ and your monopolization of it is also theft. My turn with it now thank you. (What historically happens at this point degenerates very rapidly into mass murder … but I’ll get to that below.)
The other obvious point to be made is that all that nice collectivist materials (steel concrete and some wood actually) didn’t magically leap into the form of homes all by themselves. It took a number of hard years of planning, funding, and high pressure work to achieve. At a number of points we could have easily lost the lot.
And finally what you completely miss is the notion of reward for risk. While classic marxism recognises physical labour as the ONLY unit of value, it completely excludes any sense of achievement beyond a pedestrian shoveling of shit for a living. It’s blind to the idea that if you undertake virtually anything worthwhile in life, it innately engages with risk of failure. Unless that risk is compensated for, everyone avoids that possibility and little of new value is ever created. Exactly as observed in ALL the historic marxist experiments.
Here’s the thing; your argument clearly identifies me as the soviet equivalent class of kulaks; modestly successful farmers who through their skill, entrepreneurial risks and hard work, had accumulated just a little more than the other miserable peasants in the villages. Remind yourself of the consequences of that policy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization
While clearly I’m a kulak, absolutely I’m not one of the 50 or so hyper-wealthy who have more combined wealth than half the world population. Again you’ve failed to draw a boundary between pretty ordinary working people like me, and the clear-cut outliers whose excess wealth really is a problem.
The devil is in the detail here; clearly the kind of extreme inequality as embodied by the hyper-wealthy has a corrosive impact on society. But as with Stalin, you’ve targeted us kulaks first because we’re the soft, visible target for populist resentment. Very quickly it degenerates to the condition where if you have achieved anything of value and someone else looks on with envy … it’s off to the gulag with you buster. Yes inequality is a very real and deep problem; but this is the worst possible solution.
I realise quite well you don’t intend for this to be to consequence of your marxism. We probably share a lot of the same motivations, we’ve both inhabited this socialist space for many years now. But if you think that somehow your version of marxism would turn out any better than all the catastrophically failed versions that have gone before … well I politely suggest you”re wrong. There is absolutely no apriori reason to think that you or any other neo-marxist would not behave exactly as everyone else did when thrust into that long collectivist nightmare … with deceit, betrayal and cruelty.
About 18 years ago I had the chance to work and travel in Russia for a period. Burned into my memory are shards of the soviet horror; my pathetic words can do no justice to some of the things I saw … and that in their removed, diluted form. As I said above, we share much in common, you’re intelligent and interesting, and have always behaved impeccably here which is why I’m attempting to respond in kind. But you need to think about the boundaries.
Good morning Corin from the Q&A show on tv1 on today .
I don’t think it is fair that the transgender people should be treated any diffidently from Ladys if people are not affecting anyone negatively than they deserve to be treated with respect full stop some people should get a life and stop being so judgemental Eco Maori knows how this type of behavior can affect ones life.
Peter Gluckman putting fluoride in OUR water is a no brainer lets get on with it and save our mokopunas teeth there is a wealthy organisation that will lose money when we put fluoride in all water supply’s.
With China influence in Our politics I agree with Bryce Edwards there is know evedince to back this hype from ———– theres a old saying don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
What about Big business lobbing groups they have a major influence on Our political landscape thats whom we can thank for shonky.
Ka kite ano P.S Who can we trust on the GE debate these big company’s flogging this horse can not be trusted one thing I see with Democracy is this system pits two groups against each other and this is not a good thing one group will do anything to get in power and the humane lefty’s find it immoral to stoop to those low levels . ???????????????
Newshub Nation Lisa that is one phenomenon of the western society charging people / countrys higher interest rates who are the ones who can least afford to pay it and wealthy people countrys very low interest whats with that ??????????????????????????????.
Chris Labour is right to step in and stop these loan predators not Sharks they don’t deserve the name of one of Tangaroas beautiful creatures this problem affects some of Our Pacific Island cousin the most because some are innocent and vulnerable to deceit with loans as they don’t know how the systems work yet.
Loyd Why is Nigel Far here flogging the british exit bandwagon the Queen does not have his views on this subject I say Britain pulls out of Europe than that vacuum of influence will be fulled by America so look across the Atlantic and see if you the common people want a society like trump is ruining . Ana to kai ka kite ano
This is why Eco Maori fights of all of Papatuanukus creatures they are the foundations that support Humans life another link that supports my view that capitalism is the destruction of Papatuanukus environment and wildlife and eventually humans
links below .
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2017/jan/24/what-if-we-gave-universal-income-to-people-in-biodiversity-hotpots
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2018/jun/28/biodiversity-is-the-infrastructure-that-supports-all-life
Ka kite ano P.S its good to see that the interest of Aotearoa’s tangata whenua culture is on a high note after 9 years of —————
Newshub on tv 3 Many thanks to all the American tangata for protesting trumps immigration policy’s he is just using this to bolster his support who care who he hurts in the process .
There are many ways one could save on fuel price rising like get a car that has a motor less than 2 ltr a manual car uses less fuel to service your car regularly check tyre presses fortnightly catch a ride to work with work m8s bus trains its not the end of Papatuanuku .
Those extreme sports shots of wahine gives Eco Maori A sore face ka pai Mana wahine the more publicity wahine get the better its is for te mokopuna’s future is.
It was a good weekend of sports . Ka kite ano
We don’t need people like this who think just because he new the people/ sandflys who raped and terrified Louise Nicholas when she was a teenager to get into the police commissioners and have them spread the dumb———-views on the rest of the sandflys just because he is waving his tangata whenua card you know my view its not whom you are its what you do that counts to Eco Maori Ana to kai ka kite ano
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/105108129/louise-nicholas-slams-appointment-of-top-cop-wally-haumaha-for-comments-about-rape-investigation&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjy9Mqevv3bAhUIa94KHX-8CAcQFggIMAE&client=internal-uds-cse&cx=006730714154542492986:oh6vl0ybuqy&usg=AOvVaw1SHb9r-ZX3kgyEc9kVCtmo
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/105108129/winston-peters-says-inquiry-to-be-held-into-appointment-of-top-cop-wally-haumaha&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjy9Mqevv3bAhUIa94KHX-8CAcQFggFMAA&client=internal-uds-cse&cx=006730714154542492986:oh6vl0ybuqy&usg=AOvVaw3Jro6ovXo9k6t37bEj8Q-I
Here is what the state navy army police do to a wahine when she reports the offence.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/98443248/officer-hayley-young-speaks-out-about-sexual-harassment-and-rape-in-nz-and-uk-navy&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwiGmsbwwP3bAhWMad4KHVQxDF4QFggFMAA&client=internal-uds-cse&cx=006730714154542492986:oh6vl0ybuqy&usg=AOvVaw3E7Oq7xzeXpDyhpxCcrDu3
P.S I know one thing at least I don’t bring other peoples whano into my causes
Eco Maori. I enjoy reading your comments, you make a lot of good points.