Posts by st ephen
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to izogi,
There's no mystery here. A large proportion of the population never leave TV One. They watch One News because they've always watched One News. They watch whatever is on after One News because it's on the same channel. They don't switch to watch the Cricket World Cup Semifinal because that's on Prime, which would require pushing a button on the remote that isn't "1" and they haven't done that before and what if they couldn't get it back on "1" again? They're certainly not going to go searching for "One + 1" even if they knew it existed. If they miss the news on One, they've missed the news fullstop.
-
Envirologue: The Agony of Vanuatu and…, in reply to Amanda Wreckonwith,
Amanda - not my field of expertise so I shouldn't really pass on half-remembered anecdote. Maybe start your Google search here.
-
Envirologue: The Agony of Vanuatu and…, in reply to st ephen,
Should add: the methane GWP estimates are not Laws of Physics or Chemistry - they're outputs from models. There is a feeling that the estimated GWP grossly over-estimates methane's contribution to damaging climate change (a view held by more than just dairy farmers and climate change deniers).
-
Envirologue: The Agony of Vanuatu and…, in reply to Dave Hansford,
The New Zealand delegation believes that the current “weighting” applied to methane is open to debate.
I'm not sure what the NZ delegation is arguing, but the Global Warming Potential of methane (according to the Science and wikipedia) is somewhere between 7.6 and 86 depending on the horizon you use (numbers are relative to CO2). Laws and Regulations tend to have look-up tables so people know exactly what they're dealing with, and the Kyoto Protocol look-up table value for the GWP of methane has been set at our understanding as at 1995: 21 over a 100 year horizon. This was reassessed by the IPCC in 2001 (23), 2007 (25), and 2013 (34). Changing from 21 to 34 would increase our methane emissions liability by over 50% in a stroke. If methane was a big proportion of emissions for other countries they'd be hell-bent on tweaking the rules to their advantage too (eg. extending the time horizon to 400 years might halve our accountable methane emissions).
-
The decision is about symbollism, and symbollism matters.
Yes, the argument that NZ should do nothing because we can't make much practical difference anyway would be odd coming from anyone committed to reducing NZ's greenhouse gas emissions, for example. Not sure if anyone is really pushing that argument though (and to be fair, exposing agriculture to a carbon price via the ETS is unlikely to significantly increase the chances of random NZ citizens being beheaded).
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Christchurch,…, in reply to Mike O'Connell,
-
On STEM/STEAM - at intermediate school level there is now a huge Design element in Tech. It's no longer a matter of the class simply following a set 'recipe' to make identical items - students go through a full design process with loads of scope for creativity. If anything it now penalises the kids who aren't strongly creative, because they end up staring at a blank piece of paper for an hour. For some kids it's probably better to give them a design and let them set about solving the technical issues of how to realise it.
. -
#dirtypolitics, defined as "a Totally Refuted Lift Wung Consprissy Theory Which Everyone Does Anyway".
-
Hard News: Incomplete, inaccurate and misleading, in reply to BenWilson,
"I am pleased the report shows no evidence that Ms Collins acted inappropriately. I will be recommending to the Governor-General that she be granted use of the title 'The Honourable' for life."
It's almost comical. Key is counting on everyone - including journalists - forgetting that the SFO wasn't the only target of Collins' alleged inappropriate behaviour - just the only one Key was prepared to investigate.
-
I expect the media has already lost interest because there was no evidence "that SIS officers had acted in collusion with Slater or under direction from the prime minister or the Prime Minister's Office". I'll be astonished if they don't also lap up Key's whitewash inquiry of Judith Collins - the one with terms of reference limited to the email leaked by Key himself. What a surprise that the findings are suddenly available for release today.