Posts by ChrisW
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The Listener of nominally 4Dec justifies its subscription with a good article by Rebecca MacFie on methane in the Pike River mine and the coal seam itself, and methane management in such mines. Noting that Solid Energy closed its Mt Davy mine in the same Brunner coal of high gassiness after a fatal gas outburst in 1998, having concluded it could not be mined safely.
The article quotes several experts. In particular Murry Cave, who reviewed all the exploration data as consultant to DOC in 2001-04 when the Pike River mine was a proposal seeking consents and capital funding, that methane levels in the coal itself in the near part of the seam initially being worked are generally 10-13 cubic metres per tonne which is either high or very high gassiness depending on whose arbitrary scale you use, and above 9 is prone to sudden gas outbursts.
Murry I know to be an excellent independent geologist very experienced in West Coast coal mining and oil exploration. He also assured me around that time that the mine would never pay, that the company was underestimating the degree of geological complexity and therefore overstating coal accessibility, extractability and net value, that there would be long delays in development and their capital costs would escalate many times over.
All true. As it is now - $290 million development for 2 shiploads of coal, and a distressingly easy calculation on the human side too.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Russell Brown,
Thanks RB, and Recordari for the stimulus on the photo.
On the matter of the high tide wave circulating and wrapping around NZ
- this morning's wave from the West Coast has now passed all the way up the east and rounded Cape Reinga, it will pass Auckland at the Manukau Heads in half an hour if you wish to add your thoughts, it will have returned to Greymouth about 2 pm. -
Recordari - I've emailed photo to RB with request, apologies for inability to do this myself ...
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Today is for the departed
I got up unusually early this morning. The moonlight shining off the strip of low-tide mud across the river under the still-leafing-up canopy of my 112-year-old walnut tree moved me to try for a photograph with my new-old camera, propped on a beanbag on the back of a chair in lieu of tripod for a 30-second exposure.
Loaded the photo, and I think it's wonderful - the moonlight and river, the profile of the hills showing through the tree, and a scattering of lights and houses of my sector of Gisborne.
I check what's come up on PA 'Where nature may win', I'm confused too in my thoughts of the technical and the human and the policy-political at this time. And "Today is for the departed" cuts right through, so simply, thanks.
Then I see that the lights in my photo may number 29 if I were also to count the patches of reflected moonlight. Immediate sense of connection and connections, as if by fibre-optic cable - they're just out there through the glass, on my doorstep, within my community.
And it really is low tide - the photo timed at 2.54am, low tide at 2.56 - which means it is high tide on the West Coast.
The waters of the Pike River join the Grey and are flowing to the sea at Mawhera. I see the river meeting the high-tide wave that will sweep south around Murihiku, up the eastern coasts past me here at Turanganui-a-Kiwa later this morning, past the Aucklanders twice, on the way north and again south after rounding Te Rerenga Wairua, and so down the western coasts of both islands past the Grey River bar this afternoon. Wrapping around this small country, may that wave bring tidings of sympathy this day for the families and community of Greymouth and beyond.
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Some of you might find this an interesting read:
pop in the age of the atomic bomb.Pop? Ka-BOOM! surely :-)
But yes, pop music for the boomers - indeed an interesting article, the Beatles/Love Me Do exploding on the scene at the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. For this then-10-year-old, the nuclear brinkmanship made the bigger impression at the time. The threat of devastation or annihilation seemed all too credible, but perhaps incredible too, for us so far away in the South Pacific.
So in the week between the 28 October agreement to resolve the Crisis and the USSR shipping the nuclear missiles out of Cuba, the US sent another message to the Soviets and incidentally to us that we were not so far away.
Cecelia from a couple of pages back -
I was born in 1946 and saw the sky light up once from a French nuclear test in the Pacific.
Might this have been in the evening of 2 November 1962? Aurora-like lighting of the northern sky was seen the length of New Zealand, after the US 'Kingfish' nuclear bomb exploded 97 km above Johnston Atoll SW of Hawaii, and the ionic protests of the ionosphere rode the earth's magnetic field directly over NZ.
But although they arrived 8pm-ish I was inside, head in a book (much of my growing up pre-TV - another characteristic of the early-mid baby-boomers), saw nothing of it. There was much buzz at school the next day, both excitement and the counterpoint that it made the sense of global vulnerability seem real.
Does this tally with what you saw Cecelia? French nuclear testing in the Pacific started up in 1966/68, and I'm doubtful of any visible sign of them from here.
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Dead whale disposal - here's one famous technique, trialled by the Oregon Highways Department. I saw better footage of this many years ago, with a preamble in the commentary pointing out that the engineers of the highways department were given the job of disposing of the whale on the basis that highways were large and mostly grey and so was the whale.
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Te Ati Awa and confusion with Ngati Awa - a period thing that easily persists, got slapped down myself for that mistake twice, learnt eventually. Cowan's NZ Wars is of its (1920s) period for the most part, very useful on detail, not so much the bigger picture and context.
This section of Waitangi Tribunal report summarises the mainly 19th century history behind the iwi residing in the greater Wellington region in the 1840s - all is clear ;-)
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Jolisa - good to see your review of the Emily Dickinson biography finally make it onto the page of the Listener this week - so long after the week or two you'd expected that I thought there must have been a suppressed story of editorial judgement and intrigue to explain the non-appearance. But was afraid to ask.
You were right, the one-page review so much less satisfying than the director's cut travelogue version.
This to bring Busytown up to 4/6 of the top threads on PAS.
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Understood, don't want to argue but perhaps there's a case for suggesting Kati Awa, Hikuraki say, might be culturally insensitive for important words of identity and place outside Kaitahu's rohe?
Edit: Think how much worse it would be trying to write "heritage" texts that really could satisfy all parties! In order to avoid grievous offence, end up saying nothing useful.
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That would be Te Ati Awa from Taranaki fighting alongside the Pakeha at Boulcott’s Farm, rather than Ngati Awa from Whakatane way (still less Kati Awa). And how come Te Ati Awa were in the Wellington area in the 1840s? Much to do with muskets, Ngapuhi and Waikato in the 1820s, then the opportunities provided by the NZ Company’s arrival to gain mana and more by “selling” other peoples’ land.
So, several parties all complex, not just heroes and villains, goodies vs baddies, Maori vs Pakeha - a challenging heritage for" marketing", to put across in sound-bites, even if a golf course has 18 or 19 holes/sites to build an overall story. An opportunity perhaps, but somehow I don't feel optimistic.