Bonus Joules: Suffocating Images
Suffocating Images
Bonus Joules discovers Science is only as good as its images.
Bonusjoules Blog - 28 Feb 2006
Chapter 3 No 14 A Blanket Warning
Blog by Dave McArthur - published 13 Feb 2006
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New Zealand – land of the long white cloud. Or should that read land of the long dark shroud. Our Parliament is cloaked in ignorance, confusion, obscuration and pure nastiness and the statistics of our carbon emissions form a pall over the nation. The sacking of the Minister for Transport, Energy and Climate Affairs deepens the murk.
First I should explain to new readers that the cartoon strip that accompanies this was created a couple of years ago. It is complete serendipity that it happens to coincide with this blog and is most apt today. Early this morning I gave leaflets to delegates attending the Climate Change and Governance Conference in Wellington. In it I outlined an interim strategy for developing a science in the communication of climate issues. That is a story for my next blog perhaps.
I will start this one by explaining to overseas readers that my country, more commonly known as New Zealand, was first named Aotearoa by its first settlers, Maoris. The title is very apt. Our country is a thin thousand mile (1600 km) long range of mountains “uplifted high” that straddle the Roaring Forties, the winds that race around the planet’s oceans at this southern latitude. The moisture-laden air meets our mountains and forms clouds over the land. The clarity of our air means in the clouds transform our land into a long ribbon of shining white light when viewed from afar. Indeed the purity of this white light has long inspired myths that describe us as the land of the shining light.
Blessed by such pure air and with an economy famed for its agricultural products you would think New Zealanders would care for the atmosphere. Not so. Our use of carbon and electricity forms a shroud over our children. This is sad as we are in a position to endow the next generation with a world of shining light. We have the resources to create an economic model that can sustain all humanity. Instead we squander them in an orgy of greed and fear.
One place where fear is thick in the air is our Parliament. It is paralysed by it. The nature of our bureaucracy is such that one small failure or technical breach of laws of compliance and taxation can destroy the career of an MP overnight, no matter how great and good the person. Every person in Parliament has committed such breaches at some time or another and these are compounded every year thereafter. In most cases the breaches caused little or no harm. Often the breach made common sense, as millions of the small vital acts of care and nuturing that sustain our society could not take place if placed in the current framework of taxation and compliance.
In this context any stuffwit or dollar-driven journalist can dig the dirt and dish an MP in New Zealand. Many very able people do not even considered standing for parliament as they know the mindless power of our gutter-based media. They know they have committed some minor technical breach of the laws of the land at some time and it can be used to destroy their political career, their family and their general life. So fear hangs over our Parliament and our country like a shroud.
It so happens that the portfolios of “energy” and climate encapsulate our greatest challenge to our children’s survival. This challenge is our carbon-electricity use. Sure, we can destroy civilisation using nuclear warfare or a large meteor might hit Earth. These are risks but they do not form the systematic risk that our use of fossil fuels and Bulk-electricity poses.
So it is vital that our Parliament apply its brightest and most honourable people to this issue. In my experience intellect without honour is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. I have no idea if David Parker, ex-Minister in charge of these portfolios, was up to the task. The fact that the Labour party understood the issue sufficiently to group “energy”, transport and climate issues together was a sign of intelligence. Perhaps that same intelligence saw in him the ability to achieve what Parliament had been unable to achieve in the three decades since our carbon-electricity use became evident as the pre-eminent challenge to the survival of our civilisation.
I had no knowledge of David Parker’s character and honour until I observed his resignation. This occurred after Ian Wishart of Investigate magazine dug up a technical breach of company compliance regulations he had committed. In the great scheme of things his breach seemed most minor to me and his manner of resignation signalled him as a man of honour. If this is true then it is probable that history will judge Ian is either very ignorant or is a nasty piece of works.
In the National Radio interview I heard, Ian certainly seemed proud of his ability to dig into the compliance statements of non-operational companies. Any fool can waste their lives trawling for such miserable minutia. At no point did he indicate any awareness of the impact of his activities on the greater political issue of how do we adapt this nation and humanity worldwide so we all survive this very dangerous period we are entering - the Post Cheap Oil-Gas Age - and reach the Great Electric-Solar Age.Y
You have to wonder about this magazine. Ian’s last prominent act was to dump on a Government Minister for supposedly putting a tennis ball in a student’s mouth decades ago. This is minor compared to what teachers did in those days. I was taught by teachers who came straight out of Tom Brown’s School Days and Catholic Ireland. Canings, strappings and cutting sarcasm were the norm. My woodwork teacher had a strap called the WHOOFER with metal studs imbedded into it. Discipline was mainly applied in the workshop by making students spread their fingers on the desk and whacking them with the steel workshop rulers. That was his way of keeping order and people safe among dangerous machinery.
Click through to Bonus Joules Cartoon Strip
One nun at her wits end took me into the boy’s toilets more than once, stripped off her veils, beads and habits and wildly thrashed any part of my body she could hit with the strap. A weird experience by any count for a child, especially as I confronted her grizzled shaven scalp, mottled red with rage and with this strange deep lobotomy-like dent in it from the veil holder ring (mortar?) .
Teachers at college had caning competitions and the most feared could reputedly slice through the region’s telephone book in one swipe. One teacher caned me twice. Each time I was entirely innocent. To me there was no irony in that he was a devout worker for Amnesty International and later on he provided a second family for a number of training college students. When I innocently reminded him in front of the training college class in 1970 of his caning days he was shocked, dismayed and denied it. That did not make him a dishonest man. Indeed he is an outstanding citizen. What it shows is how much things have changed and indeed I am sure many teachers died before there time as they concluded, unfairly, they had failed their own high standards of humanity in that era.
If people like Ian experienced a strong sense of humanity they would understand this and, for instance, apply their journalistic talents to exploring the impact of the Minister of Justice Phil Goff’s continuing refusal to address the festering issue of Peter Ellis case. This is having a devastating impact on sexuality in New Zealand. This prosecution proved that in our present system a rogue detective or parent can destroy any male teacher and they are defenceless against lies. In a culture where a generation of influential and disturbed women see every man as driven by child abuse desires such a flaw in our legal system has a chronic impact on the nation’s sexuality.
When I said I was going to Training College in 1998 men came up to me, shook my hand and said how much they admired me as it is such a dangerous occupation for any male now and there is such a need for a male presence in children’s lives. Overseas readers should know that now it is possible for a child to never experience a male teacher and some schools with twenty teachers may have only one or two males on the staff – as principal or as janitor. Working in education now is a weird experience and I failed those men’s hopes. I am glad I am not a teacher under Phil Goff’s regime.
Any myopia extends far beyond Ian in the David Parker case. No media that I saw or heard expressed awareness or concern about the potential serious impacts of the resignations on the big issues. Read later or click here to go to end of this blog to read my letters of concern to my most important source of news – Radio New Zealand. The notes were written in a hurry as I let off steam.
So just when the new Government administration is settling in and the new Minister of these crucial portfolios is perhaps getting a grip of them and maybe sensing synergies between them that will release us from our present deadly trap he is gone. The portfolios are broken up and back in the hands of caretakers who have either failed at them or were very uncomfortable with them. The dominant group in Parliament, National, United and ACT, publicly dismiss our carbon use is an issue and their idea of electricity use is limited to Bulk-electricity. The nominal ruling party, Labour, acknowledges the issue in its talk but its walk is counterproductive and compounds the problems we face. So it looks as though Parliament is shrouded in impotence while New Zealand’s options go up in smoke.
You
will notice my repeated use the symbol shroud. I guess I do
smell decay and death in the recent axing of the Carbon Tax
proposals. This follows a long period of malaise in the
carbon-electricity use debate:
• The unsustainable Electricity Reforms have been imbedded in this century with most options for the intelligent uses of electricity being destroyed. Meanwhile demand for Bulk-electricity soars.• Our broadband uptake potential, once the highest in the world, is going into freefall relative to comparable countries.
• Energy Gobbledygook is now rife and pollutes our schools and universities. The dominant Environmental Education resource, Enviroschools, omits the atmosphere while programmes that taught the links and impacts of our carbon-air use are fatally starved of funds.
• Interest rates are high and we are now importing $1.44 of goods for every dollar of goods we export with our addictive uses of oil being a key driver of these trends. Trade Deficit Reaches Record Level
• Our Warmer Trace Gas emissions are unsustainable, certainly from the point of view of our Kyoto commitments. More stats on this later.
• New Zealand has rapidly moved from a strong carbon trading credit status into a deficit situation. Part of this is because we have been recently destroying forests (carbon sinks) and in some cases replacing them with methane producing cows. Attempts to limit these emissions were aborted in what is called the Fart Tax Fiasco.
• Air and motorway transport has been subsidised at the expense of rail and shipping.
The use of the symbol shroud is also inspired by a recent NZ Listener article on Human-induced Climate Change (my words, not theirs) in which the atmosphere was described as acting like a “greenhouse shroud”. Now the article was no doubt very well intentioned but this symbol of atmospheric processes was just so sick that I had to sit down and remonstrate with the editor. For me the atmosphere is this awe-inspiring dynamic environment of exquisite beauty and balance. Scientists’ constant self-serving evocation of it as a greenhouse is abhorrent to me and I believe it is very destructive of science and sustainable practices. The symbol greenhouse shroud …well I am lost for words…it is just so appalling…in fact it is so appalling that it is hilarious … if deep tragedy can be comic… to think some humans have such an exaggerated opinion of their roles that they believe the universe is made in reflection of them….
When are we going to begin using symbols like trace that evoke the incredibly fine thermal balances of the atmosphere that sustain civilisation as we know it and keep us mindful of our power to screw them against us?
I guess I wrote the letter for another reason too. I have long subscribed the NZ Listener as it embodied the finest writings and reflections on our culture since its beginnings in the 1930s. The Government of the day created it as a voice for the people of this country. Perhaps its new overseas owners, APN do not have that same passion for our country. Of late some issues have seemed very short of meaningful content. For the first time ever I reviewed sending off my cheque to renew my subscription.
Click through to Bonus Joules Cartoon Strip
I see a great role in the future for a national magazine of this tradition and with the same name. As people become brain dead from staring at electronic screens all day they are going to seek nourishment and insight from other media. I believe audio is about to enter a new age. The unique capacity of audio creations to explore our universe using wonderful rich sound symbols is about to explode with the advent of digital archiving of programmes, Internet broadcasts, Ipods and other such liberating technology. You can walk with the talk. It’s a great way to learn and some of the greatest ideas ever were born while walking.
So my letter was an attempt to promote the thinking and questions that would enable this future and to highlight the shroud hanging over New Zealand journalism at present. Since posting my letter off the sacking of David Parker by our political-media complex graphically proved my point. Read the letter at the end or click here to view my letter to Pamela Stirling, editor of The Listener.
It’s been a while since my last blog and I have been busy. I finally managed to assemble on my website a prototype definition of the bonusjoules-junkjoules energy efficency measure for Wikipedia. Have still got to work out how to Wiki it. Which reminds me, I must blog my reflections sometimes on how Victoria University teaches Economics. Another case of tragedy being unbelievably comic.
I attended the NZ Climate Change Office public consultations in Wellington. What a sad affair. The several staff lined up looked kind of shell-shocked – as I would be in their position. See my outline of their failures above. They are faced with the shambles of our impossible carbon trading policy. I have always argued that carbon trading is just a psychological mechanism for those who don’t care about the environment to carry on as usual while publicly excusing their activities. I figure these bods have a worse impact than those who simply say they do not care for our environment.
My doubts about the sustainability of carbon trading were confirmed as forestry representatives got up and lambasted the officials for the Government’s failure to reward them for planting trees to protect our environment. One of the most vocal was a representative from a Christian religion’s investment group. I can only ask where has the concept of love, care and stewardship of our land gone? It seems these guys are hanging off planting forest till they get a better deal in the carbon market. Meantime our forests dwindle, our soils erode and our carbon debt grows.Yes, where is the spirit of King Asoka who had planted tens of thousands of miles of trees to shade pilgrims across India and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai?
One young man got up and pointed out the obvious to the officials. He thought it immoral of the Government presentation to use CO2 statistics that compares nations and global regions. New Zealand has only 4 million of the 6.5 billion humans on this planet and this makes our national emissions look insignificant. He argued that it is per capita emissions that count. On that count we have one of the highest emission rates.
The Government official responded that they were only being honest with people and showing how little difference we can make to global emissions. To be fair, the official is accurately portraying our Parliament’s attitude to the climate. This is to say we are too insignificant to make a difference and so why bother changing.
There was an element of disbelief when I reported the Government official’s response to this on the Sustainable Energy Forum.
Click here to see my posting providing proof. Some of it is hilarious.
And in case you think I am unkind or unfair of our Parliament, check out this correction of my letter to The Listener. While reading the statistics supplied, please recall that we committed ourselves to reducing Warmer Trace Gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol to 1990 levels. The stats are also an indictment of our Environmental Education industry and must surely serve as some cause of serious reflection there too. Here’s hoping the Climate Change Office now means what it says when officials stated at the public consultation that the Government has to start from scratch again and the Office is open to all ideas. Up till now I have completely failed to find a way to communicate with them. Maybe the following figures will facilitate open dialogue:
Dave,I can clarify those figures a little further now. A recent UN Report states that NZ greenhouse gas emissions have risen 22.5% in the past 15 years from 1990-2004 ( ie - not 21% as we discussed previously).
This was the eighth highest emissions increase over that period among the developed countries. Spain topped the list at 41.7%, Australia was just above us at 23.3%, the USA had a 13.3% increase, Japan had 12.8% and Italy 11.5%. (Source: NZ Herald, Mon 21 November 2005).
The three major greenhouse gases in NZ make up about 99% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. In New Zealand, with carbon dioxide up by 39% from 1990 to 2004, and nitrous oxide up around 28% from 1990 to 2004, I calculate that methane must only have been up by 7% above 1990 in order to get an overall increase of 22.5% from 1990 to 2004.
This would be consistent with figures from the Climate Change Office which showed that at the end of 2002, carbon dioxide was up 33.7%, methane was up 7.8% and nitrous oxide was up 27.9%.
Note that for the first few years after 1990, methane emissions actually went down because of a downturn in the agricultural sector before they started to rise again, whereas carbon dioxide emissions have risen very steadily at an average of a little over 2% per year ever since 1990.
Also note that New Zealand's annual methane emissions figures were revised downward a few years ago by the CCO in relation to the other two major greenhouse gases. This meant that instead of the proportion in 1990 being about half methane, a third carbon dioxide and a sixth nitrous oxide as had been stated during the 1990's, the 1990 proportions were actually 41.5% methane, 40.9% carbon dioxide and 16.7% nitrous oxide.
The CCO now states that carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas in NZ's emissions profile. I calculate that at the end of 1994, the actual proportions would have been about carbon dioxide 46.4%, methane 36.2%, and nitrous oxide 17.4%.
However, when the methane and nitrous oxide are added together, the agricultural sector is still the largest emitter in NZ. The CCO states that in 2002, 49.2% of the total greenhouse gas emissions came from the agricultural sector and 42.8% came from the energy sector. Emissions from industrial processes and the waste sector are very much smaller comprising 4.7% and 3.2% respectively of all of NZ's greenhouse gas emissions in 2002.
Regards,
John Blakeley
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If nothing else those figures have to act as a bit of a wet blanket on the Government’s Clean Green Image marketing programme.
I should explain before any reader gets confused about the nature of energy, the symbol energy sector is a miserable little construct created by a few global investment bankers. They limit their definition of energy to energy uses they can trade, tax and personally profit from. Don’t worry. Energy is something far finer and wondrous than that and every activity in the universe(s) involves energy. And yes, New Zealand agriculture involves the use of energy too.
I will end with a funny story that also involves shrouds and that is highly relevant to this discussion. About 1989 my family was struggling to stay in Wellington as we had had our capital decimated by Necom policies of the new Labour government. So we ended up building a home here with our own bare hands. The Caygill family had long been family friends from our Christchurch days and they popped by to check out developments. The frame and outside cladding were all in place and we sat around our new lounge on sawhorses and bales of insulation, sharing a snack. I gave Dave a can of beer.
Now understand Dave is renowned for his mild manner and conservative habits. So we were all rather startled, especially our children, when he took a swig and it suddenly seemed to go to his head. Indeed he grappled at his tongue and his eyes rolled in demented manner. His normally contained demeanour was transformed into a manic contorted appearance as he leapt around the room spluttering incoherent expletives.
This was a simple explanation for this transformation. A wasp had sneaked into the can and stung him on the tongue. Within minutes it had swollen, or should I say, become theribrily thwollen and he was reduthced to an inarticulthate lithp. Normally such an accident would not be of national moment but Dave had to present his first budget in his capacity New Zealand Finance Minister that week. It must have been a difficult delivery, as his tongue would still have a life of its own. In the event the Evening Post broadsheet ran billboards and headlines all over the region of the sort:
Finance Minister says New Zealand under a Shroud.
I cannot recall what Dave was really trying to say but the shroud utterance generated great mirth at the time. However maybe he was at some primal level anticipating our present situation. It is clear now plans were now well advanced at that point to flog-off our state owned Telecom and other plans were in place framing up the Electricity Reforms. Labour sold Telecom in 1990. Only those blinded by their returns from their shareholdings in the privatised Telecom, fools and academics still argue this was a good thing. Even business people are becoming aware that the destruction of our broadband potential has cost the country many billions of dollars as our nation became stifled in the most repressive of all worlds – that of the private monopoly. And those costs are going up exponentially in many cases as the Age of Cheap Oil-Gas ends.
At the time I wrote to Dave as Finance Minister strenuously objecting to the planned sale. He sent me a large wad of Treasury papers promoting the sale and even I, a simple meter reader, could see they were as flakey as sin. For instance they put no value on ownership of telephone numbers and these were given away. Fatal move number one. While I had no idea the form the Internet would take I sensed these guys understood and valued its potential far less than I did. They simply saw the Telecom system as just a few copper cables. At the same time even as Parliament and the media promoted lies that the sale was needed to get new technology I was stepping over road-works daily as Telecom installed optic fibres down the Terrace in Wellington city.
My work as a meter reader had made me powerfully aware that the structures we call “power poles” and “power ducts” had far more value than that. I saw them as vital communication modes that were an essential key to a sustainable future. This future even in 1990 was clearly articulated in my mind in the form of an intelligent grid system. Check out my last blog (midway through it) for my proposal for grading the intelligence–incoherence of a grid. It is pretty apparent that our national grid structure has been reduced to below the bottom on the scale of incoherence now by the sales.
Telecom was an essential part of this
wider system and this gave it vastly more value than the
miserable $4.25 billion we transferred it to Ameritech and Bell
Atlantic. The sale destroyed most of the energy
efficiency potential residual in an integrated national grid
system. The truth is there may be a shroud covering us
but it is not the atmosphere. More probably the shroud is of
our own making – our impotent Parliament, our ignorant
schools and our maladaptive industries. Perhaps that is why
a journalist reported that businesses are shrouded in gloom
these days. As I write headlines are rolling in suggesting that
we are officially in a recession. GDP Declines 0.1
Percent Which reminds me - the winner of this weeks
Junk Joules Award for Undermining Science goes to the
National Radio business reporter who has just described New
Zealand’s economy as “stalled.” When something is stalled it
is not moving, seized up, jammed, locked, stationary, dead.
I can assure readers that all around me are a million signs
that our economy is still alive, moving, working according
to all laws of Physics. And no doubt the international climate conference being
held in Wellington this week will add to the shroud over us.
Climatologists will do this by employing their stubborn
practice of employing confusing and unscientific climate
symbols. David Vaughan just gave what could
have been an enlightening interview on National Radio in
which he described how present “global warming” trends
suggest some regions of the globe will heat up, others will
experience warming unchanged and others will cool down. Can
the symbol “global warming” get more confusing than this?
Well, actually, yes but there is no time here to explore the
labyrinth. Similarly Kevin Trenberth gave an excellent
explanation last week of how INCREASING the amount of
thermal energy retained in the atmosphere increases the risk
of hurricanes etc. The Nat Radio Science reporter, normally
most clear and erudite, then completely demolished any
scientific sense in the explanation by framing it as “global
warming”. The warming process, unlike warming up, involves a
constant process in which temperatures stay unchanged.
Similarly climate expert Jim Salinger compounded the
confusion between constant states and changing states
throughout his interview on National Radio yesterday. The
thinking citizen has much cause to wonder about the science
of climate experts. I suspect most people at least sense the
nonsense. I’d love to attend the conference but its not
designed for those of us who have to “work for a living” and
are not rich. Usual old Government/University Greenwash.
Here’s hoping they open the windows and let some good old
Wellington gales blast their obsolete images of our
atmosphere as a greenhouse out to sea. I like to think they
reflected on their use of symbols as they leaned against the
forces of the cool, southerly winds this morning and
scurried for the shelter of the warm, cozy, calm greenhouse
which is Te Papa, the conference
venue. Editor Dear Pamela I am glad to
see you featuring articles such as Era of Extinction (from
Human-induced Climate Change) and Enron together. They may
be more profoundly linked than you imagine. Our individual
addictive uses of fossil fuels, our national dependence on
them and the potential impact of our use of them on the
environmental balances that sustain us are combining to put
our civilisation at very great risk indeed. Personally I
find the challenges truly humbling and so it is in a spirit
of considerable humility that I make the following comments.
I am not being judgemental. The situation is too critical
for that and compassion is the essence of all sane
responses. My simple objective is to promote a science of
the communication of the issues. Without this science we
make unhelpful uses of symbols, promote flawed images of our
environment and risk perishing on scale. In 2000 I became
very concerned that the new order in the USA would lead to
the much greater risks that we would rapidly deplete
remaining oil and Gas reserves and that our carbon emissions
might trigger unsustaining climate changes. The increased
potential of warfare and famine was so huge that it was
clearly too much to think about. So I stopped and I
addressed an open prayer to the greater wisdom that has
sustained us these millions of years. In brief, I asked what
I might do? As usual the answers, when they came, were
ones I could never have imagined. They came as a series of
questions that go right to the heart of what drives Western
civilisation. I found myself asking these questions:
"What is the nature energy?" “Who defines our popular
images of energy and power and whose interests does that
definition serve?" "Why do we cultivate an image of
Earth's atmosphere as a greenhouse and is it adaptive? How
does this greenhouse image impact on our ability to relate
to planetary thermal balances? How does it impact on the
ability of tradespeople and other major decision makers to
use air in insulation and thermal controls?" "Are there
more helpful images of atmospheric processes?" "Why don't
Scientists evoke trace images when they bemoan the fact that
people cannot understand that human activities are perhaps
impacting on the trace gases that sustain the thermal
balances that enable life on Earth?” “What psychological
mechanism enables those most publicly concerned about our
use of carbon and the atmosphere (Scientists such as
climatologists, geologists, ‘energy experts’ and
‘conservationists’) to be among the top few percent of
carbon users/emitters e.g. frequent air travellers etc?
Things got really interesting when I started asking
‘energy experts’ and climatologists the first four of these
questions. I found the responses of the Scientists were
anything but scientific. I began to realise that their use
of key symbols is driven by primal values that they are seem
unaware of. If they are aware of these drivers, they are
incapable of confronting them. Some have privately
volunteered that they are aware of their incapacity. As a
result, often their activities are in complete variance with
their stated beliefs, passions and concerns. My hypotheses
that there is little or no science underpinning the
communication of the issues is supported by recent fMRI
research. This indicates we are well capable of saying one
thing and experiencing the opposite It is possible to have a
100% discrepancy between stated and acted belief. For
instance you will probably know of the fMRI research
suggesting that women may say they do not like ads featuring
women with certain body shapes while their brains are
registering strong pleasure patterns of response at the
sight. Editors of women’s magazines have long known this
intuitively. The Listener makes use of it all the
time. Such research prompts specific questions of the
Scientists’s behaviour. For example: “Could it be their
need to use the greenhouse symbol to evoke images of Earth’s
atmospheric processes reflects a primal brief expressed in
the Victorian faith that humans dominate and can engineer
the environment in any manner they wish?” “Scientists and
‘energy experts’ often confuse energy with the forms its
takes. They talk of an energy called sustainable energy and
renewable energy. Is this because they cannot accept at some
primal fundamental level that humans cannot create or
destroy energy? Are they unable to confront the fact that
that they are truly responsible for their actions and how
they use energy?” Whatever, my summary conclusion is that
at present there is little science underpinning the
communication of the nature of energy and none underpinning
the communication of climate issues. This ignorance extends
to the highest levels in NOAA and New Zealand’s equivalent,
NIWA. One of the reasons I am writing to you is because
these “experts” claim they have to use certain key symbols
because the media use them and they “are what the public
understand”. Invariably they have no scientific evidence to
support such uses. All the relevant national statistics
indicate their symbol use is counterproductive and the
public does not understand the issues. I will offer a couple
of brief examples from our country: Our impact on the
Warmer Trace Gas balance is increasing by the day with some
suggesting New Zealand’s carbon dioxide emissions have
increased by up to 39% since 1990 (officially about 21%).
Jet travel is the fastest growing source of carbon
emissions and its impact has a thermal “forcing” of at
least 2.7 normal emissions because of the altitude at which
combustion occurs. A Government subsidised
Wellington-Auckland jet fare can cost as little as $69 while
the standard (a mainly electric, low friction mode) rail
fare is $143. SUV ownership has increased fourfold since
2000 and NZ car engines have the second largest cc rating in
the world. New Zealand dwellings are among the least
energy efficient in the OECD. Examples of doubtful uses of
key symbols by Scientists and journalists include “global
warming”, “climate change”, “greenhouse gas”, “greenhouse
effect” and the global bankers’ definition of “energy” and
“power”, which is energy and power uses that can be taxed
and traded”. In turn media people and policy-makers say
their use of key symbols is dictated by the fact that
“scientists and energy experts use them”. It is a vicious
and destructive cycle in which science in our society is
severely undermined. Take, for example, your byline
“The Climate Change Issue is, unquestionably, far more
serious than people realise.”- Dr Peter Read. Humans
down the ages have learned to appreciate at a most primal
level in their genes that climate change is a good and
healthy process. Indeed at times of drought, hurricane and
flood it is our most powerful source of hope. So we have
immediate potential confusion as Peter layers in an argument
and symbol use that is diametrically opposed to the primal
state of enjoyment that the “climate change” symbol evokes.
The article’s use of the “greenhouse” symbol begs
enormous questions, some of which I posed earlier. I am
seriously struggling to ask useful questions of the writer’s
use of symbols such as “greenhouse shroud”. I hypothesise
its probable impact on people’s primal responses will be
unhelpful. Not once does the article use the “trace”
symbol or evoke our Trace Beings or talk of the fact we are
impacting on the balance of trace gases, including water
vapour. Such seeming simple omissions have profound impacts.
The choice of this use of the “greenhouse” symbol as in
“greenhouse gases” reinforces the dominant trend in our
education system to communicate the atmosphere as a
greenhouse, a car with the windows closed and a bottle in
the sun. Water vapour is our experience of weather. It is
by far the most dominant Warmer Trace Gas (without it the
surface of the Earth would be minus 5°C instead of the
current 15°C). Its short cycle of 11-14 days makes it the
most vital and unpredictable element in the
equation. These omissions and symbol uses also detract
from the fact the sun only warms a small part of the planet
at any time and the fact that it is air’s incredible
convection capacity that enables the atmosphere to provide
the bulk of the warming of the planet’s surface. By
contrast, evoking trace images generates lesson activities
communicating very tiny proportions and the power of
leverage . This is surely what we have to understand when
dealing with our potential impact on the atmosphere. The
gases we are concerned about exist only as parts per
thousand or less. Think of how our activities were proven to
impact on ozone – a trace gas which exists in only parts per
million. Altering those rare molecules in the stratosphere
affects us in the depths of our cells. Note how almost all
the interviewees confuse warming and warming up – two very
different processes. Warming involves the maintenance of a
stable, unchanging system. It is about equilibrium. Warming
up involves breaking the stasis of the system and disrupting
equilibrium. The Scientists in the article talk of
unwelcome, even hostile, temperature changes and describe
this as warming. Most people experience the daily warming of
the planet as a most welcome and positive process at their
primal level. Also note the continual use of the symbol
“global warming” when several points in the article make it
clear some regions will know far colder extremes such as can
occur with desertification and thermohaline circulation
collapse. No wonder people find our Scientists unscientific
and confusing at their gut level. A better symbol would be
Thermal Disruption. Mention was made of the film The Day
After Tomorrow. This film was made with educative objectives
in mind using the expertise of the Potsdam Institute. Read
my discussion of it and see how it failed
those objectives according to the Potsdam study of audience
reaction – as I publicly predicted it would before its
release. Fundamentally this was because the film was not
scientific either. My contrary hypotheses that the movie
would disempower people and increase scepticism of climate
science were supported. I also predict the movie’s had an
even greater counterproductive impact on the majority of
people who did not see it. The Potsdam research did not
extend to the impact of trailers, billboards, reviews,
articles etc I share Dr Peter Read’s optimism though I
find little cause for hope in his solutions. There is less
than two and half hectares of arable land per human being
now and this ratio is deteriorating fast as fresh water,
nutrient and soil levels diminish while populations expand.
We have to think global and that will bring rewards
local. I find hope in the great plasticity of human
behaviour and it is this potential I address, not more
engineering of the planet. I did find hope in the structure
of your article and commend you for addressing the essential
issue. This issue is the challenge of maintaining realistic
hope while confronting the enormity of the issues facing us.
I believe it is vital for sustainable change that any
vision of despair be paired with a vision of hope and the
article attempted that. This requirement is why it is
helpful to ensure climate education and energy efficiency
strategies are closely linked in education resources. And
this is where our Government is failing our children with
its incoherent approaches. Global climate issues taught
alone breed despair and energy efficiency strategies taught
alone are meaningless. Pair them and they breed hope and
inspiration from each other. As mentioned, I do not find
hope in the solutions offered in the article or in its
actual communication of climate processes. Rather I find
hope in our ability to identify the psychological constructs
that prevent us from developing sustainable uses of Earth’s
resources. I have already outlined the vital role our choice
of use of a key symbol makes and how it impacts on our
systems of thought, including our legislation. Such
psychological constraints are not materially expensive
things to alter and yet they are fundamental to our
responses. One system of thought that will yield
considerable benefits from critical scrutiny and review is
our burgeoning Environmental Education industry. Such a
review will probably indicate important elements of our
current Environmental Education resources will have to be
junked as unsustainable. For instance, the dominant
programme in our schools and universities, Enviroschools, is
arguably just Government Greenwash and is fatally flawed. As
Jonathon Porrit pointed out at the recent NZAEE national
conference, it completely fails to address the greatest
issue facing humanity – our carbon use. It contains no
serious atmosphere component at all. I alone of the 300
NZAEE members present saw fit to applaud his profound
criticism. (See my Feb blog of the conference.) I would
also point out that in my view Enviroschools contains even
larger flaws. As its name implies, it is about the school
environment. It fails to tap into the greatest source of
sustainable practices: communities. It also completely
fails to address the issues of who determines popular use of
the symbols of “energy” and “power” and whose interests that
use serves. Indeed its lesson activities are designed to
promote and serve the short-term interests of the bankers of
Bulk-electricity/fossil fuel sector. They work directly
against our children surviving the Post Cheap Oil-Gas
Age. This brings me to your article on Enron. The
activities of the afore mentioned bankers working through
the likes of Arthur Andersen and Co and Enron have a vast
negative impact far beyond the “business sector”. Like
Edison and JP Morgan before them, they work to control the
world’s wealth by the Bulk-electricity system. They also are
working to control it by the world’s biomass energy and are
striving to gain ownership of global seed stocks. This
involves very high-risk manipulation of the gene structures
of plants for very short-term benefits of a few. Witness
Arthur Andersen’s 1999 template for Monsanto to control 100%
of world seed stocks by 2010. Fortunately the programme has
failed so far because of the resistance of European and
African peoples. In Enron and our own OnEnergy, both
Arthur Andersen creations, we see the re-engineering of the
“energy” symbol itself as the bankers attempt to maximise
profits by stifling energy efficiency practice and the
development of intelligent grid systems that make maximal
use of distributed electricity generation options. For me,
a future for our children resides in the universal and
intelligent use of all forms of electricity, localised food
production using a wide range of freely available seeds and
maximal uses of solar energy. Psychology, not technology,
enables this future. Get the psychology right and the
appropriate technology will happen. For instance, our new
Building Code needs to be educative rather than
prescriptive. This said, it must contain within it the right
and protection of every dwelling to solar energy. This will
include having New Zealand roofs shaped to the north to
enable best practices in solar use. This will enable all
dwellings at all points in their lives to exploit solar
energy for lighting, heating/cooling and to generate
electricity. Our appalling trades practices such as
shonky insulation measures need to be addressed by educating
our young people in the simple thermodynamics – something
the Extinction article failed to do with its evocation of
greenhouses. When I spoke of intelligent uses of
electricity I was referring to the ability of people to use
a wide range of electricity forms. With regards to our
national grid and metering I define an intelligent system as
one in which all can contribute on equal terms using its
full broad-band potential. The recent Electricity Reforms
were specifically designed to destroy this intelligence so
that the grid now tends to serve only the short-term
imperatives and interests of bankers in the Cayman Islands,
Prime Infrastructure etc. The New Zealand Electricity
Reforms need reforms that re-enfranchise communities and
permit their intelligent access to the Electricity Market
again. It is of most value to see this review and reform
process as essentially a political/education issue. To aid
this process I suggest we build on the insights of the Enron
movie and ask the following questions: “Could the same
thing happen here?” “Has it happened here?” “Has worse
happened here?” “Would people know about it and, if not,
why not?” “Who is paying the price if it has happened
here?” “What was
the impact on the development of intelligent uses of
electricity in lighting, warming (cooling) communication,
transport, education and entertainment?” “Why do
Government-owned education websites teach that the water
levels never drop in our hydro-electricity dams?” “What
is the role of the New Zealand Consumer’s
Institute in all this? How come its website states it is
fiercely independent and accepts no sponsorship when the
truth is that Government pays it large amounts of money to
push its “free market” Electricity Reform agenda in
PowerSwitch. Why does the Institute punish Bulk-electricity
companies that invest in community-based energy efficiency
strategies and reward ones who most destroy our social and
environmental base?” We can, as an example, apply such
questions to a specific Bulk-electricity company. The
collapse of the TransAlta-OnEnergy structure directly
involved 540,000 Bulk-electricity consumers – 32% of New
Zealand’s connections. Reports suggested that it only had
13% of the generation capacity required to satisfy the
historic demand of its customers. “Who was responsible for
its design and where are they now? Are they still in
positions of power?” “What legislation enabled this
massive failure?” “Were TransAlta-OnEnergy’s managers
relying on political favours and contacts to bail them out
by giving them access and control of more undervalued
generation plant?” “What was the ethos of the OnEnergy
management that it failed to hedge against climate variation
and so put a large portion of NZers at major risk?” “What
would have happened to New Zealand’s Capital City if the
Government had left the region to its new Electricity “free
market” Market mechanisms and had refused to bail it out?
(Note: The Wellington region was a growing liability in the
winter of 2001 to all the private Bulk-electricity
companies. It was causing much of the million dollars per
day drain on OnEnergy’s new owners, AGL-NGC. The Todd
family’s FreshStart was preparing to drop Bulk-electricity
customers in batches of 400, starting with our most
vulnerable citizens.) “What happened to energy efficiency
practice and demand control measures under the
structure?” “What has been the impact of NGC’s control of
half of New Zealand’s switchboards and its associated
ability to control dwelling design and use?” “What will be
the impact on energy efficiency, individual debt levels,
the environment, New Zealand health levels, our dependence
on fossil fuels, broadband uptake, intelligent grids, the
trade balance etc of the current transfer of control of
Vector Ltd to overseas banking interests?” (Vector is now
the owner of NGC and thus controller of up to 1.5 million of
our 1.8 million meters.) “Why did the Prime Minister
refrain from warning her electorate and shareholders of the
undervalued nature of Vector Ltd at the time of its float?”
See my 2005 letter to Helen Clark outlining the
immense value from the confluence of three great new
technologies –“smart” appliances and response systems;
distributed generation; and broadband over utility conduits
and wires. The maker of the Enron movie said in his
interview with Chris Laidlaw on Sunday National Radio
something to the effect that “ the movie is essentially
about humans.” I have seen the movie and he is quite
correct. This brings up a new series of questions: “How
is it that New Zealanders know so much about Enron and know
so little about huge collapses like OnEnergy?” “Why has
there never been a single in-depth article or programme on
OnEnergy’s failure – let alone a book or a movie?” “What
happened in the Wellington City Council meeting where
certain councillors decided to transfer control of Capital
Power to TransAlta-OnEnergy for a severely undervalued price
– including sale and management rights?” “What happened to
the city’s employees in Capital Power?” “What happened to
the city’s broad band uptake, demand control systems and
grid resilence?” “What happened at the Dominion and the
Evening Post broadsheets each time TransAlta bought a large
spreads?” “What happened to the personal security of
Capital Power’s and Energy Direct’s 130,000 customers?”
(Capital Power alone had the care of keys to 17000
dwellings of its 55,000 customers.) I think you will find
such questions reveal that workers were set against workers,
families divided and torn apart, neighbours set against
neighbours, communities set against each other and forced
out of the Electricity Market, valuable history destroyed
and vital knowledge fragmented and locked up by new
“commercial sensitivity” imperatives and, on balance, New
Zealand became more a liability to humanity than an asset.
The probable fact is that our lack of honest reflection on
our recent NZ history and legislation is because we are
afraid to face our humanity. This lack is the greatest
obstacle to New Zealand making a positive contribution in
the carbon constrained Post Cheap-Oil Gas Age. It is indeed
a very human problem. To give you an idea of the obstacles
such questions will face, I have three times rung the
Welling City Council and asked if it is true that Arthur
Andersen and Co were involved in the Capital Power
restructure. The first two officers came back after a
lengthy delay and said they could not find out. The third
eventually came back and said I would have to apply under
the Official Information Act for the answer. Why the intense
secretiveness? I am fairly certain of the answer to that
question. I worked directly with the now defunct AA and Co
as an employee of Capital Power when they restructured it. I
experienced the process. I can also say the Enron structure
and ethos was AA and Co’s global policy: Consumers are
tradeable items, Bulk-electricity is commodity “no different
to cabbages or bread”, energy efficiency practice is a
threat to The Electricity Market and staff are liabilities
while on the books. Similarly customer security and civil
defence measures are needless restraints on trading
operations. These are not the only questions we can ask to
open doors in our search for hope and humanity. I will leave
you with these two broad questions: “Why is our Parliament
allowed to vote billions of dollars of subsidies to carbon
dependent sunset industries of motorways and airtravel while
it was not permitted to use some of its “$7 billion surplus”
to buy our national rail company – a major sunrise industry
- when it was valued at a mere $165 million?” (The cheap
access Toll Holdings has over crucial parts of our rail
network will cost the taxpayer far more.) “Why is New
Zealand spearheading opposition to EU initiatives to develop
source label on products? Why did we vote alone with Brazil
against the consensus of 117 countries at the recent
Biosafety Protocol meeting and work to block measures to
restrict “terminator” technology? At what risk are we
putting humans to from the collapse of biomass energy
sources that sustain us?” My website contains many of the
answers, further questions and proposals these questions
generate. For instance my most recent blog contains a
suggestion of how we can rate our Bulk-electricity system
for intelligence. Most of New Zealand’s incoherent system
now rates below the bottom of the scale. I suggest a
strategies for reconciling mechanisms so we achieve both our
national Kyoto and NEECS’s objectives. The seminar I delivered at the 2006 NZAEE
conference (my audience was two people) contains a
distillation of the website’s proposals for surviving the
Post Cheap Oil-Gas Age into the Great Solar-Electric Age.
In summary I find most cause for hope in the plasticity
of human behaviour. I am sure good ideas will flourish
eventually somewhere somehow. The WWF amended its
PowerSwitch website significantly soon after I posted them
my commentary on it. The New York Times recently reported
that use of the “energy conservation” symbol is giving away
to the “energy efficiency” symbol. Meanwhile New Zealand
still has an agency, EECA, devoted to the unhelpful and
impossible notion that humans can conserve energy. I
have reason to believe some of the proposals that I make are
as advanced as any in the world and I invite you to join a
call for a national review of our images of the nature of
energy and, as part of that, climate processes I had to
write this to you as the article did leave me feeling a bit
hopeless and writing this to you revitalises me. I will
probably pop it into my next blog. Thank you again for
published those two articles together and I hope you find
the questions engaging. Oh and my use of Scientist is
deliberate. I am aware we bestow the title of “scientist” on
a select group of individuals. I believe we are all
scientists. as is proven by the fact we can learn to talk.
This scientific achievement dwarfs any knowledge of a
discipline a Scientist might have. A large number of people
with no specialist knowledge are far greater scientists than
many our Scientists. For instance, they have far more
rigorous insight and acceptance of our primal natures.
The thought occurs that it may be very helpful to run an
article on the implications of the latest fMRI research. It
might make Scientists more aware of the lack of science in
their communication and inspire them to establish serious
research into the impact of symbol use in their fields. Then
we might be able to break the current cycle of ignorance
that I referred to. The recent Super Bowl advertisement impact research
may be of help. I will quote from the FKF Applied Research
site “Choices that people make help shape
their lives. Collectively, these decisions also help shape
the structure of society- which cities grow; who is elected
to govern; which companies will thrive. Despite the
importance of how humans make these choices, scientific
understanding has been limited, based mainly on interviewing
and intuition. New technologies, such as fMRI, have
provided insight into how the mind works in many realms,
including listening to music, playing chess, and recognizing
familiar faces. It also has potential to help understand how
people make choices, but has been applied only to a few
aspects of decision-making. Understanding how the brain
makes choices is a complex problem that may never be
completely solved. Any insight, however, has the potential
to help people understand what influences their choices, and
perhaps allow them to make decisions that better comport
with their priorities. It also may shine a light on
marketing practices, discrediting those that attempt to
manipulate, and encouraging those that convey useful and
accurate information.” Re. the
Super Bowl Ad research As the article Buy This in
the Scientific American MIND vol 16 no 2 points out,
corporations are salivating at the prospects FMRI offers
them. If we are not to be manipulated we must empower
ourselves by researching how we are affected by symbol uses.
We need to be truly scientific in the communication of the
great issues of our day if civilisation is to survive. I
will leave you with this thought, Pamela. Check out the fRMI
colour graphics of the brain’s activities at the Edge or FKF
links. Then check out a colour graphic of Earth’s thermal
activities e.g. Now imagine the day when there is
evidence of a fundamental harmony within each graphic and
between the two graphics of thermal Earth and our brain
activity. All the best Dave
McArthur Hello Mary and the
CheckPoint team I listened to your discussion with
Kathryn Ryan with great interest last night (Tues) re. the
David Parker resignations. Earlier in the day I had been so
concerned by Kathryn’s failure to address the real issues
that I had shot off the note pasted below to Morning
Report. I am wondering if you realised how inhuman you
sounded yesterday when you remarked that And It is possible that you
did not mean to sound as you did in the moment. However in
case you think this really is an example of deep dishonesty
I will put this scenario to you: Mary Wilson ace
journalist, brilliantly accomplished, articulate, probing,
able to ask questions few others would ever think to ask,
providing a great national public service and knowing she
brings real talent to the job. Maybe she even feels this is
what she is on Earth for – all her talents are so fulsomely
used. People respect her directness and honesty and forgive
her occassional waspish/raspist moments for they value her
fundamental integrity. Mary Wilson Rips Off Tax
System One
day these are the shock headlines. It seems an old
acquaintance has carried a snitch on you, gone to
Investigate and reported that as a student you received $5
cash a week for a year babysitting or weeding a garden or
something. This was not declared in any declaration over
the following years and now penalties have compounded into
the thousands of dollars. As you earned over $200 per anum
on that activity it is classed as a business for ACC
purposes. Non-declaration penalties are compounding there
too. Maybe over the years you have thought to pay those few
dollars tax but you are vaguely aware admission to the IRD
might set in train a review process that could destroy you.
At minimum it could tie you up for days of explaining and
justifying years of returns. We all know the nightmare
stories. Your first emotions: Hell, just maybe when
things seemed so right and good. Shock. Sick in the guts.
Numb brain in spin. You know you are a loyal citizen. You
contribute. Now suddenly you are a criminal. Your family?
Your career? Your talents? Sure you may remember that wee
student job – lovely kids/ pretty garden – every year as you
ticked that box and signed and dated your returns the memory
existed at the back of your mind but somehow you
rationalised that signature each year. Maybe you also ticked
and signed boxes for student allowances too. Your first
inclination is to say you have not done anything wrong, to
say “ I am honest.” That is probably quite true in the
great scheme of things but not in law, not in the headlines.
Initially you offer to stand-down a few days while the mess
is sorted. Then it sinks in. Your career is stuffed. Your
dreams snuffed. Your talents unemployed…..After another
nights sleep you realise that you are just a hapless piece
of flotsam in the great slosh of the media, your presence is
a liability to Radio NZ…there is not alternative ..it is
best to resign… OK I know I am pushing the psychology of
the shock response, Mary – the denial, the disbelief, the
anger, the betrayal, the hurt and all those processes. The
thing I wish to communicate is that in those first days
everything is so out of proportion – that small omission
each year is now so huge – and all the good you do and how
hard you work to provide an excellent service now counts for
nought..Choke gag ..but but but…it does take a day or two
for it all to sink in. I agree with Winston Peters that
David Parker operated with very considerable integrity. If I
have got the guy right he has operated with more honesty
than most are capable of in such a short traumatic period–
quite the opposite to your questioning of his honesty. Till
this incident I had no views on his honesty or character.
Which brings me to ask the questions you, Kathryn and all
are not asking: Why him when any other MP could be trashed
with similar ease? Sure, he is a businessman and this means
his affairs are easier to investigate than constantly
salaried people. What is it about our media politics that
enables this selective destruction of an individual’s
career? And far more importantly the question that was
not asked is – what is the impact of his resignations in the
greater scheme of things. Energy (stupid, daft impossible,
ignorant title) Transport and Climate between them
encapsulate the central issue facing our civilisation – our
unsustainable uses of carbon and electricity. At present our
NEECS strategy and our Kyoto strategy work against each
other. The Electricity Reforms prevent communities making an
intelligent response to this great central issue. Our
Parliament is increasingly incapable of addressing the
issue. The previous incumbents in these cabinet positions
since the issue became apparent 20 years ago have been
unable to generate a creative response. Indeed many
responses were deeply destructive of our children’s
prospects. David Parker inherited a fundamental disarray
and confusion. There are powerful logics that the synergies
of these portfolios generate and it is possible that he was
after six months becoming aware of them. The logic of these
synergies is powerful and difficult – powerful because it
works directly for our children and difficult because it
threatens the short term interests of key bankers of the
Bulk-electricity/fossil fuel sector. I could be wrong but
David Parker might have been becoming aware of the enormity
of this central carbon-electricity use challenge and, like
you in your job, feeling he had an important contribution to
make. Who knows? His cabinet colleagues obviously saw he was
the best equipped to take the issue on. I have devoted much
of the last six years to addressing this carbon/electricity
use issue and I know the key quality required is honesty.
Sure knowledge, technical know-how and a smart brain are
useful but they are nothing without honesty and honour. I
also know, having worked in the Enron environment, which is
our Bulk-electricity/fossil fuel sector, that honourable
people are viewed as the greatest threat because of the
colossal greed, and corruption that is rife in the
sector. Anway now we are left dealing with overloaded
ministers who were failures at addressing the issue or were
uncomfortable in their ministerial roles. The bankers of
this sector will rejoice in the confusion and paralysis of
our Parliament. They know the paralysis is even deeper in
National Party ranks. The first question that came to our
mind when I heard news of the resignations was, “How will
impact on the growing risk we are all at from our current
carbon-electricity use?” This would have been my headline.
Why was it not Radio NZ’s first response too? Anyone
observing Parliament knows that it is near impotent to
respond to the challenge of this issue. The consequences of
this impotence are already impacting deeply on our
children’s prospects and the resignations clearly signal
growing impotence. The only reason why the details of David
Parker’s resignations could have had headline importance is
if they had been because he had been corrupt in the
administration of the carbon-electricity portfolios. Any
other reasons for his resignation are minor in the great
scheme of things. At this minor level I was interested to
hear Chris Trotter yesterday on Afternoons discuss the ease
with which selected politicians can be made impotent by
media processes. I have not read Blinded by the Right he
refers to but I have read books like Power Play by Sharon
Beder and, as mentioned, was employed in the
Bulk-electricity/fossil fuel sector for decades. So I do
know these books tend to understate the nasty ethos
operating in some quarters since the Electricity Reforms.
Any discussion of the portfolios held by David Parker need
be mindful of this context and the honest politician who
works in this field walks in a minefield. I had thought I
might be writing today to revoke the sentiments of my letter
to Morning Report. However I am supported a little by
comments by the likes of Rod Oram who said on Nine to Noon
yesterday that not many businesspeople could withstand the
level of scrutiny David Parker was subjected to. I was
pleased to hear Morning Report this morning (Wed) bringing
up the scrutiny issue with Don Brash this morning and I give
bouquets, not brickbats, to Don for acknowledging there are
those in his party who have filed incorrect returns. Therein
lies a little hope for decency and a creative Parliament.
Anway maybe current affairs can now address the big issue
with its attendant questions of how NZ generates a creative
and adaptive response. Like why is Parliament so ill
informed and ignorant of the central issue? How can we free
and support its members so they are able to address the
issue? All the best. Look forward to hearing your
programme as I do two hours daily every day through my
headphones over the sounds of the industrial vacuum cleaner
on my back and the flushing of toilets. Dave
McArthur Morning people Heard the rather
strident political commentary on David Parker. I thought he
brought up a very profound point and Kathryn completely
missed the serious problem we have in politics in New
Zealand. We don’t have an honest robust media in New Zealand
and too often journalists and editors can be bought off. As
a result their investigative abilities extend only as far as
digging the dirt on the poor, the dispossessed and Maoris.
They never dig into the millions, even billions dollar dirt
of the rich. They would be too busy looking in the gutter to
see an Enron coming at them that filled the street. As a
result there is no way that most of our most public minded
and caring people can stand for cabinet post in this
country. For instance almost every graduate is excluded
because they have committed some crime. There are very few
students who have not accepted a cash payment for
babysitting or weeding the garden at some point in their
lives. The ones who haven’t were usually born with silver
spoon in their mouth. Similarly most will have paid someone
cash and not invoiced him or her for it. If everyone was
to declare every single cash transaction then the
bureaucracy would be totally crushing and much care work in
New Zealand would cease. To give an example. I was on the
dole last year. I wished to research the performance of
older electricity meters as part of my concern for the
national interest. Billions of dollars are at stake. Each
month a rich firm paid me a token $30 to read the aging
meters in their building. ($360 gross a year) This was my
total income besides $28 bank interest and the minimum dole.
The meter reading grossed $7.50 a week. I only claimed
transport costs of $6 a month, nothing else, no office
expenses etc as I was entitled to. I was not doing this for
financial gain. However that tiny activity of a bit over an
hour a month made me a business, even if for tax purposes I
technically worked at a considerable loss. My tax on the
$280 income left after transport costs was $64. My ACC levy
was $417. I have paid this. This was sprung on me with no
warning and I had no idea of this liability. It seems that
if you engage in an activity of any type there is a minimum
cap charge regardless whether you earn 1 cent or $17999. And
this is for every different type of activity you engage in.
If the activity has more than $200 of value then it must be
declared as a business and subject to ACC levied on that
type of activity. Indeed, according to some ACC opinion, the
fact one performs the activity makes one liable, even if one
does not make a cent profit. All up I spent about 10 hours
preparing my tax returns and this includes maybe up to three
hours talking to at least 8 people in the IRD and ACC. That
is vital money now not available for insulating my home,
going to the dentist and protecting my health in general. To
put it into sharp relief, it was 3 weeks of my dole
payments. In this country you are liable for a heavy
penalty if you do not declare your full income. You are
given no credit for not claiming on rebates possible. This
is worth noting because many people make a sensible decision
not to declare every activity they engage in that may have
value of 1 cent. They help that aged neighbour or stressed
parent and reduce demands on the State coffers. On balance
the country is better off that they do this activity, even
though they are breaking the law. They pay 99% of their
taxes and perhaps do not claim rebates they are eligible
for. Nevertheless they are committing a crime that makes
them ineligible to declare they are fit to be a Member of
Parliament. In the context of the sick state of journalism
in this country they are extremely unwise to even attempt to
think of standing for office. The only people who can safely
do that are those who have been salaried for every activity
they have ever performed and are thus covered by employer
liability for their activities or the rich who will not be
investigated. The former have little to offer as they by
definition have not involved themselves in community
affaires and the latter were bequeathed their lifestyle and
have little insight into how people work to keep this
country going. So when Kathryn dirges on about this tired
administration and its lack of talent etc she is completely
missing the point. Journalism is stuffed and Parliament
itself is sick, tired and failing and bereft of capacity to
use talent. The truth is you cannot do much constructive
there. What talent Parliament has is effectively stifled
for as soon as any person attempts to do anything radical
and sane they will get trashed by someone hauling out some
trivial breach of the law that every one of them has been
involved in. And God knows we desperately need radical and
sane thinking in the Post Cheap Oil-Gas Age, as we have to
plan for survival in a potentially hostile global climate.
Our rising national debt levels and trade imbalance plus the
collapse of support for the Carbon Tax are just small
indications of the sad plight of our Parliament. Common
guys. Look at the bigger picture. Be invigorated. Don’t get
tired and dragged down to the gutter level of Parliament and
the Investigates of this world. All the best Dave
McArthur Energy is Eternal Delight -William
Blake. A
reader on the Sustainable Energy Forum responded to my
comments on the Government activities through our New
Zealand Climate Office: Is this really true: the CCO
goes around our schools and communities arguing that there
is little NZ can do to stop carbon emissions because our
nation is such a tiny contributor compared to other
nations. By the same logic, you could make a strong
argument for tax avoidance; any one person’s contribution is
a tiny amount of NZ’s total tax take. Cheers My
Response The question was asked at the
Wellington meeting "I was wondering why you chose the
emission chart that tables emission levels, but if you look
at the emissions per capita this would put New Zealand in a
different position on the global scale of emissions.
Responsibility of emissions per capita should be used as the
measurement." The person argued that what matters is
emissions per capita and it is utterly misleading to show
NZ's national emissions against the emissions of large
blocks like China, Europe, the USA etc. The CCO graphic
certainly made our role look absolutely insignificant. See
second graphic. Barry Carbon
countered that the CCO is just being honest with people
and they don't want to mislead people into believing we can
alter the global picture much. The records do not show that
the young man was very irate and persisted with his argument
unsuccessfully that per capita emissions are more relevant
and should be in the information the CCO is using around the
country. As I pointed out the CCO argument is completely at
odds with our faith in our activities in Brazil at present
and at Kyoto in 1995. view a sample of the stuff the CCO is
putting into our primary schools. Scroll down to a scanned
copy of their resources - as I have written on SEF before -
when I questioned the CCO about this cartoon and suggested
surely NZ should be feverish red too instead of an oasis of
blue/green as we are one of the highest impacts on carbon
balances this last 150 years I was told that was my
interpretation. Their interpretation was that it showed how
lucky we are that impacts of "climate change" are modified
by all the oceans around us and we wont be affected as badly
as other countries. View the whole cartoon is a record of
my interaction about four years ago when this resources was
first published. Late last year I attended a workshop at
Victoria University which promoted this CCO material to
teachers in our schools. In fact only CCO material was
promoted. It is probable Massey does promotes it too and
Canterbury certainly does through its Environmental
Education gurus. Education officials have suggested to me
that it does not matter that the dominant Government
sponsored Enviroschools resource contains no specific
atmosphere/climate element as the resource links to this CCO
material. Cheers - if that is the right word for this
situation. The CCO cartoon does fairly accurately reflect
national policy and stats re carbon emissions etc You can
see why I am concerned for our children. Dave PS
while you are the CCO website scroll down one more graphic
to the source of emissions pie chart. It is complete Energy
Gobbledygook and again I whimper for our
children.
The
NZ Listener
10 March 2006
”What happened to the employees and their
families and communities if it did happen here?” Exploring Human
Decision-Making
In conjunction
with the Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA, we
have measured the effect of many of the Super Bowl ads by
using fMRI technology. We have tracked the ads on a host of
dimensions by looking for activity in key parts of the brain
areas that are known to be involved in wanting, choosing,
sexual arousal, fear, indecision and
reward.
Note to
Check Point National Radio
“Its quite extraordinary that it took journalists to point
out his position to
him..”
“Here is
another example of another person who just cannot quite tell
the truth…”
–False Declarations for thirty years. Note to
Morning Report
Join the journey of Bonus Joules at
www.bonusjoules.co.nz
(in search of
sustainable images of
energy.) SEF
discussion of Government attitude to Climate Change