Posts by ChrisW
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I've heard tui imitating phones ringing, my brother laughing ... It's hard to imagine birds so quick to pick up and imitate something new to them would retain a call learnt from their elders through a chain of many generations. Unless perhaps a local population has maintained itself continuously with something like social stability or consistency? So the memes are passed on intact?
I've also heard tui imitating kokako on Hauturu/Little Barrier Island, where kokako were introduced from the mainland in the late 1970s/early 80s? (extracted from tawa forests to allow the forestry companies to clearfell them for woodchips and pulp with a clear conscience - but I digress yet again, it is late for me) then thought I heard tui imitating kokako calls but not so well, that turned out to be young sub-adult kokako just learning.
-
native placental mammal species extinctions in Australia
Different time-frame I think - Flannery was referring to a then recent (1990s) discovery of a fossil placental mammal of something like early Tetiary/Paleogene age, say 50-60 million years, indicating a presence alongside the first marsupials in Australia.
-
Islander- those amazing birds gone from our land indeed so sad. Extinction is forever, but the pitifully low numbers and distribution of many surviving species too. The mammals, human and other placentals, and now marsupial, have a lot to answer for.
And these changes over hundreds of years, not thousands or tens of thousands - so there's enough of those lost species ecosystems and relatives surviving that we can can imagine their presence, and so perhaps feel their loss all the more vividly?
-
Sorry Joe, "had all gone extinct" a careless absolute on my part not Flannery's.
But the point remains valid, it was about dominating the fauna and ecosystems (or not), over tens of millions of years, where relative body size matters. And the extent of that dominance before human arrival and non-coincidental extinction of the marsupial mega-fauna 60,000 to 40,000 years ago was much higher than recently and today.
-
it is old (and so are some of earth's creatures dwelling in/on it.)
really quite a young country?
Tim Flannery's being Australian
placenta
measuring skulls
All these things are connected, yes really they are.
I had the pleasure of witnessing Tim Flannery being introduced as a speaker to an NZ Ecological Society conference in the 1990s, as the scientist who should forever remain famous in the history of New Zealand/Australian relationships for establishing conclusively that having a small brain is no disadvantage for an Australian.
TF brought to attention the reasons for Australia’s special natural character, its fauna dominated by reptiles and marsupials rather than placental mammals as on other continents, because they have lower energy demands from food - reptiles because they are substantially solar powered, marsupials because they have energy-efficient smaller brains rather then the big energy-hungry ones of placental mammals. And food supplies for animals from primary productivity of plants are very low in natural Australia, because the soils are exceptionally old, stewed and leached of their nutrients over millions of years, in turn because there has been minimal geological activity over the last 200 million years or so to drive soil renewal (in radical contrast to the ongoing dynamic geological character of NZ, a "young country" in that sense). Consequently placental mammals, present in the fossil record of Australia, had all gone extinct, out-competed over evolutionary time by more energy-efficient marsupials with their small but well-adapted brains.
Partial version of this in the earlier parts of this illustrated ABC transcript - partial in that he was being kind to his fellow Australians by not emphasising the small-brain aspect. But I heard him explain it with convincing clarity to an audience of NZers. Long may his fame continue!
Edit: But still, not enough to qualify him as an honorary Pakeha.
-
Quote by Richard Benedik, former U.S./UN bureaucrat: “A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect.”
An interesting selection for a context-free quote! At first sight pretty well equivalent to such an official saying "A global nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back our assertion that Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapons program." Quite reasonable really.
But then I looked again - and "to back the greenhouse effect " gives it away. He was really saying, in his unguarded moment, "A global nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty must be implemented even if there are a dozen bloggers out there who claim there is no scientific evidence that the atom is divisible."
-
Regardless of the source of electricity consumed, the smelter itself has major CO2 emissions as an integral part of the smelting process converting aluminium oxide to aluminium metal. But the 'carbon' price for those emissions from Tiwai Point is to be paid by the taxpayers for the forseeable.
Here's one analysis of the consequences in per-job-subsidy and opportunity cost - not up-to-date, and not allowing we can't simply close down the old Huntly power station and transmit Manapouri electricity to Auckland instead cost-free, but ...
-
...vast surplus of cheap hydro-electricity Muldoon was ensuring we were soon to have with the urgent construction of the Clyde high dam etc on the upper Clutha
Muldoon was a dick, but without him, we'd have way less renewable electricity than we do. Funny how it works.
Muldoon's one relevant decision was to go against technical advice and choose the option of one high dam at Clyde (rather than two low dams) on the farcical grounds that the power was needed urgently (hint: it takes a lot less time to build a modest sized dam than a big one, especially when the site investigations haven't been done thoroughly yet and the dam-site's a bit dubious).
Result - greatly more environmental impact and loss of special productive land in the Cromwell Gorge, vast cost overruns in designing and building a large dam on a problematic site and then mitigating the greatly enhanced landslide risk owing to the higher lake level, and so expensive power delivered 8-9 years after scheduled completion.
The vast surplus of hydro-electric power was a illusion in Muldoon's mind created by power planners who projected something like 8% p.a. growth in demand continuing ad infinitum and magicked up the power stations in a plan to deliver the necessary, then when demand-growth showed signs of slowing, voila, there was going to be a power surplus from all these (as yet unbuilt) power stations - how shall we use it?
I do not think Muldoon's decision-making made a positive contribution to renewable electricity generation then or now.
-
Did he have the moustache then? I feel that a man can only truly mutter darkly if he has that moustache.
Assuredly yes, that moustache played its part well in projecting the persona then as now. But additionally (too much information perhaps) it intercepted sufficient of the the 'spray' part of the rhetoric to reduce the hazard of its projection onto us other players/ audience. This part of my stored image meant I had to write 'impassioned' rhetoric rather than the more obvious 'fiery' - any fire would have been quenched at source.
For all that I bought, read, enjoyed and continue to appreciate his book "No Left Turn".
-
when did Chris Trotter actually inhabit the South?
I think he was a student at Otago University. I retain a vivid memory of him in Dunedin (early 1981?) attending one of the weekly meetings of the Save Aramoana Campaign (re: proposed aluminium smelter desperately needed to use the vast surplus of cheap hydro-electricity Muldoon was ensuring we were soon to have with the urgent construction of the Clyde high dam etc on the upper Clutha).
But Chris T's mission was to bully the group into writing to Margaret Thatcher or somesuch British overlord to demand something or other in solidarity with the Republican/ Catholic proletariat of Northern Ireland.
Initial reluctance to divert the focused discipline of of the Save Aramoana Campaign onto unrelated matters however worthy was met with a spray of impassioned rhetoric - it was morally unconscionable that we faffed around on such bourgeois trivia as Aramoana while imperialist oppression continued in Ireland and proletarian blood flowed in the streets!
His mission failed, theatrical scornful anger, exit stage left muttering darkly.