Posts by Chris Waugh
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Paul Campbell,
For all its problems China seems to be doing stuff while we just argue
They have far more polite drivers too
EH?!??!!!!!!!!!!!!! Polite drivers?! Well, maybe Shenzhen... I've never spent more than a couple of hours there.
Yep, China is doing stuff, I just opened up this article on the always interesting, not always reliable Asia Times, for example:
China is known widely as the world's largest user and producer of coal, and the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
That is true. Less noticed has been the fact that China is also building the world's largest renewable energy system - which by 2013 stood at just over 1 trillion kilowatt hours - already nearly as large as the combined total of electrical energy produced by the power systems of France and Germany
And if you click on the "more" button at the bottom of the page, there is, funnily enough, more, though I would be curious to see somebody with a better knowledge than myself of electrical engineering and statistics critique it.
I'd also be wary of the China - doing stuff vs. NZ/"The West" - blethering comparison. Not only does China have fairly well-known methods of getting stuff done that not many of us would like to copy, some of the things China has tried have had some unfortunate unforeseen consequences. Take cars, for instance: Various methods used to restrict the number of cars on the roads seem to have had the perverse effect of encouraging gas guzzlers - if you're going to have to pay megabucks at an auction for a licence plate (Shanghai style) or enter a lottery for permission to buy a car (Beijing style), you're going to save up for something big, fancy, and not particularly efficient. I'm also not sure how relevant the climate change thing is - we're living with severe pollution on a daily basis. There are many more immediate reasons to be cleaning up than climate change.
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Springing, even.
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The toons are sprouting.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Bart Janssen,
So um yeah can we please let our imaginations really stretch and do this?
+10000000000
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Bart Janssen,
For those in those businesses delaying that loss by even a short period of time can mean millions in profit.
It's a pretty funny definition of profit that privileges grabbing as much as you can for yourself now over long-term, broadly-distributed wealth. But I'm preaching to the choir...
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Found in the garden this afternoon.
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Feed: Saints Preserve, in reply to Hebe,
Thanks, Hebe. Having seen the state of the nearby seas, I think I'll avoid kelp until we're back in NZ. Vinegar, well, we've got lots of good stuff, but the best is from Shanxi Province, not far away - the only question is if the Shanxi people do with their vinegar what they do with their Fenjiu (the local spirit), and keep the best stuff for themselves, exporting only the second rate stuff at best. As for the honey remedy for allergies, it seems to make a lot of sense, and fortunately if we take the old road over the mountains to and from our village (which we almost always do) we drive past quite a few beekeepers with hives and honey for sale on the side of the road, so it may well be worth stopping and asking them... Will try. Thanks again.
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Feed: Saints Preserve, in reply to Hebe,
Elderflowers are reputed to be help alleviate hayfever.
+1 for an alleviating hayfever and other ailments blog. We're just moving into that season up here and chrysanthemum tea is good for many things, but has never helped my hayfever or asthma, despite the advice of a friend who studies Traditional Chinese Medicine. Now, bad luck with the dictionaries (nciku used to be really good....) suggests I should try some wikipedia language-switching trickery before I can figure out if elderflower can be found in China.... Aha!*
ETA: and it is indeed available here. Must try. Thanks for the tip.
*A translation trick for when a word isn't in any dictionary. Search the term on Wikipedia in L1, then scroll down through the language options on the left sidebar until you find your target language, click that, and presto. Never use translation software - among other things, it doesn't give you the option of double and triple checking through things like pictures and the latin names.
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And we went hunting butterflies, but they wouldn't stay still. This is as close as we got.
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Out in the village where spring comes a couple of weeks later...
