Salvaged from a high tide somewhere round the end of August 2017. The memory stick appeared to come from a mac laptop. Presumably one using OSX Yosemite.
:Veena
Welcome back to the we might be screwed podcast.
:Fiona
The day the 45th US president assumed office the White House’s climate change web page was removed. It contained the nation’s plan for addressing the problem. Soon after the president appointed Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency in that country. Mr Pruitt does not believe in climate change and referred to himself as a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda. The president also appointed Rex Tillerson, a former head of Exxon Mobil as State Secretary. Mr Tillerson presumably did believe in climate change, since his company had studied it for some time, however he and his company devoted a lot of energy to downplaying or covering up the issue so that profits would not be affected.
:Oliver
This is old news and I’m only bringing it up now because not thinking or talking about climate change is still a very popular activity. Back here in New Zealand the Ministry for the Environment delivered a report back in April detailing 43,000 homes, 130,000 people, 2000 kilometres of road 46 kilometres of rail and 5 airports that are currently at risk from increased flooding and coastal erosion. That was never officially released either.
:Fiona
Now I don’t want to be too hard on the climate change skeptics, they’ve had a tough week. Half of Bangladesh went under water, while flooding there and across Nepal and India affected 16 million people and killed 1200. 500 people died in landslides in Sierra Leone and 44 in Houston, Texas, where 48,700 homes were flooded. That last one was caused by Hurricane Harvey which was described in the Washington Post as a one in 1000 year event. So that’s bad timing. They had to come up with new colours to use on the map. Its also described as the third 500 year flood to hit Houston in the past three years. So if climate change is not a real thing then they won’t have another big flood for 1500 years. Which is great. Of course climate change might be a real thing. Then it could happen again next week.
:Veena
Oh. Did I mention. There’s another major hurricane already on the way. Its name is Irma, and it could make landfall in the Carribean or U S in the next fortnight.
:Moira
This week the prime minister told Morning Report that Kiwis don’t wake up thinking about climate change. He’s usually very solid on his facts and not prone to hyperbole, so I must assume that the GCSB has extra powers these days.
:Oliver
You know, this admission that he now knows what all kiwis think of when they wake up in the morning is really quite something. I’m not even angry, I’m impressed. He ought to be told that there’s a glitch in the system somewhere since Kieran frequently wakes up thinking about climate change. Kieran doesn’t want to share this with Bill since on the rare moments when he wakes up thinking about something else it’s usually a very private time and one of the few remaining occasions when he is actually happy.
:Fiona
Surely spying on the private thoughts of citizens to this level is a little draconian. But that’s also where we’re at right now. Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett said this week that some people had “fewer” human rights than others and Prime Minister Bill English said it was good that New Zealand lacked a written constitution as it gave them flexibility to make it happen. The Universal Declaration of Human rights was a product of the Second World War and came about through a U N committee headed by Eleanor Roosevelt.
:Veena
She said this about the Declaration. That without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world. Wish she were here today to have a sit down with Paula. I’m sure one would call the other sweetie eventually.
:Oliver
Also in the last week Al Jazeera released a documentary on the state of New Zealand waterways, showing that they are among the most contaminated in the developed world.
:Fiona
So its turning into quite an election. Did I mention that the head of NASA has now been replaced by someone with no training in engineering or science? In 2013 he accused President Barack Obama of a “gross misallocation” of funds, saying the administration spends 30 times more on climate change research than on weather research.
:Oliver
So NASA will soon lose its position as an authority on the subject of climate change. Which is quite the circle since it started there with James Hansen in 1988. Thankfully, he has a job at Columbia now.
:Karen
Australia has also taken the path of getting away from bad news by removing the scientists. Its climate change authority lost its last climate scientist in July, they removed the science portfolio from the government all together and removed its climate research arm, axing 110 science jobs, and moving 350 climate staff into unrelated roles.
They said they did this because the science is settled. Also, presumably, it gets in the way of mining.
:Veena
Speaking of mis-information, how about this tasty nugget from the Federated Farmers official statement on river quality.
“Nitrogen is organic and essential to life.”
Can’t argue with that. Unless you’re implying that you can dump as much of it into a river as you like with no effect. Water is also organic and essential to life. But try telling that to a drowning man.
:Oliver
Dear lord I hope the skeptics are right. These greens and their conspiracy theories about politicians pulling the wool over our eyes. Its not like the bad old days when lobbyists tricked everyone into thinking smoking was good for you and now 6 million people a year die from it. Its not like that where vested interests devote huge resources to protect their income at the enormous cost to the human race. Its not like people go from working for tobacco giant Phillip Morris into the arms of the National Party. Except maybe for Christopher Bishop, their candidate in Hutt South. And Todd Barclay. Just those two guys. For now.
:Moira
So lets wrap this up.
The executive branch of the US government took another important step in preventing people around the world from learning about climate change. At the same time weather events never seen before killed thousands and displaced millions. Here at home the government announced some rolling back of human rights in the efforts to solve the drug problem and reminded us that we don’t have a constitution to prevent it.
They’re not bothered about climate change, and some of them were pretty chill about promoting tobacco as well. They also claimed to know that no one woke up thinking about climate change, putting Kieran in a difficult ethical dilemma.
:Veena
Does he come out and state that he wakes up thinking about climate change all the time, exposing himself presumably to the scrutiny of a prying government, or does he keep silent?
:Oliver
Are you laughing New Zealand? With all the shenanigans in Australia and the U S you could be forgiven for thinking you’re doing a better job than them on this subject. But you’re not. According the the climate action tracker you’re beating the Ukraine, who due to some political instability, really struggled to come up with a plan at all, and Singapore which just ran out of space to make anything.
:Moira
As some say in this country: the sky sheds tears in sympathy with the grief of man.
:Fiona
Its going to be shedding a lot more, by the looks. We’ll all be waking up thinking about the same things eventually.
:Moira
There there.
:Fiona
This episode was recorded in Wellington, New Zealand. Solomon would like to report that he got to meet Sarah Thomson in Auckland and that they are besties now. Kieran reports that Solomon seemed a bit star struck and failed to wake up at all when they were there. Neither of them get out much and after the 23 hour battery car trip to Auckland. Kieran spent some time imagining he was some latter day Jean Batten. There’s a real episode coming out soon so you can hear Sarah laughing at Kieran’s jokes. She’s really quite a sport.
NOTE: The stick also contained a python script that appeared to generate the voices and perform this little piece. To try it yourself in OSX select the text and hit Option+Esc. Go to System Preferences / Dictation & Speech to set the voices.
# LINKS
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/96433693/coastal-erosion-report-urges-immediate-action
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/sierra-leone-death-toll-landslide-nears-500-170820172022255.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-more-deadly?CMP=share_btn_tw
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/08/31/harvey-is-a-1000-year-flood-event-unprecedented-in-scale/?utm_term=.ab3070759626
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/31/us/hurricane-irma-forecast-weather/index.html
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201856304/election-2017-leaders-interview-bill-english
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2017/08/polluted-paradise-170831042123144.html
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/09/02/45811/rod-oram-a-trickle-of-problems-for-a-big-problem
https://bridenstine.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=127
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/jul/05/climate-change-authority-loses-last-climate-scientist
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/17/science-minister-abbott-australia
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/australia-cuts-110-climate-scientist-jobs/
https://twitter.com/comingupcharlie/status/904099549848846336
http://climateactiontracker.org/countries/newzealand.html
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10072231/National-picks-another-tobacco-man
Imagine My Relief 