Today in an interesting speech to the NZ hydrological conference Rodney Hide detailed differences from a scientific approach to conservation and inductive reasoning http://www.act.org.nz/news-article.aspx?id=27473 to one of the Greens of conservation and energy resoulution by one of rhectoric and the hypothetico inductive reasoning( a closed set answer with open set quotients,these are not necessarily incorrect but are not always correct)

The Peak oil question was an is always a good example.

"By science I mean the critical testing of our understanding against the real world. That's something the Greens fail to do. They put activism ahead of understanding. It's their political programme that drives them, not science.
Let me explain with just one example. The Greens campaigned on "Peak Oil" last election. "Peak Oil" is another imminent doomsday scenario of an oil-starved post-industrial world of war, famine, and international chaos. Green co-leader Jeannette Fitzsimons says the "terrible tipping point" of "Peak Oil" is less than ten years away. The only way to avoid this apocalypse is to "transform our civilisation". That means de- industrialise, depopulate, and submit ourselves to a command-and-control economy.
The difference between me and the Greens is that I think we should check the facts before we rush to force everyone to live in caves and hoe at the local commune in the hot sun all day.
The "Peak Oil" scare dates from 1956 when M. King Hubbert hypothesised that because fossil fuels were finite their production would follow a bell curve. Production would increase from zero to a peak and then fall back to zero.

It is interesting that Hubbard is used as the model for the structure of resource depletion.The history goes back further then this to 1866 and the COAL question by William Jevons and his essay The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines


Coal in truth stands not beside but entirely above all other commodities. It is the material energy of the country—the universal aid—the factor in everything we do. With coal almost any feat is possible or easy; without it we are thrown back into the laborious poverty of early times.
I.3
With such facts familiarly before us, it can be no matter of surprise that year by year we make larger draughts upon a material of such myriad qualities—of such miraculous powers. But it is at the same time impossible that men of foresight should not turn to compare with some anxiety the masses yearly drawn with the quantities known or supposed to lie within these islands.
I.4
Geologists of eminence, acquainted with the contents of our strata, and accustomed, in the study of their great science, to look over long periods of time with judgment and enlightenment, were long ago painfully struck by the essentially limited nature of our main wealth. And though others have been found to reassure the public, roundly asserting that all anticipations of exhaustion are groundless and absurd, and "may be deferred for an indefinite period," yet misgivings have constantly recurred to those really examining the question. Not long since the subject acquired new weight when prominently brought forward by Sir W. Armstrong in his Address to the British Association, at Newcastle, the very birthplace of the coal trade.

http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Jevons/jvnCQ.html

Familiar arguments different centuries.

Jevons whoever was an exceptional reasoned thinker and his legacy can be found in statistics and economics.His theory of Political economy with its laissev-faire approach suggested that "Where government policy can increase happiness in one segment of the population without diminishing that of another, it should be pursued -- albeit with caution to ensure that all indirect effects are accounted for. Trade unions, to take his famous example, fail on this criteria as their gains often come at the "expense" of consumers and non-union workers. "

The peak oil question is just that.The drivers being demand supply constraints,environmental restrictions and derivitives.

We are completing a major blog series on oil prices and supply and will be publishing soon,it brings into question of who benefits from the Peak oil scenario,and the 500 billion dollar position of a major player .

More Taxes Bigger Government =decreasing life satisfaction.

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "It is all work until you die."

Rudyard Kipling



This week treasury provided briefing papers to the Finance Minister recommending tax cuts,better qualitative measurement,and a leaner Government.

The usual diatribe resulted from Cullen,which is only he knows how to use your money.There is no meaningly objective described by the government for you to work harder,to be more productive ,or to save more.The rewards are only provided to the subsets of their electoral vote and not to the majority of taxpayers therefore reducing incentive to succeed.This also stifles savings and wealth accumulation meaning you work life quality wiil be simarly affected.IE You are going to work ,longer and harder to retire later just to maintain your present QOL

Surprise ,surprise a RED QUEEN EFFECT from a red queen government.

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen


Cullen states that no money remains to provide tax cuts,it has already been spent buying votes and funding non productive parts of goverment!It would require 4 world cups per year to move NZ into the top half of the OECD by 2011.

The Government is stifled by a lack of innovative thought,ingenuity,original policy or forward planning.It is restricted by a history teacher whose contribution to Academia was to report what happened yeaterday,not what can happen tomorrow.

The entire CINQVIRIATE of Government is only concerned by their own subsets of interest,Pork barrel politics at best,corruption at worst.

Bigger government is described as inversely detrimental to life satisfaction in a cross-section of 74 countries in this recent qualitative analysis.

This provides a test of a longstanding dispute between standard neoclassical economic theory, which predicts that government plays an unambiguously positive role for individuals' quality of life, and public choice theory, that was developed to understand why governments often choose excessive involvement and regulation, thereby harming voters' quality of life. Our results show that life satisfaction decreases with higher government spending. This negative impact of the government is stronger in countries with a leftwing median voter.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID830545_code333298.pdf?abstractid=830545&mirid=3

You make up your mind.If you are allowed.

Rt Hon Winston Peters
8/11/2005
ARCHIVE CORRESPONDENCE

Peters / NZ Ambassador to Israel

FM: Due to recent death of R.Donald I have decided to be entombed in Israel.NZ councils do not allow tombs to be built in Cemeteries.(Plans enclosed)

Tel Aviv. Building costs are expensive here due to construction boom(no pun intended)

FM: What costs would you expect?

Tel Aviv. By the scale of your plans ,it is estimated that the costs would be around 1 Milllion dollars!

FM: 1 Million for 3 days that’s outrageous !

This week the All Blacks visited the birthplace of the 1905 Captain Dave Gallaher.The strength and persona of the player and the soldier links the closeness of the day with Armistace day.

A fitting tribute can be found here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2005/10/27/srbren27.xml&sSheet=/sport/2005/10/30/ixrugu.html

The leader who was to fall at Passchendale in 1917 was a man who played the game.

They are making men where the grey stone school
Looks out on the broad green vale.
Can you hear the call? Can you hear the call?
Now, School! Now, School! Play up!
There's many a knock and many a fall
For those who follow a Rugger ball;
But hark! - can you hear it? Over all
-Now, School! Now, School! Play up!

They are fighting still to the grand old rule,
That heart and courage must never fail -
If they fall, there are more where the grey stone school
Looks out on the broad green vale.
Can you hear the call? Can you hear the call
That drowns the roar of Krupp?
There are many who fight and many who fall
Where the big guns play at the Kaiser's ball,
But hark! - can you hear it? Over all
-Now, School! Now, School! Play up!

Rugby Football by Eric Wilkinson

Therefore is the name of it called Babel

And still we stood and stared far down
Into that ember-glowing town
Which every shaft and shock of fate
Had shorn into its base.
Too lateCame carelessly Serenity.

Now torn and broken houses gaze
On the rat-infested maze
That once sent up rose-silver haze
To mingle through eternity.

The outlines, once so strongly wrought,
Of city walls, are now a thought
Or jest unto the dead who fought...
Foundation for futurity.

Deep sunk in sin, this tragic star
Sinks deeper still, and wages war
Against itself; strewn all the seas
With victims of a world disease.-
And we are left to drink the lees
Of Babel's direful prophecy.

Babel by Oswald Sitwell



Over the past two weeks nightly we have been shown the burning and rioting by gangs of youths through the outer cities of France.The blame has been pointed at the low economic participation of the emmigre , the difficulties of assimilation for the immigrants and the hard response from the Interior Minister Mr Sarkozy.

In January 2003 Jon Henley as reported in the Guardian wrote .

"Funnelled between grey tower blocks, a bitter wind shrieks across Val-Fourré's main square. The few shoppers there hug the concrete walls for shelter. Kids hang around on corners in big-logo parkas and tight woollen hats, smoking, joking, staring. Here you'll be fine, someone says. But don't go down to the end of the road, not on your own.
It is claimed that Val-Fourré is Europe's largest council estate, housing 28,000 people (officially; the real figure is far higher) from 29 different ethnic groups in high-rise, run-down blocks built in the 60s and 70s for immigrant workers at the car factories that then lined the Seine valley...... It's the end of the republican ideal. The French republic deals with citizens, not individuals. But here, people aren't citizens. They don't know what they are. Not Algerian or Moroccan or west African, but not French citizens either. They're unrecognised, unremembered and unrepresented. No wonder they rebel." http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,869803,00.html

These are only the symptoms of the underlying cause.The socialist creation of the modernist housing tenenment,the PROJECTS.The ESTATES .The CITIES. The failed social experiment that enhances crime,poverty,and disease by the failure to intergrate lower economic groups into the median classes by creating distributed colonies of a new underclass.

These high rise new towers of Babel are spread throughout the cities of Europe,and North America creating filing cabinets for the disenfranchised that allowed order to be created for the efficent ,automated standard housing system.The architectural modernism inspired by Le Corbusier was that form should follow function.The design of the building should be stuctured by what it does.The product of social necessity, not the expression or the fitness of use for the individual thus supplanting quantitative form over qualitative functuality.

We have seen some breaking of the modernist form towards the post modernist.It was described by Charles Jenck the Architectural critic as precise moment of 3.30 pm onJuly 15 1972 in St Louis ,Missouri.The demolition of the Pruitt -Igoe housing project the high rise tower of Babel.

High density low economic housing estates are a failed social experiment.The form or the style matters least in its causuality, the outcome of these agglomerations is always the same.The insertion of social housing into all the housing wealth bands will create better assimilation,diversty,and competition of individuals.It will create better education outcomes in local schooling.It is better to raise the bar not lower it.

WELL KNOWN WELLINGTON AMNESIAC SEES DERELICTS EVERYWHERE