frogblog

Simon Upton writes a good critique of New Zealand’s climate change situation in today’s Dom Post. It must be amazing for the former National Party Minister who got us involved with the Kyoto process in the first place to watch as once again, we go back to square one in terms of our response to […]

Why would someone who believes climate change is a hoax and human activity is not contributing to climate change, want a carbon tax? Why would you tax fossil fuels if you don’t believe they are doing any harm? Why would a party that has campaigned on a carbon tax since 1993 and accepted […]

Rarely are so few asked to do so much with so little for the benefit of so many, who are ungrateful. That’s how I would describe Pharmac’s calling. Today’s Sunday Star Times spends an inordinate amount of column inches discussing the challenges Pharmac faces. Or does it?
The unattributed comment piece on A11, “Pharmac’s $635 million […]

I thought I would kick off the weekend with a topic that is sure to challenge the imagination and bring all sorts of ideas - good and crazy - out into the open.
So just what is The Singularity? The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) describes it thus:
The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human […]

Yesterday, Greenpeace International published its Guide to Greener Electronics, and called on all manufacturers to do more to respond to climate change.
Of the 18 market-leading companies included in the Guide, only Sharp, Fujitsu Siemens and Philips show full support for the necessary cuts of 30 percent for industrial nations by 2020. Only HP and Philips […]

Obama telling it like it is and as we have always said it is:
My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process. That will start with a federal cap-and-trade system. We’ll establish strong annual targets that […]

John Key has poured cold water on the APEC meeting’s joint statement, which expressed confidence that “we can overcome this crisis in a period of 18 months.” He was correct to do so, although he probably doesn’t arrive at that conclusion by the same path I do.
The fundamentals of the global economy are not sound. […]

I laughed out loud while reading The Guardian Weekly today. In the Diversion section, readers are asked to send in answers to questions posed the previous week. The question?
If matter can neither be destroyed nor created, then how can money?
Among the very witty replies was this one from kiwi David Sinclair of Warkworth:
While matter can […]

Thanks Rodney. Thanks John. From Scoop:
Specialist news service Carbon News this morning reports broker Nigel Brunel, of OMF Financial, as saying New Zealand is “a bit of a joke in Europe at the moment” following the National-Act agreement to suspend the emissions trading scheme.
“This was New Zealand’s opportunity to reinvent its financial markets by being […]

I’m not sure how I missed it, but F&B have launched a new blog. Yesterday’s post asked a very pertinent question:
As rule-maker & whistle-blower, one of the first questions facing the new Minister of Fisheries – Phil Heatley - is how many sea-lions can be killed this season?
Since 2003, a more information rich but highly […]