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| COMMENT:
It is clear that Pakeha "experts" are either ignorant or deliberately ignoring
what is happening. Damage control is applied by attributing recent disasters to climate change | warming. That may be
so on a global scale but avoids the question of why these particular events began with TWM's announcement of concentrating on storms
and floods rather than drought. It should also be noted that TWM was experimenting
with severe storms and floods well before 2000. The first public reports
were made in 2000 and again in 2003. How will Carbon react after the third and fourth major flood? TWM confirms that it is working on these. (22.07.04) UPDATE: Carbon can add a fifth major flood to the total, all within 15 months. More to come. (16.06.05) UPDATE: Now, another group is claiming that there has been no climate warming in New Zealand. So, it is quite obvious that the "experts" haven't a clue about the real cause of recent disasters. ( |
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| Second flood 'does not necessarily signal worse problems' | |||
| NZ Herald 21.07.2004 1.00pm |
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| A second major flood
in New Zealand within five months is seen as adding urgency to a review of
river control issues, but not necessarily as indicating the country is facing
a worsening problem, Environment Ministry chief executive Barry Carbon
says. He said there were
reasons to look at the issue, but New Zealand was always going to be a country
with earthquakes and floods. "It is unusual
to have two so close but that might just be nature," he said... On National Radio today Mr Carbon
said work by the Environment Ministry and regional government reviewing the
system for controlling rivers had been made more urgent by having the two
events so close to each other. Heavy rain over the weekend caused widespread flooding through parts of the Bay of Plenty, just five months after much of the lower North Island took a battering from heavy rain and wind... The biggest change in the weather had been an increase in variability. Some countries had needed to reconsider the design of all their dams and stopbanks and in many cases had required extra measures be taken. "We're a long, long way from making that decision in New Zealand right now," Mr Carbon said... Niwa hydrologist Charles Pearson said... A weather pattern present during the 1980s and 1990s meant the Bay of Plenty had fewer floods than it might have previously. That pattern may have switched around since 2000, meaning flooding could become more common in the Bay of Plenty in the next 20 years, he told NZPA today... COMMENT: Wonder what the "experts" have to say about the latest sequence of major floods in Northland. (10.08.07) |
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| We're watching our future washing away | |||
| NZ Herald 24.07.2004 COMMENT: That will continue to be the situation until Pakeha govt accepts that Maori have unconditional title | rights to the Foreshore and Seabed. The use of natural forces to reclaim and protect Indigenous ownership of natural resources in and around Aotearoa NZ, is highly appropriate. (24.07.04) |
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New Zealand's landscape has been built up by earthquakes and volcanoes and washed down by storms and floods... Three-quarters of our rocks - an even higher proportion in the North Island - are soft sedimentary material laid down mostly by water on floodplains and out at sea, and later lifted up by earthquakes. This young, soft and vulnerable land is then lashed by all the forces of the weather generated in the vast Pacific Ocean. As Dr Warren Gray, a meteorological hazards researcher for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, puts it: "The difference between the feel of weather here and in, say, Britain is that there is a much more pumped-up energetic feel to our weather systems. Our weather systems charge through with force." Professor Terry Healy, of Waikato University, says we have made things worse for ourselves by cutting down our trees, reducing the forest cover from 85 per cent of the land before humans arrived to 29 per cent - including plantations which we periodically chop down... Even by our usually volatile standards, says Graham Hancox of the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, two big floods in a few months - first in the Manawatu and now in the Bay of Plenty - is "a little bit unprecedented"... On top of that very long-term trend, areas such as the Bay of Plenty on the east coast of the North Island can expect more storms during the next 30 years... So we are going to be vulnerable. We can plant trees and cut back our carbon emissions to save our great-grandchildren from the worst, but for many years ahead the die is already cast. In the meantime, as Gray says, all we can do is manage the risk... Herald Feature: Bay of Plenty flood |
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