3rd March

The storm that arrived Saturday night lingers on still. Monday night was the worst of it so far, trees blown down, power lines broken, roads flooded, rivers overflowing. Being in a slight hollow and protected from the worst of it I didn’t really notice anything, other than the rain, till I went out yesterday.

It turned into another one of those days when I felt by the end of it I should really have stayed in bed, or gone walkabout, or anything. As is becoming usual, the little truck refused to start, and Telekom weren’t co-operative with letting phone calls or texts go through, so it wasn’t till nearly midday that Tiffany and Adrian turned up here. Someone has “borrowed” the truck batteries, again, and it took a while to get things organised. My only bitch about it was that Tiff and Adrian spent the morning collecting everyone and taking them to Ranandi before coming to get me, which made it nearly 11am. As I said to Tiff, if they’d collected me first, we could have had new batteries and been on our way instead of Adrians plan of collecting everyone, then trying to sort out the day. As it was, by the time we got the batteries into the truck, it was nearly 12.30, and everyone had given up waiting at Ranandi and gone home.

The weather didn’t help, it started off almost fine, as in not really raining, but got progressively worse during the day. According to Solomon Island Weather, we have a full week of this, and into the weekend.

We still haven’t any water supply, from letters in the Solomon Star, it has been 4 weeks now for most of Honiara to be without water, and the best SIWA can do is have an intermittent supply operating to some areas, and as you might have guessed already, my little settlement isn’t one of them. My collection of worldly possessions is increasing, I now have 4 10 litre buckets that work as my daily water supply, one for a wash, one has clothes soaking, one for cooking and drinking, and a spare for when it is raining too heavily to go outside and refill them all. Although I’ve been putting the empties on the steps and letting the rain fill them instead of using the water tank.

The weather isn’t helping with food prices either, everything has gone up by a couple of dollars in the market, due to the fields and gardens being flooded, and lack of transport for a lot of the growers to get to the markets.

We have another meeting with the Japanese Consul today, trying to convince her that the Nursery will still go ahead, despite the obstructions from Dept Lands, Council and Forestry. I’m becoming extremely jaded about the whole thing, well, a continuation of how I felt before I went to New Zealand. It all revolves around personalities, or people abusing their position, or in some cases, just because the person involved has wantok who have a grudge. We have all of our funding through, other the Japanese Grass Roots, which gives us more than enough to get started, if we had the lease signed and agreed at Ranandi.

For anyone interested in the ongoing AGW doomsday IPCC bs, Willis Eschenbach has had a couple of excellent posts in http://wattsupwiththat.com, all well worth reading, including his reply to Judith Curry.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/25/judith-i-love-ya-but-youre-way-wrong/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/

http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2010/02/whats-the-problem/#more-3837

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/28/sense-and-sensitivity/#more-16830

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/01/a-tornado-free-february-first-time-ever/

Photos will be included soon, of various things, once I know that I won’t lose internet connection halfway through uploading, as has been happening all week so far. I get a touch annoyed when I lose the connection for the 5th or 6th time, always just before an upload is complete.

Evening. Another day in paradise over with. High points, Chie at the Japanese Consul is happy with where we are at with the land issue, it’s between Hasting Deering and Lands now, so it may be resolved. We’ve got the funding money in term deposit for 3 months waiting for approval to come through, we may as well get a bit of interest on it. The Japanese Grass Roots Funding will be through about July, so for once the future looks a bit brighter now.

I finally caught up with SI Quarantine this afternoon, and to say they were helpful is an understatement. Having a bit of experience with MAF in NZ with plant quarantine requirements helped, I was able to show what I expected, and knew, the outcome was that SI Quarantine will be recommending approval for us to put a Plant Quarantine Facility into the Nursery, plus they are going to do all the specifications and requirements for us to follow. I’ll be emailing Malcolm at Lyndale Nurseries tomorrow to let him know things are slowly moving here. I told him 3 months when I caught up with him the other week, which would seem to be about right before we are organised enough to start importing.

One of the good things about having our own quarantine area is that we can be bulking up while the plants are still held, then have a large amount of stock ready to go once we are over the 6 month quarantine period. If it all goes to plan, I know, I shouldn’t use that word, we may need half our area for quarantine, and the rest for normal nursery production, seed raising/propagation etc.

I’m still chasing Island Enterprises for prices, 3 months now and still nothing.

The weather continues to be abysmal, well, tropical weather anyway, clear periods with heavy rain, and a hot humid steamy atmosphere inbetween the rain. The little truck has now been diagnosed with a primary fuel pump malfunction, not dirty injectors or faulty glow plugs. It would all be very nice to think this means it will be running again soon, but experience is a harsh teacher. I’m giving it a week till the next problem. And I’m an optimist. Still haven’t got brake pads yet, the wipers work when it’s not raining, which resulted in me having to throw buckets of water at the windscreen this afternoon while the mechanic tried to find if water was getting into the wiring somewhere. They still don’t work. I’ve got used to driving in the rain with my head out the drivers side window, well, the space where the window should be. Did I mention the glass fell inside the door on Monday? It may be fixed this week.

Further to my mention about AGW, I see in the Solomon Star today that a family in Brazil(?) committed suicide/infanticide because of their fears about global warming and the lack of action by any government. As if the hypocrisy and lies weren’t enough from the IPCC, Jones, Mann, Briffa Hansen, Strong et al, the scare mongering, the alarmist threats and doomsday scenarios, for anyone to kill their children, and themselves over something that is finally being shown to be a load of old cobblers leaves their blood squarely at the feet of the IPCC, and all the sycophants and left wing lentil munching looney sock and sandal wearing one world government idiots. Those ones that want to turn the world into some primitive feral unpopulated wildlife park. I could go on, but there is no point, it has become a religion, not science, and the obfuscations, the denials, the refusal to show the methods, the adjustment of data that doesn’t fit the hypothesis, the discarding of everything that contradicts the belief, it all becomes a really bad joke. And this is what governments are basing taxes, energy projects, future growth trends on? If, as seems likely we are going into the next 30 year cool phase, I’d be building more power stations, cranking up the coal production, finding more oil reserves, and starting on construction of a few nuclear power stations, even in New Zealand.

All the people who have invested in viticulture, and dairy farming in the South Island in New Zealand may find the past 30 year warm cycle is coming to an end, and all their investments will be buried under the snow. I may be wrong, heaven forbid, but if, as Willis Eschenbach has demonstrated, the earth has its own built in climate control, that doesn’t depend on CO2, and the past climate record shows a strong 60 year cycle of 30/30 warm/cold periods.

As most know, I’ve been involved with www.scamwarners.com for some time, and AGW and the IPCC meet all the standard warning signs of an email scam. There is a need for urgency, no one else must be consulted, everything depends on urgent action, it has all been worked out, let others make the decisions, just send money, or in the case of AGW, let your government and the UN take your money and drive you into a cold bitter world without any hope. Add in the transfer of huge amounts of money that will beggar the developed countries, all to keep 3rd world countries at the poverty level, both in energy, and resources. How will giving Pacific Island Countries $20 billion help stop unsubstantiated sea level rise? If the money was given to stop those countries polluting their own shorelines, stop them destroying the coral reefs, decimating the fish stocks that sustain the reef, stop cutting down forest cover on islands and planting bloody oil palm plantations that at best provide a few employment opportunities, at worst destroy the land and all local agriculture, making everyone dependant on imported food, it might have some relevance.

But in close observation, 90% of any of that $20 billion will be lost as it passes through all the sticky fingers, the corrupt political systems, the sheer blatant theft that is endemic in practically all 3rd world countries. Which is the reason they are 3rd world, with all the problems. For all the money and aid poured into the bottomless hole that these countries are, where is the clean water, the removal of malaria, typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, yaws, tsetse fly, the improvement in peoples life expectancy, the education of the people?

My list of people to be up against the wall when the revolution comes grows longer by the day. Lawyers and politicians are still first, the looney leftwing lentil munchers are next. Anyone involved with the IPCC, CRU, GISS, NOAA, NIWA, any journalist who has ever copied some garbage from the IPCC and promoted the whole stinking mess. Not that I’m upset.