Thursday 30th September

We’ve finally made a concerted start on the propagation house. Admittedly that corner of the field where everything is going looks a little like Woodhenge, but some order is discernible amongst the posts standing all over the place.






The top plate is on, Andrew has made the jig frame for the roof trusses, all the posts are in place and hopefully it is only a week or so away from finished. The container has arrived from Brisbane, so next week is going to be busy with shade cloth, sorting out the jumble of parts and piping for the irrigation, installing water tanks and wiring. Along with the potting bench, cutting bench and general sorting out of what the hell is this and where does it go.

We are going to make a start on putting the big posts in for the shade area, only 4 have been delivered so far, it isn’t a size the local timber yards carry as stock, so we have had to wait for suitable trees to be delivered before it can be cut. I may have to use the crane to get them in position, once they are upright, there is no way we can lift and move them if needed.

We had thunder for most of the afternoon, with a decidedly leaden sky, but it didn’t start raining till just after 4pm, then we had everything come down at once for a while. All over with by 5pm, but it did leave the air a lot cleaner and cooler for a while.

Wednesday 29th September

It must be my week for trying very hard to keep my mouth shut.

The 2 tonne truck arrived at work Monday with a broken passenger side mirror, just the glass luckily not the whole arm and everything, and the front suspension appears to have collapsed. The leaf springs are past horizontal and have a definite convex curve at the top over the axle.

Mirror was SBD$350 to replace, I’m still trying to get prices for 2 sets of leaf springs, plus shock absorbers and the fitting of. Best guess would be close to SBD$20,000 which we don’t have, so it looks like we’ll be down to one truck again, and the same person thinking he will be driving it as well. I still haven’t had an explanation for how either happened, I guess it just gets filed in the don’t ask, won’t tell box. I did try asking, but that started to lead to “words” so I didn’t push it.

I’m past getting annoyed about it now, the chainsaw got “borrowed” and came back in pieces with a seized piston and bent con rod, I told the guys this morning that if they didn’t have their new Hi-Vis jackets they couldn’t work on the road, so they would be going home without pay. So we were a few crew short today, while some went home to try and find the vests that they were meant to have left at work. Andrew is away this week, his Grandmother died the weekend, so there is no one responsible enough to check the tools and vests back in. And that includes the supervisor.

My post from Monday made it into WUWT as a header for most of today, only the bit about Honiara Airport, not the whole rambling rant thankfully. So that was my highpoint for the week so far. Now I’m expected to somehow get permission to stand by the Weather Station while a plane is arriving and departing with a thermometer to see just how much effect the exhaust has at that distance. Which is going to be interesting, getting a digital thermometer that is reasonably accurate here is going to be the hard part. So long as it registers changes the actual calibration isn’t a concern, it’s more to see if there is an effect.

I’m going to try working through the Environment Department, and the Weather office, I know a couple of people in both that may help get permission.

Andrew the builder starts tomorrow on the Propagation House roof. So you can expect another flurry of photos as it takes shape. I’ve still got 5 posts to go in, due to the normal Solomon time work ethic, they should be in tomorrow which makes them almost on time instead of Monday. We have a few of the big posts for the shade cloth, 10’ of 8” x 8” vasa timber. Definitely 4 person lift for each one, I can just get one off the ground at one end up to chest height, anymore than that and I’d be fooling myself. As for the sling it over my shoulder and walk away, I’m not even going to let that thought cross my mind. I’ve still got muscle damage from Ireland carrying railway sleepers on a landscape job when I popped a disc out of my spine. That hurt.

Kim is going back to Canberra the weekend to watch the re-match between St Kilda and Collingwood, after the draw last weekend. As they say, AFL isn’t a religion, it’s more serious than that. I tend to agree, if it was Geelong playing I’d be extremely tempted to go along as well. I miss the MCG as it used to be in the 60’s and early 70’s though, with the streamers all over the sidelines, the sheer bloodlust and noise from the crowd. It’s not for the fainthearted players when you get to a final at the MCG, if you can’t handle the stress, you don’t deserve to be there. 100,000 people screaming for 2 hours makes a great atmosphere. Or something.

Monday 27th September

By now everyone should have gathered that I’m not exactly enamoured of the religion known as AGW. I’ve been reading and following WUWT for a long time, I do read the garbage at Real Climate, more for the laughs, and just to see how snarky and childish Gavin Schmidt can get whenever he is proved wrong.

Anyway, Anthony Watts at WUWT is compiling a list of USHNC Weather stations in the USA, photographing, measuring, and checking them against the guidelines for accurate siting. If anyone thinks weather stations are sacrosanct, and are in carefully preserved and pristine areas, take a look at the sub-stations file in WUWT Projects. (Link to Surface stations at the bottom) From this project, it has been suggested we start compiling weather stations from around the world. So it was out to Henderson Field Airport I went this afternoon, camera ready and waiting. I knew where the weather station is, I’ve seen it often enough flying in and out.

Remember that this is the weather station that reports the temperature that is used for the Western Pacific region based on the Solomon Islands. And this is compiled into the reports that go to make up the “Global Average temperature” which was the foundation for John Keys idiotic acceptance and passing of the ETS scheme in New Zealand.

Therefore, you would think that surely this station would be in a position where it can accurately and consistently measure the temperatures, wind, rain etc. In all fairness it is in a good position, away from most of the buildings, but still has the tarmac, and a couple of buildings to the Northeast. It would rate about 4 on the USHCN Station Site Quality scale for adjustments, which means the measurements need to be adjusted DOWN by 2 – 3 *C.

Class 1: Flat and horizontal ground surrounded by a clear surface with a slope below 1/3 (less than 19º). Grass/low vegetation ground cover less than 10 centimeters high. Sensors located at least 100 meters from artificial heating or reflecting surfaces, such as buildings, concrete surfaces, and parking lots. Far from large bodies of water, except if it is representative of the area, and then located at least 100 meters away. No shading for a sun elevation greater than 3
degrees.
Class 2: Same as Class 1 with the following differences. Surrounding vegetation less than 25 centimeters. Artificial heating sources within 30 meters. No shading for a sun elevation greater than 5º.
Class 3: (error 1ºC) Same as Class 2, except no artificial heating sources within 10 meters.
Class 4: (error greater than 2ºC) Artificial heating sources less than 10 meters.
Class 5: (error greater than 5ºC) Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such as a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface.

Add in the effect you will see in the photos below, and you will understand why I’m so bloody well sceptical about the whole con game Al Gore, CRU, GISS, HADCRUT, James Hansen, Phil Jones, James Connelly, Michael Mann, et al have perpetuated. And that is without going on to the IPCC and Patchuri.

It is hot here, 30*C is probably a good guess at the average year round daytime temp, we do get hotter, we can get really cooler like 26*C, but if you say 30*C no one is going to violently disagree.

If we look at the weather station, it is positioned at the corner of the landing strip, and the apron in front of the terminal. Planes exit the runway, roll down the short connecting road into the terminal area.

As you can see in this next set.


As the planes roll onto the apron, they turn slowly, and the exhaust points directly at the weather station. I’m only a dumbass maintenance fitter/ welder/ horticulturalist/ teacher, but I have suspicions about just how accurate the sensors in the Stevenson Screen are going to be after being subjected to several jet exhausts a day, both on arrival and again on departure.


Remember these are the instruments used to determine if the tropics are warming in line with AGW doomsday projections. And on which all the carbon taxes, ETS schemes, carbon trading, electricity pricing are based, and the justification for cluttering the landscape with grossly inefficient wind turbines. And don’t even try to tell me they are efficient. If they were they wouldn’t need subsidies, tax breaks, and a tax on other forms of energy production.

We’ve already had the same argument in New Zealand with NIWA and Salinger fabricating and altering data to suit his own agenda. Quotes from Quadrant On Line related to this,

Quote: The official archivist of New Zealand’s climate records, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), offers top billing to its 147-year-old national mean temperature series (the “NIWA Seven-station Series” or NSS). This series shows that New Zealand experienced a twentieth-century warming trend of 0.92°C.
The official temperature record is wrong. The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady at 12.6°C +/- 0.5°C for a century and a half. NIWA’s doctoring of that data is indefensible.
The NSS is the outcome of a subjective data series produced by a single Government scientist, whose work has never been peer-reviewed or subjected to proper quality checking. It was smuggled into the official archive without any formal process. It is undocumented and sans metadata, and it could not be defended in any court of law. Yet the full line-up of NIWA climate scientists has gone to extraordinary lengths to support this falsified warming and to fiercely attack its critics.
Quote : Global warming during the 20th Century was 0.6C, with a margin of error of +/-0.2C. The Southern Hemisphere warming was less than half that level. But New Zealand warming, according to NIWA, was almost twice the global average - and with no error margins mentioned.
Referring to the NIWA web page, one finds that this major warming trend is the product of a single study involving only 7 temperature stations - out of the 238 stations which currently report to NIWA. In response to a request under the Official information Act, NIWA has disclosed that this study was undertaken as part of a student’s thesis some 30 years ago.
NIWA has no record of how the NSS came to be in their computers. The only reasonable inference is that the student himself, one Jim Salinger, must have added it when he became NIWA’s Principal Scientist many years later.
Quote: “About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.
The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming..”
So the NIWA warming trend was revealed as entirely man-made, and all within NIWA’s own office. There was no external peer-review. To this day there hasn’t even been an internal review or any form of quantity control. There is no documentation.

And on this the whole stupid tax increasing cost increasing ETS scheme was foisted on New Zealand.

If anyone is taking notice, Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs’) have been dropping in the past few years, and with the La Nina starting to take effect SSTs’ have dropped even faster in the last few months. If anyone can remember New Zealand in the 1950’s and early 60’s, when we had snow falls, ok, not much, but still snow, on the Bombay Hills south of Auckland, and frosts and fog throughout Auckland, guess what, we’ll be seeing them again soon.

And all those vineyards and dairy farms in Southland? If you have shares in them, I’d advise selling out now while it’s good, I have a feeling dairy and grapes don’t do so well when it is below freezing for months at a time and snow is everywhere.

Another 5 years without disruptions, and the Pacific Decahedral Oscillation (PDO) turns negative in 2015 to match the Atlantic Decahedral Oscillation which is negative now, and then we’ll see some great winters. It’s time to be building a couple of new power stations in New Zealand, we have all the coal, if we don’t keep selling it to the Chinese, to keep New Zealand energy rich for a few hundred years until we get a couple of thorium reactors sited. Hell, we could get the Chinese to build a few coal fired stations for us, they are commissioning a new one every few days at the moment, fired by Australian and New Zealand coal. Guess which country isn’t going to be short of energy, and cheap energy as well.

Add in the extremely low Cycle 24 that the Sun is in at present, and the Maunder Minimum looks likely, although my guess is just the normal 30 year cooling period. We’re about 10 years into it now, or close, so about 2050 will see another warming trend start hopefully. I doubt I’ll be here to see it, but I hope Damian, Hayden, Jesse Kahu all remember and don’t get sucked in by the next wave of hysteria when it happens

Ok not my usual post, but after getting the pics today, I felt like having a rant.

Thanks to
http://wattsupwiththat.com/ Anthony Watts.

www.SurfaceStations.org

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/ Jeff Id at The AirVent

Willis Eschenbach for numerous articles, papers, and informed and witty discussions.

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

Numerous other websites, people, articles, that I should mention but I’ve lost the addresses, titles, headings etc for.

Saturday 25th September

I’m getting into another depressive state again. The frustration level is getting past my limit I think. We can get the parts for the mulcher, in maybe a month or possibly six weeks. They’ll be coming from Melbourne, via Port Moresby, then another ship to here. And please don’t ask about air freighting them. I know it’s only a 12 inch piece of metal and a drive wheel about 6 inches in diameter, but the airfreight worked out to be more than the parts cost to start with. I think we’re doomed to remain a developing country for the foreseeable future.

Al sent me a couple of cds, they arrived yesterday, thanks Al. One of Julie Fowlis, I vaguely remember her at RunRig in Scotland, before I ended up in Inverness Hospital, great cd, cuilidh, 3 disc special edition. And the Screaming Orphans, Circles cd. And Al got it signed by the Orphans as well!!!! Now I have to get to the USA to see them live and get another few cds.

Julie Fowlis cuilidh cd.

Screaming Orphans CD cover, Thanks for the note girls.

Al and the Orphans, Milwaukee Irishfest.



I don’t know how Solomon Post works, they are totally different to any other post office I have ever dealt with anywhere. I’ve had parcels sent to me in Australia, Ireland, and all picked up with no bother. Here, you get the third degree, “what’s in this?” “I don’t know” “Who Sent it?” “can I have a look at the return address?” And then they charge you for it as well. The parcel Mum and Rose sent up last year for my birthday got spread out, they wanted $40 duty for each packet of cigarettes, (2) then they charged me $38 anyway, when I said they could keep the cigarettes, I can buy them cheaper in Honiara. I have no idea what the charges are for, I used to think the postage covered everything, but not here. Anyway, $15 later I got the cds off them.

Needless to say, they have been playing most of last night and today.

We still haven’t heard back from Japan about the funding for the building, due to Planning changing it. And no one in Planning is prepared to put anything in writing about the decision either, so we are at a stalemate. I can’t see it going ahead before my contract expires, which isn’t helping my mood. I’m meant to be running classes this month till December, we haven’t water, toilets, books, classroom or something approximating a classroom. And the open sided event tent is not a classroom for 18 people. It won’t hold 12 people let along 18 plus tables etc. I can’t see the classes happening either at this rate. We can get a toilet put in for $26,000SBD< but that wasn’t acceptable and we were told to price a portaloo, like the construction site and event ones. Which from the local guy costs $800 per day, but we got a special price, cleaning only for $500 per day, $15,000 per month, which we would need till the building went up, so there is 4 months minimum if we started building now, or $60,000 gone anyway and nothing to show at the end. So we priced buying one from Australia. Remarkably cheap, it came to $7,000SBD, plus freight. But then, it has to be emptied everyday, so we are back to the $500 per day cleaning charge.

The $26,000 gets us a small building, on a platform, with an inground septic tank, and it’s ours. We’ll need one in the nursery anyway, I can’t see the nursery crew, the office staff, and the trainees all sharing the 2 toilets that are going into the office block.

But I can’t see agreement being reached on that in the near future either.

I may have the nursery structure in place before February, after that, I think I’ll leave it for someone else to organise, I’m just worn out dealing with the delays, frustrations and general lack of responsibility for anything here. Not having water to the house for the last week hasn’t helped either.
At this stage of the contract I’m meant to be at the completed and taking time out to oversee, instead I’m still dealing with the same problems that were here when I arrived. Nothing seems to get resolved, it’s all a lot of hand waving, toktok, and maybe next week ia? How I’m meant to train nursery staff when I don’t have a nursery is my main concern. There is no way I can have anyone trained in the 5 months remaining to run it. My 2 good ladies have left, the new ones aren’t even up to basic nursery worker stage yet.

I’d go outside and scream, but all it will do is frighten the fruit bats in the mango trees.

The good thing is that it has been raining nearly every day, not the tropical downpour stage yet, but still heavy for an hour or so each evening and morning.

Thursday 22nd September

I have got to cut down on the amount of rice I eat, which is going to be awkward as it is about all I can afford. Weighed myself today, I’m back to 83 kg, about 10kg more than I should be. L That’s the trouble with a high carbohydrate diet. I’ll have to start having more fruit meals, until I get tired of pawpaw, banana and pineapple salads. Add in some boiled/poached eggs for variety, I’ll try it for a few weeks anyway. If I can cut out 2 or 3 rice meals a week to start with it will help.

End of the week arriving, and still waiting for the parts for the mulcher to be ordered. I went in today to Farmset, they are still looking for the part number, my suggestion was forget the part number, you have the machine model number, it only has one main shaft, and bearings, and pulley, just order those. But no, we have to have the part number. Whatever happened to standardisation? You would think that a machine made in the thousands would have uniformity of parts. Well, I think it would, but not here. I’ve written to MTD.Ltd again to get the part number for Farmset to order the shaft, if I don’t do it, they certainly aren’t. The next step is to get an account with MTD and order it ourselves. And cut Farmset out of what could be a nice little earner for them being as we will probably be buying a larger mulcher next year.

Adrian arrived yesterday, Don Bosco Training School where he is currently hanging out, has a Caterpillar backhoe, with a scored and damaged hydraulic arm. They can’t get it repaired here, all of those facilities went in the civil war, so for me spending about 10 minutes online looking, he gave me a new shirt. Much appreciated as well. Found a replacement part for them from UKW in Shepparton Victoria, whether or not they can afford it is another matter, but they know where to get it from now.

We have the timber ordered for the roof of the propagation building finally, Tiffs brother is going to build it as soon as we get the materials, he figures about a week to complete. I hope it looks like I imagine it will, thatch roof open sides, it’s not really all that big, 7 metres by 10 metres, the roof pitch will be fairly high though to give the runoff for the rain. It’s still bigger than some of the houses people live in here though.

Still haven’t got water at Ranadi yet, nor toilets, power shifted, access gate, fence up, but I must be acclimatising, I’m not getting too stressed about it. It will happen, just not to my time frame.

I think the dry season has petered out, we’ve had rain most days this week, this morning was a good downpour about 5am, for an hour or so. Which keeps the day a bit cooler, but the humidity higher. So you don’t really notice the difference between it being only 30*C instead of 35*C because the humidity is about 80%. It’s been a thick cloying clammy hot day again. Another month or so till the rains really arrive, and then it will be floods, washouts, and landslips again.

Zoe was asking after my geckos today, and I forgot to tell her. I’ve got 3 of them back in the main room, 1 large one, about 4 inches, and 2 small ones about an inch long. There is one that lives in the bathroom, and another that lives in my bedroom. It’s taken them a while to come back, after me being away for a month during June.

My compost mix seems to be lacking nitrogen, or else it is still a bit fresh to use. Everything is growing in it, but not well, and looking decidedly pale. The crew got me another dozen bags of chicken manure today, I’ve got 2 bags tipped into a 44 gal drum filled with water, once that has had a chance to ferment, I’ll dilute it down and try liquid feeding the plants. When I say filled with water, the 2 bags of manure nearly filled the drum, there was about 6 inches of headroom left, but it did soak up a lot of water. It will be a strong brew though, high dilution needed.

I’m going to try some of the brewery waste mix next week, to see if there is any difference in growth rate and appearance.

Then I’ll try the brewery waste/chicken manure/sawdust mix, although that hasn’t had time to decompose yet. It will be another few weeks till we can use it.

St Kilda/Collingwood at the MCG Saturday, I hope St Kilda win, nothing like seeing the bloody Magpies get beaten. Plus it will make Kim happy at work, she supports St Kilda.

Tuesday 21st September

I ended up taking a mental health day yesterday as I noted. Not that it improved my mental health, but it got rid of the fever.

I should have taken today off as well, it didn’t help at all by going in to work. Although Tiffs brother arrived and can start on the thatch roof for the propagation house after Wednesday, so I need to get the last few posts in place, and one extra one he wants in the centre to run the angle supports from. I’m hoping it will look good, well, it should, but you know that difference that can creep in between what you see in your mind and the grim stark reality, a bit like the difference between the gorgeous lady you met last night at the bar you can’t remember the name of, let alone the city, and how did this harridan appear in your bed the next morning? Girls, you can change it around to suit yourself.

As a good friend once told me many years ago, always drink at a bar with ugly barmaids, when they start to look good it is time to go home.

But that is getting us away from the day. Adrian came in about midday, he’d driven past the lift truck, they were working outside #9 pruning, and lifting the rubbish cage up with the crane. Which sounds normal, apart from not having the hydraulic arms extended out, and the truck being on a 45* lean with one set of wheels off the ground and the tray twisted. So he’d gone back and after a few words got it sorted with the arms out, of course the timber I had in the truck to sit the hydraulic rams on had long vanished for firewood, so it took some time to find anything suitable. But they got it set up level finally and finished.

Then they got back to the site about 4ish, and said the crane wasn’t working. Adrian had already told me about the morning, so I went over the hydraulics etc, and found the safety mechanism had cut in and shut the hydraulics off. I didn’t show anyone where or how to reset, I can see what will happen next time if they know how to override it.

Did I mention the wheelbarrows yet? We bought 2 new wheelbarrows a while back, $1200 or so each, not too bad quality, but certainly not good contractors type. We have or had, several wheels left over from the older wheelbarrows that have either been damaged and destroyed, broken frames etc, which I had earmarked to make my nursery trolleys with, that have shrunk to only 4 left out of the 8 we had. Plus the old trays and some of the broken frames have also vanished. Ok, I know one of the crew has taken them home to rebuild a barrow for himself, which is fine, they were too light for us anyway which is why they got damaged so quickly.

Getting back to the new wheelbarrows. I noticed last week that they had only one stay on the front, instead of 2, which didn’t impress me at all, we put heavy loads into them, and now all it takes is a bump and an off centre load and the tray rips off the frame as the front isn’t supported any longer. I had a quiet word with the person concerned and they said they had been told it was ok to take one stay off each barrow to build their own one at home. I’m not impressed.

If anyone reads WUWT www.wattsupwiththat.com, the lead article at the moment is the eco-fascist greens in Western Australia basically bankrupting a farmer off his farm and land. Ok, it is a feedlot system, I’m not all that keen on them, but we have to raise food somehow, and the people involved in this one were doing everything by the book , and more, until the ecofascists started changing the rules and regulations retrospectively.

I can see the same thing happening in New Zealand with the stupid bloody ETS scheme, it won’t be financially viable to be a farmer raising livestock, with the emission charges, so there will be bankruptcies, more farms sold to the Chinese who are busily buying up farmland around the world to provide for themselves, and in a few years time everyone will be wondering WTF went on. All from some stupid failed US politician clamouring about non existent AGW, corrupt or idiot 3 rd rate weather men calling themselves Climate Scientists without being able to show any warming unless they adjust every temperature reading either down for the years before 1940 and up since then.

And stupid bloody John Key falling for it, and not having the guts to call the left wing looney lentil munching sock and sandal Malthusian Erlich inspired genocidal idiots in the green party and its ilk, to task over the lack of actual evidence, and NO, a computer generated game is not proof. You feed garbage data in, you get garbage data out, GIGO.

On another note entirely, I’ve been meaning to make ginger beer, the real stuff, not the tinned/bottled stuff, although Macs and Bundaberg are quite nice, I’m after the real exploding in the cupboard, fizzing over the room type of home made ginger beer, and I keep forgetting to get online and find a recipe. Finally did so today, and it is this one,

In a large preserving jar add:
1 dessert spoon of sugar
1 dessert spoon of ground ginger
A squeeze of lemon juice
2 cups of water.
This will be your plant…put on the lid and store it in a cool dark place.
The next day, add 1 dessert spoon of ginger.
On the following day, add 1 dessert spoon of sugar – continue to alternate these ingredients for the rest of the week, till you end up adding ginger on the 7th day.
Now, later on the same day, you’re ready to bottle.
In a large pot, or preserving pan, add 2 cups of sugar and 4 cups of hot water.
Stir till all the sugar is dissolved. Add the juice of 2 lemons. Gently strain in the liquid off your plant.
Then add 12 cups of cold water.
Mix well and filter through a fine tea strainer into bottles…makes about a dozen 340ml bottles.
Halve the sediment left in your plant jar, add 2 cups of cold water, 1 dessert spoon of sugar, 1 dessert spoon of ginger, a squeeze of lemon and continue as before for another week…and so on…
Keep your bottled ginger beer for a week or 2 before you drink it, so it has a little time to ferment.
You can either throw out the half of the plant, or start another jar going, or give it away to anyone who wants to try making it as well.
It is recommended to really chill the bottles well before opening.

Copied shamelessly from this blog http://www.keepinitkiwi.co.nz/blog/category/kiwi-chinwag/ which is the recipe I remember growing up with the starter in a jar being fed everyday for a week, then Mum bottling and me using the cap press, (we got high tech instead if using a hammer to put the tops on) then hearing a bottle or two explode in the cupboard in the laundry a week or so later.

Great stuff. I’ve got the starter going now, another week and I’ll be bottling some to try out.

Sunday 19th September

Well, I had my laugh for the week, I needed one anyway, Geelong got bounced by bloody Collingwood, so we didn’t make the Finals.

Adrian, the bane of my existence, hasn’t been around much the last few weeks, he was saying a while back he was feeling just a bit crook lately, so when he started getting bad stomach cramps, and crapping blood, he finally got himself off to the RAMSI Health Centre.

I know I shouldn’t have laughed, the poor guy was really worried, but as it turned out he was the cause of it all with his penchant for eating cold precooked sausages and bacon, without cooking them. He has a terrific dose of worms, probably a couple of months worth in his gut, and they didn’t have any worm tablets in stock here for him. I haven’t opened half my medical kit, well, apart from the suture needles and the painkillers, it is all still sitting in the fridge. He was telling me about it on Friday, I was trying really hard not to laugh too loudly, I’ve told him repeatedly not to eat any meat that he hasn’t cooked, but he likes cold sausages and raw bacon. I admit I do as well, but not in the bloody tropics, 30*C+ temps, high humidity, trichominosis (sp?) in all the pork here, what the hell does he expect.

Anyway, I gave him a couple of tablets to take, one is meant to be enough, knowing Adrian, he’ll need the other one as a back up to take after a week to make sure they are all cleared out.

The dry season seems to be coming to a close early, we’ve had thunder storms nearly every night this week, not a lot of rain with it, but some. Yesterday it fair bucketed down in the morning while I was in Honiara shopping, it was very nice. I got soaked, and just stood there for a few minutes letting the rain thoroughly soak me. The locals definitely think I’m the mad palangi. 15 minutes later it had stopped and 30 minutes after I was dry again.

I spent Sunday morning with the bucket and sponge and washed all the louvre windows again, the amount of dust that collects when it is dry is enough to cut the light levels considerably. No I didn’t take all the glass out, I just used a chair to stand on, and washed them in place, got the frames washed as well that way, and any water that got everywhere else dried up in minutes anyway. 34*C already at 11m, going to be about 35/36*C by midafternoon, then hopefully the storms will arrive. If not today, another day of this and they’ll be here Monday or Tuesday afternoon.

I’ll be having a busy time when I get my next break away, I’ve got 7 little melanomas that I can see so far, I’ll be having them burnt or cut out when I’m in New Zealand before they get to be a worry. I should most probably get them seen to here, but given what I’ve seen of #9, I’d really have to be at deaths door to consider it.

update, I'm a day late with this, came down with a fever Sunday afternoon, spent all of yesterday sweating it out and living on paracetemol and brufen. Back to normal tomorrow I hope

Wednesday 15th September

It is turning into one of those weeks when I feel like just pulling the sheet back over my head in the morning and then going to Henderson about midday and waiting for the 2.30pm flight out of here.

The manager at Hasting Deering made a formal complaint about one of the drivers on Friday, for speeding through the gates and compound at Hasting Deering. Ok, perfectly valid complaint, I’ve told the person concerned more than enough times he is a poor driver who drives beyond the trucks capability to stop in the distance he follows other vehicles at, and his speed is always excessive, we are talking a 5 tonne truck here, with about 10 - 15 people usually on the tray. I have trouble getting up to 70 kmph along Mendana, and leaving a long gap between vehicles. Being in the truck when it is being driven at 90 kmph and weaving in and out of the line of cars, always a few feet behind the one in front is not a good experience.

So anyway, I told him when the crew got back Friday afternoon that there had been a complaint about his driving in the compound. To say it didn’t go down very well is on a par with your dentist telling you don’t need novacaine, this won’t hurt, although that comparison is still mild. Anyway, he’s been in a sulk all week, I gave up with it and bumped it up to the chairperson to deal with, which isn’t going to be pretty. He’s been taken off driving any of the vehicles, work hours and after hours, instant dismissal for any transgressions, and has to attend a driver training course again. I’m getting the blame for it all naturally, as he has been telling the crew at every opportunity this week. Oh well, I can always leave and go somewhere better, he is always going to be here in the same situation until his ego deflates a bit and he starts learning instead of thinking there is nothing more he needs to know.

Ok, I’m ranting, I’m still a bit fecked off at the attitude displayed, that his actions are my fault.

Good things for the week though, most of the propagation house posts are in, all of #2 compost bin has been turned, slight problem with getting parts for the Rover Mulcher, but we are working on it.

We put 336 Delonix seeds into tubes last week, I was wondering if they would sprout without any pre-treatment, so I’m really pleased to see every tray has seeds sprouting, 336 is 8 trays with 42 tubes in each tray, excuse me for being pedantic about the number. The zucchini are thriving, and the Jacaranda are still surviving. Water is a problem, SIWA shut it off to Ranadi again this week, so it is becoming a bit of a desert, and I’m scratching for water from everywhere available.

Still waiting for the container to arrive from Brisbane with the shade cloth and irrigation system.

My sister is in Italy at the moment, staying around Umbria, and sent me a job opening as caretaker /gardener for a holiday house there, own little flat supplied and €1,000 a month. Sounds good, but until you know the living expenses it may turn out to be a poorly paid existence lifestyle, similar to what I’m living here. And it snows there as well, although I’m starting to miss the cold seasons. It’s been 35*C all week here, with no rain since Saturday afternoon. And at $2 per kilometre to run the truck, I don’t feel like driving 30 k to the beach, and paying out another $20 on top of the $120 for diesel. So I’m a miser.

Sunday 12th September

Public Service Announcement

Flat Coca Cola SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!

I got caught again with the low bi-carb version. It’s in cans now, as well as the 1.5 litre bottles. It contains one solitary molecule of bi-carbonate, that explodes into life for one brief milli-second of time, Stephen Hawking would have trouble measuring the nanoseconds it takes to go from Big Bang to extinction.

Then it sits in the glass like some primitive goo from the primeval swamp, festering and sullen. And as flat as a lizard under a ten tonne rock.

Believe me, the generic Black and Gold Cola tastes better, hell even Pepsi tastes better. Gizo Co-operative Bottling Company (Mum, Dad, 5 kids filling plastic bottles in the kitchen) makes a better tasting brew. If I could get Royal Crown Cola here I’d buy that.

Watch out for a can of Crapola Flat Coca Cola coming to a store near you at some stage. I’ve tried adding bi-carb to get some fizz, all it did was ruin the taste of the bi-carb.

Drinking black shoe polish mixed with meths is preferable.

You really have to read all the labels on the cans to find out, see pic.



Why can’t they just leave the bloody formula alone?????????

Every time they have a rush of blood to the head they start stuffing about with the formula. And get it wrong as usual.

Idiots, crapola flat coca cola tastes like it has been sitting in an open can, half drunk, the one that you find the morning after that 300 person little party you had last night, and your mouth tastes like it has been used as a cage liner for some incontinent vulture, and even though you think there are suspicious looking lumps in the murky black liquid in the can, you still drink it.

I’d rather drink, well chew, the water out of the Matinako River here. Even the Lungga River. Gutter water even, if we had gutters.

If they start to stuff around with Coke Zero and do the same I’ll swap to Pepsi despite the taste.

Crap tasting flat caramel flavoured water is all it is, no bite, taste or flavour.

It’s CRAPOLA FLAT COCA COLA



Watch out for it, shoot anyone selling it, send it back to Atlanta

I’m just a tad upset, wasted $24 buying 4 cans of Coke thinking it would be nice on a hot afternoon. Wrong, I may as well drink tap water with sugar and vegemite. With a teaspoon of bi-carb.

Crappy Crapola Flat Coca Cola.

Warn your friends, family, tell your local store keeper not to stock it, write your congressman, local MP, Crapola Flat Coca Cola is an abhorrent and disgusting foul pestilence upon the earth, a bit like Al Gore.

Crapola Flat Cola
another marketing disaster from Atlanta.
Please forward this announcement to as many of your friends as possible. Their tastebuds will thank you.

Saturday 11th September

It’s one of those dates isn’t it? Where were you when ……….?

I was at the start of what turned into a week of long hours, minimum sleep and a huge amount of work repairing No 1 Paper Mill at Kinleith following a rather bad fire. 7 days later we finished, roof replaced, beams and girders repaired replaced or buttressed up, and some incredibly insane moments involved at times during the week. Harry Lau asking me at some stage on Saturday when I thought we’d be finished, looking around at the people working everywhere, the steel waiting to be lifted into place and welded, the twisted roof trusses, wiring hanging everywhere, and saying “2.35 am Monday Harry, trust me” and then watching as we all packed up at walked out at 2.45 am Monday morning. And the Mill restarting at 6am Monday with no hesitation. In amongst all of that, watching on the screens the management had in the work stations throughout the mill all the turmoil in New York.

9 years later 3 countries destroyed and others threatened, and the world is in no better or safer condition than it was before, and I know a lot of people who feel we are worse off with the loss of personal freedoms. I know there are a few airports I refuse to fly through if at all possible, Los Angeles and Heathrow at the top of the list, closely followed by Sydney.

1959 Fidel Castro taking control of Cuba from the US backed Batista Government. I was 10 years old, and I still remember the newspaper headlines, the US especially being most aggrieved at losing one of the Mafia playgrounds.

Followed later by the US initiated Bay of Pigs Invasion that turned into a fiasco.

November 1963, 14 years old with a group of the neighbourhood kids on our bikes, when someone came racing along and announced President Kennedy has been shot!

1968 and Che Guevara shot in Bolivia after spending a wasted life trying to forment a communist uprising. Apart from his record as one of Fidel Castros execution men, there was never anything he did to help anyone. Just another failed and sad revolutionary believer that couldn’t see past the rhetoric. Reading Evergreen Magazine and having a lot of mixed emotions about how Che was portrayed. Actually, reading Evergreen, and while agreeing with a lot of the writers, Nat Hentoff, Jerry Rubin, Malcolm X, this was the 60’s, there was also a lot of nihilistic stuff that has resurfaced now. Plus the foundations for Ehrlquist and his population explosion bomb, the doomsday apocalypse crowd and the Earth Mother Gaia believers which morphed into the “the world is going to fry crowd” as exemplified by Al Gore, a true snake oil salesman if ever there was one.

1975, watching the mad scramble to get out of Saigon, the helicopters lifting off the Embassy roof, people clinging to the skids, as the North Vietnamese were coming through the gates. Helicopters being pushed off the carriers into the sea, the total waste of lives to gain nothing.

Add in Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Mama Cass, Keith Relf, Marc Bolan, Tony Hancock.

Oh well, life goes on, it’ll all be the same in 500 years. As Stupid Bloody Johnson always said about his landscaping.

All I’m hoping for is to have a nursery and training school established here sometime within my lifetime. I know, shortsighted goal, but I’m over the 1,000 year Reich stuff, I’ll settle for something I think might be possible.

Friday turned into a sudden spurt of activity for some reason, apart from finally stripping the drive pulley on the Rover mulcher, utterly munched the keyway, shaft and pulley. New pulley wheel, shaft, bearings needed now, which could be a while getting them from Brisbane. It’s had a lot of use, we put through 15 cu metres of compost in the last week, I think we are really pushing the limits with it.

So instead of mulching compost we marked out and dug post holes for the propagation house, and ended the week only a day or so behind my fantasy schedule. I’m learning to be really basic again in what I do with the crew, Andrew is good, but a lot of the others especially the older ones, with no schooling at all, when you start to talk about 3-4-5 triangles, hypotenuse, square on this equals the square on the other 2 sides, it results in a lot of smiles, blank looks and what the hell is the mad palangi talking about now look in the eyes. It gets down to using bits of twigs, drawing in the dirt, adding fingers and toes, making little model houses out of twigs to show the difference between square and not so square.

Saturday afternoon

Neighbours are having another gambling and general afternoon party, a lot of people, alcohol, cards and money changing hands. It’s threatening to rain, so it may be an early night for them, even with the extension they built this week out from the sleepout hut. I’ve already had one of the guys walk into the stays under my house, to much laughter from everyone there. I heard the TWANGGGGG THUMP as he walked into it, the house shook, followed by all the laughter from next door as he had to be carried out from under my house.

Tiff and I looked at another little landscape job at one of the World Bank houses this morning. Nice little job, a bit of clearing out, replanting, nothing major, apart from the problem of getting down the hill to the house. Then trying to turn the truck around in a rather small space.

Thursday 9th September

Ok, I admit defeat, I’m ending the week 4 days behind schedule, only one day of the schedule completed, the post holes have been dug, half the builders mix is here, but nothing else. No posts, wire, posts in the ground, weedmat completed.

I haven’t got the propagation house marked out yet either. Tuesday the person who borrowed our hammers and nail box failed to return then, till today, the handsaws are still out being used on someones house, the builders string line is being borrowed by someone else marking out their house, the axe is being used by someones wife to cut all their firewood, the bushknives have all gone missing as usual, both tape measures, the 100 metre and the 50 metre one have been borrowed and not returned yet. No I can’t just walk down the road and buy another, hammers are $200 - $400, String lines are $85, handsaws start at $300 for a cheap Chinese copy of the Japanese copy of a Sandvik or Stanley, and having spent nearly $2800 last month on tools, there would be questions raised about me buying them all again 3 weeks later.

And there is no definite reason that anyone can pinpoint to show why. Apart from the normal Solomon Island “tomorrow” belief in something happening. I think if I was more results or detail orientated I’d be going spare, but even this is starting to get to me a bit.

Having only one truck again doesn’t help, the old one is in the garage having the starter motor rewound, for the past 2 weeks. There aren’t any modern rewinding tools here, so it comes down to a little old man who comes in at some stage every day, sits down on a knocked up wooden stool, and commences to hand wind hundreds of coils of wire onto the motor. He’s been 2 weeks doing it so far, and it isn’t any good saying anything, he is the acknowledged master of the craft here, and if he gets annoyed, you don’t get it done. Which means getting the motor flown to Brisbane, and rewound there for a considerable sum of money. And no, there aren’t any spare parts here, or spare motors to suit the truck. I have to admire the work he does, it is absolutely brilliant, practically a lost art in any industrialised country now. But it is still 2 weeks in and possibly another one till it is finished. And we are back to one truck and a shite load of work to get done.

Then again, it could be worse and I could be in a country without trucks at all, and relying on water buffalo or donkeys for transport. And a considerably slower pace of life as well. I don’t think I’d cope too well. Too many things to get done and I want to do them NOW!

I might feel better after the weekend, when I have a whole new schedule to dream about following for next week.

High points of the week,

We now have another 500 Archontophoenix seeds in tubes, my zucchini have all sprouted and we have 28 in bags now, the chilli seeds sprouted, the red silverbeet , and the Digitalis rubea. Still waiting to see if the Cordyline australis sprout, and the Jacaranda have survived being transplanted into PB5 bags and are slowly growing. I could say growing fast, as you can actually see the growth rate each day.

Tiff and I had a site meeting with the people developing the new Honiara Casino site at Town Ground end of Honiara, we are high on the list of getting the landscaping to do. They saw my plans that I’d done for Heritage, and looked at what Heritage did, liked it, so they know we can produce. I’ll work with Kennedy on this one though, I got a bit annoyed about Frank using my ideas for Heritage and not acknowledging the fact it was my plans that got him the job.

Anyway, end of another week with some things done, some things not.

Tuesday 7th September

We finally had some rain last night, it has been getting steadily hotter all the last week and no rain. Even the water supply at Hasting Deering ran out, so everything has been suffering. We were going to water through town last night, all the tubs and a couple of the roundabouts, but as we were going home the sky opened up and the rain fell out.

Which pleased me no end.

Had an interesting discussion at work today. I’ve been after all the Delonix regia seed pods along the road at Ranadi, but the crew always seems to forget to collect them. I’ve finally got a promise that they will get them tomorrow, but why did I want them? When I said to plant and grow on, the look I got was priceless. Why do that, we can just go into the bush and cut them out of there instead of waiting for them to grow?

I had another try at explaining that by growing from seed we add a bit of genetic diversity to the pool, but I don’t think it sunk in. I think all the trees we have planted through Honiara all come from very few trees to start with, all of them have been cuttings from a very small group, so the chances of losing them all if something decides to get in and decimate the population, we won’t have enough diversity to withstand a specific pest or disease. A bit like the potato famine in Ireland, all of the potato crop then came from a very small genetic pool of 8 plants I think, grown by Sir Walter Raleigh at his estate in Cork. And consequently, when the blight hit, it wiped out the entire potato population.

Anyway, what I want to do is start growing a lot more of the local plants from seed, I’ve had some success so far with the palms, the Hibiscus and Bouganvillea ok, we’ll keep using cuttings for those, to keep the varieties stable, although I’d like to try some seed raised Hibiscus as well.

The concept of planning and starting growing plants for a job a year out is still a difficult concept to get across. We’ve been asked to supply plants for the new Honiara Casino which won’t be starting till December, and planting wouldn’t be till June or July next year at the earliest. Which I’m more than happy to go along with, but the looks when I told the crew that we have to ear mark and keep, and propagate plants now, for next June, they couldn’t understand why we can’t just keep going into the bush and cutting stuff out.

I’m only running a day behind in my work plan so far this week. Ok, it’s only 2 days into the week, still another 3 days to go, but I figure the week will end with only 2 days behind schedule. All the post holes for the shade cloth are dug, the posts are ordered, we have the builders mix and cement for the concrete. Which leaves me with marking out the propagation house tomorrow, post holes to be dug for that, and a concrete pad marked out, dug and boxed up. I can’t see the posts going in though, so there is the day we’ve lost, but next week was a fairly open schedule with a couple of days to juggle with.

We’ve got another 300 or so Archontophoenix palms bagged up, a few palms outside Pacific Casino dropped seed earlier this year, so I asked the girls to collect the seedlings when they did the gardens this week. Along with the 15 we put into 75 litre bags last week to grow on for City Centre when I redo the planter boxes there in March. They also bought back a seed head off one of the palms, so I’ve spent the evening here soaking them and washing the pulp off. Another 500 or more seeds to be tubed up tomorrow.

Did a quick estimate this afternoon, we now have 650 Archontophoenix growing, ok, a year at least till planting out, but once I get the routine going, we’ll have a steady supply of mature or ready to plant palms in a couple of years. Now to get the same thing happening with the trees, hibiscus and bouganvillea.

I need about 40 bouganvillea as 3’ standards for the Memorial gardens, I may go to 6’ standards, we have the bamboo stakes for that height, it is a matter of getting cuttings growing suitable for training. I only need single leader plants, everytime I separate some out, and tell the girls to keep them aside, they get cut back to bush growth. Patience I guess. Or perseverance. Or just be bloody minded and have a tantrum.

Sunday 5th September

Went into work this morning after shopping at Kukum Market. The zucchini that we planted on Friday are already pushing up through the potting mix, in the couple of hours I was there another 3 popped out, so I think we have got a good mix going finally. The Jacaranda are all looking healthy, only an inch or so high still, but you can see them slowly growing. The Cordyline have recovered from transplant shock, and it looks like we have some to plant out next year. I’ll get some tomato and
Cayenne chilli seeds set out tomorrow to try.
And that is an interesting concept to get across here. Actually waiting for plants to grow, instead of just going into the bush and cutting or digging plants and trees out, or raiding the neighbours garden. There are a few concepts that are going to take a while to get across actually, waiting for plants to grow, then waiting for fruit and vegetables to be ripe before picking them, or leaving some to grow on and keep for seed for the next crop. I can see us having problems at the nursery once we have mother stock planted out, with people climbing the fence and raiding the seed crop, or just stripping everything out. There isn’t any thought of personal property, or the idea of saving seed. My little garden I tried growing here at Ba’hai was systematically stripped out before anything had a chance to grow, being at work every day meant it was fair game to anyone walking past.

If anyone has long a long memory, I wrote last year about having a guy track me up to my house, then persistently keep coming around for a few weeks or so asking for money. He arrived back again today. All us palangi must look alike or something, he didn’t recognise me, asked where I worked, then started telling me about the white man that used to live here that worked at the Botanic Gardens and always gave him money for his family, last year he had 4 children, he’s obviously been home in the meantime, he now has 5 children. I guess 18 months here have had an effect on me, I didn’t feel any qualms about sending him away empty handed again. Which I think is a terrible statement to make, with the poverty here, coupled with the corruption that is endemic in the system, I know the starfish story, but helping one person here leads to a lot of complications. I’d likely have his whole wantok in Honiara around after a handout, then it could get a bit ugly. I’d rather offer him a job with us, if I thought he’d be suitable. But our pay rates are barely above minimum poverty level anyway. Everyone here, well, the politicians, and Govt employees, all seem to think the Aid money is going to support them forever. Without anyone ever asking for an accounting of where it has all gone.

It’s a bit off when you start thinking Peter Bauer was a liberal socialist. And didn’t go far enough. Google will find him.

I’m hoping to get some major work done on the nursery this week, I’ve written up a work schedule, I know, stop being stupid Warren, but I figure it lets me know how much we haven’t got done at the end of the week this way. Hopefully we’ll have all the posts for the shade cloth over the beds in place, and a start on the propagation house. I did say hopefully. We have the official opening of the Nursery in the middle of October, the shade cloth only left Brisbane last week, along with the irrigation, so that won’t be here till the 3rd week this month at the earliest. And if we get stuffed around by Customs again, it could be the end of this month, so it is going to be a hectic few weeks. As well as get the water tanks and water supply sorted, the power shifted, and the fence erected.

We have finally got building permission, now we have a funding problem as the building Planning approved isn’t what we described in the funding proposal, so we have to try and get a letter from Planning explaining why they changed the building to have any chance of getting the funding still. It’s going to be the usual duck shoving competition with Planning, no one there is willing to put anything in writing, there is a lot of he said, they said, but never anything written.

Weekend edition 3rd - 5th August

Friday 3rd August

I think everyone is aware of my thoughts on AGW. This weeks Discovery TV hostage drama in the USA is something I’ve thought was going to happen sooner or later.

Tom Fuller posted a really good article in WUWT on Thursday, I’ve put it in here.

It is past time all the disaster scenarios published by the IPCC, and the looney green fringe parties, the WWF, Greenpeace, the doomsday scare tactics, were all scrapped and some sensibility crept in to the discussion.

The world is not going to heat up and fry everyone, there won’t be a global catastrophe, there will be weather as usual, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, floods and droughts, as usual. Sunshine and rain, the sea isn’t going to rise 2 inches, 2 feet, 20 feet and flood the world.

If you really want to stop over population, you provide or make accessible cheap effective energy, and if that means using coal to provide the 3 rd world economies with energy, then we do it. Populations stabilise once people improve their lives, when you live in poverty, and 60% of the children born die of malnutrition, malaria, dengue fever, measles, chicken pox, flu, and every other disease of poverty, polluted water, insufficient food, it is natural for the constant increase in births.

Here is Toms post from http://www.wattsupwiththat.com/

Stop the Hysteria
Posted on September 2, 2010 by Anthony Watts

Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
After the tragic events in Maryland on Wednesday of this week, where a man took three hostages and tried to make The Discovery Channel a vehicle for publishing his manifesto, there have been accusations and counter accusations in the global warming world about taking advantage of this to advance political goals.
In particular, Joe Romm of Climate Progress harshly criticized Anthony Watts for the title of his blog post alerting readers to the situation. Personally, I think Anthony’s choice was mistaken, but not malicious–I’ve made worse editorial decisions myself.
And this may be one of them. The deluge of catastrophic predictions regarding global warming and its consequences have reached almost everyone on the planet, and perhaps unintentionally have replaced Cold War bomb scares as the primary source of doomsaying.
The messages are well-thought out and prepared by professional communicators, with disturbing and graphic images of a post-apocalyptic scenario lifted from Mad Max, and with about as much connection to reality.
In March of this year, a couple in Argentina shot their two children before committing suicide over fears of global warming. On Wednesday, in Maryland, James Lee apparently committed ‘suicide by cop’ after taking three hostages in an attempt to force the Discovery Channel to alter its programming to suit his fears over the environment.
At what point will we call to account those who have preached ‘the end of the earth as we know it’ to countless people? How many people will be driven to desperation by those who distort the science?
The IPCC’s AR4, published in 2007, painted a future with global warming as a serious, multinational problem that we should face together. You may agree or disagree with their findings–I agree with most of it, not all.
But nowhere does the work of thousands of scientists in peer-reviewed literature say that we are doomed, that civilization is at risk, that there is no future for us.
That falls to several groups of committed lobbyists, scientists, environmentalists and politicians who began saying the IPCC report was too conservative almost the day it was published. The evidence they bring forward for that claim is nowhere near as robust as the science referenced by the IPCC.
They are scaring people to death. How many more lives will be blighted or destroyed before they understand that their propaganda has real world effects?
It’s hard to work up too much sympathy for Mr. Lee–he took hostages, threatened to detonate an explosive device, and pretty much guaranteed his fate. And his worries weren’t confined to global warming. He was equally concerned with overpopulation, another scare story put out by some of the same people pumping hysteria over global warming.
At any rate, what these people are doing is despicable, if not murderous.
Sea levels are not going to rise by 20 feet. Or 10. Or five. There is not going to be a climatic tipping point that pushes our planet into a spiral of ever-increasing temperatures. Global warming is not going to cause the extinction of half the species on this planet, or even 1%.
And it is long past time that respected members of the scientific community publicly acknowledge those facts and helped bring this debate back within the realm of reality.
My father met Jim Jones briefly before he moved to Guyana with his flock, and described him as intelligent and persuasive, able to talk reasonably about a multitude of subjects. We don’t need more smooth talkers preaching the language of despair. We can now see the results. In their zeal to communicate their fears of the effects of global warming that go far beyond the predictions of mainstream science, those who Anthony called ‘warmistas’ in his blog title and who I call alarmists and sometimes hysterics have created a library of disturbing words and images that can influence the vulnerable.
Are these people responsible for the tragedies in Argentina and Maryland? No. But did they act responsibly, caveating their predictions as personal fears instead of the verdict of science. No. They were trying to scare you. They succeeded too well.
It’s time to stop the hysteria.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller

All of this over a rise in “global” temperature since the Little Ice Age ended ca 1850. A rise of 0.6 * C. in 150 years. And which has flattened out since 1999, to the extent that with the present Solar Minimum and the PDO and ENSO being affected by the coming La nina, we are experiencing falling temperatures, and a possibly 30 year cooling period again.

And whoever decided that the world should only warm up to 15*C? The average high temp is 22*C, at which stage the oceans take over as a gigantic heat engine, and shift the heat by evaporation, and deflect incoming Solar radiation by increasing cloud cover.

Google “The Thermostat Hypothesis” by Willis Eschenbach, then sit down and think about it all.

And write to John Key and tell him that the ETS scheme is a fraud.


Saturday 4th September

I’m almost over my rant from last night, although it doesn’t take much to get me going whenever anyone mentions AGW. Especially living here where the school kids are being fed AGW hysteria from the time they start school. The British High Commission here put together a dvd that is doing the rounds of the schools. I haven’t seen it yet, I’m hoping to get a copy and find out exactly what is in it, I can use the Environmental Discussions I’m doing around the schools as a reason for wanting a copy.

Until I’ve seen it I don’t want to get involved in an argument over it, but the publicity that the High Commission put out about it states it shows rising sea levels, heat waves, drought and flooded Islands, so I take that to mean it is no better than Al Gores comedic masterpiece.

I’ve decided to apply for an extension for next year. I know I’m going to have all the same frustrations again, but the good part is that the nursery will actually be working, and I will be training people, instead of dealing with stupid bloody minded people in various Govt Depts.

I’ll take another month off next year to catch up with everyone, Al and I were hoping to do a tour of NZ but I won’t have the time available for it. 2012 it will have to be now.

It’s settled into the Dry season here, high dry temperatures, 35*C most days now, and only 40 – 50 % humidity. Although we are getting impressive thunder storms a couple of times a week now as the thunderclouds build up over the mountains. We’ve had predominately south easterly winds lately, which push the rain clouds over West Guadacanal from the Weather Coast, and Central and East Guadacanal have been missing the rain.

We had a busy couple of days at the nursery Thursday and Friday. The guys have been steadily catching up with the compost, and Sheron and I managed to get 12 Archontophoenix palms bagged into 75 litre bags for growing on for next year to plant at City Centre once they are above head and car height. As well as 15 Jacaranda seedlings bagged into 5 litre, and a lot of seeds started, silverbeet (Chard), Canterbury bells, Digitalis rubea, Cordyline australis, Tamarillo.

A few of the last lot of Cordyline did sprout, I get the feeling the potting mix wasn’t the best, but we have a few that grew, including a red tinged leaf which I was hoping for. The seeds came from one of my Cordylines I grew at Tokoroa and planted at Mums. And those seeds came from the plant at the house in Tokoroa which threw up a wide range of colours from green to brown and khaki, plus striped leaves. Hopefully the latest lot of seeds produce better.

I’m glad the Jacaranda grew, apart from the seed coming from the one in Mums garden. Tiff said there used to be two in Honiara, but both got cut down for firewood during the civil war, so we can replace them now. As soon as we can be sure they can have a good place to be planted where they will survive the bush knife attacks and drunken drivers.

We lost another 5 palms over the week to drunken drivers and a couple of bush knife attacks. I’d write another letter to the Sol Star, but I’m on a promise not to get involved or get contentious stuff into the paper again.

Wednesday 1st September

Other than work, it’s been a quiet week so far, I’ve missed getting the paper for 2 days in a row, so I’m a little behind the news as far as politics go. I’ll have to read online tomorrow, there was a bit about SEB and the Childrens Park at Rove in todays paper, and how much we’ve improved it, so that would make a nice addition to a resume.

We had the EU sign over of the truck today at Rove, as many of the crew that I could convince to come, and Tiff and I. It’s a bit sad that that was the high point of the day, it’s just been work for the most part.



I’m trying to find, still, online distance courses for Level II, III and IV horticulture from any TAFE in Australia. The ones that do have courses, all seem to vary in pricing, requirements etc, so I’ve written to as many as I think are suitable, and will have to sort through them once I hear back. We still haven’t a classroom, toilets, office, but the nursery is slowly being put together. By the time it is finished in a couple of weeks, the potting mix will be ready for full scale production, thanks to the guys who have been working really well in the compost bins for a week now trying to get ahead of the supply of raw material.

I wrote to Rover Ind. Australia last week about a bigger mulcher, and they sent back a brochure with their recommendation, no price though, so I’m waiting for that. Rover model 464E, I wish I’d known about it last year.


Really grunty looking machine, 7.5 hp, and the sales rep reckons it will handle more than we can throw at it. As if I believe a sales rep, been there, done that, anything to get a sale. Now I have to work out how to justify the expense after buying the other one last year. Still, we could hire the other one out to ex-pats for their gardens, even sending one of the crew along to run it would generate some income off it.

I’ll work on how to justify it somehow.


Pic of Rose