Ryan Bridge: Did we over hype Cyclone Vaianau?

The storm for the most of the North Island was a fizzer.

The TV news struggled to find pictures of anything actually happening other than a few trees down and reporters breathlessly doing pieces to camera in the wind.

Chris Morrison: Climate Bombshell - New Evidence Reveals 30 Year Global Drop in Hurricane Frequency and Power

Last month a small but powerful cyclone named Chido made landfall in Mayotte before sweeping into Mozambique, causing considerable damage and leading to the loss of around 100 lives. Days after the tragedy, the Green Blob-funded Carbon Brief noted that scientists have “long suggested” that climate change is making cyclones worse in the region, while Blob-funded World Weather Attribution (WWA) at Imperial College London made a near-instant and curiously precise estimate that a Chido-like cyclone was about 40% more likely to happen in 2024 than during the pre-industrial age.

Clive Bibby: Suddenly - yesterday’s news is no more

It will not have escaped those who have survived the ravages of Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle and are living day to day as per kind favour of Central Government, that those responsible for this mayhem are slowly being exposed and brought to justice for their own fraudulent actions. All quiet on the “slash” front is one reason why we have cause for optimism.

Mind you, it has taken a rejection of the previous government and an “opening of the books” before we are able to see the full extent of the Labour Government’s betrayal of the trust it had been given only three short years ago.

Kerre Woodham: Is there still a place for forestry in New Zealand?

We’ll start this morning with the Government’s inquiry into slash, and the damning recommendations that found that production forestry should be banned in extreme erosion zones around Wairoa and Gisborne. Limits should be introduced around how much of a forest can be felled in a single year. And when it's spelled out like that, why would you need an inquiry to tell you? It just makes common sense, doesn't it? Production forestry should be banned in extreme erosion zones.

Well, yeah.

And limits should be introduced around how much of a forest can be felled in a single year. Again, even those of us without any experience in forestry would say, well, yeah, that makes common sense.

Michael Bassett: Cyclones and politics

In February-March 1988 when Cyclone Bola hit the eastern North Island I was Minister of Civil Defence. I remember flying crab-wise into a howling gale to a closed Gisborne airport in a small Air Force plane in order to get an immediate handle on the crisis that was unfolding. I met with local officials and put them in touch with the Beehive national emergency team. Prime Minister David Lange followed a day or two later by helicopter, dropping in on isolated farms and settlements with bottles of water and assurances that the government was doing what was needed to help the recovery.