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Breaking news: Chinese security attack NZ politician in NZ parliament

Chinese security forces have attacked and injured a New Zealand politician in the grounds of the New Zealand parliament buildings, because the MP had the temerity to be holding a Tibetan flag at a ceremony to Welcome the Chinese Vice-Premier to New Zealand.

The attack, which joins a growing list of anti-democratic security breaches in China's favour in New Zealand, is timely, given the release this weekend of a major article in Investigate magazine asking whether China is beginning to corrupt the political process and adherence to democratic traditions in New Zealand and Australia:

Open publication - Free publishing - More news

The environmentalist who doubts global warming theory

Meet Peter Taylor, author of "Chill":

The science around climate change is not as settled as it’s presented as being. I used to think it was, until about 2003 – and then, feeling that the remedies being proposed for climate change would be more damaging to the environment than climate change itself, I took it upon myself to look at the science.

In my book on biodiversity, Beyond Conservation, I had mentioned in one of the chapters that perhaps the man-made global warming theory was not all it was being cracked up to be. The changes we are seeing now, I wrote, suggested that some other processes were at work. I then took time out, visited the science libraries, and checked the original science upon which today’s models are based.

I was shocked by what I found. Firstly, there’s no real consensus among the scientists in the UN working groups, especially around oceanography and atmospheric physics. The atmospheric physics of carbon dioxide for example is presented as being pretty straightforward: it is a greenhouse gas, therefore it warms up the planet. But even that isn’t settled. There’s a huge amount of scientific disagreement on how much extra heating in the atmosphere you will get from carbon dioxide. It is even broadly accepted that carbon dioxide on its own is not a problem. So, you can double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and get half to one degree warming, which is within the natural variability range over a period of 50 years from now at the current rate of emissions.

The role of water vapour in planetary warming is also open to questioning. While it is presented as being a heat amplifier, in fact because it can turn into cloud it could actually regulate temperature instead. As it turned out, at the very beginning of the UN discussions, Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, and a leading expert appointed to the committee because of his meteorological expertise, was saying precisely that: the amplification effect asserted cannot be relied upon to increase warming because the vapour could turn into cloud. This needed to be proved before basing assumptions on it. But Lindzen was overruled. Despite still being a key part of the IPPC process, he is now vilified by the press and by the environmental movement. So even on the most basic science of the atmospherics, there is doubt.

Read more at Spiked...

ETS Campaign heats up, unlike climate

ETS Meetings:

Come to one of  John Boscawen's next Public Meetings.  Join the movement to defer the ETS well armed with the facts, not the mistruths National are peddling. 

   

Paihiatua - Wednesday 9 June - 10.00am, Tararua Club, 15 Tararua Street.

Fielding - Wednesday 9 June - 1.30pm, The Cedar Room, The Civic Centre, 84 Aorangi Street.

Palmerston North - Wednesday 9 June - 7.30pm, RSA, Cabaret Room, 200 Broadway Avenue.

Dannevirke - Thursday 10 June - 10.00am, 'The Hub', Dannevirke Christian Fellowship Centre, Allardice St.

Waipukurau - Thursday 10 June - 1.30pm, Civic Theatre, Gallery Room, 14 Northumberland St.

Hastings - Thursday 10 June - 7.30pm, Angus Hotel, Matariki Lounge, 507 Railway Road.

Napier - Friday 11 June - 10.00am, Napier War Memorial Conference Centre, Break Out Room 1, 
48 Marine Parade. (Note time is 10am, not 11am as advertised in his own newsletter by mistake!)

Dargaville - Monday 14 June - 11.00am, Pono (Masonic) Lodge, 39 Hokianga Road.

Whangarei - Monday 14 June - 7.30pm, The Pickwick Room, Dickens Inn, 71 Cameron Street.

   

Other meetings scheduled, venues to be advised:

Katikati - Monday 28 June
Te Puke - Monday 28 June
Tauranga - Monday 28 June

   

For more information call 09 531 5531 or email johnboscawen.mp@parliament.govt.nz

To subscribe to John Boscawen's ETS newsletter, emai johnboscawen.mp@parliament.govt.nz  with the word "Subscribe" in the subject line.

   

ETS Meeting with Rodney Hide - 9 June, Pukekohe

   

Public Meeting with Hon Rodney Hide MP, Leader, ACT New Zealand

   

Where:  Franklin: The Centre, 12 Massey Avenue, Pukekohe

When:   Wednesday 9 June, 7.00pm - 9.00pm

BREAKING NEWS: Drowning islands claim debunked by new research

Claims worldwide of drowning tropical islands because of rising sea levels have been dealt a death blow by new research.

Geographer Associate Professor Paul Kench has measured 27 islands where local sea levels have risen 120mm -- an average of 2mm a year -- over the past 60 years, and found that just four had diminished in size.

Working with Arthur Webb at the Fiji-based South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, Prof Kench used historical aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images to study changes in the land area of the islands.

They found that the remaining 23 had either stayed the same or grown bigger, according to the research published in a scientific journal, Global and Planetary Change.

"It has been thought that as the sea level goes up, islands will sit there and drown," Prof Kench told the New Scientist. "But they won't.

"The sea level will go up and the island will start responding."

One of the highest profile islands -- in a political sense -- was Tuvalu, where politicians and climate change campaigners have repeatedly predicted it will be drowned by rising seas, as its highest point is 4.5m above sea level. But the researchers found seven islands had spread by more than 3 percent on average since the 1950s.

One island, Funamanu, gained 0.44 hectares or nearly 30 percent of its previous area.

And the research showed similar trends in the Republic of Kiribati, where the three main urbanised islands also "grew" -- Betio by 30 percent (36ha), Bairiki by 16.3 percent (5.8ha) and Nanikai by 12.5 percent (0.8ha).

Dr Webb, an expert on coastal processes, told the New Scientist the trend was explained by the fact the islands mostly comprised coral debris eroded from encircling reefs and pushed up onto the islands by winds and waves.

The process was continuous, because the corals were alive, he said.

I cover the drowning islands fallacy in the new version of Air Con, incidentally

The Israeli attack - a video perspective

I have mixed views on the Israeli incident. On the one hand, it happened in international waters. It shouldn't have. The Israelis had no right to intercept the boat until it crossed into Israeli territory.

Having said that, everyone - especially Palestinian supporters based in the Middle East - knows the Israeli army never pulls punches. If IDF soldiers turn up on your boat after ordering it to stop, then physically attacking the boarding party with metal bars and stealing their guns is going to provoke a reaction just the same as reaching for something in your glovebox too fast while being questioned by police in the US tends to have fatal consequences.

The video below is Israeli sourced, but it certainly doesn't show "peace" activists in the Gandhi sense.