New Zealand

How will Funding Climate Science Help Prevent Coral Bleaching?

usissuescom Foreign Policy , , , ,

By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Climate skeptic Aussie One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has challenged marine park authorities to explain why giving them money will help prevent global warming from bleaching coral reefs.

Pauline Hanson gives Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s top scientist a serve over coral bleaching

“You’re saying that coral bleaching is affected by water temperatures,” she told Dr David Wachenfeld.

“Yet around Indonesia, closer to the equator … where the water temperatures are 29C, it’s a known fact that coral actually grows faster and more prolific in warmer temperatures.“

Wachenfeld explained that corals live in a variety of water temperatures over the world, with substantial differences even within the Great Barrier Reef.

Continue reading →

Methane Warming Exaggerated by 400%

usissuescom CAGW Alarmism, Energy Policy, Foreign Policy , , , , ,

By Barry Brill – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The IPCC’s AR5 estimated the global warming caused by a tonne of livestock methane would be 28 times that of a tonne of carbon dioxide. New research destroys that estimate.

The war on meat has been gathering pace amongst our Western elites. The Economist makes a detailed case for “plant-based food” in the interests of quelling climate change –

The FAO calculates that cattle generate up to two-thirds of the greenhouse gases from livestock, and are the world’s fifth largest source of methane. If cows were a country, the United Herds of Earth would be the planet’s third largest greenhouse-gas emitter.

Continue reading →

Tilting at Windmills – a Brief Update

usissuescom Energy Policy, Foreign Policy , , , , ,

By Andi May – Re-Blogged From WUWT

About this time last year, I wrote a light-hearted review of New Zealand’s love affair with Wind Generation.

Since then I’ve become interested in seeing just how effective these things really are. Where I live adjacent to a string of Turbines, we get some pretty impressive winds – 150Kph is not that unusual. But we also get days of complete calm – usually at times when electricity demand is at its highest.

Nonetheless, our green-biased Government elected just over a year ago are still pushing so-called renewables as the way of the future. Interestingly New Zealand already produces more than 80% of its energy from Renewables, with Geothermal and Hydro way ahead of Wind.

Continue reading →

Housing Bubble Is Popping Right Now

usissuescom Foreign Policy, GDP & Employment, Monetary Policy , , , , , , , , ,

By Adam Taggart – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

As we’ve been tracking here at PeakProsperity.com, the housing market is starting to look quite ill.

After the central bank-driven Grand Reflation following the Great Financial Crisis, home prices are now beginning to nose over from their new bubble-highs.

Has the Housing Bust 2.0 begun? If so, how bad could things get? And what steps should those looking to pick up values at much lower prices in the future be taking?

This week we talk with citizen journalist Ben Jones, property manager and publisher of TheHousingBubbleBlog — where he tracks the latest headlines and developments in the housing market.

Continue reading →

New Zealand Bans Offshore Gas and Oil Exploration

usissuescom Energy Policy, Foreign Policy, Regulation , , , , , ,

By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

The New Zealand government has banned offshore oil and gas exploration as part of its 30 year quest for 100% climate purity.

New Zealand bans all new offshore oil exploration as part of ‘carbon-neutral future’

Continue reading →

Consumers In Surprising Places Are Borrowing Like Crazy

usissuescom Foreign Policy, GDP & Employment, Monetary Policy , , , , , , , , ,

By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

The Money Bubble is inflating at different speeds in different places. But apparently no culture is immune:

Household Debt Sees Quiet Boom Across the Globe

(Wall Street Journal) – A decade after the global financial crisis, household debts are considered by many to be a problem of the past after having come down in the U.S., U.K. and many parts of the euro area.

Continue reading →

Asia’s Dilemma: China’s Butter, or America’s Guns?

usissuescom Foreign Policy, GDP & Employment , , , , , , ,

By Rodger Baker – Re-Blogged From Strafor 

Flying into Singapore’s Changi Airport, one is struck by the fleet of ships lined up off shore, the tendrils of a global trade network squeezing through the narrow Malacca Strait. Singapore is the hub, the connector between the Indian Ocean, South China Sea and Pacific. Since the late 1970s, with little exception, trade has amounted to some 300 percent of Singapore’s total gross domestic product, with exports making up between 150 and 230 percent of GDP. Singapore is the product of global trade, and the thriving multiethnic city-state can trace its trade role back centuries.

Trade is the lifeblood of the Asia-Pacific, and even as nationalism rises, the region still sees a globalized world as a greater reward than risk. (RODGER BAKER)

Enhance Prosperity And Improve Health: Slash Regulations

usissuescom Foreign Policy, GDP & Employment, Regulation , , , , ,

By Steven H Hanke – Re-Blogged From http://www.Silver-Phoenix500.com

Productivity and economic growth continue to surprise on the downside in most countries. While there is a great deal of handwringing over the so-called productivity puzzle, little attention is given to the real elixir: freer markets and more competition. Indeed, the policy tide is moving in the opposite direction in most places.

To get a grip on the productivity puzzle, let’s lift a page from the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” Yes. There is nothing better than a hard look at empirical evidence to see if it supports those who espouse freer markets or those who embrace the regulatory state as models to enhance our prosperity and health.

Continue reading →

Unintended Consequences (Part 1)

usissuescom Foreign Policy, GDP & Employment, Monetary Policy , , , , , , ,

By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

Somewhere back in the depths of time the world got the idea that easy money — that is, low interest rates and high levels of government spending — would produce sustainable growth with modest but positive inflation. And for a while it seemed to work.

But that was an illusion. What actually happened was textbook, long-term, surreally-vast misallocation of capital in which individuals, companies and governments were fooled into thinking that adding new factories, stores and infrastructure at a rate several times that of population growth would somehow work out for the best.

China, as with so many other things, was the epicenter of this delusion. In response to the 2008-2009 financial crisis it borrowed more money than any other country ever, and spent most of the proceeds on infrastructure and basic industry. It’s steel-making capacity, already huge by 2008, kept growing right through the Great Recession, and now dwarfs that of any other country.

Continue reading →

The New Order Emerges

usissuescom Foreign Policy, GDP & Employment, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From http://www.Silver-Phoenix500.com

China and Russia have taken the lead in establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), seen as a rival organisation to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, which are dominated by the United States with Europe and Japan.

These banks do business at the behest of the old Bretton Woods* order. The AIIB will dance to China and Russia’s tune instead.
Continue reading →