Note on New Zealand's long gun registry

Charles Cooke has this useful note:

New Zealand’s long-gun-registry experiment ended in failure, too. By the early 1980s, New Zealand’s National Police pleaded with that country’s parliament to abandon the system, having watched ballooning budgets lead only to a lot of wasted time and to the expansion of a system that, frankly, didn’t do anything useful. In 1983, parliament, conceding that criminals are unlikely to leave registered guns at the scenes of their crimes, complied. . . .

New Zealand voter decisively reject Obama-type bash the rich policies

From Business Week:

National won 48 percent of votes, the most it has taken since 1951, beating the main opposition Labour Party on 27 percent, according to the Electoral Commission. . . .
[National] has pledged to sell part of the government’s stake in four energy companies and the national airline to help erase a NZ$18.4 billion ($13.6 billion) budget deficit. . . .
Support for Labour slumped from 34 percent in the 2008 election as voters rejected Goff’s plans to raise taxes on capital gains and high income earners. Labour, which secured 34 seats, opposes the proposed asset sales and pledged to remove sales tax on fresh fruit and vegetables to ease the cost of living for low income families. . . .

Climate Gate Scandal spreads to New Zealand

"Watts Up With That" has this amazing and disappointing discussion of some problems in New Zealand. Here is a discussion from James Delingpole at the UK Telegraph.

The alleged villains this time are the climate scientists at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NiWA) – New Zealand’s answer to Britain’s Climate Research Unit. And to judge by this news alert by the Climate Science Coalition of NZ, both institutions share a similarly laissez-faire attitude to scientific accuracy.
Compare and contrast these two graphs and you’ll see.

This is the graph from NiWA’s website, showing mean annual temperature over New Zealand from 1853. Note the dotted straight line showing the upward trend. Worrying, isn’t it? Almost enough to make you fall in love your flickery, yellowy new eco-light bulbs, recycle your kids and commit yourself to a binding agreement at Copenhagen.
Now have a look at this analysis of the raw data taken from exactly the same temperature stations. . . .

The first graph shows a strong warming trend from around 1910 on. While there are some significant ups and downs, no such trend exists in the second graph. Jim Salinger, climate scientist at National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and a former researcher at University of East Anglia, is apparently responsible for the first graph. So what is his explanation?

Watts Up has this:

Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we might discover the truth.
Proof of man-made warming
What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.
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, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this. . . .

NIWA has this:

Warming over New Zealand through the past century is unequivocal.

NIWA’s analysis of measured temperatures uses internationally accepted techniques, including making adjustments for changes such as movement of measurement sites. For example, in Wellington, early temperature measurements were made near sea level, but in 1928 the measurement site was moved from Thorndon (3 metres above sea level) to Kelburn (125 m above sea level). The Kelburn site is on average 0.8°C cooler than Thorndon, because of the extra height above sea level. . . .

For a discussion of NIWA's response see here.

An interesting interview on guns from National Radio in NZ

There was a car dealer who was giving away a AK-47 with the purchase of a new car in Missouri. You can listen to the interview here. The one thing that I would have made clear is that these AK-47s are not the machine guns used by militaries around the world. They are semi-automatic guns, just like a deer hunting rifle, but they look like a AK-47 on the outside. I also would have explained the crime rate discussion a little differently, but otherwise it was a good interview.

Kesten Green from NZ was nice enough to send me the file.

A reasonable country: "New Zealanders Will Reject Anti-Smacking Bill"

Angus Reid has a discussion of the New Zealand survey here:

The vast majority of people in New Zealand will vote against a plan to criminalize the smacking of children by parents, according to a poll by Colmar Brunton released by One News. 83 per cent of respondents will cast a ballot against the proposal in a referendum.

On May 2007, then New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark of the Labour party announced the passing of a controversial bill by a wide majority in Parliament. The legislation proposed to criminalize the physical punishment of children by parents who rely on "inconsequential force."

John Key, then leader of the opposition National party and now the country’s prime minister, supported the bill.

Last year, a group of citizens garnered the necessary number of signatures to launch a referendum seeking to repeal the Anti-Smacking Bill. The postal ballot is scheduled to go ahead from Jul. 30 to Aug. 21, at a cost of $5.7 million U.S.

Citizen-driven initiatives are not binding in New Zealand. Prime minister Key has said the government will not necessarily change the law in accordance with the referendum’s outcome.

The referendum on this bill is currently under way. New Zealanders are receiving the ballots at home and can vote until Aug. 21. The question in the ballot reads: "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in NZ?" . . .

The survey showed that 83 percent are planning on voting "no." Meanwhile, the National Party is well ahead in the polls in New Zealand.

Most people in New Zealand continue to support the governing conservatives, according to a poll by Colmar Brunton released by One News. 56 per cent of respondents would give their party vote to the ruling National party, down one point since April.

The opposition Labour party is behind with 31 per cent, followed by the Green party with seven per cent. Support is lower for the Maori Party, New Zealand First and ACT. . . . .