Yvonne Van Dongen: Frozen Myths

Antarctic documentary revives debunked Māori voyages

Early in the trailer on a New Zealand documentary screening for the first time this week (July 10) the doco star, one Professor Rangi Mātāmua, is asked why he is going to Antarctica.

Mātāmua explains that on his grandfather’s deathbed he was given a 400-page book on Māori star lore. This is tribal knowledge, said Mātāmua. It is tapu. But his grandfather replied “knowledge that isn’t shared isn’t knowledge.” This, says Mātāmua, has been his mantra ever since.

Philip Cranmer: Antarctic Ambitions - China’s Expansion and New Zealand’s Scott Base Redevelopment

As New Zealand moves forward with the redevelopment of Scott Base, China has submitted plans for its sixth station on the continent.

Earlier this month, Antarctica New Zealand announced the selection of a new contractor to assist with the design and delivery of the redevelopment of Scott Base. The base is New Zealand’s only Antarctic research station, located 3800km south of Christchurch and 1350km from the South Pole.

Lushington D. Brady: Good News on Antarctic Ice Front

Ice shelves are growing, not shrinking

One of the dumbest claims in the farrago of dumbassity that was Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was the claim that sea levels were about to rise catastrophically. To really drive it home for gawping rubes, Gore hauled his bulky frame into a scissor lift, which, no doubt with a tortured whine, hefted the portly politician a dramatic six metres into the air.