eisbaar
As for b), if a Chinese investor buys some house from a Canadian, why is the money parked?
Trickle down or not, it seems in general if you can sell something (in this case houses to Chinese people), it is good.
If you build houses to sell to Chinese people, you also employ people from the building industry, for example. I'm not convinced that "trickle down theory" is the correct theory to apply there.
Special issues presumably arises with land and housing as a good - you shouldn't simply sell all your land to some foreign powers, presumably. Still, in general it holds.
If you worry about land area, you could build a huge skyscraper in a corner of the town that doesn't disturb too many people, and sell the flats to Chinese investors. Very little land use, huge margins.
That an influx of money doesn't benefit the economy would also be interesting for most Western governments. "Stimulus" by monetary means seems to be a very popular approach currently. (I don't know, but it seems debatable).
I also don't think prices are going up only because of Chinese investor. I also live in a city with the problem of steeply rising prices (Berlin, Germany), but the fact is simply, it is a very popular city with many people wanting to live here.
I'm guessing regulation is the real problem, as it is so often.
Even if foreign investors let houses sit empty, the rising prices should be an incentive to build more houses, leading to more supply of housing eventually.
Speculation is after all a bet on future demand, and useful for anticipating future demand.
It does not sound implausible that housing prices are soaring.
Also perhaps a lot of government regulation that make it difficult to build more housing.
And there are other sources of money besides "money laundering" - why assume of all sources, "money laundering" is the driving force?
Like lets say newly rich Chinese people appreciate the investment in Vancouver. Is that then "money laundering"? Do they just equate "foreign investors" with "money laundering"?
Common sense is essentially how people think. Scientists are also people. If claims don't add up or data is missing to support a claim, common sense can be used to spot it.
"how much evidence there is in the "there is no climate change" side?"
Why are you bringing up "there is no climate change"? Nobody made such a claim. But even if there is climate change, not every article has to be taken at face value, and not every theory on how it comes about has to be automatically considered true.
"The simple truth is you've already made up your mind about climate change in general, and now you're just looking for tiny crumbs of evidence that researchers are slipping up somewhere, and criticizing anything that doesn't fit your notion of how this should play out. "
That exact line could be handed back to yourself, except that you are sucking up all evidence that confirms your point of view.
Also there often seems to be the assumption that every year should be like average. In fact, average implies that some years should be below and some above.
Not saying there is nothing going on, but I don't automatically believe we are all going to die just from that article. (We as in mankind, every individual will of course die, unless there is a major scientific breakthrough).
They suggest melting ice in general is cause for concern, when really it is expected because of the ice age cycles.
Not saying the rate is not concerning, but then they should write about the rate, not about extreme measurements.