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NZ Prime Minister under pressure from coalition partner to dump ETS

Act Party leader Rodney Hide has just released an open letter to Prime Minister John Key, calling on him to delay New Zealand's emissions trading scheme, due to start July 1.

Hide argues the government's excuses about an obligation to foresters to begin carbon trading don't stack up, and he tells Key his obligation is to the "national interest", not just sector groups.

Fisking Ken Perrott, again

I was reading Ken's 'my parachute won't open' site the other day and stumbled across some answers he gave to a sceptic that suggest Ken didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

It's not the first time we've caught Ken talking rubbish.

I couldn't at the time be bothered addressing this latest example, but now Ken's popped up in this thread here spouting similar unscientific nonsense.

Specifically, he rattles off his calculations of human CO2 emissions vs natural (wrong incidentally) and then concludes with a massive mental leap:

"That is, human climate forcing is 10,000 times more powerful than natural"

Ken, you are so far off beam on the 10,000 times more forcing than natural that it really does raise genuine questions over whether your criticism of sceptics has been founded on a total misunderstanding of climate science.

So Ken, can you please reconcile your claim – “human climate forcing is 10,000 times more powerful than natural” - with this from New Scientist writer Fred Pearce:

“Some of the climate scientists gathered in Geneva admitted that...natural variability is at least as important (50% influence or higher) as the long term climate changes from global warming.”

No matter how you want to spin it Ken, you won’t find a credible climate scientist who’ll put his name to your statement that human GHG emission forcings are “10,000 times more powerful” than natural forcings. Not one. I don’t even think Gareth Renowden would be stupid enough to back you on this. A number of studies are suggesting natural forcings are currently 50% of the measured impact or more, which is why we get graphs like this:

Now again, it doesn't matter how you spin this. If YOUR statement about anthropogenic GHG forcings being "10,000 times more powerful than natural" were true, the rising CO2 in that graph would be dragging temperatures up no trouble at all.

The Journal of Climate published a study late January noting that natural forcings appear to be outgunning CO2 and methane at present, by a considerable margin, and the study authors note: “Earth’s climate may be less sensitive to rising greenhouse gases than assumed”.

Another study, published in Science around the same time, found a similar effect taking place, and as one report put it, “Susan Solomon, the respected climate scientist who led the research...did point out that the research does allude to human emissions having a much smaller role in climate change than previously thought, and serves as a warning to climate modelers who ‘over interpret the results’.”

Ouch. 10,000 times more powerful?

You actually need to read Air Con with an objective, scientist’s eye rather than thinking Renowden successfully debunked it.

You might recall, for example, his attacks on me such as this:

"…oceans are not responding to heat somehow stored from an earlier period — they respond to heat as it arrives."

In one of my posts I took him to pieces on this: http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/05/laughing-at-the-loon.html

But I was interested to re-read the AR4 WG-1 report yesterday and find this as well:

“Thermal expansion would continue for many centuries, due to the time required to transport heat into the deep ocean.”

I’m beginning to wonder if you and Gareth have actually read the WG-1 reports, or whether you all went straight to the Summary for Policymakers to get your scientific understanding and missed the detail...

Some other howlers from Ken, which I will proceed to debunk over the next day or so in edits to this post. If anyone else wants to show Ken some of the scientific studies on these points, you are welcome:

"CO2 proves to be the major contributor to current warming."

"Isnt Urban Heat Island effect a valid concern when looking at temp measuring site readings? Yes, it had been investigated and is one reason why some sites are not included. Climate scientists are specialists in their field. They are aware of these sorts of problems and have developed procedures for handling them"

"Did the Medieval Warm Period happen? Seems so, but restricted to regions. At least this is what paleoclimate evidence us telling us. The best evidence indicates that current temperatures are greater than they have been over about 1000 years, probably more"

"David I don’t have that experience. If anything I keep hearing that there was a global MWP – but not from scientific sources. When I look into the evidence I find that nothing beyond regional effects are clear. Eg Northern Europe but not in Southern Europe"

BREAKING NEWS: Germany abandons world climate treaty

According to Der Spiegel:

Merkel Abandons Aim of Binding Climate Agreement

By Dirk Kurbjuweit, Christian Schwägerl and Gerald Traufetter

Frustrated by the climate change conference in December, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is quietly moving away from her goal of a binding agreement on limiting climate change to 2 degrees Celsius. She has also sent out signals at the EU level that she no longer supports the idea of Europe going it alone.

Australia shelves ETS scheme, NZ under pressure

NEWS RELEASE FROM NZCSC

 

“The madness of the Government’s new carbon tax is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it.  It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.” Nick Smith - Friday, 25 November 2005  http://www.nick4nelson.co.nz/nelson-marlborough-farming-december-column.html

 

On the 1st July, 2010, New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is to implemented.

 

The ETS is effectively a new tax that will affect most sectors of the New Zealand economy, raising prices for all New Zealanders.

 

It can be estimated it will eventually cost the average New Zealand household about $2500 - $3000 in higher prices (worsened by any increase in the rate of GST). In addition, Sheep and Beef farmers will become liable (at $25/tonne CO²) to $5,200, while Dairy farmers will pay over $10,000 each – with 75% of these levies commencing in July 2010. And then there is the jump in prices of EVERYTHING, followed by higher interest rates!

 

For what?

 

For no measurable changes to CO² levels and climate!

 

There are no positives, only negatives for the people of New Zealand.

 

We join the business and farming communities in calling on the Government to defer the implementation of the ETS given:

- that it has just become known that Australia is deferring the implementation of its ETS scheme until 2013,

- that no other country has put in place any similar scheme,

- that its implementation will severely disadvantage NZ against its trading partners,

- that it will cause unnecessary hardship for a very large number of New Zealanders.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Five new videos - ‘The Emissions Trading Scheme: The Really Inconvenient Truth – For New Zealand’  - are now on YouTube

 

They can be found at the following links:

 

Barry Brill, Former Member of Parliament, Minister of Science, and Minister of Energy, and now Chariman of the NZCSC, overviews a brief history of the ETS and addresses its downsides.

 

Barry Brill - 7 mins - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bu2t29Lu30

 

Professor Bob Carter from James Cook University (Queensland) provides a 20 minute interview about his new book - Climate: the Counter-Consensus ^* - in which he distinguishes three different aspects of the public discussion of climate change as corresponding to science reality, virtual reality (computer models) and socio-political reality. These distinctions have important scientific and policy implications, yet until recently they were absent from the public debate.

 

Prof Bob Carter PART 1 - 10 mins - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZxgJFTLppA

 

Prof Bob Carter PART 2 - 10 mins - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7wmPeAyoiE

 

Dr Jock Allison, Former Director of the MAF Invermay Research Centre and critically involved in recent improvements to the NZ sheep industry, addresses the effect the ETS will have on Agriculture.

 

Dr Jock Allison - 10 mins - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXUdpZlwHuA

 

Bryan Leyland, is a consulting engineer specializing in electricity generation and transmission, and speaks to the effect of the ETS on the power industry.

 

Bryan Leyland - 6 mins - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROYt2m5B55I

 

 

Please watch the videos and spread this message far and wide!

 

Forward it to all who will be interested…and even those who are not! If they live in NZ, they will be affected by the ETS!

 

Or…’Cut and paste and pass along’…to all and sundry…

 

Or…if you have a website and want to embed the videos, go right ahead…

 

If you are concerned about the imposition of this totally unnecessary tax on the people of New Zealand, be sure to contact the National Government Caucus through a web page such as http://www.betterdemocracy.co.nz/email_mps.php and let them know in no uncertain terms what you think. It is very very simple to email all National Government members through this webpage.

 

Thanks

 

NZ Climate Science Coalition

 

^* Pre-publication details for Climate: the Counter-Consensus at <http://www.stacey-international.co.uk/v1/site/product_rpt.asp?Catid=331&catname=>

 

 

Obama official, Gore aide caught in climate funding scandal

Chris Horner breaks the story:

Surprising documents made available to this author reveal that Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi has a huge financial stake in companies likely to profit from the Obama administration’s “green” policies.

Zoi, who left her position as CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection — founded by Al Gore — to serve as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, now manages billions in “green jobs” funding. But the disclosure documents show that Zoi not only is in a position to affect the fortunes of her previous employer, ex-Vice President Al Gore, but that she herself has large holdings in two firms that could directly profit from policies proposed by the Department of Energy.

Among Zoi’s holdings are shares in Serious Materials, Inc., the previously sleepy, now bustling, friend of the Obama White House whose public policy operation is headed by her husband. Between them, Zoi and her husband hold 120,000 shares in Serious Materials, as well as stock options. Reporter John Stossel has already explored what he sees as the “crony capitalism” implied by Zoi being so able to influence the fortunes of a company to which she is so closely associated.

Climategate whitewash excoriated by climate scientists Judith Curry

While bloggers like OpenParachute's Ken Perrott and Hot Topic's Gareth Renowden have tried to claim vindication from the Oxburgh whitewash, many actual scientists have seen the 'inquiry' for the scam that it is.

America's Judith Curry is one of those:

Criticisms of the Oxburgh report that have been made include:  bias of some of the members including the Chair, not examining the papers that are at the heart of the controversies, lack of consideration of the actual criticisms made by Steve McIntyre and others, and a short report with few specifics that implies a superficial investigation.  When I first read the report, I thought I was reading the executive summary and proceeded to look for the details;  well, there weren’t any. And I was concerned that the report explicitly did not address the key issues that had been raised by the skeptics. Upon reading Andrew Montford’s analysis, I learned:  “So we have an extraordinary coincidence – that both the UEA submission to the [UK Parliament's Science and Technology]  Select Committee and Lord Oxburgh’s panel independently came up with almost identical lists of papers to look at, and that they independently neglected key papers like Jones 1998 and Osborn and Briffa 2006.” I recall reading this statement from one of the blogs, which seems especially apt:  the fire department receives report of a fire in the kitchen; upon investigating the living room, they declare that there is no fire in the house.

There's far more at the Curry link above.

Indians tell Key to start circling the wagons

UBCIC Calls on New Zealand to Offer Unqualified Endorsement of UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

 

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - April 22, 2010) - The New Zealand government announced that it will adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, like Canada, New Zealand is offering conditional support for the Declaration within the bounds of its own legal and constitutional frameworks. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs congratulates the Indigenous peoples of New Zealand on their unrelenting struggle for recognition of their rights. We strongly urge the New Zealand government to fully support the Declaration in order to implement its true spirit and intent.

 

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs stated, "New Zealand's limited support of the Declaration threatens the very purpose, essence and integrity of the Declaration as an international instrument. Clearly, the Declaration advances human rights for Indigenous peoples beyond national status quos and offers a framework for justice and reconciliation- it must be adopted without qualification."

 

UBCIC applauds U.S. President Obama for his announcement yesterday that the U.S. will be formally reviewing their position on the Declaration, without announcing any qualifications. By resolution, the UBCIC Chiefs Council supports and endorses the full implementation of the UN Declaration.

 

Grand Chief Phillip concluded, "Given the devastating impacts of colonialism that were imposed on Indigenous peoples, it is simply shameful that modern nation-states like New Zealand and Canada continue to deny the international reality of our Indigenous rights. Accordingly, Canada and New Zealand should both stop their efforts to domesticate international human rights instruments such as the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples."

 

The UBCIC is a NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

 

Contacts:

Media inquiries:

Union of BC Indian Chiefs

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip

00 1 250 490 5314

president@ubcic.bc.ca

www.ubcic.bc.ca

IPCC bungled Bangladesh sea level predictions

The formerly cast iron UN IPCC 2007 Fourth Assessment Report continues to crumble into rust today, with Bangladeshi scientists finding major errors in the IPCC's claims about the effect of sea level rise on their country.

It's enough to make a global warming believer cry...

Challenge to IPCC's Bangladesh climate predictions

By Shafiq Alam (AFP) – 20 hours ago

DHAKA — Scientists in Bangladesh posed a fresh challenge to the UN's top climate change panel Thursday, saying its doomsday forecasts for the country in the body's landmark 2007 report were overblown.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already under fire for errors in the 2007 report, had said a one-metre (three-foot) rise in sea levels would flood 17 percent of Bangladesh and create 20 million refugees by 2050.

The claim helped create a widespread consensus that the low-lying country was on the "front line" of climate change, but a new study argues the IPCC ignored the role sediment plays in countering sea level rises.

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri defended his organisation's Bangladesh predictions Thursday, warning that "on the basis of one study one cannot jump to conclusions."

"The IPCC looks at a range of publications before we take a balanced view on what's likely to happen," he told AFP by telephone.

But IPCC's prediction did not take into account the one billion tonnes of sediment carried by Himalayan rivers into Bangladesh every year, which are crucial in countering rises in sea levels, the study funded by the Asian Development Bank said.

"Sediments have been shaping Bangladesh's coast for thousands of years," said Maminul Haque Sarker, director of the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), who led research for the study.

Previous "studies on the effects of climate change in Bangladesh, including those quoted by the IPCC, did not consider the role of sediment in the growth and adjustment process of the country?s coast and rivers to the sea level rise," he told AFP.

Even if sea levels rise a maximum one metre in line with the IPCC's 2007 predictions, the new study indicates most of Bangladesh's coastline will remain intact, said Sarker.

Latest Investigate hits stores, and controversy

The latest Investigate hit the stores today...fascinating reading...

UPDATE: Hot Topic gets it wrong again #86

Truffle grower Gareth Renowden thinks he can race to the defence of a flawed Royal Society analysis with this piece of fluff:

TWB [Treadgold, Wishart, Brill] are wrong, and Hunter’s precise point is correct: the measured increase in carbon storage in the ocean and atmosphere is equivalent to the amount of fossil fuels burned since the beginning of the industrial era. Hunter does not mention other anthropogenic sources of carbon — primarily from chopping down forests — but they are roughly in balance with terrestrial carbon sinks (which have been called “missing sinks” because the exact details have proved hard to pin down). The “discrepancy”, as Wishart calls it, is irrelevant to the central message: that the increase in atmospheric carbon is our fault. In fact the “missing sink” and oceans have been doing us a big favour by storing away a very big chunk of our emissions…

Now here's what the experts say:

Terrestrial ecosystems sequester 2.1 Pg of atmospheric carbon annually. A large amount of the terrestrial sink is realized by forests. However, considerable uncertainties remain regarding the fate of this carbon over both short and long timescales. Relevant data to address these uncertainties are being collected at many sites around the world, but syntheses of these data are still sparse.

In the same abstract it concludes with what they had to do in the computer models to actually achieve 'balance':

In all biomes, closing the CO2 balance required the introduction of substantial biome-specific closure terms. Nonclosure was taken as an indication that respiratory processes, advection, and non-CO2 carbon fluxes are not presently being adequately accounted for.

Call me a simpleton, but I don't think scientists are as certain about balance in the system (and that was just the land-based sinks) as the truffle expert over at Hot Topic would have us all believe. I would add that the anthropogenic emissions amount to less than 5% of the annual global CO2 emissions, so pinning the measurement 'exactly' to human sources is highly unlikely, given the capacity for natural emissions to grow significantly or reduce significantly in any given year for entirely natural reasons.

Then there's the mystery of the continuing balance in the airborne fraction - the ratio of atmospheric carbon dioxide to absorbed CO2 in the oceans and land biomass.

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO₂ than had been previously expected.

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO₂ should start to diminish as CO₂ emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.

The mystery, still unsolved, is how and why the airborne fraction has remained the same despite increasing human caused emissions - in 1850 the atmosphere caught 45% of two billion tonnes and now it is holding 45% of 35 billion tonnes a year. But why 45%? We chuck everything we have into the air, and earth keeps 45% of it in the sky regardless of how much we produce.

Renowden (and Hunter) seem to think all the 'experts' solved this equation a long time ago and we know exactly where everything went, "move on, nothing to see here".

But if so, why is scientist Wolfgang Knorr asking the same question I am:

"We need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed”. 

UPDATE 16 April.I love serendipity:

David Adam

guardian.co.uk News Thu 15 Apr 2010 19:00 BST

Further study on oceans needed before hidden heat "comes back to haunt us", say researchers in Colorado

Experts need to beef up ways to measure the heat content of oceans as a way to track more reliably the course of global warming, scientists say today.

Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo, climate scientists at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, say that only about half of the heat believed to have built up in the Earth in recent years can be accounted for. New instruments are needed to locate and monitor this missing heat, they say, which could be storing up trouble for the future.

"The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later," Trenberth said. "The reprieve we've had from warming temperatures in the last few years will not continue. It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate."

Although the rise in surface temperature in recent decades is the most well-known consequence of the thickening blanket of greenhouse gases around the Earth, it represents just a tiny fraction of the extra heat trapped. Most of the extra solar energy heads straight into the oceans, where it is stored as warmer water. Some goes into melting glaciers and polar ice, as well as warming the land and atmosphere.

Writing in the journal Science, the scientists say their calculations show that current measurements can only account for half the extra heat trapped by human emissions. Much of the rest is probably in the deep ocean, they say. Some heat increase has been detected in the upper ocean, but there is no routine monitoring below depths of about 3,000m.

Fasullo said: "Global warming at its heart is driven by an imbalance of energy. More solar energy is entering the atmosphere than leaving it. Our concern is that we aren't able to entirely monitor or understand the imbalance. This reveals a glaring hole in our ability to observe the build-up of heat in our climate system."

The missing heat is important, they say, because it could be released as weather phenomena such as El Niño, in which the upper waters of the tropical Pacific ocean warm, and La Niña, which often follows. La Niña events have been linked to cold weather, while El Niños drive storms.

The scientists say: "How can we understand whether the strong cold outbreaks of December 2009 are simply a natural weather phenomenon, as they seem to be, or are part of some change in clouds or pollution, if we do not have adequate measurements?"

If you needed proof the Royal Society of New Zealand, and Hot Topic, were talking through a hole in their chuff about how everything matched nicely and you can trust the science, the Guardian newspaper just delivered the coup de grace.