Every year extraordinary weather events rock the Earth. Records that have stood centuries are broken. Great floods, droughts, and storms affect millions of people, and truly exceptional weather events unprecedented in human history may occur. But the wild roller-coaster ride of incredible weather events during 2010, in my mind, makes that year the planet’s most extraordinary year for extreme weather since reliable global upper-air data began in the late 1940s. Never in my 30 years as a meteorologist have I witnessed a year like 2010–the astonishing number of weather disasters and unprecedented wild swings in Earth’s atmospheric circulation were like nothing I’ve seen. The pace of incredible extreme weather events in the U.S. over the past few months have kept me so busy that I’ve been unable to write-up a retrospective look at the weather events of 2010. But I’ve finally managed to finish, so fasten your seat belts for a tour through the top twenty most remarkable weather events of 2010. At the end, I’ll reflect on what the wild weather events of 2010 and 2011 imply for our future.

The list is rather long, which is the point, of course. Makes for unhappy reading too.

What could it mean?  Hmmm, I couldn’t possibly comment.

Russel’s questions were in light of the World Meteorological Organisation and global insurance giant Munich Re both coming out and saying that the unprecedented amount of floods and other extreme weather events around the world right now are definitely part of a trend attributed to climate change. The head of GeoRisk at Munich Re had this to say:

Climate change cannot be identified from individual events but our figures, backed by verifiable changes in meteorological data, indicate a trend towards an increase in extreme weather events that can only be fully explained by climate change.

The current state of knowledge leaves no doubt about the existence of anthropogenic climate change.

So, climate change is already causing an increase in extreme weather events, just as the science predicted. Go figure!

All Russel was asking the Minister was whether or not he would require local councils to plan for these events, through a National Policy Statement on climate change adaptation.

The Minister didn’t want to say no, so he pretended that Russel was asking for something else – like telling councils where they could build houses and the like.

It was really just smoke and mirrors to indicate that John Key’s Government is going to do absolutely nothing to help New Zealanders prepare for what the scientists and actuaries know is already happening!

This has really turned out to be a do-nothing government of empty rhetoric, busy tearing things down but not preparing or planning for the future.

‘Letting the market decide’ is a poor excuse for a lack of vision and leadership.

Here’s Russel in this week’s Green video:

Their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt.

My exceedingly lazy analysis of the document (it is the third report to exonerate them, after all), the phrase ‘no evidence’ appears no less than 17 times. For die hards, Hot Topic does a good overview of the report.

More interesting to me was the gossip from George Monbiot, who himself had called for Phil Jones’ scalp:

Overall it shows, in most cases persuasively, that there is no evidence of fraud, manipulation or a lack of rigour and honesty on the part of the CRU scientists. The science is sound; the IPCC has not been compromised.

So was I wrong to call, soon after this story broke, for Jones’s resignation? I think, on balance, that I was. He said some very stupid things. At times he squelched the scientific principles of transparency and openness. He might have broken the law. But he was also provoked beyond endurance. I think, in the light of everything I’ve now seen and read, that if I were to write that article again I’d conclude that Phil Jones should hang on – but only just. I hope the last review gives him some peace.

Some peace indeed. All the scientists deserve it. And what about those New Zealand scientists who have been dragged through the mud by politicians hiding behind parliamentary privilege? Russel asked the other week if they would apologise and withdraw. I doubt it. At least Rupert Murdoch did.

I also doubt whether the frothing climate denial blogosphere here in NZ will apologise either. No doubt this is just more proof of the ever widening global conspiracy. These things tend to become a self fulfilling prophecy. We few who know the truth must stand against the whole world!  (and the scientific evidence)

Frankly, I’m over it. Unfortunately, man made climate change is far from over. It’s just beginning.

Despite the propoganda from denialists and a couple of glaring but insignificant errors in the AR4, the IPCC has been shown to be extremely conservative in its forecasts, as climate change is running ahead or in line with the modelling.

There are three working groups involved in the report, with the following NZ scientists on the team:

Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report  Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis

Chapter 5: Information from Paleoclimate Archives

Tim NAISH, GNS Scinece, Victoria University (Antarctic Research Centre)

Chapter 14: Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change

James RENWICK, NIWA (Energy)

David WRATT, NIWA

Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

Climate Change 2013: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

Chapter 6: Ocean systems

Phil Boyd, NIWA

Chapter 11:  Human health

Alistair Woodward, Auckland University (Population Health)

Chapter 25:  Australasia

Andy Reisinger, Victoria University

Paul Newton, AgResearch

Andrew Tait, NIWA

Blair Fitzharris, Otago University

Working Group III Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

Climate Change 2013: Mitigation of Climate Change

Chapter 8:  Transport

Ralph SIMS, Massey University, IEA

Chapter 11:  Agriculture, Forestry and other land uses (AFOLU)

Harry CLARK, AgResearch

This is a pretty good showing for New Zealand. I won’t go on about punching above our weight and all that, I just want to congratulate some of our leading lights who are contributing to what is the most important challenge facing humanity today.

With the physics of global warming long settled and the science of when and how much a perpetual moving feast, it is truly important work.

It is more difficult to answer why, in the face of broad scientific consensus about global warming, the public remains confused.

This disconnection between scientific knowledge and public opinion is not restricted to global warming. There is broad scientific consensus on a number of issues where public opinion is far more divided. Scientists generally agree, for example, that genetically modified food does not pose a food-safety risk; the application of 1080 poison helps protect native flora and fauna; and that vaccinations are important for the health of our children.

…another explanation is that journalists, in their quest for objectivity, strive to report “both sides of the story”. Unfortunately, this admirable ethos results in a systematic over-reporting of dissenting views. It can be very difficult for the media to determine whether a dissenting opinion is specious and should be ignored or is a legitimate challenge to orthodoxy that should be reported.

…consensus is not the same as unanimity.

In contrast to the courtroom, new evidence continually arrives during the conduct of scientific debates. Where science and law do agree, however, is that when a verdict is “beyond reasonable doubt”, such as with global warming, it is time to act.

It’s time to act. That’s what the science tells us to do. Act now to mitigate the risk inherent in our current behaviour.

It sucks being asked to change our behaviour. All sorts of rationalisations and temper tantrums erupt. Even for a rational frog like me. Too bad. Either we adapt our behaviour or we risk joining the fossils.

Despite the title, it is clear from his post that Professor Guilford thinks that the scientists do agree – it’s the public that struggles to seperate the wheat from the chaffe in the global warming debate.

The Guardian has a great article on the video, who’s behind it and why it is so ripe for a spoof. I’m tempted to do one myself!

In a slick attempt to undermine the US Environmental Protection Agency’s recent ruling that CO2 should now be classified as a pollutant because rising levels of the gas in the atmosphere will “endanger public health or welfare”, a former oil industry executive has stumped up some of his cash to pay for these adverts to be shown in Montana and New Mexico. The ultimate aim of the advert, though, is to derail the forthcoming vote in the Senate on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which now appears as if it might even impact on vital UN climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

In not so plain English? It’s a simple case of political brinksmanship.

Dear Big oil,

If you kill our climate change bill, we’ll act on the EPA’s declaration of CO2 as a pollutant and achieve the same aims of the ETS through regulation.

Love,

Barack

Dear Barack,

We’ve got more money than you.

Love,

Big oil

I look forward to the outcome of this particular battle. Rumour has it that the Senate version of the climate bill is even tougher than the one that went through the House. We’ll find out over night.

Basically, it’s less obligation for everyone, and more delay. Taxpayers pick up the cost. It seriously weakens the scheme we have now, and will do little to reduce emissions.

There are serious problems with entry dates, a price cap, free credits to big emitters for the rest of the century and a two for one deal that halves the price signal.

However the worst feature of the new proposal is none of these. It is the proposal that free credits be allocated on the basis of how much a firm produces. It’s called “intensity based” or “output based” allocation. It means there is no limit ever to NZ’s emissions; they never peak and start to trend downwards; and the incentive is to grow our most polluting industries. It works like this.

Suppose a cement plant (or steel, or aluminium) currently produces 100 tonnes of product and emits 500 tonnes of greenhouse gases. Under the existing law, let’s assume the same numbers were true of 2005. They would then get free allocations for 90% of this pollution, or 450 units, and have to purchase 50 units. If they managed to become more efficient and reduce their pollution they would have less to purchase. If they grew their production to 150 tonnes at the same energy intensity and therefore emitted 750 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, they would still get only 450 free credits.

So when they did the financial analysis about whether to expand production, the cost of carbon credits they would have to purchase would be part of the calculation. There would be a strong incentive to find new technology that emitted less pollution per tonne of product, or to invest their capital in something with lower greenhouse gases per dollar of value created. This is how a country can transition to a low carbon economy. At the same time, cement, steel and aluminium become more expensive and new technology is developed to build strong buildings using less cement, and in some circumstances to substitute strengthened timber for steel or concrete.

But that was last year’s scheme, which is about to be cancelled. Under National’s new scheme, the plant gets a free allocation for every tonne of product they make. If the starting  point is 450 tonnes for 100 tonnes of production, when they expand to produce 150 tonnes of product they get 90% of 750 units, or 675 units. When considering whether to expand, the firm never faces the full price of carbon on the next unit of product. They only ever face 10% of it. This leads to an economy where our most carbon and energy intensive industries grow and there is little reason for new technology or low carbon production or switching from high to low intensity materials. It is an economy stuck in the past, unable to transition to the new, hi-tech, climate-friendly future.

There is also a provision that the allocation will be related to the industry average emissions for that level of production. This raises more problems than it solves. It is unclear at this stage whether the industry average is international or NZ, and how it is determined.

Of course, if the plant expands its production and raises its emissions, that becomes part of New Zealand’s obligation under Kyoto. As a country, we have to purchase units overseas to balance out that extra 250 tonnes. The difference between 450 free units under the old scheme, and 675 under National’s proposed scheme is picked up by taxpayers.

In short hand, the more you pollute the bigger the subsidy you get. It’s not polluter pays, it’s pay the polluters.

I’m going to Copenhagen in December. I’m thinking of a large sign round my neck: Ashamed to be a New Zealander.

Raising benefits is the correct way to compensate for higher prices, rather than the Government’s proposal for a three year transition where the energy and transport sectors only have to purchase one tonne of emissions units for very two tonnes emitted by their products, effectively halving the price from $25/tonne to $12.50. A rise in the core benefit would achieve two things:

• it would give financial relief to the households who most need it, without subsidising those who don’t;
• it would not dilute the price signal  that makes it worth while to save energy and fuel.

So beneficiaries could take their higher benefit and use it to purchase more efficient appliances or vehicles in order to reduce fuel and power costs permanently.

It is not clear from the Government’s announcements so far whether the family assistance measures negotiated  between the Greens and the Labour Party as part of the 2008 ETS legislation will be allowed to stand. First, the billion dollar home insulation fund which is in the legislation but may be repealed by National’s bill, was to have offered 100% subsidy for low income households and a lesser subsidy for those who could have afforded to put up some of the money, and none for those on the highest incomes. When we worked with National to reinstate the scheme, it was a bottom line for them to have no income cap, so 100% funding for poor families was not affordable.

It was also part of the agreement last year, though not implemented through legislation, that every household would get a one-off payment in compensation for the higher power prices, and the CPI based benefit adjustment would occur in advance rather than in arrears. Those changes were to cost $180m but may not survive.

We argued with Labour for a general benefit rise last year, and failed. National should reconsider it this year.

Owen was commenting on my earlier post about Nick Smith’s failure as Climate Change Minister, when he stated that:

Nick is even wrong in his wrongness

Owen then goes on to link to the work of Professor Mark Adams in Australia, claiming that cattle are actually carbon neutral because the soil absorbs methane. This is a common meme used by climate deniers and the Greenhouse Policy Coalition to ‘debunk’ climate change and to try and get agriculture off the hook for their emissions.

Cherry picking the science is one of their favourite tools, and this is a case in point. What Professor Adams really said was:

“Typical methane production by beef cattle is round about 60 kilograms of methane per year, and some of the high country soils are taking more than that out of the atmosphere every day, so one hectare is taking out, or oxidising, more methane than a cow produces in a year” says Professor Mark Adams.

He says low intensity grazing, and sensible fire management, are the keys to success and sustainability for both the environment and farming.

By endorsing Professor Adams, McShane is endorsing a 1 cow per hectare policy to combat climate change, which is a very extreme culling of the herd, to say the least.

Now, we are mixing up beef cattle and dairy cattle here, but their climate change effects are roughly similar.

The Green’s document, Getting There, quotes research showing that farmers can reduce their herd from the average of 2.83 per hectare to 2.3,  still be profitable, and not have to pay anything under the existing ETS until 2018.

In contrast, Owen is suggesting a serious cull, down to 1 cow per hectare.

It’s great that Owen is finally referring to some real science, but in his haste to cherry pick, he has endorsed a pretty extreme view. I’m not sure the economics will stack up in Owen’s favour. That’s a shame, coming from an economist.

As temperatures rise, the sea-bed grows warmer and frozen water crystals in the sediment break down, allowing methane trapped inside them to escape.

The research team found that more than 250 plumes of methane bubbles are rising from the sea-bed off Norway.

Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, the team says the methane was rising from an area of sea-bed off West Spitsbergen, from depths between 150m and 400m.

So this new evidence shows that methane is stable at water depths greater than 400m off Spitsbergen.

However, data collected over 30 years shows it was then stable at water depths as shallow as 360m.

Methane bubbles observed by sonar, escape from sea-bed as temperatures rise

In our paper Getting There, we have come out in support of a 40% target by 2020, which still only gives us a 50/50 chance of keeping warming at or below 2 degrees, and atmospheric CO2 at 450 ppm.

What if this is simply not enough? The 350.org crowd very sensibly call for a return to 350 ppm, which is the CO2 range wherein humans have evolved and prospered.

The Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change, set in the future. Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devasted world of 2055, looking back at “archive” footage from 2007 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

While I wouldn’t go so far as to call the evening uplifting, the Paramount theatre was packed to the rafters, with a real buzz in the crowd. The story is based on the IPCC’s business as usual assessment, and much of the footage used for the film is real. It weaves the story of six different people, (real people, from today) in the same way the movie Traffic does, telling a compelling story about the time we live in.

It was produced by new Zealand Green Party candidate Lizzie Gillett. There is an extended  interview with Lizzie and TV3 talking about the premier, the making of the film and getting Pete onboard. Director Franny Armstrong brought us McLibel and other documentary hits, and has an interesting RadioNZ interview of her own.

The Listener waxed poetic about the film:

It’s been made cheaply, the subject matter is bleak but a Kiwi-produced documentary is taking the world by storm.

Sure, darlings of the fashion world are a must at any movie premiere, but this is probably the only one where Vivienne Westwood has arrived on her bike, skirt tucked into her knickers.

And probably the only one where a national treasure has threatened to renounce his title. At the March London premiere of new environmental doco The Age of Stupid, Pete Postlethwaite vowed to hand back his OBE if plans for a new coal-fired power station in Kent went ahead.

I recommend that anyone who simply cannot conceive of how imminent a problem climate change is, goes to see Age of Stupid.

Palm oil is a contentious ingredient with reports blaming its plantations for huge contributions to global warming and intensive habitat destruction leading to the deaths of orang-utans in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Cadbury New Zealand managing director Matthew Oldham said he was “really sorry” and that the decision was in direct response to consumer feedback, including hundreds of letters and emails.

It’s a small but significant victory in getting rid of high cost environmental subsidies to big business. Congratulations to Cadbury for realising that the climate is the bottom line, not just for business, but for everyone. You can’t burn the assets of the parent company and expect the subsidiary to survive.

Well, we actually think the game is going to be really tough. We have looked over the Katikati RFC playbook and we reckon we’re  going to try our best and get 10 or 20 points on the board, but it’s going to be really hard.

That 10 or 20 points is conditional, don’t you know, on whether Dan Carter plays, whether the pitch has been mowed properly and whether or not the fans are polite on the night. If those conditions are met, I think we’ll be able to get 10 or 20 points on the board.

Our circumstances are unique and we think that the Aussies will recongnise that and take it into consideration when we square off in Wellington this weekend.

Can you imagine Graham Henry saying that at a press conference? This is precisely what John Key did yesterday at the post cab. He let his junior coaches spin the yarn, but the message was clear. We aren’t even going to try, and we hope that the others will play nice on the night.

How is it that Nick Smith can spend upwards of a million dollars refurbishing the Ministry for the Environment’s offices and reshuffling bureaucrats, but he can’t do a simple bottom up analysis of how New Zealand could lower its greenhouse emissions?

If Henry fronted up like this he would be fired in a minute. Too bloody hard? Get real! If Henry fronted up and said he hadn’t really done any of the homework, but he thought the ABs might still manage if the conditions were right, we’d fire him. So. John Key. Where the bloody hell are you?  If we can do it, why can’t you?

So there we have it. The National Government failing to take responsibility for our share of the mess. Such a small share, but ours to bear nonetheless.

The feeble details can be found at the MfE website.

Nick Smith practically admitted that the government hasn’t even done a bottom up analysis of what each sector could manage in the way of emissions reductions. This is a sad abdication of responsibility and of leadership. We deserve better.

I think this Scoop image says it all!

Well, with our limited resources we have done the government’s work for them. The punters have praised it, saying NZ must do better.

We certainly have set ourselves up to fail with this one!

Today we are launching an e-card to support my Member’s bill that will regulate the import of illegal and unsustainable tropical timber and wood products. Please send one now to the Prime Minister.

In additional to the e-card, next week we are working with visiting Papuan activists Paula Makabory who is speaking in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch about human rights, mining and forestry issues in her country (which is currently occupied by the Indonesian military and their corporate allies).

Paula and I are also going to visit retailers to congratulate ethical businesses who sell credibly-certificated timber products and to challenge the bad guys to do a whole lot better.

My Bill requires that all imported timber and wood products are certified as legal and sustainable.  Many of these products — from kwila decking and garden furniture to teak ornaments — have some kind of label, but not all labels are credible as research from groups such as Greenpeace has uncovered. I recommend Greenpeace’s Good Wood guide.

Sustainability can be the hardest and most nebulous test on the planet, and that is why we are requiring certification that meets the tests of cultural, ecological and social justice as well as financial sustainability.

Neither Labour or National have yet shown leadership on this issue of national shame, but my bill gives them the opportunity to do something about it. The global illegal timber trade  substantially harms the New Zealand forestry industry — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in depressed prices, and costing us jobs and carbon credits at the same time — as well as harming the climate, indigenous people and the biodiversity of the planet.

In the next month we are going to push the Government hard to show some commitment to this issue. To find out more about the campaign go to the Rainforests campaign on our website!

First, he refused to give any information about any work the Government had done to set out possible emissions reductions, other than to say a lot of departments had worked on it. We suspect that is because there is nothing to say. The Government has relied on macro-economic analysis about emissions prices instead of analysing opportunities. Smith had made it clear that it was up to NGOs and volunteers to work out how to meet a target, not the job of the well resourced government departments he controls.

Then, he claimed he had not read our package. While it is true that we got a copy to his office only about an hour and a half before he had to answer the question, you can be totally sure that his staff had read it and advised him. It would have been obvious when it turned up that it related to question 1 in the House which they would already have been working on. Clearly they advised him not to address anything it actually said. That is good news; it means he could not rebut it.

Then, he set about rebutting things we had not said – like proposing 100% renewable electricity, which he said would raise power prices 30%. That’s the reason we didn’t propose 100%. When I was leadng EECA’s work under the last government, we had some robust analysis done by EECA and MED  to determine the costs of various levels of renewability in the electricity system. We found 90% renewable by 2025 was entirely achievable and hardly raised prices at all, as there is a lot of low cost geothermal and wind energy waiting to be built.

Going to 100% is costly because you have to build a huge amount of capacity which just sits around unused until there is a very dry winter, given that people don’t like power cuts. Much better to have a couple of gas peaking stations that are cheap to build and only run a small proportion of the time. The greenhouse gases are negligible in the scheme of things and the saved capital is much better used to make significant reductions in transport or agriculture which are a much bigger worry than electricity.

Next he attacked the idea of reducing farm animals by a third. That would mean reducing dairy farm stocking rates from 2.83 cows/ha which is the current average to 1.86. Our proposal was to reduce them to 2.3, which is the intensity that research has found is most profitable for the farmer if milk prices are below $5.50. The current price is $5.20, which is also the average price (inflation adjusted) over the last ten years. The extra return from additional animals per hectare just doesn’t pay for the huge increase in urea, bought in feeds, off farm grazing of animals not in milk and animal health costs that are needed to cram more animals on to the same land. Dairy farmers could be making more money and reducing emissions.

We didn’t get as far as transport where fuel economy standards for vehicles could dramatically lower petrol costs for motorists – but he’s bound to have a reason not to do this too.

He quoted again that mysterious figure attributed to the NZIER/Infometrics report, that a minus 40% target would entail a cost of $14.5 Billion a year – impressive, except that no-one can find it in that report. Did he make it up?

Not a single question of mine answered, not a single  point in our report addressed, but finally, the last refuge of someone with no arguments,  a personal attack: emissions rose while I was leading the Government’s work on energy efficiency. Well, of course! Programmes take a couple of years to get through Cabinet and operational; then they take some time to have measurable effect. And energy efficiency is only one part of a much larger problem. The effects of the Government doing nothing today wil be felt over the next decade.

NZ deserves a “can do” minister, not a “can’t do, won’t try” government.

The bottom line being that significant domestic reductions ARE feasible, and a responsible 30-40% target is possible, affordable and responsible. The government has not presented any evidence themselves on what reductions are possible domestically, instead relying on costing based soley on purchases – and their misuse of evidence has been exposed. Their bubble that a responsible target is too hard and too costly has been burst. Their lack of leadership in challenging advocates of responsible targets to say how it can be done has been shown up. The Greens have shown how it can be done; something the government has been too lazy to do. The full report and media release are here.

Click here for details of the webcast. I encourage everybody and anybody to take the time to log on tonight and have a go. If you’ve got questions, you can email them in advance, or use the live chat features to try and get a word in edgewise.

Old timers like me or people with substandard internet connections may find it easier on IRC:  irc.mibbit.com and the chat channel is #mfe.

I have reason to believe (e.g. rumours) that the only reason that Nick Smith is going through these motions is because Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd both rang John Key personally during the Bonn talks last month and gave him a bollocking for our government being so slack in setting a 2020 target. (By the end of that meeting, we were the only country left who hadn’t set a target, and our bemused negotiators had made promises of a “public consultation” taking place with an answer by August.)

It was confirmed in the House after questions from the Green MPs that Kevin Rudd had in fact rung the PM, but we haven’t heard confirmation of Gordon Brown’s phone call, at least not from the Beehive.

If you want some pointers on issues you can raise, read the Green’s submission guide.

Auckland and Wellington had 3-400 people with a big majority arguing for an ambitious, science driven target. Rural and provincial areas are very different, with a very palpable fear of what such a target would do to their livelihoods. The Napier meeting was the only one I was able to attend, but it sounds from what I hear as though it was the one most dominated by climate change sceptics and misinformed, afraid farming folk. Farmers will of course be most disadvantaged by climate change, but if you think it’s all a myth and a hoax you wouldn’t be worried by that.

I suspect that any sceptics present at the city meetings felt intimidated by the large noisy majority arguing for a 40% reduction target. Certainly those wanting an ambitious target at the Napier meeting did not speak up, but voted for 40% in the show of hands at the end. And so the divide grows.

The arguments were very familiar and recycled, but no less deeply felt, for all that.

• “The science is wrong”. The Governments of the world have sought out the most qualified climate scientists in the world to review all the credible, peer reviewed literature published in reputable journals and come to a widely supported, if not totally unanimous, conclusion – but some other scientists who have PhDs (often in unrelated fields) disagree so the IPCC must be wrong. Well, it’s not who you believe, it’s what the evidence says.
• “There was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the past than now” – yes, millions of years before there were humans. We probably wouldn’t survive going back to that.
• “It’s all due to sunspots”. Well, they tested that one and it couldn’t explain the temperature rise.
• “Cows are carbon neutral – they take in carbon from the grass they eat, and breathe it out again – they just cycle carbon so shouldn’t have to participate in an ETS.” Ignores the little issue of cows converting carbon dioxide into methane which is 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a climate warmer.
• “Agricultural soils hold so much carbon we should get credits”. If that were true, why would NZ have opted not to count soil carbon when we agreed our target at Kyoto? Top soil is NZ’s greatest export, at something like 400 MT/y. Want to buy credits for that?
• “We have to feed starving people so food production should be exempt. Our pastoral farming is the most efficient in the world – better to do it here than overseas.” Actually, none of our food goes to feed the starving. We feed the already well fed, as they are the ones that can pay the prices we expect to sustain our standard of living. Work has been done to compare the carbon footprint of our farming with that of the UK and we come off well in that. But there just isn’t the analysis to show we are more efficient than the rest of the world. Eventually the world has to face the fact that we can feed far more people with more grains and less meat and dairy, even leaving aside greenhouse gases.
• And the old chestnut: “People in Siberia would like a bit of warming”. People in Siberia are adapted to the climate they have. What about water stressed Africa, where more drought will cause massive hunger, and Bangla Desh and South China where millions of people will lose their homes and food supply if sea level rises a metre?

You can’t blame people for recycling these myths when they read them daily in the farming papers and when Federated Farmers quotes them constantly. We heard them constantly in the select committee considering the ETS last year, and again in the ETS review committee this year. It’s as though town and country live in such different worlds they never talk to each other, let alone listen.

You can’t blame people for being frightened when they are told by Meat and Wool NZ, as one woman at the meeting claimed, that under the ETS legislated last year they would have to pay $150,000 a year to purchase carbon credits and this would bankrupt them. Turns out, on investigation, that this is in 2030 – 22 years away – when the free credits provided for in the ETS are planned to run out – if by then the rest of the world, or more particularly, our farming competitors – have a price on carbon too. That’s why the ETS has a built in five year review of the phase out. If by 2030 the rest of the world doesn’t have a price on carbon for farmers ours will have long since been dropped – and we will truly be facing climate chaos that will destroy farming as we know it.

Nick Smith did a good job in standing up to these claims and correcting the misinformation. But National has a huge job to do if it wants to take its farming community with it to an all sectors all gases ETS, even a weak one. Curiously, they may succeed, if they really try, where Labour failed. Farmers didn’t have to listen to Labour or the Greens because they thought National would bail them out after the election. Now, with National accepting climate science and the need to do at least something, they have nowhere to go but Act – and judging by the polls they don’t see this as an attractive alternative.

In the end, climate change will sink us all together. We need to bridge that town-country divide if we are to develop sensible policy. It would be nice if that policy could be based on reputable science.

The bar graph showing percentage emissions change for sectors between 1990 and 2007 serves to focus attention on the electricity sector, where the emissions have grown over 90% in that time.

But astute readers will notice that the energy half of our emissions is broken down into sub-sectors (electricity, transport, etc.), while the agriculture half is broken down into gases. Why the double-standard? It’s partly technical, but it serves to hide some key areas of emissions growth that we need to deal with.

If you break agriculture into its sub-sectors, you are confronted by the sacred cow of New Zealand ghgs – the large increase in emissions from dairy farming.

You see, the modest looking 12% increase in agricultural emissions is made up of a large increase in dairy emissions, offset by significant decreases in emissions from sheep and beef cattle.

I checked the inventory and discovered that the increase in dairy emissions of enteric methane alone is 70% over the 1990-2007 period, about the same rate of increases as transport emissions, and not much less proportionally than electricity. (Unfortunately the inventory doesn’t break-down all ag emissions into sub-sectors so I don’t know how much NOx comes from dairy rather than sheep, for example.)

More importantly, the real increase in dairy methane emissions is 3.5MtCO2e, which is MORE than the real increase in electricity emissions of 3Mt – in fact, the difference is even greater because the dairy number is only methane (and NOx has increased much more than methane). So, in real terms, the increase in total emissions from dairy farming may well be nearly twice that of the increase in electricity emissions.

The structure of the graph means that one source is accentuated and another hidden: while the pie graph above indicates the relative proportions of each sector, the bar graph above only accounts for relative increases. A better graph is one that combines the two, such as this one in the inventory:

However, this doesn’t split energy and agriculture into sub-sectors, so it still hides the large increase in dairy emissions is hidden in the broad agriculture category. Hiding it in the statistics only delays dealing with it. I guess I’ll have to do my own…

Fortunately, the Minister did stand up to those who sought to completely ignore the science and significance of ag emissions at the Napier meeting last night.

Addendum: No Right Turn has crunched the numbers and done the graph I was seeking. Thanks.