National sets carbon targets
Carbon emissions have grown faster in NZ since 1999 than in most other countries, despite the rhetoric of Labour, but with no action.
Clark has spoken of being carbon neutral but absolutely refuses to set any timeframe around that. John Key however has announced a policy commitment today of a 50% reduction in carbon-equivalent net emissions by 2050 (compared to 1990).
Some extracts from the speech (not online yet)
In the decades ahead, peoples’ perceptions around climate change will affect the brand image of New Zealand and its exports. New Zealand must take credible steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or risk becoming a trading pariah.
We’re going to need some serious climate ‘cred’ to tackle the ‘Food Miles’ bullies.
We also need to be on the economic offensive.
Climate change awareness will create new markets for Kiwi industries, tourism, and technology. It’s estimated that demand for low-carbon products will be worth at least $500 billion per year by 2050. Countries and consumers will be crying out for climate-friendly products and innovations.
Helen Clark’s policies have seen New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions grow faster than ever before. Between 2000 and 2005 alone, New Zealand’s emissions grew by 6.8 million tonnes. The weight of that gas is more than 16,000 fully laden jumbo jets, 260 titanics or 20 Empire State Buildings. It’s a big increase.
Labour’s policy framework has been characterised by uncertainty and indecision. Their eight years in Government have seen a revolving door of climate-change interventions: The fart tax, the carbon tax, and the negotiated greenhouse gas agreements have all been abandoned. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on an energy-efficiency strategy that saw the annual rate of improvement in energy-efficiency fall.
The most damaging area of Labour’s climate change policy is what happened in forestry. In the 50 years to 2003, New Zealand each year planted an average thirty thousand hectares of new forests. After Labour broke its word on forestry credits, we’ve had deforestation for the first time since those records began. The media is describing this as a “chainsaw massacre”.
I’m confident that many New Zealand businesses and individuals can and will become carbon neutral. I’m pleased that more and more are striving for it.
But making one household carbon neutral is quite a different thing to making the entire country carbon neutral. Not even the Green Party thinks that will be achievable in Clark’s lifetime.
Take their flagship scheme of getting six government departments to go “carbon neutral” in 2008. The emissions that will save over one year will be wiped out in just over half a day by greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation alone.
And the 180 tonnes estimated to be saved from Parliament’s proposed new fuel-efficient cars – that will go in less than half an hour.
So today I say this: don’t be sucked into believing that Labour has the solutions on climate change. When Helen Clark talks about achieving carbon neutrality, Kiwis need to remember her track-record of skyrocketing emissions.
So today I will do something Helen Clark has never done and I doubt she ever will.
I will set the achievable emission reduction target for New Zealand.
Here it is: A 50% reduction in carbon-equivalent net emissions, as compared to 1990 levels, by 2050.
In shorthand: A 50% cut by 2050. 50 by 50.
If I am Prime Minister of New Zealand I will write this target into law.
This target is comparable with targets being set by other developed nations and it makes sense for New Zealand’s agriculture-intensive economy.
I make no apologies for promising less than Labour; because National will deliver more.
I think the points about a trading and economic need to cut carbon, otherwise face trade boycotts is a strong one. We are starting to see the danger already from food miles campaigns.
I’m glad to see National set a specific target, as it allows for meaningful debate – something one can’t do with Clark’s meaningless spin on carbon neutrality. What I would like to see is some ballpark estimates of the costs of the 50% reduction by 2050, and what the projected benefits will be, in fiscal terms. If for example trade fell by 5% due to a lack of action on carbon, would this cost more than the carbon reduction?
May 13th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
2050 . And John key will be how old then.
Its a nonsense and they know it since half our emissions come from agriculture that would 75% reduction in emissions from the usual suspects , transport, power generation, industry.
May 13th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Key is trying to outflank Labour on the Left, and this is alienating the part of his electorate that believes in property rights.
Second, he cites a string of failed solutions from Labour while implicitly assuming this is unrelated to the top down nature of government and therefore something he can avoid. It’s not. When push comes to shove, National will run into the same resistance and be forced into the same compromises as Labour.
Third, the “50 by 50″ sounds suspiciously like something concrete from Key because it involves numbers. But of course it’s not. He will be long gone before this policy starts to bite and before its success can be tested.
But its clever: as DPF notes, it is a talking point, it makes Key appear assertive, and it comes at no real cost for National with the benefit of making National appear green.
Is National eyeing up the Greens as a coalition partner?
May 13th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
And we are just supposed to forget that National fought tooth and nail over the fart tax and carbon charges?
1. Agricultural methane emissions account for about 50% of our total AGW contribution. A “user pays” tax to fund some research was entirely reasonable, yet National backed the FedFarmers hysterical campaign against it to the hilt…so I suppose Key could not go down that path if no other reason that Shane Arden might have to crank up the Myrtle again.
2. A carbon charge is still seen by many as the most broad based and efficient market mechanism to shift the market from fossil fuels to renewables. But of course National hugely decried that the first time around and it would be a new tax. But Key has promised to cut taxes…so I guess he might find it tough to go down that path as well…or if he did attempt to he might find how hard it is to ram such a major change through without degree of cross-party acceptance.
Well that is two policy options that are tainted by Nationals own track record, so yes…a fine target (if way too late, the date should be 2025 at the latest)…but like his tax policy, long on “aspirational goals”, very scant on actual details.
May 13th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
by 2050 the ‘global warming/climate change’ hoax will be seen for what it is and we won’t need any 50 by 50 target.
John Key is just peddling this because it’s PC but he’s not as thick as he appears, and he knows that the IPCC is not a scientific organization, it is a political one. And he knows that if he doesn’t play ball he’ll be removed by the powers that be.
May 13th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I would sooner see John KEY promising to withdraw from Kyoto and joining the affiliation of our natural allies and trading partners Australia, USA, China, and soon to be Canada among others. At least we would then be in company sympathetic to our interests rather than Europe to whom we will be paying massive fees thanks to Hodgson’s poor arithmetic, and Liabours pathetic governance.
May 13th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
The speech is online now at both the National website and on John’s site (where readers can comment). Go to http://johnkey.co.nz/index.php?/archives/115-SPEECH-50-by-50-New-Zealands-Climate-Change-Target.html
for the speech and for an associated media release with a backgrounder, go to
http://johnkey.co.nz/index.php?/archives/116-NEWS-Climate-Change-Target-50-by-50.html
May 13th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
The speech is online now at both the National website and on John’s site (where readers can comment). Go to http://johnkey.co.nz/index.php?/archives/115-SPEECH-50-by-50-New-Zealands-Climate-Change-Target.html
for the speech and for an associated media release with a backgrounder, go to
http://johnkey.co.nz/index.php?/archives/116-NEWS-Climate-Change-Target-50-by-50.html
May 13th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
The undue concern with carbon emissions has only arisen becasue the Nats are lazy, uninformed, incompetent and ideologically fractured. If truth was the main concern, they’d start doing what they should have started doing two decades ago. Articulating the argument against anthropological climate change. Now, its too late, and if they want to win an election, the only strategy that will work is going along with the lie. If they win the election, they can at least put things a bit right by firing Nick Smith’s arse.
May 13th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
“If I am Prime Minister of New Zealand I will write this target into law.”
What is the law going to say? What is he going to write? how is he going to achieve it? He (rightly) accuses Clark of talk and no action, yet all he seems to offer himself is talk.
The hysterical National backed ‘fart tax’ campaign is still ringing in our ears, who does this guy think he is kidding?
May 13th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
In the meantime the link below is a smörgåsbord of the kind of thing we could be doing instead of of all this pointless bickering and procrastination….
http://www.metaefficient.com/
May 13th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Off the topic, but what are Nationals plans for student loans?
May 14th, 2007 at 12:44 am
I am assuming the Government will act to improve the tax treatment on forestry and provide incentives against deforestation. I assume there will be some stick as well as ex school teachers like imposing the stick. It is how they think.
May 14th, 2007 at 12:59 am
Last week I slagged off a 50% by 2050 target as underwhelming compared to those set by other nations. But having crunched the numbers, it’s actually pretty good:
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2007/05/climate-change-fair-contribution.html
Not leading the world, but doing our bit, at least as compared to the low estimate for the EU (who we need to be using as a benchmark given the potential trade problems).
I share people’s concerns about the distance of the target – but this suggests a need for intermediates rather than ignoring the long-term. “20% by 2020″ is probably a good one to aim for; it would be difficult, but would also leave us with far better options if it turns out we need deeper cuts in the future.
May 14th, 2007 at 1:53 am
The most important thing about this target is that it’s real. The last time anyone made a realistic attempt to achieve a carbon neutral country was when Pol Pot set Cambodia back to year zero.
I know that sounds a bit ridiculous but a carbon neutral country is pretty much impossible whereas 50 by 50 can be done and I trust Key to do it ahead of Clark.
May 14th, 2007 at 6:39 am
Idiot savant mistakes rhetoric for reality with his idealistic “Scandinavian models”
According to figures from the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE), Norway accounted for 90 percent of the Nordic Countries’ net power imports from Russia the first half year of 2004. Of the 3,8 TWh imported from outside the Nordic countries, 3,4 TWh was imported by Norway. 90 percent of power imports to Sweden, Finland and Norway comes from Poland and Russia.
Norway buys an increasing amount of energy from the Russian atomic power industry, and thus helps old and dangerous nuclear power plants keep up production. – Norway has a growing energy consumption and is forced to buy power at the Nord Pool power exchange market. The Russian nuclear power comes from the power plant outside St.Petersburg and at the Kola Peninsula.
Statoil, the Norwegian oil and gas company, has made a US$2bn cash offer for privately held North American Oil Sands Corporation, its third significant acquisition in less than a year.
The state-controlled oil group has received approvals from shareholders representing 69 per cent of the Calgary-based company, which owns 257,200 acres of oil sands containing so-called ‘heavy oil’.
The deal forms part of Statoil’s long term aim of diversifying its operations geographically to avoid being too reliant on oil and gas deposits in Norway, which will decline over time.
Finland annouces kyoto policy and achievement of goals .Finland’s new Energy and Climate Strategy outlines the measures that will be carried out in the energy and climate policy to meet Finland’s Kyoto commitments during the period of 2008–2012. The strategy includes very concrete commitments as regards what is to be done over the next 10 years. The resources and funding have also been allocated.
According to the Strategy, Finland will invest in the adoption of renewable energy sources, in energy conservation and in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, Finland will utilize flexible mechanisms, defined in the Kyoto Protocol, to acquire emission units.
Nice rhectoric now for the reality……..
United Power has signed a contract worth 4.5 billion euros ($5.58 bln) with Sweden’s Basel AB on supplies via a power line running from Russia to Finland, the Russian-Finnish electricity company said Wednesday.
Company board chairman Andras Szep told a news conference that construction of a 300-mln-euro ($372-mln) undersea high-voltage power line connecting the Leningrad Nuclear Power Station to the Finnish town of Kotka would begin at the end of this year.
United Power is majority owned by Russia’s Baltenergo, a St. Petersburg-based subsidiary of state-owned nuclear power generating monopoly Rosenergoatom. The other major shareholders are Finnish energy and investment firms.
Under the 15-20 year contract, Basel AB, majority owned by Finnish industrial firms, will buy around 90% of the electricity supplied by the power line, Szep said.
The project, proposed by Baltenergo, envisages construction of two 150-km power-line legs, each of 1,000-MW capacity.
“Agricultural methane emissions account for about 50% of our total AGW contribution. A “user pays” tax to fund some research was entirely reasonable, yet National backed the FedFarmers hysterical campaign against it to the hilt.”
Lets introduce a competitive market from an Ecological system far from equilibrium.
Methanogens (producers)have relatives called methanotrophs similar genetically but facultative respiresers. In the ABSENCE of sulphur say from volcanic eruptions they consume methane.In the presence of sulphur they are restricted by the rapid growth of sulphur oxidizing bacteria who compete for the available nutrients.
This is competition ,it has happened for 3.5 b years,the rise and fall of various taxa in the microbial world is called evolution,and interesting enough in the microbial ecosystem a system far from thermodynamic equilibrium the transient road is two way ie market dominance can return down the evolution gradient .
May 14th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Unfortunately John Key claimed our agriculture is responsible for half of our CO2 emissions. He does not know the difference between CO2 and methane etc – and then was so rude as to describe us as “armchair skeptics”.
I am surprised at our ongoing focus on what the Europeans think. Their population is in collapse and as this drags down their economy they are entrenching their fortress position – and Kyoto is part of putting up the walls and we are the “barbarians outside the gate”.
By locking ourselves into their mindset we will end up as the only nation saddled by Kyoto in the whole of the Pacific Rim. Canada has just decided to pull out.
The Pacific Rim is growing and remains in love with Western science etc and we should be looking to these neighbours who like us rather than to the Europeans who want to put us out of action.
Maybe we need that sedition legislation after all!
May 14th, 2007 at 10:00 am
You are wrong, Owen. Key was careful to talk about CO2-equivalent emissions. You’re wrong about Canada too. I suppose your rather odd world view is a consequence of being unable to believe that global warming is real. But if you want to influence the policy debate in NZ, you ought try getting on the same page as the rest of us. And that means accepting that climate change is real, and a problem.
May 14th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Gareth, I think we all believe that Climate Chnage is real. Its just the man made part there is skepticism over.
Owen do you have a link about Canada pulling out? That is news.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:08 am
I can’t wait until Key announces National’s policies on witches and alien abductions.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:45 am
smoke ‘n mirrors alert..!
this is an example of ‘key-speak’..
(def:..appearing to have signifigance..but upon closer appraisal..signifying nothing…)
“..i promise to do/fix something in 50 years..!
so..vote for me now..!..”
(um..!..just raises many more questions than it answers..eh..?..”..)
what a nonsense..!..it means absolutely nothing..!
phil(whoar.co.nz)
May 14th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Captain Crab, please speak for yourself.
Speaking for myself, it seems apparent that ‘Climate Change’ in all its guises is simply a crock of shit – the same as the Y2K bug, “The End Of The World Is Nigh”, Armageddon, Original Sin and all the other sad fantasies that the human race periodically dreams up to process its feelings of guilt and fear.
Quite apart from any other considerations, an increase in temperature coupled with an increase in CO2 would result in more plant growth, more forests and increased food producing capacity, so what’s the f***ing problem?
Grow up and look at the facts. The earth’s climate is, and has been, continually in a mild state of flux around a few degrees. This gives the world ice ages and one end of the scale and a decrease in polar ice cover at the other end.
Get over it.
May 14th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
RE Canada.
I should have written “effectively pulled out” because most commentators agree that is the position. Here is what Wikipedia says (rather than a comendium of recent media stories):
In January 2006, a Conservative minority government under Stephen Harper was elected, who previously has expressed opposition to Kyoto, and in particular to the plan to participate in international emission trading. Rona Ambrose, who replaced Stéphane Dion as the environment minister, has since endorsed some types of emission trading, and indicated interest in international trading.[24] On April 25, 2006, Ambrose announced that Canada would have no chance of meeting its targets under Kyoto, and would look to participate in U.S. sponsored Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. “We’ve been looking at the Asia-Pacific Partnership for a number of months now because the key principles around [it] are very much in line with where our government wants to go,” Ambrose told reporters.[25] On May 2, 2006, it was reported that environmental funding designed to meet the Kyoto standards had been cut, while the Harper government develops a new plan to take its place.[26] As the co-chair of UN Climate Change Conference in Nairobi in November 2006, Canada and its government received criticism from environmental groups and from other governments for its climate change positions[27]
May 14th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Mr Mann:
This used to be true (at least it was for the last 4 million years), but then someone put an extra 35% CO2 into the atmosphere. This has upset the thermal balance of the planet, causing it to warm. It’s not rocket science – basic physics that’s been understood for 150 years. The current rate of temperature change is 20 times faster than the warming out of an ice age. Where that warming stops, and how much damage it causes, will depend on how we limit our emissions over the next 50 years.
Ignoring the problem (or wishing very hard), isn’t going to make it go away.
May 14th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Owen:
Nonsense. Canada may have given up on trying to meet its Kyoto target – something that could equally be said for NZ and other countries – but it has ratified the Protocol and will have to cover its excess emissions by buying credits – at a substantial cost to the Canadian taxpayer. Harper’s minority government can’t put together the votes to pull out of Kyoto.
May 14th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Absolute rubbish, Gareth.
The TOTAL proportion of CO2 in the WHOLE earth atmosphere is only concentration of approximately 0.038% and this infinitesimally small amount of this gas is 1.5 times as heavy as air, so it sits around the surface of the planet, where it most of it dissolved into our oceans and the remainder is ideally placed to provide the lifeblood for land based plant growth.
Again, remember that we are talking about 0.038% of the atmosphere’s gas, here.
‘Somebody’ hasn’t ‘put an extra 35%’ of CO2 into the atmosphere at all. From about the start of the last century, the atmospheric CO2 concentration would seem to have increased from 300 ppmv to 377 ppmv or about 25%. This is, however, a moot point as our scientific ability to accurately measure the fucking stuff is only about this old, so the true story is anybody’s guess, actually.
Apart from anything else, the major source of atmospheric CO2 is volcanos. Not mankind’s industrial activity. Volcanos.
Jeez… get a grip. Try not to panic. Repeat this in your mind “Irrational fear destroys the balance of the mind, so I will not be anxious. The sacred earth mother is not angry with me, its just her having her period.” This might help.
May 14th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Mr Mann: Your comment provides entertainment value, if only because of the errors it contains.
A couple of the more obvious: CO2 doesn’t “sit around at the surface of the planet”. It’s well mixed into the atmosphere.
CO2 concentrations were about 280ppm in the middle of the 19th century (as measured very accurately in ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland), and are currently at about 382ppm giving a 36% increase.
Volcanoes emit only a tiny fraction of the CO2 emitted as a result of human activity.
If you are able to demonstrate that increasing CO2 is not causing the observed global warming, please write a paper explaining why, get it published in a scientific journal, and then collect your Nobel Prize.
I won’t be holding my CO2-laden breath.
May 14th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Gareth, if I had the potential to win a Nobel Prize, I would certainly give it a go, so thanks for the encouragement. However, I would need to observe the PC niceties, otherwise I wouldn’t have a show – even if I was a genius with an IQ of 200+, as any scientific paper now that doesn’t have the express aim of researching ‘the effect of Global Warming on blah blah’ is consigned to the dustbin immediately!
As for your CO2 laden breath, don’t worry about holding it on my account. If the humanity hating Greens have their way, there will be a lot fewer filthy CO2-spewing people on the planet in the near future and, if you survive, I’m sure they’ll sell you a breathing permit if the price is right.
May 14th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
that’s dave ‘hockey-stick’ mann..
his blogging/commenting raison d etre is/has been to discredit that climate-change sports analogy..
and to base/hang his denialist burblings off that..
a real ‘one-trick-pony’..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
May 14th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Thats right Phil. And you must be the well known winner of the Nobel Literature prize hahahahah
May 14th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I think the points about a trading and economic need to cut carbon, otherwise face trade boycotts is a strong one. We are starting to see the danger already from food miles campaigns.
Yeah, because the way to deal with to extortion attempts is to pay up.
May 14th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
I think the points about a trading and economic need to cut carbon, otherwise face trade boycotts is a strong one. We are starting to see the danger already from food miles campaigns.
Yeah, because the way to deal with extortion attempts is to pay up.
‘Food miles’ is just another attempt at protectionism, this time invoking environmentalism instead of socialism as the justification.
Of course, this is just further proof that the modern green movement is red on the inside …
May 14th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Yes, Duncan. And I have just heard Key on Radio Live saying that, while he previously didn’t subscribe to the idea of Global Warming, he is now perfectly prepared to capitulate to the Greens’ extremist propaganda and sign up to the Kyoto protocol for the sake of kowtowing to the Eurocrats’ protectionist ‘food miles’ brigade.
This is despite the fact that Australia, who used to be our friends and allies, are refusing to ratify Kyoto. He reckons Australia will capitulate soon to some modified version of Kyoto when it is introduced, and it is in our best interests to drop our pants and present our arses earlier rather than later to these ‘food miles’ extortionists ‘as we are an agicultural economy’.
So this fucking unprincipled prick is prepared to just seamlessly change his tack 180 degrees without so much as adjusting his greasy smile.
Oh yes…. roll on a National government. I just can’t wait for the glittering new dawn of Labour Lite.
May 14th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Dave Mann,
Amazing. You think that the geophysical scientific world is one vast conspiracy.
Do you also think that the jewish puppet-masters control the USA’s foreign policy, that there’s a secret cabal in Zurich controlling the world’s banks, and that the vast communist conspiracy controls the world’s trade unions?
Does Atlantis get a mention in your view on global warming as well? How about the Knights Templar?
When those arguing against anthropic global warming are down to peddling conspiracy theories you can see why the National Party is balking.
icehawk
May 14th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Icehawk, I haven’t even hinted at any of those things in my comments. At no point have I alluded to any kind of conspiracy by anybody.
Just as rise of Soviet Russia, Nazism etc weren’t ‘conspiracies’, the rise of fundamentalist eco-facism isn’t a ‘conspiracy’. Its simply a deeply flawed world view which unfortunately has strong undertones of religious zeal.
Unfortunately for democratic capitalism, this sick strain of socialism is a product of our own democratic system, which makes it more difficult to effectively counter than other threats we have faced.
As for trade protectionism masquerading as ‘food miles’, this is not a conspiracy either. Its just good old fashioned tariffs and barriers being dressed up in ‘eco’ language and disguised in the PC spin of the times.
In psychological terms its called ‘reframing’.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
icehawk,
From my observation of the debate on global warming, the charge of conspiracy has most often been made against the fossil fuel industry which apparently funds skeptics to distort the “truth”. Apparently when someone has worked for a corporation which deals with fossil fuels then they *must* be biased, whereas those who are receiving millions of dollars from the government are not. And when a skeptic has never received any funding from any corporation then they find another name to call them (in denial, crazy etc.)
Indeed there is no conspiracy in the “geophysical scientific world” because there is no one opinion. There are plenty of believers and there are plenty of skeptics. Unfortunately though science has now been thrown out the window and instead we consider, to quote Jeanette Fitzsimons, “majority science vs minority science”. Perhaps we should also take a vote on whether or not pigs can fly.
May 15th, 2007 at 2:01 am
Key has simply taken a cue from his European counterparts; commit yourself to ambitious Kyoto targets without ever having any intention of actually following through on them.
Look at how far all the current Kyoto signees (particularly in Europe) are from reaching their targets. They’re not even trying anymore. Just build a windturbine here and a solar-panel there in the name of symbolism (none of this is going to have any real impact after all). And then jump on their high horse to give the US a lecture on climate change. The funny thing is, since 2000 the US has actually outperformed them in terms of reducing CO2 emissions (per head of population), despite having far superior economic growth. This vindicates Bush’s statement that Kyoto is an ineffective tool in reducing emissions.
So let Key sign up to it. He hasn’t even bothered coming up with any ideas on HOW he’s actually going to achieve his stated goal, so clearly he can’t be too serious about it anyway. And with that, our farmers, and the country as a whole, can breathe a huge sigh of relief; for IF Key is really genuine in his aim of reducing the living standards gap between NZ and Aussie, hammering our agriculture sector (which is still the mainstay of the NZ economy) with crippling carbon taxes is the LAST thing he’d want to do….
May 15th, 2007 at 9:06 am
“this is an example of ‘key-speak’..
(def:..appearing to have signifigance..but upon closer appraisal..signifying nothing…)
“..i promise to do/fix something in 50 years..!”
Phil.
Read the speech. This is not Key promising to do something in 50 years. This is Key promising to do something NOW that will be wirtten into law that will have an effect over a fifty year period.
Climate Change has occurred over a long time, and no matter what you beleive the root cause to be, there is NO QUICK FIX.
What we have is a policy, with a clear target and a clear time line. Labour gave us a slogan.
Key recognises that there will be Economic Advantages in addressing these issues. (Trade possibly worth $500 billion). He understands that sustainability and viablility must go hand in hand in future. We finally have a politician who is taking a targetted long view.
May 15th, 2007 at 9:17 am
New skepticism – the brightness of the planet Neptune as observered through Lowell Observatory has been seen to increase in correlation with the increase of earth’s temperature.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/05/08/neptune-news/#more-241
May 15th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
The paper you refer to admits the correlations are not statistically significant (ref).
May 15th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
True. These correlations to earth temperature are not statistically signifigant. Retract the suggestion.
Just intuitively it would seem odd that a physical aspect of another planet would behave in correlation with Earth’s temperature increase.
All that appears to be valid is that Neptune is brighter now than it was.
May 15th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
What’s odd is that World Climate Report somehow forgot to mention the lack of statistical significance. I wonder why?
May 16th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Meh, obvious – they want there to be one.
But is it important that there is not a direct correlation? Why is Neptune getting brighter and is there an implication in this for Earth? Does it imply greater solar output that may cause warming etc on Earth?
June 7th, 2007 at 9:15 am
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June 7th, 2007 at 9:17 am
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