Further cost of the ETS?
The Press reports:
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has received an assessment of the impact of the Government’s flagship climate-change policy on the value of land handed to iwi under Treaty of Waitangi settlements.
Officials are refusing to divulge the monetary figure placed on the estimated loss in value contained in the assessment by senior Christchurch-based valuer Donn Armstrong, of Forest Land Consultants.
However, Maori say they could be owed as much as $2 billion in compensation, because land currently in forests will not be able to be converted to other potentially more profitable uses.
So we are starting to get to the beginning of the end of settling historic grievances, with compensation likely to be around $1.5 billion.
And the ETS could create a new contemporary grievance of up to $2 billion?
This is why NZ needs to be very careful as we proceed with an ETS. Again, we need to develop one or risk trade sanctions, but need to ensure the costs are proportional to the benefits.
Also we should consider what our Kyoto obligations mean in light of Russia’s invasion of Georgia. You see there is a high possibility that we would have to purchase carbon credits off Russia as we will be well above our 1990 emissions levels. So we may end up giving Russia hundreds of milllions of dollars of hard cash, which they can use to fund their war in Georgia. Yep, there is no mechanism for excluding Russia because they have gone nasty – if they have the carbon credits, they will get billions of dollars in hard currency for them.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Yet National promises to put in place an ETS within 9 months of taking office.
The only parties seeing any sense on this issue are Family and Act.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Just throw out the whole barrel full of bullshit which is ETS, along with the other barrow full which is kyoto and concentrate on increasing our standards of living.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
David, There are various measures for excluding the “hot air” credits that exist in Russia and many parts of former eastern europe. The EU trading scheme will not take “hot air” credits, and it has yet to be decided whether NZ’s version would allow them into the registry, ( although this seems to be a rather moot point, given the current lack of political numbers)
August 11th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Can someone in National do a recalculation on what we owe since several tank divisons are now belching exhaust and will continue to do so for a few months yet. Also, what is the carbon penalty for discharging high explosive ammunition? Or 1500 rotting bodies as of yesterday? The vile perversion of the ETS may make a Russian war quite profitable for NZ.
August 11th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
The war in Georgia will probably reduce their carbon emissions also, so at least Georgia will feel a better that by being invaded they are doing their bit for the planet!
August 11th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
If there is an ETS and we intend to honour the treaty, then Maori land must be exempt from the ETS. That’s what ‘full, exclusive and undisturbed possession’ means. Non-Maori forest owners should be looking into whether they can sell their land to iwi and lease it back.
August 11th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Then, Nigel, as the Treaty also stresses the equality of law for all, everyone else should also have the same rights as Maori. So none of us would be subject to the ETS. Problem solved!
August 11th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
“…which they can use to fund their war in Georgia.”
It’s not the Russians who are the aggressors, it’s Georgia.
Get it right.
August 11th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
We all still agree that endeavouring to protect the environment from human pollution is ridiculous, then?
August 11th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Pollution?
What pollution.
All nations reduce pollution once they can afford to do it.
That is why environmental protection increases with GDP.
Trade sanctions? India and China won’t because they won’t have signed up.
The sanction nations will be the crooks and we may well be able to challenge their sanctions for not being based on sound science.
Who knows whether chopping down pine trees and turning them into pasture is GHD neutral, negative or positive?
It can only be negative is you decide (as we stupidly have) that cows are man made. Ruminants are part of the natural cycle and have been around much longer than we have.
But I am equally convinced that the NZ public will not tolerate a regime which requires us to send checks for hundreds of millions of dollars to Mr Putin or Mr Mugabe,
August 11th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
DPF: “We need to develop [an ETS] or risk trade sanctions, but need to ensure the costs are proportional to the benefits.”
What have you been smoking? Which countries are going to impose “trade sanctions” on NZ because we don’t have an ETS?
China?
India?
The EU (whose ETS does not include agriculture)?
The US?
Australia?
?????
August 11th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I think the issue with the ruminants (cows?) is that when you deliberately breed legions of millions of them, and farm them intensively, (vs a few wild ones running around in the woods, which would indeed be natural) then what you are doing kind-of *is* man-made, in the sense that it is an industrial process we have set up pumping out pollutants… just that it’s an industrial process that happens to involve cows.
Quite right though, paying Russia (Zimbabwe? Really?) for our emissions seems pretty pointless…
August 11th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
RRM (846) Add karma Subtract karma +0 Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
“I think the issue with the ruminants (cows?) is that when you deliberately breed legions of millions of them, and farm them intensively, (vs a few wild ones running around in the woods, which would indeed be natural) then what you are doing kind-of *is* man-made, in the sense that it is an industrial process we have set up pumping out pollutants… just that it’s an industrial process that happens to involve cows………”
……to feed HUMAN BEINGS, shock, horror !!!!!!!!!
August 11th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Yes, to feed human beings.
This issue is not whether we should feed humans on beef & dairy dairy products.
The issue is whether the environmental consequences of doing this are “nothing” and should should be ignored/laughed off.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
The fifty million cows in the US replaced 50 million buffalo or thereabouts.
The number of cows in NZ is trivial when compared to the world ruminant population and our pastures may well be net GHG sinks – we do not know.
But it looks increasingly as though turning pine forests into pastures should be a Kyoto plus.
But we won’t do this because then we don’t have a Kyoto problem and how can you be a world leader in solving a problem if you don’t contribute to the problem to begin with.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Given their recent record I Doubt this, but it could be a clever Liarbour strategy:
They’re not going to get the ETS through before the election + they’re going to lose all the Maori seats = blame Maori for an extra $2 billion in spending and paint them as the bad guys.
Maori bashing is always en vogue at election time. Just would not have expected it from those wankers currently warming the Treasury benches, but then political expediency has always been their strong point…
August 11th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
New Zealand should be the first country to declare itself free of believing the AGW bullshit. A public flogging of Al “Mr Hypocrite” Gore would be a welcome sight too. We need enough people to vote Act so they can talk some sense into National re this stupid promise to have an ETS within 100 days or whatever it is.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
So RRM I take it that you would like to see NZ farmers pay for their livestock emissions. Then following your logic we should see the Aarabs paying the carbon emissions on all oil exported from their countrys, after all it’s just an industrial process. What say you?.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
If Labour and its cohort agree to compensate Maori for the loss in value of their lands as a consequence of penalising them for felling forests and converting the land to other uses, then any refusal to pay the same compensation to non-Maori landowners would be graphic racism – what’s the bet the ETS dies a natural death, or the ban on conversion is removed from the proposed legislation?
August 12th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Hasn’t Labour learnt its lesson on why it is so unpopular and ditched the ETS.
I guess Labour will have to learn that lesson on 8 November.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Right on, OECD. The last line of THIS says it…….
Dr David Evans
7 August 2008
Global Warming Science Moves On
“On global warming, public policy is where the science was in 1998. Due to new evidence, science has since moved off in a different direction.
The UN science body on this matter, the IPCC, is a political body composed mainly of bureaucrats. So far it has resisted acknowledging the new evidence. But as Lord Keynes famously asked, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Four things have changed since 1998.
First, the new ice cores shows that in the six global warmings over the past half a million years, temperature rises and falls occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rises and falls in atmospheric carbon. The carbon rises could not have either started or ended the temperature rises. So there must be natural influences on global temperatures that are more powerful than atmospheric carbon levels.
This 800 year lag became known and past dispute by 2003, which is significant. The old ice core data, collected from 1985 to 1998, was low resolution: the data points were more than a thousand years apart. It showed carbon and temperature moving in lockstep, and it was the only supporting evidence we ever had for the notion that carbon caused temperature. It seemed too good to be true—it appeared we could control the temperature of the plant just by adjusting the levels of a minor gas!
Watch Al Gore’s movie carefully. The old ice core data is the only evidence he presents for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. But by 2003 we had found the 800 year lag, so then we knew that temperature caused carbon, not the other way around as previously assumed. Al Gore’s movie was made in 2005 so it was misleading of him not to mention the new ice core data. Would anyone have believed his pitch if he had mentioned that the alleged cause (rising and falling carbon levels) happened 800 years after the effect (rising and falling temperatures)?
Secondly, with the reversal of the ice core evidence, there is now no evidence that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None.
Evidence is a set of observations by people of events. The scientific method demands evidence—theory, politics, and vested interests are all trumped by evidence. The scientific method evolved as our best method for obtaining reliable information, precisely because it was immune from forces such as power and superstition.
It is important to realize what is not evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. There is ample evidence that global warming has occurred, but it says nothing about the causes of that warming. Serious theoretical calculations for the amount of warming by 2100 range from an inconsequential 0.24°C to a catastrophic 6.2°C, but theory (including computer models) is not evidence. Comparison of model outputs to observed results is not evidence, because it cannot prove that the model is always right, only that it was right in that instance. Existing computer models treat clouds simplistically and unrealistically, and omit the effects of cosmic rays on clouds, so we cannot begin to be confident that they might approximate reality.
Western governments have spent $50b on global warming since 1990, yet have found no evidence. We are constantly bombarded with evidence that the world has warmed. Don’t you think we would have heard all about any evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming, if there was any?
Thirdly, the warming trend that started in 1975 ended in 2001. The global temperature has been flat since 2001, and has dipped sharply in the last few months. The warmest recent year was 1998. This is a very different picture from that presented by the IPCC in 2001, of overpowering warming due to carbon emissions for the foreseeable future. Obviously there is some other influence on global temperatures at work, more powerful than our carbon emissions. The IPCC are silent on what those causes might be (hint: probably something to do with clouds).
So why do some people say temperatures are still rising, apart form being out of date? Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. The satellites go around 24/7, measuring the temperature across broad swathes of the world, everywhere except the poles. Three of the four world temperature records use satellite data partly or exclusively, and they all say that the world stopped warming in 2001 and that temperatures have recently dipped.
NASA GISS, the home of the global warming scare, only uses land based thermometers (and a few ocean thermometers)—despite being a space agency. Land thermometers are housed in little boxes a few feet off the ground. They were mainly put in place decades ago, on the outskirts of towns or cities so it was convenient to go and read the temperature each day. But urban growth has changed the microclimate around many of these thermometers, due to concrete, asphalt, vegetation changes, houses, air conditioners, and so on. In contrast to the satellite data, NASA GISS reports a continued warming trend since 2001. But their data is likely just measuring urban growth around some of their thermometers.
Fourthly, we looked for the greenhouse signature and could not find it. Each possible cause of global warming heats the atmosphere in a different pattern. Increased greenhouse warming causes a hotspot 10 km up over the tropics. The hotspot is central to our understanding: if there is no hotspot then either there is no significant increased greenhouse warming, or we don’t understand greenhouse and all our climate models are rubbish anyway.
Decades of measurements with thermometers in weather balloons have been unable to find even a small hotspot. So we now know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the recent global warming. I would switch back to being an alarmist if we had found a strong greenhouse signature. (By the way, our carbon emissions have no doubt caused some underlying warming, but not enough to create a hotspot that we have been able to detect so far.)
These four changes have rendered our current debate over carbon emissions obsolete. The changes occurred slowly as the science on each item became more settled, so there was no sudden news flash to make us sit up and take notice.
But now that we are finally coming to terms with how exp ensive it will be to cut back our carbon emissions, the causes of global warming have suddenly become a topic of major economic importance.
Policy makers must grapple with the possibility that global temperatures don’t rise over the next decade, and that the recent rises were predominately not due to our carbon emissions. Deliberately wrecking the economy for reasons that later turn out to be bogus hardly seems like a recipe for electoral success……..”