by Joe Fone     9 December 2010

The political consensus in this country is that New Zealand will look good on the world stage because we have an emissions trading scheme in place and that we are therefore leading the world in “fighting climate change”. This dubious honour comes despite earlier assurances by Prime Minister John Key that New Zealand would be a “fast follower” behind Australia. Back in 2005, Nick Smith argued that any form of carbon tax would be “mad” because “New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it” and that it “will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.” Before he took on the National Government’s climate change portfolio, Nick Smith was scathing of Labour’s plan to introduce an emissions scheme and correctly argued that “it will not make one iota of difference to New Zealand’s emissions.” Yet as Environment Minister for climate change issues, Nick Smith seems to have changed his tune to become the driving force behind the current ETS.

Rex Murphy  December 4, 2010 – 11:09 am

Cancun, Mexico: Not a bad place for a summit, eh?

This global-warming/climate-change stuff is a great racket.

Over in England right now, they’re locked in the jaws of a very early freeze-up. The roads are iced, the plows overworked, and people are angry. But there’s a precious subset of the English population that are not enduring the frigid and premature torments of a northern winter. They’re the climate-change activists, bureaucrats, politicians, puppeteers and NGOs — the class of professional alarmists who’ve been banging on about global warming for close on two decades now. This bunch has exempted itself from the rigors of English November, traded their sackcloth and ashes for sun-wear and tropical breezes.

Carbon-sense Coalition newsletter:

If images are lost or format mangled in transmission, you can link to a print friendly PDF of this newsletter here:

http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/no-rerun-kyoto-folly.pdf

 7th December 2010 

• Nats launch 'axecarbontax' campaign
• Send C Tax the way of fart (sic) tax
• The madness (sic) of C Tax will drive up the cost of living
• The tax will undermine our competitiveness
• There's no justification for NZ to go out by itself on this issue (Idoubt that the pun was intentional!)
• We only contribute .4% of CO2 global emissions (I reckon we may sequester it all)
• We are the only people in the world paying it
• It will cost Nelson/Marlborough $25 million/year  (I reckon that's a helluva lot more than $3/head Nick quotes)
• It will adversely impact on inflation
• It is just an excuse for Dr Cullen to get deeper into our pockets
• It will make not one iota of difference to NZ emissions
• We need to bury this lemon (er, yes!)

Guardian.co.uk     3 December 2010

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.

 Newsletter from the Pastural Farming Climate Research team.                                                                                                                      

5 December 2010

There were 61 submissions received by MAF during the consultation process to determine the emission factors for agriculture’s reporting of carbon emissions.

Some points of interest

Species exemption

MAF proposed exempting Llama, alpaca, ostrich, emus. horses and ruminants other than cattle, sheep, goats and deer,(eg bison etc)

Some submitters argued Llama and alpaca contributed the same quantity of emissions as egg production and if egg production was included so too should llama and alpaca.

All submitters who commented on species exemption were opposed to horses being exempt. Fairness was the reason given by most for including horses. (we submitted horse emissions were as harmless as cattle emissions and carbon neutral; but that it was unfair not to ping horses if cattle were being held liable for emissions that do not exist)

New Zealand News.Net
Thursday 2nd December, 2010 (IANS)

The hole in the Antarctic ozone layer, blamed for global warming in the southern hemisphere, is shrinking and at its smallest for five years, New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) said Friday.

Atmospheric scientist Stephen Wood said it indicated that international initiatives, such as the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which phased out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting substances, may be working.

Wood said land and satellite calculations showed the Antarctic ozone hole reached a maximum of about 22 million sq km and an ozone mass deficit of approximately 27 million tons this year.

Last year, it was 24 million sq km and 35 million tons. The largest ozone hole ever recorded was in 2000, when it reached 29 million sq km with a 43 million ton deficit.

Although reluctant to say the ozone hole was recovering permanently, Wood said, 'However, we have now had a few years in succession with less severe holes. That is an indication we may be beginning to see a recovery.'

Continued monitoring would enable scientists to assess whether it was the start of a sustained, long-term, recovery, he said.

The Antarctic ozone hole forms in August and September every year and remains until breaking up in November or December.

Articles like this one (below) give a clear demonstration as to why Climate Realists exist. Note the (edited ) highlighted parts- and see that in the midst of all the alarmism, most of the hype is created by computer models- which are only as good as the scenarios and information fed into them. Note the absence of anything really definite.... read it and weep.

CANCUN - Even if we stopped spewing global warming gases today, the world would face a steady rise in food prices this century.

On our current emissions path, climate change becomes the "threat multiplier" that could double grain prices by 2050 and leave millions more children malnourished, global food experts reported yesterday.

Beyond 2050, when climate scientists project temperatures might rise to as much as 6.4C over 20th century levels, the planet grows "gloomy" for agriculture, said senior research fellow Gerald Nelson of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

The specialists of the authoritative, Washington-based IFPRI said they fed 15 scenarios of population and income growth into supercomputer models of climate and found "climate change worsens future human well-being, especially among the world's poorest people".

Act Party Press Release: 30 November 2010

The Climate Change Conference in Cancun might be nothing more than a meaningless and actionless talkfest, but it does have one saving grace – it should show the National Government how foolhardy it would be to continue forging ahead with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), ACT Deputy Leader and Climate Change Spokesman John Boscawen said today.

“Like the Copenhagen summit before it, the Cancun conference will consist of nations doing a lot of talking – but ultimately coming to no agreement,” Mr Boscawen said.

“In fact, of all the nations represented in Cancun, only New Zealand jumped in where angels fear to tread – implementing a comprehensive ETS forging ahead with it at a time when all other countries are abandoning theirs.

“In 2009 I warned Climate Change Minister Dr Nick Smith that, with the ETS, he was gambling with our economic future.  I urged him to scrap the ETS or, at the very least, delay it and retain the commonsense ‘wait and see’ approach that National promised in 2008.