Blogs

BACKGROUND
United Nations countries belong to an organization called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which publishes a report every six years. Often referred to as the "climate bible" these reports are relied on by governments around the world.

The latest was released in 2007. Sometimes called the AR4 (the Fourth Assessment Report), it contains 44 chapters and is nearly 3,000 pages long. Written by people organized into teams - Working Group 1, 2 and 3 - it consists of three smaller reports bundled into one.

The chairman of the IPCC has repeatedly said the report relies solely on peer-reviewed literature to support its findings. He has said research that hasn't appeared in peer-reviewed journals should be thrown "into the dustbin" (see the last line of this newspaper article). But our audit has discovered almost 5,600 non-peer-reviewed references in this report.

In elementary schools in the United States, students are assigned grades ranging from an A to an F, based on the mark they've achieved out of 100 (see Wikipedia's table here). Most parents would be alarmed if their child brought home a report card similar to the one received by the IPCC.

Guardian.co.uk

John Vidal in Bonn 12 April 2010

Document outlines key messages the Obama administration wants to convey in the run-up to UN climate talks in Mexico in November

A document accidentally left on a European hotel computer and passed to the Guardian reveals the US government's increasingly controversial strategy in the global UN climate talks.

Titled Strategic communications objectives and dated 11 March 2010, it outlines the key messages that the Obama administration wants to convey to its critics and to the world media in the run-up to the vital UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico in November. (You can read the document text below).

NewScientist

14 April 2010 by Stuart Clark

BRACE yourself for more winters like the last one, northern Europe. Freezing conditions could become more likely: winter temperatures may even plummet to depths last seen at the end of the 17th century, a time known as the Little Ice Age. That's the message from a new study that identifies a compelling link between solar activity and winter temperatures in northern Europe.

The research finds that low solar activity promotes the formation of giant kinks in the jet stream. These kinks can block warm westerly winds from reaching Europe, while allowing in winds from Arctic Siberia. When this happens in winter, northern Europe freezes, even though other, comparable regions of the globe may be experiencing unusually mild conditions.

"Earlier today Nick Smith said that ‘New Zealand would face a deficit of 22 million tonnes, or $446 million without the ETS’.  This is misleading.  Unlike the very real costs that will be imposed on all New Zealanders due to the ETS from July 1, the $446 million figure is purely hypothetical," Mr Boscawen said.

Telegraph.co.uk 17 April 2010

From Macbeth to Watergate, it’s not the act that leads to nemesis, but the attempts to 'trammel up the consequence’ , writes Christopher Booker.

If you were faced with by far the biggest bill of your life, would you not want to be confident that there was a very good reason why you should pay it? That is why we need to know just how far we can trust the science behind the official view that the world is threatened with catastrophe by global warming – because the measures proposed by our politicians to avert this supposed disaster threaten to transform our way of life out of recognition and to land us with easily the biggest bill in history. (The Climate Change Act alone, says the Government, will cost us all £18 billion every year until 2050.)

Aardvark Daily  16 April 2010

You've got to feel sorry for those folks living in Northern Europe right now.

They've just learned that they could be headed into a mini-iceage thanks to an unusually low level of sunspot activity and now, to make things even worse, an erupting volcano in Iceland is filling their skies with a dimming haze of ash.

The ash problem is currently so bad that they've had to close much of the area's airspace to avoid the risk of airliners falling from the sky with ash-clogged engines.

The huge cloud now stretches over 1,000 Kms from the volcano and has risen to a height of 11,000m, the altitude at which most modern passenger jet aircraft are most efficient.

It's not unheard of for large volcanic eruptions (such as Mount Pinatubo in 1991) to result in reduced temperatures, as their ash dims the skies and reduces the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth.

In fact, in the two years following the Pinatubo eruption, the average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere fell by 0.6 degrees C and the global average temperature dropped by an astonishing 0.5 degrees C.

 Pastural Farming Climate Research newsletter- 14 April 2010

by Robin Grieve

The Herald on Sunday ran an editorial “Meat the good and bad news”

It related to the finding that our sheep meat has a lower carbon footprint than European sheep meat when sold in Europe, despite the food miles.

This was the good news.

The AgResearch analysis bears out what farmers have long been saying: that food miles are only a small part of the equation and that European and American sheepmeat production techniques have huge energy costs that farming of pasture-fed animals does not incur.

Then the bad news.

But the figures tell a darker story: 80 per cent of the carbon emissions are generated before the animals are even trucked out the farm gate.

The editorial concluded

there is no getting away from the fact that we all need to eat less meat.

Where does one start? People who call for us to eat less meat based on carbon emissions but do not make the same call for a reduction in rice consumption, which is also a significant producer of methane, have I believe questionable motives. A number of vegetarians, Paul McCartney and Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, to name a couple have been very vocal in trying to get people to eat less meat.

Windfall Profits To Our Power Companies And Govt Because Of NZ's ETS

John Boscawen MP, ACT New Zealand
Speech to New Zealand Grey Power Federation Annual General Meeting, College House, Christchurch, Wednesday, April 14 2010.

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to address your AGM this morning.

To President Les Howard, and your executive, I sincerely appreciate your adjusting your programme to accommodate me and the very important issue of power prices and the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme.

Before turning to the ETS may I briefly acknowledge your former President, the late Graham Stairmand.  I had the pleasure of working with Graham when he joined me, on behalf of Grey Power, in my legal challenge against the previous government's Electoral Finance Bill.  In the short time I knew Graham, he struck me as a man of principle and integrity who was committed to fighting for the interests of Grey Power and its members.  I know that Graham was very concerned about electricity prices, so it is fitting that I am speaking on that subject this morning.  Graham's passing was a great loss to Grey Power and New Zealand.

Let's turn now to the Emissions Trading Scheme:

In just under three months time, on 1 July, New Zealand's ETS is to be extended across most sectors of our economy:

The ETS is deliberately intended to make energy - both electricity and petrol - more expensive and Treasury forecast its immediate impact will result in a five percent increase in the price of electricity and a four cents per litre increase in the price of petrol and double again in 2013.

 Pastural Farming Climate Research newsletter  8 April 2010

So writes Alister Doyle, Environment correspondent from Reuters

Source: Reuters

OSLO, April 7 (Reuters) - Grazing by cows or sheep can cut emissions of nitrous oxide — a powerful greenhouse gas — in grasslands from China to the United States, according to a study that overturns past belief that farm animals stoke releases.

Adding to understanding of links between agriculture and global warming, the report in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature said livestock can help to limit microbes in the soil that generate the gas, also known as laughing gas.

Good afternoon

The following appeared in the NZ Herald on 5 September 2003.  This protest was applauded by farmers and other New Zealanders alike.    Have you considered a similar protest against the ETS which will seriously impact on our farmers and their profitability as well as households the length and breadth of New Zealand.

Obviously a protest would not be possible under the present regime.

Maureen C