From Alan Sutherland- Katikati

On my holiday early this year, I stopped in Bulls for a light meal and coffee. The town has taken a humourous approach to marketing itself based around having fun. The Fire Station is named “Extinguish-a-bull”, the police station has a “Const-a-bull”, the medical centre is “Cure-a-bull”, the information centre is “Inform-a-bull”, there is a “Veget-a-bull” shop and so on. You can check out other labels at their website. Quite “Laugh-a-bull”. I would like to suggest one more. “Glo-bull warming” - the main topic of my editorial in the Katikati and Te Puke Fruitgrowers Association magazine.

 

When I first heard about “warming”, it was couched in terms to suggest that Katikati would (in umpteen years) have a climate similar to Kerikeri (just part of natural climate change). I didn't find this scary, just interesting and in fact was looking forward to it. Apparently, this message was supposed to be alarming. So along came Al Gore with his movie (it is speculated that Al Gore has amongst the highest carbon footprint of anyone on this planet). The film caused me to do some reading to understand the concept of “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming” for myself. This new concept is supported by a great deal of propaganda and very little truth – much the same as Al Gore's movie, as it turned out (based on a British court judgement). Disciples of CAGW exist in most Western developed countries and their job is to preach the religion. In fact research funding now depends on the CAGW meme. If you don't believe in CAGW you will not be funded to do any research, and you will not get a job as the science advisor to the Prime Minister. Nor would you find it worth your while to apply for the MAF position recently advertised - “International Policy/Senior Policy Analyst: Climate Change”.

 

The religion has spread to many developing countries by the use of bribes - $US100 billion per annum to be precise. At Copenhagen, Mugabe and Chavez were cheered and applauded because they were anti-capitalist and capitalism was the culprit of warming apparently. And you can bet that Mugabe, at least, expects to get a large chunk of AGW money.

 

The conjecture is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, as is methane, and that these are causing the temperature to rise. But not all CO2 or methane is bad – just what we humans produce. Our contribution to CO2 is pretty negligible when compared to what is absorbed and released from the oceans. With methane there is good and bad. Good methane comes from wetlands and we want to increase this because it increases “biodiversity”. Other good methane comes from animals in the wild and sacred cows in India because these do not provide food for people. Bad methane comes from farmed animals because they serve a human purpose of feeding people with milk, milk products and meat, as well as providing wool, leather and fertiliser. So productive animals are bad and unproductive ones, and bugs, are good? Bugs in the wetlands are more important than people?Oh Oh. I smell a rat.

 

Agriculture producers will be forced to pay through the nose because we produce food. Meat eaters, consumers of fruit and vegetables, car owners, electricty users etc etc will be forced to pay extra and, of course, transport costs will increase the price of everything. There will be those that benefit - forestry investors, and dubious overseas scheme promoters purporting to save emisssions from hypothetical alternatives – i.e. if you don't pay us we will build a coal fired station instead of hydro/wind/solar. Some of these “offsets” are being sold twice. Part of the mix will be those who charge fees and commissions to take a huge slice of the pie. And lets not forget the $US100 billion per year that is to be paid for “climate debt”. The net effect of the schemes is to tax the ordinary citizen (the poor in rich countries) to give money to the rich in rich countries and the rich in poor countries.

 

I was in the South Island recently and saw the marks where both the Fox and Franz Joseph glacier terminations used to be in 1750, well before CO2 could be blamed for their retreat. In fact the Haast river valley was carved out by a glacier which disappeared ages ago - nothing to do with CO2. The Arctic sea ice has reached a level (early April) higher than the average for the last seven years despite the increase in CO2. Sea levels were rising slowly well before CO2 could be blamed. Hurricanes have not increased. Himalayan glaciers will not melt by 2035. More importantly, the “hockey stick” temperature graph is bogus.

 

Temperature trends have been cooked by measuring the Urban Heat Island effect as part of Glo-Bull Warming. Even our NZ records show no warming and the readings need to be “adjusted” to get that warming. Records of the adjustments made by NIWA have been “lost”. GISS temperature records show warming for New Zealand only because Campbell Island is included in the early anomolies and excluded in the more recent ones. Most of the data held by the Climate Research Unit was withheld from freedom of information requests so that the science of CAGW could not be studied or replicated – and now the data is lost also. CO2 has also been higher than now but the IPCC hides this. It was 440 ppmv in 1940—about 50 ppmv higher than now (Beck 2007). If one wants to talk about climate science the answer is the “time for debate is over”, or the subject is changed to smoking, big oil or Aids.

 

The so called “consensus” of scientists in favour of CAGW is achieved by silencing those that dissent, cutting off their funding and dominating the peer review system to ensure that any contrary papers do not get published. The IPCC was happy to use propaganda from WWF and Greenpeace as part of their science even though the material concerned was never published in scientific papers. The UN now wants countries to commit irrevocably to costly emissions reductions and climate debt payments so that when the CAGW theory is finally laid to rest, we will continue to be committed to shoulder the cost of solving a non-problem.

 

It was reported that Mr Key, in his simplistic way, says the problem at Copenhagen was that the developing countries asked for too much. In fact the stand off was between US and China. China wants Western countries to sign the “pledge” without allowing any monitoring of its own country. The less oil and coal the rest of the world uses, the more for China. Quite simple really.

 

Surely the electorate would expect some caution from our Prime Minister? If he invested the country's money in a Madoff scheme he would be derided, held responsible, made to pay a price and be recorded in history as the worst Prime Minister this country has ever had. The Madoff scheme was a confidence trick just like this. The country is going to buy into it, but go further by including agriculture in the ETS. This is a trade exposed industry for goodness sake, on a par with fishing or aluminium smelting. I thought we were going to align with Australia, but Australia has already excluded agriculture from the equation. Its not too late to delay ETS, but after June, property rights will be created and it will become more difficult. The Maori Party were bribed to support ETS. If the scheme is cancelled, can they demand compensation for lost ETS benefits? What a shambles, certainly not science.

 

Alan Sutherland