Members' Contributions

Govt To Get Windfall Profits At Your Expense

John Boscawen MP, ACT New Zealand

 

Press Release Wednesday, 31 March 2010.

Receiving ever increasing dividends from State-owned power companies – such as the $89.5m payout announced today by Meridian Energy - is something the Government will ‘have to get used to’ once the Emissions Trading Scheme comes into effect, ACT New Zealand Climate Change Spokesman John Boscawen said today.

 

"From July 1, Treasury forecast that power prices will rise by five percent, as generators seek to recover the additional costs incurred from burning fossil fuels - such as coal and gas – due to the ETS,” Mr Boscawen said.

New Zealand goes where 26 other global alliance members don’t

Federated Farmers media release:

6 April 2010

While Federated Farmers is restating its support for the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases, it’s also cautioning that New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) means the country is going where the other 26 nation members aren’t.
“Yes the world is fully behind New Zealand, in fact, they’re a long way behind us looking on while the New Zealand Government prods our farmers out into an ETS no mans land,” says Federated Farmers President, Don Nicolson.
“The ETS is a policy solution borne out of a disproportionate sense of environmental noblesse oblige.  We’re going where the 26 other members of the Global Research Alliance fear to tread – including agriculture in their respective ETS type responses. 
 

Press Council rules on climate change article

nzherald.co.nz

by David Hastings  27 March 2010

This complaint concerns one story in a climate change feature published in the New Zealand Herald on December 5, 2009 and also online, on the same date. The complaint is upheld.

The complaint

Robin Grieve, Chairman, Pastoral Farming Climate Research, was not objecting to the overall tenor of the reports themselves; rather he was upset about one part of the secondary report under the main heading "In search of low-carbon nirvana".

His complaint focused on its references to the impact of agriculture on New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions. The report said: "In 2007 agriculture produced 36.4 million tonnes of greenhouse gases - 48 per cent of New Zealand's total emissions."

It also said about two-thirds of the emissions were from methane produced by sheep and cattle, with the remaining third from nitrous oxide, mainly from animal waste.

Press Council Rules on Climate Change Article

The NZ Press Council has upheld a complaint made by Robin Grieve Chairman of Pastural Farming Climate Research Inc. against the NZ Herald. The complaint concerned their reporting of livestock emissions and the extent of agriculture’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The complaint was for inaccuracy.

For some time now I have been trying to get the NZ Herald to publish our views about livestock emissions. In particular we have keenly sought to be able to balance the preposterous claims made by vegetarians that vegetarianism is a good way to save the planet from global warming. The claims that meat production is warming the planet are readily and regularly published by the NZ Herald. Counter arguments such as ours are effectively censored out of the public arena by mainstream media such as NZ Herald. I have also sought to put the record straight about the nonsensical carbon dioxide equivalents and how ridiculous it is that an animal can emit huge quantities of these bull shit theoretical emissions when belching, yet add no extra carbon dioxide or methane and cause no increase in any real greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. And as a consequence no global warming.

The NZ Herald has not had a bar of it; they staunchly keep the NZ public misinformed by only offering one side of the argument.

Earth Hour or Blackout Night?

 The Carbon Sense Coalition today said that Earth Hour should be renamed “Blackout Night” and be held outdoors, for the whole night, in mid-winter, on the shortest and coldest day of the year - 22 June in the Southern Hemisphere.

 
The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that all supporters of alternative energy should spend just one night in the cold and the dark, emitting no carbon dioxide from coal, oil, gas, petrol or diesel for lights, TV, hot coffee, barbecues or cars. This will be good practice for the blackouts and shortages to come if Penny Wong’s rationing of carbon products and carbon energy is attempted.

Ministers dodge questions on ETS pressure

NBR by Andrea Deuchrass

29 March 2010

Both Prime Minister John Key and Environment Minister Nick Smith are dodging questions in the face of growing pressure to place the Emissions Trading Scheme on hold.

The National Business Review understands nine leading business associations sent a joint letter to Mr Key earlier this month asking whether New Zealand climate change policy remained appropriate.

As NBR understands, concerns included:

  • The lack of an Australian scheme (after the ETS was designed to align with it)
  • Global inaction
  • That New Zealand’s ETS was too stringent in its all-sector approach
  • The lack of a liquid international carbon market
  • The little prospect of progress at the Mexico COP at the end of the year
  • Trade disadvantages once businesses enter the ETS in July

Carbon Sink Deals Down The Gurgler

By Richard Rennie

NZ Farmers Weekly

A carbon company has reneged on farm deals valued over $50 million in
the Central North Island and could face charges under the Fair Trading
Act from 15 affected farmers.

Last month New Zealand Farmers Weekly reported on CO2 Farming's efforts
to secure hill country land in the Taumarunui, Taihape and Wairarapa
region to plant in trees and sell the carbon credits on the open market.

"CO2 Farming has never paid any of the money owing to buy either my
property or any of the others owned by 14 other farmers," said Janette
Walker of Pongaroa. 

Walker had originally intended to sell the property to CO2 Farming,
headed up by Robin Lewis and his partner Julie Chegwidden of Rotorua. 

Making no secret of her financial difficulties, Walker has been
responsible for organising the Farmers Weekly banker survey, run in
February. 

She has been under bank pressure to sell her 840ha property and said the
Lewis offer was unconditional, taking an invoice for the deposit,
claiming the GST back and using that as payment toward the property. 

Letter to Waikato Times by Ben W

Bryan Walker's latest missive (WT 16th Mar) smacks of considerably more denial than most climate skeptics. Like the majority of his kind, he is desperately trying to play down the impact of the recent IPCC blunders in the face of a growing skeptism towards man-made climate change.

World’s biggest coal company brings U.S. government to court in climate fraud

Hilltopper Haven.com

by John O'Sullivan on February 17, 2010

The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody Energy Company (PEC) has filed a mammoth 240-page “Petition for Reconsideration,” a full-blown legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The petition must be answered and covers the entire body of leaked emails from ‘Climategate’ as well as those other ‘gate’ revelations including the frauds allegedly perpetrated under such sub-headings as ‘Himalayan Glaciers,’ ‘African Agricultural Production,’ ‘Amazon Rain Forests,’ ‘Melting Mountain Ice,’ ‘Netherlands Below Sea Level’ as well as those much-publicized abuses of the peer-review literature and so called ‘gray literature.’ These powerful litigants also draw attention to the proven criminal conduct by climate scientists in refusing to honor Freedom of Information law (FOIA) requests.

US Senate Report 'Consensus' Exposed: The CRU Controversy

The scientists involved in the CRU controversy violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, may have violated federal laws. In addition to these findings, we believe the emails and accompanying documents seriously compromise the IPCC-backed "consensus" and its central conclusion that anthropogenic emissions are inexorably leading to environmental catastrophes.

 

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