Gareth – Page 199

High hopes

If you thought the Emissions Trading Scheme was in big trouble, you were right – but for the wrong reasons. The Southland Times reports that Basil Walker, a former property developer from Queenstown, has decided that the ETS poses such a dire threat to New Zealand that he’s seeking a High Court injunction against Labour MPs to prevent the legislation being passed.

Mr Walker said he was acting in the interests of the people of New Zealand. “I’ve taken the action because someone had to. This Government is trying to force this on the people and someone had to stand up and say that there is no evidence to support it,” he said yesterday.

Not in my name, Basil. Not in my name.

The NZ C”S”C helpfully provide PDFs of his application and supporting affidavit. The latter is most amusing – a concatenation of crank arguments, from Monckton to Carter, with – according to The Southland Times – further supporting material from Muriel Newman.

Mr Walker has no legal advisers, and his chances of success are non-existent. One hopes his day in court will prove a chastening experience.

Cloud nine

National’s new energy policy [PDF], released yesterday, includes a promise that it will “introduce an emissions trading scheme within nine months of taking office that balances our environmental responsibilities with our economic opportunities.” Other highlights of the policy document include lifting the government’s moratorium on development of baseload thermal power generation (preferring gas over coal) but accepting the goal of 90% renewable generation by 2025, more seed money for oil and gas exploration, reform of the RMA, and a $1,000 grant for domestic solar hot water installations. Also released yesterday: the government’s proposed National Policy Statement on Renewable Energy Generation, designed to smooth the consent process for new renewable schemes. As you might expect, No Right Turn and Frogblog (one, two) are unimpressed, while David Farrar seems to think more hydro’s the answer (though his commenters are rabidly pro-nuclear).

There’s been plenty of attention paid to the end of thermal moratorium, but I’m particularly interested in how National plans to get a revised ETS ready within nine months of forming the next government. In the absence of any legislation before the election – which is looking more and more likely – the announcement suggests that National will take the framework of the existing scheme, tinker with the details, and then reintroduce it to parliament. The “tinkering” is reasonably predictable. There will be some sort of cave-in to the big emitters on “economic” grounds. This could involve bigger allocations of free credits and a longer phase out period – and there will be some sort of attempt to make the scheme line up with Australia’s. Agriculture might even be able to push for its entry to the scheme to be delayed even longer, once again on “economic” grounds.

In the absence of an ETS before the election, it is clearly good news that National has publicly committed to introducing some form of trading scheme early in its first term. Any ETS is better than none – any carbon pricing is better than none. The bad news is that the whole economy is left in limbo in the interim. What advice does National have have for the forestry sector, who are – at least theoretically – already in an existing scheme? I hope that before the election National will provide more detail on its ETS plans. This is a hugely important piece of policy with wide-reaching effects, and the electorate deserves to know more – much more – about Key & Co’s plans before deciding whether to support them.

Celia of the seals

It appears that my wish is someone’s command. Last month, blogging on the continuing break-up of the Wilkins ice shelf, I noted a reference to “seal hats” as data gathering devices and expressed a wish to see them. And here they are! Little devices glued to the heads of elephant seals that gather data as the seals as they go about their daily business. A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science explains:

Here, we show that southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) equipped with oceanographic sensors can measure ocean structure and water mass changes in regions and seasons rarely observed with traditional oceanographic platforms. In particular, seals provided a 30-fold increase in hydrographic proï¬les from the sea-ice zone, allowing the major fronts to be mapped south of 60Â°S and sea-ice formation rates to be inferred from changes in upper ocean salinity. […] By measuring the high-latitude ocean during winter, elephant seals ï¬ll a â€˜â€˜blind spotâ€™â€™ in our sampling coverage, enabling the establishment of a truly global ocean-observing system.

Abstract here, full paper here[PDF]. More coverage at New Scientist, e! Science News.

Fight test

A few months ago I posted about a presentation by science historian Naomi Oreskes, discussing the roots of denial. John Mashey (in comments at Deltoid, since promoted to a post) draws attention to another Oreskes talk – You CAN Argue With The Facts – which looks in some detail at how the Western Fuels Association test marketed climate dissent. Oreskes is typically incisive, but I found her calm dissection of the cynical application of professional marketing techniques to create an illusion (and later, the fact) of dissent truly shocking. If you were wondering where Hansen got his “prosecute the CEOs” call from, this is the context. Required viewing for all pol sci and mass comms students (you know who you are 😉 )…

Once upon a time there was an ocean

The Arctic summer sea ice cover could be reduced by 2013 to “a few outcrops on islands near Greenland and Canada between mid-July and mid-September”, according to new research reported in The Observer [UK] today. The paper also suggests that this year could still see a new record minimum. Wieslaw Maslowski, the US Navy researcher who suggested in 2007 that the Arctic could be ice free by 2013, told Observer science editor Robin McKie:

‘It does not really matter whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for Arctic ice,’ Maslowski said. ‘The crucial point is that ice is clearly not building up enough over winter to restore cover and that when you combine current estimates of ice thickness with the extent of the ice cap, you get a very clear indication that the Arctic is going to be ice-free in summer in five years. And when that happens, there will be consequences.’

This is the first story I’ve found in a mainstream newspaper that has picked up on what those “consequences” might be, albeit in only the most general terms:

This startling loss of Arctic sea ice has major meteorological, environmental and ecological implications. The region acts like a giant refrigerator that has a strong effect on the northern hemisphere’s meteorology. Without its cooling influence, weather patterns will be badly disrupted, including storms set to sweep over Britain.

Or a run of warm wet summers.

The paper also talked to Mark Serreze from the NSIDC about the speed up in melt over the last week:

‘[…]Beaufort Sea storms triggered steep ice losses and it now looks as if it will be a very close call indeed whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for ice cover over the Arctic. We will only find out when the cover reaches its minimum in mid-September.’

The fat lady may just have got back into the limo and returned to her hotel for a snack.

[Update 12/8: The NSIDC has updated (11/8) its Arctic news page, commenting on the effect of storms on the ice, and noting that Amundsen’s long version of the NW Passage will be open soon.]