re: “I’m not an economist”: Sir Nicholas Stern has issued new report on economics of carbon trading (although obviously a global view rather than NZ-specific), etc here:

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2008/globaldeal.htm

The report from the Sustainability Council

http://www.sustainabilitynz.org/docs/TheCarbonChallenge.pdf

“The proposed rules for the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will involve huge transfers of wealth but make very little difference to New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions in the next five years”

“agriculture receives a net subsidy of $1.31 billion up to 2012″

got (at least according to Stuff) no coverage in the newspapers, and nor did supporting press releases from the NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development. They were interviewed yesterday on National Radio though.

On the same day, an NZIER report

http://www.nzier.org.nz/includes/download.aspx?ID=79602

made great headlines:

“The Government’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme could cost New Zealand 20,000 jobs, reduce agriculture exports, cut wages and slash almost $6 billion from gross domestic product.”

and vigorous comments on the Stuff blog. However, you only have to read to page 7 to find that their model predicts 42% GDP growth from 2007 to 2025 under the ETS, vs 44% without it – that’s where the $6b comes from. ie it affects about 1 part in 20 of our economic growth. Not such a great headline.

While I am not an economist, I am not convinced of the value of this kind of modelling. Their assumptions include
“no comprehensive global commitment to reducing CO_2″ and “All of our scenarios are based on an assumed international price of carbon equivalent to $40 per tonne of CO2-e in 2008 prices”; the alternative scenario is that
“In our ‘NZ Pays’ simulations we assume that it does so by paying for emission reductions abroad.” Nor did I see any mention of possibly much greater reductions being required after 2012.

However, both the Sustability and the NZIER reports agree that the phase-in period, especially for agriculture, is much too long.

It seems kind of ironic that after decades of right-wing economists promoting auctions and trading as sound market-based solutions for these situations, the moment the government tries to implement one they are up in arms! They should have been speaking up when we signed Kyoto, it’s a bit late now.

How about some reports from economists on how we can actually cut our emissions by 50% by 2050 (John Key’s “50 by 50″ – haven’t heard so much about that lately!)

How about some leadership from local councils? When local councils started declaring themselves nuclear free in the late 1970s everybody laughed, but it led to the whole country becoming nuclear free in 1984.

For that matter, how about some actual leadership from the government? I would like to see New Zealand become a world leader in reducing GHG emissions. It seems you can win a medal from the UN without actually doing anything.

Cheers

Robert

That’s both true and irrelevant. CO2 levels in deep geological time have been well above today’s levels (see image here). But over the last 4 million years (the current sequence of ice ages), maximum CO2 reached during interglacials is about 290/300ppm, dropping to 180ppm during ice ages. We’ve pushed that to 385 ppm, and (surprise!) it’s getting warmer.

I appears that there’s a “permafrost cap” over the bulk of the methane hydrates, and that present leakage is through faults and discontinuities in that “cap”.

As for the Holocene Thernal Maximum, that’s a very good question. Kaufman et al, Holocene thermal maximum in the western Arctic (0–180W) (pdf), suggests that the “lingering” residual Laurentide ice sheet over North America could have had a marked impact on Arctic climate. The forcings involved, being orbital (Milanokovitch) would have been distinctly different (ie, perhaps not so much heat being shipped north by the Atlantic).

{Edited to add] And then there’s the fact that the recent emergence from an ice age may have created a thick permafrost layer – thick enough to survive the warming. Hansen thinks we’re now past HTM temps…

Crown minerals doc 5Mb file

Also USGS presented on the global resource

here 2Mb

I guess you would call it relatively climate friendly because tapping the methane and burning it (in say a power station) gives you electricity and CO2 and possibly some spare heat to use if we get really clever.

If I had a choice between a) a massive release of methane and b) a controlled release of CO2 plus some useful byproducts I’d go for b) every time.

Of course the choice isn’t quite that simple.

Good question from Steve Bloom re the HTM.

The other question I have is how this a large quantity of hydrates would have survived the Holocene thermal maximum (which IIRC had a considerable warming effect in the Arctic) but be vulnerable now.

I’m a bit confused as to why MfE would call methane hydrates “relatively climate-friendly”? Esp in light of the Spiegel piece…