Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming.

That’s the only bit that I have any issue with.

A throwaway comment like the one above could be seen to imply a solar connection, which I am sure wasn’t the intention.

The current solar minimum is lower (and has lasted for longer) than usual, but there is not as yet any good evidence for any significant decline in solar forcing over and above the normal sunspot cycle variability – and (unless your name is Piers Corbyn) there is no established link between the sunspot cycle and global temperature.

To be fair, the authors do not claim that there is any such link – indeed they quote Lean and Rind (2008) :

They found that the sun contributed only about 10% of surface warming in the last century and a negligible amount in the last quarter century

I had not come across this report before, thanks for giving it some publicity.

The ETS will be known as Nick’s Bill by NZders long after Key’s and his lot are ejected and forgotten. Nick has immortalised himself for Nick’s ETS will far out live the Great Depression of 2009. It will be a defining point in NZ history. The point at which NZ’s “clean, green” credentials start to leach, and the world’s citizens start to realise that NZ products (diary and tourism) are a sham!

Gaia save your soul Nick!

The EU ETS includes CO2 emissions from selected industries and covers a whopping 40% of total EU emissions. And they only give 90% of units as allocations.

The Aussies and US haven’t yet passed schemes into law, but they will! And the proposals they have are so different to Nick Smith’s…. The US will include all gases except agricultural and allocate 85% of units free, while the Australian scheme is SO DIFFERENT TO OURS RIGHT??

And the US scheme will be phased in from 2012-2016, the Aussies from 2011. When does ours start again? Oh next year?

Yes New Zealand is defiantly a climate laggard. We should be doing as the rest of the world is and implementing comprehensive ETS’s, not bowing down to corporate interests that hate our grandchildren’s grandchildren!

So yes, National campaigned on not leading the world in climate policy, and the nation voted for them, but this, this is….

Possibly a quote mine. What Nick Smith actually said was ” Our head held high, up our backsides”.

Which day of the week will be shower day. I bags Friday.

Re Nick Smith’s comment this morning that NZ can now attend the talks with “our head held high”, this must be some new meaning of those words that I am unfamiliar with.

Some combination of the words “craven”, “spineless” and “intergenerational theft” would surely be more appropriate…