The uncertainty created by the shelving of the current emissions trading scheme legislation is already having a significant impact on the New Zealand economy. Carbon News reports that one of the world’s leading players in the carbon market had planned to announce today that it was to open an NZ operation, but that as a result of the National/ACT deal, those plans have been put on hold. NZ’s international reputation in carbon markets is “taking a battering” according to TZ1 boss Mark Franklin, and the market for NZ emissions units (NZUs) is now “effectively dead”, CN reports.
The forestry sector is also feeling the impact of Key’s decision to cave in to Hide, with Roger Dickie of the Kyoto Forestry Association telling Morning Report yesterday that a major forestry project worth hundreds of millions of dollars has been cancelled as a result of the ETS decision (stream, mp3). Also worth a listen: Rod Oram on Nine To Noon today, assessing the new cabinet (stream, mp3). Nick Smith, the incoming minister with responisbility the environment and climate change portfolios apparently still believes (according to Oram) that a modified ETS can be up and running by 2010, but the “special” select committee process is going to make that very hard to achieve – especially if consideration of a carbon tax is included in the final terms of reference. Brian Fallow in the Herald believes an ETS is “most likely“, but in the meantime the uncertainty created by the new government is doing no-one except the big “do nothing” emitters any favours.
To avoid further damage to our international credibility, National should immediately issue revised terms of reference and a tight timetable for their “special” select committee: taking out all references to considering the science of climate change and the possibility of a carbon tax, and explicitly limit the committee to considering amendments to the ETS framework. To do less (or nothing) will do further damage to business in NZ and our international reputation.
Unfortunately Nick Smith has got the ETS job. It would have been much better if it had been given to Hide or Lockwood Smith.
You’re a funny guy Roger, you just crack me up. Their understanding of climate change is just as bad as yours.
Try this for size
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf
An extract from it.
High solar activity occurs whilst the
sun is in the ordered phase and the earth warms up. Minimum or
no activity occurs whilst the sun is in the chaotic phase and the
earth cools, sometimes entering a relatively short little ice age.
Each 179 years the sun begins a new cycle of the epitrochoid
family of barycentric orbits; the most recent of these began in
1996 with Sunspot Cycle No. 23. Whilst the sun is in the
beginning phase of the new epitrochoid cycle, solar output of all
types is understood to decline and the climate on the earth cools.
The four previous epitrochoid cycles began in about 1790, 1620,
1430 and 1270 respectively. Solar activity diminished during the
first several decades of each of these epitrochoid cycles, resulting
in a cooling of the earth. For example, Europe between the 1620s
to the 1710s (the Maunder Minimum) was a time of intense cold,
causing extensive havoc and misery. The Thames froze each
winter and the alpine glaciers grew deep into the valleys. Between
the 1790s and 1820s (the Dalton Minimum) was also a time of
intense cold throughout Europe, with 1816 being considered one
of the coldest of the last 250 years.ix All of the cold intervals have
been well documented in both the standard climatological records
and the broader historical record (FAGAN, 2000). Catastrophic
volcanic and earthquake events accompanied these cold periods.
Nevertheless, the physical process by which sim modulates the
solar dynamo has not yet been established, although several
testable hypotheses have been published.
The geological record shows that periods of minimum and
maximum solar output (and their consequential climate impacts)
have occurred throughout at least the last million years. Since the
positions of all of the planets in relation to the sun can be readily
and accurately calculated hundreds of years in advance, the sun’s
orbit around the barycentre can also be readily and accurately
calculated hundreds of years in advance.
Or esle you could try these
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
http://www.aimes.ucar.edu/MEETINGS/2005_AIMES_SSC/SSC%20PUBLICATIONS/Millenial_CCSM_Schimel%20copy.pdf
http://publishing.royalsociety.org/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/publications/preprints/pp2006/MPA2001.pdf
The sim hypothesis and SVALGAARD, CLIVER, and KAMIDE (2005)
predict precisely this pattern of gradual rise to a very moderate
maximum for the emergent Sunspot Cycle No 24.
According to sim hypothesis, Sunspot Cycles No 25 and 26 will
be smaller and weaker than Sunspot Cycle No 24, which will be
smaller and weaker that Sunspot Cycle No 23, and the earth will
enter a little ice age. According to this analysis, as the sun enters
Sunspot Cycle No 26, the earth’s climate is expected to be much
the same as it was during the Dalton Minimum cold period from
the 1790s to the 1820s. Subsequent orbits are expected to become
more regular. Solar output will increase once the sun leaves the
chaotic phase of its orbit around the barycentre. Solar activity is expected to pick up; the warm climate return for the remainder of
the century, from about 2050 onwards. It is to be hoped that in its
next series of publications, the IPCC includes in its modelling of
climate change the consequences of reductions in solar activity
expected during Sunspot Cycles No 24, 25 and 26.
Dewhurst-
You’re seriously off-topic here. This post was about the ETS. Please do not post trying to poke holes in the science on posts that are not about climate science.
Rog 11.18.08 at 3:22 pm
Dewhurst-
> You’re seriously off-topic here. This post was about the ETS. Please do not post trying to poke holes in the science on posts that are not about climate science.
Rubbish. It is not off-topic. This entire blog is dedicated to promoting AGW propaganda. From time to time someone is going to shoot holes in your nonsense. Live with it. It is no use throwing your toys out of the cot and crying that it is not fair.
Dewhurst-
If you think the entire blog is propaganda fine, and I don’t care if you go shooting holes in my nonsense, but at least have the common courtesy to keep comments on the science of AGW on posts about the science of AGW and put comments about policy and the ETS on posts about the ETS.
Gareth-
I know you’ve expressed you don’t like to censor, but it really impairs the readability of the blog to sort through comments that are off-topic for a particular post.
Thank God Helen had so much time in government to put New Zealand on the right emissions path:
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2008/11/helens_legacy.html
Roger:
Not with your calibre of pop-gun broadside, Roger.
Shorter Rog:
True enough, but I’m operating on the “enough rope” principal with Mr Dewhurst (NZ CSC member, signatory of the Manhattan Crank Statement).
AW:
The last government failed to implement policy early enough – principally through getting into bed with NZ First and UF. But note that the Nats and ACT both voted against a carbon tax when it was on the table – yet they are apparently both now considering that option.
National has failed to grasp this particular nettle, preferring to allow big emitters and lobbyists (not to mention their libertarian rump – who got fewer votes than Winston First) determine their policy. Bad move, bad for the country. Key will find himself out if step with all the leaders he’s now so keen to be seen with… And there is a business backlash to be seen – think forestry, think the companies who have been taking carbon mitigation steps to help their overseas marketing.
DPF can try to spin this all he wants, but Key is pandering to his right wing. If the cranks get into the review process we’ll be a laughing stock.
National stating they will head down the carbon tax path is a complete u-turn, and probably the first of many, on promises from Mr Key. He firmly stated throughout his campaign that he was committed to an ETS but that a review process would occur and the ETS would be altered ever so slightly – that’s fine, they’re the government expending our dollar on the research to best inform their decisions but to head down the ‘carbon’ tax path again we are beating around the (ever-decreasing) bush. Farmers in particular see the ETS simply as a tax and what are they going to think about this u-turn?
Bit hard for one Mr Arden to drive his tractor up the steps of his own front yard now that National have re-mooted this idea!!
Common mistake actually. The “fart tax” was actually a research levy proposed to be applied to agricultural industry bodies. The carbon tax was another part of the same policy package, and aimed at enegy sector emissions. Pretty much all media seem to be making the assumption that a carbon tax included agriculture, when it wasn’t the case back then.
I have to wonder what world you lot live in.
I sincerely hope that Key is just going through the motions of supporting ETS and Kyoto to protect our trade with every country in Europe which, with the exception of Britain run by that madman Brown, is wriggling out of the commitments as fast as the barbed wire permits.
You lot want some loopy green agenda without any thought to the consequences.
“You lot want some loopy green agenda without any thought to the consequences.”
And you are a fruit loop who wants a yellowish-blue agenda with no regard to the environment and future generations. Shame our largest trading partner Australia is heading down the ETS path and we will have to anyway if we want to remain competitive with this well advanced nation compared to ours.
>And you are a fruit loop who wants a yellowish-blue agenda with no regard to the environment and future generations.
Have you ever done a day’s work for the environment?
>Shame our largest trading partner Australia is heading down the ETS path and we will have to anyway if we want to remain competitive with this well advanced nation compared to ours.
Rudd may well get the message that it is bloody stupid to bankrupt the country while the rest just stand around and watch.
You are senile Roger.
“the rest just stand around and watch.”
“Rudd may well get the message that it is bloody stupid to bankrupt the country while the rest just stand around and watch.”
The rest, who are the rest dumb-dumb? You have no idea of economics ethier.
Every country in eastern Europe and most in western Europe. Brown is the only only accelerating down the path to cultural and economic suicide. Try keeping your finger on the pulse.
Try it yourself Roger. Are you deliberately misleading people?
News from PointCarbon in Nov 08:
1) Leaders from six countries signed a declaration vowing to cooperate in reducing carbon emissions. The signatories included Brazil, Canada, China, India, Mexico and the US.
2) The US Senate will draft a cap-and-trade bill in 2009 reflecting the president-elect’s climate goals.
3) China is set to establish a carbon trading scheme for its provinces, according to media reports. The proposal was made earlier this month, and according to an official at the State Forestry Administration the central government is likely to advance plans for a forestry-based scheme.
4) Most major Japanese political parties favour drastic medium and long-term national emission reduction targets, according to a survey by environmental groups on Thursday. Of the country’s eight major political parties, five replied that the world’s second-largest economy should set targets of cutting its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25 to 40 per cent under 1990 levels by 2020 and by 80 to 95 per cent by 2050.
5) Finland’s government today approved a long-term climate and energy strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions, curb energy consumption and boost the use of renewable energy by 2020, with additional guidance for 2050.
6) The EU may offer compromises to individual member states in a bid to stave off rejection of the bloc’s landmark climate and energy package by at least seven countries. At the second day of a summit of leaders from the EU’s 27 member states, countries opposed to some of the key measures in the climate package were digesting comments from French president Nicolas Sarkozy that the bloc needed “to take into account some specific problems of some member states
…Yesterday, Poland and six other central and eastern European countries warned fellow member states that they will reject the EU climate package unless it takes greater account of national circumstances and proposed changes to key areas, including the full auctioning of carbon credits to power companies.
Apologies for the long post. http://www.climateark.org/ is a good source of policy news
Both Poland and Italy have coal based electricity systems. By negotitating hard (and playing negative messaging games) they will influence the eventual compromises offered to them. Don’t over simplify this Roger.