Tag: agriculture

Shaking the money tree

pine.gifNZ Incorporated has moved from a Kyoto deficit to a surplus, according to the 2009 Net Position Report [PDF] released today. A reduction in agricultural emissions due to the 2007/8 drought, and an upwards revision in forest carbon have produced an expected surplus of 9.6 million tonnes of carbon over the first Kyoto commitment period: 2008-12, worth $241 million at Treasury’s current carbon price of $25.

Announcing the figures, environment minister Nick Smith commented:

It is good news that we may exceed our Kyoto target but we need to be cautious of these projections given their volatility. It is difficult for the Government to make sound climate change policy when projections have ranged from a 55 million tonne surplus in 2002 to a 64 million tonne deficit in 2006 and when the figures over the past year have varied by 31 million tonnes equivalent to $787 million.

The volatility of the figures certainly doesn’t help the budget process, but has nothing whatsoever to do with making “sound climate change policy”. If you dig around a little in the FAQ [PDF], you find that the government’s only contribution so far has been to increase our liability as Section 2.3 on p2 points out:

Total energy and industrial emissions projections for 2008-2012 have not changed from the 2008 projection. There are reductions in the projected emissions from energy due to lower than projected energy demand during 2008, and the expected effects of a continued recession. However, these have been offset by the effects of removing the Biofuels Sales Obligation and the Renewables (Electricity) Preference, and a small increase in fugitive emissions from greater geothermal electricity generation.

The other fly in the ointment is that although the national carbon account may be positive, that does not necessarily mean that the government will avoid having to buy emissions unit on the international market. A key feature of the current ETS design is the “grandfathering” of heavy emitters by giving them allocations of free units to cover a large chunk of their emissions, and this could lead to the government having to buy units overseas, as Section 5 of the FAQ makes clear:

The net position is a simple balancing of New Zealand’s units assigned under the Kyoto Protocol (Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) and Forestry removal units) against our projected obligation under the protocol. ETS accounting considers how those units will be devolved domestically to participants, and balances up the flows of units from the Crown account. This means that under the net position New Zealand could have a surplus of units, but due to a generous allocation of units under the ETS, the Crown may still need to purchase units from overseas. The ETS accounting is a prediction of what units the Crown will receive from the sectors that have obligations under the ETS, and a prediction of allocation of units to sectors within the scheme. The two sets of accounting are very different as different sectors come into the ETS at different times, and have differing levels of allocation, while under the net position accounting, all of ‘New Zealand Inc.’s’ emissions are accounted for from 2008.

In other words, if the ETS Review proceeds with the expected softening up of the scheme for big emitters and agriculture, even if our national carbon account performs well the government could still end up shelling out taxpayer funds in subsidies to major corporates.
There’s a lot of material to plough through in the report, but here’s an interesting point that should make some of our farming advocates squirm: a chunk of the reduction in agricultural emissions — 4.1 mT, worth $100 million — comes from accounting for the use of nitrification inhibitors and emissions from urine and dung. So much for agriculture not being able to do anything to reduce emissions…
[Update: No Right Turn digs into the methodology changes behind the new figures, DPF at Kiwiblog posts an incredibly facile take on the issue, Business New Zealand want to use the new numbers as an excuse to do nothing (why am I not surprised?), while the Green Party want the government to commit to a 2020 target.]

[Youssou N’Dour & Peter Gabriel]

Telling porkies to Parliament

NZETS.jpgThe Emissions Trading Scheme Review committee has released the first batch of submissions it has received — those made by organisations and individuals who have already made their presentations to the committee. There are some heavy hitters in there: from New Zealand’s science and policy community there’s the Climate Change Centre (a joint venture between the University of Canterbury and Victoria University of Wellington, plus all the Crown Research Institutes – from NIWA to AgResearch), VUW’s Climate Change Research Institute, and GNS Science, and from the world of commerce, we have the Business Roundtable‘s “evidence”. Why the quote marks? Because the Roundtable’s submission is a fact-free farrago of nonsense.

Continue reading “Telling porkies to Parliament”

Melting Point

Melting Point

Eric Dorfman is an ecologist.  He has been aware of the science of climate change since his doctoral student days in the 1990s but he credits Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth with inspiring him to make a larger contribution towards addressing the issue. Hence his book Melting Point: New Zealand and the Climate Change Crisis, published last September.

The book is not long, and is written in a relaxed style accessible to the general reader.  He begins with a brief overview of the global science, centring particularly on carbon sinks, carbon pumps and feedback loops as keys to understanding climate change. Debating whether climate change is real is senseless. Credible scientific opinion is unequivocal.  The risk of doing nothing in the face of the predicted consequences is foolhardy, and the problem is not beyond us.

Turning his focus to New Zealand he begins with the climate, pointing out that unlike Europe which is experiencing unprecedented weather patterns we are likely to see an intensification of the weather patterns we already have, much of it driven by an an intensification of the pattern of westerly winds and warmer sea surface temperatures.  He considers the effects of rising sea levels and details some of them; even one metre will cause an enormous and costly mess for the country – farmland around Invercargill inundated, salt water intrusion in many agricultural areas, water seep on to Wellington airport, Tamaki Drive under water, and much more.

He ranges through several aspects of New Zealand life explaining how they may be affected by the coming changes.  Primary production, human health, natural ecosystems and socio-economic impacts are the main areas considered. He offers something of a plug for organic farming as a goal, and has an intriguing look at farm animal alternatives such as beefalo, ostriches and emus, and angora goats. He explains the habitat constraints likely to be experienced by species both on land and in the sea, and the extinctions which may result. Human health is also likely to be affected, though less severely than in developing countries. Mosquito-borne and water-borne diseases are surveyed and psychological health considered. Likely impacts on the economy conclude with a positive reference to the previous government’s stance on carbon neutrality and emissions control.

Comparatively speaking we will fare better than most countries, though this is scant reassurance in a world mostly worse affected. For instance, Dorfman asks at one point how NZ will react to the arrival of most or all of the populations of small Pacific Islands such as Tuvalu as rising sea levels make their islands uninhabitable. A chapter on choices covers a familiar range from making personal emission reductions to engaging in political pressure.

The book is a reasonable and relatively gentle discussion around what may already lie ahead for New Zealand in the uncertain future into which climate change is launching us. That very uncertainty makes it difficult to be precise or trenchant, but it is important to be thinking ahead and realising that we are preparing a different world by our greenhouse gas emissions. Hopefully Dorfman represents a wide group of people who are doing just that.  Not that he is happy for us to continue along our present path.  Far from it. He rests what hope he can muster for the future on the decisions of international forums and the actions of superpowers and the author sees an important lobbying function for New Zealand in these arenas. One hopes he is not being too optimistic about New Zealand’s readiness to lobby.  We are getting mixed messages from government at present

Nice weather for ducks

Duck.jpg A couple of days ago, NIWA published its climate summary for 2008 — a comprehensive overview of all the weather events that went together to make last year what it was. In general, 2008 was sunny and warm for New Zealand, but with many notable extreme weather events — a “rollercoaster” of a year, according to NIWA principal scientist Jim Renwick (who’s been a guest poster here). The Herald picked up on the rollercoaster reference, but Stuff latched on to something else Jim said:

[…] Renwick said the extremes could be a preview of how global climate change would affect New Zealand weather. “I am not saying 2008 was a result of climate change, but we should expect to see more years like that,” he said. “The idea of a sunny year, but with some pretty violent storms, is consistent with climate change. We should expect to see more of those rainfall extremes.”

The last time I looked at my weather records was last February. After musing on a heavy rain event, my comment then was “if you were to ask me what will Canterbury’s climate be like in 2030, I’d have to answer – just like this summer…” For our property in the Waipara Valley, 2007 was a dry year — only 496 mm of rain. 2008 was much wetter: 809 mm in the year, 10% over the average for the last 11 years, and the second wettest in my record. That’s been good news.

However, when I look back at the year, nearly 40% of that rain came in just three events — a big fall in February to break the dry spell, and then two big storms in late July and August, the latter severe enough to cause dramatic flooding in the region. Roughly 320 mm fell in those three events. I had to wash mud out of the garage three times, dig a drainage trench through the truffiere (truffles don’t like drowning), gullies eroded, the road slumped, and the Waipara River lowered its bed by half a metre in places.

Take away those big storms, and we had only 489 mm for the year — a dry year by my standards. Over the ten years up to 2008, we had a total of three comparable heavy rain events (Aug 2000, Jan 2002 and Sept 2003), and then like London buses, three came along at once.

What does this prove? Precisely nothing. I don’t have records going back far enough to know whether there’s any sort of statistical significance in 2008’s North Canterbury rainstorms. But… remember what Jim said earlier? The impact of global warming on the east coast of NZ is expected to increase the frequency of drought, but because warming also means more water vapour in the atmosphere — more “fuel” for weather — when rain does fall, it could come in floods. So if you were to ask me what Canterbury’s climate will be like in twenty year’s time, I’d have to answer – just like last year.

[Lemon Jelly]

Cloud nine (#2)

kanga.jpg Forty leading Australian scientists have issued an urgent call for action on climate change. Drafted by Barrie Pittock and Andrew Glickson, the statement says that there is a “window of opportunity to halt a climate crisis”, if Australia begins:

Urgently cutting carbon emissions.

Seizing the opportunity to fast-track utilisation of established and new clean energy technologies thus creating new business opportunities.

An urgent tree-planting campaign in Australia and its neighbors.

Attempts at CO2 capture through soil-carbon enrichment and preservation.

The statement has a list of nine suggested policies, including committing (and urging others to commit to) a peak greenhouse gas level of 450 ppm CO2e. Barry Brook at Brave New Climate, one of the signatories, suggests we may need to go further:

We need CO2-e to be 300-325 ppm, and >100% emissions reductions (with active geo-bio-sequestration) as soon as possible. Nothing less is going to pull out out of the sticky mire into which we are now rapidly sinking.

It would be useful if our science community could issue an equivalent statement in the run up to the election, to provide voters with guidance on what can and should be done here – and a yardstick against which to measure policy proposals (or the lack of them). Consider it the scientific equivalent of Treasury’s opening of the national books…

[Title ref: one, two]