Tag: National

Tangled up in blue

NZETS.jpgJohn Key has announced that National will not support the Emissions Trading Scheme legislation in its current form [Stuff]. When the select committee reports back to parliament next month, National will vote against a second reading. The reactions are as you might expect: from praise at Kiwiblog to righteous indignation at No Right Turn. Hot Topic (for what it’s worth) is disappointed that climate policy is effectively becoming a political football. Key’s move doesn’t mean that the ETS is dead, but it does radically change the political landscape on climate issues. Helen Clark is insisting the ETS will proceed, but she will now need to ensure that the Greens and Maori Party are on side, and rustle up some votes from New Zealand First and/or United Future. Good luck with that.

It appears National, despite their fine words about being committed to emissions trading and firm action on emissions reductions, have made the crude political calculation that in the general clamour being raised by submitters on the ETS they can keep both their business constituency happy and lessen problems with the remaining sceptics in their ranks (and in a future support arrangement with ACT) by delaying the introduction of a scheme. Note the speed with which the climate cranks have been rushing out supporting press releases. I hope Key realises that he’ll need a long spoon to sup with that lot.

Delaying action on climate change is now an election issue. If National form the next government, it doesn’t take much of a crystal ball to see that substantive action will likely be years away as officials return to the drawing board for a third time. Those who aren’t bald already could be forgiven for tearing their hair out.

In the land of make believe

NZETS.jpg Today’s lesson is taken from Jane Clifton’s Politics column in this week’s Listener (full text on the web next week). Her take on the current fuss over the Emissions Trading Scheme perfectly illustrates how the debate around this issue is being misunderstood and misrepresented, occasionally wilfully, sometimes from ignorance. This is not Clifton’s fault. She is reflecting only a certain kind of reality – the perception of the issue that is driving press coverage and political actions. Here’s a key passage:

“… most people have gotten the drift by now: to reduce carbon emissions means to reduce activities we currently benefit from and enjoy. And we will have to pay handsomely for our lack of pleasure.”

She then considers why the government is struggling with the scheme:

“It’s the ultimate non sequitur. A government that addressed this crisis seriously would become massively unpopular and lose office. A government that didn’t would be hideously irresponsible and deserve to lose office. Hard to avoid a certain fatalism.”

If the first part of the argument were true, then her “non sequitur” would follow. Happily, her assumption is completely wrong, so it doesn’t have to. But you’d be hard-pressed to glean that from the current discussion in NZ (or indeed from Clifton’s column).

Continue reading “In the land of make believe”

Sugar coated iceberg

Polarbear.jpg Prognostications on the fate of the Arctic sea ice this boreal summer are coming in thick and fast. The National Snow and Ice Data Centre in the US has updated its summer news page with the latest data and some projections of what might happen:

Spring has arrived in the Arctic. After peaking at 15.21 million square kilometers (5.87 million square miles) in the second week of March, Arctic sea ice extent has declined through the month of April. April extent has not fallen below the lowest April extent on record, but it is still below the long-term average. Taken together, an assessment of the available evidence, detailed below, points to another extreme September sea ice minimum. Could the North Pole be ice free this melt season? Given that this region is currently covered with first-year ice, that seems quite possible.

Most striking are the estimates of this summer’s likely minimum based on the melting rates observed over the last 25 years.

Icepredict0805.png

“To avoid beating the September 2007 record low, more than 50% of this year’s first-year ice would have to survive; this has only happened once in the last 25 years, in 1996.”

Meanwhile, Andy Revkin at the New York Times has been asking sea ice researchers for their views. You can read their replies in the comments to his post. A number of well-known names are backing a new record, including BIll Chapman, the researcher responsible for the excellent Cryosphere Today site (I want to get an iPhone so that I can try out the special graphics CT provides), who writes:

The two wild cards remaining would be (1) how thick is this first-year ice and (2) will it be warm enough to melt the first-year ice this summer? Since temperatures over the central Arctic were normal to above normal this past winter and spring, I don’t think the thickness will be too great. The key will be June temperatures and cloud cover in the central Arctic. Given relatively clear conditions and an early to average start to the melt of the central Arctic, the albedo will lower and the process will be in motion to easily melt that first year ice. In fact, the only thing that could prevent a record would be a colder than average summer – especially early summer. Given recent history and our penchant for burning fossil fuels, I’d consider this somewhat unlikely.

I say the odds favor a new NH record minimum – put my money there.

My money’s already there… Good to know I’m backing the form horse, even if I would rather lose.

Your cheatin’ heart(land)

heart.jpg You’re a senior New Zealand climate scientist. You shared in the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the IPCC last year. As a young scientist in the 1970s you did ground-breaking work on warming in New Zealand, and wrote a seminal paper in Nature pointing out that cooling experienced in the northern hemisphere might be due to aerosols. You wrote the first book on what global warming might mean for New Zealand. And then your name appears on a list of “500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares” published by the Heartland Institute. Would you not be a trifle irritated?

Jim Salinger (for it is he! – excellent Herald profile here) and four other NZ scientists who found their way on to the Heartland list issued their response last night (pers comm):

The five scientists concerned are Associate Professor Chris Hendy (University of Waikato), Dr Matt McGlone (Science Team Leader, Landcare Research), Dr Neville Moar (retired DSIR,), Dr Jim Salinger (Principal Scientist, NIWA) and Dr Peter Wardle (retired DSIR, FRSNZ). Other eminent scientists around the world, also included in the list of 500, have publically distanced themselves from the Heartland statement. While the Heartland Institute is entitled to make what it will of their research, these scientists strongly object to the implication that they support Heartland’s position. The scientists fully endorse the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as to global warming and its causes.

There’s good coverage by Angela Gregory in the Herald this morning, plus Hard News & Stuff, and Morning Report has an interview (6:16am, podcast available), including a remarkable effort by Owen Mcshane of the NZCSC to defend the list. DeSmogBlog broke the story about the Heartland list, and has been documenting the reaction from scientists on it. Meanwhile, the Heartland Institute has made a small change to the heading of the list, but refuses to remove it from their web site.

This is the same Heartland Institute whose President, Joseph L Bast, sent a letter to The Listener (scroll down this page) demanding that Dave Hansford stop writing about climate. He wrote:

I don’t know how writers like Hansford sleep at night. If he has even a shred of personal integrity, he should apologise for his attacks on the growing number of scientists who say the threat of global warming has been over-sold, and promise to never again write on this subject. And his publisher should accept nothing less.

Bast defends his actions over the list in equally bombastic fashion (here):

Many of the complaining scientists have crossed the line between scientific research and policy advocacy. They lend their credibility to politicians and advocacy groups who call for higher taxes and more government regulations to “save the world” from catastrophic warming … and not coincidentally, to fund more climate research. They are embarrassed — as they should be — to see their names in a list of scientists whose peer-reviewed published work suggests the modern warming might be due to a natural 1,500-year climate cycle.

Well, Mr Bast, I’ve got news for you. The embarrassment should be yours. You are happy to claim the moral high ground when making thinly-veiled attempts to get rid of a journalist prepared to point out the inconvenient truth about your organisation and its funding of sceptics in NZ and around the world. But when you professionally smear a group of respected scientists – and then deepen the smear by questioning their ethics – you cross the line from advocacy to desperate defamation. To coin a phrase, you should apologise for your attacks on respected scientists, and promise to never again write on this subject. And stay out of New Zealand.

But I’m not holding my breath.

(Hat tips to JS, cindy, Deltoid, International Journal of Inactivism)

White light/white heat

NZETS.jpg The proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is under intense scrutiny at the moment. Lobbyists, economists and politicians are all pounding their respective beats, and as is usual in these matters, a great deal more heat than light is being shed on the proposed legislation. At the beginning of the week, the government’s climate change leadership forum – the great and the good of the business world – announced that it supported the broad outline of the ETS with some caveats (announcement, Herald), only for Business NZ to promptly withdraw its support. Then the Sustainability Council of NZ published a report [PDF] criticising the way that the ETS transfers revenue from consumers to key industries – especially agriculture – and warned that it wouldn’t do enough to reduce emissions. Not to be outdone, the NZ Institute for Economic Research produced its own report [PDF], warning that the scheme would do little good and cost the economy billions, and advising that we shold do nothing except buy Kyoto compliance on the world market. ACT leader Rodney Hide then announced that “the Government’s ETS is a crock and should be dumped.” There are now rumours that the government is running scared, and might delay implementing the petrol and fuels part of the scheme to avoid frightening consumers in the run up to the election. So, who’s right? Is Rodney’s incisive analysis on the money?

Continue reading “White light/white heat”