Tag: Nick Smith

Twas the night before… the ETS

Tomorrow morning, a large chunk of New Zealand’s much debated Emissions Trading Scheme comes into effect. Forestry’s already been in it for two years, but July 1st is the day that the liquid fuels and electricity generation sectors start to have to account for their emissions, and it’s the first day that consumers might see a change in fuel and electricity prices that can be blamed on the ETS. Last week’s National Business Review had a pretty good overview of the state of play here. The scheme has also come in for some robust criticism in a new book, The Carbon Challenge, by Sustainability Council executive director Simon Terry and VUW economist Geoff Bertram (of which more in another post soon, I hope).

Federated Farmers have been out protesting in force — even though agriculture gets a free pass until 2015, and then gets 90% of its emissions “grandfathered” (effectively free). A few weeks ago Farmers Weekly editor Tim Fulton popped in for a cuppa and interviewed me about my views on climate change, agriculture and the ETS for an article that appeared a couple of weeks ago. Most of what I said won’t be news to Hot Topic readers, but I thought it worth passing on my thoughts on agriculture and the ETS to a wider audience:

Continue reading “Twas the night before… the ETS”

The Listener joins the attack

“…serious and growing questions over the standards and credibility of the international body whose job it is to determine the scientific truths about climate change.” 

The Listener is not going to be left out.  Ruth Laugesen writes in the current issue that “probes by a variety of international media have uncovered a smattering of poorly based and even shonky assertions” in the IPCC reports.  By the time she comes to list them later in her article they have become “potential inaccuracies”. The list is familiar enough.  First is the Himalayan glacier melt rate, which has been acknowledged by the IPCC as a regrettable error.  Of the other four, two track back to Jonathan Leake at the Sunday Times – dubbed Amazongate and Africagate – and both have been shown up as lacking any substance by Tim Lambert here and here. Another refers to the mistaken statement that 55% of the Netherlands is below sea level when the correct figure is 26%, yet Laugesen acknowledges that this relied on a figure supplied by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The remaining item concerns the reliability of data from weather stations in East China used in a research paper by Phil Jones and others published in Nature in 1990. Jones has reasonably responded to the accusation of fraud here.

 

Against the massive and impressive IPCC reports these are all matters of negligible substance, as anyone who has cast an eye over the reports would immediately recognise.  Only one of them reveals a clear failure to observe the processes and standards expected of the IPCC authors.  It is absurd to suggest that they add up to serious and growing questions.  All they add up to is a demonstration of how savagely determined climate change deniers are to cast doubts on climate science by whatever means they can find.  Is it too much to ask that a staff writer for the Listener treat her “international media” with more caution?  Journalists around the world seem to be engaged in an operation where you simply pass on something you have read about climate science in another publication without feeling the need to check on its initial reliability.  The more this happpens the more the story becomes entrenched. And the longer the public is left thinking there may be some deep uncertainty about human-caused climate change. The abdication of intellectual responsibility is alarming.

And it’s not only journalists who are letting the public down. Depressingly, and I wish I could add surprisingly, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith when questioned by Laugesen has chosen not to deny the notion that the IPCC report is untrustworthy.  “It does raise questions – if those parts of the report have mistakes in them, what about the rest of the report?…The reality is that governments respond to the mood of the public. And the fact that there are errors in the IPCC report is of concern.”

He says that the errors will be one reason for the government being “a bit more cautious” on climate change policy.  How much more cautious can the government get without giving up on the issue altogether?  If Smith is taking his lead from the mood of the public he should not be occupying the post of Climate Change Minister.  He has access to expert scientific advice.  He should be telling the public how serious the situation is, not letting their mood be determined by superficial journalism.

He even has the nerve to advise the 16 NZ scientists involved in the IPCC process that “it is better to pursue quality than quantity.”

Thankfully Laugesen includes comments from NIWA’s chief climate scientist, David Wratt, NZ’s representative on the 31-member IPCC governing bureau.  He introduces a note of sanity into the article. One hopes the Listener readership is sophisticated enough to see with whom the truth lies, but journalists certainly aren’t making it easy.

Copenhagen: opening thoughts

Delegates at the opening ceremony for COP15 — the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen — had to sit through this video, so I think you should too. 😉 It’s a fitting introduction to the next couple of weeks. There are not enough hours in the day for me to be able to cover everything that’s happening, but I hope to be able to provide occasional perspective, and pointers to interesting material.

Some key issues:

  • Can the global community pull together, or is the gap between the positions of the rich world and developing nations too big to bridge?
  • If a global deal can be done, will it be able to deliver emissions reductions on the scale required to avoid damaging change?
  • Will a deal build on Kyoto, or will a new framework emerge?
  • What will all this diplomatic tussling mean for New Zealand’s interests, and what role will Nick Smith, Tim Groser and John Key play?

A lot of the underlying tensions are already emerging, as the leak of a negotiating position document — the “Danish text” agreed by key developed nations (including NZ) is causing outrage in developing countries. The Guardian spells it out:

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

While the diplomatic games begin, commentators sharpen their pens. Bill McKibben thinks the whole thing will be a disaster:

It’s like nothing we’ve ever faced before — and we’re facing it as if it’s just like everything else. That’s the problem.

To help me keep an eye on all this, I’ll be using a number of resources. Apart from my usual array of RSS and Twitter feeds, I’ll be keeping an eye on the Guardian‘s amazingly diverse coverage (and blogs), the BBC (try the animated 800,000 years of climate history) and the COP15 web site (they provide good news coverage, and if you have the time, they’re providing live feeds to a lot of stuff). Press journalist David Williams is blogging his time at the conference, and the Science Media Centre has a page listing useful resources — aimed at the media, but there’s a lot of good stuff in there for the interested reader.

Who writes Rodney’s rubbish?

rodenymorph.gifWho’s this supporting the NZ C”S”C’s idiotic attempt to cast doubt on the NZ temperature record? Why, it’s none other than Rodney Hide, leader of the ACT Party, and Minister of Local Government, Associate Minister of Commerce, Minister of Regulatory Reform and Parliamentary principal climate crank. Hide has written to climate change minister Nick Smith, demanding that the NIWA release the temperature data:

There is only one process that is appropriate for matters of science, and that is to release all data, together with a detailed account of what adjustments have been made, with an account of the reasons for doing so, and the computer codes that have been used to adjust and smooth the final published series, together with details of which measurements have been discarded. All the data and the relevant computer codes should be available for scientific scrutiny.

Free the NIWA code! What a rallying cry. It’s a pity that he thinks the likes of Treadgold constitute independent scientific scrutiny. Hide’s also been taking instructions on the CRU hack, and is seemingly happy to completely misrepresent what’s been going on. Apparently the emails:

…reveal a systematic attempt to manipulate the historical time series data, together with what appear to be arbitrary adjustments to the computer codes which produce the averaged and smoothed temperature data…

Er, no. That’s not true. The Herald does a far better job than the Minister of Local Government of covering the stolen emails and what they actually say. But perhaps Rodney gets his “facts” from somewhere else. So, in the spirit of his letter to Nick, here’s mine to Rodney.

Continue reading “Who writes Rodney’s rubbish?”

Weakened ETS now law

The government’s amendments to the Emissions Trading Scheme became law this afternoon, thanks to support from the Maori Party [Stuff, Herald, Reuters]. Nick Smith called the changes “workable and affordable” and said that they struck “the right balance in protecting the future of our economy and our environment”, but Labour climate spokesman Charles Chauvel was scathing:

It is economically irrational, socially inequitable, environmentally counter-productive and fiscally unsustainable. And its hallmark has been one of poor procedure and hasty consideration.

But what does the new ETS mean for New Zealand’s emissions? The Science Media Centre is collating responses from the science community, and first out of the blocks is VUW associate professor Ralph Chapman:

The passing of today’s Climate Change Response amendment bill through the House is deeply disappointing. Every week, emerging climate science underlines the need for urgent action to cut emissions drastically, with developed countries especially needing to make cuts right now to avoid a global warming drift above 2 degrees, the guardrail against dangerous change. The Government’s amendment bill does way too little to bring down New Zealand’s emissions. The bill has good aspects (e.g. agriculture is included, eventually) but its overall weakness and lack of clarity about its impact on emissions will undermine New Zealand’s reputation and positioning for Copenhagen.

Deeply disappointing. Pretty much my reaction. NZ has now has a much steeper hill to climb in future than was necessary.

Update 28/11: Additional responses from science community, courtesy of the SMC:

Dr Jim Salinger, an Auckland-based climate scientist, comments:

“At present we appear to be bogged down in emission reduction schemes and targets. This thinking is short-term as the high emissions industries in the long run are doomed. We have the low-carbon technology –- which include many forms of renewable energy such as solar electric, solar thermal, wind, wave, tidal, geothermal and bio-energy. All we need to do is scale these technologies up rapidly and harvest the economies of scale.”

Suzie Greenhalgh, Senior economist in the Sustainability & Society team at Landcare Research, comments:

“The passing of the ETS ammendments sends positive signals about New Zealand’s desire to address global climate change, providing greater certainty to business and the population about the path New Zealand will follow. Given that most of the debate so far has been around the risks New Zealand faces with adopting the ETS, now perhaps the debate can switch to where potential opportunities may lie. The inclusion of agriculture, despite its omission in other national schemes, is also an important step for New Zealand’s management of greenhouse gas emissions and may just provide some of these opportunities.”

Associate Professor Euan Mason, of the School of Forestry at the University of Canterbury, comments:

“It is good that New Zealand has begun to address climate change, and if the energy sector is required to surrender credits earned from genuine CO2 sequestration then the ETS should begin to change our behaviour in helpful ways. In its deal with the Maori party the Government implicitly acknowledged that the ETS legislation markedly devalues pre-1990 forest land and that the few credits offered to owners of such land are inadequate compensation. Offering owners of pre-1990 forests the option of replanting elsewhere after land use conversion as an alternative to paying conversion tax would have gone some way to softening the impact on land values. As it stands only a proportion of these land owners have been adequately compensated, and the remainder, both Maori and Pakeha, no doubt feel a sense of injustice.”