The following is my submission in your name on this bill that threatens to mutilate our economy. Much more could have been said; much less might have been preferable. But let rip, kind readers.
Submission on Zero Carbon Bill
Richard Treadgold
Convenor, Climate Conversation Group
19 July 2018
I have operated the Climate Conversation Group blog (climateconversation.org.nz) and studied global warming for 13 years.
Western democracies have a long tradition of scientific study of policy issues before responding to them. In fact, our Cabinet Rules require an assessment of costs and benefits so as to select the most efficacious policies at a reasonable price.
But we are given no explanation of why we need the Zero Carbon Bill, what effect it will have, nor how much it could cost us. The bill apparently will not stop global warming: it will simply be a good example to other countries for we know not how much money.
Extraordinary disregard of science
This is repugnant virtue-signalling, a horrendous use of taxes and an abominable disregard of science. Climate science is far from “settled” and actually embroiled in vigorous scientific disputes in numerous areas of disagreement, which an even-minded person may discover in a few minutes. This evasion of a discussion of the science will outrage New Zealanders.
Examples of disputed climate science include the accuracy of surface temperature records, the effect of clouds on temperature, the equilibrium climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide, the influence of the sun, the effect of intergalactic cosmic rays on incoming solar radiation, the global warming potential of minor atmospheric gases (including methane), and the course over the next 80 years of human activity, any of which might seriously influence the risks we face and the policies we adopt.
In addition, myths and misunderstandings are embedded in public climate discourse, as follows.
There’s no evidence for a dangerous human influence
Sea level rise is not accelerating.
Neither the frequency nor the intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes and droughts is increasing.
The Royal Society of New Zealand does not seem to believe that human activity is causing dangerous warming, for they produced no evidence for it recently even when pressed.
The most powerful greenhouse gas is not carbon dioxide but water vapour, as long acknowledged by the IPCC.
The influence of water vapour overwhelms that of CO2 due to evaporation that cools the ocean, condensing as clouds that shade the earth and falling as rain that cools the air, thus naturally regulating the earth’s temperature.
Carbon dioxide cannot dangerously warm the earth, as it’s a minor gas, constituting an inconceivably small 0.0004 of the atmosphere and absorbing energy in just a tiny portion of the infrared spectrum. Note that CO2 has risen 9% in the last 20 years without raising temperatures.
For some reason the IPCC does not mention in its reports hundreds of papers confirming a solar influence on climate (see NoTricksZone).
The government’s basic failure to confirm evidence of a hazard before committing the country to substantial expense and disruption to mitigate that hazard is reprehensible. Reason demands that before the bill proceeds it absolutely must be supported with clear scientific evidence.
Thank you.
Richard Treadgold
Convenor
Climate Conversation Group
Views: 642
You still don’t understand how the climate works. Please listen again to this tutorial and get back to us when you get it. http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/news/2018/0410.html
Simon,
Where’s the description of how the climate works? Do you want me to labour through five videos? Please, mate, just summarise for me!! Jesus!
Well done on this submission. An important point that might be stressed is that, since the Hockey Stick Graph was shown to be erroneous, even IPCC concedes that natural variability explained Modern Warming until the late twentieth century (IPCC AR4-2007 and IPCC AR5-2013). IPCC maintains that anthropogenic forcing has been the key factor since then – with natural drivers somehow switching off, or being swamped by our emissions!
The truth is we really don’t know how much forcing we have had from the relatively small % of total greenhouse gas that humans contribute. Even Niwa has acknowledged this natural variability on its website under “Natural Climate Fluctuations” – perhaps providing a certain degree of deniability when it is finally understood that anthropogenic emissions are not the principal driver of climate.
So natural variability is generally acknowledged to have prevailed over some two thirds of Modern Warming (i.e. totaling about 0.8C since the early to mid-nineteenth century in a series of well-recorded warming and cooling phases). Yet the extraordinary thing is that this natural variability is nowhere acknowledged in our media, which continues to use the term “climate change”, misleadingly, in the perverse sense defined by the UN IPCC as being due solely to anthropogenic emissions. And ignoring hundreds of years of science recording the continuous variability of climate through geologic history – and well-recorded by that branch of science I am proud to say!
How the climate works is somewhat of a distraction.
If we assume for the sake of argument that CO2 is a major driver of climate and we need to urgently reduce emissions, then the USA has done more than any major OECD country recently, despite withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.
Obviously any mention of the USA will induce a feverish onset of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) but it there are still any rational people left on the planet, (in the media and academia etc) is if possible to analyse why the USA is doing well here and all the EU/UN cronies are not?
General questions:
Where does one send a submission?
What is the deadline?
Thanks
Yesterday, 5 pm. Sorry. P’raps I should have said, that might have been helpful.
But email the CEO of MfE, Vicky.Robertson@mfe.govt.nz and I’m sure she’ll pass it on to someone who cares. Or just James Shaw, he supports the democratic voice sometimes.
Excellent submission, Richard, easy to read and understand and I didn’t feel that it was too long.
http://eidclimate.org/in-landmark-ruling-federal-judge-tosses-calif-climate-lawsuits/
Alsup threw the climate cases out. Trolling is less well funded now,, and trolls are not what they once were…. Same with the New York cases. We are winning now, definitely, though the pigs will suck the trough until they are chewing the wood. At least pork is useful.
Write all the nonsense you like, the world is watching: we will need to be seen reducing GHG emissions. This will be difficult for the farming sector. Disbelief and denial of normal “textbook” science won’t make it any easier.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/meat-dairy-industry-greenhouse-gas-emissions-fossil-fuels-oil-pollution-iatp-grain-a8451871.html
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/6/26/17505800/san-francisco-oakland-climate-change-lawsuit
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jul/23/scientists-detect-a-human-fingerprint-in-the-atmospheres-seasonal-cycles
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6399/eaas8806
And versus the best we have people who have not got even a simple grasp of basic climate science. Oxford professor Myles Allen offers an excellent tutorial; why don’t you read it.
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/news/2018/0410.html
The thread-bombing above is just desperate idiocy. Companies who supply what we need to survive and Judges are now turning alarmists’ lies on them and they have no credible answer. Answer the judges’ requirements, or leave the Courtroom. No room for propaganda here or in Courthouses. Where we will in good time have some of the fraudsters listed above.
But they are irrelevant. However, the 1000 or so new power stations planned and being built now are relevant to saving lives and allowing poor people to better themselves.
As I said before, the USA has reduced emissions more than any other OECD country, but hey we’re NZ so let’s shut down the economy.
Apparently it will make us all richer in the long term according to the Minister for Weather and Rain, James Shaw
Richard,
Thanks mate for your efforts here. It never ceases to amaze me how people such as Stephanie Hawking above can’t see the wood for the trees. I too wrote a submission and sent it in, not exhaustive, but full of real examples from scientists world wide, some of whom have been shouting from the roof tops that anthropological climate change is a fabrication and merely a tool for the U.N. and globalists to through Agenda 21 and 2030 to bring about their totalitarian vision for the planet.
I could go on for hours, like you putting forward scientific evidence for why anthropogenic global warming is a ridiculous idea.
I am waiting for them to post our submissions so people can read them, mine will probably not see the light of day, because they carefully framed any discussion around the Bill had to take place within their 3 solution remedy option. I had a 4th option, don’t do anything, because there is no emissions problem at all.
Anyway, thanks again for your efforts Richard, lets hope and pray some one in our government remembers at least a little of their biology from school and decides to pull the plug on the most idiotic piece of legislation based on one of the biggest deceptions in human history. MSM has done a good job of hood winking what appears to be a gullible and lethargic public world wide. Thank God for guys like Trump that fight this nonsense every day and don’t give up, USA is waking up to this crap more than ever, while stupid Socialist NZer’s continue down the path to slavery and destruction. Death by politics.
Brian Hughes
Yeah, it’s great to hear your comments, Brian, thanks. Must ask whether “Stephanie” made a submission. It was devious of them to try to confine the discussion, but quite transparent. Anyway, they’ll never stop intelligent comment or questions without preventing our breathing.
You can reduce emissions without shutting down the economy. The US has fracking as an interim solution and we have geothermal. Energy efficiency is also steadily improving. James Shaw is correct and the US is an example.
Stephanie:
“Disbelief and denial of normal “textbook” science won’t make it any easier.”
With that admission why then do you still deny the science of how our climate works. There is a big yellow star not far from our planet, we call it the sun, it is the thing more than anything else that effects and drives our climate.
30 years ago Hanson told us we would be “toast” in 30 years time (ie now), he said all the arctic ice would be gone (its doing quite nicely right now), he said all our coastal towns would be flooded due to see level rise. Its not happening Steph, its a con.
The government has already committed to shutting down Oil and Gas exploration in NZ, without consultation.
We have around 9 years of gas reserves left apparently
If the Zero Carbon Bill includes ruminant methane then I suspect a lot of our agricultural sector will fold too.
But, apparently, nothing to worry about. The “Low Carbon” economy will make us all richer, according to Comrade Shaw