A few days ago, Christopher Luxon announced the first part of National’s new Electrify NZ policy, explaining:
Electrify NZ will help double the amount of renewable energy available and put New Zealand on track to reach its climate change goals.
The Labour government’s Maorification agenda simultaneously shreds our freedom while the Net Zero agenda tears the heart out of our national treasury. Continue Reading →
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Excerpted from Climate catastrophe? Follow the money ($),
by Amy Brooke in The Spectator of 1 April.
Because of the importance of the claim that CO2 has the potential to cause considerable damage to the planet we all share, it is little wonder that the media, knowing that peddling disaster sells newspapers, constantly invoke doomsday scenarios. But what happens when the mainstream media have become so corrupt that they want no debate at all about whether such claims are actually true?
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Belief, belief is everywhere,
Yet all the proof extinct;
A strong belief fierce binds us, now
Our minds no longer think.
With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Unshakeable belief in global warming is now permanently installed in our important (and many minor) institutions. For evidence of this, browse through recent newspapers and websites: Continue Reading →
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Should we leap into this without looking? Let’s avoid overseas mistakes when formulating our climate policy.
was: Global Warming Target Of 1.5°C Based On Shaky Scientific Analysis
by Robert Murphy and Ross McKitrick on 27 .
published by Climate Change Dispatch
The Trudeau government’s decision to ban gasoline-powered cars by 2035 in the drive to “net-zero” emissions is part of a global policy agenda kick-started by a 2018 “Special Report” issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Special Report, titled Global Warming of 1.5°C, was commissioned to study the potential benefits of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius rather than the 2.0 °C target stated in the Paris Agreement. Continue Reading →
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Battle of Guadalcanal 1942 – click to enlarge
It’s true that science offers no support to the warmsters, and their narrative has been a dismal failure in the halls of science, but those fraudsters have more or less triumphed in the battle for the corridors of power. However, we can be of good heart, since we will eventually win the war: truth always defeats ignorance. Always. Continue Reading →
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New Zealanders are more satisfied with the Government’s efforts to combat climate change than they were a year ago, but fewer than half actually rate the effort as good.
Last month’s IAG poll didn’t ask people what they might pay to fix climate change — and shame on them, for previous surveys show very low willingness. Families must be fed, so there’s little sense of climate change urgency. Thirty-one percent were more concerned about the effects of climate change on them than about any influence they might have on climate change.
Continue Reading →
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Dr Michael Kelly likens New Zealand’s Zero Carbon project to digging a hole while someone else fills it in.
Say the government has decided it’s an important national project, so they assign a platoon of 50 strong men and play trumpet fanfares so they’ll give it their maximum effort. But we discover China has amassed several battalions, totalling over 6000 men, to fill the trench faster than we can dig it. Continue Reading →
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Once a year the BBC invites guest editors onto Radio 4 to assemble the Today programme. The latest batch includes Greta Thunberg, the child climate activist, and Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher biographer and former Telegraph editor.
Professor Michael Kelly
Moore gave a spot on the programme to our friend Michael Kelly, Cambridge Professor of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Society, Prince Philip Professor of Technology, former chief scientific advisor to the Department for Communities and Local Government, and member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Introducing Kelly’s segment [at 32:22], Charles Moore observes wryly:
One of the subjects that’s very difficult to air on the BBC if you don’t share the prevailing view is climate change.
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Essay 6: Big emissions reduction bang for every buck
Reducing emissions is expensive. Every dollar spent on climate change mitigation is a dollar unavailable for health or housing or poverty; waste is unacceptable. New Zealand’s new Commission must recognise that where emissions occur is irrelevant and stick with the “global peaking” aim.
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Essay 5: Cuckoo Shaw lays 1.5°C egg in cosy Paris nest
The Paris treaty ratified by New Zealand says: “We’ll keep the temperature increase to 2°C, never mind about trying for 1.5°C.” But Shaw says: “Yeah, nah. Never mind about 2°C, we’ll shoot for 1.5°C, the lower the better, right? Lead the world. How hard can it be?”
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Nuclear power has moved on since Fukushima — now Gen III and IV, small, self-regulating, cannot melt down, put them virtually anywhere. Available in various sizes that last from 3 to 20 years or more. If it fails, truck in another one. Cheaper than coal, more efficient and safer than ever. Come on, Greenies, why resist it? Afraid we might survive your climate crisis?
Essay 4: Climate scare could be gone by 2030
The Hon Barry Brill’s fourth essay (pdf, 302 KB) of these eleven on the Zero Carbon Bill examines the Government’s economic modelling, which tells us increasing New Zealand’s net emissions target from 50% to 100% by 2050 will cost us $200–$300 billion over 30 or more years of ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ Continue Reading →
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Essay 3: Climate-wise, we are the champions!
The third (pdf, 240 KB) of these eleven essays by the Hon Barry Brill on the Zero Carbon Bill has a look at the vanity factor, asking:
From Copenhagen in 2009 to Paris in 2015 we did our best to hog the limelight by taking a lead. Now the Green Party strives to legislate for carbon neutrality by 2050 to gain the prize. But that’s all about ego—what are the facts? Continue Reading →
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Essay 2: 2050, costs vs benefits
The second (pdf, 267 KB) of these eleven essays by the Hon Barry Brill on the Zero Carbon Bill has a look at what it will cost us and what we will get in return. Barry asks the fundamental question:
The sacrifices in eliminating carbon emissions by 2050 will be far more painful than some undetectable heat, and far off, as it’s 30 years away. Admittedly this is a long time for government planning—usually tuned to about five years at a time—but it’s a savagely short time to create total disruption in our commercial, industrial, agricultural and other spheres—and then attempt to smooth it over. Continue Reading →
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Essay 1: The Zero Carbon Bill
Barry Brill has given us these eleven essays on the Zero Carbon Bill. Do sample these enjoyable pieces for yourself, with their crisp writing and clear logic. It’s illuminating to absorb Barry’s analysis of the origins of the Bill, its aims, strategies, substantial flaws, and his oh-so-pragmatic strategy to align the Bill with our international obligations without exposing our lower classes to the egregious fanaticism of the coalition’s Green climate dogma.
Barry’s first essay (pdf, 185 KB) opens with the startling news that the Bill is
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Nobody really knows how much it would cost us to attempt to meet James Shaw’s Zero Carbon prescription, as it would take 30 years and there is much about it that is yet unknown.
But the Zero Carbon Bill’s own accompanying Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) admits that it’s impossible to identify any quantifiable benefits at all, and following Barry Brill’s outstanding examination of the Bill Continue Reading →
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— by Owen Jennings
Member, NZ Climate Science Coalition
from left: Winston Peters (NZ First), Jacinda Ardern (Labour), James Shaw (Green)
The ‘transformational’ government of the Labour-Green Coalition has taken some heavy, self-inflicted hits, including the inability to institute a capital gains tax, dropping the Kermadec Island sanctuary, walking back Kiwibuild housing numbers, ousting Curran and Whaitiri, and loss of business confidence, to name a few. Continue Reading →
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Letters to the Editor
12th May 2019
Most politicians live in a green fantasy-land where facts and numbers don’t count. They dream up fanciful figures for proposed cuts to industrial and agricultural emissions without any understanding of the remorseless growth of population.
The Australian government has set a target to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 27% from 2005 levels by 2030, just 11 years away. The ALP opposition plans to cut emissions by a staggering 45% by 2030. Continue Reading →
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Jamie Morton’s recent Herald article How NZ could cut agriculture emissions by to [sic] 10 per cent states:
Nearly half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture – the main source being methane burped from cattle and sheep.It’s indeed surprising to again hear this non-factual assertion that methane in ruminant eructation constitutes cumulative emissions, when it’s well established that the methane arises from the digestion of recently-eaten grass as part of a cycle.
One has to wonder where the government gets its scientific advice.
There is no evidence to claim that ruminant methane is one-way traffic, for it moves in a cycle, and has done for millions of years. After a short time in the atmosphere the methane breaks down, the carbon dioxide is released to contribute to more grass growth, the grass is consumed and digested and around it goes again. Nothing is added to beyond wool, milk, meat and the rest of the beast (at slaughter nothing is wasted).
To continue claiming that farmers are in this way adding to global warming signals deep ignorance.
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For they serve us all [click pics to enlarge]
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Liberty, equality, fraternity.
What accounts for the fury of the “yellow jackets” as they rage against Macron’s new climate taxes? Why has this protest continued for over three weeks and, according to polls, gained the support of 73% of the French population? Continue Reading →
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Barry Brill and I condemn the wilful political blindness that contemplates destroying our energy security and risking dry-year blackouts by shutting down the last thermal power plant merely to win polite applause from other nations. Meanwhile, those same nations are brazenly operating a gigantic fleet of 3700 coal-fired power plants and building another 1900.
The Huntly gas and coal-fired power station is NZ’s largest thermal generator. With its coal generation halved to 500 MW and total capacity including gas now 953 MW, or about 5000 GWh/year, Huntly can still provide about 12% of our annual consumption. Genesis intends to remove the remaining coal units by 2022, and there’s an uncertain future for the gas units since the Prime Minister, without consulting interested parties such as the industry or the electorate, banned gas exploration.
Are New Zealand politicians naive? Babes in the wood? Country yokels who don’t understand realpolitik? Continue Reading →
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Fresh off the press is a paper that takes an innovative look at the national contributions pledged under the Paris Agreement. Continue Reading →
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Economists have proposed really effective solutions to the high levels of anxiety felt by politicians and government officials about the risks of transport sector emissions.The New Zealand Government’s plan to legislate for “Zero Carbon by 2050” has been accompanied by economic modelling that shows the NPV of the economic costs will be huge. See Putting a price on the hair shirt.
Tailrisk Economics, a private firm, has now delivered a devastating critique of both the quality and veracity of the Government’s modelling and consultation documents. The price of feeling good is a must-read for anybody interested in this issue. Continue Reading →
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Here is a curious thing.
Since 2007 our population has risen by what seems a healthy 14.8%, our emissions of carbon dioxide are out of step in rising only by 2.8% and our per capita emissions have fallen by 10%.
Our energy efficiency has improved. Continue Reading →
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Dr Anna Berka
There’s nothing to be done about global warming beyond feeling anxious, if you choose. We’re not causing any harmful warming and the sporadic warming we’ve seen is of no concern.
But once again we’re being hectored, this time by an academic skilled in redistributive environmental policy, inclusive energy governance and conceptualizing community renewables deployment as a form of associative democracy—oh, yes, Anna Berka knows us so well. Continue Reading →
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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. Continue Reading →
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Dr Mike Kelly alerted me to Roger Pielke Jr’s thoughtful piece at WUWT titled Opening Up the Climate Policy Envelope. I heartily suggest you read it; below is a sample. As well as improving our thinking about climate policy, Dr Pielke makes it sound perfectly reasonable for convinced climate alarmists and unyielding climate sceptics not only to talk with each other but also to reach common ground. A miracle indeed. But wait, there’s more: the questions he poses are those we’ve been waiting for from our political leaders—questions, if quietly contemplated, that would fit them for the decisions we need from them and only they can give—if only they knew. –RT Continue Reading →
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Not next Friday—there’d be pitchforks in parliament.
Not next month—the riots would have spread to every town.
Not next year—not with markets collapsed, trade destroyed, the country in chaos, permanent departures through the roof and condemnation universal. Continue Reading →
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2 July, 2018
Dear Prime Minister,
I wish to register my disagreement with your decision to make us reduce our so-called “carbon” emissions to zero by 2050. You commit the nation to this significant goal without knowing, as your joint statement makes quite plain, what it means, how to achieve it or, extending by simple logic, what it might cause. That is unreasonable.
Continue Reading →
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One of the few valid applications of the well-known propaganda term “carbon emissions” (heard of chemistry?). Listen: it’s called carbon dioxide. In a similar way, we don’t try to call water (dihydrogen monoxide) hydrogen.
Basically, we don’t know what carbon-free means, we don’t know how to achieve it and we don’t know what it might cause. But oh, yes, we’re going for it! (Big silly grin.) Welcome to the rabbit hole.
The new Government has set a goal of New Zealand achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Farming leaders with the support of the Government are stating their support for this goal and the agri-food sector playing its part in achieving it.
This is a very ambitious and challenging target for the agri-food sector. We have agreed that there is more work required to understand exactly what this means and how we can achieve it. – emphasis added
This is utter nonsense. By this blunder alone — and there have been many others — the Peters-appointed coalition government secures its release from power at our earliest convenience. Continue Reading →
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Here’s a harsh dose of reality for the NZ Productivity Commission in attempting to convert us to a “low-emissions” economy. The map shows China’s plans to expand their links with the world in a colossal project that will triple China’s emissions. Their gas discharges already eclipse ours by 250 times so our reductions will be absurdly futile in stemming man-made global warming. The climate won’t notice, but our poor will suffer, while China’s poor rise into the middle class. What do we think we’re doing, cutting back — even banning oil exploration — when we ought to be boosting the economy at full speed?
My friend Dr Mike Kelly kindly sent me a copy of his latest analysis of New Zealand climate policy that he’s just submitted to the New Zealand Productivity Commission in response to its draft report on moving to a Low-emissions economy, which many would describe instead as disabling our productive capacity. Dr Kelly’s unflinching engineer’s eye assesses our Government’s putative policy responses to the climate perils forecast by skittish warmsters and it makes for thoughtful reading.
His central message is a revelation: whatever emissions we record over the next 20 years, China’s will be a thousand times larger. In fact, the emissions expected just from their One Belt, One Road, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are destined to overwhelm all other human emissions for twenty and more years. Continue Reading →
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Sarah Thomson, a law student, is taking the government to court.
In filing an application for judicial review she hopes to get the government to pledge an emissions reduction target that is, in her words, both “lawful and rational.” In other words, larger — so the world might be properly saved. Miss Thomson recently described her reasoning at The Spinoff. In her Coal Action article (the web site is broken and doesn’t accept comments), Sarah explains: Continue Reading →
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A Message from James M. Taylor, Vice President of External Relations at the Heartland Institute
One of the most important battles in the history of the global warming debate will be fought this December at a United Nations climate conference in Paris. The UN is attempting to impose binding carbon dioxide restrictions on the United States and transfer billions of dollars of climate “reparations” from the United States to nations like Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela. Continue Reading →
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Wahoo! It looks really low (though it should be nil), but how much will it cost?
The government has announced a new climate change target that aims to reduce New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2020 and a review this year of the existing Emissions Trade Scheme as part of its policy mix to meet the new targets.
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The Royal Society has made a submission to the MfE on Setting New Zealand’s post-2020 climate change target (pdf, 217 kB).
Nine pages of high-powered propaganda, impressive, sciencey-sounding scary stuff from real professors. Let me know what you think of it. Continue Reading →
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But not in the way the Herald means it.
Phillip Mills and Barry Coates, like good zealots everywhere, loyally maintain the view pushed down our throats by the IPCC that we need to reduce our emissions “to meet the aim of limiting global temperature rise to 2°C.”
They say they can’t stay silent, as the stakes are too high. I actually agree, but they’re thinking nobly of the whole world. I see the stakes a little differently. We’re just a small country and I want to know how much it could cost. Continue Reading →
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Sent today, 20 May 2015
It is a great irony that you should call this a “climate change” target, for the science tells us New Zealand doesn’t change the climate. It is a fact that, were we to reduce our emissions even to zero, thus achieving the greatest possible reduction, though destroying our entire productive capacity, there would be no resulting change in the average global surface temperature. Continue Reading →
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Comments here from someone who shall remain nameless (thanks a lot, Andy!) forced my twice-yearly drive-by glance at Hot Topic, finding again that its unending invective, rancour, impatience, embarrassing ignorance and sheer mindless chatter is all too irksome.
But a recent post by Renowden calls for comment. He talks about Bill McKibben.
Bill McKibben — that most thoughtful and interesting of climate campaigners — is bringing his very successful Do The Maths campaign to New Zealand next month [June], and will be speaking in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin. Bill’s argument is straightforward:
The maths are simple: we can burn less than 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. Continue Reading →
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Simon asked in comments:
What fundamental central and local government policy decisions have been based exclusively on the 7SS?
The question is too restrictive. Possibly the only “exclusive” policy was the decision to spend $70,000 reconstructing the national temperature record using the wrong method and then ignoring public-spirited citizens who found serious faults in it. Continue Reading →
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from The Global Warming Policy Foundation
Financial Times Deutschland, 5 October 2012
The EU Energy Commissioner opposes a tightening of the EU’s climate targets. Instead, energy policy should focus more closely on the needs of European industry. In Berlin, Günther Oettinger made jokes about the green “do-gooders” in his own party.
Günther Oettinger fears the decline of Europe if energy prices continue to rise and competitiveness deteriorates further compared to the United States and other parts of the world. He wants to convince his colleagues in the European Commission to introduce an industrial policy objective instead of new climate targets. At a meeting of the European Christian Democrats (EPP) in Berlin last night, Oettinger said the share that manufacturing contributes to the GDP of the economies of the EU should increase from currently 18 percent to 20 percent. Within the European Commission, he is fighting for a corresponding definition.
His appearance before a few dozen party members in Berlin’s Adlon Hotel was a day of reckoning with the EU’s energy and climate policies. Energy policy had long been climate policy, he said, but in the future it must be industrial policy. Continue Reading →
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Fran O’Sullivan, writing in the NZ Herald a few days ago, summarised objections to the government’s Emissions Trading Scheme and the difficulties Labour faces in getting some kind of political consensus together in time to pass some legislation before the election.
I was interested in her conclusion—in passing, though apparently sincere, that:
“New Zealand does need to address climate change issues. But not in a lopsided fashion where ordinary folk—and smaller businesses—feel the brunt first.”
I applaud her concern for “ordinary folk” and their economic difficulties, but the more important question must be: why must we address climate change issues? Continue Reading →
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