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Top image: NASA
Bottom image: NASA
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1. The Promise
What John Key said to the National Blue-Green Forum, on 6 September 2008, one month before the up-coming election that year;
“What global Leaders know, and what the National Party knows, is that environmentalism and a commitment to economic growth must go hand in hand. We should be wary of anyone who claims that one can or should come without the other. And we should always measure a Government’s environmental rhetoric against its environmental record.
In the years ahead it will be increasingly important that New Zealand marries its economic and environmental policies. Global climate change awareness, resource shortages, and increasing intolerance of environmental degradation will give environmental policy renewed relevance on the world stage…
… And, in seeking the balance between environmental and economic goals, National will never forget that New Zealand’s outstanding physical environment is a key part of what makes our country special. Kiwis proudly value our forests, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans. They are part of our history and they must continue to define our future.”
Significantly, Key added;
“National will also ensure New Zealand works on the world stage to support international efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. We are committed to honouring our Kyoto Protocol obligations and we will work to achieve further global alliances that build on the goals agreed to at Kyoto.”
Pre-election, Key had unequivocally committed National to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and honouring New Zealand’s Kyoto Protocol obligations.
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2. Agriculture and the Emissions Trading Scheme – Timeline of a Broken Promise
On May 2008, John Key stated,
“National supports the principle of the ETS and is following the select committee process closely. National has had reservations about the timing of new taxes on motorists and households when there has been no personal tax relief for so long.”
On 8 April 2010, Key confirmed that the ETS would be preserved unchanged,
“I’d say it’s unlikely it would be amended.”
By 6 June 2010, the then-Climate Minister, Nick Smith announced that whether or not agriculture comes into the emissions trading scheme in 2015 would depend on technological advances and what other countries do.
And on 9 November 2011, Nick Smith announced,
“ … It is not in New Zealand’s interests to include agricultural emissions in the ETS yet. The lack of any practical and real technologies to reduce agricultural emissions means it would only impose a cost or tax on our most important export industry. It would also have New Zealand too far ahead of our trading partners on climate change mitigation measures. National will review the position in 2014 and only include agriculture if new technologies are available and more progress is made internationally on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
By 3 July 2012, Key began to publicly vacillate,
“John Key says the Government will wait for other countries to follow suit before introducing agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme…”
And on 20 August 2012, National introduced the “Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2012″, which would remove agricultural emmissions indefinitely, and;
“…remove a specified entry date for surrender obligations on biological emissions from agriculture”.
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It took them four years to do it, but with some cunning public manipulation (and outright lies) – National achieved it’s real agenda,
- Watering down the ETS until it was toothless,
- Keeping agriculture (the worst emitter of greenhouse gases in NZ) out of the ETS
- Abandoning the Kyoto protocol
It was National’s worst broken promise (one of many), and it successfully slipped under the public and media radar.
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3. Gagging the Watchmen
Part of National’s strategy to cope with embarrassing data on unpalatable problems – is to eliminate the data. This is Standard Operating Procedure for this government, and has been used to prevent data collected on Child Poverty and foreign investors buying up farms and houses.
By eliminating (or not collecting) data, it becomes difficult for the media and public to assess problems and determine how effective the government is in dealing with them.
The public, media, Opposition parties, and other critics become reliant on hear-say, anecdotal evidence, and evidence obtained through back-door methods. The recent release of a list of non-resident/citizen Chinese investors in our already over-heated property-market is perhaps the best example of this pressing problem.
National also employed the same tactic by no longer requiring five-yearly State of the Environment Reports from the Ministry of the Environment;
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National’s minister explained;
Environment Minister Amy Adams said the ministry is continually tracing environmental performance using 22 core indicators and the change is to ensure new information is released as it comes to hand.
Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright was not impressed, and said as much;
Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright said that is not good enough, because the data is not compiled, analysed, or compared.
Ms Wright is correct. This was National’s clumsy move to silence critics and hide evidence of our on-going environmental degradation. (See Addendum1 below)
Because really, if Minister Adams wanted “to ensure new information is released as it comes to hand” – there is absolutely no sound reason why that could not be done and still have five yearly State of the Environment Reports produced.
The only possible reason for State of the Environment Reports being scrapped by National is that they were fearful of the information that would become public.
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4. National abandons Kyoto Protocols
At the same time that National was quietly abandoning it’s pre-election committment to include agriculture in the Emissions Trading Scheme, our esteemed dear Leader, John Key, was announcing that New Zealand would not commit to the second state of the Kyoto protocols;
Prime Minister John Key has defended the Government’s decision not to sign on for the second stage of the Kyoto Protocol, saying the country is playing its part in combating climate change.
The climate change treaty’s first commitment period expires at the end of the year and New Zealand expects to slightly exceed its target.
The treaty aims to curb international greenhouse gas emissions through binding national commitments but some countries have questioned its effectiveness.
New Zealand would be joining other countries in going following the “convention track”, Mr Key said on TVNZ’s Breakfast show today.
“Next year New Zealand will name a binding commitment to climate change – it will actually have a physical rate that we’re going to hit – but instead of being what’s called a second commitment period that is likely to run from 2012 to 2020, we’ll be able to set our own rules around that,” Mr Key said.
As Fairfax’s Vernon Small reported at the time;
The Government has opted not to sign up to the second Kyoto Protocol commitment period from 2013 and will instead take its pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the parallel “United Nation Convention Framework”.
Protocol targets are legally binding, and the convention ones are not.
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That would mean from next year New Zealand would be aligning its climate change efforts with developed and developing countries responsible for 85 per cent of global emissions.
“This includes the United States, Japan, China, India, Canada, Brazil, Russia and many other major economies,” Groser said.
In other words, our government has put us into a ‘club’ with the world’s major polluters.
Key wants to “set our own rules around” climate change. It is fairly apparent what those rules are; doing as little as possible.
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5. Shifting Goalposts
Even less known by the msm (mainstream media) and public is how National has moved targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions since 1991. For the the past 24 years, successive National governments have quietly and with little scrutiny, changed targets for reducing emissions.
- First Target
In September 1993, the Bolger-led National Government signed up to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) . Four months after the UNFCCC came into effect, in July 1994, National announced a number of very specific climate change committments, as the State of New Zealand’s Environment 1997 report outlined;
◊ a target of reducing net emissions to 1990 volumes by the year 2000,
◊ a target of slowing growth of gross emissions by 20%,
◊ increased carbon storage in plantation forests
◊ energy sector reforms
◊ an energy efficiency strategy and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA),
◊ renewable energy sources
◊ use of the Resource Management Act; and,
◊ voluntary agreements with industry.
(Source for precise bullet-points – Wikipedia)
Even the initial target – reducing net emissions to 1990 volumes by the year 2000 – was the bare minimum, being set at net levels, rather than gross.
National stipulated that if emissions were not stabilised at 1990 levels, by 2000, a (low-level) carbon charge would be introduced in December 1997.
- Second Target
By July 1996, plans were under way to water down those targets set only three years earlier. Then Environment Minister, Simon Upton “committed” his government to;
…take precautionary actions to help stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in order to reduce risk from global climate change, and to meet New Zealand’s commitments under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, including:
• To return net emissions of carbon dioxide to no more than their 1990 levels by the year 2000 (but aim for a reduction in net carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent below their 1990 levels by the year 2000 if this is cost-effective and will not harm our trade) and to maintain them at this level thereafter; and
• To reduce net emissions of other greenhouse gases, particularly methane, by the year 2000 where possible and maintain them at those levels thereafter.
“Cost effective“, “not harm our trade“, and “where possible” – the weasel words of a government determined not to be bound by any committment.
One could imagine the reaction if those terms were included in marriage vows or other social or legal contract.
- Third Target
Two years later, on 22 May 1998, National ratified the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC. This time, National “committed” New Zealand to a target of limiting greenhouse gas emissions for the 2008-2012 period to five times the 1990 volume.
Worse still, New Zealand could either reduce emissions or obtain carbon credits from the international market or from domestic carbon sinks, to meet those “targets”.
The relevant Kyoto Protocol stated;
New Zealand’s emissions management task
• New Zealand’s initial assigned amount (translating into a corresponding holding of “emission units”) for the commitment period is 365 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is equal to five times the 73 million tonnes that New Zealand emitted in 1990, times 100%, which is New Zealand’s target under Annex B of the Protocol.
• New Zealand is projected to gain, during the commitment period, additional assigned amount (“removal units”) of 110 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent due to the growth of trees planted on land that has been converted (or reverted) to forest since 1990.
Like a desert mirage, New Zealand’s targets were continually receding under National.
- Fourth Target
December 2014 – National’s Climate Change Minister Tim Groser, announced New Zealand’s latest emissions reduction target of 5% below 1990 levels by 2020. This pushed the target date from 2008-2012 to 2020.
- Fifth Target
July 2015 – National’s Climate Change Minister Tim Groser announced new emissions target, a 30% reduction on 2005 levels, by 2030.
Not only is the target date pushed further out, from 2020, top 2030 – but the baseline is now 2005 instead of 1990.
Five different targets in twentytwo years – each one more watered down; pushing target dates further and further into the distant future. Which begs two questions;
- What will be the next emissions reduction level and target date? When does it begin to sound patently ridiculous? 2050? 2099? Next century?
- How has no one noticed that National has been surreptitiously shifting the goal-posts?
Massey University climate change expert, Professor Ralph Sims, was not impressed with National’s subterfuge;
Prof Sims said 2005 was the year of New Zealand’s highest emissions and the 2030 target gives New Zealand “10 extra years to produce very little extra reduction.”
By Prof Sims’s calculations, based on gross greenhouse emissions set under the Kyoto Protocol, New Zealand needed to cut emissions by 63,384 kilotonnes under its previous target and by 59,150 KT under the new one.
In essence, he said New Zealand is now doing less than its fair share.
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6. The Problem Worsens
Meanwhile, our emissions have continued to worsen, whilst National fiddles;
New Zealand’s net emissions of greenhouse gases climbed 42 per cent between 1990 and 2013.
Gross emissions, which exclude carbon flows relating to forestry and land use change, rose 21 per cent between 1990 (year zero for carbon accounting purposes) and 2013, to be the fifth highest per capita among 40 developed countries.
Two decades of goal setting; and goal-post moving; and the results have been disappointing, if not predictable.
This has been National’s legacy.
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Addendum1
University’s Environmental Performance Index has highlighted New Zealand’s falld on international EPI rankings.
In 2008, New Zealand ranked seventh out of 149 nations.
In 2012, our ranking had dropped seven placings to number fourteen.
Last year, we fell a further two spots, to number sixteen.
As John Key stated seven years ago;
“And we should always measure a Government’s environmental rhetoric against its environmental record”.
On every indicator and policy, New Zealand is doing poorly in the field of conservation. We are going backwards.
Addendum2
“I think we never wanted to be a world leader in climate change.” – John Key, 12 November 2012
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References
National Party: John Key Speech – Environment Policy Launch
Fairfax media: ‘Carbon neutral’ policy added to scrap heap
NZ Herald: ETS changes ‘unlikely’ despite pleas
NBR: ETS may exclude agriculture – Climate Change Minister
Interest.co.nz: See: National would phase in ETS obligations for transport, electricity, industrial sectors; Will review Agriculture in 2014, will only put it in if technology to help is there
Radio NZ: Govt puts off including agriculture in ETS
National Party: Government announces ETS amendments
Radio NZ: Farmers’ ETS exemption progresses
NZ Herald: Measuring poverty line not a priority – Bennett
Otago Daily Times: Foreign buyers still in market
TV3 News: Govt – Foreign buyers not part of housing problem
Radio NZ: State of the Environment report stopped
NZ Herald: Key defends decision not to stick with Kyoto Protocol
Dominion Post: Government shuns second Kyoto committment
Wikipedia: Fourth National Government of New Zealand
Ministry for the environment: State of New Zealand’s Environment 1997 (ch5)
Beehive.govt.nz: Environment 2010 Strategy
Otago Daily Times: Groser – NZ’s emission impossible
NZ Herald: NZ commits to post-2020 emissions reduction target
NBR: New 2030 greenhouse gas emissions target far weaker than 2020 goal – climate change expert
NZ Herald: NZ’s greenhouse gas emissions soar
Yale University: 2008 Environmental Performance Index
Yale University: 2012 Environmental Performance Index
Yale University: 2014 Environmental Performance Index
Other Blogs
Green Party: Govt’s emissions reduction target 100% pure spin
Hot Topic: Climate Action Tracker analysis: NZ emissions targets inadequate, not doing our fair share
Hot Topic: Renwick on NZ’s 11% cut: follow us down the path to catastrophe
No Right Turn: Are fossil fuels really an industry we want to promote?
Open Parachute: Talk of “mini ice age” bunkum
The Daily Blog: Using freezing temperatures to claim global warming is a hoax
The Standard: Emissions targets an admission that we don’t care
The Standard: It’s just too expensive to act on climate change
The Standard: Voices of the people on emissions targets and climate change
Additional
NASA Goddard Insititute for Space Studies: Global Climate Modeling
Skeptical Science: Global Warming in a Nutshell
Previous related blogposts
Johnny’s Report Card – National Standards Assessment y/e 2012 – environment
John Key – more pledges, more broken promises?
As predicted: National abandons climate-change responsibilities
National ditches environmental policies
ETS – National continues to fart around
National – what else can possibly go wrong?!
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The Key government is aided and abetted by its enablers in the NZ media. John Roughan is one of those.
Today he writes a wilfully ignorant piece on Climate Change.
It is wilfully ignorant if he wishes to claim to be a serious journalist.
Wonder if he’s watched Alister Barry’s ‘Hot Air’? As a New Zealand journalist, he should have.
Or if not, has he read the book ‘Merchants of Doubt’ by Conway and Oreskes. The film based on it is showing at the NZ Festival. I recommend he watches it.
If he does, he will realise how ridiculous the following statement of his is.
“But if the worst that can happen is a rise of a metre in sea levels and a few degrees in mean temperatures over a century, I think we’ll cope.”
Yes, that’s right Roughan is saying, without any Science to back himself up (apart from a chat with a pschchologist), that a 2 per cent temperature rise isn’t much.
Climate change is according to him “on a political mission.” Yet it is clear from his snide comments about obesity and sugar taxes that the main reason for this article being written was political. For some context , Roughan wrote the hagiography of Key. Despite his claims , it is Roughan who is using politics to muddy the Science.
Shame on the Herald for publishing this climate denial piece in 2015.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11482780
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGf4maDU7Ps
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ii9zGFDtc
Why single out National? As your graph shows this heating has been going on since Christ, kind of hand in clove with population growth, Its just that in the past 165 years or so humans have expanded @ geological light speed.
To the point that it has been claimed we have done in the past 30 what last time took 10,000 years, that is bring CO2 up to 400 ppm.
The last time this happened was 250 million years BC, except it took 10,000 years and an average of 833 CH4 (methane) lifetimes, where as now we have reached 400 ppm in only 3 CH4 lifetimes, the reason we are now seeing massive methane releases, is the melting global ice, be it deep ocean or the poles/tundra. This ice would have melted slowly over the past 10,000 year heating period, releasing the abiotic CH4 that had been caped.
There is an area off the coast of Gisborne with 700 CH4 ‘vents’ in 50km2 ? And until they stoped reporting this stuff there were kilometer wide areas in the ocean around the East Siberia Arctic Shelf, and lets not forget the ‘volcanoes’ (100 mt across and 300 mt deep) on the Yamal Peninsula (meant to mean ‘End of earth”)
From Wikipedia
Yamal craters[edit]
See also: Arctic methane release
In 2014, Yamal was the discovery site of a distinct sinkhole or pingo which quickly drew the attention of world media.[7]
“The permafrost is thawing from two sides… [T]he interior of the Earth is warm and is warming the permafrost from the bottom up. It is called geothermal heat flux and it is happening all the time, regardless of human influence.”
—CAGE 2014
Methane is leaking in an area of at least 7500 m2. In some areas gas flares extend up to 25 m (82 ft). Prior to their research it was proposed that methane was tightly sealed into the permafrost by water depths up to 100 m (330 ft). Close to the shore however, where the permafrost seal tapers to as little as 20 m (66 ft), there are significant amounts of gas leakage.[12]
Because there is no real cold being forced down below the surface, the heating a mile deep is ‘winning’ this is causing a lot of pressure as the warming is thawing the methane under ground, and the ice cap is getting weaker.
We are nearly @ 2 parts per million CH4, over the time frame of your graph Frank, we haven’t gone above .7ppm.
Even if we take the understatement from the IPCC that CH4 is 84 times worse than CO2 as a GHG over 20 years then, then that puts us at over 568 PPM CO2 and CO2e NOW.
Some of the people that replied to me question of the forcing factor of CH4/CO2 have gone as far as to say it could be 300 – 1,000 times as strong depending on quantities, and like on Pluto it can hang around longer if the air is dry, or lacking in the gunk that converts it to CO2, ….. which then hangs around for 1,000 years.
So humans are facing a real potential sudden methane burst from the very soon to be ice free Arctic, though with the tundra hitting 25C daytime temperatures, ice free might might just be a visual tipping point, meaning the real damage was done years ago.
Back to National’s inaction ?
There are something like 2 million Kiwi Savers in NZ, or at least there are lots of people who but there hand out for the $1,000. Anyway the principle of KS is to grow, that is what investing is all about ???
BUT to grow the planet has to keep bleeding, and filling up with crap IE – sending us extinct (even though we are past that point)
So when laying blame at the wankers, make sure you distribute it fairly, they are ALL lying to you.
“Why single out National? ”
Because the targets set by National have been changed at least four times by National. That’s the point of this blogpost.
Sorry Frank, not wanting to piss you off at all.
But with a passive ignorant population, no politician is going to attempt the impossible, which is reverse, or reduce carbon emissions/amount in the atmosphere now.
Even if they proposed 80% unemployment, it would still do Nothing to change what is already in motion.
To remove enough CO2 to make one bit of difference, would take a project bigger than anything humans have ever done, bigger the the UK sized tar pit in Canada, bigger than WW2, bigger than burning 85 million barrels of oil a day …… it is fucking massive.
It is like the proverbial ant planing on raping the elephant.
NO politician is going to tell you this, instead they tell you to open a 65 -67 year investment plane at birth, because according to their crystal balls life is going to continue to grow for the foreseeable, that is the lie they are telling, and you are happy to let them get away with.
Vote Green Vote Labour, they are truthful planet saving politicians, unlike the climate criminals we have in power now, well NO! they are all the same.
Don’t you think the pig ignorant would have been less stupid, if the Greeds had taken my request up 16 years ago to try and educate people, instead of playing business as usual bullshit games, like helping to finance our extinction?
I take your point, Robert, and it will be interesting to see what changes – if any – a new Labour-Green government will implement.
De-carbonising the planet; reducing planned obsolescence/consumption; and stabilising/reducing the planet’s human population, are all challenges that may be beyond the abilities of our species.
So no, not ‘pissing’ me off at all. These are problems almost beyond the ken of human beings, including a lowly blog writer like moi…
Ok then you two; what are you suggesting?
1) We do absolutely nothing because we can’t?
That sounds a bit like throwing up our hands and surrendering. In other words, justifying the National approach for the wrong reason. They’ve gone soft because of their farmer and business friends. You’re going soft by being overwhelmed by the size of the problem.
2) Do what we can and keep pouring ginger on the naysayers and especially these Tory laxatives?
Maybe it won’t be enough. Maybe the whole of humanity is fucked; maybe the animal life is fucked; maybe even the planet itself is fucked. I personally do not know the size of the problem beyond “it’s bloody big”. I’m not a scientist. But I’m not about to stop demanding action from “my” non-effective government. I was a trade unionist once and I learnt how to deal with stagnant boss thinking.
Nobody ever won a fight by surrendering at the outset.
And if we do fail to save ourselves could we at least go down fighting?
The Royal Navy never struck its colours during war and neither should we.
Viva los ecologistas!
About the only thing we can do is stop producing people who are going to suffer what is in motion, it also would be nice if we stopped killing each other in this non stop blood bath we call civilization.
We could go out being nice to each other ?
The last human generation is about 10 years old now.
‘….. it also would be nice if we stopped killing each other in this non stop blood bath we call civilization’.
Actually, killing each other is one of the few strategies left that will work bearing in mind that we need to cut population by at least a third IMO. Of course we would need to use bows and arrows since modern warfare is THE biggest polluter.
As it happens, there is another possibility waiting in the wings. The first graph that you showed (about CO2 emissions) is the one from Al Gore’s “An inconvenient truth”, I think, and the spikes are the warm periods, lasting about 20,000 years, between successive ice ages.These are the habitable years. Since each cycle is approximately 100,000 years that means that the troughs are the Ice Ages themselves and last about 80,000 almost uninhabitable years. We appear to be due to plunge into the next ice age any time soon. Any wars that we fight then will be very local, between very few people, who will be struggling to survive because there are very few woolly mammoths left.
It has always puzzled me why no one else apparently reads that graph the way I do.
Well said Robert, that I think is the aim – to shut this whole thing down in as civilised a way as is possible.
The truth will set you free, but first it’ll really piss you off.
We definitely don’t give up trying, JS.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have spent the last two weeks gathering data, researching into National’s failures in this arena.
We can and must do better.
Pick any 5 year period in the past 15, – we put the equivalent of every tree grown since your year 0 through our exhaust pipes, you know taking the kids to soccer, or going to climate conferences etc
The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers: a demographic explosion that triggers social chaos and spreads death, nuclear delirium and the quasi-annihilation of the species… Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years.
– Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997)
Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.
– Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997)
This is the first age that’s ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.
– Arthur C. Clarke
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” – Oscar Wilde
Brilliant piece, Frank. But why is this happening. Is “the climate” another piece of a big puzzle. Changes are happening globally to the climate, people, economies, countries, why? We live from the heart. We are a generous, giving people. We dislike rape, pillage and cruelty most of which never appears in our papers or TV news unless, of course, it is deliberately presented and couched to create fear and uncertainty and, of course, with the red herring catchphrase “War on Terror”. The Truth seems to be surrounded by disinformation, derision, and Truth Tellers are hounded, as is happening here at the moment.
Where should we look? Let’s look firstly at the so-called conspiracy theories and go for the big one first. One World Order aka New World Order (NWO). 1954, Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands sets up The Bilderbergers, (aka The Bilderberg) top secret group of bankers and politicians. Why and what for? The Club of Rome – Committee of 300 exists and Mr Key you are a member. Why?
Question1 : Mr Key you attend these meetings secretly. Why?
Question 2 : Mr Key The Bilderberg sets the rules for a country’s economy, banking, education,etc. Why?
Question 3 : Mr Key, the NWO through The Bilderberg sets the rules for a country’s policy (and action or lack thereof) regarding climate change. Why?
Question 4 : Mr Key, why does New Zealand feature among the countries involved in speeding up the NWO stated goals.
Question 5 : Dr John Coleman, Constitutional Scholar, has stated that the NWO Committee of 300 has 21 Goals. Mr Key, please identify these goals?
Well those are my questions about John Key’s lack of useful action on climate and everything else. After the flag change – do we rename New Zealand and call it Keyland?
Gypsy, your response as a habitual denier is predictable.
A shame (for you) that you can’t back up any of that hyperbole on your part. Quoting right wing commerce professors from dubious Think Tanks seems to be your limit.
You’re not in the least interested in evidence. When it is presented to you – as above – you turn a blind eye to it.
NIWA disagrees with you;
https://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record/seven-station-series-temperature-data
A 1 °C rise over the past 100 years. There y’go.
Or is NIWA part of the “false alarmism, inaccurate predictions and out and out scientific dishonesty”?
By the way, if you want to believe in a god or other invisible deity, without evidence, that is your prerogative.
I prefer science and accumulated evidence.
I’m assuming Gypsy’s comment has vapourised as I recall reading of a permanent ban by Scarlet Mod.
Good job.
Konspiracy Kooks and their PRATTS are pathetically tiresome.
I doubt my response to Frank has been vaporised. I have made my interest in climate science clear to Scarlett, and I am very happy to debate the science as I have made clear. If the mods have removed my post, it can only be that they do not want genuine debate, and I doubt that is the case.
We don’t waste time with climate deniers as a blog Gypsy
So listening to a counter opinion is a waste of time? Gee that’s very tolerant and open minded of you.
[Gypsy, have you read the rules of this site? I sent you the link. Let me remind you that you do not have a god-given entitlement to post here. Your choice is to abide by the rules or go elsewhere. -ScarletMod]
Yes, because you are wrong and allowing climate denial trolls to waste one second of the time to state their quack science is demeaning to the debate.
Climate deniers like yourself Gypsy are creationists at an evolution conference.
Then there’s an awful lot of us, and more every day. Science is an open forum of ideas. Good science subjects hypotheses to critique, painstakingly. Ideology, on the other hand…
No there isn’t – most of the organised climate denial is funded by US oil interests and corporate interests. The science is clear, human beings since the Industrial Revolution have super heated the environment in a manner that would take hundreds of thousands of years normally.
You seem to be very late in coming to this debate.
@Gypsy Ideology! Pop over to http://www.culturalcognition.net/ to really see how ideology applies to settled science.
The underlying message is the issue – that there is a debate.
This has been a well-worn strategy first introduced by Big Tobacco and seamlessly picked up by Big Coal and Big Oil.
97% plus of climate scientists ascribe global warming to manmade emissions. Papers that support the dominant scientific position typically have multiple authors. Papers that contradict the dominant position typically have one author.
The “science debate” is a proxy for the political debate and apparently justifies a “do nothing” position.
Weirdly though, I fully expect the deniers (now morphing/retreating into minimisers as their pseudo-science collapses) to get more shrill as the impacts of climate change get up close and personal.
“Debate the science”?
One can debate certain things, but try debating the laws of physics, Gypsy. All you need to is walk off the edge of a twenty story building without a paracute or paraglider, and I don’t need to witness your plummetting to Earth to know the Laws of Gravity have done their work.
Or maybe debate laws of biology? Try putting 50 sheep into an aquarium with 50 sharks. Try to get them to breed. What are the results? Unsuccessful? Well fed sharks?
There y’go.
As I pointed out to you above, when you asked about temperature rises in New Zealand;
Source: https://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record/seven-station-series-temperature-data
A 1 °C rise over the past 100 years.
That’s the science. Your predictable response will be;
(a) scorn/derision/mocking
(b) branding NIWA “dishonest science”
(c) deflecting
(d) referencing right wing commerce professors who run dodgy Think Tanks or Wall St journals
But you won’t reference any credible scientists of scientific organisation. In your conspiracy-mind, they’re all “dishonest”. Even NASA is part of some secret cabal.
The mental gymnastics required by you to deny science and grasp at any dubious source reminds me of Creationists and birth certificate “Truthers”…
Your grasp on reality is, I submit to you, tenuous.
The NIWA data is redundant because of the now discredited adjustments. This is the Salinger data, which was brought into question at the time by a paper by JW Hessell. Check out the DeFreitus paper I have already cited. It is becoming the definitive go to for temperature adjustments in NZ, which is why people like Gareth Renowden are resorting to playing the man.
Hmmmm, now you’re referencing sources and claiming thewy support your position without providing quotes or links?
Is that because past links and sources you’ve provided have been shown to be of dubious quality? (Eg; using a commerce professor to act as your proxy science mouth-piece.) So far you’ve not provided much in the way of hard science, and instead you have disparaged science-based organisation like NASA and the data they provide.
You really are a “Creationist”.
Interesting that you should use the word “proxy”. The so-called “debate the science” is a proxy for a political debate in which the freebooters (aka neo-libs) are pitching a do-nothing position with little to back it up other than a bogus attack on the science.
Physical reality (global warming) invalidates a political philosophy of limitless growth and so-called personal freedom. The abstract hit concerns these people more than stark reality. They don’t like it when their imaginary friend gets dissed.
“A shame (for you) that you can’t back up any of that hyperbole on your part.”
I can. Here’s a few examples.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Worlds-climate-scientists-confess-Global-warming-just-QUARTER-thought–computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/7177230/New-errors-in-IPCC-climate-change-report.html
Happy to provide many more if required.
“NIWA disagrees with you;”
Only by ignoring the errors de’Fraitas found.
Gypsy –
Nah, those are both out of date media stories published in newspapers with a slanted take on AGW. One is five years old, the other three years old. One states that temperatures rose only 0.05 in 15 years. Well, 15 years is a hell of a lot shorter than the 100 year data I presented – which you’ve ignored (again).
All those article do is report some peoples’ opinions. You have yet to cite hard, credible data or scientists.
I’ve given you NIWA’s findings. That’s the science. Do you have anything to contradict it?
By the way, it seems that even The Telegraph and Daily Mail have recanted and now accept that climate change is predominantly caused by human activity.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/01/telegraph-and-mail-concede-on-climate-change
That article was written only last year.
Got anything else?
Frank, engaging in a war of newspaper clips is inadvisable. 😉
Besides, the Telegraph is James Delingpole’s climate denial haunt, best referred to only for a laugh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Xu3SQcIE0
It’s interesting though, Richard. As well as rebutting “Gypsy’s” dishonest propaganda, I’m also learning more with each bit of research. For example, the Daily Mail’s September 2013 story claims;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Worlds-climate-scientists-confess-Global-warming-just-QUARTER-thought–computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html
But that is at variance with actual data,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract (Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Volume 140, Issue 683, pages 1935–1944, July 2014 Part B)
Alt source: http://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm
“Gypsy” has consistently quoted a right wing commerce professor; British tabloid newspapers that are ideologically opposed to climate change research data; and other non-science “sources”.
I’m not sure who he is trying to convince. It can’t be me, as fact-checking his links and “information” usually yields distortion, mis-information, and a notable lack of hard data. Branding NASA as “dishonest science” is indicative of his anti-science beliefs. If he tried to convince me that human beings derived from one man and woman, created 6,000 years ago by a supernatural entity, he would use precisely the same disingenuous tactics.
The only thing I wonder is why he does it? Paid by the fossil fuel industry? Blinded by right-wing National/ACT ideology? Just plain nuts?
I go with “just plain nuts” spiced with free market ideology.
Science deniers display serious deficiencies in their cognitive and critical faculties.
They seldom fact check or vet their sources.
They use the same tactics and arguments in whichever scientific field they oppose. It’s uncanny
Young Earth creationists, moonlanding denialists, anti-vaxers, HIV link to AIDS deniers, antifluoridationists.
Same arguments, same talking points, you can often change the labels around in their arguments and a climate denier’s rant will read as anti evolutionist rant.
Dig far enough and it’s always the Conspiracy: Big Pharma, the evil Gubmint, UN = New World order, corrupt Science, Agenda 21.
Frank quotes Gypsy implying it at 12.51 out and out scientific dishonesty
It ultimately has to be a conspiracy because the science on these issues invariably involves a global scientific consensus.
Deniers can’t get past the consensus without invoking the conspiracy theory. It’s impossible.
The consensus is created by thousands of scientists working independently, ferociously critical of each other, spread across the globe.
Deniers can never explain how the conspiracy works. The spooky, terrifying conspiracy that has all these individual scientists, working in different political environments, all lying in unison.
Don’t know how it works, it’s just there.
The global Scientific Conspiracy.
Never a whistle blower. Never even a single member of the scientists’ families, their employers or their employees, no-one ever spills the beans on the conspiracy’s mechanism. It’s all just-so-perfect.
That’s why Gypsy and other deniers so desperately attack the peer reviewed research results on the consensus. They don’t want to reveal their nakedness.
An excellent piece of research Frank, and thank you for keeping this in our ken. The truth, in this Big Brother age, is often difficult to track down and we can certainly NOT rely on our MSM for this information.
Indeed, top job Frank – thank you. Not often we get to clearly see how the dots get joined up.
This piece really does deserve a wider audience.
Thanks, e-clectic! (I guess it shows I spend more time scrutinising National over the years than is healthy…)
You can take action here
https://www.change.org/p/call-upon-the-new-zealand-government-to-set-realistic-and-effective-emissions-reduction-targets?utm_source=guides&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=petition_lonely
Thanks, Kingi! Something practical we can all do!
Thanks Kingi. All done 😀
That Gypsy character is really scary, aggressive also if you don’t listen to it.
We don’t care to be preached to thank you very much as this is a contest of ideas and suggestions not hate mail.
Chill out or cut loose.
Yes we need to good custodians of this planet also as previous generations didn’t exploit the earth as we are with burning, and pumping/fracking just to get the last fossil drop out of this planet.
All this is no sustainable, and we need to go renewable.
Wind turbines and solar are the future not burning oil.
Plan to use rail not trucks as the oil companies are also pushing truck freight.
Reasons are clear as the tyres are made from oil and shred toxic dust, and use huge amounts of oil.
Trucks use 8 to 12 times the oil fuel to move each tonne one km, than rail so its a no brainier really.
Wake up World.
Anyone looked down at the ground lately? Seems Monsanto’s glyphosate is affecting just about everything. Bill Gates is a big investor of this company and he’s very talkative about the climate. Now he wants to spray millions of tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere.
Bill says the earth’s over-populated. Someone suggested he set an example and leave.
Thank goodness we only have to deal with jonkey et al!
Why is my blog up the top? Should be down here. Probably get edited out anyway.
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