NZ Emissions Reduction Policy Slammed By Environmentalists, Experts

By Rich Bowden

Img: Huntly coal-powered thermal station, NZ.

Yesterday's announcement by the New Zealand government that it intends to aim for carbon equivalents emissions reductions of 10 – 20 per cent by 2020 based on 1990 levels has drawn mixed reactions from the country's climate experts and environmental groups.

The agreement, which is conditional on a world agreement being reached which will limit atmospheric CO2 to 450ppm and limit temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius, has been called a "first step" towards effective carbon reduction though is still considered conservative in many quarters.

However the announcement, which is based on the proviso that New Zealand access to world carbon markets, has come in for criticism by environment groups who say the government has neglected to include an unconditional component.

“Crucially, it has not offered up any unconditional target at all, making us virtually the only developed country in the negotiations without one,” said Greenpeace Senior Climate Campaigner Simon Boxer in a press release.

“What the New Zealand Government is saying with its highly conditional range of 10-20% is that unless other countries shoulder New Zealand’s burden, then there’s no deal. This is an incredibly dangerous position to take at such a crucial time," he said.

Barry Coates from aid organisation Oxfam agrees. "The losers here are the people from the developing world who stand to suffer from climate change, including our Pacific neighbours," he was quoted as saying by the ABC.

Elsewhere in the country, research carried out by the Science Media Centre has uncovered a nervous reaction to the announcement of the policy.

Dr Andy Reisinger, Senior Research Fellow at the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington told the Centre pointed out there was an increasing gap between short-term targets and long-term goals.

“The emissions reduction range of 10 to 20% below 1990 levels set by the New Zealand government goes in the right direction," he said. "However, there is an increasing gap between short-term targets and the long-term climate change goals that governments say they subscribe to."

“Apart from the concrete 2020 emissions targets, the New Zealand government has set long-term goals of reducing emissions by 50% by 2050, and to stabilise global greenhouse gas concentrations at 450ppm CO2-equivalent."

He continued: "A broad range of international studies indicates that if we want to limit global greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to 450ppm CO2-equivalent, then developed countries collectively have to reduce their emissions by 25 to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, and by 80 to 95% by 2050."

"The New Zealand government’s target range of 10 to 20% reductions by 2020 is a move in the right direction but falls well short of this collective goal, Dr Reisinger said.

Another scientist whose opinion was canvassed by the Science Media Centre was Professor Janet F. Bornman, Director, International Global Change Institute at the University of Waikato. Prof Bornman warned carbon emissions reduction policy was in danger of being "compromised" unless the government's strategy met certain criteria.

“At first glance, the government’s target of 10-20% emissions reduction seems very conservative, given that this is not based solely on reducing domestic emissions," she said.

"One wonders how much of the emissions reduction will be offset by the softer options of carbon storage in forests and buying of emission reductions permits from other countries. Unless there is emphasis on the domestic emissions, the pathway to strong commitment will be compromised."

“The real message as to how we live and work lies in the fact that on a per capita basis, New Zealand is rated 11th in the world as an emitter," continued Prof Bornman.

"For the general community, targeted awareness campaigns, and where feasible, further financial contributions, to bring about a change in lifestyle practices are vital for buy-in towards a sustainable and exemplary New Zealand. The co-benefits to quality of life would be remarkable. But we all need to be caught up in this euphoria for a significant result to occur,” she concluded.

New Zealand will set its final emissions reduction target following the all-important climate talks in Copenhagen in December.

Originally published in The Tech Herald.

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Australian Climate Scientists Strike Back at Sceptics

By Rich Bowden

Img: Air pollution. Credit: pfala/flickr

Fifteen leading Australian climate scientists have used the platform of a weekend newspaper article to hit back at what they see as creeping climate scepticism in the country's media and politics.

Declaiming doubters in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on August 1 named "Climate Change Poised to Feed on Itself", the scientists contend that there exists irrefutable scientific evidence on the world's ongoing climate change that lead to "four conclusions."

1. They contend the world is warming. The group say "global average temperature has increased by about 0.8 degrees since 1850, with most of the increase occurring since 1950" and while agreeing that there are some natural fluctuations in temperature, the natural trend is rising.

The scientists back their claim by pointing to rises in sea temperatures and a reduction in the world's sea-ice and snow cover. They claim that climate sceptics' view that the world has cooled since 1998 as a "misrepresentations of the full data" contending that the climate temperature trend measured during this time is inexorably upward.

2. That the most important factor behind global warming is the dramatic increase since 1950 of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases released by human activities, of which carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single most prevalent.

Critically the group assess this conclusion as being based on "... several independent lines of evidence, including basic physics, studies of climate changes in both in the geological past and in the industrial era, and finally – but far from solely – from the predictions of climate models. Together, these provide an overwhelming case that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations cause warming, and that CO2 is the largest contributor to the current warming trend."

3. The globe will continue to warm if nothing is done to restrict carbon emissions, and may even increase. The scientists state that if "business as usual" is continued, the planet may heat up to a nightmarish six degrees above current temperatures by the turn of the next century.

They warn of drastic rises in global temperatures as providing a "knock-on" effect with changing temperatures "...major disruptions to food supplies, river flows and water availability, significant and ongoing rises in sea level (of up to about a metre by 2100 and potentially metres over longer times), disease threats, disruptions to ecosystems including the extinction of many species, and social and geopolitical destabilisation."

4. That it will take many centuries to reverse the effects of climate change.

The group felt they needed to go public to refute many theories gaining prevalence in Australia that the world climate crisis is over and the globe is in fact cooling. Climate sceptics such as Senator Steven Fielding, who holds a vital balance of power vote in the coming carbon emissions trading scheme, has publicly declared himself a climate sceptic. His views have been endorsed by many in Australia's conservative parties as the Senate looks to debate the trading scheme within the next two weeks.

The group say they put their views in an article partly to refute these "unscientific" views from Australia's political right but also to hit back at popular misconceptions that the Earth is cooling or that any warming is caused by sunspots, not man-made activity.

The scientists, many who have worked on the subject of climate change for the United Nations, also warned of the inexorable approach of a number of climatic "tipping points" if nothing is done to curb carbon emissions, a state of affairs which had the potential to throw the world into a new, more serious state.

The group are: Michael Raupach and John Church, CSIRO; David Griggs, Amanda Lynch and Neville Nicholls, Monash University; Nathan Bindoff, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre; Matthew England and Andy Pitman, University of NSW; Ann Henderson-Sellers and Lesley Hughes, Macquarie University; Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, University of Queensland; Roger Jones, Victoria University; David Karoly, University of Melbourne; and Tony McMichael and Will Steffen, Australian National University.

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Solar Power the Key to Sustainable Future says Prof Flannery

By Rich Bowden

Img left: Tim Flannery. Credit: scienceinmelbourne2007

Img right: Climate change protesters, Parliament House, Canberra 2009. Credit: Paul Hanly.

Author, environmentalist, scientist and former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery has used a keynote address at Australia's foremost solar industry conference to reiterate his support for solar power as the globe's single most useful renewable resource. Prof Flannery also called on China and the U.S. to exhibit leadership in climate talks in Copenhagen.

Speaking in an address to the ATRAA 09 [Appropriate Technology Retailers Association of Australia] Conference and Exhibition in the capital Canberra yesterday, Professor Flannery outlined how harvesting the sun could be the basis for a sustainable energy future. He said the renewable energy "...directly harvests the ultimate source of Earth’s power, the sun, and costs to deploy it are coming down," according to a report by EcoGeneration magazine.

Prof Flannery said though various attempts by the renewable energy industry to harvest the power of the sun in a sustainable way had met with problems, not least through the sometime lack of government support, he stated he looked forward to the age when solar energy was used, not only as the major source of renewable energy, but also to provide power to major projects such as the desalination of water at plants around the globe.

Moving on to the world's climate change crisis, Prof Flannery also commented optimistically on the progress he expected the world to make at the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen in December. Citing positive new leadership shown by the United States on climate change since the election of the Obama administration, he called for the U.S. and China to set an example for the rest of the world in Copenhagen.

“Between them, China and the US account for 40 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. If they were to come together with an agreed position at the table at Copenhagen then we will see advances being made and the rest of the world will have very little choice but to move forward with the initiative taken by those countries,” he said.

Meanwhile the Sydney Morning Herald has today quoted Prof Flannery as calling on the Australian Government to set up a single trading desk for farmers to sell carbon credits to the United States.

He says the government-operated single desk had the potential to earn up to 10 percent of the one billion tonnes of carbon offsets the U.S. would need to buy offshore under an U.S. emissions trading scheme expected to pass the Senate later this year, said the SMH.

Outlining the scheme, Prof Flannery said: ‘‘The Government could then buy a certain amount of permits from farmers for carbon soil storage … at, say, $15 a tonne and sell them on to the US at $20 through the desk,’’ Mr Flannery said to the SMH in an interview. ‘‘If we could get 10 per cent of the US market at, say, $20 that would be about $2 billion a year coming into Australia and [would] help Australian farmers expand carbon storage projects.’’

He said the single desk plan would ensure carbon offset schemes were legitimate before they were bought by the government-run single desk as government assessors would examine the offsets before purchase.


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