Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says he will accept the advice of a panel established to set softer methane emission reduction targets for farmers and the waste sector.
Five scientists have been appointed to review methane science and the 2050 climate targets to give advice on a new target that would not worsen global warming relative to 2017.
Because methane only stays in the atmosphere for 12 years, agricultural emissions only have to hold steady to stop adding to the greenhouse gases warming the planet.
However, a build up of methane over previous decades has helped to create the greenhouse effect that is causing global warming. Current targets aim to eat away at this build-up.
New Zealand law requires annual gross biogenic methane emissions be reduced by between 24% and 47% of 2017 levels by the year 2050. This would mean the amount of methane in the atmosphere would decrease and weaken the greenhouse gas effect.
But the Coalition Government has worried asking farmers to reduce their emissions over the next 25 years will cause some farms to close and push food production overseas.
And so, it has asked this panel to come up with a target which would allow the agriculture and waste industries to lock in the methane levels that were in the atmosphere in 2017.
Simon Upton, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, has previously said this approach would allow the agricultural sector to “claim a right to a certain level of warming … indefinitely”.
Research done in 2018 found methane emissions would only need to be reduced between 14% and 27% to halt warming at 2016 levels — instead of the up to 47% legislated today.
Advice will be accepted
McClay said he believed New Zealand’s targets should be consistent with this “no additional warming” principle and that the panel’s recommendations would be adopted.
“We've worked very, very hard to ensure that everybody on the panel has the scientific expertise they need and that they are completely independent,” he told reporters.
“And so, whether it's good news or not for farmers will depend on what they find, but the science will be the science, if you will”.
It is highly unlikely the panel will find similar or stronger reduction targets are consistent with the softer "no additional warming" concept.
This would mean rejecting the advice of another independent advisor, the Climate Change Commission, which said in April there was no evidence to support weakening the target.
Adopting a no additional warming approach for methane would require the Government to strengthen targets in other sectors or tolerate more warming, it said.
The terms of reference given to the panel specifically barred the scientists from providing advice on what choosing a new methane target might mean for NZ’s broader climate strategy.
They will also not be allowed to make any judgments about how the burden of limiting global warming should be shared across different sectors and countries.
McClay’s promise to accept the advice clashed with simultaneous comments made by Climate Change Minister, Simon Watts, who said the review’s findings wouldn’t necessarily be adopted.
“That review is going to feedback policy recommendations by the end of the year, and that'll inform us in terms of our position around the re-setting of those targets, or not,” Watts said.
Whether the advice would contradict the Climate Change Commission was a “hypothetical” question and would be resolved “if, and when” it happened.
Doves and hawks
The panel will be chaired by Nicola Shadbolt, a professor of Farm & AgriBusiness Management at Massey University, who has previously been employed as a Fonterra board member.
It will include Dave Frame, a physics professor at the University of Canterbury who has advocated for lower methane targets, but also others with opposing views.
Bill Collins, a Professor of Climate Processes at the University of Reading, co-authored a 2018 study which concluded reducing methane emissions would be “crucial” to keeping warming below 1.5 degrees as agreed in the Paris Agreement.
Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher, a principal scientist at NIWA, said in 2022 there was “a strong argument” for reducing methane emissions to prevent warming within the next two decades.
The final panel member, associate professor at the University of Canterbury Laura Revell, doesn’t seem to have made any comments on the record one way or another.
128 Comments
I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but If you lived anywhere with 1000 ppm carbon monoxide, you’d quickly die. So yeah, parts per thousand do matter. Even CO2 at that concentration will impair you cognitively.
I’m obviously talking about the average concentration in a system, like scientists do. Not whatever transitory red herring you’re on about. But yeah, those things matter do. Try not to inhale asbestos, I guess?
What? I’d say you wouldn’t want to be in a room with 1ppt carbon monoxide
Where 1ppt = 1 part per trillion? Maybe, but I'm not going to up-end civilisation for carbon monoxide levels a hundred or a thousand times less than walking down the street.
Edit, oh single parts per thousand. Yeah poisonous gases are a problem for human health at that concentration. Methane isn't which is why your neighbour can fart and you don't die.
If you were in a room with an average concentration of 1 part per 1000 methane, you’re in huge trouble.
But none of this is relevant to methane’s capacity to absorb heat being radiated from the earth, which is the subject of the article.
Come on people. I hate the greens and the degrowthers as much as the rest of you. Cut out the dumb arguments and fight them on a scientific basis.
Ouch, hate is such a strong word. Unfortunately yeasty growthists, industrialists, synthetic libertarians, techno utopians/eco modernists et al, can't argue on a scientific basis, because they have to ignore the degradation of our life support systems for their cultish behavior to exist.
Incorrect. The "cultish behaviour" actually comes from a colonial western attitude which believes that it still has a God-given moral right to tell the other seven billion people on Earth how they are allowed to live and what standard of living they should accept. Further that same attitude assumes that it is western countries which should control the course and direction of global technology and the world economy.
I looked it up, there are minimal to no hazards associated with being in a space with a 0.1% (one part in one thousand) methane concentration. However since that methane might be produced by rotting organic matter, it might not be that pleasant there for other reasons.
"Because methane only stays in the atmosphere for 12 years, agricultural emissions only have to hold steady to stop adding to the greenhouse gases warming the planet."
False. Methane may stay in the atmosphere as methane for 12 years but most of it converts to carbon dioxide. "In addition to the direct heating effect and the normal feedbacks, the methane breaks down to carbon dioxide and water." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
The net climate change impact of methane over a 100-year period is 25 to 28 tons of carbon dioxide.
Methane (CH4) in the Earth's atmosphere is a powerful greenhouse gas with a global warming potential (GWP) 84 times greater than CO2 over a 20-year time frame. Methane is not as persistent as CO2, and tails off to about 28 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year time frame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
If methane really is the problem they say it is, it has already boosted the CO2 equivalent warming level to far over 600ppm CO2. At those CO2 levels the world should be ending shortly (remember the now defunct 350 dot org outfit which claimed that we had to keep CO2 levels under 350ppm...)
Try it. Your change will get reverted and they’ll ban your IP straight away. Wikipedia is accurate because it’s open source; especially for scientific topics. Just like the software that this website, your phone, and the world runs on. Many eyes make for shallow bugs.
But CO2 is not driving global temperature. That's provable by empirical data, not just the millions of years of historical temp/CO2 data, but the current temp/CO2 data since the industrial revolution. Methane is even less important than CO2, which itself is virtually irrelevant to the climate. How do we as a population walk back this climate hysteria?
It's been posted many times before, but here it is again. The global tropospheric satellite data going back to the 70s.
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
This paper contains several models for historic temperature and CO2 levels going back several million years.
LOL, thanks Fat, but I was more interested in a surface temperature data set, You know, one that records temperature trends where humans live? Satellite data are a weighted average of temperatures over multiple altitudes (roughly 0 to 12 km), and not a surface temperature. Not completely useless, but misleading to promote AHEAD of actual surface readings!
"Surface temperature readings are more accurate" says Carl Mears, senior scientist behind RSS satellite dataset
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BnkI5vqr_0&t=5s
Your paper from 2003 is also pretty useless. Cosmic ray theory was postulated a causal factor in global heating especially by the denial industry decades ago. Now science has moved on and it's been forgotten about, except in the hardcore denier movement. How much of last years record global temperature can be attributed to the Earths movement through a spiral arm of the milky way galaxy is not serious science!
"Terry Sloan at the University of Lancaster and Sir Arnold Wolfendale at the University of Durham, conclude that neither changes in the activity of the sun, nor its impact in blocking cosmic rays, can be a significant contributor to global warming"
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cosmic-rays-not-causing-clim…
On the contrary, Terry Sloan's work confirms that charged particle cosmic radiation influences global temperatures. They were looking at recent high resolution, but perhaps low dynamic range data (11 year sun spot cycles). "Using two data sets going back to 1955, the study’s authors found that a small correlation between cosmic rays and global temperatures occurred every 22 years". The theory is appealing because it has a lot of explanatory power. Any cooling cycle happening on the tens or hundreds of millions of year scale can't possibly have a terrestrial origin. Of course no theory is ever set in stone, but cosmic radiation, and Milankovitch cycle explanations for climate change are a heck of a lot more convincing than anything to do with CO2
Regarding surface temperatures, the urban heat island effect and data adjustments decrease the integrity of the dataset. The troposphere is the relevant lower layer, and the satellite data appears to be uncontaminated.
No need to apologise. The kill-zone of a supernova is about 20-50 light years. Slightly further away, and we'd all get radiation sickness here on earth. Such events have happened in the distant past, and they will happen in the future (not during the reign of man). Just imagine - if minuscule changes in radiation from sunspots can cause detectable climate change, then what do you think near proximity supernova would do?
People in your bubble don’t count. I know within your bubble it’s 100% but 3 people don’t matter. The figure you are looking for is 3%. That is the number of people that listed this nonsense as important to them. 30 something percent listed cost of living as their most important issue. That’s 10% more people than Support the Labour Party. So, still insignificant, but still more than 10x the number of people than support your issues. Strangely 30% of people moaning about having no cash gets in the news. Your mob, air time reducing…..funny that. Numbers are great aren’t they. Scientific too.
Many past mass extinction events have been attributed to periods of elevated CO2.
The mechanism is roughly like this:
High CO2 > increased vegetation > increased dead vegetation ending up in water > anaerobic breakdown of vegetation > very nasty gasses > death for mammals.
There are several periods where increased vegetation turned seas and oceans into toxic swamps with very bad consequences for mammalian life.
As with everything in life, balance is key.
Regarding very long climatic cycles, the mechanism is more like this: Our solar system orbit moves in and out of the spiral arms of our Milky Way galaxy over millions of years. When inside the spiral arms, the earth is exposed to more charged particle cosmic radiation in the upper atmosphere. This leads to cloud formation because radiation of this type can act as a nucleation site for atmospheric water vapour. Clouds reflect solar radiation which leads to global cooling. About 30,000 years after the earth cools, the CO2 concentrations in the earth's atmosphere drops as CO2 absorbs into the ocean because the gas is more soluble in cold water.
You are right. The names are very similar. It wasn’t a rant, it was just pointing out the fact that most people do not rate these issues highly at all…..and what is an angry old man flat earth rant. Do you Mean to say that because I and most others don’t believe this nonsense then we are either old and believe the earth is flat or both? Interesting approach you have there.
I love your comments (rants) Jerry..specially how you speak "for the others". Check out the courts cases around the world - some believe the "nonsense"
Future impact of proposed fossil fuel projects must be assessed, UK court rules
The climate impact of burning coal, oil and gas must be taken into account when deciding whether to approve projects, the supreme court in London has ruled.
The landmark judgment, handed down on Thursday, sets an important precedent on whether the “inevitable” future greenhouse gas emissions of a fossil fuel project should be considered.
This is a New Zealand policy discussion. Most people on New Zealand care about climate change at some level. The number of deplorables on this site is not representative of the population.
But you’re right, it’s a luxury concern. Which is why the solution is massive economic growth decoupled from emissions.
Unfortunately we have so stuffed up the planet with our yeasty industrial growthist cult, greening the planet now adds to the global heating we've already caused.
"Changes in vegetation cover are recognized to modify climate and the energy budget of the earth through changes in albedo in high latitudes and evapo-transpiration (ET) in the tropics, In snow-covered regions, the springtime growth of leaves enhances solar absorption because surface albedo is reduced from that of snow".
Perhaps you don't understand the climatic parameters needed for successful crop production? Crops are failing all over the planet. Parts of the planet not suffering extremes do experience enhanced crop production though CO2 fertilisation, but as we head further into our new climate regime, this is guaranteed to change.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-29/drought-threatens-food-wine-prod…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/10/uk-food-production-…
Engineer 11,
Man made climate change is a massive lie, I could answer that in great detail over many pages, but I couldn't be bothered. Instead, I suggest that you go and talk to a few wine growers. Why is the NZ Wine Centre is building a facility-The Plant and Food Research Experimental Future Vineyard? To mimic future climate change scenarios. Go to Central Otago and see vineyards now able to grow varieties like Gamay(the Beaujolais grape) and Tempranillo, both of which need warmer conditions. You might ask yourself how Pinot Noir has become the second most important variety in Germany when previously, it grew only gapes for white wine. You might wonder why major champagne houses have been buying vineyards in Southern England. You might ask yourself why there are now over 700 commercial vineyards in England.
If you are an engineer, start thinking for yourself and examine the evidence.
It would be good to track the human induced climate change deniers on this site, so whenever an article gets posted we can add a quick reminder to readers they are dealing with conspiracy theorists, will save time and energy
- Profile - paid to say so
- Fat Pat
- Jeremyr
- Colin Cameron
- Colonial Viper
- Engineer 11
- DD62 (confirmation pending)
Add as and when necessary.
Nice one. Eliminate any other opinions, since you struggle to justify what you say. This is what the struggling CNN tried to do with predictable results. You end up talking and agreeing with yourself. I see a mention above about how we walk back this climate change hysteria. That’s going to become a common theme soon particularly with most major economies turning right. Maybe it is you that should be eliminated so you don’t disrupt the walk back.
To be fair and for balance balance we would also need to track the climate alarmists, you know, those totally captured by the UN mantra, so we can remind readers that you are reading opinion from the most pompous, patronizing know alls (lets face it, the science is settled!) on this site!
- PDK
- agnostium
- Chrisofnobrain
- solardb
- Palmtree08
- Larry76
- Kiwi_overseas
- Baywatch
Add as and when necessary
Very true. I also love the science is settled line. Science is a progression, science is always tested, scientists have been wrong so many times on so many issues over time you probably could not assess it. That is what science is, new discoveries, new methods. All of that stuff. Stating that the science is settled on this one issue that they are all beholden to is a such an obvious lie.
Colonial Viper,
He was also an alchemist, but neither that nor his religious beliefs detract from his massive scientific achievements. At one time, pretty much everybody believed in a god with each religion having their own supreme being. The Enlightenment and the discovery of evolution gradually opened most people's minds to the reality that god-any god-is no more than a construct of the human brain.
And it's not about stopping people having their opinions, happy for all the climate deniers to keep posting their nonsense, it's just being clear that your starting from a position that you know better than the scientific community, having absolutely no background in science.
So yes I would welcome people tracking and being transparent as to whether they were a human induced climate change denier or accepter.
it's just being clear that your starting from a position that you know better than the scientific community
To be clear, this is the same scientific community which is in the middle of a massive corporatised peer review publication money and influence peddling and replication scandal. I wouldn't treat them as unassailable temple priests, if I were you.
Hey DD62,
I have updated my Interest profile to say I accept human induced climate change and am very concerned about the consequences.
Assume you and the Facebook tribe will do the same and say you believe it's made up?
Maybe Profile can add "My work requires me to post climate change denial narratives"
That’s a broad and leading question. Climate has changed since the beginning of time. Some times it is influenced by external factors (rocks dropping from space and volcanos erupting being obvious examples). Other times it has been extremely volatile without touch explanation, ie in the 1930s and 40s, which were much like today. So everyone knows the climate changes, always. What sort of percentage of influence do you think humans have. That is the actual question. Is it 1%, is it less. If we Make adjustments will it turn the dial, or does it even matter. Yours is a yes/no answer required to the wrong question.
Hey Agnostium remind me why sea levels rapidly rose about 70 metres roughly 9,000 to 10,000 years ago, creating the Irish Sea and the English Channel? Before that you could walk from where Dublin is now to where Amsterdam is now without getting your socks wet. Was it a) all the new coal mines and coal fired powerplants? Was it all the fossil fuel powered petrol and diesel trucks on the roads? Or was it simply a lack of renewable energy sources like wind and solar back then?
It’s interesting when you go on a guided tourist boat and they talk about how the huge cliffs up the side of the fiord you are moving past were totally under water x years ago….and when you get off there is sometimes some flag waving protestor (or news item on the radio) talking some nonsense about sea levels rising x cm over the next 100 years being a problem….and that it’s your fault.
New Zealand's sea level has been rising at about 2mm per year. I started following the climate change movement about thirty years ago. All our coastal cities were supposed to be regularly inundated or outright under the sea by now. As a young man I used to date a girl from the Maldives. She had been convinced her entire country was going to be salt water swimming pool within a few years. In actual fact sea levels have gone up about 6 to 7cm in that three decade period. My basic premise now is that someone was lying to our faces then, and that they are lying to our faces now.
We've set geological forces in motion now Colonial. Not important to short termists though, of course. All that melting ice and thermally expanding water has to go somewhere? Best guess is up.
SLR now 3.5mm/year and accelerating by the way. That's a global average of course. Greater in some places, less in others.
1. I'm not a lefty, I accept human induced climate change. They are two different things.
2. Apologies if you also accept human induced climate change. If you can confirm I'll remove you from the list.
Maybe also add it to your profile so it's clear whether you accept or deny as you have suggested.
Yes. You have got it. Unless you agree exactly with what they say - they will try to ban you. There is failed leftie nonsense all around, they fight tooth and nail and try make you agree with them. When it all comes crashing down on them with a spectacular fail (see Labour Party), they melt away (snow flakes is what they call it). But soon they are back, blaming their failure on someone else and ridiculing their own ideas.
Sorry agnostium, you have some interesting comments but when you label someone an outright conspiracy theorist and stop listening to their views because you disagree with them, this isn’t right. many were labelled conspiracy theorists in 2020 and much of what they called conspiracy then has come to fruition. Everyone is allowed an opinion, period.
I am 100% agreeing they are allowed to express an opinion and I am in no way suggesting I will not listen, I'm asking them to clearly state their opinion up front so we know where we're starting.
I'm pretty happy to be up front about mine likee DD62 asked, I'm just a bit surprised how many others aren't.
And the reason for it was because when I first came on to this site to find information about the state of the economy * found it really useful when people on here pointed out the housing spruikers and DGMs. It helped me better interpret the data and opinions.
Rightio. So, let me get this straight.
- We spend years piling an absolute load of methane into the atmosphere. That methane is now causing demonstrable harm - it is part of the insulating gas blanket we have wrapped around the world (that is undeniably driving climate change).
- Now that we have stopped increasing methane emissions, the NZ 'stock' of methane in the atmosphere is not going up by much - let's assume it is stable.
- Some genius has worked out that if we keep our stock of methane in the atmosphere at the same level, we can claim that we are not contributing any additional warming. We're not making things any worse than we already have done.
Let's be clear, this position is flawed - like laughably bad. It will get us thrown out of any room where serious climate science is being discussed. Go through the bullet points above and replace methane with poison in the well.... Don't worry my international friends and trading partners, we may have poisoned our collective well, but we are not going to make it any more poisonous. So, do you want to buy some of our milk powder?
Awesome! Please explain why glaciers receded and sea levels dramatically rose (about 70m if not more) around 9,000 to 10,000 years ago thereby creating the Irish Sea and the English Channel. This occurred when CO2 levels (and presumably methane levels) were at rock bottom (under 300ppm for CO2) and there was no man made industry or use of fossil fuels of any kind.
Have some humility chap. This stuff is a work in progress.
"In a series of painstakingly precise experiments, a team of researchers at MIT has demonstrated that heat isn't alone in causing water to evaporate. Light, striking the water's surface where air and water meet, can break water molecules away and float them into the air, causing evaporation in the absence of any source of heat.
The astonishing new discovery could have a wide range of significant implications. It could help explain mysterious measurements over the years of how sunlight affects clouds, and therefore affect calculations of the effects of climate change on cloud cover and precipitation."
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-vaporize.html
"A doubling in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), predicted to take place in the next 50 to 100 years, is expected to change the radiation balance at the surface by only about 2 percent. Yet according to current climate models, such a small change could raise global mean surface temperatures by between 2-5°C (4-9°F), with potentially dramatic consequences. If a 2 percent change is that important, then a climate model to be useful must be accurate to something like 0.25%. Thus today's models must be improved by about a hundredfold in accuracy, a very challenging task. To develop a much better understanding of clouds, radiation and precipitation, as well as many other climate processes, we need much better observations."
So, all the best models we have right now predict catastrophe, but we should 'have some humility' and gather 'better observations'. Seriously, what is wrong with people? The models I was using in the 1990s have been proven to be scarily accurate. Even the limits to growth work in the 1970s was not too far off.
The challenge here is that people don't want to accept the truth so they adopt a strong bias towards research and arguments that give them comfort. They then amplify (copy and paste) that research and give other people in the same position a reason to justify just carrying on.
None of these models comprehend that mammal life thrived on Earth at CO2 levels around 1,000ppm
Take off the "end of the world is nigh" sandwich board, it doesn't suit you. Further, the western world is no longer in a position to tell everyone else how to live. China approved 114GW of new coal generation last year, you're going to have to accept the fact that Chinese scientists and Chinese models don't agree.
So, not showing any humility then. Jfoe - the knowall who lectures us with climate model predictions but didn't have the wherewithall know NZ was a net CO2 sink. You're priceless.
Grab some humility while you still can chap or at least read a bit of Popper, Rutherford or Dyson. "If your result depends on statistics then you need a better experiment.”
"the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models.
...I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry, and the biology of fields and farms and forests"
https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/18/
I remember our climate sink discussion. Do you attach any importance to it? If we found that Christchurch was a climate sink and Wellington was a net CO2 emitter, would we decide that Wellingtonians could just crack on as usual - driving the utes, scoffing the steaks, burning the coal, BUT people in Christchurch would have to start living like ecowarriors?
Seriously, snap out of it.
Re: Photomolecular effect, It's fascinating from a physics point of view. In terms of climate, it ties in quite nicely with Nir Shaviv's work regarding the importance of cloud formation. I guess this new photomolecular effect profoundly changes all the evaporation and heading dynamics of climate modelling.
I'm assuming the one who copied my pen-name is attempting to be me, here?
To queer the pitch?
Apart from the obviously-tainted Chair, this Panel should know what they're doing. So unless she closes it down (possible) what comes our should be science.
I'll go with that. I'm certainly prepared to listen to that. But we need to keep in mind that it looks very much like this (human-forced climate) cat is ALREADY out of the bag.
And so, it has asked this panel to come up with a target which would allow the agriculture and waste industries to lock in the methane levels that were in the atmosphere in 2017.
"The terms of reference given to the panel specifically barred the scientists from providing advice on what choosing a new methane target might mean for NZ’s broader climate strategy."
It has been asked to come up with a target that locks in methane levels that were on the atmosphere in 2017 but it has been barred from explaining what that target would mean for NZ's broader climate strategy. The previous targets were set in the context of an overall emissions target. This requires them to change the target to meet different base assumptions but not update the overall emissions picture.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.