Climate Change – Bullshit & Bluster

Climate Change – Bullshit & Bluster

There was a February deadline from the UN under the Paris Agreement, to submit new emissions-reduction plans, yet of the 195 signatories to that agreement, only 13 submitted their climate action plans outlining emissions-reduction targets and strategies under that agreement.

While global powers like China, India, and the EU delayed or outright ignored the requirement, New Zealand lined up with just nine other nations to comply.

With most of the world either backing away from strict climate commitments or stretching their response times, why is New Zealand still playing by the rules?

Of the 195 signatories to the Paris Agreement, only 13 submitted their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) on time. These are country-specific climate action plans under the Paris Agreement, outlining emissions-reduction targets and strategies.

Major economies—including China, the EU, and India—failed to meet the deadline, while others like Canada and Japan are still sitting on draft plans. China and India have stated that they will not be enacting any of these action plans till at least 2050.

And the new president of the United States, Donald Trump has declared that they are pulling out of the Paris Agreement.

New Zealand has a minor emissions footprint of just 0.017% of global emissions with the biggest source of CO2 emissions being road transport but even so, the government set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture as part of its overall effort to reduce New Zealand’s emissions.

New Zealand has the lowest carbon footprint of any food producer in the world. Our agricultural industries produce and export enough food to feed 40 million people around the world.

Our farming methods are unique in that we use more greenhouse gas than we emit and we urgently need a government to go into to bat for our food producers, in international forums.

Particularly in light of the fact that Article 2 (b) of the Paris Agreement that NZ signed said clearly; no government should take steps that “threaten food production”.

NZ’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture as part of its overall effort to reduce New Zealand’s emissions by 50 percent by 2030, threatens our ability to continue producing the current levels of food production.

Given that 83% of global emissions come from countries that didn’t bother to submit, New Zealand’s commitment looks more like symbolic compliance than a move with real-world impact.

I have written many articles about Climate Change and the more I research the effects of climate change the more I am convinced that a majority of the opinions written about climate change should be headed up as “Climate Bullshit” not climate change.

The first thing that I see in almost every debate around climate change is how we need to go back to carbon zero or the planet will burn up.

This in my opinion is where the “Bullshit” starts.

We have been indoctrinated with the lie that CO2 is bad for the environment and that we need to reduce our emissions down to zero if we want to save the planet from burning up.

Well I have to tell you that this is the biggest lie of all and if by some chance we were ever able to get the emissions down to zero that would be the day that life on earth would stop.

CO2 is the gas of life, and we should celebrate CO2 rather than denigrate it, as is the fashion today."

Let’s look at the facts around CO2:

What percentage is CO₂ in the atmosphere?

Approximately 0.04 percent

It is a naturally occurring chemical compound that is present in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide exists in the Earth's atmosphere at a concentration of approximately 0.04 percent (400 parts per million) by volume.

Water vapour can vary from 0 to 4% and is the dominant greenhouse gas in our atmosphere.

Of all of the CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere, what percentage is produced by humans?

Depending on the estimates anywhere from 3.6% to 5% is produced by humans.

That is actually 3.6% to 5% of that 0.04 per cent in the atmosphere.

If we take the top estimate of 5% that means that human emissions add up to 0.002% of the atmosphere.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) announced in October 2022 that it accepts research shows climate change is expected to reach just 2.5°C – only half as much as has long been assumed.

Agriculture/food production produces carbon dioxide through what is known as a “biogenic carbon cycle”.

What is a biogenic carbon cycle?

The biogenic carbon cycle centers on the ability of plants to absorb and sequester carbon. Plants have the unique ability to remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere and deposit that carbon into plant leaves, roots, and stems while oxygen is released back into the atmosphere.

The argument from the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) has always been that the methane produced by livestock digestion is more ‘dangerous’ than carbon dioxide by a factor of twenty-eight - even though methane is part of a natural biogenic cycle that can be traced back to the dinosaurs.

However, it now turns out those climate change ‘experts’ were wrong, and that the actual figure is only seven, not twenty-eight.

The IPCC admitted the mistake in their Sixth Assessment Report, explaining at page 1016 of Chapter 7, “…expressing methane emissions as CO2 equivalent of 28, overstates the effect on global surface temperature by a factor of 3-4”.

Thus, it is highly likely that the total emissions calculated for New Zealand globally are overstated on a global warming basis. The oft quoted figure of 50% of emissions coming from agriculture is only correct if the wrong figures are used (methane emissions calculated as CO2 equivalent of 28).

This mistake by the IPCC has never been acknowledged or corrected by New Zealand officials and in fact those false assumptions from the IPCC have continued to underpin the Net Zero policy agenda.

Professor Dave Frame who advises the government and farming industries, and has been an IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) participant, admits that New Zealand’s total emissions from all sheep, beef, dairy and deer ruminant methane over the last 100 years have caused some nonsensical fraction like one, one-thousandth of a degree centigrade change; In other words, an immeasurable, utterly insignificant amount per year.

It seems to tally with what a Dr William van Wijngaarden told Irish farmers recently stating that the entire world’s ruminant methane over the next century would only cause 0.17 of a thousandth of a degree C change. Remember New Zealand only has 1% of the world’s ruminants. For this we are proposing slashing our sheep and beef industry by up to 20%.

Compared to the use of fossil fuels, farms have a ‘negative' position in relation to CO2 emissions. Below is an example of some research into the levels of farm emissions.

According to a paper published called Phase 3 Multivariate analysis of Greenhouse Gas emissions from sheep and beef farms – April 2020 it takes up to 7 tonnes of CO2 to grow a hectare of grass on the farm, through the process called photosynthesis where plants use CO2, sunlight, water and mineral salts to develop.

The farm turns those 7 tonnes of CO2 per hectare into enough feed (pasture) for 10 ewes. Those 10 ewes each emit about 20 – 22 grams of methane a day which means they produce in total 80 kgs of methane per year. It is accepted that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 – generally regarded as 7 times stronger. If we multiply our ewe’s 80 kgs of methane by 7 we get 560 kgs of CO2 equivalent.

The farm is therefore, using approximately 12 times more CO2 than it emits. A car owner cannot say that, or a coal fired boiler, or a private jet going to a climate conference. Farmers are not quite the villains they are made out to be.

Why would New Zealand, a tiny country that is already one of the cleanest and greenest in the world need to do much more? We already produce 80 percent of our electricity from renewable energy sources.

We have the most efficient farmers in the world. The country is awash with trees. And we are so ‘green’ that urban development and roading covers less than one percent of our land area.

And the answer is that we wouldn’t need to do much more - if the Coalition Government corrected two fundamental errors in their climate modelling that are making New Zealand’s situation appear worse than it really is.

The first is their continued use of the IPCC’s ‘worst case’ emissions scenario called Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 which predicts such extreme sea level rise and flooding that it’s been discredited for policy-making.

The second major flaw in the Government’s policy framework is their claim that methane is twenty-eight times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The UN has accepted that 28 overstates the effect of methane on global surface temperature and has corrected it to a factor of seven. Yet our Government continues to use 28 in their projections. But if the correct value of seven was used, instead of 28, our total emissions would fall to a level close to our 2050 target.

The magnitude of these climate errors is significant – and the consequences are so horrendously expensive and far reaching, that they will impact on the lives of all New Zealanders.

New Zealand has the lowest carbon footprint of any food producer in the world.

We need to ignore the Bullshit and Bluster around climate change.

We need a government that stands up for our food producers. We feed 40 million people around the world. Article 2 (b) of the Paris Agreement that we signed said clearly; no government should take steps that “threaten food production”. Why do we rush to meet some international obligations and ignore others?

Our farming methods are unique in that we use more greenhouse gas than we emit and we urgently need a government to go into to bat for our food producers, in international forums.

In conclusion as the Greenpeace co-founder, Dr. Patrick Moore stated, I believe that we need to remember that carbon dioxide is the gas of life, indeed the backbone of life on Earth rather than the devil that it is being portrayed as by many environmental commentators.