Guest essay by Eric Worrall
While nobody expects the elimination of New Zealand’s carbon footprint to have a significant direct impact on global warming, the rest of the world will surely be inspired by New Zealand’s moral example.
New Zealand declares a climate change emergency
Phil Taylor in Auckland
Wed 2 Dec 2020 13.42 AEDTJacinda Ardern calls climate change ‘one of the greatest challenges of our time’ and pledges carbon-neutral government by 2025
New Zealand has declared a climate change emergency and committed to a carbon-neutral government by 2025, in what the prime minister Jacinda Ardern called “one of the greatest challenges of our time”.
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Speaking in parliament after its introduction, Ardern said the country must “act with urgency”.Climate emergency: New Zealand must match words and actionsRead more
“This declaration is an acknowledgement of the next generation. An acknowledgement of the burden that they will carry if we do not get this right and do not take action now,” she said.
“It is up to us to make sure we demonstrate a plan for action, and a reason for hope.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/02/new-zealand-declares-a-climate-change-emergency
New Zealand does not manufacture much, decades of radical environmentalism have taken a toll. So despite New Zealand’s pledge to be carbon neutral by 2025, they will be importing lots of carbon tainted manufactured goods for the foreseeable future.
In related new, the Australian Senate voted that there was NOT a Climate Emergency this week.
The Greens were not amused. Everyone else in the Senate – Libs, Nats, Labor, Independents – didn’t care what they thought.
As others note, the announcement is only that the Government of NZ will be carbon neutral by 2025.
Largely meaningless virtue signalling.
Agriculture accounts for about 50% of NZ’s carbon dioxide emissions.
With 27 million sheep, 6 million dairy cattle and countless pigs, what is happening in the real world?
Agriculture was to have been brought under the national emissions control regime by 1 July 2020.
That meant carbon taxes or carbon credits but the move has been deferred till 2025.
If Agriculture does not have its own emissions reduction regime effective by 2025 it will be folded into the national scheme.
The real test is ahead for New Zealand.
Herbert,
Read my previous comments re enteric methane being counted as emissions .
The process is a cycle and if scientists cannot see this it proves that the whole global warming ,climate change and climate emergency is based on fantasy and science is consigned to the dust bin .
It is a political driven agenda and New Zealands and the worlds population have to wake up before to much damage is done to our civilization and poverty is forced on to the general population.
The PM could go carbon free, by being the first to go. Find a cliff and let the lemmings with her go. Let the sheep run the country. Much better alternative. A “Climate Emergency” only in her mind to control the country. But even if NZ achieved Carbon Zero. No one would notice the difference globally. Same as AUS. All this for what? Destroy the economy, manufacturing, tourism. What’s left. The world after MAD MAX?
Taking all of the really dangerous ones and paying their salaries and phony expenses to sit in a chair and look out of a window all day, guarding the gates of Hell like in the movie The Sentinel, would be less expensive for humanity. The useful idiots, like we have on here, would be lost in the wash , but we wouldn’t miss them.
Well that sux
There was a time when Ladies and Gentlemen had other things to do instead of cultivating fearsome climate scaremongers to feed their schizophrenia nightmares with further hysteria.
Respectfully FL, when was that? Cretins like these burned “witches” to death for bad weather going back centuries.
What, exactly, is the emergency, via climate, in NZ? Specifics please. Not what might happen if so and so…
“It is up to us to make sure we demonstrate a plan for action, and a reason for hope.”
Not another five year plan and great leap forward from the fearless leader? Still the cloistered ones being frogmarched off to the fields with hoes scythes and pitchforks will be some comfort amidst the tedium of manure shovelling.
I’m a New Zealander and I **DESPISE** this airheaded virtue-signaler and her party.
Don’t you love the way they can bank all the credits of their ancestors and the fruits of the Industrial Revolution and it’s simply moving right along we’re going carbon neutral now? And electoral majorities actually believe in them? Whatever happened to the Age of Reason?
“Carbon neutral by 2025”
That is FOUR years from now.
Are they perhaps going to burn all forests for fuel and label that carbon neutral?
The plan seems to be to dig a tunnel through the cap of the Taupo super volcano to use Lake Taupo as a pumped storage reservoir. Or something like that. Nothing bad happens when water comes into contact with lava, right?
The lake at Taupo is a submerged volcano.
The other interesting thing about Taupo is if it is considered a sea no place in NZ is further away from the sea than sixty miles. I don’t think the salinity is great enough to be considered that but the nitrogen could be considering all the forestry surrounding it. I know farming gets the blame but it is actually forestry that is responsible. From memory it is eight kilo per hectare and there are many hectares of forestry surrounding Taupo.
When reading the World Economic Forum “suggestions” for the Great Reset, Ardern’s stance is totally in keeping. As for electric cars, they must be rationed to be only for the elite as we don’t have enough electrickery to go around, even with the dream output of renewables. I have done my three score years and ten, and can assert that New Zealand politicians have always been woefully short on technical understanding. They think that the Houses of Parliament have all the magical powers of a Hogwarts.
Queen of the socialist luddites! Pass the koolaide!
People who say carbon when they mean CO2 are lying
Carbon neutral. Are they going to kill every living creature in the country, including themselves?
So despite New Zealand’s pledge to be carbon neutral by 2025, they will be importing lots of carbon tainted manufactured goods for the foreseeable future.
New Zealand has declared a climate change emergency and committed to a carbon-neutral government by 2025,
Spot the difference.
“Carbon neutrality” is another meaningless term like “climate change”. It’s a political idea intended to produce a desired effect. The whole language of “climate change” is a study in politicized ideation. It has nothing to do with science. Its sole purpose is to mold minds.
Do kiwis dream of virtual sheep in a carbon free world?
The New Zealand Government owns the New Zealand Navy (of course ) which consists of various ships totaling 6 vessels with a total of approx 47,000 tonnes and a total of at least 100,000 HP . All these ships are oil powered , mostly diesel or oil burning so for the “Government” to be Carbon free by 2025 some other method has to be found and retrofitted to these ships in 4 years ? New Zealand has one of the biggest Economic Zones in the world and seriously needs these vessels to patrol and defend this zone .
Oh, they can fix that problem easily. They have a built in “Get Out of Jail Free” card. It’s called carbon offsets. That’s how Al Gore manages to declare that he’s “carbon neutral” even though his carbon footprint is the equivalent of a small town. The whole thing is utterly absurd, considering that “carbon” is not and never has been a problem. It’s the stuff of life.
The stupid thing is the airforce would have been far more efficient at patrolling all that water but what do we have now.
1. Since power plants in Denmark are burning wood, the climate crisis is over. No further action by anyone else in the world is required.
2. The reality is that based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Hence if New Zealand eliminated all of their CO2 emissions, doing so would have no effect on climate. It is all a matter of science.
3. The AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere caused by trace gases with LWIR absorption bands. Such a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere, or anywhere else in the solar system for that matter. The radiant greenhouse effect is hence science fiction so hence the AGW conjecture is science fiction as well. Officials in New Zealand need to understand this.
4. For those who still believe in a radiant greenhouse effect, it has to be dominated by H2O and not CO2. Molecule per molecule, H2O is a stronger IR absorber than is CO2 and on average there is 50 times more H2O in the Earth’s atmosphere than is CO2. Changes in CO2 will have no significant effect on the over all radiant greenhouse effect. Apparently New Zealand has no plans for lowering global H20 emissions and hence no plan to significantly change the overall radiant greenhouse effect, if it exists.
5. But even if we could somehow stop the Earth’s climate from changing, Extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue unabated because they are both part of the current climate. We do not even know what the optimum climate is let alone how to achieve it. Officials in New Zealand need to understand this.
6 The gas in the atmosphere that holds the most heat energy is N2 and not CO2 or even H2O. It is really the non-greenhouse gases that trap more heat energy in the Earth’s atmosphere because they are such poor IR radiators to space. N2 is also the one gas that is most responsible for the pressure at the Earth’s surface. The higher the atmosphere pressure the warmer will be the Earth’s surface. So if New Zealand really wants to cool the surface of the Earth significantly they need to find a way to significantly reduce N2 in the Earth’s atmosphere and so far they have no plans to do so.
“reduce N2 in the Earth’s atmosphere”
Produce more nitrates?
NZ has many pleasant features, but it sure is a land of the lotus eaters. Many suffer from the delusion that what NZ thinks or does on any issue is of any global consequence , or matters a damn to the other 99.3% of the world’s population. The idiotic declaration of a climate emergency falls in that category. At least the police have shown a bit of commonsense – they have rejected electric and hybrid vehicles for their replacement vehicles, and have gone for Skoda Superbs, on the basis of performance and utility.
Actually 99.93%
It shall be found that the Emergency was not the will of NZ, but of the Green (Marxist and Loopy) and some of the Labour (Centre-Left) Political Classes. Not sanctioned by the populace who are a bit stunned by it.
I expect the leadership will pay for their arrogance in good time….. Brett Keane