The Climate people are gearing up for the next round of talks on an international agreement on climate change. This will happen in Durban at the end of the year.
In all the correspondence I have had with politicians like Nick Smith and David Carter and officials in MAF and MOE not one of them has been able to deny that livestock emissions of methane have no effect on the concentration of methane in the atmosphere (from steady state of production). Yet they persist with the ridiculous notion that enteric methane is a problem and should be included in any international agreement.
I wrote to Tim Groser who is the Minister responsible for international climate change negotiations because he is the one charged with representing us at these negotiations. I put it to him that the negotiators at Kyoto had made a mistake when they agreed to include methane, I explained the reason for this and the methane cycle etc, and I urged him not to make the same mistake his predecessor Simon Upton did at Kyoto.
His reply was that methane contributes 0.5W/ M2 to the anthropogenic radiative forcing of the earth compared to pre industrial times. Ongoing emissions of methane will maintain that forcing and therefore need to be mitigated.
At least he agrees enteric methane only maintains that forcing, it does not increase it. This is undisputed now and is the first battle won for us. It seems though they are now shifting their argument, they are no longer trying to argue that enteric methane is causing an increase in atmospheric methane instead they now argue that an emission which helps maintain atmospheric levels is also causing global warming.
They can not do this for a couple of reasons. Firstly such an activity is outside the official UN definition of anthropogenic climate change. Secondly their argument has a major problem. If we are to include all emissions that just maintain a level of greenhouse gas then animal respiration and human respiration qualify for inclusion. They currently are not included because it would be absurd to do so because they are neutral to the atmosphere. They just complete the cycle by where the CO2 they breathe out returns to the atmosphere the CO2 removed from it to grow the food they eat.
It is absurd to think of an emission of CO2 from human or animal respiration as a problem and everyone agrees with that but Tim Groser’s argument for including methane just because it helps maintain atmospheric levels applies equally to CO2 from respiration. If one is absurd, both are. I have pointed that out to him and will let you know his response.
In the meantime it seems unlikely that there will be any post Kyoto agreement. There will be some agreement though of some sort which is worrying and even more worrying is the way this National Government is behaving it would not surprise me if NZ agreed to commit economic suicide and stand alone in the world and place binding targets on itself. We must start applying pressure on them not to do this. Save NZ from its own Government! The election may give us a platform if ACT gets strong enough because getting agriculture out of the ETS is one of the three areas they will fight the election on.