Hi everyone
I would again like to welcome all the new members who have joined up since the last newsletter (about 170 new members).This is a reflection of our growing membership and the fact that it has been 2 months since the last newsletter which is not ideal.
In my defence I took some time off over Christmas and since coming back I have had to devote quite a lot of time to getting our admin up to speed. While all the cheques and new members are fantastic and appreciated, at the moment it is me loading all the information into our database so this eats into my available time.
I am currently still working on getting the members only page on the website up to speed so you can log in and see what is happening with the membership and the money raised so far. I don’t want to put it in this newsletter because it goes out through our website and once Google get hold of it we can’t delete the information from the web even if it is deleted off our own page. I’ll let you know when that is running.
Timeline for initiating action on the study is June; I hope to have sufficient funds raised to set the ball rolling. Ultimately we need to have it finished by 2014 when the next ETS review takes place and before we get a Labour /Green government.
The issue of what the study seeks to do is important. What we don’t want is to do the study and have one press release from another group dismissing it as irrelevant etc. As an example I have had a meeting with a group I hoped would be interested in helping set the terms of reference and assist overseeing the study. They are not interested at this stage but I am hopeful they will rethink this. The point made by them was valid in that what the study asks and answers is vital. They also said that everyone knows that the atmospheric concentration of methane does not increase from livestock emissions of a steady state so we don’t need to prove that. (Although I have never heard that group publicly say that and it would be interesting to hear Dr Smith acknowledge this) This group argues that without livestock replacing atmospheric methane, the methane levels will drop and so too will the greenhouse effect. Therefore they argue that livestock are responsible for global warming. I can see why they think this and this argument might sound logical to them but its logic evaporates when it is put in the context that they are arguing that an emission which maintains the concentration of a greenhouse gas (enteric methane) has exactly the same global warming effect as an emission which increases it (fossil sourced emissions).
Of course it can’t, they are quite wrong and for proof of that you only have to consider that if all our emissions just maintained the concentration of greenhouse gas and did not increase it then there would be no global warming industry because there would be no problem. An activity which does not alter the composition of the atmosphere is also outside the definition of an anthropogenic global warming activity. I said to this group that until the definition is changed by the UN , there was no need to include atmospherically neutral emissions. Hopefully t hey will mull over this point.
This group is an influential farming group and it would undermine our study should they make a statement that undermines our study when asked to comment on our study regardless of whether there was any merit in their argument. We really want them and other groups involved at least in an advisory role before we frame the study, so that the right question is asked and answered. I am confident this can happen.
In the meantime keep the membership growing, if you have neighbours or friends and you want information sent to them or you want some info yourself to pass on to others let me know. I will be at the Northland fieldays in Dargaville for a couple of days in the rural marquis so drop in and say hi if you are passing by.