The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Media release (immediate) 22 August 2007

Time for a Climate “Cuppa Tea”

The Government should follow the lead of one of its predecessors and pause for a “cuppa tea” before plunging the country into the economic turmoil of an emissions cap and trade system based on scientifically unproven claims about the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This today from Owen McShane, chair of the policy panel of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, commenting on criticism by the Greens of the Government’s climate change policies, and the announcement of extra research funding on how to increase sustainability and tackle climate change.

“There is a fundamental linkage between these two news items. Commonsense would suggest that before saddling New Zealanders with the extra costs implicit in introducing trading in emissions, there ought to be some New Zealand based research into the real effects of the very modest increases in so-called greenhouse gases by humans and animals. To date, there’s been no such Government funded research in New Zealand that we know of, but instead, government agencies have relied on computer modelled scenarios from overseas, scenarios that are coming under increasing challenge from many hundreds of international scientists around the world.

“For instance, until just a few days ago it was the received wisdom that 1998 was the warmest year of last century, and this was cited as evidence of global warming. Then, the American originators of that research admitted an error in their calculations, and agreed that the warmest year was in fact, 1934. That admission coincides with satellite records of global temperatures that show very little warming since 1979, in spite of carbon dioxide levels having increased by 17%.” said Mr McShane.

“Now we find the Government increasing its spending on climate research, but not one dollar being devoted to finding out whether there is any scientific climate justification for policies which will not onl impose costs on every New Zealand household but will impact on the way people in those households live. Not even a dollar on a search of the growing volume of peer-reviewed overseas literature that identifies the sun as the driver of climate change; or a report from KMI, the Belgian equivalent of our NIWA that shows that carbon dioxide does not play a decisive role in climate change; or reports demonstrating that clouds - which no climate models can handle accurately - play a decisive role in global warming; or recent American research pointing to benefits for growers of agricultural crops and pasturelands from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

“Then, the Government should review inconsistencies in statements by its own scientific employees, such as Dr Jim Renwick, of NIWA, who said his agency’s climate predictions were right about half the time, but were on par with similar agencies around the world. Or Dr Jim Salinger, also of NIWA, who is on record with claims about excessive sea level rises, but who when confronted recently by an acknowledged world leader of sea levels, Professor Nils-Axel Mörner, of Sweden, declined an offered opportunity to question Dr Mörner’s findings that sea level rises by the end of this century cannot be more than 20 centimetres.

“In the energy field, there are anomalies such as:

- Solid Energy's critique of the New Zealand Energy Strategy that demonstrates that a carbon tax of $20 per tonne would cost New Zealand electricity consumers $800 million per year - of which the government would collect $400m per year in taxes and windfall profits from the state owned hydro power generators.

- A report by the Electricity Commission that states that the real cost of wind power is in the region of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour (not the 7c kwh stated in the energy strategy) and that a carbon tax of $45 per tonne, would be needed to make wind power economic compared with conventional generation.

“It’s time that business and farming interests in New Zealand, as well as ordinary citizens, joined in demanding answers from the Government before it is allowed to make significant and costly changes to our economy and our lifestyles. It doesn’t appear that any of our political parties have the wit or the instestinal fortitude to ask these questions for us, so we’ll need to do it ourselves,” concluded Mr McShane.

ENDS

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