Europe declares worst drought in 500 years, compounding coming recession due to Russian gas cuts; Drought in China’s south-west forces widespread hydro power cuts, shutting shops and factories
Interesting Bernard especially about the methane. What dies Groundswell think, if they do think? Tipping points are now “baked in” in a manner of speaking. The most ecologically destructive sector is pasture fed Beef and Lamb. See George Monbiot “Regenesis” recently published. His advice to dairy farmers is “sell” , the farm I mean. The idea that we can continue our grossly profligate emissions to “feed the world “is Magical Thinking. Farming is the most destructive enterprise.
This is darkly amusing only an extremely entitled man would get up on stage promoting long and well known permaculture and regeneration practises after unnecessarily killing 40000 beautiful creatures because he had a privileged position, supreme confidence bordering on arrogance and again by virtue of his own self entitled privileged attitude and complete IGNORANCE and then tries it on again. If anyone else of a different class or background tried that on they’d be booed off the stage after such grossly incompetent, cruel, heinous acts, mass unnecessary ecocide, death and destruction. Then to claim to promote what is well known anyway to anyone with half an inch of gardening or farming experience (as he does actually say) is just spectacular unashamed arrogance lacking any shame or humility whatsoever for what he’s done. He really should sit down and shut up and let others without so much wasted blood on their hands and probably better knowledge speak. “There is no other way” and “only one way” sounds like the same self assured bs all over again. We know big polluters doing most of the damage elsewhere aren’t going to pay to regenerate anywhere or stop polluting if they can pay peanuts and faux “carbon credit”,to Governments that will misspend or misuse it anyway, their way out of consequences unless they already voluntarily began years ago when it was proven and obvious to industry the damage being done and unless countries regulate and charge polluters with ecocide and ensure they clean up their mess….if it’s even possible and imprison those responsible or complicit.The current economic system will ensure they don’t and force average people into more taxes, levies higher costs, poverty, deprivation, brutalisation, illness and consign billions and the planet to death before Governments will transform their economies to prioritising the public good rather than private profit for corporates and the few captive and privileged class in each country only. Clearly this man from Africa who persuaded a Government to needlessly slaughter 40000 elephants belongs to one of those groups. But hey he feels a bit bad about it so that’s ok. We should let other violent criminals off in the same way maybe? “Oops so sorry” then let them shamelessly promote tax payer paid and others work as their own as well. Total exploitative entitled shit … no problem dude! You’ve made good… yeah, NAH .
Elephants are one of my favourite animals, as you can probably tell…because they’re another creature more civilised and less destructive than humans are and deserve to be able to live and not be culled for nothing by white men with God complexes that border on insanity and Because the ends justifies their means even when totally wrong and at other peoples or creatures cost and lives. As long as they and only they remain on centre stage, in control and pulling the strings against all decency and failing a simple self test of …”is doing this right or wrong?”
Should I hang my head in shame Kath because I’m a mostly white well off middle aged man for posting a positive message? Regenerate Agriculture is a rebranding of many ideas. I think Bill Mollison is a genius. But little is new… Would your view be that his words would hold more weight if he was a poor female POC?
Anyone would hold more weight than a white African privileged and paid academic who convinced a Government to slaughter 40000 innocent native animals for absolutely no reason except his own flawed, extremist. belief system. I’m not talking about YOU, I don’t even know you so why be so defensive? This guy is a genius like Hitler was “ a genius”. A killer. What’s worse wrongly and of innocent creatures, It’s annoying when men get all sensitive and make things all about themselves.. not flash and quite telling about your priority and prejudices. Clearly it’s all about you isnt it? Not. I am allowed to speak from a different perspective than you aren’t I?
Kath I’m defending people who do things. I take offence to keyboard warriors ranting about “privilege” I called Bill Mollison a genius I assume you don’t know who he is Jesus help us
I know enough to know he’s an extremist who doesn’t mind wanton slaughter to further his flawed beliefs and has and will go that far to promote himself using ancient indigenous natural practises which others without that type of shameful personal history of death and destruction and who aren’tcolonisers but like the elephants indigenous people, yes even the Scots and Irish, women and children grabbng platforms for their own aggrandisement now. That type of hypocrisy is revolting. I don’t care if you’re purple or blus male or female or anything in between you cannot deny a certain class has done untold damage to people nature and the planet and should really just sit down and shut up and let the grown ups do the job now given where it’s gotten us all too. Not let their power and control issues and faux victimhood and claims of innocence and remorse go by any longer (because clearly it’s bs) and he’s still appropriating old knowledge without admittting or acknowledging it and trying to be as they say on Dads Army “a very clever dicky”. 😂 No capacity for humility or self reflection whatsoever… that’s manchild male elite privilege for you right there. No show without Punch. They haven’t just treated elephants in Africa that way you know. I don’t care “who” he is it’s his deeds that count and revolt that me. Because that type of man and that type of remorseless arrogance has got us and Earth to where we are today. Sorry, not sorry.
I wouldn't expect Groundswell to have any idea about climate science, their lead even admitted he hadn't read the 3 Waters legislation as he was whipping the farmers into a frenzy about it. They are simply pro status quo and anti anything that imposes cost or regulation on farmers. I think changes to farming are most likely to come from changes in consumer demand or widescale disease or climate event. This stuff is depressing but we have to face it and act on it to have a viable future for ourselves and our kids and grandkids.
Sonya, the only thing that will change farming practices is legislation which forces them to change. This Government can legislate if they choose to, because they get very few farming votes anyway.
Sure they could Dean, but they won't. MPI has been captured by farming interests and while there are few votes for Labour in rural areas, they seem reluctant to make themselves unpopular with legislation that will make a difference. Would love to be proved wrong but as a former policy analyst at MPI I've seen how the sausage gets made.
Unforunately, Sonya, you're right. The Howl of Protest processions with their crazy placards, the occupation of Parliament's lawn & the inarticulate, ill informed spokespersons for Fed Farmers & Groundswell all paint a depressing picture. An interesting rural development is ACT & the Taxpayers Union holding a series of rural meetings & whipping up hysteria against 3 Waters, methane emissions restrictions, etc. This is putting National & Fed Farmers in a difficult position as their former base increasingly moves towards the lunatic fringe.
I still have to remember that Groundswell is something different in NZ to the surfing sustainability festival in Perth haha. Same name, polar opposite politics.
Sadly I think you're right about no major changes happening in the farming sector in NZ. Eventually there will be a demographic shift in who owns these farms, but that is too far away for the changes we need asap.
“Our level of primary knowledge is still very, very low,” he says. “Methane keeps kicking up these surprises"
Thank you for link Bernard, it was an assuring article that the feedback loops will keep looping until either the radio breaks or someone manages to change the 8 track.
Another interesting read from May 2022 about greenhouse gas pollution on CO2 and methane gas, warming feeding the warming.
Will Aotearoa-NZ be able to pivot fast enough in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, are we doing enough as a developed nation to protect our wetlands from emitting more gases, and reducing our methane emissions from agriculture? One remains hopeful..
I just joined The Kākā recently. Top quality research and thinking on the most important issues we are all facing - communicated clearly in a way I can understand and engage with! Really appreciate your work Bernard, thank you! 🙏
There was that cartoon in The Kaka back on the fifteenth where a water company worker was moaning "It's a disaster - there's no river to pump sewerage into!". I wonder how rivers with greatly reduced flow are going what with the usual amount of pollutants being discharged into them but nowhere near as much water to dilute it. And the effect on any aquatic life that may have been there.
Political suicide if you're a politician I know but if the government can give farmers a 95% discount on their GHG emissions, can the government give itself a 95% reduction on the amount of aid it gives to farmers to clean up after the recent flooding?
They can’t even adequately enact laws, rights and resources for women children or the Ill and homeless, simply criminalising and brutalising and monetising kids instead to “save” money irrationally given the effects are the reverse causing MORE costs as mens obligations are avoided. How anyone thinks they can or should pay for rich folks, oil and other big industries and hobbies (male) costs or obligations, with mainly the poor and middle class paying tax, they can’t afford to avoid, is beyond me. How these guys think they afford to do anything else if they can’t get the basics right for the most vulnerable and have the audacity to expect is beyond me.
Sigh... I see so many versions of this comment: "If we let the earth warm enough to start warming itself, we are going to lose this battle". But I'm reading a book about the *current* effects of warming on the forests of the high northern latitudes, where warming is maybe 4x more visible than in the temperate zone. The TL:DR is, the tipping point for an irreversible methane feedback loop is well behind us.
We need to stop using the rhetoric of "we have to stave off the tipping point". Because as soon as people realise it's too late for that, they'll reply "okay then, we'll just give up now, it's over". And it isn't ever going to be over. Every single thing we can do to reduce emissions and speed adaptations, we need to do. The fact that we needed to do it last century is beside the point; we really, really need to do all of it now.
I linked to it lower down in the comments -- it's called The Treeline. The author circumnavigates the world, following the current northern limit for tree growth, & looks at the ways the local ecologies have grown up around particular adaptations to cold, and how that's currently being disrupted. You can literally see the methane bubbling up from the bottom of the meltwater lakes in the Russian taiga. He talks to one researcher who's been studying the taiga for 40 years; she's impatient with the idea that anything we do now can stop the accelerating burnoffs. The trees have a symbiotic relationship with the ice, they're adapted to it & they protect it. As they give way to grass, the permafrost melts faster, more methane's released, it gets hotter, more trees burn... This is 30% of the total forest on the planet we're talking about, and half of it will be gone in 50 years.
It's a fascinating book but it probably should come with a trigger warning for extreme climate depression. I'm trying to treat it as an opportunity to open my eyes wider. The gloom it inspires in me is as short-sighted as the complacency I'm also sometimes prone to. Really bad things are coming, but we don't actually know how it will play out in detail, and our choices still matter.
thanks for sharing. it sounds really interesting (and grim, but here we are). i've got this one in the wings to re-energise - haven't dived into it yet, but the reviews are promising. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57427603-full-circle
Oh thanks. I'll check that out. I'm pretty sceptical of the "find a positive way to look at things" imperative in climate change coverage -- it usually seems like people start with that goal and work to meet it, rather than just going where the observations take them. But I'm definitely here for positive conclusions if they're robust ones!
"France has had to cut back on nuclear power production, which it relies on and in theory should be renewable" - Nuclear is not renewable (but it is also not a fossil fuel).
and
"methane, which is the most potent climate warming emission" - methane is not the MOST potent climate warming emission, it is just a lot more potent than carbon dioxide.
I was unable to read the article without becoming a subscriber, albeit for little for 4 weeks. But the title of the article is relevant to NZ. Here, almost 90% of methane is from livestock, but there is no surge. The level in the MfE's annual GHG inventory report of 21 October21 shows that over 30 years from 1990 to 2019 it's up 9%, and since 2001, not at all. Since 8% or so of methane 'leaves' the 'cloud' of it every year, it's quite straightforward to say that methane emissions from NZ livestock have ceased to increase warming. Since 1990 there are 50% less sheep, 17% less cattle and 15% less deer, which helps explain this.
But it does mean that for methane, NZ agriculture is at 'net zero' emissions, almost 30 years before the rest of the economy's target of net zero at 2050. Before I cover N2O, I want to suggest one reason why many have a totally wrong view of urgency with regard to methane from NZ agriculture (which must reduce and will provide a cooling impetus in doing so). The MfE is stuck producing stats on annual emissions using the GWP100 formula for all gases, which scientists did not want and which produces 'methane misinformation'. MfE is using the formula from the IPCC's 4th assessment report, requiring methane to be reported as 25 times the warming value of carbon over that 100 year time frame. So the annual report shows methane at around 38% of gross GHG emissions on a GWP100 basis, and with N2O at about 10% making agriculture in total 48%, compares it to the 52% from everywhere else, almost entirely from CO2.
This produces the impression methane is warming as much as the 52% from CO2. But it's not, because the 'ins' and 'outs' from NZ livestock methane are in balance - no more warming is coming from there. By contrast, CO2 and N2O from livestock via soils are adding to warming potential every year.
For GWP100 purposes, N2O, nitrous oxide, in NZ is at least 50% from mostly cow urine, and can be compared directly with CO2. So to contrast livestock impact on warming potential via each year's emissions, we need to remove the methane and rebase the the calculations for percentages, without methane. Using the MfE tables, for 2019 this gives 15% for livestock (N2O) and 85% for CO2. It gives a more sensible picture of what sector's gases are actually contributing to warming each additional year.
I've outlined this to suggest farmers are getting a statistically bad rap, and also to imply that one reason for the current HWEN approach from officials (and Shaw) is because of course they know this too. But both livestock-induced gases need action, and N2O perhaps more - where farmers have dragged their feet for decades. There is a strong mitigating solution for leaching, which may also seriously cut N2O emissions, and that is cow barns. Check them out on the web - progressive dairy farmers are experimenting with them and the Govt needs to get in behind this.
By the way, I am not a farmer and don't even know one, but I am interested in policy solutions to the IPCC science. I know from experience you don't get them easily if you misuse data.
Your facts are wrong. There are about the same number of beef cows in NZ as there were in 1990, but the number of dairy cattle has doubled from 4 million to 8 million. Because of this methane is not set at zero as today's methane, while it has a relatively short half life, is being replaced all the time.
John, I got those animal stock facts from the MfE from its website under 'climate change' and the data I quoted is from its stocktake spreadsheet, which I downloaded. The methane 'bathtub' effect for NZ's livestock is attested to by those figures, together with the science about its dissipation. The science can be found by Googling GWP*100, where the * is intended to indicate a measurement system that accounts for the much shoter life in the atmosphere of methane.
Dairy cattle numbers increased by 82 percent nationally from 3.4 million to 6.3 million
Between 1990 and 2019
My claim of 8 million was wide of the mark but Stat NZ should be correct. As far as methane goes, it's short life in the atmosphere is only important if dairy cow numbers drop.
There you go John. And its short life is very important, or we would be completely done I think.
There has been no increase each year in methane emissions since 2001 - it's been flat. Since it declines naturally at about 8% a year, it's clear that if we put no more in each year for 20 years and it declines naturally each year (there's a half life that's longer than 12 years I think, so I assume that's why the scientists are being just practical with saying 8% a year), then NZ's livestock methane gas cloud is not growing - it may well be shrinking. So that means it is not ADDING to warming - it still warms, but no more each year than the last. Whereas the CO2 we pump out each year does not dissipate even in 100 or several hundred years, so it continues to add to warming. That's what net zero 2050 means - by then we are targetting the same result for CO2 as we already have for methane.
This difference is major, and it is never referred to for NZ agriculture, which of course it should be. If 'farmers' are already at net zero with 80% of their emissions (the methane, the rest is N2O) then why is the 'city' yelling at them to cut methane when the city has not cut CO2, which continues to do more damage? We need the farmers onside - to slowly reduce methane with technology and what will be slow destocking as genetics deliver better milk from fewer cows and more importantly, to focus on cow barns and other expensive ways to stop urine leaching.
Reductions in the size of the methane cloud by reducing annual emissions into it will actually be cooling. When we stop net CO2 we won't be cooling, we will just have stopped warming any more.
Loved the dog slide, not so much the lack of water for French nuclear reactor.
More links please Bernard? Also can we do a group buy on Xanax?
Consider me in.
More links pls Bernard
Interesting Bernard especially about the methane. What dies Groundswell think, if they do think? Tipping points are now “baked in” in a manner of speaking. The most ecologically destructive sector is pasture fed Beef and Lamb. See George Monbiot “Regenesis” recently published. His advice to dairy farmers is “sell” , the farm I mean. The idea that we can continue our grossly profligate emissions to “feed the world “is Magical Thinking. Farming is the most destructive enterprise.
Keep up good work.
Patrick Medlicott
For you, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI 😀
This is darkly amusing only an extremely entitled man would get up on stage promoting long and well known permaculture and regeneration practises after unnecessarily killing 40000 beautiful creatures because he had a privileged position, supreme confidence bordering on arrogance and again by virtue of his own self entitled privileged attitude and complete IGNORANCE and then tries it on again. If anyone else of a different class or background tried that on they’d be booed off the stage after such grossly incompetent, cruel, heinous acts, mass unnecessary ecocide, death and destruction. Then to claim to promote what is well known anyway to anyone with half an inch of gardening or farming experience (as he does actually say) is just spectacular unashamed arrogance lacking any shame or humility whatsoever for what he’s done. He really should sit down and shut up and let others without so much wasted blood on their hands and probably better knowledge speak. “There is no other way” and “only one way” sounds like the same self assured bs all over again. We know big polluters doing most of the damage elsewhere aren’t going to pay to regenerate anywhere or stop polluting if they can pay peanuts and faux “carbon credit”,to Governments that will misspend or misuse it anyway, their way out of consequences unless they already voluntarily began years ago when it was proven and obvious to industry the damage being done and unless countries regulate and charge polluters with ecocide and ensure they clean up their mess….if it’s even possible and imprison those responsible or complicit.The current economic system will ensure they don’t and force average people into more taxes, levies higher costs, poverty, deprivation, brutalisation, illness and consign billions and the planet to death before Governments will transform their economies to prioritising the public good rather than private profit for corporates and the few captive and privileged class in each country only. Clearly this man from Africa who persuaded a Government to needlessly slaughter 40000 elephants belongs to one of those groups. But hey he feels a bit bad about it so that’s ok. We should let other violent criminals off in the same way maybe? “Oops so sorry” then let them shamelessly promote tax payer paid and others work as their own as well. Total exploitative entitled shit … no problem dude! You’ve made good… yeah, NAH .
Elephants are one of my favourite animals, as you can probably tell…because they’re another creature more civilised and less destructive than humans are and deserve to be able to live and not be culled for nothing by white men with God complexes that border on insanity and Because the ends justifies their means even when totally wrong and at other peoples or creatures cost and lives. As long as they and only they remain on centre stage, in control and pulling the strings against all decency and failing a simple self test of …”is doing this right or wrong?”
Should I hang my head in shame Kath because I’m a mostly white well off middle aged man for posting a positive message? Regenerate Agriculture is a rebranding of many ideas. I think Bill Mollison is a genius. But little is new… Would your view be that his words would hold more weight if he was a poor female POC?
Anyone would hold more weight than a white African privileged and paid academic who convinced a Government to slaughter 40000 innocent native animals for absolutely no reason except his own flawed, extremist. belief system. I’m not talking about YOU, I don’t even know you so why be so defensive? This guy is a genius like Hitler was “ a genius”. A killer. What’s worse wrongly and of innocent creatures, It’s annoying when men get all sensitive and make things all about themselves.. not flash and quite telling about your priority and prejudices. Clearly it’s all about you isnt it? Not. I am allowed to speak from a different perspective than you aren’t I?
“ I think Bill Mollison is a genius “
Kath I’m defending people who do things. I take offence to keyboard warriors ranting about “privilege” I called Bill Mollison a genius I assume you don’t know who he is Jesus help us
I know enough to know he’s an extremist who doesn’t mind wanton slaughter to further his flawed beliefs and has and will go that far to promote himself using ancient indigenous natural practises which others without that type of shameful personal history of death and destruction and who aren’tcolonisers but like the elephants indigenous people, yes even the Scots and Irish, women and children grabbng platforms for their own aggrandisement now. That type of hypocrisy is revolting. I don’t care if you’re purple or blus male or female or anything in between you cannot deny a certain class has done untold damage to people nature and the planet and should really just sit down and shut up and let the grown ups do the job now given where it’s gotten us all too. Not let their power and control issues and faux victimhood and claims of innocence and remorse go by any longer (because clearly it’s bs) and he’s still appropriating old knowledge without admittting or acknowledging it and trying to be as they say on Dads Army “a very clever dicky”. 😂 No capacity for humility or self reflection whatsoever… that’s manchild male elite privilege for you right there. No show without Punch. They haven’t just treated elephants in Africa that way you know. I don’t care “who” he is it’s his deeds that count and revolt that me. Because that type of man and that type of remorseless arrogance has got us and Earth to where we are today. Sorry, not sorry.
I wouldn't expect Groundswell to have any idea about climate science, their lead even admitted he hadn't read the 3 Waters legislation as he was whipping the farmers into a frenzy about it. They are simply pro status quo and anti anything that imposes cost or regulation on farmers. I think changes to farming are most likely to come from changes in consumer demand or widescale disease or climate event. This stuff is depressing but we have to face it and act on it to have a viable future for ourselves and our kids and grandkids.
Sonya, the only thing that will change farming practices is legislation which forces them to change. This Government can legislate if they choose to, because they get very few farming votes anyway.
Sure they could Dean, but they won't. MPI has been captured by farming interests and while there are few votes for Labour in rural areas, they seem reluctant to make themselves unpopular with legislation that will make a difference. Would love to be proved wrong but as a former policy analyst at MPI I've seen how the sausage gets made.
Unforunately, Sonya, you're right. The Howl of Protest processions with their crazy placards, the occupation of Parliament's lawn & the inarticulate, ill informed spokespersons for Fed Farmers & Groundswell all paint a depressing picture. An interesting rural development is ACT & the Taxpayers Union holding a series of rural meetings & whipping up hysteria against 3 Waters, methane emissions restrictions, etc. This is putting National & Fed Farmers in a difficult position as their former base increasingly moves towards the lunatic fringe.
Definitely they have weaponised by the dairy mafia. MPI "agents" did a dawn raid and laptop confiscation on the guy selling me non-fonterra milk!
I still have to remember that Groundswell is something different in NZ to the surfing sustainability festival in Perth haha. Same name, polar opposite politics.
Sadly I think you're right about no major changes happening in the farming sector in NZ. Eventually there will be a demographic shift in who owns these farms, but that is too far away for the changes we need asap.
“Our level of primary knowledge is still very, very low,” he says. “Methane keeps kicking up these surprises"
Thank you for link Bernard, it was an assuring article that the feedback loops will keep looping until either the radio breaks or someone manages to change the 8 track.
Another interesting read from May 2022 about greenhouse gas pollution on CO2 and methane gas, warming feeding the warming.
https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2877/Greenhouse-gas-pollution-trapped-49-more-heat-in-2021-than-in-1990-NOAA-finds
Will Aotearoa-NZ be able to pivot fast enough in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, are we doing enough as a developed nation to protect our wetlands from emitting more gases, and reducing our methane emissions from agriculture? One remains hopeful..
I only recently learnt how much methane is emitted from hydro electric dams as well, another methane issue to add to the mix
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/nov/14/hydroelectric-dams-emit-billion-tonnes-greenhouse-gas-methane-study-climate-change
I just joined The Kākā recently. Top quality research and thinking on the most important issues we are all facing - communicated clearly in a way I can understand and engage with! Really appreciate your work Bernard, thank you! 🙏
There was that cartoon in The Kaka back on the fifteenth where a water company worker was moaning "It's a disaster - there's no river to pump sewerage into!". I wonder how rivers with greatly reduced flow are going what with the usual amount of pollutants being discharged into them but nowhere near as much water to dilute it. And the effect on any aquatic life that may have been there.
Political suicide if you're a politician I know but if the government can give farmers a 95% discount on their GHG emissions, can the government give itself a 95% reduction on the amount of aid it gives to farmers to clean up after the recent flooding?
They can’t even adequately enact laws, rights and resources for women children or the Ill and homeless, simply criminalising and brutalising and monetising kids instead to “save” money irrationally given the effects are the reverse causing MORE costs as mens obligations are avoided. How anyone thinks they can or should pay for rich folks, oil and other big industries and hobbies (male) costs or obligations, with mainly the poor and middle class paying tax, they can’t afford to avoid, is beyond me. How these guys think they afford to do anything else if they can’t get the basics right for the most vulnerable and have the audacity to expect is beyond me.
Would love to get another link to that horrid methane story, Bernard!
There's a lot on this topic here, if you're interested. It's a longish book, very well reported & written.
https://www.amazon.com/Treeline-Last-Forest-Future-Earth-ebook/dp/B094N2N2L6/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Sigh... I see so many versions of this comment: "If we let the earth warm enough to start warming itself, we are going to lose this battle". But I'm reading a book about the *current* effects of warming on the forests of the high northern latitudes, where warming is maybe 4x more visible than in the temperate zone. The TL:DR is, the tipping point for an irreversible methane feedback loop is well behind us.
We need to stop using the rhetoric of "we have to stave off the tipping point". Because as soon as people realise it's too late for that, they'll reply "okay then, we'll just give up now, it's over". And it isn't ever going to be over. Every single thing we can do to reduce emissions and speed adaptations, we need to do. The fact that we needed to do it last century is beside the point; we really, really need to do all of it now.
what are you reading? this was my understanding also, but nothing i've seen recently acknowledges this.
I linked to it lower down in the comments -- it's called The Treeline. The author circumnavigates the world, following the current northern limit for tree growth, & looks at the ways the local ecologies have grown up around particular adaptations to cold, and how that's currently being disrupted. You can literally see the methane bubbling up from the bottom of the meltwater lakes in the Russian taiga. He talks to one researcher who's been studying the taiga for 40 years; she's impatient with the idea that anything we do now can stop the accelerating burnoffs. The trees have a symbiotic relationship with the ice, they're adapted to it & they protect it. As they give way to grass, the permafrost melts faster, more methane's released, it gets hotter, more trees burn... This is 30% of the total forest on the planet we're talking about, and half of it will be gone in 50 years.
It's a fascinating book but it probably should come with a trigger warning for extreme climate depression. I'm trying to treat it as an opportunity to open my eyes wider. The gloom it inspires in me is as short-sighted as the complacency I'm also sometimes prone to. Really bad things are coming, but we don't actually know how it will play out in detail, and our choices still matter.
thanks for sharing. it sounds really interesting (and grim, but here we are). i've got this one in the wings to re-energise - haven't dived into it yet, but the reviews are promising. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57427603-full-circle
Oh thanks. I'll check that out. I'm pretty sceptical of the "find a positive way to look at things" imperative in climate change coverage -- it usually seems like people start with that goal and work to meet it, rather than just going where the observations take them. But I'm definitely here for positive conclusions if they're robust ones!
I'm wondering if Aotearoa will also experience hydro-electric power shortages this summer, as it looks like it might be a hot, dry one.
A couple of minor things jumped out at me today:
"France has had to cut back on nuclear power production, which it relies on and in theory should be renewable" - Nuclear is not renewable (but it is also not a fossil fuel).
and
"methane, which is the most potent climate warming emission" - methane is not the MOST potent climate warming emission, it is just a lot more potent than carbon dioxide.
I was also going to mention that nuclear isn't renewable :) Thanks for also picking that up.
I was unable to read the article without becoming a subscriber, albeit for little for 4 weeks. But the title of the article is relevant to NZ. Here, almost 90% of methane is from livestock, but there is no surge. The level in the MfE's annual GHG inventory report of 21 October21 shows that over 30 years from 1990 to 2019 it's up 9%, and since 2001, not at all. Since 8% or so of methane 'leaves' the 'cloud' of it every year, it's quite straightforward to say that methane emissions from NZ livestock have ceased to increase warming. Since 1990 there are 50% less sheep, 17% less cattle and 15% less deer, which helps explain this.
But it does mean that for methane, NZ agriculture is at 'net zero' emissions, almost 30 years before the rest of the economy's target of net zero at 2050. Before I cover N2O, I want to suggest one reason why many have a totally wrong view of urgency with regard to methane from NZ agriculture (which must reduce and will provide a cooling impetus in doing so). The MfE is stuck producing stats on annual emissions using the GWP100 formula for all gases, which scientists did not want and which produces 'methane misinformation'. MfE is using the formula from the IPCC's 4th assessment report, requiring methane to be reported as 25 times the warming value of carbon over that 100 year time frame. So the annual report shows methane at around 38% of gross GHG emissions on a GWP100 basis, and with N2O at about 10% making agriculture in total 48%, compares it to the 52% from everywhere else, almost entirely from CO2.
This produces the impression methane is warming as much as the 52% from CO2. But it's not, because the 'ins' and 'outs' from NZ livestock methane are in balance - no more warming is coming from there. By contrast, CO2 and N2O from livestock via soils are adding to warming potential every year.
For GWP100 purposes, N2O, nitrous oxide, in NZ is at least 50% from mostly cow urine, and can be compared directly with CO2. So to contrast livestock impact on warming potential via each year's emissions, we need to remove the methane and rebase the the calculations for percentages, without methane. Using the MfE tables, for 2019 this gives 15% for livestock (N2O) and 85% for CO2. It gives a more sensible picture of what sector's gases are actually contributing to warming each additional year.
I've outlined this to suggest farmers are getting a statistically bad rap, and also to imply that one reason for the current HWEN approach from officials (and Shaw) is because of course they know this too. But both livestock-induced gases need action, and N2O perhaps more - where farmers have dragged their feet for decades. There is a strong mitigating solution for leaching, which may also seriously cut N2O emissions, and that is cow barns. Check them out on the web - progressive dairy farmers are experimenting with them and the Govt needs to get in behind this.
By the way, I am not a farmer and don't even know one, but I am interested in policy solutions to the IPCC science. I know from experience you don't get them easily if you misuse data.
Your facts are wrong. There are about the same number of beef cows in NZ as there were in 1990, but the number of dairy cattle has doubled from 4 million to 8 million. Because of this methane is not set at zero as today's methane, while it has a relatively short half life, is being replaced all the time.
John, I got those animal stock facts from the MfE from its website under 'climate change' and the data I quoted is from its stocktake spreadsheet, which I downloaded. The methane 'bathtub' effect for NZ's livestock is attested to by those figures, together with the science about its dissipation. The science can be found by Googling GWP*100, where the * is intended to indicate a measurement system that accounts for the much shoter life in the atmosphere of methane.
Stats NZ
Updated
15 April 2021
Next update
April 2024
Dairy cattle numbers increased by 82 percent nationally from 3.4 million to 6.3 million
Between 1990 and 2019
My claim of 8 million was wide of the mark but Stat NZ should be correct. As far as methane goes, it's short life in the atmosphere is only important if dairy cow numbers drop.
There you go John. And its short life is very important, or we would be completely done I think.
There has been no increase each year in methane emissions since 2001 - it's been flat. Since it declines naturally at about 8% a year, it's clear that if we put no more in each year for 20 years and it declines naturally each year (there's a half life that's longer than 12 years I think, so I assume that's why the scientists are being just practical with saying 8% a year), then NZ's livestock methane gas cloud is not growing - it may well be shrinking. So that means it is not ADDING to warming - it still warms, but no more each year than the last. Whereas the CO2 we pump out each year does not dissipate even in 100 or several hundred years, so it continues to add to warming. That's what net zero 2050 means - by then we are targetting the same result for CO2 as we already have for methane.
This difference is major, and it is never referred to for NZ agriculture, which of course it should be. If 'farmers' are already at net zero with 80% of their emissions (the methane, the rest is N2O) then why is the 'city' yelling at them to cut methane when the city has not cut CO2, which continues to do more damage? We need the farmers onside - to slowly reduce methane with technology and what will be slow destocking as genetics deliver better milk from fewer cows and more importantly, to focus on cow barns and other expensive ways to stop urine leaching.
Reductions in the size of the methane cloud by reducing annual emissions into it will actually be cooling. When we stop net CO2 we won't be cooling, we will just have stopped warming any more.