A Letter to MP’s: Unrealistic Targets & Misleading Science

Dear Ministers,

I am in receipt of your letter to National Party rural supporters on the Government commitments to the Paris Agreement.

Your newsletter totally avoids the issue of how you are going to meet your Paris commitments.

From previous comments there appears to be a fanciful belief that some significant reduction can be made to livestock methane by the use of a technology such as boluses, vaccines, genetics etc. The public reaction overseas to bovaer coupled with the cost and effort to farmers should tell you that that is not a solution.

You will no doubt be hearing from many scientists telling you they are on the brink of a solution, just a few more millions in research needed. Unfortunately they have been doing that for decades and but their claims never eventuate- only the demand for more funding.

In reality, the only way to reduce stock methane is to reduce stock.

Like every other country, NZ will not meet its commitments so your latest change will mean that NZ has to pay for the shortfall. In the process it will destroy our agricultural industry and increase poverty in NZ.

You have been sent the Groundswell response to the Methane Review Panel report. You need to read the Groundswell response but it is fairly technical, so please concentrate your mind on the figures I am about to give you.

My first number is based on a number stated by the Ministry for the Environment; that the cumulative warming caused by NZ's anthropogenic methane in the 172 years from 1850 until 2022 is 0.0021°C, this equates to 0.000012 °C/year. BUT because NZ livestock has reduced significantly, the number going forward, as calculated by Professor David Frame, is of the order of 0.00001 °C/year.

• 1st 0.00001 °C/year or 10 millionths of a degree/year

Now atmospheric temperature measurements have an average margin of error of ± 0.35. So my second number is the number of years it would take for warming from NZ's methane to equal the margin of error (i.e. to reach a value that might be measurable). That number is 0.35/0.00001 = 35000

• 2nd 35,000 years

So it will take 35,000 years before NZ's warming could even be noticed, but that is not the end of it, that warming would be lost in the noise of the variability of global temperatures.

In the 13 months from January 2023 world temperature increased by 1 °C. From February 2024 until this January, it decreased by just on 0.5 degrees (see UAH global temperature below) What temperature change is caused by nature and what is caused by man is very difficult to determine (that 1 °C increase was not expected, was not explained by the climate models and while there are some suggestions, such as the water vapour put into the air by the Hunga Tonga Ha'apai , the cause of that increase is unknown).

In 1995 the scientists preparing the summary for policy makers wrote that they would need to have more data on natural variation before they could determine whether any increase was caused by CO2. So, what is natural and what is caused by humans is difficult to determine.

In 35,000 years Earth will be well into the next glacial period, many degrees cooler than now, glaciers will be advancing across the northern hemisphere, permanent ice will cover most of northern Europe, Asia and America. The cold oceans will have absorbed CO2 to the point where atmospheric CO2 is less than 190 ppm, plants die, most land is desert and dust storms ravage the planet. (plants die from lack of CO2 when it goes below ~200 ppm)

This is written in the ice record, it will happen again as it has happened, repeatedly, in the past, see evidence below.

Global Methane

Now let us consider global methane. Methane's ability to absorb energy is 30 times that of CO2 at present concentrations, but CO2 is increasing 300 times faster than methane. So from adding one methane we get 30 warming units = 30 and for every methane CO2 increases 300 fold, so 300 CO2 @ 1 warming unit each = 300. Warming from methane then is only 10% of the warming from CO2. Not the 28 times worse that you use.

The warming caused by the increase in CO2 (at the present rate of increase) is 0.85 °C/century. methane is a tenth of that at 0.085 °C/century, that is 0.00085 °C /year or 0.86 thousandths of a degree/year.

The additional warming caused by the increase in methane, based on its present rate of increase.

• 3rd 0.00085 °C /year (0.85 Thousandths of a degree/year)

Which means it would take 412 years to reach the error margin of temperature measurements, let alone have any significant effect on global temperatures

• 4th 412 years

In 400 years time the next cyclic cold period will be well underway and that will be colder than the last Little Ice Age.

Ministers, the first two numbers are based on MfE values, they are your figures.

The numbers 3 & 4 are based on very sound research that has become available in the last few years but ignored by the Methane Review Panel.

• The choice for you, Minister, is to pour billions of dollars into a failed venture and destroy the NZ economy, or to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

• To continue to waste taxpayers money on a temperature increase that is so minuscule as to be unmeasurable for 35000 years, is the epitome of madness.

Lets not pull punches Minister, do you want to be remembered as a politician of merit, or a dumb naive gullible idiot.

To stay in Paris is virtue signalling for no benefit to anybody, will the world follow our lead ?

Reflect on this;

USA, Indonesia have pulled out of Paris, Argentina is set to follow

BRICS group are not taking part except for China who has no intention of reducing its use of fossil fuels - it is there merely to help push the western world to its own destruction

EU & UK are in industrial decline with an energy crisis on hand. They will move politically to the right in the near future and pull out of Paris or renege on commitments.

Canada is in political turmoil and if a center right group takes over it will pull out of Paris.

Mitigation is at a dead end. Adaptation is the new buzz word. Why throw good money after bad. The NZ green fringe will just have to bite the bullet of reality so stop appeasing them.

Pull out of Paris now

Yours sincerely

Peter Foster

• BSc Hons Biochemistry (Otago). 1995 recipient of a FORST fellowship in the Geology Department Otago University.

• Leader of Vanda Station Antaractica 1985/86 and leader of Cape Hallet demolition team 1987.

• Has studied climate literature since 2007 with particular emphasis on methane since 2018.

---