The Prime Minister John Howard seems to get all the breaks. There was Tampa a couple of federal elections ago, then the terrorists bomb plot uncovered the day he introduced the IR legislation into parliament and now, the week the Prime Minister gets to host the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, science journal Nature publishes a paper attacking "one of Kyoto's conceptual cores".
Under Kyoto, trees are good. Forests count as a sink for carbon, with carbon credits for trading being available to those who plant forests in accordance with Kyoto rules.
But carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas, there are a few others including methane. Methane is about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a warming gas.
The new study led by Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute in Germany has found living plants emit methane and calculates that all the world's living vegetation (forests included!) could emit between 62 and 236 million tonne of methane per year. This is apparently equivalent to between 10 and 30 per cent of all annual global emissions.
The finding is being hailed as an explanation as to why methane emissions had been reducing - by about 20 million tones a year during the 1990s. And I had been sure methane emissions were going up and up, click here for related blog piece with graph of atmospheric methane levels.
The reason methane levels are now thought to have been reducing during the 1990s is because we apparently cut down 12 per cent of the world's tropical forests during that decade, click here.
How have global methane emission being trending over the last 5 years?
How does planting a forest compare with defrosting a Siberian swamp - in terms of adding methane to the atmosphere?
What are the implications for Kyoto participants if forests are a source rather than a sink for greenhouse gases?
Australia, a Kyoto dissident, is nevertheless on target to meet its Kyoto targets because it has banned broad scale trees clearing. But hang-on, maybe it will now be OK to clear regrowth?
So many questions!
I had avoided the issue of carbon trading and targets in the piece I recently wrote for the Courier-Mail about the the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, click here. It looks like the rules might have to be rewritten now anyway.
Imagine trees emitting methane! Who said the science was settled?
Cut down the trees, save the environment
For all those who don’t know what the Kyoto Protocol is, why not stupids? Just kidding, I had to look it up.
“The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement under which industrialized countries will reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gas...
The following comment, received via email made me smile:
"Reading this Fin Times Comment in Bernie Pieser's newsletter on the plant methane discovery:
Sceptics of the Kyoto protocol will seize on the findings as evidence of the need for caution before instituting counter-measures. Environmentalists, sensing a backlash from the research, are already insisting that the findings are preliminary and should not detract from scientists' consensus view that global warming is a genuine threat.
I suddendly realised that, if one were to apply the "Precautionary Principle" here,
uncertainty about the science cannot be used as a reason for discounting the plant methane "threat"!
end of quote
AND - furthermore I AM NOT EMOTIVE. NOT. NOT. NOT. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Aw Rog - what utter tripe. I have made an extremely good arguments against Louis's arrant nonsense. And it is arrant nonsense. Ask your local uni physics lecturer. Ask your horse.
So forget Philosophy 101. No authority at all - it's a well written and logically argued URL. I could have cause para-phrased it by why bother.
I am not saying something like "look bloody hell "Plimer wrote this" and he's a famous person so it must be true". That's an appeal to authority. I'm saying the RC posts I draw your attention to are informative and are referenced. Feel free to comment - many do.
Failure to address my reasonable concerns IMHO consign you guys to the class of charlatans, rapscallions, bounders, cads, and sophists. Unless of course it's a comedy site and the joke is on us for falling for it.
And you're also a bit naughty and need a smack.
Rog
This is the standard debating technique of the Greens etc - they make a sensational allegation insisting it is true but require their critics to disprove them, rather than they substantiate their allegation with facts.
This methane business has really stirred the apple cart - since now assumptions of previous climate states also now are incomplete.
Ender, Phil Dones arguments are fallacious in that his argument is that his case must be argued against and anybody who fails to do so has lost.
For instance P Done says " Your failure to address my substantive points above and your ongoing utterly preposterous comments about climate on your closed blog puts you in the class of charlatans and sophists."
He also likes to use the "appeals to authority" trick eg "Please read the RC url I have provided - it is well written and non-emotive"
Unlike P Done who is always emotive.
Paul Williams,
further to Helen's explation of the workings of the energy grants credits scheme, I would briefly like to point out the rationale behind it.
Excise on fuel was introduced as a tax on road users to fund new projects and maintenance of existing roads.
The energy grants credits scheme (fomerly the more honestly titled Off Road Diesel Fuel Rebate scheme)was introduced to rebate that excise to those industries that use diesel off road.This, as Helen pointed out, includes earthmoving, mining, fisheries, forestry, nursing homes and hospitals(for heating) etc as well as agriculture.
I realize this is off topic, but it's a real bugbear of mine to be constantly told by the "city folk" that farmers receive subsidised fuel.
rog - "A fallacious argument if I ever heard one"
Which one - try to find it here http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
Nowhere there is backing up arguments with accurate scientific data.
He's been corrected but has not desisted. Obviously not a professional nor a scholar.
What's your point about RC? Are you worried about "real" scientists being baffled. There's lots of baffling things - like the mass of the Higg's boson for example. Google that !
Phil, you say that your posts are substantive then demand they be countered. A fallacious argument if I ever heard one.
Real Climate says "Scientists baffled!" Breaking news?
Obviously you are not a scientist!