Now it’s “carbon-free” farming, but what is it? Why do it?

One of the few valid applications of the well-known propaganda term “carbon emissions” (heard of chemistry?). Listen: it’s called carbon dioxide. In a similar way, we don’t try to call water (dihydrogen monoxide) hydrogen.

Eh?

Basically, we don’t know what carbon-free means, we don’t know how to achieve it and we don’t know what it might cause. But oh, yes, we’re going for it! (Big silly grin.) Welcome to the rabbit hole.

from Scoop (h/t Andy S.)

The new Government has set a goal of New Zealand achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Farming leaders with the support of the Government are stating their support for this goal and the agri-food sector playing its part in achieving it.

This is a very ambitious and challenging target for the agri-food sector. We have agreed that there is more work required to understand exactly what this means and how we can achieve it. – emphasis added

This is utter nonsense. By this blunder alone — and there have been many others — the Peters-appointed coalition government secures its release from power at our earliest convenience.

Demand to know why!

Announcing the goal before investigating is not the way to run a solid government, yet these Muppets admit they don’t know what it means and they don’t know how to achieve it. Our beloved nation has been thrown down the rabbit hole and if you think “zero carbon emissions” is strange, it’s only the beginning. This “aspirational” goal is 32 years away, which leaves plenty of time for ample messing about with our productive capacity, our money and our prosperity.

Kiwis: Opening your eyes to the things that the odd concept of “fighting climate change” is doing to our country will help a lot but describing in a firm clear voice what you see and what you want would be better. The warmsters are winning only through your refusal to raise a clamour and stop them.

No warming, no problem

There’s no reason to push ourselves into a simple-minded zero emissions policy, yet even that foolishness is exceeded by not knowing what effects it might have. Dr Mike Kelly tells us exactly how our emissions are swamped by China’s no matter what we do. If we cease all production and return to our caves, the climate will still receive vastly more emissions than before.

The Royal Society refuses to tell us how we’re warming the climate, so why does this leaders’ group claim to know more than the RS? As we’ve published several times here:

Official New Zealand temperature records for eight years in the 1860s, which are both reliable and area-representative, show the absolute mean temperature was then 13.1°C. A 30-year government record for the period ending 1919 shows the mean temperature to be 12.8°C. The current normal (30-year) mean 7SS temperature is 12.9°C. Clearly, New Zealand mean temperatures have remained almost perfectly stable during the past 150 years.

Can we trust this new “informal” group? How did it come together? Considering the witless target their first year has produced, I don’t trust them a bit.

The Farming Leaders Group is an informal grouping of New Zealand farming leaders that was established in May 2017 to work on issues of importance to the sector.  Members hail from Dairy NZ, Federated Farmers, Beef and Lamb New Zealand, Sheep and Beef Farmer, Meat Industry Association, Fonterra Shareholders Council, Irrigation NZ, Horticulture NZ, FOMA, Apiculture NZ, LIC, Foundation of Arable Research, and Deer Industry NZ.

Let’s be realistic here. This group will be informal in the same way that groups appointed by the Inquisition, or Napoleon, or the SS, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao or the UN were informal. We can be confident that this brand-new FLGship for global warming parades a carefully chosen selection of the finest global warming activists from among those otherwise sensible memberships. There’s no way, for example, that a majority of our farmers supports the idea of zero carbon emissions. Farmers are educated realists who understand that the concept of “carbon” emissions is something that might apply when burning the rubbish but not when a cow burps.

I should have added they also understand that, since you cannot burn fuel without producing carbon dioxide, reducing carbon dioxide means abstaining from work. Not a good idea.

Ask why!

Carbon is carbon; carbon dioxide is not carbon.

But it seems we’re sliding downhill every day.

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17 Thoughts on “Now it’s “carbon-free” farming, but what is it? Why do it?

  1. Andy on 02/07/2018 at 2:10 pm said:

    Isn’t it interesting that they make a target and then state that more work is needed to understand what it means?

    We need a conversation, and probably some working groups to engage with “key stakeholders” and Iwi, going forward

  2. Richard Treadgold on 02/07/2018 at 2:16 pm said:

    It’s nuts, isn’t it? Horse before the cart, oh, oops. I’ll have a bite to eat then post my letter to Jacinda.

  3. Andy on 02/07/2018 at 3:20 pm said:

    Jacinda is probably wishing for an “emissions free future” of a different sort, right now

  4. Andy on 02/07/2018 at 4:46 pm said:

    Greenpeace turned up just down the road from me to protest a big dairy farm.
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/dairy/105157124/greenpeace-protests-mega-dairy-conversion-in-the-mackenzie-district

    Just as well they did it this year. A year ago they’d be in knee deep snow

    For the record, I have mixed feelings on this. I’m not sure that the Mackenzie Country is the place for dairy.

  5. Simon on 03/07/2018 at 1:49 pm said:

    Nobody know yet how methane emissions will be treated with this zero carbon target. If it is ignored or has a very short lifespan, then the target will be much easier to achieve. It is not hard for a farmer to become carbon neutral, just plant some trees on the steep stuff out the back.

  6. Brett Keane on 03/07/2018 at 6:20 pm said:

    I had to write a farm carbon cycle study at Massey in ’03. People forget the beneficial effects of drainage on methane reduction for instance. Likewise on the NOX cycle and promotion of soil respiration, plus enhanced CO2 conversion to organic buildup. This I have seen as humus builds on medium high rainfall hill country for instance. There are two sides to the story at least, and we only hear one.
    Yes, the hill country that is steep, up to one third of about 70% of our farmland, should be replanted in a mix of short and longer rotations. Perhaps better left to owners’ discretion as to species (thus a wider variety, who knows what will be needed one day). The fert it would have had can more effectively be used on the gentler slopes.
    Between us we have vast knowledge of our land, and nowhere better demonstrated than by following the Farm Forestry Assoc.. We also know, as I learnt from investigation, that any actual farming net emissions are lost in the annual changes plus margins of error. Acting on different bases would be a crime of theft.

  7. Andy on 04/07/2018 at 1:35 pm said:

    Why should farmers plant the trees? We are all consumers of products from farms. I think there should be a requirement for all comrades to plant a minimum number of trees a week. Men with clipboards can check the tree quota that the comrades have planted. Anyone who doesn’t meet their quota will be sent to a re-education camp for “deniers”.

    By the way, I recall that Mao made his peasants shoot birds because they were eating food from the trees that was meant for humans . I don’t think we are quite at that level of stupidity yet, but just give it time..

  8. Simon on 04/07/2018 at 4:50 pm said:

    Financial reasons for planting: timber + carbon and nitrogen credits.
    Environmental reasons for planting: Flood protection, erosion mitigation, nitrogen fixation, soil improvement, increased biodiversity, shelter, carbon neutrality.
    The current government will even subsidise planting.
    Last week it was Nazis, this week it’s Mao. Once again Andy kills the discussion with hyperbole.

  9. Andy on 04/07/2018 at 5:12 pm said:

    Make hyperbole great again !

  10. Brett Keane on 04/07/2018 at 11:30 pm said:

    Farmers, mind you, are the biggest Foresters in the land. The denizens of those white dots on the map surrounded by green, you know, the townsfolk, cannot see that from the tarseal.
    The methane scam however, is all about billionths of the atmosphere. Any scientist understands that such dosage is less than irrelevant. Not only Mao but Stalin and all communist dictators were mighty murderers of countryfolk. Now we see how “farmers will have to” this and that. Always leads to a horror story followed by mass starvation as we know, in living memory…… We live and learn or else!

  11. Richard Treadgold on 05/07/2018 at 9:05 am said:

    Brett,

    Stop that. You’re frightening the children. It can’t happen here. Surely.

  12. Andy on 05/07/2018 at 9:43 am said:

    Having recently read The Gulag Archipelago and a book on the Chinese Cultural Revolution, I am reminded how recent these events were.

    We do not, as Brett suggests, learn from history and are doomed to repeat it

    I am constantly surprised by the number of people who think that tyranny and war will never happen again, and that we have somehow reached the perfect zenith of human civility

  13. Richard Treadgold on 05/07/2018 at 10:33 am said:

    Andy,

    These are horrible events. As soon as the latest one ends our mind scrubs our memories clean of them, hence we forget. Hence we need someone to say to us: we shall remember them. And other memorable things. All right, all right! I’ll keep the blog alive!

    You say “that we have somehow reached the perfect zenith of human civility.” It’s a lovely phrase that sums up what we do.

  14. Andy on 05/07/2018 at 11:07 am said:

    If you want an example of tyranny under Soviet rule, the attacks on the Kulaks is particularly distressing

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak

    It is almost exactly 100 years since this purge on farmers started.

  15. Brett Keane on 06/07/2018 at 8:46 am said:

    Sadly, the words and actions of those who call us deniers reveal there is no change in the behaviour of true believers. James Cook U is just one example, NZ has plenty.

    However, while the rule of Law stil obtains, we carry on. while nature does the job for us. I made a start with a vigourous submission on the Zero carbon Commission website. For starters. Took a while to figure out how to penetrate the pre-structured configuration. Good luck with the submission to the PM.
    RNZ commntary re Pruitt shows their continuing and illegal bias…… He did a good job. One thing coming through is weariness in the US fom the stream of false propaganda emanating from billionaires who are sworn to destroy the West. Reminds me of the plutocrats who toppled the Roman Republic, in favour of Ceasars as it turned out. Owned by them at least for a while.

  16. Stephanie Hawking on 06/07/2018 at 10:11 am said:

    https://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/nz-temp-record/temperature-trends-from-raw-data

    The warming trend over the 77 year period of this series is close to 1°C
    We have analysed raw data from these sites directly, making no adjustments to the numbers from the NIWA climate database. Taking all sites together and averaging the annual mean temperatures anomalies (difference from 1961–90 mean at each site) results in Figure 1 below.

  17. Andy on 06/07/2018 at 10:11 am said:

    Brett – I would be interested in any tips that you may be able to share with us regarding the submissions for the Zero Carbon Bill

    Thanks, Andy

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