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Down Under
(New Zealand) Govt admits huge Kyoto cost miscalculation
2005-06-16
The Government has admitted it has made a massive miscalculation in the cost of the Kyoto Protocol. Original estimates were that New Zealand would have a surplus of 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide credits between 2008 and 2012, worth around $450 million. Climate Change Minister Pete Hodgson says new estimates put it at a deficit of 36.2 million tonnes. That will cost New Zealand $543 million, and it will have to be borne by the taxpayer. Mr Hodgson says it is largely due to huge growth in energy and industrial process emissions. He claims the Government would still have ratified Kyoto if it knew of the deficit risks. New Zealand will now have to cut its emissions, or buy carbon credits on the international market to the tune of $543 million. Mr Hodgson rejects accusations the first estimates were a gross miscalculation. He says the error is a change in assumptions, which will always be the case in energy issues.
The New Zealand economy is small. You have to multiply these numbers by at least 100 to get the equivalent effect on the US economy (by 8 or 9 for Australia). Combine this with the recent news on forest being cut down as a direct result of Kyoto and steep increases in the cost of energy to consumers and the Kyoto lunacy would have given the USA a 100 billion budget hole after cutting down upwards of 5 million acres of forest, combined with a sharp increase in inflation, and for something that even if it were a good idea (and its not) just isn't working.
Posted by:phil_b

#22  Frank, LMAO.
Posted by: Matt   2005-06-16 20:52  

#21  So. Pacific Schadenfruede tastes like Teriyaki...I like it
Posted by: Frank G   2005-06-16 19:56  

#20  Papua New Zealand!
Now that's just mean.
Posted by: Shipman   2005-06-16 19:50  

#19  "See, we assumed that 1 + 1 = 11. It seemed logical enough, and besides, mathematics is just sooo fascist."
Posted by: Matt   2005-06-16 13:49  

#18  Poor Papua New Zealand. As if they don't have enough problems, now they have to come up with 543 million smackeroos, all on the output of a tribal, subsistence economy.

Someone call Sally Struthers.
Posted by: Carl in N.H.   2005-06-16 12:28  

#17  Hodgson rejects accusations the first estimates were a gross miscalculation. He says the error is a change in assumptions

Doesn't that suggest that their assumptions were made in error, even if the calculations were correct? I mean, clearly there's an error here somewhere.
Posted by: Captain Pedantic   2005-06-16 12:26  

#16  If the enviros and nimbys (and admittedly, some sloppiness on the part of the industry)hadn't sabotaged the US nuclear power program we would probably be emitting about 5% less CO2 today (assuming we'd have about triple the nuclear energy).

Oh well.
Posted by: mhw   2005-06-16 11:26  

#15  AP is right. This charade will collapse once the bills start coming in. It's good clean tranzi fun only as long as it feels like they are playing with other people's money.
Posted by: Classical_Liberal   2005-06-16 11:02  

#14  That will cost New Zealand $543 million, and it will have to be borne by the taxpayer.

Don't worry, Kiwis. As we say around here, "It's for...the children!"
Posted by: tu3031   2005-06-16 10:57  

#13  Either that or Xena: The Next Generation.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2005-06-16 10:54  

#12  Maybe they should push Peter Jackson into making Similarian after he's done with the Hobbit. Get that New Zealand economy going again.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2005-06-16 10:54  

#11  Well, c'mon Kiwis! Get to conservin'! Show us how it's done.
Posted by: eLarson   2005-06-16 08:51  

#10  I predict that Kyoto will be dead in 5 years. NZ arithmetic is only the beginning. Feel-good legislation will bankrupt a country in the end.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2005-06-16 08:50  

#9  To change up a quote from the Great Communicator(tm):

"A few million tons here, a few million tons there; pretty soon, you're talking real emissions!"
Posted by: BA   2005-06-16 07:50  

#8  Good work anon1. Not much else to say, except "Save a tree, wipe your @$$ with a spotted owl"
Posted by: Rex Mundi   2005-06-16 03:16  

#7  Oops, URL for that article is :

http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=56
Posted by: anon1   2005-06-16 02:52  

#6  Check this out, written in 1998 by Glenn Woiceshyn:

To convince countries to support the Protocol a counterfeit "scientific consensus" was concocted by UN bureaucrats. First came a 1995 UN scientific report which explicitly claimed no discernible manmade global warming. Then, a policymakers' summary was prepared from the report and stressed the opposite conclusion -- one based solely on computer models which don't match historical data and which incorporate assumptions that grossly exaggerate the warming effect of carbon dioxide. To eliminate the contradiction, the politically undesirable statements in the science report were quietly removed, yet the authors' names were retained.

Following this blatant act of politicizing science, more than 140 climate scientists (including several TV meteorologists) rebelled and signed the Leipzig Declaration, which states that "there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide ... actual observations from weather satellites show no global warming whatsoever -- in direct contradiction to computer models."
...

Troubled by this blatant assault on objectivity in science, more than 17,000 basic and applied scientists have, to date, signed a petition against the Kyoto Protocol, spearheaded by Frederick Seitz, a former president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. A scientific article accompanying this petition -- in addition to debunking the theory that rising carbon dioxide levels are causing global warming and catastrophic weather -- demonstrates that the extra man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere actually creates a greener planet, the alleged goal of environmentalists.

According to the article: "Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the CO2 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life as that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution."

So what explains the environmentalists zeal to push a socialistic Kyoto Protocol in the name of creating a greener planet? Decades ago, when it became apparent to people that Marxism ... yielded poverty and murderous dictatorships, not prosperity as promised, many leftists switched to environmentalism. ... In essence, the reds merely painted themselves green.


(And i would add that they merely use Kyoto as a punishing stick to beat the 'rich' industrial nations as the 3rd world polluters China, Indonesia and India don't have to reduce any emissions at all. Instead of stealing from the wealthy class to give to the poor within one nation now they want to steal from the rich nations and give to the poor nations.)
Posted by: anon1   2005-06-16 02:52  

#5  Kyoto is a crock of shit. By the UN's own figures, if implemented fully and at its highest and best, Kyoto would only slow climate change down by about 3 months over 100 years (quoting from memory).

Now explain to me why that is worth wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on?

A couple of months of difference.

There is no logic in it whatsoever. We might as well spend billions building a giant umbrella to sheild the earth from solar radiation or any other crackpot idea as Kyoto.

Of course if the world were smart and didn't think that pouring billions after a mere symbolic gesture (and Bono was so persuasive!) then we would instead divert a few of those billions preparing ourselves for the inevitable climate change.

Building water purification/pipelines/desalination plants for example.

Converting car engines to run on ethanol: it works and there's already the infrastructure of oil distribution that can be converted to ethanol distribution.

Or just nothing at all and keep the cash! Anything is better than throwing billions down the Kyoto void.

I'm sad because I really like New Zealand, it's a great country. What a shame they signed that stupid protocol.
Posted by: anon1   2005-06-16 02:37  

#4  Climate Change Minister Pete Hodgson says..

"Climate Change Minister"? Sheesh.....
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2005-06-16 02:17  

#3  Will they "get it"?

No. Tranzi suckers.
Posted by: .com   2005-06-16 02:10  

#2  Original estimates were that New Zealand would have a surplus of 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide credits between 2008 and 2012, worth around $450 million

Happens to me all the time when I reverse the sales tax payments and liabilities. Throws the books all out of balance until I do it right. ;o)

The left never is very good with accounting. That is why Bush got hammered for the dotcom bust when it was said that the old ways of doing business (profits, acountability ) are gone. It is also why I call Kyoto voodoo environmentalism.

Theyll never get it.

And a $1 trillion difference is quite a bit, all joking aside.
Posted by: badanov   2005-06-16 01:51  

#1  All Pain, No Gain. For those of you interested in the facts and figures on Kyoto. This is a good summary.
Posted by: phil_b   2005-06-16 01:14  

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