Facts About Ruminant Methane (FARM)

Please Take Action

The week beginning 6 June, the Government will release the He Waka Eke Noa recommendations. Farmers are being sold a con. The industry has bowed to political pressure and unscientific ideology.

FARM has produced 10 questions. Please spread them far and wide. Send them to your MP or all MP’s. Send them to fellow farmers. Send them to any media you can. Send them to Ministers. Post them on social media. Make it a campaign. Demand answers. Challenge farm leaders to answer. Use your own intro but keep the question intact. Be resourceful.

Question 1.
How come we can afford to subsidise offshore corporations to plant trees to suck up CO2 and in the same breath tax farmers who suck up CO2 to grow grass?

Question 2.
Why is Article 2 (b) of the Paris Agreement ignored when it states clearly that countries should not reduce food production in their pursuit of emission goals?

Question 3.
Why are we taking unilateral action that will cut production in NZ that has the planet’s lowest carbon footprint when we know that other countries, with a worse record, will make up the shortfall, leading to increased emissions overall?

Question 4.
Why is 1990 used as a base date for measuring ruminant emissions when methane emissions only last only 9 to 10 years in the atmosphere?

Question 5.
Why is the Climate Change Commission’s finding ignored that showed when ruminant methane emissions are stable or falling slightly as they have since 2005, farmers have achieved ‘net zero’ and are literally contributing to cooling the planet?

Question 6.
Why do many scientists, green lobbyists, media and politicians focus on greenhouse gas concentration, volume and molecule strength and not on warming ability, especially as IPCC scientists claim when methane emissions are stable, as they are in NZ, the measurement we currently use – GWP100 – is 400% overstated?

Question 7.
Was the Climate Change Commission’s proposal to tax farmers for their emissions determined solely because they could not find a way to adequately reduce fossil fuel produced CO2?

Question 8.
Why have recent science findings been ignored that show methane is a poor absorber of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, unable to impact temperature and dominated by the main radiation absorber, water vapour, which is 9,000 times more concentrated?

Question 9.
If all methane is 0.00018% of the atmosphere and ruminant methane is 14% of that or 0.0000252% of the whole atmosphere what warming, in degrees Centigrade, can be attributed to NZ’s 1% of the planet’s ruminants?

Question 10.
When the GHG Research Centre hasn’t come up with any usable technologies to reduce agricultural emissions after 19 years of research, and a $200 million spend, how is the new funding of $300 million expected to contribute?

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Robin Grieve, Chairman FARM
Ph 0274795663

Owen Jennings, Manager FARM
Ph 0274424933