"For over 30 years, NZers have believed that they produce relatively high emissions of greenhouse gases; and that our farmers are responsible for nearly half of all those emissions. No longer. Science moves on."

"For over 30 years, New Zealanders have believed that they produce relatively high emissions of greenhouse gases; and that our farmers are responsible for nearly half of all those emissions.
    "No longer. Science moves on.
    "We now find that all our climate change calculations have been based on a simple but fundamental error... [The] peer-reviewed research paper (Allen et al 2018) showed that the global warming potential (GWP) of livestock methane had been over-stated by some 400%. The old opinion that methane was 28 times more potent than CO2 was based on demonstrable errors.... Oxford Professor Myles Allen – one of the world’s best known climate scientists and dubbed by the BBC as ‘the physicist behind net zero’ – had no doubt at all that the correct multiple is about 7: “That this formula is vastly more accurate than the traditional accounting rule is indisputable.”.... Then came another peer-reviewed journal paper. Lynch & Garnet (2021), which again highlighted the 'special characteristics' and 'nuances' of livestock methane and warned against 'heavy-handed policy interventions'.... Then the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the IPCC ... squarely addressed the methane GWP issue at page 1016 of Chapter 7:

'…expressing methane emissions as CO2 equivalent of 28, overstates the effect on global surface temperature by a factor of 3-4'

"That is the final word.... the 'gold standard' of climate science has left the New Zealand authorities with nowhere to hide. If there was ever a debate, it is now over. The use of a GWP of 28 for agricultural methane is simply a dead parrot.
    "About these momentous events, the Minister has had nothing to say. Although the IPCC’s decision is clearly the news of a lifetime for all of New Zealand’s copious subsidised climate change reporters, they too have been strangely silent....
    "The GWP of methane did not matter too much to other developed countries, whose main emissions worry was CO2. But New Zealand was different. As livestock methane made up almost 40% of all the country’s projected warming, it’s true GWP was highly material to every calculation and every policy.
    "The Minister has been playing for time...."

~ Barry Brill, from his article 'What Will We Do About .... the Mammoth Methane Mistake'