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Arbor wishes all our customers a Happy Holiday Season and New Year filled with Peace and Prosperity. 

​New Zealand structural log prices have hit their highest level in more than two decades as local mills compete with the export market to secure supply to meet demand from the domestic market. 

The price for structural S1 logs lifted to $124 a tonne this month from $123 a tonne last month and $114 a tonne at the same time last year, reaching the highest price for the grade since April 1994, according to AgriHQ's monthly survey of exporters, forest owners and saw millers. 

"The New Zealand domestic log market has slowly but consistently risen this year, and the past month was no different," AgriHQ analyst Reece Brick said in his report. "Supply and demand fundamentals remain skewed in favour of sellers rather than buyers, squeezing even more returns out of harvested logs." 

The market remains strong for most segments of the domestic industry, even as the volumes traded slowed when winter weather stymied construction activity, AgriHQ said, noting that local wood supply had been hampered due to difficulties harvesting in wet weather. While strength in the local housing market is helping stoke demand, the main driver behind higher domestic prices is that export markets are draining supplies out of New Zealand, the report said. 

"Domestic mills are in a tug-of-war with export log traders for unpruned logs and are facing the prospect of further hikes in log procurement costs," Brick said. "A large portion of mills are still paying below the export market for logs. Log suppliers are currently attempting to gauge mills ability to absorb higher log prices. All signs suggest more increases are on the cards." 

Prices in the log market are heavily reliant on Chinese demand, which is expected to hold in the medium term after the Chinese government introduced restrictions on logging native forests and reduced tariffs on imported logs to 11 percent from 13 percent to discourage the use of native wood, AgriHQ said. 

New Zealand exported 1,666,639 cubic metres of logs in April, up 3 percent on March volumes and 21 percent higher than a year earlier. Some 72 percent of the volume was exported to China. "The volume exported in April is one of the largest amounts exported in the last 10 years and is only surpassed by August 2016," Brick said. 

The value of log exports is expected to climb to NZ$2.66 billion this year from NZ$2.22 billion last year and reach $3.14 billion in 2021, according to the latest Situation and Outlook for Primary Industries published by the Ministry for Primary Industries last week. 

Source: Scoop

PLEASE CHECK BELOW TWO ARTICLES WITH WIDELY DISPARATE VIEWS ON WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE GLOBAL SCENE .

 On one hand we have NIWA asserting that 2016 is NZ 's warmest ever year  with all the hysterical prophecy accompanying the 400PPM  breach of CO2 levels  .

 On the other, we have the British Met Office  findings of a record drop in global temperatures (taken from NASA satelite measurements  and the positing that the whole thing has  been a misread of the phenomenon "el Nino "effect AND NOTHING TO DO WITH AGW!!! 

Global Temperatures Plunge. Icy Silence from Climate Alarmists

Land temperatures have plummeted by 1 degree - the biggest and steepest fall on record. But the news has been greeted with an eerie silence.

• Global Ocean Temperatures Dropping Fast
  • Date: 07/12/16
  • Bob Tisdale – Climate Observations
  Global sea surface temperatures have been declining rapidly in recent months. The following is a Global map of Reynolds OI.v2 Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies for November 2016. It was downloaded from the KNMI Climate Explorer. The contour range was set to -2.5 to +2.5 deg C and the anomalies are referenced to the WMO-preferred period of.....

FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL PEOPLE !!

Date: 12/12/16
Dominic Kennedy, The Times 
Britain has given £274 million in foreign aid to a controversial climate change organisation without knowing where the money goes. The donation to the Strategic Climate Fund was made so that the government would get closer to meeting its promise to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid. The fund was disclosed.............

Niwa principal scientist for climate Brett Mullan said that, while we continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we will continue to break records.
Mullan said the warmer conditions could be bad news for the horticulture industry, aiding the spread of crop diseases and pests.
But Dairy NZ spokesman Andrew Reid said a hot year was not necessarily a bad thing for dairy farmers, provided it didn't turn into a drought.
"Typically hot conditions are a good thing, because it means good pasture if you have moisture in the soil. If it turns into dry conditions then farmers need to ensure they have a plan in place."
This year it had been unusually wet weather that was affecting production, he said.
New Zealand's average temperature for 2016 is currently sitting at 0.94 degrees Celsius above the 1981-2010 average.
Christchurch was less of a departure from the norm, but still had its hottest year since 1998.
At Niwa's Baring Head Clean Air Station, near Wellington, the levels of carbon dioxide – the primary greenhouse gas contributing to atmospheric warming – also broke records, passing the 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold in June.
Globally, the World Meteorological Organisation said 2016 was set to be the hottest year by a significant margin, with temperatures 1.2C above pre-industrial times.
If confirmed by the year's end, it would mark the third record year in succession.
Temperatures for the rest of the year would have to drop markedly, to more than 1C below normal for the next three weeks, to avoid the record being set.
Mullan said Kiwis would not bear the brunt of the warming, which would fall heaviest on areas that were already very hot, including India and the Middle East.
The first six months of this year were exceptionally warm, which Mullan said was a consequence of the long-term regional warming trend caused by greenhouse gases and local natural variability.
"Natural variability acts like a tailwind or headwind, pushing local temperatures either above or below the long-term trend. In 2016, sea surface temperatures in the Tasman were exceptionally warm and there was more northerly flow than usual over New Zealand, pushing local temperatures above the trend."
National measurements date back to 1909. During this century, only four years have recorded colder-than-average temperatures: 2004, 2006, 2009, and 2012.
This year, August was the only month that dipped below normal.
Mullan said he expected to see the record for the hottest year beaten repeatedly in coming years.
"I don't expect to ever again set a record low temperature. Those have come and gone."
 - Stuff

• Date: 11/12/16
  


• David Rose, Mail on Sunday

New official data issued by the Met Office confirms that world average temperatures have plummeted since the middle of the year at a faster and steeper rate than at any time in the recent past.

Cooling: New Met Office world data shows a big fall from heat spike caused by El Nino this year
The huge fall follows a report by this newspaper that temperatures had cooled after a record spike. Our story showed that these record high temperatures were triggered by naturally occurring but freak conditions caused by El Nino – and not, as had been previously suggested, by the cumulative effects of man-made global warming.
The Mail on Sunday’s report was picked up around the world and widely attacked by green propagandists as being ‘cherry-picked’ and based on ‘misinformation’. The report was, in fact, based on Nasa satellite measurements of temperatures in the lower atmosphere over land – which tend to show worldwide changes first, because the sea retains heat for longer.


 It is true that the massive 2015-16 El Nino – probably the strongest ever seen – took place against a steady warming trend, most of which scientists believe has been caused by human CO2 emissionsHowever, now the drop in temperature is also showing up in the authoritative Met Office ‘Hadcrut4’ surface record, compiled from measurements from more than 3,000 weather stations located around the world on both sea and land.
To the end of October, the last month for which figures have been released, Hadcrut4 had fallen about 0.5C from its peak in the spring.
The reason is the end of El Nino. The natural phenomenon, which takes place every few years and has a huge impact on world weather, occurs when water in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America gets up to 3C hotter than usual.
It has now been replaced by a weak La Nina, when the water becomes colder than usual. This means temperatures may still have some way to fall.
El Nino is not caused by greenhouse gases and has nothing to do with climate change. It is true that the massive 2015-16 El Nino – probably the strongest ever seen – took place against a steady warming trend, most of which scientists believe has been caused by human emissions.
But when El Nino was triggering new records earlier this year, some downplayed its effects. For example, the Met Office said it contributed ‘only a few hundredths of a degree’ to the record heat. The size of the current fall suggests that this minimised its impact. When February produced a new hot record for that month, at the very peak of El Nino, newspapers in several countries claimed that this amounted to a ‘global climate emergency’, and showed the world was ‘hurtling’ towards the point when global warming would become truly dangerous. Now, apparently, the immediate threat has passed. It would be just as misleading to say lower temperatures caused by La Nina meant the world was into a new long-term cooling.
The Mail on Sunday’s report was picked up around the world and widely attacked by green propagandists as being ‘cherry-picked’ and based on ‘misinformation’
But the big question is: what will happen when both El Nino and La Nina are over and the Pacific water returns to its ‘neutral’, average state? Professor Judith Curry, of Georgia Tech in Atlanta, who is president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, said it would take years before it was clear whether the long-term warming trend was slowing down, staying the same or accelerating.
‘The bottom line is that we can’t read too much into the temperatures of a year or two,’ she said. ‘We will need the perspective of another five years to understand what is going on.’