Oh dear
So, Don Brash has come out as a climate change denier. He wants to revisit New Zealand’s commitment to the Kyoto Protocol till he’s convinced that:
1) Global warming is occurring.
2) Global warming is being caused by humans.
3) Reducing emissions, as required by Kyoto, is a sacrifice commensurate to the potential gain.
Wow. This really is back to basics stuff. I really am astounded that a politician aspiring to be our Prime Minister is seriously questioning whether global warming actually exists. He is claiming that he knows better than the science academies of the G8 countries (yes, Dr Brash, that does include the United States), China, India, and Brazil, who recently made an unequivocal statement that climate change is happening and that action is required. The statement called on G8 leaders to:
- Acknowledge that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing.
- Identify cost-effective steps that can be taken now to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions.
- Recognise that delayed action will increase the risk of adverse environmental effects and will likely incur a greater cost.
- Show leadership in developing and deploying clean energy technologies and approaches to energy efficiency, and share this knowledge with all other nations
As George Monbiot argued recently, anyone who denies climate change’s existence is seriously delusional:
It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in the palm of your hand. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals.
I don’t actually believe Don Brash seriously thinks that climate change may not be happening. Rather, I think his advisors have convinced him that National has something to gain politically from pretending that it’s not happening and thus that we can afford to pull out of Kyoto. It’s a hackneyed political trick, and Dr Brash - who likes to call himself principled - really should know better. In some ways, I’m glad National is willing to abandon reason in the pursuit of power to this extent. Because, as the campaign unfolds, the terrible damage a Brash Ministry would do to our international reputation and our environment will become clear, and New Zealanders will consign him to the rubbish bin of history.
Next week, Dr Brash calls on New Zealand to review its membership of the United Nations until he’s convinced:
1) That other countries actually exist;
2) That humans have caused other countries to exist;
3) That recognising the right of other countries to exist, as required by the UN, is a sacrifice commensurate to the potential gain of engaging with them.
UPDATE: A few weeks ago, David Farrar commented on this blog:
Umm as someone who spent quite a bit of time on this issue when working for National, I am unaware that National denies climate change is an issue. That’s certainly not what I have heard the Spokesman say.
I take it from Dr Brash’s comments yesterday that National’s thinking has moved on relating to climate change since the eminent Mr Farrar worked for that party at Parliament.
June 22nd, 2005 at 10:52 am
So Dr Don is using the ‘global warming’ term rather than the more widely accepted and proven ‘Climate Change’? He may indeed have been a very astute Reserve Bank Governer, but politcally he comes across as being prone to out-dated policies.
June 22nd, 2005 at 10:54 am
What is the Green policy with regards to population growth and consumption? We, as humans can’t continue to grow and consume at the rate we have in the past. I think that these aspects are often left out of environmental concerns, when in fact they are perhaps the key causes. How are governments to tie together environmental policy with economic and social policy - especially when we have to attempt to restrain consumption, which is generally ‘good’ for the economy. How would a government discourage consumption? Increase GST? What about slowing population growth? Or reducing the amount of resources we consume?
Inquiring minds want to know…
June 22nd, 2005 at 11:10 am
Thank you Bernard. At least the Greens do care. Is anyone else (politically) talking seriously about population sustainability and the risks of too much growth? Yes, I do think you have an extremely valid point, applicable to all.
June 22nd, 2005 at 11:57 am
frog,
Yup, those who deny climate change ignore large arrays of scientific evidence in order to find a tiny crumb, and then claim that since there are one or two kooks on their side “scientific opinion is divided”. Then they decide that the vast number of scientists and scientific institutions who disagree with them clearly must have some vested interest and come up with odd conspiracy theories about why almost all the scientists say that human-caused climate change does exist and is getting worse.
Those anti-science conspirary-theorist climate change deniers do sound oddly like Sue K when she takes on immunization programmes. Don’t they.
June 22nd, 2005 at 12:13 pm
Population in NZ is largely a matter of keeping immigration numbers low. WOW are we successful. Population controll in the rest of the world is largely a matter of starving people to death or bombing them into ever diminishing pieces…. which is why I moved here.
We Greens do not (yet) have an “Immigration” policy.
Given the situation in the rest of the wold it may be more relevant for us to have a defense policy than an immigration policy (also missing of course). I doubt anyone here can stand it, myself included, but the alternatives are always unpleasant when Dr Malthus is writing the prescriptions.
Back to Dr Brash, I wonder if anyone has tipped him off as to what climate models most accurately reflect the temperature changes in the ocean (as uncovered by the Scipps institute). We might see the first 5 meters of rise a somewhat earlier than expected.
respectfully
BJ
June 22nd, 2005 at 1:12 pm
Maybe he, like me, thinks that global warming is part of a global warming and cooling that takes place naturally, making his second requirement, ‘prove humans cause it’, all the more important.
June 22nd, 2005 at 1:22 pm
OK, so if climate change is a normal function of this planet, even if we human’s are not exacerbating the pace of change then at the very least humanity needs now to try and plan for survival.
June 22nd, 2005 at 1:24 pm
No, not at all. Studies from various universities can show that we are not at the hottest the planet has been before. And those studies also show that after a period of heating, we begin a period of cooling. All we need to do is wait. It’s not a matter of having a ‘plan for survival’.
June 22nd, 2005 at 1:43 pm
The data from Scripps is damning, the models that it supports mean that the only way it could be doing what it is doing is with the CO2 driving it… and the CO2 is definitively being driven by us’ns. The ocean temperature rise is so large as to make all the weaker models fail by predicting too little warming. That was the problem for most of the last decade. The CO2 models predicted more warming than was measurable in the atmosphere. So there were questions about the models… until Scripps found the missing heat.
Ultimately we will get “Transmission Gully” built (hopefully with an electrified rail option in the corridor) because the coast road expansion will require underwater construction by the time this government quits jabbering and gets down to doing something.
respectfully
BJ
June 22nd, 2005 at 2:12 pm
No, we are not at the hottest we’ve ever been, but you have to go back many MANY Ice Ages to find a hotter interglacial. You also have to go back that far to find the sort of CO2 levels we’ve got. That the temperature would be rising anyway isn’t unlikely, but the levels we are reaching are unprecedented since well before the evolution of our species. Heck… maybe before the evolution of mammals.
respectfully
BJ
June 22nd, 2005 at 2:14 pm
Well that’s just patently false. Studies of ice material shows that we were hotter in the period 1200-1400 than we are today.
June 22nd, 2005 at 2:41 pm
carnifexsenatoris: hose studies also show that after a period of heating, we begin a period of cooling. All we need to do is wait. It’s not a matter of having a ‘plan for survival’.
What do these ’studies’ say about what happens to life on the planet during the period of heating? You’ll probably find all sorts of things like mass extinctions, vast tracts of previously inhabitable temperate land becoming uninhabitable and/or untemperate, and all sorts of messy things like that. In other words, the world’s entire agricultural system will be severely modified.
Just because it’s ‘natural’ doesn’t mean a process isn’t potentially catastrophic. An ice age right now would be fairly catastrophic to most of human life as we know it, but ice ages are perfectly ‘natural’ events.
June 22nd, 2005 at 2:43 pm
Besides, climate change isn’t about how hot we are, it’s about the degree to which the global climate is changing: changing in ways that will potentially destroy established agricultural systems, possibly catastrophically.
June 22nd, 2005 at 4:09 pm
I am interested in the various learned comments, but it seems to me that climate change, for what ever reason and in which ever manner, will dramatically affect food production, and as a farming person, I can tell you right now, our traditional food crops/animals cannot readily be changed overnight. Such adaptation takes preparedness and time: time which, with floods, hurricanes, water levels, salination of water tables etc, we may nor have.
June 22nd, 2005 at 4:11 pm
My comments were based on having worked with Nick Smith on presentations re Kyoto. Nick is well up on the issue and my recollection if he had said that on balance of probabilities climate change was an issue. Whether Kyoto is an answer or even a part-answer is another matter.
Also one may be reading too much into Don’s comments. He is not necessairly saying he does not believe there is global warming, just that this is the three-point test one should apply to whether to stay with Kyoto. I am guessing though as I have not seen the hansard with the exact comments.
June 22nd, 2005 at 5:16 pm
Carnifex Senatoris: Well that’s just patently false. Studies of ice material shows that we were hotter in the period 1200-1400 than we are today.
Which was in the current interglacial and wasn’t related to CO2 but appears (AFAIK) to be related to methane releases.
It isn’t simple, and it isn’t JUST people, but the CO2 driver is real and people have definitively added to CO2… and only the CO2 driven models explain the rise in ocean temperatures. This is the last thing I thought I’d need to be explaining in this forum.
The warming is already locked in. Anything we do now reduces impacts in 2070 and onward… but we’d have to quit NOW, and get the CO2 content to go down, to do a meaningful amount of it. That’s Kyoto on steroids. That’s oil > $200 a barrel due to peak oil and world recession.
For NZ the goals will have to be to mitigate potential damage, which will be immense, and reduce the gases. Our reductions are going to have minimal effects, but anything we do that gives us the ability to generate energy without burning oil or coal is going to be a big advantage to our children. That may be a real point on which Brash can argue. Our efforts are going to bring minimal relief because of our size. Not that we shouldn’t do it, but that there’s got to be consideration of whether our environmental righteousness is going to cost us more than is reasonable. I don’t think it will, we’re going to modify our behaviour a little and have credits to sell, but it’s a real consideration.
We shouldn’t build major infrastructure
June 22nd, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Hmm… something happened to that last post. I think I need to escape the -less than- symbol… tsk.
We shouldn’t build major infrastructure less than 20 meters above mean high water.
There is another possible solution of course, but we don’t have a space program and the people who do aren’t thinking very hard about the problem.
respectfully
BJ
June 22nd, 2005 at 5:39 pm
20 mtrs? That high? So much for the Kapiti highway plans. As I said, with a substantial rise in sea levels, (and 20 mtrs surely is that) we in NZ then have salt water making inroads into our water tables. Not good for humans or for farming. Fish instead of meat perhaps? Alpine goats? Townships in the Mackenzie country? And that is without thinking compassionate thoughts for low lying countries around the globe.
June 22nd, 2005 at 8:09 pm
Twenty is an excessive worst case, I wasn’t exact. It assumes both the WAIS and the Greenland Ice wind up in the ocean. It is not predictable that both will go, and the exact dynamics (including the possibility of breaking the haline cycle of deep ocean currents) is really outside the realms of the modelling. That means that the details aren’t predictable. Breaking the haline cycle could reverse the arctic melting all by itself… even as the WAIS breaks up, but it would cause climate problems for the entire Northern Hemisphere.
The issue is really to make choices that protect us if things go very very bad.
The principle thrust of NZ policy has to be alternative power. We have to get off the back of the dinosaur and create a society and systems that can function without oil from the middle east or anywhere else… because long before the warming happens, the peak oil problems are coming.
Betting on the twin disasters of global economic collapse and peak oil to avert the catastrophe of global warming? That’s not a game I want to play, but it could happen.
The price we pay will depend on how we deal with OUR requirements for energy… so building wind farms and decent hydro projects (they are NOT all bad), and pushing grid operations to be able to work both ways so we can feed excess from our home generators back into the grid… and a lot of other changes, need to be encouraged. This is all stuff that is necessary, with or without warming and Kyoto. It all earns us carbon credits we get to sell to the less attentive.
The Peak Oil problem feeds the answer we need to make to our Kyoto obligations.
———————-
How high does the ocean really get… I had to look it up again. I knew 20 was enough… but it is really too much.
WAIS would raise the ocean 6 meters. Greenland would raise it 7 meters. The non-arctic glaciers are going already. Could do with15 meters really, but the point is that anything that is safely out of the water will be valuable when we lose what we’ve built on the beach.
The rest of the Antarctic Ice is high enough and sequestered enough that it’d take a thousand years for it to melt… even with all the warming we imagine. Which is a good thing, cause that block is worth another 70 meters or so… and transferring that much mass from the pole to the equator will do bad things to the stability of the planet.
respectfully
BJ
June 22nd, 2005 at 8:43 pm
BJ, thank you for that. Excuse my total ignorance but please tell me what WAIS stands for? Is it an ice shelf?
I know that my totally unscientic opinion is of little use in a debate, but I simply feel we need to look to survival. Obviously peak oil and the likely collapse of the oil industry will cause global economic chaos. I agree with you about wind generatored power, and the carefully placed hydro schemes. Um, again my ignorance, but why cannot the existing old hydro plants, that have already drowned a valley, be upgraded now?
June 22nd, 2005 at 9:05 pm
So “And those studies also show that after a period of heating, we begin a period of cooling. All we need to do is wait. It’s not a matter of having a ‘plan for survival’.”
well can’t argue with you there, you’re absolutely right. However I can’t imagine that will be much comfort to say the people of the Seychelles,
“don’t worry about your homes being underwater, eventually the sea will fall again … may take 15,000 years but hey, it will fall again”
June 23rd, 2005 at 12:05 am
Twenty is a massive exaggeration.. if only because global warming, if it were an issue, would result in the reversal of the gulf stream and the freezing of water - not the raising levels of it.
June 23rd, 2005 at 12:37 am
west antarctic ice shelf is my guess??
Mr Bush says that he isn’t signing up to Kyoto not because he doesn’t believe in climate change but because Kyoto is flawed. He also points out that removing/preventing all the pollution dust clouds actually lets more sun & heat through thus exacerbating the problem of global warming.
Be that as it may, it’s still pollution that shouldn’t be there. He’s saying well yea we polluted but it’s gone so far that if we clean up it will make it worse so we won’t.
*sigh*
There are so many other positive effects from jumping wholeheartedly in to Kyoto though, I mean getting the carbon emissions down can be done in a number of ways including as I’ve said several times before: solar power instead of fossil fuels and having electric cars on top of that thus negating pretty much the worst offender (transport) and saving each of us a whole bundle of money in the meantime. Cleaner air is heaps valuable! Easier for a small country such as ourselves than the USA I’m sure. Develop a spine Mr Brash Economist man, and see that nestling us further into the niche of clean, green, pure & pristine will make us some m.o.n.e.y.
*Follows on but diversifies slightly*
Globally there is a shift toward sustainability. Also anti GE, toward organic products and so on, make us world leaders! We’re an isolated island nation unlike most countries who might want e.g GE free, organics, products made/grown in a very low pollution (”pure”) area (it’s a marketing angle if nothing else!) but can’t have them because of the country next door using lots of pollutants. Europe is a union now so can’t block trade from each other or the US but they want GE Free products, they tried to ban GE as a continent but couldn’t because Monsanto got the WTO to rule that this was breaking their free trade agreement. Hmm where could they get genuinely GE free products… I know let’s make it NZ!
June 23rd, 2005 at 12:39 am
The idea of Bush signing it is unimportant. It wouldn’t be ratified.
June 23rd, 2005 at 1:27 am
*What I meant was he isn’t going to ‘do the Kyoto thing’
June 23rd, 2005 at 8:39 am
WAIS is indeed the West Antarctic Ice Shelf.
Link here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4275729.stm
and others.
Carnifex is correct, as I noted in my subsequent post (I guess we leapfrogged
.
Even I at my most pessimistic, do not expect 20 in the next 200 years. In truth I expect something more like 1-2 in the first 100 and 5 more in the second hundred. My problem and everyone elses, is that the geo records do not give that sort of fine-grained understanding of the mechanisms in play. What to expect in detail. The potential is there for more than I expect, and that is where I’d build my infrastructure. Partly because it isn’t a big problem to ensure that it IS out of harms way if it is planned that way to begin with.
But I wouldn’t be building a lot of new road (or rail) on the coast between Pukerua bay and Paekakiriki. I’d be solving that problem AND reducing risk by going inland and up a bit to build a 3rd link into Wellington.
I think that if Bush signed it, it WOULD be ratified now… but he won’t
We can all build boats.
respectfully
BJ
June 23rd, 2005 at 9:06 am
When you way that Bush believes in global warming, well, he’s never said that. He very carefully always claimed that “there are divided opinions on that” or that “different experts offer differing opinions on that”.
Much like Brash: the “when it’s been proven to my satisfaction” response, which he then adds to with a claim “oh, and Kyoto’s not economically worth the cost”.
June 23rd, 2005 at 9:36 am
carnifex,
In a sense your claim is true: in the long run the world will heat, and cool, and all we have to do is wait. But it may take a few thousand years. Or a few tens of thousands of years. But as Keynes put it (when he argued that very long-term macro-economic trends weren’t helpful to those facing a recession of few years): in the long run we are all dead.
I believe your claim about the 12-14th century being warmer than now is false. My memory is that we’ve evidence from the Greenland and Antarctic ice that their average temperature for 13th C was warmer than their average temperatures for the 20thC. But not warmer in the 13th C than for the decade of the 1990s. Which is why the Greenland ice cap is melting now, but wasn’t then. (couldn’t find the damned link to post. bother. please post one if you’ve got one.)
Also you’re skipping past the first differential: the rate of increase of temperature we’re seeing now is greater than any we’ve seen in (at least) the last 20,000 years.
And then we could talk about the second differential: it is rather worrying that we appear to have an _accelerating_ rate of increase of temperature at a time when (if you were right with your ‘cyclic’ comparison to the 12th-14thC) we should be reaching the top of the sine wave.
But certainly it’s true that the effects of global warming are not a hugely big deal now to most of us (though exceptions like the Inuit are pretty pissed off): it’s what it’s going to be like in 20, 50 and 100 years that’s the big deal.
June 23rd, 2005 at 10:29 am
I’m going to summarize what WE should be doing.
We shouldn’t be abandoning Kyoto. Symbolically that’d be the end of any chance for change in the rest of the world. There’s a cost here that isn’t easily measured, of seeing clean-green-New Zealand bailing out on Kyoto.
We shouldn’t be working real hard to put heavy penalties on heavy industries… like Aluminium smelters (learning to spell all over again). Instead we need to break all previous records for putting in renewable energy resources and making it possible to smelt it without using dead dinosaurs. ( Renewable means wind and hydro and geothermal and biomass. Excluding some valley from being wrecked by a hydro plant doesn’t change the renewable nature of hydro.) There are pumped hydro storage facilities that allow smoothing of the electric load peak. That’s also going to be important to us
We should be encouraging building of bio-diesel (fischer-tropf), and ethanol refineries.
We should be re-engineering (if necessary by government edict) the transmission grid so that distributed sources can actually be accomodated and operators of home generators can get credits for power uploaded into the grid,
Basically we should be using the effort to secure our energy supplies from the effects of peak-oil to also push the carbon usage back to where we get carbon credits to sell.
respectfully
BJ