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Posts Tagged John Key

Bearing witness: oil at sea Bryan Walker Apr 11

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Pursuing the last drop of oil should not be on the agenda of any country which takes climate change seriously. That’s why I applaud the Greenpeace and Te Whanau a Apanui action in endeavouring — successfully for a time — to stop the Petrobas seismic testing vessel off the East Cape. Potential danger to the marine environment is one of the reasons for the protest, and in the thinking of Greenpeace climate change is the other. The action is part of their longer term campaign against new oil and coal development in favour of a clear orientation to the clean technology which would show New Zealand was serious about moving to a low-carbon world.

Prime Minister John Key, unsurprisingly, doesn’t share my pleasure in what Greenpeace is doing. They are standing in the way of ’better jobs and better incomes’ he says in the Herald. This is legitimate exploration work that could benefit the New Zealand economy. No mention of climate change here. He does acknowledge that there are environmental risks to be considered, but he appears to be thinking only of spills, and believes those risks can be managed.

Admittedly the question of oil is difficult in some respects. There is clearly a need to continue using it while alternative means of powering transport are developed. But when it comes to deep sea drilling, tar sands and shale oil, companies are pursuing oil to the last drop and at great environmental risk and cost. In the case of New Zealand we are putting far more government support into oil exploration in extreme environments than into clean energy development. Desperation (and greed) over a fast diminishing resource is no substitute for the development of the technologies which will all too soon become another exercise in desperation if we don’t start setting them in place now.

The government plans are unlikely to be more than temporarily held up by the Greenpeace action. One way or another the protest flotilla will be dispersed and the survey will resume. The mantra of jobs and incomes will continue to be repeated and the environmental risks downplayed. If there is oil there (and I, unpatriotically, hope there isn’t) it will be drilled for, brought to land, and burned, unless by that time the world has woken up to the danger of what we are doing.

Does this make the Greenpeace action rather pointless?  Not in my worldview. It is in the Quaker tradition of ’bearing witness’, a term Greenpeace is happy to use. Governments can spurn the message, but at least it has been delivered: dramatically and disruptively perhaps, but with an underlying quiet clarity of purpose which hopefully will have many New Zealanders thinking about the wisdom of the government’s course.

You can see a short video of the action and a statement from Greenpeace climate campaigner Vanessa Atkinson here.

Whispering wind #2 Bryan Walker Mar 12

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The arrival of a Wind Energy Association Newsletter suggested it might be time for an update on wind power in New Zealand. It’s nearly two years since I wrote about wind farm prospects in my own Waikato region. The first of those wind farms, at Te Uku, is now up and running. The Prime Minister was present at the opening on 11 February, and is reported by the wind energy association as saying ’In a world where we want to get away from fossil fuels and ultimately have a cleaner, greener environment, wind is a tremendous technology for us.’

The newspaper report, however, failed to report that remark and focused on his use of the occasion to defend the Government’s wish to privatise up to 49% of Meridian Energy. It also reported him as saying that new technology and generation such as Te Uku would only be introduced ’when it pays for itself’. One would like to think that at this point he pointed out that fossil fuel-generated electricity doesn’t pay for itself but is heavily subsidised by future generations, but if he did the paper didn’t think it newsworthy.

Te Uku was a challenging construction effort on steep terrain, with the building of 26 kilometres of roads to transport the turbines to their foundations. The local economy benefited through direct employment and the engagement of local services, some of which will no doubt continue throughout the farm’s life. Seen from the road to Raglan the turbines are a clear feature of the landscape, and to my eyes visually pleasing — certainly more so than many of the human constructions bordering that road.

The considerably larger wind farm proposed for the coast further north from Raglan, Hauauru ma Raki, ran into problems in the early stages of its seeking consent, as reported by us here. But happily the Board of Enquiry has recently announced its draft decision to grant resource consents for 168 wind turbines and designation for the transmission lines. Confirmation of that draft decision will open the way for a very substantial addition to New Zealand’s wind power resource if Contact Energy proceeds with its development. The decision was a good deal more favourable than that announced recently by the Board responsible for consent for the proposed farm at Turitea, near Palmerston North, where a proposal for 104 turbines has been scaled back to 61, impacting adversely on the economics of the project.

Te Uku is just one of four wind farms currently being built. When all four projects are complete New Zealand’s wind capacity will sit at 623MW, and supply around 5% of our electricity.

The activity at the four sites represents over $300 million of investment, which creates opportunities for local businesses and communities. These opportunities are not only associated with the initial construction of the farms. The newsletter points to ongoing economic benefits.  An example is the three Manawatu wind farms whose ongoing operation is estimated to inject $8 to $11 million into the Manawatu economy each year.

Locally based companies like Ashhurst Engineering and Construction have been able to expand their operations as a result of opportunities at these wind farms. AEC’s work in and around wind farms has taken them all over the world. They have built specialist equipment for use at wind farms and offer innovative solutions to new challenges.

The Association website provides five case studies of what a wind farm development can mean for the surrounding community and the electricity system.

The newsletter carries some interesting information on wind farm noise. A recently commissioned report shows that infrasound levels measured at two Australian wind farms were well below established perception thresholds and also below levels produced by other natural and man-made sources, including a beach. This supported existing overseas data. More generally a report commissioned by the Australian Clean Energy Council showed that the NZ Wind Farm Noise Standard, (used both in Australia and New Zealand) is among the toughest and most up-to-date of the guidelines used for controlling wind farm noise in the world.

Global wind capacity increased by 22% in 2010, and for the first time more than half all new wind power was added outside of traditional markets in Europe and North America, mainly in China. How far can wind go in supplying electricity demand? The Global Wind Energy Outlook considers that by 2030, at 2300 gigawatts capacity, it could be providing 22% of the world’s needs. The NZ Association considers a similar level possible for New Zealand. This is considerably less than the global level visualised by Lester Brown in his recent book World on the Edge, where he writes of 4000 gigawatts capacity by 2020, but he advocates a crash programme to meet it.

On an encouraging note the newsletter reported the cost of wind turbines in NZ terms had fallen significantly in the past couple of years by some 15 to 20%.

I mentioned briefly in the past the possibility of wind energy in New Zealand playing an important part in the electrification of our car fleet. Bruce Smith, director of modelling and forecasting at the Electricity Commission, was reported as telling the 2009 biofuels and electric vehicles conference in Wellington that electric vehicles have the ability to smooth the peaks and troughs of electricity supply so efficiently they could triple the country’s capacity to use wind power. Electric cars could make it possible to build many more wind turbines because they solved one of wind power’s major inefficiencies – that energy is wasted overnight and at other times when people use little electricity because the wind is blowing and not being used. It’s a scenario which is not infrequently canvassed in writings about vehicle electrification and renewable energy and one which would seem to have particular relevance to New Zealand, perhaps indicating a fuller use of wind energy than might otherwise be contemplated.

The New Zealand Wind Energy Association has a conference and exhibition coming up in April in the Wellington Town Hall.

[Moby]

Waving, not drowning (yet) Bryan Walker Oct 13

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I found myself hesitating over reporting a further attempt on the part of Oxfam to draw attention to the increasing plight of populations in poorer countries faced with the early effects of climate change. In this case it is Oxfam New Zealand’s Wave of Change campaign, highlighting climate impacts in the Pacific region.

Why was I hesitating?  Fear of overdoing a theme? Recognition that there is not absolute scientific certainty that a particular event can be attributed to climate change? Caution about compassion fatigue? Foreseeing reactions from some that this is just another begging strategy devised by the pesky poor? A general feeling of hopelessness about the likelihood of rich nations taking a sustained interest in the plight of others, even when their responsibility for that plight is established? Not wanting to be seen as a bleeding heart liberal?

All these elements, and others, were discernible when I interrogated myself. None of them justified ignoring the Oxfam news release sitting in my inbox.  All the more when I read George Monbiot’s latest Guardian article. His argument is more generally political than climate change related, and I don’t propose discussing it here in those wider terms. But his conclusion was entirely relevant to this post:

’People with strong intrinsic values must cease to be embarrassed by them. We should argue for the policies we want not on the grounds of expediency but on the grounds that they are empathetic and kind; and against others on the grounds that they are selfish and cruel. In asserting our values we become the change we want to see.’

So let me write briefly about the Wave of Change campaign. It’s timed as the Cancun conference comes into view.  There appears to be some slight hope that Cancun will see advance on the transfer of finance and technology from developed countries to help developing countries adapt to climate change. Oxfam intends that New Zealand politicians and negotiators are well aware of the seriousness of the need of our Pacific Island neighbours in this respect. The declaration opening the short video on their website:

’People of the Pacific are among those to be hit first and worst by climate change.’

This isn’t just about the future danger of islands disappearing as a result of sea level rise, as Oxfam’s Coordinator Anne-Marie Mujica pointed out when launching the campaign:

’Right now people are struggling with salt poisoning their staple food crops and polluting their drinking water.’

A Pacific Conference of Churches spokesperson underlines this when he  speaks on the video of the increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather patterns.

’Salt water is now seeping into the food crops and the drinking water. Tropical storms are more fierce.’

One woman puts it simply:

’Seawater is coming. Every high tide I have water in my front yard.’

The campaign seeks a fair deal. Two Pacific Islanders on the video say it:

’Our Pacific urgently requires a fair deal on climate change.’

’We need to protect our Pacific regions. We need to speak out loud and clear for a fair and ambitious deal on climate change.’

Fair deal is the right note to strike since issues of justice are clearly involved when the effects of  emissions are felt by those least responsible for them.   One woman speaker says:

’Climate change is not just about science; climate change is about human rights.’

These are island voices. People alarmed by what they see happening where they live and asking for attention and fair treatment. Auckland is the most appropriate city in the developed world for their voice to be raised loud and clear.

Awareness-raising events taking place around Auckland this week are detailed on this Facebook page.

One of the campaign activities suggested is writing to the NZ Prime Minister. He should be open to the plea. New Zealand has signed up to the Copenhagen Accord and consequently no doubt expects to make a proportionate contribution to the funding targets outlined in that Accord to assist developing countries adapt to and mitigate climate change.

Last word to Oxfam’s Mujica:

’New Zealand may be a small country, but we’re a big player in the international climate talks. Our negotiators lead, or are members of, important working groups. It’s time to show the government that its citizens want them to do more to protect our Pacific.’

Twas the night before… the ETS Gareth Renowden Jun 30

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Tomorrow morning, a large chunk of New Zealand’s much debated Emissions Trading Scheme comes into effect. Forestry’s already been in it for two years, but July 1st is the day that the liquid fuels and electricity generation sectors start to have to account for their emissions, and it’s the first day that consumers might see a change in fuel and electricity prices that can be blamed on the ETS. Last week’s National Business Review had a pretty good overview of the state of play here. The scheme has also come in for some robust criticism in a new book, The Carbon Challenge, by Sustainability Council executive director Simon Terry and VUW economist Geoff Bertram (of which more in another post soon, I hope).

Federated Farmers have been out protesting in force — even though agriculture gets a free pass until 2015, and then gets 90% of its emissions “grandfathered” (effectively free). A few weeks ago Farmers Weekly editor Tim Fulton popped in for a cuppa and interviewed me about my views on climate change, agriculture and the ETS for an article that appeared a couple of weeks ago. Most of what I said won’t be news to Hot Topic readers, but I thought it worth passing on my thoughts on agriculture and the ETS to a wider audience:

Author Gareth Renowden’s views might jar against a farmer and ACT Party campaign to dump the Emissions Trading Scheme but he’s not about to be pitch-forked into that particular political debate.

“The laws of physics aren’t left-wing or right wing. They’re not green or red or blue. The laws of physics are the laws of physics – and what they tell us is that if you put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere the earth is going to warm up,” he says.

People can argue about how warm the planet will become but the trend will remain the same whether you’re an environmentalist or a libertarian, the entrepreneurial tree-cropper and author says. “What I’m trying to do in my writing and when I talk to people is to say, ‘look, the science is not political, please just step away from that, look at the evidence and then decide what you’re going to do’.”

Adopting an ETS needn’t be a sickly economic pill, says the North Canterbury blockholder. “I’m very confident that in New Zealand’s position as a trading nation and as an agricultural nation we are uniquely well placed to cope with climate change and, to be blunt, profit from climate change.” The ETS gives NZ farmers a real chance to be “seen to be” the most carbon efficient on the planet.

“If we show the world that we’re carbon efficient as well as production efficient we’ll find probably that we’ll end up saving our own costs by giving ourselves a marketing edge in key markets.”

Such optimism isn’t commonly heard on NZ’s pastoral plains and hill country but Renowden is adamant that the country can thrive by adapting to what the climate has in store. “I’m actually very bullish about agriculture’s prospects in a world where the climate is changing rapidly. We’re a small country. We’re remote, in the middle of a big ocean which is going to warm slowly. The changes that take place will, with luck, be slower than in other places so our growers will have time to adapt to changes as they happen.”

So, farmers might ask, why should we rush into an ETS and other climate initiatives if we have so much time to spare? Renowden, an innovator in growing and marketing truffles, counters that NZers are wasting time debating the science of climate change when we could be working on responses to it. “What it’s actually doing is taking a valuable voice out of the debate … because if you deny the problem, you don’t have a seat at the table about what we do”.

He puts Federated Farmers firmly in this camp of counter-productiveness. “They are showing all the signs of saying ‘we don’t want to do anything’ … whereas I think the best approach for NZ agriculture is to confront the problem.”

He accepts that the ETS will be a cost “but it will only be an insurmountable cost if you don’t respond to the pricing signal that the ETS sends. I mean, it’s a market-based mechanism to change people’s behaviour”.

Thoughts may turn at this point to what an ETS imposed on NZ agriculture could possibly do to maintain the balance of the world’s climate. Renowden isn’t ruffled by these doubts. “Funnily enough (former agriculture minister) Jim Anderton gets it quite well. You’ve got a Crown responsibility through the Kyoto Protocol to account for our carbon emissions and that is a cost on all of society. The ETS is a means of taking that cost and distributing it around society.”

Agriculture, producing 50-60% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, should naturally be subject to the scheme, Renowden says. “If we give 50-60% of our economy a free pass on emissions then the rest of the country has to pay for it. And believe you me, our competitors out there around the world will notice and they will say that NZ is subsidising its farmers.”

In European markets, for instance, products were typically by judged by “a perception of how green they are or how planet-friendly they are” so NZ could not afford to be seen to give its producers an easy ride.

The New Zealand wine industry is benefiting from being pro-active in this area, Renowden says. “They are already there, already thinking about ways they can adapt themselves and cope with the future because they can see their colleagues having to do it overseas.”

In case the wine industry is dismissed as being irrelevant to the experience of a livestock producer, Renowden can point to his neighbour Ian Turnbull, a Federated Farmers stalwart, who converted to organic farming about six years ago. Renowden reports that Turnbull is now growing Dorper sheepmeat on irrigated pasture “and the last time I saw him he seemed to be quite happy and was doing quite well”.

His own experience of farmers tells him that care for the natural farmed environment is not – and perhaps never was – the exclusive domain of zealots. In fact, there’s a rich variety of environmental initiatives out there that you wouldn’t expect “if all you ever do is listen to Don Nicholson, Rodney Hide or for that matter the National spokesperson”.

A response to climate change therefore starts with the state of mind.

“Instead of seeing climate change and the ETS as somehow a threat that you’ve got to resist I think you’ve got to accept that it’s happening and make the most of it.”

Fulton captured the essence of our conversation well, I think, and the piece provided an interesting counterpoint to the reports in the same issue about plans for last week’s protest at Parliament. It remains to be seen how successful the farming campaign will be. ACT’s Hide and Boscawen and the Feds Don Nicholson have pretty much had the field to themselves for the last few months. John Key and Nick Smith have been content to tough it out, and although Smith is now on the road defending the policy, there’s still no sign of any coordinated effort to explain to the wider population why action on climate change is necessary, and why carbon pricing is an important part of that response. Whether this government’s watered down ETS is the best way to go about it is, of course, a matter for debate…

Gluckman: climate denial undermines all science Gareth Renowden Jun 10

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NZ PM John Key’s Chief Science Advisor, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, tackled denialism head on in a lecture at Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute of Policy Studies last night. Titled Integrity in Science: Implications from and for the Climate Change Debate [pdf of full text], it’s an interesting and worthwhile overview of the issue from someone steeped in the science. Gluckman’s thesis is that the tactics of those who deny climate change — for whatever reason (he defines three) — are undermining all science:

…in an electronically connected world the tactics of those who reject the consensus, whatever their motives, can undermine confidence in the entire science system. In a world that is increasingly dependent on science in many domains, I cannot regard it as helpful to actively promote distrust and suspicion of the scientific process for political ends.

Gluckman begins by discussing the nature of science and true scepticism, then moves on to define the climate debate thus:

At the heart of the climate change issue are three questions:

  • What is the rate of change in global temperature and what will be its local effects?
  • What is the level of certainty about these predictions and the assumptions made in reaching these predictions?
  • What is the nature of response that the world community must make?

The bulk of climate science and indeed the IPCC consensus approach has been an effort to deal with the first two questions.

Finding answers to the third question is the hard bit, because that’s where what science tells us feeds into policy decisions, and special interests and ideologies come into play. Gluckman defines three groups opposed to action on climate change:

…a small group of scientists who sustain a contrary view for a variety of reasons, some scientific and some not, those who have a vested interest in promoting denial and those who for a variety of reasons, largely philosophical, will reject the evidence.

One philosophy he considers in some more detail:

In particular, many with a libertarian ideology do not accept that the state should control how they live their lives, particularly when the actions required will not impact for a generation or so. The economic libertarian believes growth is paramount and if there is a problem then technology will eventually solve it. There seems to be some irony in accepting that science may solve a problem but that it cannot correctly identify the problem.

That might ruffle a few feathers. I suspect a pop-gun broadside will be on its way from Barry Brill in the near future. In reality, Gluckman is being rather cautious. I find it a little disappointing (if entirely understandable, given his position) that he doesn’t go on to describe how these groups have become intertwined, to the extent that climate denial is now almost a required position for anyone with strong right wing views. It’s also clear that the melange has been encouraged, planned and funded through a clever campaign by special interests. Gluckman notes the parallel with tobacco denial, but doesn’t draw the obvious conclusion: that the tactics and tools for delaying action were first developed there, and then transferred on to climate and other issues. If he hasn’t already got a copy of Merchants of Doubt or Climate Cover-Up, perhaps we should club together to send him copies…

The media plays an important part in all this, and Gluckman is pretty direct about the responsibility they carry:

The issue here that concerns me is that of how to communicate complex science. The public has a right to understand these issues and in the end they determine how society will respond. However without responsible media it is not clear how this can be achieved. Publishers, editors and journalists all have a role in ensuring quality in the information exchange.

He underlines his point by quoting from a recent essay and book review (pdf) by Philip Kitcher in Science (which is well worth a read in its own right):

’It is an absurd fantasy to believe that citizens who have scant backgrounds in the pertinent field can make responsible decisions about complex technical matters on the basis of a few five minute exchanges amongst more or less articulate speakers…’

He goes on a few sentences later to say:

’Those covering the questions in the media, have the duty to convey the results so that citizens can cast their votes as an enlightened expression of freedom, justifiably aimed at the outcomes for which they hope. Staging a brief disagreement between speakers with supposedly equal credentials, especially when it is not disclosed that one of them is answering to the economic aspirations of a very small segment of society, is a cynical abnegation of that duty’.

Clearly, communicating science in those circumstances is a difficult task, and Gluckman notes how difficult and frustrating that can be for working scientists. Naomi Oreskes (reported in a Revkin tweet) goes further:

Scientists and academic institutions need to expand definition of what their ’real work’ is: “The work is not done, in my opinion, until it’s communicated in a way that citizens understand.”

It’s just as difficult and frustrating for communicators who aren’t working scientists, forever playing whack-a-mole with arguments and ideas that have been repeatedly debunked, dealing every day with the deluge of denialist propaganda. And I can’t help but have sympathy for the under-resourced and hard-pressed non-specialist journalists who have to deal with the issue in New Zealand’s media. The easy option may sometimes be the only feasible option.

Gluckman’s key point, however, is that the encouragement of confusion and mistrust of climate science has wider implications:

There is a growing concern among those of us who have some role in marrying science and policy that the way the debate is being framed is undermining confidence in the science system.

I would put it more strongly. The tactics being used to delay and undermine action climate change are quite deliberately poisoning the interface between science and policy-making. It has become almost standard corporate practise to deny, delay and defer action. Policy-makers are left in an invidious position — especially when those corporates and their shareholders play a significant role in funding politicians and parties. John Key’s appointment of Gluckman was a step in the direction of a solution. One can only hope that the PM is following his advice.

Weekend reading: dealing with noise Gareth Renowden Feb 27

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There’s no doubt that in the last few months the PR war against action on climate change has been fierce — and effective. Three articles I’ve read in the last couple of days throw some light on what’s been going on, and are well worth a few moments of anyone’s time. The first, and by far the most eloquent, is Bill McKibben’s The attack on climate science is the O.J. moment of the 21st century. McKibben likens the tactics of OJ Simpson’s lawyers, confronted with a huge pile of evidence that their client was guilty to the campaign against climate science:

If anything, [OJ's lawyers] were actually helped by the mountain of evidence. If a haystack gets big enough, the odds only increase that there will be a few needles hidden inside. Whatever they managed to find, they made the most of: In closing arguments, for instance, Cochran compared [LA detective Mark] Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler and called him ’a genocidal racist, a perjurer, America’s worst nightmare, and the personification of evil.’ His only real audience was the jury, many of whom had good reason to dislike the Los Angeles Police Department, but the team managed to instil considerable doubt in lots of Americans tuning in on TV as well. That’s what happens when you spend week after week dwelling on the cracks in a case, no matter how small they may be.

McKibben suggests that CRU head Phil Jones has been cast in the Fuhrman role, taking the full force of the attack. This personalisation of the process is exemplified by the McCarthy-like tactics of US senator James Inhofe, who has just released a report calling for investigations and prosecutions of leading climate scientists. Because they can’t change the evidence, however hard they try, they are reduced to shooting the messenger…

The robustness of the case for action is underlined in the new statement on climate science from NZ PM John Key’s science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman, Climate change and the scientific process, but Gluckman is also realistic about the difficulty of making policy in this area.

Although the risk to our future of not acting now is real, the scientific community has had and is having difficulty communicating both its uncertainty and the absolute need for action simultaneously. [...] The ensuing political and economic debate on how best to respond to climate change should not be used as an excuse to gamble the planet’s future against the overwhelming evidence that humans are contributing to the world warming at an unsafe rate. The basic principle is no different to risk management in any other sphere of life.

The “debate”, such as it is, is not about the science. McKibben again:

…it’s a mistake to concentrate solely on the science for another reason. Science may be what we know about the world, but politics is how we feel about the world. And feelings count at least as much as knowledge. Especially when those feelings are valid. People are getting ripped off. They are powerless against large forces that are, at the moment, beyond their control. Anger is justified.

Feelings can do more: they condition the way the think about things. This recent National Public Radio story, headlined Belief in climate change hinges on worldview explains the work of The Cultural Cognition Project:

To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it’s not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy beliefs. “People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view,” Braman says.

“Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values,” says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project.

Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work.

“If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way,” he says.

And if the information doesn’t, you tend to reject it.

This is what is happening with climate change. The polarisation is all too obvious in the blogosphere and the wider media. The CCP has also identified what it calls the “messenger effect” — where people tend to believe information if it comes from people like themselves. In the climate “debate” this becomes a vicious, inward-looking circle, with sceptic and crank arguments endlessly recirculating around blogs, boards and mailing lists.

All of these articles illuminate one central truth: all the noise about emails, IPCC “errors” and crooked scientists has absolutely nothing to do with the underlying science. Those who want to delay action on climate change have no hope of dismantling what McKibben calls the haystack of evidence, they can only pretend that finding a needle means the thing is not made of hay. But they can change the politics — the willingness of politicians the world over to take firm action now.

The answer, if it can be found, will not come from climate scientists. They need to do what they do best — study the planet in all its complexity, define and delineate the implications of what we’re doing to it. But we should not expect them to win hearts and minds, to build a global public consensus on the need for urgent action. That’s a matter for politics, not science. The lead has to come from elsewhere. My own suspicion is that nothing much will get done until the damage from change becomes too great to ignore — and I found an eery echo of that fear in my morning paper, in a story lifted from the Times about a new British report on likely land use changes in the UK over the coming century. One scenario considered is described thus:

Mass migration northwards to new towns in Scotland, Wales and northeast England may be needed to cope with climate change and water shortages in the South East, according to an apocalyptic vision set out by the Government Office for Science. [...] In the most extreme scenario, world leaders hold an emergency summit in 2014 when it becomes clear that the impacts of climate change are going to be far worse and happen much sooner than previously envisaged.

The sad fact is that if we wait until the damage is too obvious to ignore, it will be too late to stop much worse impacts in future decades. McKibben says we need courage and hope. But we also need leaders who are prepared to take the evidence and act on it — and who will not be swayed by the denialist noise campaign. They need to recognise empty vessels when they see them.

The annotated Rodney Hide: treating parliament with contempt Gareth Renowden Feb 10

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rodenymorph.gifHow far can a Minister of the Crown go in misrepresenting the facts of a matter before he is guilty of misleading the House? That’s not an easy question to answer, but any sensible reading of Rodney Hide’s speech in response to prime minister John Key’s statement to the House yesterday would suggest that if there’s a line to cross, Hide’s not just trodden on the chalk but taken a flying leap into touch.

Hide is certainly parliament’s highest-profile climate “skeptic” (his spelling), with a long track record of spouting the standard climate crank arguments, but yesterday Hide combined a complete misrepresentation of the so-called “climategate” affair with a scurrilous attack on the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, based entirely on the discredited smear campaign emanating from the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition and Richard Treadgold’s “Climate Conversation Group”. Here’s the relevant section of Hide’s diatribe, annotated by me to show just how far from the truth he strayed…

After an opening dig at the ETS, Hide climbs straight into the so-called “climategate” affair:

Climate-gate is now the greatest scandal in the history of science.

Astonishing hyperbole, but straight out of the denial campaign’s play book. Try Googling “greatest scandal in the history of science” and see where the hits are coming from…

It turns out that the prestigious agencies involved in leading climate change science were breaking official information laws,

Where does he get the plural from? One agency — the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK might have failed to meet the relevant freedom of information standards, but it was the subject of a coordinated campaign of frivolous FOI requests at the time, emanating from the Climate Audit blog — details here.

arbitrarily adjusting raw data,

Wrong. The “raw” data, supplied by national met services around the world was processed to create a global temperature record — a far from arbitrary process, and one fully described in the literature.

hiding the reasons for those adjustments,

Wrong. The methodology is fully described in the scientific literature.

then somehow contriving to lose the original unadjusted data so that it could not be independently checked,

Wrong. Most of the temperature data is freely available from national met services. Anyone wishing to independently check the CRU process could obtain the data in the same way as the CRU. Some met services do not make their data available free of charge (NIWA, for example, charged for access to its data until 2004), but will often provide it free to bona fide researchers.

thereby making claims that were not remotely justified by the state of the science,

Wrong. The various global temperature datasets produced by the Hadley Centre and CRU are very similar (though not identical) to those produced by NASA’s Godddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the various satellite data series.

and in some cases simply making it up.

Complete nonsense.

The so-called scientific agencies responsible for the climate-scare have ruthlessly suppressed competing theories and contrary data controlling and manipulating the peer review process.

More nonsense. If this were true, how did McLean et al (2009) slip through the net? The simple fact is that the most vocal sceptics are not working scientists, and do not submit papers to the peer-reviewed literature.

Government sponsored climate science has proved to have more in common with the Spanish inquisition than Popperian science.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Falsifiability is difficult to arrange with only one planet upon which to experiment.

Climate-gate, Glacier-gate, Africa-gate has left the once vaunted IPCC totally discredited.

Although “gates” are certainly proliferating in the media, when the substance of the allegations is examined the “mistakes” turn out to be minor. The IPCC’s fourth report is over 3,000 pages long. It would be a miracle if there were no mistakes in it, but it has certainly not been “totally discredited”.

I have always been a skeptic.

In mid-2008 (well after the publication of AR4). Hide was apparently happy to accept the state of the science as contained in the IPCC reports. Not so “skeptical” then. I wonder what happened to change Hide’s mind? Anything to do with ACT receiving large donations from millionaire climate sceptic Alan Gibbs?

When I started studying environmental science in 1975 many of the same so-called scientists were trying to scare the pants off us all with the coming of a new ice age. That’s because the world had been cooling for thirty years.

Hide studied for a Masters of Science in Resource Management at the Centre for Resource Management studies at what is now Lincoln University. One of his classmates at the time reports that Hide could have passed the paper without any reference to the primary scientific literature. Climate science wasn’t covered.

The “global cooling scare” never happened. There were a few media reports based on some speculative studies, but no “scare”.

It then warmed apparently for twenty-three years. So the same scientists turned global cooling into global warming. When the warming stopped in 1998, and the earth started to cool, the scare switched to climate change. That way the alarmists couldn’t be wrong. They were right whatever the temperature.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988. Republican strategist Frank Luntz suggested in a notorious memo in 2002 that Republicans should stop talking about “global warming”, and refer only to climate change as less “frightening”.

The world did not stop warming in 1998. Hide is repeating one of the oldest and most widely debunked canards in the crank catechism, but here’s the real irony: 1998 is only the warmest year in the record in the global temperature dataset produced by… wait for it… the Hadley Centre and CRU, the very body Hide has accused of “making stuff up”.

Our own NIWA is caught up in the scandal and its scientific credibility shredded.

NIWA has had nothing to do with any “gate” that Hide has mentioned.

NIWA’s raw data for their official temperature graph shows no warming. But NIWA shifted the bulk of the temperature record pre-1950 downwards and the bulk of the data post-1950 upwards to produce a sharply rising trend. Their warming trend is not a consequence of measurement but of manufactured adjustment.

Hide appears happy to forget that stations that have not been adjusted show the very same rising trend.

Well, there may be good reason for the adjustment.

So, before Christmas, I asked NIWA to disclose the adjustments and their reasons. They said they would.

But they have just told the Climate Science Coalition they don’t have the record of the adjustments.

As I discovered a couple of days ago, that’s not what NIWA told the CSC and Treadgold. The adjustments are described in the literature, and references were provided. Hide is clearly misrepresenting the facts of the matter here, taking his cue from the NZ CSC and Treadgold.

NIWA’s entire argument for warming was a result of adjustments to data which can’t be justified or checked.

A straightforward lie, and a direct attack on the scientists working at NIWA. The shareholding ministers for NIWA are finance minister and deputy PM Bill English, and minister for research, science and technology Wayne Mapp. They should immediately demand that Hide withdraw his allegation, and apologise.

It’s shonky. The entire thing is.

What’s shonky is the “work” done by Treadgold and the CSC. That Hide should rely on stuff that had already been widely and publicly discredited says a very great deal about his willingness to play fast and loose with the facts in order to pursue a political agenda.

But on the basis of shonky science, our government is whacking Fonterra with a $100 million-a-year bill, taxing the average dairy farm $10,000 extra and hiking fuel and power costs to every business and householder in the country.
Even if the science was perfect you wouldn’t have an ETS. But the science is not just settled. It’s descended into a farce.

The only farce here is that a member of the government, the minister for local government, should be prepared to tell lies in the House and participate in a smear campaign concocted by the Climate “Science” Coalition and the “Climate Conversation Group”.

Hide’s performance in the House yesterday was scandalous, and he should be held to account for it. His comments on climate science amount to a pot pourri of misrepresentation, lies and innuendo, and a direct attack on the reputation of NIWA and the scientists working there. Members of Parliament are free to speak their minds in the House — they have absolute freedom of speech, and cannot be sued for libel. But they are also obliged not to mislead the House, and it is clear that Hide’s performance yesterday was misleading in the extreme. There is a wider issue too: if a minister of the crown can lie with impunity about matters outside his ministerial responsibilities, how can the public have any confidence in his statements about areas in which he works? John Key needs to make Hide aware that credibility is hard won and easily lost, and he now has none. But I won’t be holding my breath.

[Update: At the same time as Hide was asserting that NIWA couldn't justify or check the adjustments made to the temperature, NIWA was publishing on their web site that very data. Did he think to check with NIWA before attacking them? Obviously not.]

Copenhagen: opening thoughts Gareth Renowden Dec 09

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Delegates at the opening ceremony for COP15 — the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen — had to sit through this video, so I think you should too. ;-) It’s a fitting introduction to the next couple of weeks. There are not enough hours in the day for me to be able to cover everything that’s happening, but I hope to be able to provide occasional perspective, and pointers to interesting material.

Some key issues:

  • Can the global community pull together, or is the gap between the positions of the rich world and developing nations too big to bridge?
  • If a global deal can be done, will it be able to deliver emissions reductions on the scale required to avoid damaging change?
  • Will a deal build on Kyoto, or will a new framework emerge?
  • What will all this diplomatic tussling mean for New Zealand’s interests, and what role will Nick Smith, Tim Groser and John Key play?

A lot of the underlying tensions are already emerging, as the leak of a negotiating position document — the “Danish text” agreed by key developed nations (including NZ) is causing outrage in developing countries. The Guardian spells it out:

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

While the diplomatic games begin, commentators sharpen their pens. Bill McKibben thinks the whole thing will be a disaster:

It’s like nothing we’ve ever faced before — and we’re facing it as if it’s just like everything else. That’s the problem.

To help me keep an eye on all this, I’ll be using a number of resources. Apart from my usual array of RSS and Twitter feeds, I’ll be keeping an eye on the Guardian’s amazingly diverse coverage (and blogs), the BBC (try the animated 800,000 years of climate history) and the COP15 web site (they provide good news coverage, and if you have the time, they’re providing live feeds to a lot of stuff). Press journalist David Williams is blogging his time at the conference, and the Science Media Centre has a page listing useful resources — aimed at the media, but there’s a lot of good stuff in there for the interested reader.

As you sow… (aka the ’bugger’ moment) Gareth Renowden Nov 13

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And so it begins: the rest of the world is starting to notice the major disconnect between New Zealand’s much advertised “clean and green” image and the National-led government’s piecemeal demolition of sensible climate policy. In yesterday’s Guardian, one of Britain’s leading quality newspapers, Fred Pearce devotes his “greenwash” column to New Zealand:

…my prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community goes to New Zealand, a country that sells itself round the world as “clean and green. [...] To rub our noses in it, last year New Zealand signed up to the UN’s Climate Neutral Network, a list of nations that are “laying out strategies to become carbon neutral”. But if you read the small print of what New Zealand has actually promised, it is a measly 50% in emissions by 2050 — something even the US can trump.

Pearce fails to draw the distinction between the policies of the last government — which were for carbon neutrality — and the stance of the current government — which has stopped all work on plans for carbon neutrality — but is spot on about the marketing problem NZ now faces:

Check the UNEP website and you will find an excruciating hagiography about a “climate neutral journey to Middle Earth”, in which everything from the local wines to air conditioning and Air New Zealand get the greenwash treatment.

After extolling the country’s green credentials, it asks: “Have you landed in a dreamland?” Well, UNEP’s reporter certainly has. He cheers New Zealand’s “global leadership in tackling climate change”, when the country’s minister in charge of climate negotiations, Tim Groser, has been busy reassuring his compatriots that “we would not try to be ‘leaders’ in climate change.”

This is not just political spin. It is also commercial greenwash. New Zealand trades on its greenness to promote its two big industries: tourism and dairy exports.

And there’s the crunch. Pearce goes on to point to research that suggests tourism would be badly hit by a loss of the clean green image. To make matters worse, environmental tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of the market. Our agricultural exports also depend on that image — but Tim Groser and the audience of farmers he was addressing seem to have been blissfully unaware of the pit they were digging for themselves.

It takes years to build a good image and establish what marketing people call positive brand attributes, but it can take only a few newspaper articles to damage or destroy it. Tourism NZ’s British campaign just took a major blow. How long before the news spreads, tourist numbers fall and exports are hit? Will our Minister of Tourism rush to defend our brand? And just how are you going to do that, John? It’s your systematic demolition of sensible climate policies that is doing the damage.

[See also: Bernard Hickey this morning.]

[Hat tip: Sam Tobin]

Finding better words Bryan Walker Oct 25

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ClimatechallengeA sidelight to Gareth’s post about the 4ºC map launched in London last week is the strength of the language used at the event by the Miliband brothers — foreign secretary David (left) and climate change secretary Ed. The Times reported that David Miliband accused the public of lacking a sense of urgency in the face of the potentially devastating consequences of climate change. People have grown apathetic, he said, when they needed to be galvanised into action before Copenhagen.

’For a lot of people the penny hasn’t dropped that this climate change challenge is real and is happening now. There isn’t yet that feeling of urgency and drive and animation about the Copenhagen conference.’

His brother Ed chimed in to point out that only 18 percent of people believed that climate change would affect their children, and defended the government’s hard-hitting advertising campaign on the dangers ahead. He also spoke of a positive vision of a low-carbon future.

The Milibands are not alone in offering a robust message to the British public.  Gordon Brown speaks unequivocally of the threat and has undertaken to go to Copenhagen.

There ought to be nothing remarkable about this, other than the fact that it has been so long in coming. It’s straightforward, down to earth political leadership which we have a right to expect in a modern democratic state where scientific literacy is fundamental. But it looks remarkable from a New Zealand perspective because we are hearing next to nothing by way of urgent statement from our own government on the issue. Certainly no clarion calls.

I’ve scrolled through the record of ministerial releases and speeches which bear on the issue, and have nowhere found anything resembling a wake-up call to the New Zealand public. Nick Smith sometimes gives the impression that he is aware of the threat, but most of what he has to say is about the difficulties of facing it. I commented on his May address to a climate change conference here, and it is difficult to see much change since then. The most recent statement I could find was his address to the Bluegreens Forum, entitled Goodbye Nanny State; Hello Green Economy which, after detailing few government initiatives, concluded with the reassuring government mantra of a “balanced approach”.

Not much help from Gerry Brownlee. One of the first things he did was to remove the ban on new thermal baseload electricity generation.

’The Government wants investment in new electricity generation to occur on the basis of sound economics, rather than through ruling out particular options on the basis of ideology.’

Admittedly since he has duly welcomed advances in renewable energy deployment and claimed much credit for the home insulation scheme, but one looks in vain for any indication in his speeches that these are matters of urgency. 

Tim Groser is also a letdown when it comes to stressing urgency.  On his departure for pre-Copenhagen talks in New York last month he had this to say:

“New Zealanders will want to know that the deal is fair and the efforts they are called upon to make will lead to a safer future.’

His ministers give the Prime Minister an easy ride. However on the international stage when addressing the UN in September he sounded briefly exciting:

’Distinguished representatives, the major focus of the General Assembly this year must be the challenge of climate change. 

’Climate change demands innovation and a global response.  The world cannot afford to contemplate failure at Copenhagen.  Political leadership is needed, and it is on display.’

But it was downhill from there, and the balance theme duly emerged:

’All countries must take action that reflects our individual circumstances, responsibilities and capabilities.

“For our part, New Zealand is committed to securing a durable and meaningful agreement on climate change. An agreement that is both environmentally effective and economically efficient.’

I’ve not heard anything from John Key inside the country that comes anywhere near his opening words on the topic at the UN. But there’s been plenty on the need for a balanced approach. With tepid statements from the political leadership the New Zealand public can perhaps be forgiven for thinking there’s not too much at stake.  And it leaves plenty of unoccupied space for the lobbies urgently pursuing shortsighted financial interests.

Another contrast has shown up today. President Obama has just given a major speech on clean energy at the MIT.  No quarter there for those who want to slow things down: 

’There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy — when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs. There are going to be those who cynically claim — make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary.

And no helplessness in the face of how difficult it all is:

’But understand there’s also another myth that we have to dispel, and this one is far more dangerous because we’re all somewhat complicit in it. It’s far more dangerous than any attack made by those who wish to stand in the way of progress — and that’s the idea that there is nothing or little that we can do. It’s pessimism. It’s the pessimistic notion that our politics are too broken and our people too unwilling to make hard choices for us to actually deal with this energy issue that we’re facing…

 ’I reject that argument. I reject it because of what I’ve seen here at MIT. Because of what I have seen across America. Because of what we know we are capable of achieving when called upon to achieve it.’

It looks as if New Zealanders won’t know what they are capable of achieving because they won’t be called upon to achieve it by those best placed to issue the call. I realise this post is about words rather than deeds, and that rhetoric alone won’t save us. But without some political rhetoric I see little chance of effective actions.

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