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Posts Tagged NZ Herald

Climate of complacency: NZ Herald lazy and irresponsible Gareth Renowden Jan 14

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Saturday’s New Zealand Herald carried an astonishing editorial on climate change — remarkable enough to prompt me to tweet that it was “crass, complacent and so very wrong“, despite it being ostensibly in support of action on climate change. The piece begins by riffing on the wildfires in Australia, before observing:

With Australia having its two hottest days on record this week, and New Zealand enjoying a hot summer, it feels like climate change has arrived. But most scientists are wary about attributing any particular weather to global warming. To cite this summer as evidence would enable sceptics to recall last January’s washout.

“Most scientists” are being anything but wary about discussing the link between the Aussie heatwave and climate change. Australia’s Climate Commission released a special report on the heatwave at the end of last week. Here are the first three “key points” from the report:

  • The length, extent and severity of the current Australian heatwave is unprecedented in the measurement record.
  • Although Australia has always had heatwaves, hot days and bushfires, climate change is increasing the risk of more frequent and longer heatwaves and more extreme hot days, as well as exacerbating bushfire conditions.
  • Climate change has contributed to making the current extreme heat conditions and bushfires worse.

Straightforward enough, you might think. Climate change is making the heat and fires worse. But if the Herald editorial writer might be forgiven for missing a major report from the Australian body tasked with informing that nation about the realities of climate change, he or she cannot be forgiven for the astonishing complacency evident in the next few paragraphs.

In a review of climate study this week, we reported that New Zealand might fare quite well under the predicted 4C increase in average global temperatures. Here the expected rise is 3C.

That “review” doesn’t appear to be available online, but it appears on the basis of those numbers to have been a reasonable, if somewhat gloomy appraisal of where we might be heading. But then…

Victoria University’s Dr Jim Renwick, a lead author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel’s next report, said the North Island’s climate would be closer to Queensland’s and the South Island would have the North Island’s conditions. It does not sound so bad.

Not so bad? Only if you ignore what a three degree temperature rise would mean for the ecosystems in which we live. Human systems might be able to cope reasonably well — if at considerable expense — but the New Zealand environment would be transformed beyond all recognition. And while NZ might fare better than much of the planet, the reality of four degrees warming elsewhere would be nightmarish. Australia’s heatwaves are already being pushed into record territory by a mere 0.9 degrees of warming. How much worse would they be in four degree world?

Without these important caveats, that paragraph amounts to ridiculous complacency.

The editorial then moves on smoothly to introduce geoengineering as a possible solution.

The next IPCC report will examine engineering responses to climate change, such as extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sending sun-reflecting particles into the stratosphere.

It is something to ponder as we bask in another hot, sunny weekend.

Apparently, the newspaper wants us to ignore the bad stuff, look only the bright side, and believe that we can fix the problem by applying technologies yet to be invented. No need to sweat the hard stuff. No apparent necessity to reduce emissions. Let’s all lie on the beach and ponder that wonderful world.

The editorial closes with one sentiment I can wholeheartedly endorse :

If this is a symptom of global warming we are all in it together.

No need for the if: we are undoubtedly all in “it” together, but if we are to have any hope of reaching the sunlit uplands of a world where climate change has been restricted to manageable proportions, we will need to take the problem seriously, and work hard to achieve a solution. Sadly there’s no sign of that wisdom to be found in this lazy, risible and irresponsible Herald editorial.

[Update 15/1: The Herald article including NZ climate projections can be seen here.]

NZ Herald’s turn to offer propaganda as opinion – De Freitas’ links to cranks hidden from readers Gareth Renowden Sep 12

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The new “compact” NZ Herald has taken a downmarket tabloid approach to informing its readers by running an opinion piece about the recent courtroom defeat for NZ’s climate cranks by prominent climate sceptic and Auckland University geographer Chris de Freitas, without explaining de Freitas’ long history of association with the cranks he’s defending. In the article, de Freitas overstates the uncertainties associated with temperature records, even going so far as to imply that the warming trend over the last hundred years might be “indistinguishable from zero”1. He also overplays the importance of temperature series to policy-makers — a line straight out of crank litigant Barry Brill’s playbook, and self-evident nonsense.

Despite this transparent partiality, the opinion editors at the Herald credit him like this:

Chris de Freitas is an associate professor in the School of Environment at the University of Auckland.

But, as the Herald opinion team well know, de Freitas is much, much more than a mere associate professor in the School of Environment. He has a track record of activism against action on climate change that stretches back two decades. Here, for the poor misled readers of the new Herald‘s opinion pages is a handy, cut-out-and-keep guide to de Freitas’ long history of climate denial activism.

This long list is far from complete — not least because it doesn’t include all the sceptic nonsense he’s presented as opinion at the NZ Herald and National Business Review over the years3, but it should serve to give a flavour of the man that Herald readers might think was a humble and respectable geographer at the University of Auckland.

The Herald has no excuse for failing to explain de Freitas’ interests in this issue, and should print a clarification as soon as possible. Carrying a good piece by Brian Rudman may “balance” CdF’s effort in some eyes, but the paper really needs to do better. What next? An opinion piece criticising the Labour party by prime minister John Key, where he is described as “a retired banker”?

[Updated 13/9 to add CEI link, and CdF's publication record.]

  1. “Temperature trends detected are small, usually just a few tenths of one degree Celsius over 100 years, a rate that is exceeded by the data’s standard error. Statistically this means the trend is indistinguishable from zero.”
  2. It didn’t.
  3. A rough count suggests that since 1990 he has published around 77 opinion
    pieces about climate change – with 32 in NBR and 27 in the Herald – partial publication record here.

Offshore wind: a huge resource Bryan Walker Aug 28

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Two wind energy items arrived in my inbox in close proximity recently. One was from the NZ Wind Energy Association (NZWEA) congratulating Meridian Energy on turning the first sod at Mill Creek wind farm in the Ohariu Valley north-west of Wellington. It’s a 60 megawatt farm of 26 turbines. The project will cost $169 million and is expected to be commissioned by mid-2014. It will increase NZ’s installed wind capacity from 623 megawatts to 683 megawatts.

NZWEA’s chief executive made appropriate remarks to accompany the announcement, reiterating the expectation that at least 20% of NZ’s electricity will be generated from wind by 2030 and noting the technology advances in harnessing wind which is now one of the lowest cost options for new generation in New Zealand.

It’s good to see the steady progress in the development of wind energy in NZ, although it seems to arouse little excitement in Government circles who reserve most of their interest for further  fossil fuel development. And a report in Saturday’s NZ Herald was a sobering reminder that the $7 billion invested in the oil and gas sector over the past five years puts it far ahead of any other local sector when it comes to investment in new productive capacity. NZ is hardly on the brink of transition from fossil fuels, hardly, it seems, even interested in the possibility while there’s money to be made from exploiting them.

The second item was from the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), and reported that offshore wind development is picking up pace. Globally wind power now has 238,000 megawatts of capacity installed. Most of that is land-based, but the focus of the article was on the rise in offshore wind capacity, which has expanded nearly six-fold since 2006 to currently stand at 4600 megawatts. The article provides a useful overview of the prospective future development.

More than 90% of the offshore wind installations are in Europe, where the UK leads the way with 2500 MW, over half the world total.  Outside Europe, only China and Japan have operational offshore wind farms. Although its first offshore project was not installed until 2010, China already ranks fourth behind the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Belgium, with 260 megawatts. And China is poised for big development. The government’s goal is 30,000 megawatts of offshore capacity by 2020. This could generate the equivalent of roughly one fifth of China’s current residential electricity consumption. Elsewhere in East Asia, South Korea has big plans for offshore wind, targeting 2,500 megawatts by 2019.

The US by contrast is moving only slowly in offshore development. It trails only China in land-based wind generating capacity but has yet to install a single offshore turbine. After a decade of fending off opposition a proposed 470-megawatt project off the coast of Massachusetts aims to begin construction next year, as do two other East Coast projects. A proposed offshore “transmission backbone” of highly efficient underwater high voltage direct current cables financed by Google and other investors would stretch some 300 miles from New York to Virginia, and could connect around 7,000 megawatts of offshore wind to the Mid-Atlantic’s population centres. It’s now under environmental review and complete construction would take approximately 10 years. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that wind turbines installed in the shallow waters of the Mid-Atlantic region could add up to nearly 300,000 megawatts of capacity—enough to power 90 million U.S. homes. For the entire Atlantic Coast, including deeper waters, the resource is estimated at 1 million megawatts.

The EPI report claims that nine of the top ten carbon dioxide emitting countries in 2010 have more than enough offshore wind energy potential to meet all their current electricity needs. (Iran is the exception.) Russia’s offshore wind resources, for example, exceed its current electricity demand by a factor of 23. Canada’s current electricity needs could be met 36 times over with domestic offshore wind energy.

It’s clearly an enormous resource, albeit not one that all the countries concerned are racing to exploit. Current leaders in offshore wind are expected to remain the principal sites for deployment, with China, the UK and Germany accounting for more than 70% of new installations.

Lester Brown is founder and president of EPI. His well-known Plan B, to which this article is one of many updates, called in 2009 for a crash programme to develop 3 million megawatts of wind generating capacity by 2020, enough to satisfy 40% of world electricity needs. There’s little in what is reported here to suggest we are on track to that sort of figure. Indeed, this update merely concludes: “As interest grows and technology advances, offshore wind appears headed for a prominent position in the world’s renewable energy mix.”

It’s not difficult to see the promise in renewable energy, but it is difficult as yet to see sufficient development to suggest we are serious about decarbonising our economies. It can even seem a little foolish to make much of the promise of renewables, given the political strength of climate change denial and the determination of vested interests to hold on to fossil fuel industries. It’s easier to lament the apparent incapability of the world’s political leadership to challenge the disastrous route we are on than to paint hopeful prospects for clean energy. But there is movement, either with or without government support, and it’s important to publicise that and to say over and over again that we do not need to burn fossil fuels to obtain reliable and abundant power.

Nick Smith: another fossil fuel fail Bryan Walker Aug 15

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MP Nick Smith in a NZ Herald opinion piece this week uses the fracking debate to advance the cause of fossil fuel mining. He claims that fracking is important in the development of geothermal energy and then moves seamlessly to the notion that we are desperately in need of unconventional natural gas in order to save us from falling back on coal, which we will otherwise “inevitably burn”. In defending fracking he manages to nicely couple the fossil fuel natural gas with a renewable energy source, geothermal.

It’s not my purpose to argue here about fracking as a technology. What is dismaying about Smith’s article is the complacency with which he advances the cause of natural gas. Writing enthusiastically of the huge unconventional shale gas resources in the US, he claims gas emits one-third the greenhouse gas emissions of coal. I know its emissions are lower, but it was news to me that they were as low as that. I could find no source to substantiate that figure. A little over half is the best figure I have been able to locate, and there are big questions about methane leakage in the fracking process. However let that pass. The real issue is the unrestrained pursuit of unconventional fossil fuels, which as James Hansen has reminded us often enough will mean game over for the climate.

The argument that natural gas is better than coal from a climate change perspective is increasingly made. It is true enough. But it does not mean that natural gas is somehow benign in relation to global warming. I’ve written on this question before and I repeat here a quote I used then from Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA:

“While natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, it is still a fossil fuel. Its increased use could muscle out low-carbon fuels such as renewables and nuclear, particularly in the wake of Fukushima. An expansion of gas use alone is no panacea for climate change.”

Nick Smith’s urgent advocacy of fracking for natural gas, albeit hedged by some precautions, completely ignores the challenge to replace the use of all fossil fuels with renewable or nuclear energy. It appears to be either natural gas or coal in his book, and he works up a lather of indignation about how opposition to fracking “halts the development of industries offering significant economic and environmental benefits” to the country.

There may or may not be immediate environmental concerns about the process of fracking. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is undertaking an enquiry and will report by the end of the year. But the overarching environmental concern is much greater than the fracking technology. That concern is the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, a matter which Smith addresses only to the extent of hurriedly claiming the superiority of natural gas over coal. If that is as far as Government thinking goes, it is nowhere near far enough.

Smith in his final paragraph, in the context of an assertion that he is passionate about New Zealand’s natural environment, urges the need for “a rational and science-based approach to our natural resources and risk management”. Is there anything more rational and science-based than the warnings of climate scientists that we are putting humanity in grave danger by continuing to explore and exploit fossil fuels? Certainly we can’t make the transition to other fuels overnight. But it would be good to see a politician of Smith’s background saving his insistent advocacy for the necessary goal of developing energy sources that do not add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The Government’s preference for short term issues is a sad avoidance of responsibility.

Roughan’s ready theory Gareth Renowden Jul 08

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John Roughan has a theory. The New Zealand Herald‘s columnist and leader writer waxes lyrical this week about the discovery of the Higgs boson bringing excitement back to science — science having been made dull by being “dominated by environmentalism” for too long. Others may wish to make fun of Roughan’s somewhat incoherent take on particle physics:

The glimpse of the ‘Higgs boson’, or something like it, allows minds to boggle on the existence of “dark matter” and the possibility there really is a dimension to the world that is beyond human sensory perception.

Who knows where that knowledge will lead? Next they will work out how to control the particle, then they will remove it to enable things – people – to travel at the speed necessary to explore the galaxy.

But bring it on, I say. Let’s get the Roughan-Higgs drive patented. That’s a new technology that could really drive the economic transformation of New Zealand. Truly ground-breaking stuff from a political columnist.

Roughan’s real theory, sadly, is much more mundane, and amounts to little more than an extended and ill-educated rant against environmentalism.

After a barely coherent run through his incomprehension about humanity’s ability to have planetary scale impacts, he concludes thus:

Science has been dominated by environmentalism for too long. What it gained in political attention and research grants has come at a cost to its power to excite us. If a subatomic particle has opened a door to phenomena we can barely comprehend, science will be wonderful again.

What the hell does Roughan mean by “science”? I presume he’s talking about his perception of what science is, but his column makes it obvious that he has a sadly limited view of what that might be. His own boredom with science (but not geology apparently, which might speak to us in our dreams) — including all the many subjects that yield to scientific investigation that have little or nothing to do with the environment or environmentalism in any shape or form — tells us nothing about what science is or might be.

Being interested in “science” means being curious about everything. Doing science means being systematic in exploring the limits of our knowledge. It’s endlessly fascinating and exciting. You don’t need to be a particle physicist to have fun. And we should not let the ignorant trample on reality. Truthiness in service of politics is never a pretty sight. Which brings me to my1 quote of the day.

We need evidence-based decision-making; not decision-based evidence-making.
-Raj Sherman, leader of the Alberta Liberals

Unfortunately for Roughan’s rough and ready and right-wing world view, the evidence suggests that we have no option but to accept we’re stuffing up the planet, and must decide to do something rather urgently to stop it. We’re all environmentalists now. In the real world, we have no choice.

PS: Here’s a much more nuanced take on what we can learn from the discovery of the Higgs boson.

[My theory…]

  1. And Planet 3.0′s.

No dallying with denial Bryan Walker Jun 27

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Will Hutton’s Observer column this week was forthright on the folly and danger of climate change scepticism. “Climate change is already hurting and, unchecked, will turn into a catastrophe.”  Against that statement he points to the intellectual bankruptcy of allowing ideological preference for reducing the role of government in society to somehow justify climate change scepticism. It’s not even as if capitalism is under threat of disappearance.  “Capitalism is not going away: the task is to reform it deploying a more agile, intelligent state.” But taxation and regulation will be part of that reform and the climate sceptics on the right need to come to their senses on that necessity.

Hutton’s was the sort of direct statement we should expect from informed journalists. He notes in passing that the media is often less interested in the evidence that it should be. “It likes a spat: the idiosyncratic brave climate change dissenter is pitched as the David against the Goliath of established opinion.”

The day after I’d read Hutton’s column the NZ Herald’s monthly magazine Element accompanied Monday’s edition of the paper and cheered up my morning. There was no dallying with denial here. Editor James Russell gave voice to the slight embarrassment many of us who worry about climate change probably feel in some company.

I can’t help feeling like an idealistic teenager when I say that tackling climate change and achieving global emissions targets would be the greatest collective achievement of the human race.

He ploughs on:

But, well, damn the begrudgers – I’m saying it anyway.

He goes on to explain that at Element they take climate change as a given and are long past old questions about whether it’s happening and what’s causing it. Instead, he says, their lead story this week explores the phenomenon of those that don’t or won’t believe in climate change, and their possible reasons for denial. “Basic psychoanalysis” he calls it, acknowledging that those in the denial camp will likely find it patronising, even infuriating.

The story “A Climate of Denial”, written by Andy Kenworthy (pictured), works through possible psychological barriers to action on climate change, drawing on a 2010 Report by the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Interface between Psychology and Global Climate Change.  He focuses particularly on the barriers that relate to our ability to accept the problem exists. The slowness of societies to recognise the seriousness of the issue is puzzling:

Despite a veritable and constant cascade of peer-reviewed and authoritative research all saying the same thing about anthropogenic (caused by human activity) climate change, the numbers of people in Australia and the US who don’t believe is actually on the increase.

What gives? Is the problem simply too big? Too hard to accept? Or is it just that denying the problem provides an excuse not to act on it?

The article goes on to discuss a variety of barriers and how they might be contributing to this state of affairs.  He ranges through such topics as ignorance, uncertainty, mistrust, cognitive dissonance, the undervaluing of future risks or risks to people in other places, and the difficulty of breaking habitual behaviours. Concluding this discussion he observes that “it is honesty, humility and willingness to co-operate that is required to tackle this together for the benefit of all”.

He next considers the denial industry, funded to deliberately promote doubt about climate change. No psychological surmise needed here. Follow the money.

Well, most of the recipients of this corporate largesse are essentially public relations companies that do no scientific research of their own: their job is to get selective information into the public domain to sway public opinion on behalf of those who pay their bills. So misleading information distributed by them appears on many websites, and even in the mouths of pundits who deny climate change is an issue on radio and television.

The tone of Kenworthy’s article is quite moderate, but its intention is direct enough and in some quarters will no doubt arouse the indignation that the editor foresees. There is no need to be defensive in the face of such objection. If emissions are not drastically reduced climate change shows every sign of being catastrophic in its proportions as it develops, heavily weighted with human suffering. One would expect that the media would reflect this fact regularly and persistently even in a country like New Zealand  where government spokespersons manage to avoid even mentioning climate change for most of the time and to little effect when they do.

The media should have been sounding the alarm and giving close attention to the issue for some years now, not lending weight to the campaign of misinformation by treating it as a legitimate alternative scientific source. Things appear to be improving somewhat recently, as they certainly needed to, but there’s hardly yet the sense of crisis that is called for. We need more editors prepared to run the risk of appearing like idealistic teenagers.

A sunnier outlook from the ground up Bryan Walker May 19

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The NZ Herald business supplement recently carried a thoughtful feature by Peter Huck in which he described moves to combat climate change at lower levels than the floundering international negotiations. He begins with a report on Desertec Industrial Initiative, the German-led consortium which this year hopes to trial in Morocco a concentrated solar power plant as the harbinger of ambitious plans to provide very large quantities of solar and wind energy to North Africa and Europe.

Huck takes this as one of the many signals that the top-down approach to limiting carbon emissions through international deals is giving way to a ground-up attitude that stresses action.  Others include the EU’s introduction of a carbon tax on airlines that use its airports; Scotland’s investment in wave power; California’s embrace of renewable energy, clean fuels, a cap-and-trade programme to limit emissions, and other green policies; Ecuador’s efforts to preserve its forests by getting donors to pay it to keep oil in the ground; China’s approval last year of its 12th Five Year Plan, which aims to tackle energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Further down the chain Huck instances a growing urgency about reducing emissions which can mean corporate investment in renewable energy, municipal emphasis on public transport, or a family insulating their home.

He produces comments from a number of people in the course of his article, one of the most direct being from GLOBE’s president, John Gummer, Lord Deben:

“The shape of the debate is changing from one about sharing a global burden – with governments naturally trying to minimise their share – to one of realisation that acting on climate change is in the national interest.”

That sent me to the GLOBE website and to the discovery of a recent article by John Gummer and John Prescott. I’ll leave Huck’s article at this point, recommending it as a good example of well-informed and scientifically aware journalism, and turn to Gummer and Prescott who develop the theme Huck reports by pointing to recent Mexican and South Korean legislation. They emphasise the significance of Mexico’s recent landmark environmental legislation, the General Law on Climate Change. Mexico is also noted as very close to approving a REDD+ forestry law that will set a benchmark for international best practice.  Added to this is the recent passage of far-reaching legislation introducing an emissions trading scheme in South Korea.

The passage of Mexico and South Korea’s law (which in both instances were supported, significantly, on a cross-party basis) highlights the remarkable progress on climate change now being made globally. A critical mass of strategically significant — often emerging — economies have made landmark climate and energy-related legislation over the last year. These countries, including China, are advancing laws at a pace that contrasts sharply with the UN-brokered climate change talks that formally convene again in Qatar in late November.

They put the trend in a global context and hail it as marking a major shift:

This trend comes at a time of pivotal change in international relations with continuing economic downturn in the West being counterpoised with the increasingly rapid shift of power to emerging economies.  Mirroring this structural shift is a fundamental repositioning of the centre of gravity of the global climate change debate towards domestic climate change legislation. This is nothing less than game changing.

They provide other examples of countries where governments are developing climate change action plans and note that with the exception of Australia there is an encouraging move towards political consensus over such action, with many legislators increasingly recognising the positive co-benefits of climate change legislation, ranging from greater resource efficiency and increased energy security to the reduction of air pollution.

Here’s the different order that this points to:

All this, in turn, mirrors a crucial shift in the political debate on climate change. Until now, it has been largely framed by the narrative of sharing a global burden – with governments, naturally, trying to minimise their share.

Now, legislators increasingly view the issue as one of national self-interest, with each nation trying to maximise the benefits of climate change legislation. Indeed, those countries with strong national legislation are already attracting most inward investment on low-carbon technologies because there is greater business certainty rather than high regulatory risk.

They acknowledge that although there is encouragement in these developments they are not yet sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change.

Nonetheless, the national legal and policy frameworks to measure, report, verify and manage carbon that are now being created have the potential of significant tightening. This will be the more likely as governments experience the benefits of lower energy use, reduced costs, improved competitiveness, and greater energy security.

However a global deal still matters, and it will be important to translate progress at national levels into such a deal during the negotiations that began at Durban and are due to finish in 2015.

Such a deal will probably only be possible when even more countries are committed to taking action on climate change because it is to their advantage rather than out of perceived altruism. In other words, such a deal will reflect domestic political conditions not define them.

The authors note that this has opened up new possibilities for progress in international agreement:

Countries that have found it hard to agree to international action are now outdoing their commitments in domestic legislation. Having taken those steps at home they will find it much easier to commit to a global agreement which confirms the decisions they have already taken of their sovereign free will.

But they warn of the danger of some developed countries lowering their long-term ambition and hardening their stances.

A curmudgeonly response from the developed world is now the biggest threat to the Kyoto process.

John Gummer, Lord Deben, is a former Conservative UK Secretary of State for the Environment; John Prescott, Lord Prescott, is a former UK Labour Deputy Prime Minister. Their joint authorship is an indication of the extent to which climate change is now a cross-party issue in many countries, as it should be.

The thesis is that countries considering their own best interests in their own constituencies are proving able to act more hopefully for the climate than when they are assembled in international negotiating forums, and further that this can in turn help break the deadlocks which are frustrating effective international action. It’s an attractive interpretation, albeit accompanied by warning about possible intransigence from some unnamed developed countries. Contemplating the possibility of groundswell achieving the necessary changes is certainly more pleasant than looking at the bleak prospects so far offered by international negotiation.

I thought of my own country New Zealand when reading the article. We seem to have persuaded many observers that our emissions trading scheme is a bold example of national initiative on climate change. But if they looked below the surface they would see that so far it is little more than a public relations exercise, weak in its effects and co-exists with a firm intention to obtain wealth from increased fossil fuel exploitation. One hopes that the examples Gummer and Prescott — and Huck — have offered have more substance than New Zealand is yet providing.

But not to be gloomy and to end on a positive note here’s a recent video from Desertec.

Kiwiblog kobblers Gareth Renowden Mar 22

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New Zealand’s leading right wing blogger, National Party spinmeister and opinion poll guru David Farrar, this morning allowed himself the luxury of a rant about the New Zealand Herald‘s coverage of a new paper on sea level during the late Pliocene. In a post teasingly titled “Alarmist bullshit“, he manages to demonstrate his rudimentary grasp of the facts, misunderstands the real story behind the new research, and ends up shooting himself in the foot. Here’s David in full flow:

Anyone who thinks public policy today should be based on a forecast of what the climate might be in 5,000 years is nuts. Look at how the world has changed in just 100 years let alone hundreds or thousands. Hell in 1,000 years we may be living on Mars.

The Herald should be ashamed for saying that the projected increase could ’dramatically transform’ our coastal boundaries. A change over 1,000 years+ is not dramatic. It’s like saying the separation of Gondwana was dramatic.

20 metres is a lot of sea level rise. Here’s what 20 metres would mean for my nearest city, poor old quake-plagued Christchurch, courtesy of the Firetree sea level rise calculator. The central business district is under water, the new shoreline well to the west. At a rough guess, I’d say 80% of the city is flooded, and Banks Peninsula is an island once more.

I think that can be reasonably described as a dramatic transformation of the South Island coastline, even if it does take 1,000 years to happen. DPF might like to note that coping with two metres per century sea level rise is nobody’s picnic. But his misunderstanding runs deeper…

His first mistake is in his opening paragraph:

Some people doubt temperatures are rising at all, But I do think there is a warming trend, of which greenhouse gas emissions are at least partially responsible. However even the IPCC say that the maximum rise in sea levels by 2100 is 59 cm. This is a 2007 projection. Since then some media have quoted extreme claims beyond that, but I prefer to put credence on the IPCC projections. The IPCC process is far from perfect, but they tend to produce reasonably sane figures.

The IPCC’s Fourth Report does not say that the maximum sea level rise by 2100 is 59cm. It says that the maximum modelled sea level rise is 59 cm, specifically “excluding future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow”. The “extreme claims” in “some media” since then reflect the advancement of our understanding of those dynamical ice sheet flows — the rapid increase in ice mass loss from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets in particular, the subject of the paper that prompted the Herald story. The IPCC’s fifth report is due out towards the end of next year, and it is certain — based on the recent literature — that the AR4 numbers will be revised upwards.

Isaac Davison’s Herald story is actually a good account of the new paper1, and it’s obvious that he’s taken the time and trouble to speak to Victoria University’s Tim Naish, one of the authors. He quotes Naish as saying it was “well-established that oceans would rise one metre this century”. Perhaps DPF didn’t read that far…

However, both the Herald and Farrar fail to make the key point that this study illustrates so well. If current carbon dioxide levels commit the planet to a further 2ºC warming and 20 metres of sea level rise (however long it takes to get there), then prudent public policy means that we have to reduce the amount of CO2 below today’s levels to avoid visiting catastrophic sea level rise on future generations. This is essentially the point that Jim Hansen has been making, and why 350.org adopted the number they did.

Put simply — in terms DPF can understand — the import of this new study is to confirm that New Zealand government policy on carbon emissions is ludicrously out of touch with the state of our understanding of the planet’s climate system. Sadly, NZ is not alone in this. Global policy settings are just as far out of line with reality, and the international community shows little appetite for addressing the real scale of the problem. By aiming only for what they deem politically possible, they commit the world to disaster.

I suppose we can forgive DPF for not keeping up with the state of research in this field — he is, after all, a political animal first and foremost, and one not averse to feeding the ravening denialist hordes that haunt his blog’s comments — but you might expect someone who expects to be taken seriously when discussing public policy to be a little more humble when commenting out of his area of expertise.

  1. Miller, K.G., Browning, J.V, Kulpecz, A., Naish, T.R., Kominz, M., Rosenthal, Y., Cramer, B.S., Peltier, R., Sosdian, S., Wright, J.D., (in press). The high tide of the Pliocene: Implications of a 25-20 m eustatic peak for Antarctic glaciation. Geology, here

Cranking it out: NZ papers conned by denier media strategy cindy Jan 16

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My inbox in the last month has filled with emails about denier articles in leading New Zealand newspapers. It’s been a veritable crank central across the country. They include the ridiculous opinion piece by Jim Hopkins in the Herald late last year, a similar feature by Bryan Leyland  published in both the DomPost and The [...]

Jim Hopkins: vapid, vacuous, pretty vacant Gareth Renowden Dec 18

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There’s a terrible tyranny in being a columnist for a national newspaper, required to produce entertaining and informative copy every week. It’s a hard job, having an opinion and expressing it cogently. Some writers struggle and succeed, others strive and fail dismally. The NZ Herald — the newspaper of record for NZ’s biggest city — has a couple of fine examples of the latter: old curmudgeon Garth George, who meets the difficulties inherent in his job by ripping off other people’s copy, and red-spectacled “funny man” Jim Hopkins, who has never allowed the facts to get in the way of a good rant.

And what a diatribe he gave us last Friday! Global warming’s gone away, Jim reckons:

There has been a trickle of terror but, by and large, the whole calamitous narrative is a goneburger.

…and…

The conclusion’s inescapable. Either we (literally) cooked our goose a long time ago or global warming’s always been more chimera than catastrophe. Quids in, it’s the latter. This is a crisis of faith, not a crisis of fact.

…and…

We just don’t need to worry about it any more. That’s all. The prediction holds. Global warming has disappeared.

Yes that’s right, because the media isn’t giving global warming the same prominence as a few years ago, the problem must be over. Thank the Lord for that sir. And what a shame that Hopkins’ is talking — not to put too fine a point on it — complete bollocks. Here’s why:

Hopkins is wrong because the laws of physics haven’t changed. CO2 continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, the world continues to warm. But his position is actually worse than mere wishful thinking — it’s based on wilful ignorance. The world’s media have been providing the very kind of “calamitous narrative” he thinks has disappeared — but he’s failed to notice. Let’s count a few of the terrible weather disasters likely to have been made worse by a warming climate:

…and that’s just for starters. You’d think Hopkins might have noticed, but perhaps he needs a new prescription in those famous red specs of his.

You might also think that the powers that be at the NZ Herald would notice just how far removed from reality their “humorous” columnist1 has strayed — but given that they are happy to provide a regular platform for Garth George and Chris de Freitas, one has to assume they don’t care.

[See also: Phoebe Fletcher at Tumeke!]

[Pace the Sex Pistols, you'll always find that Hopkins is out to lunch.]

  1. He had me smiling at his “Higgs bison” quip in the opening par, but that was the extent of my amusement. Reminded me of something though: What’s the difference between a buffalo and a bison? You can’t wash your hands in a buffalo. [/Aussie accent]

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