Guest Author • Dec 01, 2017 •
By Robert McLachlan, Massey University. The election of the sixth Labour-led government heralds a new direction for climate change policy in New Zealand. As part of the new government’s 100-day priority plan, it pledged to set a target of carbon neutrality by 2050 and to establish the mechanisms to phase out fossil fuels. In doing so, New … Read More
Guest Author • Feb 06, 2017 •
By Prof Tim Naish, Director of the Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University Wellington By the end of the century it is predicted that rising sea-level will directly impact more than 200 million people around the world. The damage to property and infrastructure, groundwater, and the prospect of widespread displacement of people will indirectly affect every one of us on this … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Apr 13, 2014 •
The IPCC has just released the summary for policymakers of the Working Group 3 report on mitigating climate change. It makes clear that the world has to act quickly to restrict carbon emissions to have a reasonable chance of restricting warming to 2ºC by the end of the century, but establishes that the costs of […] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Apr 09, 2014 •
This week’s Daily Blog post takes a further look at NZ political responses to the release of the of the second part of the IPCC’s Fifth Report, and ponders how everyone who has gleefully claimed that adaptation is all we need to do will react when the third report — on mitigating carbon emissions — […] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jun 10, 2013 •
Day two of last week’s climate change conference kicked off with a keynote from Andy Reisinger, the deputy director of the NZ Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre on New Zealand’s wedges – a balanced meal? I grabbed ten minutes with him to explore some of the issues he raised. Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jun 04, 2013 •
It’s been a long day in Palmerston North at the NZ Climate Change Conference for 2013. There’ll be nothing particularly cogent in this post, but I have recorded interviews with two of the VUW 3 — Jim Renwick tells me about the southern annular mode,the ozone hole and sea ice, and Dave Frame gives me [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jan 22, 2013 •
This is the five minute condensed version of the talk I gave in Gore at the Coal Action Network Aotearoa Summerfest (a somewhat optimistic title, given the chilly and wet weather last weekend). It’s too late to avoid damaging climate change, because it’s already happening. Weather extremes — floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and storms — [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Mar 13, 2012 •
This article by David Schlosberg, professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney was first published earlier today at The Conversation. It’s an excellent and forthright overview of the challenges we will face in coming to terms with the reality of climate change. When thinking of the challenges we face in responding [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Oct 17, 2011 •
A valuable review, Climate Science 2009-2010, has just been published by the World Resources Institute. It’s a summary of major peer-reviewed research in climate change science and technology during those two years. Aimed at policymakers, the NGO community, and the media, it offers succinct summaries of the findings of a wide array of scientific papers, [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Sep 23, 2011 •
My reading this morning didn’t incline me to optimism. I don’t actually need reminding, but in case I did two items underlined that we remain very much on course for a 3 to 4 degree global temperature rise by the end of the century.  A new report published by the Joint Research Centre of the [...] … Read More