Day 1 - highlights from budyong hill![]() PM of Samoa did an opening address - Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Neioti Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi has been Prime Minister of Samoa since 1998. Some things he talked about were - The Blue Pacific Continent concept. This article has more info about it. Here’s a quote from the article - “The Blue Pacific is a strong expression of Pacific Regionalism. It’s about reclaiming the identity that we are ‘one oceanic continent’ – and that as Big Ocean Stewardship States we can do more together than we can alone. It encourages us to see the collective potential of harnessing the energy and opportunity that lie both above and below our Pacific Ocean.” Samoa has a target of having 100% renewable energy. They are planning a wind farm, 9 mini hydro plants and 5 solar farms. Pacific Island nations get up to 40% of their income from selling fishing rights to foreign companies. The Pacific Resilience Partnership was launched in 2016 and Samoa is a member along with several other Pacific nations. I went to a workshop later in the day where they talked about “The Pacific Disaster Risk Financing Initiative”. It’s an interesting initiative which is designed to deliver quick injections of cash to governments immediately after eligible disasters. There is more info in the above article about it. Wesley Morgan. Wesley talked about the concept of “normative change” and global politics. It looks at what is appropriate behaviour. For instance slavery used to be normal but became unacceptable. There is a global norm shift happening regarding use of fossil fuels. Emitting GHG’s will become unacceptable just like slavery did. He said Pacific Island leaders are “Norm Entrepreneurs” who are at the forefront of instigating change and had a big influence at the Paris talks. Bronwyn Hayward. She talked about bringing about a sea change in climate politics in NZ. She strongly believes that the regular people of the country are missing from the debate. Good science and decisive leadership are essential ingredients. We can’t reach the Paris targets without addressing issues such as sustainability, environmental degradation and poverty. They are all interlinked. Genuine democratic public debate is needed. The targets set in Paris require ratcheting up ASAP. If the top 10% of emitters reduced their emissions to the level of an average European it would reduce global emissions by 1/3. She raised the question of how we maintain functioning democracies with fairness and good citizenship through periods of constant change. Jean Kahui. Talked about the drivers and victims of the fossil fuel industry in NZ. She lives in Taranaki and has witnessed the effects of oil drilling and fracking there. She said it’s essential all oil industry subsidisation and exploration is stopped. Capitalism cannot save the day how ever you wrap it up. We have to find another way. Indigenous cultures have the answer. We must educate ourselves into a fairer, more inclusive society. We have to decolonise from capitalism. Somehow the privileged must be forced to look at themselves. The oil companies supported by the government are the drivers of the status quo continuing. $87.6M was spent last year which is double what was spent in 2007. The subsidisation is usually indirect like tax breaks or NIWA doing data collection and the info is then made available to oil companies for free to entice them to drill here. Here is an article from 2013 with interesting info about how it works. Sarah Thomson. Sarah took the case against the government last year. She talked about CC litigation. The Netherlands government was forced by the courts to raise it’s Paris target from 17% to 25% after a successful case was brought against it. The court found that the government had a duty of care to protect citizens from CC. Good law needs to be in place to make litigation a realistic option. This is called The Urgenda Case. She talked about the Public Trust Doctrine which is being applied in the US. Here is an article giving more info about it. The other pathway is “Tort” law. A tort, in common law jurisdictions, is a civil wrong that causes someone else to suffer loss or harm resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. The idea is to make the polluter pay, but it can be difficult to prove causation. For instance Exxon Mobil has produces about 3.5% of the global GHG so trying to pin damage on one company is difficult. Attorneys General from New York and some other cities in the States have taken Exxon and some other companies to court for costs to defend against SLR and other CC effects. The oil companies have taken a counter case accusing the AG’s of collusion because they met to discuss how best to take some action. A Peruvian man Saul Lliuya has taken one of the biggest energy companies in the world, RWE in Germany to court. They produce 0.5% of global GHG’s. The glacier that supplies their water supply is drying up so he is asking them to pay 0.5% of the damage costs. Here’s some info about this interesting case. The Commonwealth Bank in Australia was taken to court by a couple who were shareholders asking them to disclose to investors what threats it faced to it’s assets from CC. The Aussie Financial Regulator has warned that CC poses material risk to the financial system. The bank ended up disclosing information to avoid any consequences. Here’s some info. Sarah said the biggest obstacles to CC litigation are costs especially if costs awarded against you and the state of current law that may not provide good opportunities to take a case. She said the opportunities are that cases, even partially successful cases like hers create legal foundations for future cases. Also opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing are created. It’s important to keep trying until the real ground breaking cases happen. Tobacco and asbestos are examples where many cases were taken until there were breakthroughs. Nicole Smith. Nicole is a lawyer who has worked for Corporations and also for groups challenging them. She says they can be ruthless and must not be underestimated. (The oil company’s challenge talked about above is an example) She talked about the group “Client Earth” that takes legal action on environmental cases. They have won cases against the UK government on breaches of statutory obligations in regard to air pollution. She said it’s important that new laws are enacted around the world to ensure no costs can be awarded against litigators in environmental cases if they pass a certain threshold. She talked about Leghari Ali taking a case in Pakistan to try and stop a coal mine. Greenpeace Norway have been trying to stop the Norway government issuing oil exploration licences through the courts. Nicole said there are principles that are emerging about the roles of courts, consensus on the middle ground of climate science. By countries signing the Paris agreement they are effectively saying they agree with this science. Causation is the biggest issue because it is a collective problem we all contribute to. Michael Sharp. Michael presented along with Nicole about the role of indigenous people in legal cases. He talked about a Waitangi Tribunal claim (Wai 2607) and the general potential of indigenous peoples in the Pacific and elsewhere to bring climate change claims against governments. Here’s a bit about it - “In June 2016 a claim was filed in New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal on behalf of the Mataatua District Maori Council alleging that the Crown was acting in breach of its Treaty of Waitangi obligations towards Māori as a result of the New Zealand government failing to implement adequate policies to address the threats posed by global climate change. It was hoped that the claim would be heard this year. This claim appears to be the first climate change claim brought on behalf of indigenous peoples. The claim is based around the Crown’s obligations of “active protection” towards Māori stemming from article two of the Treaty of Waitangi. Such obligations have parallels with the common law “public trust doctrine” upon which climate change claims in the United States of America are based. Under this approach the government is held responsible as a trustee of the environment on behalf of indigenous peoples to deal with the threats of climate change.” Michael said it was based on Article 2 obligations under the Treaty to provide active protection towards Maori regarding the environment. That they are suffering prejudicial effects and the environment is suffering. That there has been ineffective government consultation and ongoing harm. It is now not being heard until 2020. They will revise the case when the government presents it’s new Paris targets. If they feel they are inadequate they will carry on with the case. This sort of case is similar to the “Public Trust” cases in the US. Michael Mann. Some points from his keynote address after lunch.
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call out for action![]() Greetings! This is a Stop the Bad Stuff call-out for action. Despite the more hopeful policies of our new government, the fossil fuel industry rolls on in New Zealand. The industry will be holding its annual summit on March 26-28 in Wellington. They say on their website, ‘New Zealand’s oil and gas sector is poised for action and ready for growth – exploration activity is progressing and there is genuine excitement about the opportunities available and the development underway.’ Growth? When our government has a goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050? This means that extraction and burning of oil and gas must be phased out by or before 2050. Our Climate Declaration spells this out exactly. ‘Senior government officials’ are said to be involved in the summit. Will they be speaking of a phase-out? The ‘carbon budget’ is a calculation of how much more carbon dioxide (or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases) can be emitted globally before the blanketing greenhouse effect will drive the global average temperature to increase by 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees. Obviously, the budget for 1.5 degrees is smaller than that for 2 degrees. The quantity of carbon in the carbon budget can be compared with the quantity of carbon in fossil fuels in known reserves. It has become clear that the carbon in known reserves is very much greater than the carbon budget consistent with relative climate safety. It follows then that a great deal of the already known fossil fuel reserves cannot be burned if we are to have a safe climate. Therefore there is no point, if we recognise this argument, in exploring for more. It is a waste of human and financial resources. This has to do with why many people are withdrawing their investments from fossil fuels in general. Clearly, this argument is threatening to almost all in the oil and gas industry. There appears to be little mention of the issue in the conference programme, whereas it should be the highest priority issue for the industry. There is a panel on ‘the environment’, featuring the Minister for the Environment, the CEO of WWF and a representative of the industry’s environment and social concerns body (IPIECA). We must add to this argument the damage that any industry extracting material from the Earth’s crust does to people, other species, ecosystems and landscapes. The people of Taranaki have suffered from this damage, greatly worsened by ‘fracking’. There is great concern about suffering inflicted on marine mammals from seismic exploration. Time to say NO! Our Climate Declaration specifies: Phase out extraction and burning of fossil fuels by 2050. Clearly, such a phase-out is a huge undertaking, assisted by technological change, and must actively begin now. End deep sea exploration. End fracking. There is a plan to blockade the conference in Wellington on March 26th to impede the delegates’ entry, as was done successfully at last year’s petroleum summit in New Plymouth and the previous year in Auckland. The conference planners know this is likely and haven’t yet announced the site of the summit. Oil Free Wellington and Greenpeace are lead planners. The idea is for groups to converge on the day, and to have hundreds of people with banners and signs blockading the conference. Be there! Come to Wellington if you possibly can! Register with the Oil Free Wellington website for ongoing information The day before the beginning of the Petroleum Summit, March 25th, there will be a meeting of activists for tactical planning. SuperGrans Those of us who are grandparents can have a special role in this event. We’re calling ourselves ‘SuperGrans’ to signify our special powers. We care deeply about the world we’re leaving to our mokopuna, and some of us are more easily able to risk arrest in nonviolent direct action. We’re planning to wear something that distinguishes us as SuperGrans. There will be some SuperGrans who will risk arrest, and others who will be important close supporters. In the lead-up time we can communicate by e-mail to decide on our main message, what we wear, our roles, our spokesperson. If you can consider being a SuperGran, please contact me directly, at [email protected] ![]() The ACT Party policy ACT values the environment. Clean water, fresh air, efficient disposal of waste and the preservation of natural and historical features are all important for quality of life. We believe that free markets, far from being incompatible with good environmental custodianship, are essential to it. It is wealthy countries (Prosperity), where people take ownership (Property Rights), people pay the true costs of valuable resources and pollutants alike (Pricing), and communities have opportunities to get out and make a difference (Private Initiative) that make the difference, that have the best records on the environment. These are ACT’s four P’s of smart environmentalism. In future Governments ACT will push to better price roads and water, and set up more wildlife sanctuaries. ACT has ACT included reforming the RMA as one of its 3 priorities for confidence and supply with the current government. Proposed an ambitious 100 year plan to bring back New Zealand’s original birdsong with at least one wildlife sanctuary in every town. Fought for better ridesharing laws to reduce congestion and emissions. Promoted road use pricing to reduce congestion and emissions from vehicle ACT will Introduce better water management, where water rights are tradeable, giving owners greater incentives to conserve water and oppose pollution of it. Sell Landcorp, an environmentally harmful Government activity, and put the proceeds into a Sanctuary Trust for applicants who wish to operate inland sanctuaries for native wildlife. Introduce pricing of road use to reduce congestion and emissions, following the examples set in London, Singapore, and Stockholm. ![]() The Conservative Party policy Climate Change and the Environment While we have no specific Climate Change policy, the Conservative Party’s Environmental focus is to do all we can to secure breathable air, fertile soil and drinkable water. As a Party we have a no regrets policy to maintain our environment in a clean green fashion, whether that ultimately affects climate or not. While there is much conjecture about the influence of humankind on climate through emissions (the climate on Mars changes too), our interpersonal relationships and care for one another as human beings also has a rub off effect on how we relate with and care for our environment. Money could well be better spent on education bringing attitude change than on ETS and Kyoto, both of which we would prefer to see scrapped. We are in favour of using our natural resources for the common good with minimal harm to the environment, with total restoration required for any short term harm done, leaving our children with an inheritance of beauty and sustainability. Conservative Party of NZ www.conservativeparty.org.nz ![]() The Green Party policy https://www.greens.org.nz/policy/cleaner-environment/2015-climate-action-yes-we-can https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/policy-pdfs/Yes%20We%20Can.pdf Yes we can! A plan to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions: Options for domestic climate action to achieve a target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Climate change is the most challenging issue of our time. In December 2015, New Zealand has a chance to work with the international community on strong action to limit the impacts of climate change. Representatives from governments across the world gathered in Paris to negotiate a global climate agreement. New Zealand was asked what we as a nation were willing to do to reduce our greenhouse emissions? The answer to this question defines us. Sadly, the National Government chose to set one of the world’s weakest and most embarrassing climate targets. It only pledged an 11 percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2030, complaining any more is too difficult, largely because of agriculture. They say we can’t do more. The Green Party says, “Yes we can!” A solution The Green Party has produced a climate discussion document showing it is possible to reach an ambitious emissions reduction target that New Zealanders can be proud of. We show how, even with a five year lead-in time for the farming industry, New Zealand can reduce its emissions by a respectable 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. By allowing agriculture five more years before reducing emissions, our paper removes the Government’s main roadblock to action and gets us all moving towards a cross-party agreement on climate solutions. Our paper shows how New Zealand can reduce our emissions by 28 Mt below today’s levels and meet our climate target. We propose three economy-wide measures: • A Climate Commission to assess progress and provide guidance on emissions targets • A Green Investment Bank to stimulate growth in a low emissions economy • A ‘Climate Tax Cut’ that puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions (except from agriculture) and recycles the revenue back to householders and business via tax credits In addition to these economy-wide initiatives, we propose the following sector specific measures: Cutting 4.8 Mt from our electricity emissions by: • Achieving 100% renewable electricity generation by 2030, achieved in part by introducing initiatives including smart grid technologies and real time electricity pricing, and implementing our Solar Homes and Solar Schools policies. Cutting 7.7 Mt from transport emissions by: • Providing public transport and safe walking and cycling options that will result in a decrease in car travel of 2 percent per capita per year • Increasing fuel economy standards for vehicle imports • lncentivising the uptake of electric vehicles Cutting 3.7 Mt from industry’s combustion of fossil fuels by: • A carbon price to incentivise the reduction of thermal coal by 90 percent, reduce liquid fuel use by 40 percent and maintain industrial use of gas at 2015 levels Cutting 2.1 Mt from our industrial process emissions by: • Reducing F-emissions (emissions of fluorinated gases, mainly refrigerants) by two-thirds with the adoption of EU regulations • Reducing our carbon emissions by one-third due to the eventual closure of Tiwai Point by it’s owners, and new technologies in steel production Cutting 3.6 Mt from our waste sector by: • Phasing in regulation for farm dumps, reducing biodegradable waste to municipal landfills and improving methane capture rates Cutting 2.2 Mt from agriculture, after a five-year lead-in: • We are committed to agriculture eventually doing its fair share. A five year lead-in time allows it to transition while removing the National Government’s road-block to action • Following the lead-in time, agriculture would need to reduce its emissions by 2.2 Mt below 2015 levels by 2030 Cuts plus sequestration equals 40 percent These cuts will achieve a target of 35 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, lf we immediately embark on a significant tree planting regime, we can sequester the remaining emissions needed to meet our 40 percent target. This plan shows how, with greater leadership and a bit of Kiwi ingenuity, we can achieve a climate target New Zealand can be proud of. We can have a more prosperous New Zealand now, and leave a stable climate for the future. There is no justification for New Zealand sitting on its hands any longer. This paper shows how all parties can work on a lasting climate plan that will make a real difference. The ball is in the Government’s court now. Can New Zealand do our bit to limit the impacts of climate change? We say, “Yes we can.” James Shaw MP, Green Party Co-leader Climate Change & Economic Development ![]() Labour Party Climate Change Policy – Summary The Labour Party regards climate change as the most critical sustainability issue of our time. Climate change is posing a severe threat to the planet and to the future of humans and other species – and must be tackled urgently and effectively through a low-carbon economy and a comprehensive international climate change agreement. The Paris climate agreement called for “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels”. Labour has set ambitious climate change targets in the reduction of greenhouse gases that we would implement once in government. Our target is a 40 per cent reduction in carbon emissions. We will achieve this reduction in the core areas of transport and energy. We would also ensure that there is a carbon price that incentivises forestry, and push for a higher proportion of renewable energy. In the short run, Labour has signalled that although we wish to bring agriculture into the ETS, a serious evidence-based discussion around accounting for gases other than CO2, such as methane and nitrous dioxide, is imperative. Once in government, Labour will establish an independent climate change commission which would establish a carbon budgeting process for achieving emissions reduction targets. A carbon budgeting process based on, for example, a five yearly budget cycle, would remove the short-term thinking of a three year electoral cycle. It is imperative that the process be independent of the government of the day. Advice and recommendations must be able to be put in the public arena fearlessly and promptly, free of Ministerial or political influence or direction. ![]() Climate Change Solutions The Māori Party recognises the urgency in establishing alternative sources of energy that are environmentally friendly and do not depend on fossil fuels. The Maōri Party will:
![]() The National Party policy Climate Change Policy As a Government we have set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by the year 2030. This target compares favourably to the United States, Mexico, Canada, Japan and other nations. It offers a fair and ambitious contribution, while taking into account the uncertainties New Zealand continues to face. Although New Zealand accounts for just 0.15 per cent of global emissions, it is still important that as a country, we do our bit. We are currently reviewing New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) to assess its operation and effectiveness to 2020 and beyond. The review will look at how the NZ ETS may need to evolve to support New Zealand in meeting its 2030 targets to reduce greenhouse emissions. New Zealand is one of the first countries outside Europe to have an ETS. Furthermore, we are well on track to achieving our target of 90 per cent of renewable energy by 2025. Over 80 per cent of electricity generated nationally comes from renewable resources, and in 2014 geothermal energy contributed more energy than gas for first time in 40 years. National remains committed to policy supporting a fair and ambitious contribution to the international effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ![]() NZ First Climate Change Policy Dated 2 December 2015 • A great majority of countries accept climate change as a result of increasing greenhouse gases and as a major global challenge, and the major cause of sea level rise. • The most effective way in which mankind can reduce the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (primarily carbon dioxide and methane) is to progressively phase out the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, and instead use renewable energy eg wind-power, and photo-voltaic electricity from sunshine. • In the last three years both wind and photo-voltaic electricity generation have become increasingly competitive with fossil fuel energy. A progressive phase-out of fossil fuels is possible if society develops appropriate strategies and plans. Other countries, notably Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries are already doing this. Each citizen, and each country, has a duty, and self-interest, to work to this end to reduce damage to our planet. The motivation for reducing carbon emissions is clear. • As well, major overseas companies that New Zealand trades with will increasingly require proof that our exports are produced sustainably. As a trading nation we cannot afford to sit on our hands. To do so would be to put our trade in primary products at risk, especially with countries that are doing their bit to reduce emissions. New Zealand First Policies New Zealand First will: a) Oppose the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as it has failed to deliver significant emissions reductions and there is no sign it is encouraging industry transition. In addition, it is counterproductive to pay polluting companies large taxpayer subsidies with no requirements on them to reduce emissions. b) Oppose the direct taxation of carbon. c) Develop the strategies, the plans, the legislation, and the regulation to achieve the emissions performance we seek. We would do so in consultation with New Zealanders and New Zealand business, because we think that without their cooperation we will have no chance of achieving emissions reduction objectives. d) Make transport a first target, requiring more use of rail for heavy freight and for urban passenger travel, reducing the number and use of polluting vehicles by actively encouraging the use of hybrid and especially fully electric vehicles, providing better public transport including the large scale introduction of light rail in the main population centres, and by introducing incentives to use non-fossil-fuel vehicles, especially by: 1) a fringe benefit tax holiday for plug-in vehicles; 2) the continuation of the exemption for electric vehicles from road user charges beyond 2020; 3) addressing residual vehicle values (the market value of a vehicle at the end of its lease) by adjusting depreciation rates for electric vehicles; 4) and regulation to require licensed petrol service stations to have at least 1 electric plug-in facility within 2 years. e) Provide local government with clear guidelines and information to assist it in its planning functions and to achieve a consistent standard throughout New Zealand. f) Support a more ambitious target for greenhouse gas emissions than the target announced by the New Zealand government. The New Zealand Government has decided that our post-2020 climate change target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. This is equivalent to 11 per cent below 1990 levels. New Zealand First would improving this by at least a factor of 2 to 22% on 1990 levels by 2030, and by supporting even greater improvements when it becomes clear that this is possible without damaging New Zealand’s economy and trading interests. ![]() Meaningful action on climate change TOP’s Priorities are:
New Zealand is an innovative, adaptable nation. We can lead the world on reducing emissions, and even better we can profit from that leadership. Delay will not only load more costs onto future generations, it will also cost us precious opportunities to develop new technologies and markets. TOP aims to take the most efficient and effective path to a low carbon economy. There is no time for delay, nor for a sentimental focus on any particular technology. In the first instance that means focusing on doing the things that have the lowest cost, or may even save us money. Investment in energy efficiency will actually save many households and businesses money as well as reducing emissions. We also have 1.1m hectares of erosion-prone land that should be forested as soon as possible to reduce emissions, stop soil erosion and improve our rivers and lakes. We will fund this by ensuring that the Emissions Trading Scheme is a true cap and trade scheme. It will remain closed to foreign units, with government auctioning off its allowance. This will push the price of carbon up over time. At the same time we have to be careful to ensure any new investments made don’t lock us into a dependence on fossil fuels past 2050. This means ending the bias towards roads over rail and shipping, and ensuring that all major new investments take into account the true cost of carbon. Local Authorities need to be able to implement charges to control traffic congestion in peak times and raise revenue to invest in public transport. Regardless of our actions to reduce emissions, some communities such as South Dunedin will be impacted by sea level rise within our lifetime. A large disaster, far greater than the Christchurch earthquake is looming. This however is completely predictable, and as The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment recommends we need to discuss this issue now so that individuals, local authorities and government are all fully aware of their rights and responsibilities. Here are the questions to ask yourself. It is the mission of this website to help you answer them. • Q. Is the climate changing and if so, is it bad news? • A. No one questions the fact that it is changing. It has always changed and the paleoclimate record from ice and ocean sediment cores confirms this very clearly. Scientists have analysed ice cores going back around 800,000 years and have now identified regions in Antarctica they say could store information about Earth’s climate and greenhouse gases extending as far back as 1.5 million years. By studying the past climate, scientists can understand better how temperature responds to changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere. This, in turn, allows them to make better predictions about how climate will change in the future. Ice-cores contain little air bubbles and, thus, represent the only direct archive of the composition of the past atmosphere. The 3.2-km-long ice core completed in 2004 at Dome Concordia (Dome C) in Antarctica revealed 800,000 years of climate history, showing that greenhouse gases and temperature have mostly moved in lockstep as shown in this graph. Note that in 2015, the high point on the chart below passed the 400ppm mark! ©2015 SBC Energy Institute. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute copies of this work for personal or non-profit educational purposes. Any copy or extract has to refer to the copyright of SBC Energy Institute. The activities of humanity have caused changes within 200 years that took thousands of years in the natural cycles of ice age and interglacial. Change that is this rapid leaves no time for evolutionary adjustment to the changing environment and mass extinctions of species result – humans could be among them. • Q. What can we learn from these ice core records? • A. Within the current major glaciation period, the past million years saw regular interglacial warm periods, initiated by natural variations in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun (~100,000 year Milankovitch cycles). The Milankovitch theory describes the collective effects on the Earth’s climate of cyclic changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun. For each cycle, it took an average 5,000 years for temperatures to rise by 4 – 7°C and for the global average CO2 concentrations to rise by ~80 ppm. Current CO2 levels are ~400ppm, higher than at any time in the last million years. This is a rise of ~120ppm from the pre-industrial level of ~280ppm. During the natural cycles, Antarctic temperatures and variations in global CO2 concentrations appear closely correlated and CO2 concentration rises do not precede temperature rises:
The emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activities since the beginning of the Industrial age, have overpowered this natural cycle. By emitting large quantities of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, in such a short period of time, we have created an imbalance in the natural cycle. This has amplified the greenhouse effect and temperatures are steadily rising as a consequence. Currently the rise is roughly ten timesfaster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming. • Q. Is climate change caused or affected by human activity? • A. There is an overwhelming scientific agreement that it is. The scientists tell us that over millions of years, plants and algae took CO2 out of the atmosphere and sequestered it in the form of fossil fuels (coal, oil & gas.) In the past two centuries, since the industrial revolution, humans have learnt how to extract and burn fossil fuels and, over a short period, have released back into the atmosphere large amounts of CO2 that had been sequestered over many millions of years. At the same time, they have cleared away the forests that used to trap CO2 and often replaced them with domesticated animals that themselves produce methane – another greenhouse gas. Due to human activities, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has been rising extensively since the Industrial Revolution and has now reached dangerous levels not seen in the last 3 million years. Human sources of CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural emissions, but sufficient to have upset the natural balance that existed for many thousands of years before the influence of humans. This is because natural sinks removed around the same quantity of CO2 from the atmosphere that was produced by natural sources. This kept CO2 levels balanced and in a safe range. But human sources of emissions have upset the natural balance by adding extra CO2 to the atmosphere without removing any. Although our output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons moving through the carbon cycle each year, it adds up because the land and ocean cannot absorb all of the extra CO2. About 40% of this additional CO2 is absorbed. The rest remains in the atmosphere, and as a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years. (A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20,000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years). Human CO2 emissions upset the natural balance of the carbon cycle. While fossil-fuel derived CO2 is a relatively small component of the global carbon cycle, the extra CO2 is cumulative because the natural carbon exchange cannot absorb all of the addition. The level of atmospheric CO2 is building up, the additional CO2 is being produced by burning fossil fuels, and that build up is accelerating. • Q. How fast is the climate changing? • A. Many of the world’s climate scientists believe it is happening at a rate that will threaten the stability of human populations due to major adverse weather events, famine, war, mass migrations, sea level rise and ocean acidification within the lifetimes of our grandchildren. Some argue that there remain serious gaps in scientific understanding and that each year of inadequate action increases the likelihood of the Earth reaching a tipping point where we move from the current rate of change into one that is disastrous or abrupt. • Q. Why is CO2 a greenhouse gas? • A. The temperature of the Earth depends on a balance between incoming energy from the Sun and the energy that bounces back into space. CO2 absorbs heat that would otherwise be lost to space. Some of this energy is re-emitted back to Earth, causing additional heating of the planet. Most of the light energy from the sun is emitted in wavelengths shorter than 4,000 nanometers (.000004 meters). The heat energy released from the earth, however, is released in wavelengths longer than 4,000 nanometers. Carbon dioxide doesn’t absorb the incoming energy from the sun, but it does absorb some of the heat energy released from the earth. • Q. Should I be looking at my consumption of animal products? • A. A large source of carbon emissions is from livestock farming. Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options is a U.N. report, released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations on 29 November 2006. Based on this report, senior U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation official Dr. Henning Steinfeld stated that the meat industry is “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems” and that “urgent action is required to remedy the situation.” Following a Life Cycle Analysis approach, the report evaluates “that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport.” In a 2009 issue of the Worldwatch Institute magazine, environmental assessment specialists Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang argued in “Livestock and Climate Change” that the FAO vastly underestimated the environmental impact of the livestock sector and that it accounts for at least 51% of global GHG emissions. Some criticisms included the FAO’s use of the 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP) of methane (CH4) rather than the 20 GWP favored by Goodland and Anhang. However, Goodland and Anhang continue to use the 100-year GWP for anthropogenic greenhouse gases in their analysis, with the sole exception of methane emissions from livestock. More controversially, Goodland and Anhang argue that animal respiration should be included, despite widely adopted conventions that they be treated as part of the short-term carbon cycle and excluded. Suffice it to say animal agriculture is a large contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and something that needs to be taken more seriously at all levels of decision making. Currently very few people want to talk about it as it raises so many questions about our lifestyles and the economy that we depend on. Whenever the issue of animal agriculture and its associated emissions are discussed the common response is that it is a very difficult area in which to reduce emissions. Very few address the elephant in the room – that emissions can be very simply reduced by reducing animal numbers. Consider this fact. On average 1 hectare can produce about 28,000 kgs of plant-based food but the same area can produce only 280 kgs of meat. If we really want to play our part in contributing to food security at the same time as reducing greenhouse gases then the answer is clear and simple. The added bonus in the case of NZ is that reducing cow numbers will help restore some health to our waterways. • Q. What is climate forcing? • A. Climate forcing is one of the critical factors to understand if we are going to get our heads around what is causing the current rate of climate change. There are positive and negative forcings, which are natural and man-made. “In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing, is defined as the difference of insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space. Typically, radiative forcing is quantified at the tropopause in units of watts per square meter of the Earth’s surface.” Radiative forcing “The natural forcing due to insolation variations, averaged over the planet, is a small fraction of 1 watt/M2. This very weak forcing is effective only because, operating over long periods, it succeeds in bringing into play two powerful slow feedbacks: global surface reflectivity changes and greenhouse gas changes…. Humans, by rapidly burning fossil fuels, have caused global warming that overwhelms the natural tendency towards the next ice age…. But human-made climate forcing is now so large that decadel-mean climate will continue to warm for at least the next few decades….because of slow feedbacks, global temperature will continue to rise for decades and millennia unless we reduce human-made climate forcings.” (page 49 – ‘Storms of my Grandchildren’ by James Hansen) Using current global climate simulations, NASA GISS shows in the image below, the changes in effectiveness of the main radiative forcings since 1880. As you can see, greenhouse gases are shown to have the greatest sustained positive forcing on the climate system. Stratospheric aerosols from volcanic eruptions can also have a strong, negative cooling influence, but it is very short term. Also note the small influence of solar irradiance changes since 1880. The indirect cooling impact of the release of man-made aerosols is also having a significant impact.
• Q. What can we learn from ocean sediment cores? • A. From ocean sediment cores we have learnt that about 55 million years ago, an enormous amount of CO2 entered the atmosphere in perhaps only 1,000 years, causing global temperature to rise. Much of the CO2 was absorbed by the ocean, quickly changing its composition. Younger sediments, which do not contain any carbonate shells, lie on top of older sediments, which contain many tiny shells. This sharp boundary indicates that many shelled organisms suddenly disappeared from the ocean at that time. One theory for the source of all this CO2 is that gradual warming of the ocean melted ices containing methane that were part of shallow ocean sediments. The released methane, in turn, reacted with oxygen in the atmosphere to form CO2. The amount of CO2 that was injected into the atmosphere 55 million years ago is comparable to the amount that humans will put into the atmosphere over the next century if we do not reduce CO2 emissions. So that event of the distant past could have important lessons for today. • Q. If the climate is changing, is there anything I can do about altering the speed of change slowing or stopping it? • A. You can do a teeny, weeny, little bit by altering your own carbon footprint www.karangapledge.org.nz However, if everyone took steps in this direction it would have a huge impact. You owe it to the future to do your little bit. Other big differences can be made by governments and economic pressure. There are many reasons why governments do not want to take the steps necessary. This can only be changed if they are forced to take action by a ground-swell of demand from their electorates. A massive grass-roots movement can do this. Help by signing the Karanga pledge. Economic pressure is being created by large organisations, such as investment and endowment funds, banks and cities divesting from fossil fuel investments. If enough momentum can be created so that people start to worry about fossil fuel investments becoming stranded assets then liberated funds can be redirected into renewables and new technologies. • Q. How do New Zealanders emissions compare to other countries? • A. Per person, NZ’s emissions are the 5th highest in the developed world (17 tonnes/person compared with 5.6 tonnes/person in Sweden – 2012). There has been a net 42% rise in NZ’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. This was the year of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that attempted to limit greenhouse gas emissions from developed countries, and which NZ ratified. (net figures include land use, land-use change and forestry inputs.) Q. Why do carbon dioxide emissions weigh more than the original fuel? A. The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that is produced from burning a fuel weighs more than the amount of the fuel itself, because during complete combustion, each carbon atom in the fuel combines with two oxygen atoms in the air to make CO2. The addition of two oxygen atoms to each carbon atom forms CO2, which has an atomic weight of 44 – roughly 3.6667 times the atomic weight of the carbon, which is 12. For example, sub-bituminous coal is on average 51% carbon, so the carbon in a tonne (1,000 kg) weighs 510 kg. The carbon dioxide emissions from burning a tonne of sub-bituminous coal are approximately 1,872 kg, or about 3.67 times the weight of the carbon in a tonne of coal, and 1.87 times the weight of a tonne of coal. Q. What part do the world’s oceans play? A. Since 1955, over 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases has been stored in the sea ice, ice caps, and glaciers, and warming the land masses. Only the smallest fraction of this thermal energy goes into warming the atmosphere. Humans thus, living at the interface of the land, ocean and atmosphere, only feel a sliver of the true warming cost of fossil fuel emissions. This 90% of extra heat taken up by the ocean is mostly in the upper 700 metres (m) layer (about 60% of total excess heat), while 30% is stored in layers deeper than 700 m. The ocean absorbs most of this “anthropogenic heat” because:
The complex interactions between continued emissions of greenhouse gases, consequent energy imbalance, and changes in the storage and transport properties of heat in the ocean will largely determine the speed and magnitude of long-term anthropogenic climate change impacts. These interactions have significant policy and economic implications, and must not be ignored in the climate policy discussions forum. As the climate negotiators are now shifting their focus towards reaching an agreement on appropriate stabilisation targets and designing mitigation and adaptations strategies required to meet those targets, understanding and incorporating the highly important role of ocean as the most powerful climate change mitigator becomes of utmost importance. http://www.oceanscientists.org/index.php/topics/ocean-warming *Climate deniers have used the period 1998 – 2013, during which atmospheric temperatures did not rise as much as expected, as evidence that global warming was not happening. This has been termed the “hiatus” period. In fact now that we have a couple more years under our belt and 2014 and 2015 have been the hottest years on record it is now clear that the hiatus period is not outside the statistical trend-line. This is an example of using information selectively that suits an argument but doesn’t have wide enough parameters to give clarity. It now appears that the deep ocean absorbed more of the heat than expected during the hiatus period. This highlights the fact that the proportion of heat that is causing rising atmospheric temperatures is a small fraction of the total extra heat that can be attributed to greenhouse gases. According to Craig Stevens, Oceanographer with NIWA (Radio NZ, Nine to Noon, 27/01/2016) research has shown that the upper layers of the world’s oceans have warmed by between 0.90C and 1.30C/decade over the last 40 years. The oceans have absorbed 20 times more heat than the atmosphere over the same period, resulting in their heat energy having doubled since 1997. He says if you took the amount of heat absorbed by the oceans and put it into the atmosphere the atmosphere would have heated by tens of degrees. In other words without the heat sink effect of the world’s oceans we would all be cooked by now. Q. The climate is always changing irrespective of human presence on earth or not. Why do we think that our actions make any difference? A. Read this article and you should soon abandon such inspirations to complacency. http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm Answers at the bottom of the page. 1. We use fossil fuels every day all over the world for essential purposes like cooking, heating, transport and manufacturing. What are fossil fuels? Choose the best answer. a. coal b. coal and oil c. coal, oil and natural gas d. coal, oil, natural gas and wood 2. Why does our use of fossil fuels affect Earth’s climate? a. fossil fuels are sources of energy and burning energy creates heat b. burning fossil fuels releases stored carbon into the air as carbon dioxide gas c. burning fossil fuels produces particulates that pollute the air d. burning fossil fuels takes vital oxygen out of the atmosphere 3. The group of gases that cause global warming when they are released into the atmosphere are called greenhouse gases. Why? a. they allow the sun’s heat to penetrate the atmosphere b. they absorb infrared radiation from the sun c. they prevent the sun’s heat from being released back into space d. all of the above 4. Which of these gases is not a greenhouse gas? a. carbon dioxide b. water vapour c. nitrogen d. methane 5. As average global temperatures rise, does the Earth’s climate get wetter or drier? Or does Earth’s climate stay much the same? a. average precipitation (snow and rainfall) increases b. average precipitation (snow and rainfall) decreases c. average precipitation (snow and rainfall) stays about the same 6. Carbon dioxide gas has been released into Earth’s atmosphere as part of a natural process for centuries. True or false? a. true b. false 7. The release of carbon dioxide and water vapour into the atmosphere are natural processes, so why is burning fossil fuels harmful to Earth’s atmosphere? a. our use of fossil fuels is causing much larger amounts of carbon dioxide to be present in the atmosphere b. carbon dioxide traps heat and increases the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere c. the quantities of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere are upsetting the natural balance that was maintained in the past through the carbon cycle d. all of the above 8. How long does the life cycle of the carbon dioxide gas we release into the atmosphere continue to have an effect on Earth’s temperature? a. 10 years b. 50 years c. 100 years d. more than 100 years 9. Even what appears to be a small change in average global temperatures is already having an effect on sea levels, on weather patterns around the world, and on the environment. Compared to 1850, how much have average global temperatures already risen? a. 4°C b. 2°C c. 1.15°C d. 0.5°C 10. The eight hottest years on record have occurred when? In the last… a. 100 years b. 50 years c. 20 years d. 8 years 11. Which part of the world is likely to warm most rapidly due to climate change? a. the Arctic b. the Antarctic c. the tropics d. Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific 12. Why are warmer temperatures predicted to be harmful to our planet? a. melting of land based ice at the North and South Polar regions will cause further sea level rise b. there will be more frequent extreme weather events c. drought and heat waves will occur more often and be more severe d. changes in the environment will affect all living things and extinction of more species will be likely to occur e. all of the above 13. Earth has been warmer at different periods in its past history than it is today. a. true b. false 14. There are examples of severe winter storms with extreme cold and snowfall occurring. Storms like this are evidence that scientists are wrong and Earth’s climate is not getting warmer. a. true b. false 15. How do scientists know how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere many centuries ago? By studying… a. the atmosphere of Earth today b. ice cores c. past scientific records d. soil samples 16. What methods do scientists use to compare Earth’s present day average temperature with temperatures in the past? They do this by… i. observing when plants flower ii. taking readings from thousands of weather stations all over the world iii. using satellites and weather balloons to measure temperatures higher in the atmosphere iv. using ships to measure sea temperatures v. measuring the width and density of rings in tree trunks vi. boring deep holes in the earth vii. analysing ice cores a. i, ii, iii, iv b. i, ii, iii, iv, v c. i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi d. i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii 17. The highest proportion of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from which sector? a. agriculture/farming b. energy/power generation c. transport d. industry/manufacturing e. waste/landfills 18. About half New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions (50%) are produced from the farming sector, mainly by sheep, beef and dairy cattle. Which greenhouse gas is produced as part of the digestive process of grazing animals? a. carbon dioxide b. methane c. ozone d. nitrous oxide 19. New Zealand is a small country. However, our carbon footprint is significant. What is New Zealand’s ranking compared to the Annex 1 developed countries in relation to the level of greenhouse gas emissions per person? a. 6th highest per person b. 11th highest per person c. 22nd highest per person d. 32nd highest per person 20. New Zealand’s gross emissions have increased significantly since 1990, despite promises to stabilise and reduce them. The largest percentage increases have been in which sector? a. energy b. agriculture c. industrial processes and product use (IPPU) d. waste 21. What is the New Zealand government’s main policy tool to reduce emissions? a. a $323 million fund to increase home insulation and clean heating b. a new Centre for Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research c. incentives for new energy technologies like sustainable biofuels, electric cars and solar water systems d. an emissions trading scheme buying credits on the international market to offset emissions 22. Which of these organisations is the United Nations-based international authority on climate change? a. IEA b. ICC c. IPCC d. WHO ANSWERS 1. We use fossil fuels every day all over the world for essential purposes like cooking, heating, transport and manufacturing. What are fossil fuels? Choose the best answer. a. coal b. coal and oil c. coal, oil and natural gas d. coal, oil, natural gas and wood Answer: c. coal, oil and natural gas. Coal, oil and natural gas are called fossil fuels because they are mined from the ground having been formed 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous Period, long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth. When plants and animals died, their bodies decomposed and were buried under layers of earth. Over millions of years, depending on conditions, heat and pressure transformed them into coal, oil and gas. This is why these fuels, which we have come to depend on so much, are non-renewable resources. Once we use them up they are not replaced. 2. Why does our use of fossil fuels affect Earth’s climate? a. fossil fuels are sources of energy and burning energy creates heat b. burning fossil fuels releases stored carbon into the air as carbon dioxide gas c. burning fossil fuels produces particulates that pollute the air d. burning fossil fuels takes vital oxygen out of the atmosphere Answer: b. burning fossil fuels releases stored carbon into the air as carbon dioxide gas Carbon dioxide gas (CO₂) is having a harmful effect on our climate because, together with a group of other gases, it traps heat from the sun. As a result our planet is getting warmer. 3. The group of gases that cause global warming when they are released into the atmosphere are called greenhouse gases. Why? a. they allow the sun’s heat to penetrate the atmosphere b. they absorb infrared radiation from the sun c. they prevent the sun’s heat from being released back into space d. all of the above Answer: d. all of the above Carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases trap the sun’s heat like a greenhouse or glass house. This ability of some gases to trap heat has always been important for our planet. Without it Earth would be a lot colder. Over the past 150 years, however, human activities have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As a result global temperatures are rising. 4. Which of these gases is not a greenhouse gas? a. carbon dioxide b. water vapour c. nitrogen d. methane Answer: c. nitrogen Nitrogen and oxygen together make up 98% of our atmosphere but neither of these gases absorb or emit infrared radiation as greenhouse gases do. 5. As average global temperatures rise, does the Earth’s climate get wetter or drier? Or does Earth’s climate stay much the same? a. average precipitation (snow and rainfall) increases b. average precipitation (snow and rainfall) decreases c. average precipitation (snow and rainfall) stays about the same Answer: a. average precipitation increases. The simple reason for this is that warmer temperatures lead to more evaporation and hence more moisture in the air in the form of water vapour. For every degree Celsius that Earth's atmospheric temperature rises, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere will increase by about 7%, according to the laws of thermodynamics. This in turn results in more rain or results in heavy snowfalls in colder parts of the world. Scientists predict that in the future we will see more heavy rainfall, more frequent floods and more snow storms. As a greenhouse gas, water vapour has a higher warming potential than carbon dioxide, and it is also present in much bigger quantities. Carbon dioxide and water vapour interact together in the atmosphere to create warmer temperatures. Carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun and warms the atmosphere. This leads to more evaporation and more water vapour in the air, which in turn increases the warming effect on the atmosphere. 6. Carbon dioxide gas has been released into Earth’s atmosphere as part of a natural process for centuries. True or false? a. true b. false Answer: a. true. Carbon is continuously stored, released and replaced in various different forms in a process called the carbon cycle. All living things are made of carbon. Carbon is also part of the ocean, air and even rocks. People and animals give off carbon dioxide when they breathe. Plants use carbon dioxide and sunlight to make their own food and grow. When plants and animals die and decompose the carbon stored in their bodies is released into the atmosphere. 7. The release of carbon dioxide and water vapour into the atmosphere are natural processes, so why is burning fossil fuels harmful to Earth’s atmosphere? a. our use of fossil fuels is causing much larger amounts of carbon dioxide to be present in the atmosphere b. carbon dioxide traps heat and increases the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere c. the quantities of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere are upsetting the natural balance that was maintained in the past through the carbon cycle d. all of the above Answer: d. all of the above People first started using fossil fuels on a large scale about 150 years ago when the industrial revolution began. Before about 1850, the carbon cycle was a process that maintained a balance in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Over the last 150 years, the amount of carbon dioxide gas (CO₂) in the atmosphere has increased by almost 30%. That’s why it’s great if you get on your bike or walk to work instead of taking the car! In 1950 the world emitted 6 billion tonnes of CO2. By 1990 this had almost quadrupled, reaching more than 22 billion tonnes. Emissions have continued to grow rapidly; In 2021 we emitted over 34 billion tonnes. 8. How long does the life cycle of the carbon dioxide gas we release into the atmosphere continue to have an effect on Earth’s temperature? a. 10 years b. 50 years c. 100 years d. more than 100 years Answer: d. more than 100 years This is why the actions we take today to reduce our carbon emissions are so important. The carbon dioxide we emit today will still be affecting the temperature on Earth many years from now. 9. Even what appears to be a small change in average global temperatures is already having an effect on sea levels, on weather patterns around the world, and on the environment. Compared to 1850, how much have average global temperatures already risen? a. 4°C b. 2°C c. 1.15°C d. 0.5°C Answer: c. 1.15°C Keeping the rise in average global temperatures below 2°C is the target that was set by the 195 countries that took part in the International Conference on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015. This is considered by many scientists to be a limit that will keep the impacts of climate change within our control. However, other scientists disagree that this is a safe limit and would rather see the limit set at 1.5°C. A number of small Pacific island countries, seriously threatened by sea level rise, are also calling for the target to be 1.5°C. Global temperature rise of up to 4°C is possible if we continue to our current level of greenhouse gas emissions. 10. The eight hottest years on record have occurred when? In the last… a. 100 years b. 50 years c. 20 years d. 8 years Answer: d. 8 years According to information released on 12 January 2023, the past eight years were the warmest on record globally, fueled by ever-rising greenhouse gas concentrations and accumulated heat, according to six leading international temperature datasets consolidated by the World Meteorological Organization. The average global temperature in 2022 was about 1.15 [1.02 to 1.27] °C above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels. 2022 is the 8th consecutive year (2015-2022) that annual global temperatures have reached at least 1°C above pre-industrial levels, according to all datasets compiled by WMO. 2015 to 2022 are the eight warmest years on record. 11. Which part of the world is likely to warm most rapidly due to climate change? a. the Arctic b. the Antarctic c. the tropics d. Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific Answer: a. the Arctic Over 90% of the increased warming so far created by the impact of greenhouse gases on the atmosphere is estimated to have been absorbed by the ocean. Warming ocean water is melting ice at the North and South Poles. However, while the South Pole is situated on the continent of Antarctica, which is a large landmass, the North Pole is very different. It is situated in the Arctic Circle in the middle of a large ocean. Warmer ocean temperatures are melting more of the sea ice. The reduction in Arctic summer sea ice is having an impact on polar bears. 12. Why are warmer temperatures predicted to be harmful to our planet? a. melting of land based ice at the North and South Polar regions will cause further sea level rise b. there will be more frequent extreme weather events c. drought and heat waves will occur more often and be more severe d. changes in the environment will affect all living things and extinction of more species will be likely to occur e. all of the above Answer: e. all of the above The negative impacts of climate change will outweigh any possible advantages a warmer climate could bring to some parts of the world. Even a 1 metre sea level rise (predicted to be very likely to occur by 2100 by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) will displace over 150 million people on low lying islands and in coastal cities and communities. Rising temperatures will lead to unpredictable weather patterns which will affect farming and food production, impact biodiversity and cause extinctions of plants and animals. Disappearing glaciers will deprive millions of people in a number of parts of the world of the main source of their water supply and damage from extreme weather events will have serious impacts on all societies. 13. Earth has been warmer at different periods in its past history than it is today. a. true b. false Answer: a. true Global temperatures in the past have exceeded temperatures today, and scientists have found plenty of evidence that sea levels have been higher in the past than they are today also. Past changes in Earth’s climate have taken place over thousands of years, unlike today when we are experiencing very rapid change, happening over just 100 – 200 years. The causes of warming in the past have been different, but these periods have also been accompanied by higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 14. There are examples of severe winter storms with extreme cold and snowfall occurring. Storms like this are evidence that scientists are wrong and Earth’s climate is not getting warmer. a. true b. false Answer: b. false In fact the opposite is the case. Even extreme cold weather events are further evidence of the influence of climate change on our weather. Warmer temperatures and the resulting increasing amounts of moisture in the atmosphere make heavy rainfall and destructive storm events more likely to occur in many parts of the world. When warm, moisture-laden air is mixed with cold polar air, huge amounts of energy and moisture are generated. In parts of the world that are normally cold, this will produce snow. Some parts of the world are likely to remain cold in spite of global warming. Some areas may even become colder if sea currents that have traditionally moved warmer waters around the planet are affected by climate change. 15. How do scientists know how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere many centuries ago? By studying… a. the atmosphere of Earth today b. ice cores c. past scientific records d. soil samples Answer: b. ice cores Ice cores are long cylinders of ice drilled out of glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland. These cores contain tiny bubbles of air from past centuries preserved in the ice. When these atmospheric time capsules are chemically analysed we can find out how greenhouse gas concentrations have changed over thousands of years. This research has shown that until the mid 19th century the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere had remained relatively stable. 16. What methods do scientists use to compare Earth’s present day average temperature with temperatures in the past? They do this by… i. observing when plants flower ii. taking readings from thousands of weather stations all over the world iii. using satellites and weather balloons to measure temperatures higher in the atmosphere iv. using ships to measure sea temperatures v. measuring the width and density of rings in tree trunks vi. boring deep holes in the earth vii. analysing ice cores a. i, ii, iii, iv b. i, ii, iii, iv, v c. i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi d. i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii Answer: d. all of these methods The first four methods tell us what Earth’s temperature is today. The other three provide information about Earth’s temperature in the past. Trees add a new layer of wood, which appears as a ring, every year. The fluctuation between wider and narrower rings points to periods of drought, rain, storminess, flood, temperature fluctuation, frost, atmospheric circulation, and seasonal extremes. Massive kauri trees found buried in Northland bogs have yielded some of the world’s oldest tree-ring records, dating back up to 60,000 years, being studied by NIWA. Boreholes in the ground can be used to measure a thermal ‘imprint’ of temperatures from the past. The chemical composition of ice can also provide information about temperature in the past. 17. The highest proportion of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from which sector? a. agriculture/farming b. energy/power generation c. transport d. industry/manufacturing e. waste/landfills Answer: a. agriculture/farming Agriculture accounts for approximately 50% of our greenhouse gas emissions. 18. Half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions (50%) are produced from the farming sector, mainly by sheep, beef and dairy cattle. Which greenhouse gas is produced as part of the digestive process of grazing animals? a. carbon dioxide b. methane c. ozone d. nitrous oxide Answer: b. methane Methane is the second most common greenhouse gas produced by human activities, mainly from agriculture, but also from landfills and wastewater systems. Methane is also the main component of natural gas. It has a much shorter life cycle than carbon dioxide, but it is more efficient at trapping radiation, and over a 100 year period its impact on climate change is more than 25 times greater. Methane emissions make a significant contribution to global warming. 19. New Zealand is a small country. However, our carbon footprint is significant. What is New Zealand’s ranking compared to the Annex 1 developed countries in relation to the level of greenhouse gas emissions per person? a. 6th highest per person b. 11th highest per person c. 22nd highest per person d. 32nd highest per person Answer: a. 6th Our high level of per capita emissions is largely due to the reliance of our economy on agriculture. Our level of greenhouse gas emissions per head of population places us ahead of countries like Japan, the UK, and China. Compared globally, New Zealand’s ranking for per capita emissions is 11th. Based on the latest available Inventory data for 2018 for Annex 1 (Developed) countries, New Zealand’s gross emissions ranked 24th among the Annex I countries, but New Zealand’s emissions per person were the sixth highest at 16.9 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) per capita. The New Zealand government is spending millions of dollars on research into methods of reducing emissions from agriculture. So far, research indicates small reductions may be able to be made on these emissions in the future. If New Zealand is to contribute to the global effort to reduce emissions, our dependence on agriculture presents a challenge, and reductions we can make in other sectors are vitally important. 20. New Zealand’s gross emissions have increased significantly since 1990, despite promises to stabilise and reduce them. The largest percentage increases have been in which sector? a. energy b. agriculture c. industrial processes and product use (IPPU) d. waste Answer: a. energy Emissions from the Energy sector in 2020 were 32 per cent higher than in 1990. Most of this increase came from road transport (an increase in emissions of 76 per cent). Emissions from the Agriculture sector increased by 17 per cent. This is primarily due to an 80 per cent increase in the national dairy herd since 1990 and an increase in the application of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser by approximately 693 per cent since 1990. Emissions from the IPPU sector in 2020 were 29 per cent higher than in 1990. In 2020, Waste sector emissions were 17 per cent below 1990 levels. Ways we can make a change are by using electricity efficiently, by biking or walking when possible, and by using public transport. 21. What is the New Zealand government’s main policy tool to reduce emissions? a. a $323 million fund to increase home insulation and clean heating b. a new Centre for Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research c. incentives for new energy technologies like sustainable biofuels, electric cars and solar water systems d. an emissions trading scheme buying credits on the international market to offset emissions Answer: d. an emissions trading scheme buying credits on the international market to offset emissions. An emissions target is a stated intention to meet a particular level of reduction in emissions within a set period – for example, by 2050. It can be met by reducing emissions to that level, but it can also be met by storing carbon in forests or by purchasing units to offset emissions. These units can be obtained from other countries which reduce their emissions below their target levels or from projects in developing countries that reduce emissions. 22. Which of these organisations is the United Nations-based international authority on climate change? a. IEA b. ICC c. IPCC d. WHO Answer: c. IPCC The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up in 1988 at the request of United Nations member countries. Its current membership is 195 countries. The UNIPCC is the internationally accepted leading authority on climate change. The organisation does not carry out its own research, instead it reports on the work of thousands of scientists and other experts. All research is subjected to careful assessment before it is accepted. In 2023 the UNIPCC published the results of its most recent findings in its 6th Assessment Report. The UNIPCC reports are used as the basis for a lot of the information that is currently available on climate change. IEA – International Energy Agency (also has informative things to say about climate change) ICC – International Criminal Court WHO – World Health Organisation the religion of climate change denialReligion and Science The recent article by professor Denis Rancourt, The Climate Religion, argues that belief in climate change is a religion. Although he is right that religion is a powerful belief system common to human societies, which leaders take advantage of to control people, he is dead wrong about acceptance of the science of anthropogenic global warming being a religion. This is a one-time rebuttal (no spitting match, thank you) of his contention. Professor Rancourt is a climate change denier. Climate denial itself has become a religion, impervious to evidence. There have been many prominent climate deniers, such as the late Michael Crichton, whom Rancourt cites. Most of them, like Crichton, are not climate scientists. Of the few who are scientists, most have received funding directly or indirectly from the fossil fuel industry, which has spent millions on manufacturing uncertainty about climate science. For more on the climate denial industry, see Global Warming Skeptic Organizations. Note that, contrary to the name of the article just referred to, there is a difference between global warming deniers and skeptics. Skeptics are willing to converse with scientists on the nature of the evidence and the conclusions, in a spirit of inquiry and cooperation, sometimes even contributing to the science. Like scientists they are prepared to alter their views on the basis of rational dialogue. Deniers do not dialogue, they attack, without peer review, accusing scientists of fraud or grave error, often indulging in conspiracy theories. Science operates on informed consensus. If there is a consensus among qualified scientists that organisms evolved, we should accept that consensus – as a result, modern biology is irreversibly based on the century-and-a-half-old theory of evolution, and creationists’ “disproofs” and “alternatives” have been refuted. Albert Einstein founded both relativity and quantum mechanics, the source of many important scientific discoveries over the last century. Modern climatology, about half a century old, is very robust, with thousands of articles in top peer-reviewed scientific journals annually, by climatologists, chemists, physicists, geologists, anthropologists, archeologists, paleontologists, and even space scientists. Like creationists, climate change deniers’ arguments have all been refuted or proven irrelevant. The scientific method differs greatly from religion, in one fundamental way: religions claim to be based on absolute, revealed truth, which cannot be questioned, whereas science is based on observation, hypothesis formulation, testing, and rejection. Religious adherents work hard to twist observed facts to fit their doctrines; scientists modify their theories on the basis of empirical evidence. So what? Why is global warming important? Because our failure over the last three decades to take global warming seriously has led us to a present climate disruption which can lead either to a guaranteed hostile planet for humans, or a planet which is totally uninhabitable by any life, depending on our actions — now. The scientific evidence Here is the science, in outline form. The evidence is extensive, and it takes more explaining to rebut, than to make glib denials. Links are to scientific sites, or to lay articles with their own links to original scientific work. There’s a very brief conclusion at the end. (1) Ocean, land and atmospheric warming is accelerating Climate Change 2001: Chapter 2, Observed Climate Variability and Change (b) 5 Key Takeaways From Alarming New Climate Report (c) Climate records are being broken regularly, and warming-induced changes are unprecedented in human history. Just a few examples: 1. Stuck on record warm: Earth has unprecedented 16-straight warmest months. 2. Kuwait, Iraq sizzle in 129-degree heat, setting all-time eastern hemisphere record. 3. Atlantic bathwater: Why the ocean is so warm right now and what it means. 4. The longest — and probably largest — proof of our current climate catastrophe ever caught on camera. 5. Greenland’s ice melting faster than we thought, study finds 6. The Alaskan village that needs to be relocated due to climate change. 7. Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun. 8. Causes of Drought: What’s the Climate Connection? 9. Increased flood risk linked to global warming. 10. 375 top scientists warn of ‘real, serious, immediate‘ climate threat. (2) Causes (a) The greenhouse effect: About 31 % of the incoming radiation from the sun is reflected directly back to space by the earth’s atmosphere and surface, and another 20% is absorbed by the atmosphere. The rest is absorbed by oceans and land, and converted into heat. Certain gases in the atmosphere act like the glass of a greenhouse, preventing the heat from escaping. These greenhouse gases absorb heat and radiate some of it back to the earth’s surface, causing surface temperatures to be higher than they would otherwise be. The most important naturally occurring greenhouse gas is water vapor, the largest contributor to the natural greenhouse effect. Other gases, in much smaller quantities, play a substantial and growing role in the greenhouse effect. These include carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Without this natural greenhouse effect, the earth would be much colder than it is now. (b) The main cause of global warming is the human-enhanced greenhouse effect. Proof that greenhouse gases, especially CO2, are warming the Earth: (i) Using satellites to compare how much energy is arriving from the sun, and how much is leaving the Earth, scientists have seen a gradual decrease in the amount of energy being re-radiated back into space. The amount of energy arriving from the sun has not changed very much at all. This is the first piece of evidence: more energy is remaining in the atmosphere. (ii) What can keep the energy in the atmosphere? The primary greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), water vapor, nitrous oxide and ozone. This is the second part of the proof: a testable mechanism by which energy can be trapped in the atmosphere. (iii) CO2 has increased by nearly 43% in the last 150 years, in parallel with temperature increase – consistent with the hypothesis. (iv) The final piece of evidence is ‘the smoking gun’, the proof that CO2 is causing the increases in temperature. CO2 traps energy at specific wavelengths, and other greenhouse gases trap different wavelengths. The graph shows different wavelengths of energy, measured at the Earth’s surface. Among the spikes you can see energy being radiated back to Earth by ozone (O3), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N20). But the spike for CO2 on the left dwarfs all the other greenhouse gases, and tells that most of the energy being trapped in the atmosphere corresponds exactly to the wavelength of energy captured by CO2. Where are the greenhouse gases coming from? The recent rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere is known to be mainly due to human activity. Researchers know this both from various national statistics, and by examining the ratio of various carbon isotopes in the atmosphere. Observed isotopic ratios correspond to an origin millions of years old, which can only come from fossil fuels. Human sources of greenhouse gases (a) The most emitted greenhouse gas is CO2. (b) Methane is the second-most plentiful greenhouse gas emitted. — Methane release from fossil fuel extraction, particularly natural gas — Methane release from tundra, clathrates (methane hydrates, “methane ice”) Other anthropogenic causes of global warming (a) Deforestation Forests decrease global warming in many ways:
(b) Causes
(i) Clearing land — For agriculture — Mineral and fossil fuel extraction (ii) Global warming — Bark beetles are thriving at warmer temperatures, killing boreal forests. — More frequent forest fires are destroying forests. (iii) Population growth — There are no problems – climate change, mass extinction, depletion of resources, killer pollution – that would not be eased by slowing, ending, or best of all, reversing population growth. — Effects on climate: (a) Robert I. McDonald and colleagues concluded that by 2050 population growth in cities in the developing world will multiply the number of people perennially short of water seven-fold, from 150 million to 1 billion. Projected climate change, they found, will add 100 million people to this number – no trivial growth increment, but still a much smaller one. (b) More fossil fuel use (c) More farming Conclusion So there are the facts of climate change, in a large nutshell. As you can see, there is a lot to it. We not only know that global warming and therefore climate change are happening now, and accelerating, and that they are caused by human activities, primarily the burning of carbon. We know how these changes affect heat waves, droughts, floods, ice melting, and sea level rise. What can be documented on another occasion are the consequences for the ecosystem, of which we are part, and the fact that amplifying feedbacks are now causing global warming to accelerate on its own, and might lead to runaway warming even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases. Also, the greenhouse gases we have already emitted will remain in the atmosphere for centuries, continuing to heat the planet. That is why our inaction has made the problem especially urgent. Deniers will pick at details or claim that climate change is impossible, or it’s caused by other factors, but remember this: 1) All their objections have failed to disprove the main tenets of anthropogenic climate change and its effects; and 2) All of their proposed alternative explanations for climate change have been refuted. This article, already too long for many, can’t go into those refutations, although some links have been provided to them. It is therefore no surprise that deniers have not come up with a robust theoretical framework that can be built upon scientifically, unlike the current theory of anthropogenic climate change. Paul Brown is a retired brain scientist. His primary interests are threats to civilization and human existence: Corporate rule, militarism, and destruction of our planet’s ecosystem. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, and was author or co-author of several books, including Notes from a Dying Planet. His free esamizdat newslink emails can be subscribed to at [email protected].. Read other articles by Paul. This article was posted on Monday, September 26th, 2016 at 5:38am and is filed under Climate Change, Environment, Oceans/Seas, Pollution, Science/Technology, Sustainability, Water. And…. in answer to the ‘Climate has always changed, so let us relax’ argument: http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htmClimate Myth…Climate’s changed before Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. (Richard Lindzen) Science has a good understanding of past climate changes and their causes, and that evidence makes the human cause of modern climate change all the more clear. Greenhouse gasses – mainly CO2, but also methane – have been implicated in most of the climate changes in Earth’s past. When they were reduced, the global climate became colder. When they were increased, the global climate became warmer. When changes were big and rapid (as they are today), the consequences for life on Earth were often dire – in some cases causing mass extinctions. So why is the myth wrong?The myth is wrong for two reasons:
Ice ages Scientists have shown that CO2 and climate moved in lock-step throughout the Pleistocene ice ages. The ice ages were actually many pulses of cold glacial phases interspersed with warmer interglacials. These pulses had a distinct regularity caused by wobbles in Earth’s orbit around the Sun (Milankovitch cycles). When Earth’s orbit reduced the intensity of sunlight in the northern hemisphere, the Earth went into a glacial phase. When the orbital cycle brought increased the intensity of insolation in the northern hemisphere, ice sheets melted and we went into a warm interglacial. Because warmer oceans can dissolve less CO2, the CO2 levels see-sawed extremely closely with Earth’s temperature. It was a slow pace of change, taking tens to hundreds of thousands of years, and yes as the myth states, in the last million years the biggest orbit-induced cycles were every 100,000 years. But we know these orbital changes are not behind today’s global warming. In fact our orbit dictates we should be cooling now, not warming. The Earth was indeed cooling over the last 6,000 years due to Earth’s orbit, heading into the next glacial phase scheduled for about the year 3500 AD. But all that changed when we got to the industrial era. Global temperatures departed from that cooling trend, and instead rose parallel with our greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gasses and Temperature moved in lock-step through the Pleistocene Ice Ages, controlled by Earth’s orbit around the Sun (Centre for Ice and Climate, University of Copenhagen). Arrows show where levels were a few years ago, on the same scale. CO2 doesn’t lag behind temperature Until 2012, Antarctic ice core data suggested CO2 may have lagged behind the warming trend by hundreds of years. This was used by skeptics to question the link between CO2 and climate. More recent studies, with much more precise correlation between ice cores and global temperature records, have shown that temperature and CO2 changed synchronously in Antarctica during the end of the last ice age, and globally CO2 rose slightly before global temperatures. Palm-fringed Arctic and balmy dinosaurs It’s true that at times in Earth’s past the climate has been as warm or even warmer than temperatures projected for the end of this century and beyond. Aside from some warm interglacials, the average climate was last as warm as we expect in 2100 during the Pliocene epoch – before the emergence of the genus Homo which includes you and me. In that time, summer Arctic temperatures were 3°C (5°F) warmer than today, with CO2 levels similar to today’s and sea levels were 15-25m (50-82ft) higher than today. Rain-drenched forests fringed the Arctic Ocean at the time. Going further back to the Eocene, the world then was very warm and humid – on average 10°C (18°F) warmer than today. Lush swamp forests fringed the Arctic, inhabited by turtles, alligators, primates, tapirs, and the hippo-like Coryphodon (just as the myth claims). Lowland Antarctica was warm and covered in near-tropical vegetation, and London was a mangrove swamp as rainforests spread across much of the planet. Going back even further to the age of the dinosaurs, life flourished in a time of high CO2 and generally warm average temperatures with high sea levels. Even Antarctica was forested and supported a healthy population of dinosaurs. CO2 and Climate Changes in the last 400+ million years (note all human existence fits under the right-hand vertical axis line). CO2 proxy data from Dan Breeker, U.Texas, originally published here. Greenhouse events in part from Kravchinsky 2012. Sudden vs slow changeLife flourished in the Eocene, the Cretaceous and other times of high CO2 in the atmosphere because the greenhouse gasses were in balance with the carbon in the oceans and the weathering of rocks. Life, ocean chemistry, and atmospheric gasses had millions of years to adjust to those levels. But there have been several times in Earth’s past when Earth’s temperature jumped rapidly, in much the same way as they are doing today. Those times were caused by large and rapid greenhouse gas emissions, just like humans are causing today. In Earth’s past the trigger for these greenhouse gas emissions was often unusually massive volcanic eruptions known as “Large Igneous Provinces,” with knock-on effects that included huge releases of CO2 and methane from organic-rich sediments. But there is no Large Igneous Province operating today, or anytime in the last 16 million years. Today’s volcanoes, in comparison, don’t even come close to emitting the levels of greenhouse gasses that humans do. Those rapid global warming events were almost always highly destructive for life, causing mass extinctions such as at the end of the Permian, Triassic, or even mid-Cambrian periods. The symptoms from those events (huge and rapid carbon emissions, a big rapid jump in global temperatures, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, widespread oxygen-starved zones in the oceans) are all happening today with human-caused climate change. The outcomes for life on Earth were often dire. The end Permian extinction saw around 90% of species go extinct, and it left tropical regions on the planet lethally hot, too hot for complex life to survive. The Triassic extinction was another, one of the 5 biggest mass extinctions in the geological record. Even in the end Cretaceous extinction, in which dinosaurs were finally wiped out by an asteroid impact, a major global-warming extinction event was already underway causing a major extinction within 150,000 years of the impact. That global warming 66 million years ago was due to catastrophic eruptions in India, which emitted a pulse of CO2 that sent global temperatures soaring by 7°C (13°F). So yes, the climate has changed before, and in most cases scientists know why. In all cases we see the same association between CO2 levels and global temperatures. And past examples of rapid carbon emissions offer no comfort at all for the likely outcome from today’s climate change. Another such – extracted from a highly recommended book on the subject:Extract from “The Madhouse Effect – How Climate Change Denial is Threatening our Planet, Destroying our Politics, and Driving us Crazy” by Michael Mann and Tom Toles. Science – How it Works Science, Everybody says they are for it. So why the fire-storm of argument about the science of climate change? It’s an interesting question. With a disturbing answer. For all the complexity of detail in science, the process is actually fairly straightforward. Science is unique among human endeavours in the “self-correcting” machinery (to quote the famous Carl Sagan) by which it is governed. That machinery ensures that science continues on a path toward an increasingly better understanding of the natural world despite the occasional wrong turns, dead ends, and missteps. The machinery consists of the critical checks that exist in the form of peer review and professional challenges, with the overriding maxim – again attributed to Sagan – that extraordinary claims especially require extraordinary evidence. Good-faith scepticism – that is, scepticism that attempts to hold science to the highest possible standard through independent scrutiny and questioning of every minute detail – is not only a good thing in science but, in fact, essential. It is the lubricant that ensures that the self-correcting machinery continues to function. Unfortunately, the term sceptic has been hijacked, especially in the climate change debate, to mean something entirely different. It is used as a way to dodge evidence that one simply doesn’t like. That, however, is not scepticism but rather contrarianism or denialism, the wholesale rejection of validated, widely accepted scientific principles on the basis of opinion, ideology, financial interest, or all these things together. We must distinguish true scepticism – a noble attribute found in all good science and all good scientists – from the pseudo-scepticism practised by armchair critics who misguidedly fancy themselves modern-day Galileos. As Carl Sagan also once said, “The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown”. For every Galileo, there are many thousands of Bozo the Clowns. When it comes to the fractious debate over policy relevant areas of science, the Bozos are too often the ones with the megaphones. Scepticism. True scientific scepticism takes many forms. Scepticism takes place in the give-and-take at scientific meetings, where scientists present their findings and then address questions, criticisms, and challenges from their colleagues in the audience. It takes place in the form of peer review: Scientists write up their findings and submit them to journals. The journals select several other scientists with expertise in the field to critically evaluate the submission. If they find flaws in the data, the underlying assumptions, the experimental design, or the logic, the authors must revise and resubmit. This process might be repeated a number of times for a single article. In the end, the article is published if and only if the editor determines that the authors have satisfactorily addressed any concerns or critiques raised during the review process and that the manuscript represents a positive contribution to the existing scientific literature. The quality-control process of peer review isn’t perfect, of course, and flawed work inevitably does get published. Certainly, no single scientific article ever defines the collective body of knowledge. And so there is even peer review in the form of multi-authored scientific assessments, like those by the National Academy of Sciences, that evaluate the collective evidence in the peer-reviewed literature on a particular topic and summarise the state of knowledge on the topic. These assessments, too, are peer reviewed for accuracy, objectivity and thoroughness. The fact of the matter, however, is that there is a weakness in the scientific system that can be exploited. The weakness is in the public understanding of science, which turns out to be crucial for translating science into public policy. Deliberate confusion can be sown under a false pretext of “scepticism”. And the scientific process is continually under assault by bad-faith doubt mongers. There is, for example, the whole duplicitous game of assigning motives. Critics sometimes seek to cast suspicion on the scientific enterprise by suggesting that it is compromised by a conspiracy of ulterior-motive-driven individuals. “The scientists are in it for the money,” they say, seeking to “get rich off of government grant money.” Ironically, there is no small amount of projection here. These accusations, after all, are typically made by talking heads who get paid hefty sums by industry front groups to peddle disinformation to the public and to attack the scientists. But what about the substance of the accusation? Do climate scientists, for example, seek to reinforce the dominant narrative that climate change is real and caused by humans to generate concern from the public and policy makers just so they can guarantee the ongoing availability of government grant support for their work? To understand just how absurd that premise is, we have to understand something about how science really works. In science, you don’t make a name for yourself by simply reinforcing the dominant narrative. You don’t get articles published in the premier journals “Nature” and “Science” by simply showing that others were right. The way you establish a name for yourself in the world of science is by demonstrating something new or surprising, by contradicting conventional wisdom. A record of novel, ground-breaking work is what gets you tenure, what helps bring in research grants, what leads to salary increases from your institution. Any scientist who could soundly demonstrate that Earth is not warming would become an instant science celebrity. A scientist who could definitively explain the warming of Earth by natural rather than human causes would have prominent articles published in “Nature” and “Science”. He or she would appear on the network news and make the cover of “Scientific American”. Such an individual would be tenured, promoted, likely elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The scientist would go down in history as one of the great paradigm breakers of all time, part of the exclusive club that includes Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein and Wegener (of plate tectonics fame). Such a scientist would, in short, achieve both fame and fortune. So the incentives for a scientist would appear to be rather the opposite of what the critics claim. But let us not forget that in science the more extraordinary the claim. The more extraordinary the evidence must be……. More from the third chapter – The Bizarro World. If you are a climate change denier, there is a good chance that you (1) aren’t reading this book anyway, (2) don’t read Tom’s editorial cartoons in the Washington Post or Mike’s commentaries and interviews, and (3) get your information about climate change from conservative media outlets committed to perpetuating the notion that climate change is a myth, a vast conspiracy by thousands of scientists around the world perpetuating a massive hoax to create a new socialist world order. If that is your viewpoint, it probably doesn’t matter to you that the world’s leading scientists have reached an overwhelming consensus that climate change is (1) real, (2) caused by us, (3) already a problem. It probably doesn’t matter that the National Academy of Sciences, founded by President Abraham Lincoln, has stated this to be the case, as have the scientific academies of all the major industrial nations. It probably doesn’t matter that every scientific society in the United States to weigh in on the matter has done so as well. From your perspective, that’s all just evidence that the scientific community conspiracy must run even wider and and deeper. It is this sort of epistemic closure that makes it increasingly difficult to reach hardened climate change deniers. Science is litigated through the formulation and testing of hypotheses, the analysis of hard data, and an examination of the facts, not by television debates between talking heads with opposing viewpoints. Yet our mass media too often frame climate change precisely that way. Who do you imagine benefits from that framing? Doubt is their Product. When it comes to the public battle over policy-relevant science, special interests have long recognised that they enjoy the advantage of the prosecution in the court of public opinion. Their internal research, focus groups, and polling have revealed that they need generate only sufficient uncertainty about the scientific evidence in the public mind-set to ensure an agenda of inaction. “Doubt is our product” read one internal tobacco industry memo. It is unsurprising that right wing media outlets serve as mouthpieces for this agenda. But what is more troubling is that the mainstream media have often played the role of unwitting accomplices. By perpetuating the notion that there are two equal “sides” when it comes to objective matters of fact such as evolution and climate change, mainstream media outlets have reinforced the perception that there is legitimate doubt about these matters. Comedian John Oliver had it precisely right when he brought ninety seven scientists out onto the studio floor to debate three climate change deniers. The split is ninety seven – three, not fifty-fifty, when it comes to support among actual publishing scientists for the scientific consensus on human caused climate change. As we shall see, the success of the industry funded climate change denial machine derives in part from media outlets’ willingness to emphasise conflict over consensus, controversy over comprehension. Add a bit of Journalism 101 false “balance”, and you have a perfect recipe for industry front groups and their hired guns to bake up mass confusion and to do what they do best – obfuscate and obscure the facts and delay action. The increasingly popular refrain among politicians, “I am not a scientist,” is just another formulation used to avoid an intelligent discussion of climate. It is not in any way a coherent response because logically the follow-up would be “so I will defer to the consensus of people who are scientists.” But the politicians never seem to get to that part. They instead act as though unless there is 100% unanimity among scientists, nothing can be known. But they are also contradictorily fully willing to assent to a tiny minority of scientists who happen to be saying what they want to hear. As often as not, the scientists in question are not even climate scientists, but who cares? ![]() Before the climate summit in Paris, there might have remained much uncertainty in the public mind about the subject of climate change: whether or not it was caused by human activity and/or represented a serious threat to our society. After Paris, any such lingering wishful thoughts should have been finally dispelled. From their point of view, the more than US$500 million spent by corporations, such as the oil companies and their owners, and paid to PR companies, politicians, bogus scientific authorities and the media to persuade the public either that climate change was not happening to a threatening degree (or that if it was happening, it was an entirely natural process and not susceptible to human intervention) was money well spent. It bought them several decades of freedom to generate profits unhampered by constrictive legislation. The reverse of the coin is that this demonstration of corporate greed has turned a deteriorating climate change situation, which, over time, could have been addressed relatively painlessly, into a full-blown emergency, which now calls for urgent action. After Paris, one can safely claim that there is no reason for anyone, other than the victims of chronic wishful thinking, to give any credence to those who continue to deny the real and present danger of man-made rapid climate change. After Paris, society is faced with a problem of a different nature: complacency. Paris was a major diplomatic victory for the nations of the world. At long last, diplomacy brought them together to the point where, all in unison, they publicly announced that rapid climate change posed a threat to human civilisation, which had to be addressed and, more impressively, each individual nation put itself on record as to what its government intended to do about it. From the point of view of the people of the planet, however, the diplomatic victory was a political failure. Firstly, the actual counter-measures promised by their leaders at Paris, if implemented, will still leave the global climate with a change in temperature considerably above the maximum acceptable danger limit of an additional 2C of warming. Secondly, despite the ebullient celebrations, there was no enforcement structure put in place; all the promises at the Paris summit were non-binding. What for their citizens was a political failure, for the politicians was a resounding success. They have bought themselves more time. They have lulled the vast majority of mankind into a complacent belief that their leaders have the matter under control. In reality, for the politicians, it is back to business as usual. Business as usual means continuing to prioritise the illusion of well-being to be derived from a national economy, which prospers to the detriment of the planet off which it feeds. The economy is what will ensure a government’s re-election at the end of the current three-year, or five-year or whatever-year term. Measures implemented to safeguard the future of the planet, while showing no visible positive results in the current electoral term, will limit economic growth and thereby hamper the leadership’s chances of re-election. Even, the feeble and inadequate promises made by the New Zealand government at Paris, are unlikely to be implemented, without serious and continuous pressure being exerted by the electorate. Climate Karanga’s mission is to ensure that no restricted vision allows complacency to flourish among the electorate and that, in its turn, the electorate allows no such complacency to flourish among the leaders it elects. If our politicians want to be voted into power, they have to act for the long-term benefit of future generations and not just the short-term benefit of their own.
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Authors
These are a collection of opinion articles principally written by CKM member Tom Powell for the Marlborough Express. Tom is a retired geologist who came to New Zealand in 2004 to work in the geothermal industry on the North Island, is a New Zealand citizen and now lives in Blenheim. Some articles have been written by other CKM members, and their names appear with those articles. Archives
December 2023
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