By Sean Rush & Katharine Moody*
The government could be said to be ‘screwing the scrum’ by ignoring the most recent findings of the IPCC, (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and persisting in using extreme climate change projections.
The IPCC is clear: its high-end, worse-case scenario, Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP5-8.5), is “not likely” and “implausible to unfold”,1 with the government’s higher-end of that high-end scenario (called 8.5H+) only having a 1 in 14 chance of happening on top of that!
To continue the rugby analogy, screwing the scrum is sneaky, opportunistic, and not really legal.
So, what advantage is being gained by inflating sea-level rise and other climate change effects to the extent of implausibility? And who benefits from this “over-egging” of these effects?
It is a particularly important question to ask today, given those affected by current weather events are being told these events are the result of climate change, but there will be no compensation until;
…they [Government] form a national policy response to the places severely affected by flooding and land instability, including managed retreat.
So, let’s follow the money, given it’s not getting to those affected (yet).
The research community
Central government has poured plenty of money into research into climate change, for example: here, here, and here.
But a key tenet of the scientific method is that novel claims have to be published in a credible, peer reviewed journal.
Only then should such scientific findings be relied upon, particularly by regulators. So, a disturbing feature of the current managed retreat policy discourse and coastal planning guidance generally, is the emergence of novel estimates of New Zealand-specific sea-level rise that have not passed the required academic peer review.
Readers may recall new claims, popularised by the media in May 2022 that large parts of coastal New Zealand are subject to a disturbing subsidence trend. The claims were that sea-level rise was happening twice as fast as previously thought. Projections showed infrastructure and homes in Auckland and Wellington - as well as many other places – at risk of inundation decades earlier than previously expected.
The study, known as the ‘SeaRise Project”, is a collaborative effort led by scientists at Victoria University, NIWA and GNS funded to the tune of $20 million by the Government. The projections relied on a short 7-year satellite dataset (2003-2011) measuring subsidence and uplift along coastal New Zealand.
These projections were fast-tracked into policy via the ‘SeaRise tool’, an interactive map specifically designed to target the public, the media, and regulators. One headline projection was that parts of Wellington’s coast would subside up to 30 centimetres within the next 10 to 20 years.
Coastal residents and regulators have been holding regular meetings ever since to discuss the study’s implications and next steps.
The findings were so inconsistent with what the much longer-term tide gauges showed, that their publication warranted closer scrutiny. What was omitted from the media coverage was that despite submitting a manuscript to the American Geophysical Union’s, Earth’s Future, in July 2022, it was not published (and still has not been) as it did not pass the peer review process.
This should not be unexpected. Several conclusions drawn by SeaRise are at odds with the peer reviewed and published works of several of the co-authors. Colleagues of the group, with established credentials in the world of land subsidence, pointed out that the short-term subsiding trends should not be extrapolated forward, particularly when they do not incorporate the often-balancing effects of earthquakes and slower, more subtle rises in land, known as ‘slow slip events’ (SSEs).
These events are well documented in the peer review and can completely cancel out subsidence. Despite these warnings, the SeaRise tool went live on 2 May 2022 and remains online.
The project’s communications plan shows that publication of the online tool was agreed to go ahead irrespective of whether the manuscript had passed the peer review process.
The timing of the publication coincided with the commencement of Minister James Shaw’s consultation on proposed managed retreat legislation and was subject to a carefully orchestrated, week-long series of media coverage, interviews with the Prime Minister, Shaw and other stakeholders.
Concerns about the utility of the projections for policy making are ongoing. For example, tide gauge measurements for sea level around Wellington have not materially changed since the end of the SeaRise data set in 2011. Individual scientists have pointed out that the SeaRise measurements of subsidence are in direct contrast with their own measurements. Even GNS have acknowledged that the Kāpiti Coast, which is shown by the SeaRise tool to be subsiding, was uplifted by a full centimetre during this year alone.
The ~$20 million funding for this project was sourced from the MBIE ‘Endeavour’ fund with an initial tranche of $7.1. million and a more recent tranche of $13 million. The more recent tranche will be applied to refining the coastal data points (from the current 2 kilometre spacing to 100 metres) along with solving, if they can, the issues raised in the peer review process. But it is entirely possible that broad spatial satellite measurements will never be as accurate as local tide gauge measurements.
This brings into question the value for money of this ongoing expenditure.
In the meantime, significant caveats should be applied to the SeaRise tool pending either its correction or abandonment. It should certainly not feature in the managed retreat debate and cannot be used in formal coastal policy planning processes.
Private sector consultants
Every local authority is required, under the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement (NZCPS) Policy 24 to identify coastal hazards, taking into account “the likely effects of climate change on the region or district”. This work, commonly referred to as a coastal hazard risk assessment, is normally contracted out to consultants. The output is used to define boundary lines, or coastal hazard zones, for restrictive planning purposes – i.e., to determine rules about what one can and cannot do with their property if it is identified as being within a coastal hazard zone.
Anecdotal evidence suggests these reports cost in the vicinity of $200,000 – $400,000 depending on the length of the coastline and the nature of the geomorphological characteristics. Multiply that (at the low end) by our 57 local authorities with a coastline, gives a total in excess of $11m ratepayer funded dollars. And, if private property owners believe the results of such assessments are “over- egged” (referred to as ‘conservative’ in technical terms), then challenges to the associated Council plans have to be taken to the Environment Court for legal compliance and scientific merit review.
Hence, the cost of defending these often found to be overly ‘conservative’ findings, falls solely on the ratepayer – as, more often than not, the same firm providing the science underpinning the planning rules has to be hired/paid further for affidavit preparation and appearances associated with court processes.
It therefore makes little sense for central government to persist in recommending the use of the “implausible” IPCC sea-level rise projections (i.e., SSP5-8.5 and 8.5H+) in any coastal guidance material, as this simply adds unnecessary costs to local authorities, and cost and stress to the residents inappropriately caught up in this process.
Moreover, NZCPS Policy 24 requires that Council’s give “priority to the identification of areas at high risk of being affected”. As one pragmatic scientist explained, there is nothing complex or difficult about this – the most high-risk areas of coastline can be identified by simple observation of existing protective measures.
Communities know their coasts, but there is no money in following the historic/observational record, or in using local knowledge of coastal and estuarine processes as understood by residents and property owners. The ‘money’ is in the production of complex and yet inadequate technical models, purported to predict the future via weighty output reports, unable to be interpreted and/or easily understood by general public.
Public sector bureaucrats
As many readers will realise, nearly every government entity (including, the RBNZ) are busy developing their own unique climate change strategies. That bureaucratic expense aside, the main public service benefactor of these unfolding declarations of climate emergencies in our communities, is the Ministry for the Environment (MFE).
When resource management was reformed during the 1980s, the Department of Conservation (DOC) was set up to manage the very large conservation estate, and MfE to give even handed policy advice on the environment. Some would say MFE is going well beyond that into advocacy, supporting these exaggerated positions on climate change. We can see this trend reflected in growth in the environment budget over recent years.
MFE output expenses rose from $114m in 2017/18 to $410m in 2022/23 whereas over the same period, DOC went from $386m to $720m – a near quadrupling of costs for advice on the environment versus not quite a doubling of costs for getting actual work done in the environment.
Where to from here?
Much more time, effort and expense is on the cards regarding the future Climate Adaptation Act. Already, councils are busying themselves with making adaptation plans, even though they are not a regulatory requirement at this stage. Hawke's Bay residents (view oral submission at 53 minutes 19 seconds) have been going through the gruelling process of coastal adaptation planning for 9 years now, with little action to show for all the talk.
The Environmental Defence Society (EDS) has commissioned a series of reports on the topic of public funding for managed retreat from climate-related hazards. These are big volumes of work, but for an enthusiast, worth reading. The emphasis is on publicly-funded compensation to residential property owners for moving away from the hazard as a preventative, or proactive measure, as opposed to an EQC-type, event-driven, or reactive measure.
From the authors' perspectives, we have not formed an opinion on the need, but foremost, we consider that any such considerations must not stray beyond planning for likely, if not near certain, climate change futures. Compensation can only be costly, and weather events (slips and floods) are more likely to threaten lives and properties far sooner than sea-level rise.
This means not using “conservative” or “novel” or “implausible” or “precautionary” methods and outputs from our coastal scientists and consultants. Instead, it means a far greater emphasis on observational data and a pragmatic application of it, responding to present-day events and what can be reasonably seen in the future.
In the end residents want to understand the likelihood of them being at risk in the future, based on a reasonable set of assumptions. That is what the law says should happen, but it is being ignored.
The Kāpiti Coast, for example recently mapped what they refer to as ‘Adaptation Areas’ – determined using the “implausible” SSP5-8.5 (H+) scenario. An estimated one quarter of all properties in the district are ‘caught’ by the lines drawn.
There will be consequences in the planning processes, but insurers are using this information today. While insurers generally write one-year policies, and slow progressive risks (such as sea-level rise) should be by and large, irrelevant, anecdotal evidence suggests they are already applying risk premiums to coastal properties in areas like those in Kāpiti’s adaption areas. Similarly, some banks are modelling climate risk, again, based on these “implausible” scenarios.
We need to be more realistic when it comes to policy development regarding sea-level rise projections and managed retreat. ‘Screwing the scrum’ with the use of unlikely and implausible climate change scenarios (SSP5-8.5 and 8.5H+) needs to be yellow carded.
1) IPCC, AR6 WG1, Chapter 4, section 4.4.2. p. 13
*Sean Rush (LLB, LLM, MCCSP) and Katharine Moody (BSc, PGDipPlan) recently collaborated on the preparation of expert evidence for an RMA plan change hearing. This article summarises some of those matters raised in that regulatory process.
128 Comments
The science isn't settled, i.e. is uncertain. For example, relevant here is what is the Climate Sensitivity to GHGs, and the related issue of sensitivity to clouds. The projections don't mostly depend on what people do, with different models forced with the same emissions scenarios showing a very wide range of results.
Yeah, nah. There are a lot of assumptions thrown in there not just projected gas concentrations. Clouds are a huge source of variation in climate models.
"Owing to their large geographical extent, small errors in predicting the way trade cumuli respond to warming can have a large effect on the global radiative budget. This explains why shallow cumuli in the trades are a main source of spread in the estimates of climate sensitivity of climate models
...Our observational analyses render models with large positive feedbacks implausible and both support and explain at the process scale a weak trade cumulus feedback. Our findings thus refute an important line of evidence for a high climate sensitivity"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05364-y
https://landshape.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/climate_sensitivity5.png
Here is a link to 'RCP8.5 - A scenario of comparatively high greenhouse gas emissions' https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y. The introduction describes in high level terms what is done and why.
You were telling us the projections were the result of what people do. In fact the RCP scenarios are constructed from assumptions about what needs to happen (realistic or otherwise) to get to that level of forcing. This gives the various modelling teams common more detailed assumptions to use throughout their modelling. Nothing to do with the real world, and as discussed in this article the assumptions that need to be made to ger to 8.5w/m2 are not likely and even implausible.
Now the modelling teams stick these assumptions into their models and each produce projections of the global temps (for example) and these are all over the paddock. So if you assume the same behaviour by the population (same RCP) you get widely different results. Other factors cause lots of variation, contrary to the impression you were giving.
Of course, the science is not settled. If it was, we would not need to pay all these people to 'research' this.
The fact is that the climate has always changed, and it always will. But it will not change in the way that the alarmists say. It will be more like the historical cycle, as obviously, as any sane person can see, we are going through a cycle.
Even the so-called super experts now admit they were wrong, as outlined above. Tell any climate charge alarmist what is listed above and they will start yelling hysterically that you are some sort of conspiracy theorist. It is really quite amusing when the end game of them being completely wrong is fast approaching all the shouting and yelling and pointing fingers will start. If ever there was any doubt.
In New Zealand, we have a bunch of rank amateur useless nobodies doing this so-called research. They will continue to grab money from wherever they can and continue to produce these rubbish statistics about things that will never happen for as long as they are able. Just look at Covid. The so-called experts could not have been more wrong about the projections and the outcomes.
I have a mate that believes all this stuff, I completely disagree and think that it is a load of bollocks,
We are still the best of mates even after numerous drunken disagreements on the matter. However, we do have a bucket of KFC on the line for whoever is right. I think I will be tucking into that bucket of chicken when the time period on the wager runs out, and as expected, nothing has happened.
COVID projections were almost spot on. The 80k dead people like to bandy around was if we did nothing and let the disease run rampant. Did we do that? NO. The other projection you don't want to talk about was what would happen in the first couple of years if we limited our cases by doing lots of the things we did - social distancing/closing borders/quarantine etc. Which is what happened. That projection said we would end up with about 20 dead still, which was about right, give or take a couple of dozen. Basically spot on.
Total crap. The projections were based on the % of old people dying in Italy in old people's homes that were dying of coughs and colds anyway. The rate was just higher with Covid. That statistic was projected onto a healthy population and was completely wrong.
In any case, I am talking more about the idiots here that kept on going on about the new normal of social distancing forever, mask-wearing for ever, working from home forever, no more plane travel, crap crap crap. All completely, totally, and utterly wrong, like everything else about it.
Before embarrassing yourself more, I suggest you read the actual study instead of making up fantastic and incorrect assumptions. Take note of page 5 where they used 12 countries case fatality rates as a basis for their scenarios.
You have a lot of rage in you clearly, I recommend chilling out bro.
Your linked study is more of a polished turd than sh#t. Didn't these people look at the Diamond Princess data? It is good to see these old papers to highlight how badly wrong the public health jobsworths and politicians got it. If only we had a media at the time. Example your paper claims - "The human population currently lacks immunity to COVID-19, a viral zoonotic disease with a case fatality rate (CFR) of the order of 1%." and this gem:
"Population mortality No Control 1.67%
(when control ends)
Whereas:
"At a global level, pre-vaccination Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR) may have been as low as 0.03% and 0.07% for 0–59 and 0–69 year old people, respectively."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512201982X
and - published 3 days before the polished turd:
"The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.
Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%).
...However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes. In fact, such “mild” coronaviruses infect tens of millions of people every year, and account for 3% to 11% of those hospitalized in the U.S. with lower respiratory infections each winter."
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coron…
Your comparisons are a polished turd, sorry.
The Diamond Princess IS A CRUISE SHIP, not a country, comparing the two is frankly, idiotic, which you yet again provide with this argument. The Diamon Princess effectively quarantined people in their rooms once widespread outbreak occurred. Guess what, that's not "no control". Surprisingly, when you want to compare what happens in countries, you compare other countries.
The authors looked at what was happening at that time and made their assumptions across 12 countries as those countries reported it. It's easy to look back in hindsight, realise the infection rate was a lot higher, across all variants where some were less deadly, pre vaccination and come up with different statistics. In fact, it's completely expected. You are expecting health authorities to have prescient knowledge of how a virus is going to mutate and respond accordingly. A completely idiotic thing to suggest.
"Close confines help the virus to spread, but closed environments are also an ideal place to study how the new coronavirus behaves.
When COVID-19 was detected among passengers on the cruise ship Diamond Princess, the vessel offered a rare opportunity to understand features of the new coronavirus that are hard to investigate in the wider population."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00885-w
Your polished turn 1.67% fatality rate was never met anywhere whereas analysis published in January this year stated "At a global level, pre-vaccination Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR) may have been as low as 0.03% and 0.07% for 0–59 and 0–69 year old people, respectively."
Six months after the Diamond Princes analysis the data (below) was still pretty much bang on with the original age adjusted estimate of 0.125% and miles off the 1.67%. Looking back in time we can see who got it right and who got it wrong . The paper you presented was woefully wrong and is still causing havoc to our economy, healthcare and education. Hopefully we can learn from the scientists who got it right at the start - and next time round not shamefully vilify them for not being alarmist enough.
"Acknowledging these limitations,
based on the currently available data,
one may project that over half a billion
people have been infected as of
12 September 2020, far more than the
approximately 29 million documented
laboratory-confirmed cases. Most
locations probably have an infection
fatality rate less than 0.20% and with appropriate,
precise non-pharmacological
measures that selectively try to protect
high-risk vulnerable populations and
settings, the infection fatality rate may
be brought even lower."
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/340124/PMC7947934.pdf?…
Cool, so you are saying that we should have thrown all reporting from countries data out, which included their response or lack thereof and instead applied data from a cruise ship to our country response. And you believe that is the right approach? Note that you fail to acknowledge that the cruise ship initiated serious quarantine controls, much like our country did, once the outbreak was confirmed. You also fail to acknowledge that a small sample population size doesn't overwhelm health systems, which it does with widespread country outbreaks.
The Diamond Princess tracked 3711 passenger and crew very precisely. A floating petri dish. The data gathered was gold standard and showed directly how the virus would behave in the wider world. This was far, far better data than any “country data” you speak of. It showed only very old frail people with 3+ commorbidities were at risk and healthy people below 70 were are virtually no risk. The Diamond Princess found those at risk were >80 years old – very similar to the average age of death of 83 in countries like Australia and the UK. The challenge for your vaunted turd paper was to explain why their doomsday scenarios had not played out on the Diamond Princess. Instead, this early, crucial, DP data was ignored and we locked down healthy people at no risk, and destroyed the economy, healthcare and education.
“Figure 2 shows the age distribution of 677 PCR-positive individuals [18% of ship]. Of these individuals, 377 (55.7%) were symptomatic, 48 (7.1%) had severe disease and 13 (1.9%) died. The proportion of symptomatic infected individuals was highest among cases aged ≥80 years (88.5%). Severe disease was observed most frequently among cases aged ≥80 years (21.1%), followed by cases in their 70s (10.3%) and 60s (6.1%). No cases aged <40 years experienced severe disease. Deaths were most common among cases aged ≥80 years (7.7%), followed by cases in their 70s (3.4%) and 60s (0.6%). No cases aged <60 years died.
…Using the epidemiological data collected during an outbreak of COVID-19 on the cruise ship Diamond Princess, this study found that severe disease, death and symptomatic illness were more common among older individuals. Among older elderly cases, age ≥80 years was associated with the highest risks of severe disease and death.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971221012133
God I am thankful you weren't involved in the response then. If you think a cruise ship = country with zero differences and therefore policy should be formed around it, there is no hope for you. And since you still believe that scientists should have absolute prescient knowledge of the future, to enable them to form their response. You are giving links to papers written in 2022 and claiming that people should have used for an outbreak in 2020! Your either delusional or hilariously incoherent.
I think the point is that should have known math and a bit of history and reviewed that against their perceived outcomes and understood that most of what they were saying into 2020-2021 was a complete load of bollocks and would be more aligned with history as time passed. Rather than just making stuff up and pretending similar events had not happened in the past, actually, worse events had happened in the past, i.e. Spanish Flu, and the outcome would be very similar (making allowances of course for the fact that medical science has discovered a few things in the past 100 years). But no, this time was different yada yada yada, and everyone that looks at history must be a conspiracy theorist.
Blobbles the 2022 paper was consistent with the first Diamond Princess data. Demonstrating how it stood the test of time. The data was as prescient as you could get. If the DP data was so bad how did it get the IFR and average age of death so close to reality? Poor old Blobbles, all you have is ad hominen.
All you have is deluded arguments where you believe a cruise ship is exactly the same as a country and scientists should be able to predict the future.
You also completely fail to recognise the people on the cruise ship WERE QUARANTINED, much like what happened when we had lockdowns. So yeah, unsurprisingly reality in this country matched the cruise ship data.
by blobbles | 28th May 23, 5:24pm
"Correct. And you still want scientists 3 years ago to know what they do now? Do you not understand how time works?"
In early 2020, very early on in the pandemic, a study in Wuhan estimated the infection fatality rate to be very low for the vast majority of people (higher for the elderly). These estimates were later found to be fairly accurate (maybe a bit high) by the plethora of international seroprevalence studies that began to be published around April-May 2020 (none of which made it to the general media).
Scientists three years ago knew very well that historically when a new virus turns up, initial estimates of fatality rates (usually based on CFR rather than IFR) will always be far higher than the actual rates, later determined by seroprevalence studies.
Is it really so difficult to accept that public opinion was manipulated? Most of what happened - the ridiculous modelling by Neil Ferguson and our own bunch of bought scientists, the mandating of splashguards and cloth (!) facemasks for an aerosolised virus, and breathless media reporting of every single positive PCR test - this was all obviously designed to terrify people into complying with NPIs way out of all proportion to the actual threat.
Before 2020, politicians, journalists, and pharmaceutical companies were the least trusted professions in the world - why did everyone suddenly start trusting them absolutely during the pandemic? Because fear trumps rationality.
Not sure it matters whether it is cruise ship or not. At least the outcome is known and they do not have all this silliness of screwng the scrum so to speak and massively over-inflating the infection rate and also the death rate. The least the experts should have been able to do is actually count, and know what to count, i.e. people that die of gunshot wounds did not die of Covid we all know the reality behind those so-called numbers.
So, let's summarise how the experts actually did on the following:
i) The death rate from Covid, they got it wrong, vastly overestimated. Totally wrong on that. It is similar to the flu, after initially being slightly ahead.
ii) Did masks work, NO. Most normal people already knew this. There was a slight chance that they would work if you had the correct kind, and fitted it correctly and were religious about it. The reality is that almost no one came into that category so it was a total failure.
iii) Did the vaccine prevent transmission, experts say YES, reality NO. The vaccine was never tested as to whether it prevented the spread and as we now know the manufacturers never tested it. So, it would just be incompetence or an obvious lie on behalf of the experts.
iv) Was the vaccine safe, experts say YES, reality NO. There are so many incidences of damage now that the vaccines should have been prevented from us.
vi) Was the ideal period between vaccinations two weeks, as the experts told us. NO, that was not correct, no vaccines given that close together work, I don't think there has ever been one that did ever work for cold/flu Coronavirus. The most effective period was 3-6 months, not 15 days and not 1 month.
vii) Was there a devastating third wave in NZ, experts say YES, it was going to happen at Christmas last year. Did it happen, NO, that was an obvious failure.
viii) Do you get lasting immunity from having a Covid infection? Experts so NO, get boosted all the time. This was another obvious one. There is nothing special about Covid, it is just a variant of a coronavirus of which there are many including the Spanish flu. Do we get lasting immunity from other Coronavirus YES, we do, is it the same with Covid, also YES, and we now find this is exactly the case, so experts are wrong again.
vix) Will there be a massive wave in NZ this winter as we are being warned about? Experts say yes. The answer will be NO. No-one one is getting boosted anymore. Large piles of test kits are available at airports with no one taking them. Everyone gets that there is nothing to be scared of. Experts say to be scared though.
If only the experts knew history and math they would not need to read into their fake numbers and make stupid predictions (and then make up studies based on said fake numbers and rely in their decisions to document a positive view of their complete incompetence). It was pretty obvious early on, that it was a strong strain of the flu (or common CoronVirus). However, unless you were old and had significant health problems that would put you at risk as a result of catching a bad flu, then there was nothing at all to be scared of. No matter what happened, it was going to spread around like any other virus has also in the past, and over time it would get weaker, just like viruses almost always do.
So, that is just a short list of the things that we promoted or presented as facts that were completely wrong, and embarrassingly so, given what we know of history. I don't think a document written by someone with access to very questionable statistics overrides the fact of the matter, which are listed above.
by blobbles | 26th May 23, 9:06pm 1685091984
"Before embarrassing yourself more, I suggest you read the actual study instead of making up fantastic and incorrect assumptions."
I wonder why this "study" still hasn't passed peer review after more than 3 years?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.26.20044677v1
Mate, I think this poor guy has listened to the 'experts; far too much. Has fallen into a hole filled with Covid experts that just keep on digging...nd making themselves look more stupid by the day with their flimsy excuses for scaring the life out of a load of people for no actual reason.
Soon more people will be falling into the hole on top of him, but this time it will be a bunch of climate experts who have been wrong about every prediction made so far in the last 100 years.
If their predictions had been correct, we would not be here anymore. Seems they were very wrong....and I don't think there is any doubting it. We are still here.
But....I am sure there is a study around, that says statistically speaking we should be already dead. They are just doing another study to find out how that's possible (I already know the answer too, and it's because they were wrong in their assumptions about climate change in the very beginning).
Stay tuned.
Like what predictions are you talking about? Nothing I have ever read has said we would not be here anymore, I think you like to fantasize theories or believe hyped up media instead of reading the actual science.
Hansens modelling in the 80's is almost spot on, as is most climate modelling. You can read about them if you want (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-proje…), but I suspect you will just climb back into your own rabbit hole.
In any case, I am talking more about the idiots here that kept on going on about the new normal of social distancing forever, mask-wearing for ever, working from home forever, no more plane travel, crap crap crap. All completely, totally, and utterly wrong, like everything else about it.
Who were these imaginary people saying this? People got annoyed at all those things, but most sensible people new it was a process to go through and come out of, they just didn't know the exact timings.
The sea is rising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_New_Zealand
The land is rising in places too.
Which will prevail.
True, but he question here is how much it might bother us? The average sea level has been steadily rising over the last couple of millennia, and we've adapted quite happily. The issue here is whether there will a sudden acceleration in the latter part of this century, as shown by the implausible SSP5-8.5 scenarios, or proceed at a much more manageable pace as per the likely SSP2-4.5 scenario, and how much time and money should we waste on something that is not likely/implausible?
Obviously you have read literature somewhere that supports a personal bias of "heating won't be as bad as the worst case scenarios, so all good". The bad news is, data gathered to present indicates we are on the rcp8.5 pathway and current human activity reinforces this as the path we will remain on!
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2007117117
The only diversion from this pathway seems to be running out of stuff to burn.
The other little understood fact is that time doesn't end at 2100. The biosphere will be suffering/adjusting to, the human pollution caused carbon pulse for thousands of years.
"Accounting for this bias indicates RCP8.5 and other ‘business-as-usual scenarios’ consistent with high CO2 forcing from vast future coal combustion are exceptionally unlikely. Therefore, SSP5-RCP8.5 should not be a priority for future scientific research or a benchmark for policy studies."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544217314597
More here on the underfunding of DOC;
Nothing is more certain than a heating planet means higher sea levels. There will be variation in how this physically translates to every stretch of coastline.
"Not only are the emissions consistent with RCP8.5 in close agreement with historical total cumulative CO2 emissions (within 1%), but RCP8.5 is also the best match out to midcentury under current and stated policies with still highly plausible levels of CO2 emissions in 2100."
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2007117117
You really don't get it do you. The difference is, this time humans are causing global sea level rise by heating the planet with pollution, therefore the damage to trillions of dollars of infrastructure near sea level is avoidable. Of course the term "mean" hides all sort of variations. Some places will suffer more than others.
Gravity means the sea will always roughly find it's level
Eh?! So if there is more water in the oceans the level will stay the same because of gravity?
Do you mean isostatic rebound?
RCP8.5 is not the best match. Even AR6 describe it as very improbable. There is not enough coal in the world to match the scenario. Anyone using the extreme case in their models (about 43% according to some studies) aren't doing science. They are writing very poorly scripted fantasy stories.
Perhaps also cite Hausfarther's response https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2017124117, pointing out Schwalm et al's analysis was wrong. Note both were published before the AR6 cut off date and the IPCC went with the Hausfarther analysis.
Not a big fan of Zeke Hausfather, being a principal of the techo utopian fantasists the "Breakthrough institute" I can understand why the politically influenced IPCC would water down projections. (Not in the way science deniers dream) Wouldn't want to scare the dominant growthist culture.
Please get real and read the truth.https://climaterealism.com/2023/05/climate-fact-check-april-2023-editio…
A cursory glance paints Milloy as a career grifter. Seems to capture a few with his illogical word salads though.
Data and measurement is the only truth
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/global-temperatures
Yes, thanks for that info Black Swan. I'm not surprised given that is what central government recommend in their guidance documents - and do you know whether the properties tagged as within this 'conservative' estimate of SLR have had restrictive planning rules placed on their properties?
Doing enough of what exactly? Your point is valid with respect to more frequent and more intense rainfall events (e.g., better routine maintenance needed to keep streams and culverts clear of debris; greater stormwater capacity in the city's infrastructure, etc.) but exactly "what" more do you think ratepayers and taxpayers ought to do to mitigate sea-level rise?
That's the point of the article, as we begin to explore compensation (from the public purse) for managed retreat (proactively moving our of harms way in the event forecasts of future events suggest a property may at some time in the future be subject to coastal inundation).
And surely if we are considering this - then it's madness to "over-egg", or get the science completely wrong in the case of SSP5-8.5 and 8.5H+. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment recently advised against the use of these 'conservative' estimates regarding SLR in planning, stating;
“Because current government policy on sea level rise emphasises the need to take a ‘precautionary approach’, technical analysts have been embedding ‘precaution’ into coastal risk assessments to varying degrees. This takes various forms such as assuming ‘high end’ amounts of sea level rise.
“But undertaking a coastal risk assessment is very different from designing a building or a bridge where redundancy and safety factors are intrinsic to the design. Technical assessments of coastal risk should be based on best estimates of all the parameters and assumptions that are fed into the modelling. Decision-makers should then take the modelling outputs including estimates of uncertainty, and then openly and transparently decide how cautious to be in delineating hazard zones”
PCE, 2015, ‘Overview’, p. 6 https://pce.parliament.nz/publications/preparing-new-zealand-for-rising-seas-certainty-and-uncertainty/
All the more reason why it baffles that the government has ignored not only the IPCC, but our independent environmental watchdog as well.
Kate - with the greatest of respect, I'm going to call you.
The problem with CC, isn't the slow - and inevitably, physically - rise of sea-level.
The problem is with the energy going into weather events - essentially the ocean has been a capacitor but is running out of capacitance. The excess goes directly into atmospheric temperature differentials - which increase both rain and wind-speeds. The latter create waves, the stronger, the bigger. Not only that, the lower barometric pressures inside these more powerful 'lows' means the adjacent sea-level is higher. It's a compound problem.
Who has to pay for the defense or retreat? Those who are doing the burning - now.
End logic-trail. :)
The problem is with the energy going into weather events - essentially the ocean has been a capacitor but is running out of capacitance.
Yes, on the first point - don't think we really know yet that "the ocean is running out of capacitance" That's an interesting bit of study still unresolved (in my recent reading, but I don't follow the science all that closely).
But back to where we agree - and this is my issue. We know for certain that we face weather events - and we also know for certain that we are ill-prepared to face them. A lot of that is lack of sound operational management and maintenance at council levels - right here, right now. The motorway that became a river in Auckland had this 'story' behind it;
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/why-the-onehunga-sluice-gates-didnt-open
The northern gate, though, was undergoing critical repairs by contractors STF Group – the gates were examples of how the city had allowed its water infrastructure to deteriorate for decades, says one Auckland expert.
That left only one gate, 100m further south – and responsibility for opening and closing that officially sits with the council's Community Facilities department. That's been delegated to the manager of a wakeboarding business that is licensed to operate in the lagoon.
That's just poor civil defense preparation and a council handing over its responsibility in this regard to a member of the public (who lives on the other side of the city)! This is my point - we are doing the existing job with the existing problems poorly. Why are we spending all these millions on forecasting an implausible future when we can't even get the present-day right?
Re: Auckland council use RCP 8.5. Council should plan for the most probable outcome outlined here http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_April_2023.pdf That’s global air temp change of +0.157 degrees Celsius per decade, and sea level increase of 1-2 mm /year.
Govts have learned a lot from Covid. Like how if you hysterically claim that 80,000 people will die from Covid, people will happily allow you to lock them in their homes and ban them from entering the country for 3 years. Now everything is an extreme "emergency", because it allows Govts to do whatever they want without question. And of course, anyone who dares question it will be cancelled, silenced, deleted, arrested, or detained for committing a "hate crime" or "domestic terrorism".
Insurance companies, just like the pharmaceutical ones, will do everything in their power to reinforce this narrative. After all, it means they can raise premiums or deny coverage, thus vastly increasing their profits.
Like how if you hysterically claim that 80,000 people will die from Covid
Nothing hysterical about it. That is what the models showed would happen IF NO CONTROL MEASURES HAD BEEN TAKEN.
Obviously it was not acceptable, so control measures were taken and that situation didn't eventuate.
This is the same idiotic denial we see from people who refuse to get their children vaccinated for childhood diseases that were all but eliminated in the 20th century - "no one dies from these illnesses these days so my child doesn't need vaccination". Demonstrably illogical attitudes like this is why I despair for the future of humanity.
I dunno about that. Given the poor state of our health system and quite large elderly population, if those early variants had gone large around NZ, I reckon it might have been close. The modelling did say "...up to 80k". What did work out was the actuality and the numbers given we instituted heaps of measures:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120604818/new-model…
"Only a full mix of suppression strategies - population-wide social distancing with a lockdown and the closure of almost all businesses and schools - could keep the case numbers down enough for the healthcare system to cope, with a mortality rate of just 0.0004 per cent: About 20 people."
I mean if you look at their modelling, they just took all case fatality rates over time of every country known, then projected that onto us. So it's not really "modelling", it was just "if we are the same as other countries, this is what we get".
Wow, so some people still believe that surgical splashguards and locking everyone in their homes prevented 80,000 deaths in NZ?!
The original strains of C-19 had an infection fatality rate of 0.1% at the most, likely much lower (and of course Omicron was far less deadly again):
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.11.22280963v1
So if every single Kiwi had been infected then less than 5,000 would have died.
That ridiculous 80,000 figure was based on modelling, not empirical data.
If covid is so harmless how do you explain this graph?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-number-of-deaths-by-world-region
How about euromomo. Look at the cumulated excess mortality for 0-14 year olds. They didn't start dying until mid 2021. What do you think is going on there?
by False economies | 26th May 23, 8:00 pm
"If covid is so harmless how do you explain this graph?"
I didn't say Covid-19 was harmless. I provided evidence that pre-omicron Covid-19 had a fatality rate of 0.1% at most, and concluded that it could never possibly have killed 80,000 Kiwis.
The "modelling" of this absurd figure was deliberately used to terrify people into compliance with lockdowns etc - a fact obvious to most people by now.
The graph you link to shows global deaths from all causes. This seems consistent with the 0.1% figure - if say 80% of the global population had been infected by the end of 2021 then that would be roughly 0.001 x 6.4 billion = 6.4 million Covid-19 deaths (in addition to the usual ~60 million deaths per year before then).
Of course, a significant proportion of the increased deaths since 2020 was likely due to the unprecedented and incompetent response to the virus by governments worldwide - in particular lockdowns, which sent tens of millions into poverty, restricted access to medical care for other serious diseases, and had numerous other detrimental effects, for example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/10/opinion/covid-death-young-old.html
Oh, and dare I say it, in 2021 billions of doses were administered of a poorly-tested experimental mRNA product with a serious adverse event rate of around 1 in 1,000:
Well the data is in Labourthide. You don’t have to speculate. Simply look at the countries that did "nothing" and bear witness - nothing bad happened to them. Pick a rich coutry like Sweden with a population of 10 million. Pick a poor country like Papua New Guinea with a population of 8 or so million. If you really want to challenge your perceptions then look at the fact that Papua New Guinea has an incredibly low mrna-vaccination rate and for some reason they're not suffering from higher than expected excess deaths like we are -- hmm I wonder why.
That's true, but the high transmissibility meant that everyone got it rather quickly anyway. My point is New Zealand fared rather badly with covid and that reflects more generally on the negative effects of the politicisation on science. It was not a good idea to give that mrna agent to healthy young people. If politicians in NZ had adopted a more open minded approach, then they might have taken into consideration the ideas underpinning the Great Barrington Declaration or ideas put forward by Nobel Laurates Luc Montagnier and other scientists.
The whole article starts off by cherry picking and seems to devolve to conspiracy theories about some massive cohort of ultra wealthy scientists shaping public opinion? Yes, SSP5-8.5 is now not likely, given humans have started responding to carbon emissions and their consequences. It was a scenario that saw a continuation of the parabolic rise in carbon emissions. We were warned about the consequences of that scenario and gone "Hmmm... maybe we should moderate somewhat" and slowed down the parabolic rise. Yay! However, there are a whole stack of other scenarios that aren't quite as bad, but still bad, that the writers conveniently ignore. The middle of the road estimates which are most likely are that our temps rise by 2.7deg by 2100 under SSP2-4.5. So we should hope for that, but prepare for slightly above that. That's SSP3-7.0 and a 3.6deg rise by 2100, until this becomes unlikely because we double down and limit our pollution even more, at which point we could change again. You see, the future isn't decided when these scenarios were created, this doesn't mean the scenarios were always impossible, just that we reacted to them and changed our behaviour. That's good. But we should note that the most likely scenarios are still really bad, given human civilization as we know it has a lot of built infrastructure at severe risk even under those most likely scenarios. The writers forgot to mention that.
While some NZ authorities should definitely moderate their guidance away from SSP5-8.5 years ago, they should still aim for the upper bound of the most likely scenarios, prepare for the worst, hope for the best. That's because you really don't want to get caught out with too small of a sea wall etc and building one slightly higher isn't going to cost you double the amount, as an example. Slightly over preparing for something is quite precautionary, when any underpreparing could mean devastation. Kind of like making sure you have an extra day or two of food if you go out tramping and wet weather gear even when the forecast is for sunshine. It doesn't hurt too much to build up your resilience in the face of uncertainty, in fact it could save you in the end.
But we should note that the most likely scenarios are still really bad, given human civilization as we know it has a lot of built infrastructure at severe risk even under those most likely scenarios. The writers forgot to mention that.
As one of the authors, I'm not saying we need to ignore SLR issues we will experience under the most likely scenarios. Quite the opposite.
I am saying we should not be spending time and money and effort on implausible futures, when we have enough existing issues in the present-day. And most of those issues have nothing to do with sea-level rise, rather they are extreme precipitation (rainfall) and weather (cyclone) events (causing inland flooding and both inland and coastal slips).
Correct. But it seems you refuse to acknowledge that the plausible future under the other scenarios are almost as bad. The lack of analysis into them makes it appear you haven't given thought to the lower scenarios and their impacts, that all you are doing is saying "That one isn't going to happen, therefore nothing is going to happen". More balance in your articles please.
SSP5-8.5 diverges considerably from the others so 4.5 the likey one is much less worrying. The probabily the IPCC assigns to its top end is itself low.
The NZCPS is a good piece, and it introduced the idea of risk and likelihoods to this issue. The high ends of 4.5 may occur but probability is low, and we'll see it coming if we end up on that track.
Indeed. Obama gets to live where he likes, knowing he'll be long dead before water arrives at his door. Usually alternative reality types pick on Al Gores "beach property" at Montecito, although that one is a kilometre from the coast and 100metres above sea level. Maybe in a few thousand years it could be beach front though?
Oh well, you dudes experiences must extrapolate to the whole planet. Oddly data from around the planet suggests sea level rise and associated increased coastal erosion.
https://geographical.co.uk/climate-change/the-rising-threat-of-uk-coast…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-13/erosion-on-sydney-beaches-reache…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/71747690/call-to-protect-oam…
Do you think you'd notice a difference of around 8 to 10cm?
What a tragedy for New Zealand this self-reinforcing hysteria feedback loop has become. Government awards large grants to a select group of climate scientists who know full well that more hyped-up their claims are, the more attention and funding they’ll receive in the future. Pride, arrogance & groupthink prevents politicians and aforementioned scientists from backing down because they don’t want to lose their social status and funding. Billions of dollars are squandered while the country makes strategically poor decisions. Similar to what happened wiht covid.
From my perspective as one of the authors - absolutely not. The responsibility for encouraging the continued use of SSP5-8.5 lies solely with central government. See the letter in response from Minister Shaw in the below article;
I'm sure some official at MFE wrote this for him - but he signed it.
Totally agree about using the 8.5 scenario Kate. I actually commented on that on another article here recently.
I am just genuinely curious if people like fat pat think that the scientists working for NiWA etc are nt just selecting implausible worst case scenarios, but are actually either lying about climate change in general or are totally incompetent.
In either case, you would expect them to be corrected by other scientists around the world. Unless... you think there is a worldwide conspiracy to hoodwink the public which would involve 1000s if not 100,000s of people to pull off and involve states that are hostile to each other to keep quiet about the conspiracy.
There's a quite I read somewhere that states something like "the chance of a conspiracy theory being true is inversely proportional to the number of people needed to carry out the conspiracy", but i can't seem to find the oringinal now.
Edit: something along these lines https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35411684
Indeed there are many scientists involved in the IPCC peer review process who work tirelessly to ensure the outputs of the IPCC are robust and reliable. Then there are others who seek to 'cling' to the alarmist end of their previous projections and protestations. And then there is another faction who falsely believe that without emphasizing the worse-case scenarios, there will be no political action on GHG reduction measures - hence, 'screwing the scrum' is legitimized in this way.
I'm not a scientist - I'm a planner - and so my concern is not to see my profession (more or less) 'forced' by poorly implemented scientific findings into restricting private property rights unnecessarily.
I think the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement 2010 is a good piece of legislation - and it requires assessment of the likely effects of climate change. In the plan change process I was involved in recently (that gives rise to this article), the council used this unlikely scenario (SSP5-8.5H+) in determining a de facto coastal hazard line. It will be interesting to see if the independent hearings panel allows it.
Kate, I am no CC expert either, but the likely trajectory will be the one where we eventually extract and burn all the economically recoverable fossil fuels. Human nature dictates that we won't all agree to leave it in the ground, and the military advantage of fossil fuels also means the powerful countries giving them up is tantamount to surrender.
If they say that, they're incorrect, Kate. It's physics, and most important you get it.
Feedback loops take off irrespective of further burning.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/09/tipping-points-coul…
(final sentences).
Feedback can take 1.5 degrees with no more burn at all, and go to 6 degrees, or more - totally uninhabitable. And I'll give you the tip, at 6 degrees, Wellington is underwater. And academic point, of course.....
Yes, certainly I understand feedback loops. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but here was a an academic giant, a favourite of mine;
That said, I suspect it is more likely that one of the calderas going off might cause the next extinction event. And who knows, Will Steffen most certainly said he didn't know and had hope for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvD0TgE34HA&t=138s
Kate, doomsters like PDK want to have it both ways they believe in peak fossil fuels will constrain growth and also believe in RCP8.5 which assume a 640% increase in per capita coal consumption. This paper sums it up.
"Why do climate change scenarios return to coal?
...Historical trends in global coal since 1965 have shown more stability than oil, averaging 18 GJ/capita over this period. Extended data indicate this relative level of per-capita coal use has remained in relative steady-state since the 1920s, establishing a strong reference case baseline signal. ...Yet, AR5 scenarios consider a dramatic change in coal use is on the horizon, which leads to as much as a 640% increase in per-capita coal consumption from recent levels by 2100.
...Accounting for this bias indicates RCP8.5 and other ‘business-as-usual scenarios’ consistent with high CO2 forcing from vast future coal combustion are exceptionally unlikely. Therefore, SSP5-RCP8.5 should not be a priority for future scientific research or a benchmark for policy studies."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544217314597
"Very few scientists realised that RCP8.5 was originally a 90th percentile outcome, not a most likely or business-as-usual outcome. They assumed too much, when they should perhaps have checked, say the authors of the review.
"At the end of the day, scientists have to take responsibility for what they choose as input data, and there should be a degree of due diligence," said Glen Peters, from the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Norway.
"How many of your average climate scientists know the nuances of RCP8.5? It would certainly be interesting to know."
You’re seeing the biasing of science by politics. When a person’s salary, prestige, and peer esteem become tied to a political narrative, then most will adhere to that narrative. Of course, NZ has great scientists, and I know a lot hide ther real opinions because I chat to them. Internationally there are plenty of well-respected scientists trying to backpedal on CO2 alarmism. There’s no conspiracy, it’s just human nature to conform, look at the Asch conformity experiments. Actually, it’s not even about conformity. If you publicly say the wrong thing about climate change then you could lose your job in NZ. I mean look what happened to Simon Thornley, and Garth Cooper, the Listener 7. Cancel Culture is real. Government has the potential to make it worse if they signal to scientists which conclusions they wish to affirm, which of course is exactly what they’ve done.
But the question I am asking is do you think the underlying science behind climate change false and they are lying about it, or are they "just" being encouraged to overemphasise the worst case scenarios?
To be clear, I am not a fan of using 8.5 either. I have no doubt that their is politics involved in science having seen it firsthand but some of the accusations that people make about it all being a hoax are very far fetched to me.
Aristotle (my favourite ethicist :-)) put forward the concept of the "Golden Mean" - the midpoint between excess and deficiency - as the key to making moral decisions. You are right - alarmists are the excess, and deniers the deficiency - if we apply the model to our current decision-making regarding AGW.
If you are doing science there is nothing wrong with using RCP8.5 to stress test your models. That's what it was designed for, and the original authors (Riahi et al 2011) were pretty clear it wasn't particularly realistic. They were told to produce a narrative for how to get to 8.5w/m2 forcing, which was the upper 95th percentile of where researchers felt business as usual would end up, but it was also of the order of what some modellers were using at the time. In that sense it standardised what the modelers at the high end were using.
Now a lot of what is called climate science is done in these models. This an interesting pursuit, and like any modelling produces useful insights, but the results are often demonstrably false, even in hindcasting where they are often trained, and that gives cause for concern. In forecasting they are all over the place even when addressing what one would think are simple statistics like global temperatures. Individual models ostensibly working with the same assumptions and all starting with a common history very quickly diverge. For the first time IPCC AR6 started to exclude models because they were deemed to be running too hot.
So I would say that the modelling part of climate science is unreliable and produces false results (i.e. able to be empirically disproved), and is likely to stay that way for a considerable time, although AI might help it.
But the same can be said for economic forecasts 100 year out, and the economy is a simpler system. The difference is we all know that and treat the results accordingly. Instead we look for alternative ways to manage those risks.
So in this regard I'd say the climate models are being misused in the policy arena. Those that really understand the modelling know that and push back to preserve their integrity, but that level of self awareness isn't common. That is where the politics come in and there is strong lobby for certain outcomes, and unfortunately the IPCC reflects this.
So the IPCC Summary for Policymakers is definitely a false representation of climate science, sometimes completely biased and often ignoring the uncertainty.
All this reflects into what we see in SLR in NZ.
To answer your question False_e, I think both! The science behind climate change is highly dubious. The temperature records are dubious, The CO2 sensitivity parameter is constantly trending towards a low number, and the system-dynamics models used to convert CO2 sensitivity into equilibrium doubled CO2 sensitivity are wildly inaccurate, and geared to show positive feedback ie. runaway. AND the scientists are being encouraged by politicians and the media to emphasize the worst case scenarios.
Just an aside - You've gotta love the nomenclature around this stuff. "equilibrium doubled" as if it's automatically assumed that positive feedback is involved. No possiblility for negative feedback which actually looks to be the case, and our earth tends towards stability not instability. I love the one Kate highlighted in the article - an over-egged or exadurated model is technically reffered to as a "conservative" model - You've gotta laugh at that. What the heck kind of upsidedown Kafkaesque logic is that.
It depends on your personal risk profile. If you need no mortgage and no insurance, and just want to live out the rest of your life in that spot - I'd look at the observational record and if not under threat at the moment, I'd determine that the hazards of rising seas was unlikely to take my house away within my lifetime.
Why is that unfortunate? It's their personal risk profile, their money and their life?
And this is my point about compensation for managed retreat - should you or I pay to move them off the beachfront as a precautionary measure? Do you disagree with the article linked where a more realistic view is suggested?
The only problem I have with that suggestion is that if risk-premiums are applied in the manner suggested - then lower premiums might need to be regulated for elsewhere (i.e., in lower risk areas). I can't see the insurance market voluntarily doing that re-balancing.
Because it's impossible to build a house without impacting others. From the firefighters who may have to risk their lives to save you, to whoever cleans the mess off the beach, to neighbors who may be on danger from an unstable house.
But in the bigger picture, because we are the first generation to know we are endangering our children's children, and are doing bugger all about it. They're inheriting a raw deal , while their grandparents go on cruises, drive big cars, international flights etc.
You are confusing hazards associated with building on unstable slopes, impacted by heavy rainfall (slips) with hazards at sea level (e.g., for example in Petone, Lower Hutt). And yes, I agree with you that unstable slopes are far more a present-day - sudden event - type hazard that needs attention. Here's what I earlier suggested government do, from a planning perspective in that regard;
Not really, I've lived at sea level, and can see the effects of short term planning , and not taking a long term view in to account. Long term planning should take into account the worst case scenario, which is why houses in Auckland are built for an earthquake they've never had, nor are predicted to have.
To reinforce. We have hazards from random events, eg earthquakes, and slow progressive changes like SLR. They need different approaches when managing the risk, and in the case of the latter we have time during which to get more information and reduce the risk.
Often when doing an option analysis, doing nothing and getting more information far outweighs the value of betting the farm today while being very uncertain about what the future holds. The problem with local government planning responses are that they are the equivalent of unilaterally betting the farm on our behalf.
If it were me I'd wait 10 years and see, unless I could see I was clearly at risk.
HAS 1 - You demonstrate the problem of (usually academic) siloing.
We haven't 10 coherent years left - not because of the single facet of CC, either.
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/980
https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/publications/research-papers/is-glob…
And all my op/eds, this site.
Too many so-sure specialists. Too many status-quo-vested interests. Too much future-discounting.
J'accuse....
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