The latest IPCC report coming out with the backdrop of the wildfires in the northern hemisphere certainly captured the attention of many, as well as media. The New Zealand section of the report was somewhat interesting as it flipped some of what I, at least, considered to be usual predictions on their head. Mainly that the east coast of New Zealand is likely to get more wet over the summer months.
Presumably this is likely to be in large dollops, but floods aside, rain certainly beats a drought and its accompanying stresses in my book. Along with the east getter wetter the west, over summer, is meant to be getting drier. The reverse takes place in winter.
If these predictions do take place not only will farmers lives potentially get easier, but it should aid the environment with waterway flushing occurring at a time when most needed. I personally won’t be putting the irrigator away, but it is a nice thought to go on with until proved wrong. Without the IPCC New Zealand predictions, the alternative thoughts lead to the raised likelihood of wildfires, heat and drought. Not nice.
The global view maps below of annual mean precipitation and temperature change (%) relative to 1850-1900 helps to show what that looks like. New Zealand’s colour generally resembles that of the surrounding ocean and soil moisture looks very much like what we currently experience. However, temperatures are going to increase. Good, bad and otherwise. Remembering of course these are simulations and while what is being experienced at the moment comes close to matching the simulations there is no guarantee this will continue. Changes at +1.1c of long-term average may be accurate but when the temperature heats further changes may move faster (or slower) than simulations show.
A). Annual precipitation change
B). Spread of temperature change across globe
C). Impact of precipitation and heat on soil moisture
The increasing clamour of noise concerning Covid-19, climate change and for farmers; pressure regarding impacts on waterways, must getting under farmers’ skin. The younger fraternity especially must be wondering what way to turn.
Perhaps the best hope for them lies in the fact that despite the chaos that is beginning to ensue around them, whatever they chose to produce, it will be in demand as these same impacts will affect others offshore far worse. Perhaps cold comfort benefiting from others misfortune; however, farmers inevitably will be appreciated in the future.
Once the water issues are sorted (and they will, because they have to) dairy farmers may start to enjoy life again.
An under-read article quoting a OECD-FAO report highlights the issue of looking at New Zealand dairy farmers externalities in isolation. Currently New Zealand production is produced with a smaller GHG footprint than the vast majority of competitors.
In the meantime, in less regulated regions, they predict dairying to grow by over 30% and 22% overall. However, perhaps little regard has been taken of the climate changes. Growth is being driven by consumer demand but meeting this extra demand may be more difficult than expected.
What every farmer knew
Finally, the news that Overseer has been found wanting will come as no surprise to farmers and consultants alike. They have been pointing out deficiencies since the model was first mooted to be used for calculating nutrient losses on farms.
I was also conditioned to believe “all models are wrong, good models are useful”. There are now serious question marks over whether or not Overseer can be considered a ‘good model’, and it may be considered to be misleading. Farmers have spent $10,000’s responding to Overseer output and trying to comply with regional council regulations. The PCE commissioned report now throws considerable doubt on the wisdom of councils using Overseer as their tool of choice.
Unfortunately, coming up with an alternative is going to take time, time we don’t have. Perhaps a different approach is going to have to be used. Whether it will be any more palatable to land-owners remains to be seen.
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46 Comments
Things are certainly confusing. For instance in Christchurch a recent decision to moderately increase seating of the long awaited stadium is decried with much anguish by one particular councillor as a dire decision of negative impact on climate change. Yet that same councillor was one of a small group that signed off on constructing a new wide bodied jet international airport in Central Otago. Hard to reconcile. This sort of contradiction is actually neither acceptable nor helpful to any given cause.
The whole project is most odd, in conception and the surreptitious acquisition of the land. A long time ago lovely Joni Mitchell sang “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” This is worse, much worse. But nary a word from the much vaunted Green Party, self appointed protectors of the NZ environment. Why is that? Talk to us Mr Shaw.
At least it is in Christchurch. Central Otago has nothing to do with Christchurch ratepayers, and with exactly no consultation whatsoever, they now been handed $45 mill worth of liability for nothing but bare land there. And venture to suggest there is one hell of a lot more concrete, bitumen, steel and other climate altering elements that would go into constructing an international airport, let alone the subsequent activity.
Its bad either way and a big mistake to think of any climate change as being a "Good Thing". Its clear to see from events happening right now around the world, we simply didn't plan for any extremes like this. In places like Turkey they have wild fires and floods at the same time, its a wake up call.
" a big mistake to think of any climate change as being a "Good Thing "
just out of curiosity - does this apply to any natural , not man-made change as well ( that happens quite a lot you know .. ) ?
or do you think we already live in a world with a perfect climate , in all localities ?
Every weather related disaster now has human foot prints all over, because they all occur within a system that has been juiced up by emissions from human industrial activity. The climate over the the last few thousand years has been perfect for the expansion of human civilisation. We are polluting our way out of that zone!
Hmm, so the modelling above states pretty clearly that 'if' there is a 1.5 degree rise in temperature, this is what will happen. They reference 1850-1900 temperatures as the benchmark. So is this article stating the fact that temperatures have not even risen 1 degree over the last 150 years? Sounds like its all man made to me, yea right? Read up on inter glacial periods and you may learn a thing or ten.....
Exactly. Very few think of the harm elsewhere and how it will affect them. Climate refugees will be everywhere and keeping them and their countries from trying to come take what you have will be next to impossible. Food and likely water prices will skyrocket because governments will start the compulsory acquisition of productive land on the grounds of national security, selling it to cashed up buyers locally and abroad to boost GDP growth and personal gain, while locals get priced out of the market of their home countries sustenance. That's the FULL picture of the future for you.
The speed of change is also an issue as people and nature are struggling to adapt fast enough: the floods in Germany took out houses that had stood safely since the middle age, the wild fires are happening in areas not used to being burnt, ice sheet collapse will happen rather than slow retreat.
'Stood safely since the middle age,' well at least since 1962 http://www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia/great-flood-1962-hamburg
There are some problems with using averages though. As you point out Guy, some of the extra precipitation in summer will come in "large dollops" (as warmer air holds more moisture) but that is also true for temperature. So we could go from days/weeks of 30+ degrees C to a massive dump of rain and back again. So more variability and wider extremes. I don't think that's going to make life easier for growers.
Plus, add in the extra diseases and potential pest spread. Lack of frosts will be an issue for some orchardists (and some wheat growers) and reduced winter/spring rainfall could cause a few problems too.
Good to see the coming of the end for Overseer. Never should have been used for regulation purposes. I asked the developers once how accurate it was at predicting nitrate leaching: answer "maybe plus or minus 30%"! So a value of 100 could be 70 or 130 in reality!
Sure, but they will always be limited by sunlight hours being quite far north.
Also, are their soils suitable for that sort of agriculture? A lot of Siberia has podzol soils which are very acidic and not good for agriculture. Not sure about Canada
Edit: https://russian-farmland.com/jpg/soil-map-russia.jpg
North of the 60 degree line is mostly podzols.
Have to wait until the forest has burnt off before northern Russia and Canada can become "arable". Which is currently happening. On the other hand, the idea of converting one of the current largest stores of sequestered carbon into farmland, exemplifies how determined to extinct themselves the human race really is.
For anyone interested...research article on northward spread of agriculture
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-26321-8
From the article "The quality of the boreal soils is considered to be the critical limiting factor40. While considered as unfavourable for agricultural use boreal soils accumulate and store massive amounts of organic carbon41,42,43,44. Boreal regions also contain a broad range of unique ecological habitats and species, from microbial communities to vertebrates, subject to complex and fragile interactions45,46. It is well documented, that boreal land conversion is associated with negative and often irreversible effects on environmental parameters (soil carbon balances, GHG emissions, and loss of biodiversity)5,40,42, and that agriculture has the greatest impact47
Also, if I'm reading the figures correctly then water will also be a key issue in Siberia and much of Canada...
Interesting to see North Africas rainfall is likely to increase. Historically the Sahara Desert was much wetter during the last ice age. I read once that there are trees there, in the desert, with root systems that go all the way down to the water table. New trees cannot grow as the land is now too try but they live on as a remnant of the last ice age, over 5000 years ago.
How can anyone publish the numbers from that fundamentally flawed research of the carbon emissions of NZ milk? Those figures are from a dairy industry funded study that compared the 'birth to gate' carbon footprint of milk across the world. Obviously this 'to gate' approach was used because it excludes the huge carbon footprint associated with the coal-fired drying of most NZ milk to make milk powder to ship off to China. The study also used 'more accurate' (aka more flattering) assumptions for NZ emissions, whilst continuing to use the less flattering assumptions for other countries.
The article more widely fails to call out the blindingly obvious fact that our dairy industry will be a fraction of its current size in 10 to 15 years - unless we think we can get away with emitting two or three times more than 'our share' without facing huge tariffs and international embarrassment.
Dude what? Take butter as an example, 25kg of milk to make 1kg of butter, that 1kg costs 1kg of carbon to export to Europe. So the transport of butter adds 0.04 kg of carbon to the 0.77 kg. Transport of end product is minor. Cheese is 10 to 1 as is milk powder. Its not transport my dude. Nor is it processing. In fact 85% of all NZ milk based emissions are from milk production, overall only 15% comes from processing and transport within nz, and as ive noted little more is added in the international shipping. NZ dairy farmers are the greenest in the world and in order to help the earth NZ should increase production not reduce... The reason everyone looks at on farm emissions is because that's by far most of the emissions...
Firstly the 'if we don't do it make milk responsibly, others will make it irresponsibly' line is straight out of the tobacco and fossil fuel industry playbook - shame.
As for the facts, the coal fired processing of milk for milk powders and transport to China adds over 20% to on farm emissions (our numbers are actually pretty close). This is hardly negligible. The use of the NZ specific metrics on feed digestibility (rather than the IPCC standards used by other countries) underplays the comparable emissions by as much as 30%. It is therefore disingenuous in the extreme to claim NZ is the 'greenest'. Many other countries produce milk for local consumption at lower carbon emissions - and that's before we even get started on the catastrophic impact of NZ dairy farming on river / water quality, or the fact that plant based milks produce a fraction of the carbon and use much less land and water.
Dude dont be a goose, meeting consumption as efficiently as possible isnt from any play book.
As to your second point; if you already new the maths, then you should already know you do not compare nz export carbon costs to the lowest domestic carbon producers, you compare it to the worst offenders and use a tax to incentive that exchange of production.
If you want to further refine the solution, then sort the countries that can meet that demand by the cradle to grave model and you will find NZ is the greenest milk producer for most large scale deliverable solutions.
As to your other meandering arguments im not interested in fairly tails that detract from solutions that can implemented quickly with simple international tax agreements.
It seems to me that every weather event, bush fire around the world is a direct consequence of Global Warming !
And as for IPCC modelling ! well as for forecasting of anything it's a best guess using computer processing which outcomes are very connected to inputs - garbage in garbage out.
Even the earliest climate models have proved accurate. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-climate-models…
Guy your linked NZ section states - 'Results are based on time sampling simulations from the CMIP6 multi-model ensemble under SSP5-8.5'. This is the most extreme scenario and is not going to happen - unless coal use per capita increases sixfold, there are no new tech development before 2100 etc.
Even the AR6 states this is unlikely - 'The likelihood of high emissions scenarios such as RCP8.5 or SSP5-8.5 is considered low in light of recent developments in the energy sector (Hausfather and Peters, 2020a, 2020b).'
'Accounting for this bias indicates RCP8.5 should not be a priority for future scientific research.'
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544217314597
You can see the other scenarios here https://ofcnz.niwa.co.nz/#/nationalMaps although they may have updated the data since those maps were produces
As I said above, just looking at averages can be misleading. There's a lot of (extreme and variable) details hidden in them. So for example, the average temp in summer may "only" be predicted to increase by 1 degree but the variability around it might increase by 2 or 3. I think it's the wild swings that are going to make life difficult for us.
Not sure what your point is in your second sentence?
https://www.noaa.gov/news/its-official-july-2021-was-earths-hottest-mon…
Global warming is here, we created it, its serious but we are going to do nothing about it. Its one big pointless exercise even talking about it or getting into arguments with climate change deniers because the big polluters like China, USA and India simply cannot alter their current course of action. Climate change will be only one of a whole raft of interrelated problems coming up in the future. It will be the perfect storm.
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