By Peter Gluckman*
An assessment of current scientific reports1 on the global climate show a very high level of consistency with previous work and with the continuing scientific consensus.
There is unequivocal evidence that the Earth’s climate is changing, and there is strong scientific agreement that this is predominantly as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
Any short-term departures from the long-term warming trend can broadly be explained through a combination of other causes of climate variability and inherent lags in the system.
That is not to say that our understanding of the global climate is complete; inherent in any scientific assessment of the future is a component of uncertainty2.
There is no way to completely remove uncertainty, given the nature of climate science and the climate system, but despite this there is strong scientific consensus on the general trends and drivers of recent climate change.
The most probable future scenarios are cause for concern.
For New Zealand, the resulting impact of changes in wind patterns, precipitation, and the chemistry of our oceans can be expected to be at least as significant as the changes in temperature itself.
Such changes are not expected to be uniform across New Zealand; there may be pronounced differences between the North and South Island and between the East and West coasts, and there are also likely to be unequal and important effects on seasonal patterns of rainfall and extreme weather events.
In the intermediate term (over the next 30-40 years)3, New Zealand will face significant adaptive requirements to cope with these shifts in climate and there will need to be a consequent readjustment in expectations of frequency of extreme events.
The impact of change is likely to be greatest in domains unable to adapt quickly or in those areas already close to limits of tolerance.
These include natural and farming ecosystems evolved to function in current conditions and infrastructure requiring a long lead-time to plan and build, but also areas with high vulnerability such as those already prone to flooding or drought.
The magnitude of environmental changes will depend in part on the global trajectories of greenhouse gas emissions and land use change.
Given there is significant uncertainty in such future trajectories, and natural variability within the system, future climate projections are best represented as probabilistic distributions.
It is important to understand that the average predictions represent what is calculated to be the most likely pattern of change, but there is always the potential for more or, indeed, for less extreme change to occur.
Effective risk management also requires consideration of the possibility of experiencing more extreme components of the predictive range.
Continuous and on-going work is needed to monitor climate and environmental change across New Zealand, and to test and improve estimates for future changes specific to New Zealand.
Advances have been made in the past five years in assessing some impacts of change, however many gaps still remain.
In addition, the understanding of second-order4 and higher level effects are very limited for all sectors. As an example, climate change may alter the spatial distribution of existing food production, leading to pressure for land use change in new areas and destabilisation of social settings where such change occurs.
Finally, given that global emissions continue to track near the upper end of previous projections, it will be important to gain a better understanding of the adaptive capacity of New Zealand to more extreme scenarios of climate change.
A risk management approach is needed when New Zealand faces the likelihood of significant impacts. An upcoming paper from the Office of the Chief Science Advisor will discuss the interpretation and communication of risk generically in more detail. Active and adaptive management is required.
The strong dependence of New Zealand’s economy on international trade implies that the country will also be affected by the impacts of climate change other nations’ economies, and by changes in production internationally as well as in New Zealand.
It is therefore important to consider New Zealand in a global context and not as an isolated system.
The table below summarises some of the projected changes by region and season, described in more detail within the report.
1. There is also considerable information synthesised by authoritative science bodies available to the general public, one recent example is ‘The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers’ by the Australian Academy of Science.
2. For a good discussion about scientific uncertainty and how this is addressed within science see ‘Making Sense of Uncertainty: why uncertainty is part of science’; A report from Sense about Science 2013: http://www.senseaboutscience.org/resources.php/127/making-sense-of-unce… .
3. Over shorter time intervals, changes due to natural variability may appear to dominate over anthropogenically-driven trends.
4. In this context, a first order effect is a change as a result of global warming, a second order effect occurs as a result of some reaction to this new change.
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Professor Sir Peter Gluckman is the Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand.
This piece is the Executive Summary of the full Report.
47 Comments
Farmers should be taking note of this, especially those planning to buy farms in parts of the north island that are already prone to drought in summer and too much rain in winter.
The land value should reflect the future cash earnings based on a sustainable budget, not some ridiculous expectation of capital gain to retire on.
Philly - you obviously have little faith in farmers. I like many others have undertaken an enormous amount of research on climate change. I have attended farming for change conferences and a plethora of events world-wide. Most farmers I know have read enormous amounts of the published and peer reviewed studies.
If Global warming were indeed going to happen then farmers own the soil which is actually a giant carbon sink.........people are only able to mitigate what they have control over.........
How are you going to stop volcanoes erupting and spewing their contents into the atmostphere? Not all volcanoes are land-based......plenty of under-water ones heaving away and some under the ice as well.
I sense people are very fearful of the world and the natural phenomena of nature that takes place everyday.......farmers live with the natural world everyday.....their livelihoods depend upon it.......they are rational, practical, well educated, very knowledgable and extremely observant......NZ is in good shape with such an educated population on our doorstep.
Notaneconomist - bollocks. Most farmers are 100% unsustainable, due to reliance on fossil fuels. Few if any are sustainable - I'm not even in that class and I'm sure to be light years ahead of you.
The rest of your bleat is a blame-shift. "if" and "volcanoes". How about some real mea culpa? I did it years ago, then did something about it. I regard your comments as pathetic.
PDK, how old were you when you started your drive to sustainability? And where did you get the money for your lifestyle block and to make the journey?
I suspect you spent years enjoying the fruits of capitalism before retiring to the country.
You expect the young of today to make sacrifices that you never made when you were 20. You posted comments not long ago saying the 'solution' is for all reproduction to cease, do you have a family? I'll assume you do... yet another hypocrisy.
Everything you have now you owe to capitalism and you ask/suggest that the young make sacrifices you never made yourself.
I'm technically in the "young" group (33) . It easy to attack the messenger that way you don't need to focus on the real issue. As far as making sacrafices go, we won't have a choice.
When you have "educated" climate deniers like notaneconomist going on about how they are sustainable when they most likely don't even know what sustainable means. It's the people like him us young people should be angry with.
Farming was sustainable up until the last lets say 100 years. Once we needed to start feeding more people than the earth could sustain long term we needed to start using oil for machinery and fertilizer. At that point sustainability went out the window.
Also my comment was aimed at climate change deniers who deliberately try and muddy the waters to stop people taking action now.
I agree.
We're starting to reduce some of the science and technological damage done by the industrial approach but such things take time.
But believing the same group of people that piloted us down this mess (scientists, selfserving political commercial and banking services, politicians) suddenly now have all the correct answers (like they said every time for the last 100 yrs), that would just be wronger than wrong.
Check out precison farming and crop rotation. It will blow your mind. Farming is getting more efficient all the time. Look at the million of ha that have been put into soybean/corn rotation in Brasil in the last decade. http://www.economist.com/node/16886442. Whole cities have sprung up where there was nothing but scrub.
Then they score a big find of potash. http://www.agrolink.com.br/noticias/ClippingDetalhe.aspx?CodNoticia=188151
As an ex-computer tech and electronics hobbist (points to couple arduino boards sitting next to computer...) I find the precision farming horrifying.
Take a look at Brazil, and then play "follow the money"....
Sustainable and lowimpact farming has survived _thousands_ of years, including World Wars and tax tyrannies. I'd be surprised if the precision crew can last even 3 rotations of equipment (without going third world ownership or captive consumers)
Happy123 - I first came across that silly argument in the 1970's. For a long time here, I've pointed out that it's a Tragedy of the Commons issue; the best an individual can do is to 'save oil' in terms of getting resilient. The only valid withdrawal is across-thre-board societal.
You suspect wrong.
I didn't 'make sacrifices', I chose to go without, for decades. The funny thing is that when you do so, life becomes so much richer in so many ways. In my case, nearly all we have/use is recycled/reused
We had replacement kids, but 27 years ago, there was hope we'd become smart enough globally to call a halt. You conveniently forget time.
And your last sentence is stupid. If things change, so do requirements. Aree you seriously suggesting that as a reason not to change? You're fooling yourself - although that's probably not too hard..
....don't tell the Act Party or [...] Colin Craig ..they don't wanna know. As don't many Nat Mp's..http://hot-topic.co.nz/lip-service-nz-government-infested-with-climate-denial/
[A gratuitous insult has been deleted. You are expected to abide by our Comment policy. There are plenty of other places to make drive-by smears, just not on interest.co.nz please. The substance of this comment is fine. Ed]
2000 British climate scientist states Snow will be a rare and exciting event... children are not going to know what snow is
2005 UN states there will be 10 million climate refugess by 2010
2005 IPCC predicts Himalayas glaciers will be melted by 2035
1996 IPCC predicts temperatures will keep going up
2005 offshore winds farms are a good idea
1968 The battle to feed humanity is over. Population bomb...
2003 Flannery: building desal plants is a good idea, I might buy a house next to the beach and live there.
1972 Club of Rome reckons we are going to run out of stuff by 1995
2007 Arctic will be summer ice free by 2013
1900 London will be drowning in horse dung by 1920 if we don't do something
Looks like peak horseshit has not been reached yet, the predictions still come thick and fast.
Hello my little cherry picker, a bare handful of bloopers, mis-quotes and out of contexts is all you can manage?
take the 1996 "quote",
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/global-warming-si…
Yep on trend and it keeps on rising.
1972 predictions, well,
"LTG never predicted catastrophes to occur soon, never estimated that some specific mineral resources should run out by some specific date."
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.co.nz/2011/06/limits-to-growth-revisite…
regards
Time will tell on the single paper you link to, just like time has told on the chicken little claims of activist scientists above. You can toss off about bloopers and misquotes but these predictions cost the taxpayer a billion dollars a day.
Take the desal plants in Oz - 15 billion wasted on mothballed white elephants. Put in place on the call of a climate commissioner who is so concerned about runaway sea level rise that he lives next to the beach.
I've given you the links in the past for each of those quotes, you know they are not out of context or misquoted. Here is another link for you: http://www.nature.com/news/policy-twenty-tips-for-interpreting-scientif…
profle....you can take the most absurd postion on any topic and a troll of the internet will find umpteen articles supporting a nonsense. This is what climate deniers do. For me, I beleive in science as this is what has led us from our caves - I can't undertand it all, but I still have faith in science. The alternative is to go back to being a sun worshipper or other simiar instinct based faith.
I know full well at least two are simply wrong on your/others part. I just replied to two, one showing there has been warming since 1996 as expected ie more or less to trend as predicted, hence really what you quote was out of context ie the trend in 100 odd years.
Second that limits to growth did not predict dates as you claim, so that appears to be a bare faced lie on your part, or a casual quote off someone who is.
regards
Thats great news about the club of room, I thought they told us they were going to run out of stuff.
And what are your thoughts on the other failed predictions? You always seem to go quiet when I give you the links. Just a reminder: None of these have ever been called out by the media, just quietly brushed under the carpet while the billion dollar a day gravy train rolls on. Did you read the Nature editorial link?
snow prediction
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-...
glacier prediction
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8387737.stm
10 million missing climate refugees
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB100014240527487046587045762744702…
desal plants
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3604572.htm
warming (learn about statistically significant)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
Ehrlich
“In the 1970s … hundreds of millions are going to starve to death,”
Roll on the inter-glacial.
Actually I dont think, you look at anything but through blinkers. So any "thinking" you are doing is based on what you want to see and is hence faulty or at least baised. That means any decisions you make are likely based on quick sand. So really you are trying to troll based on little real evidence Intead you seem to be actively looking for the odd boob out of thousands of scientific papers in order to, well troll...certianly its not a balanced discusion.
I posted rebuttals on the significant ones ie there is warming and the club of rome report was not that type of report.
In terms of resources we have indeed peaked more or less in oil and many of the other important minerals are also close to peaking. In terms of humans close is, now to 50 years, 2 generations.
The rest as I said were minor word of mouth slips, out of context and reports in news papers often badly written by journalists. These are not actual academic papers though we have had some bloopers from a minority of scientists.
The Desal plants are interesting, so the State Governments built these to try and ensure the population had water in a great drought this seems fair enough, its known as resiliance. As it turns out the drought broke and they were not needed. Its a safety thing, like I said you dont appear to be capable of thinking very well so Im not surprised that understanding such concepts is beyond you.
regards
Mate, thanks for the condescension. Perhaps try demonstrate to me that these predictions were not made as a more useful tact or that current predictions are based on better evidence rather than the same old tired watermelons. Logic governs here. These predictions by eminent climate scientists, the UN and the IPCC have shown to be wrong. There is no wriggle room. To call them misquotes after the fact is disingenuous. Are you suggesting these predictions were not made and supported by the UN, UEA, IPCC? The links demonstrate otherwise. If they were misquotes why were they not called out by their peers and the media at the time? Who has the blinkers on?
It’s not a big deal people get predictions wrong – especially in a field as chaotic as a planetary climate systems. It is naïve to think we know all there is to know about the climate system. Did you read the Nature link? Or try the book Why Things Fail? Life is always so simple for chicken littles.
The desal plants suck, they they are not interesting. Unless you lent the chicken litle local govenrment the money and like taking money off yet to be born taxpayers.
Its really simple, you wish to deny it and troll at the same time by cherry picking a few points and thus claiming its all wrong. That's farce if not effectively lies (as you know full well what you are doing) or at the least mis-direction and smoke. We dont know it all about climate, hence the intense research and the growing confidence in it. Really when someone says 95% yes its pretty much as certain as anything can be until it actually occurs then its a bit late.
Minor parts are shown to be wrong, however the underying numbers are getting more and more confidence.In fact the latest stuff Im reading / watching is saying its way faster.
NB The nature link has not worked, got a 404, I was about to google to try and find it.
The desal plants are a part of a Govn's job to keep ppl safe as a best effort....on the opposite side Hurricane Sandy cost billions and the sea defences were to low....so not enough was spent.
Really you want your cake and eat it.
regards
most of the climate debate science I have read doesn't take into account that we have been travelling through a period of natural cooling, which offsets the results. Still looking for an reputable article that establishes those baseline norms, without which, all "scientific" projections are just speculatons.
As ignored earlier that is just a single paper Steven - time will tell on it. Just like time will tell on this paper posing an alternative view.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12534.html
Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century1, 2, challenging the prevailing view that anthropogenic forcing causes climate warming.
Yet more cherry picking. Temperature is rising as I posted earlier,
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/global-warming-si…
regards
The temperature rise isnt linear, in fact it looks like a series of steps. If you only look at short periods and gnore longer, ie cherry pick, yes sure you can claim anything. If you look at the series of steps and trend that the temperature rise is clear about 0.8deg C give or take a bit.
Lots of reputable scientific papers out there, truck loads, if really you dont want to look, well thats up to you. Quite amazed that ppls ideology will get in their way of sound decision making....
regards
(Degrees C per decade) Significance 1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes 1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes 1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes 1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes
I take it you didn't read the BBC link above. I'll make it easier for you. Note that there was bugger all increase in CO2 emissions prior to 1940 so what caused the similar warming rate prior to significant manmade CO2 emissions? Given that 25% of mankinds CO2 emissions have been in the last ten years surely we should be seeing some sky falling by now?.
Yeah the BBC cherry picked that not me - but you'd know that if you read the link. You'd better give those guys a call. Perhaps you could call them liars or something.
“The UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office."
Here's a science paper for you - given you have so much faith in them - or just paper that support your world view?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12534.html.
and here again for the third time is that link,
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/global-warming-si…
regards
And for the second time here is a paper from nature with a differing view. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12534.html. Gee you went all quiet on that one.
Time will tell on both paper. Hilarious how you pick one paper featured on an activist website yet accuse me of cherry picking. Time has told on the glacier, snow, desal and runaway temperature increases. Hence all you have is to call me a liar, dumb, lurid, clueless, farcical...
Wake up and smell the roses. Get off the computer and go outside. The world is not so bad.
Where is the wriggle room in these black and white predictions? I can't wait for your straw man.
"According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".
"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said."
"The UN panel on climate change warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035 is wildly inaccurate, an academic says."
Climate Refugees, Not Found
Discredited by reality, the U.N.'s prophecies go missing.
“The UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office."
For the second time, I replied quoting part of your own link,
"Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase."
So we have a warming trend due to greenhouse gas increase. Are these words too big for you to manage? let me know I will try and find smaller ones if that helps.
For the 5th~6th time looks like there is no hiatus for 1996 on.
Do you really want me to post it a 5th or 6th time?
The snow will be a rare event, written in 2000? plus within context like I said. Other stuff, like I said the odd verbal blooper. So the mountain of evidence, data and science you wish to ignore due to a few bloopers and minor errors. That is of course your choice.
Computers etc, well it seems you now object to someone doing some research to show what you post is mostly, out of date, wrong, mis-direction, errors or lies, cake and eat it comes to mind.
regards
Classic. In the first sentence you direct quote from the nature paper confirming the hiatus. Then in the fifth sentence you sate there is no hiatus! What is it going to be? I think I will take the nature paper, Chair of the IPCC and the Met service on this one. The first sentence is from a nature paper the other is your opinion. Who is in denial here? Yes it will keep warming - we are in an inter glacial. Thanks for the straw man. Some warming will be due to manmade emmissions but the runaway chicken little predictions of the computer modelling fraternity ain't going to happen. If there models were so great why did they not predict the hiatus when 25% of mankinds CO2 emmissions were dumped into the admosphere in the past 15 years? Think of some more names to call me if it makes you feel better. As for the out of date barb the nature paper is June 2013!
Personally I don't give a crap what the scientists say.
My neighbours don't like fertiliser or effluent in their water intakes.
Nitrogen loss via atmosphere and leeching and runoff is a waste of good nutrient.
Good plants need good soil, need good microbe action (and the organic carbon is much more absorbant for water come droughts, and good soil structure resists pugging damage much more effectively).
And as long as a consumer is willing to pay for the upgrades for environmental tidy up, I'm totally on board. But. _if_ the customer doesn't want to pay...then there simply isn't money in the budget for it.
Simply good business. simply good living.
And I understand that such an approach doesn't give the scientists the funding opportunity they want, which makes it hard for a gubbermint to justify a War on Science
Looking at the number of comments on this subject after one day we can conclude that the interest in this subject is ebbing away.
It is interesting to see this article written by PG at this time. Wonder what other political statements are going to be made in the near future.
There is one very true statement in the above: The climate is changing.
Always has and always will, we can't change that but we can predict that for certain.
The rest is a matter of ideology and interpretation but the facts are not in favour of AGW predictions at the moment.
What is for certain is that at one point even if it is still at least 150 years away we are going to run out of carbon fuels and we do not yet have a viable alternative. The next 10 billion barrel oil find will push that day back by a staggering: 100 days. We need to continue to invest in, and look at, other ways of generating energy.
I know that it is hard to get anyone exited about something that is not going to happen in their lifetime but so are predictions about weather at the end of the century, although that does stir up emotions. the kids might boil or something like that.
If it is the worst storm, hottest summer or whatever in 50 years it means that 50 years ago we had that event in equal measure or worse. So it hasn't changed then.
"Since records began" means in most cases in the last 30 years.
As it is, Hannibal can still not cross the Alps using elephants.
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