Author: Bryan Walker

Butterfly futures flutter by

James Hansen’s latest discussion paper begins and ends with Monarch butterflies. He watches some on his property in Pennsylvania as they prepare to leave for their migration to Mexico and reflects on the prospects for their survival as a species as global warming takes hold. The Monarchs cross Texas on their way south, a difficult path this year over desolate, baked-out territory. Which leads Hansen to a spirited denunciation of “well-oiled Governors and Senators in Texas and Oklahoma” who assert that global warming is a hoax and help business-as-usual CO2 emissions to continue.

He addresses the question of whether the drought and fires in Texas can be attributed to global warming. The media have remained largely silent this year on possible connections between extreme weather events and human-made climate forcing, and Hansen asks whether scientists should be making more effort to draw public attention to the human role in climate anomalies.

Continue reading “Butterfly futures flutter by”

We have the technology, but…

“One word sums up the attitude of engineers towards climate change: frustration.” That’s Colin Brown, director of engineering at the UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers, writing in the latest New Scientist. Political inertia combines with continuing noise from the vocal minority of sceptics to mean that we are doing woefully little to prevent the worsening of global warming.

It’s not as if we are lacking the technology:

Engineers know there is so much more that we could do. While the world’s politicians have been locked in predominantly fruitless talks, engineers have been developing the technologies we need to bring down emissions and help create a more stable future.

Wind, wave and solar power, zero-emissions transport, low-carbon buildings and energy-efficiency technologies have all been shown feasible. To be rolled out on a global scale, they are just waiting for the political will. Various models, such as the European Climate Foundation’s Roadmap 2050, show that implementing these existing technologies would bring about an 85 per cent drop in carbon emissions by 2050. The idea that we need silver-bullet technologies to be developed before the green technology revolution can happen is a myth. The revolution is waiting to begin.

The barriers to a low-carbon society are not technological but political and financial, he declares. That’s why at a London conference this month 11 national engineering institutions representing 1.2 million engineers from across the globe decided on a joint call for action to be presented at December’s COP17 climate change conference in Durban, South Africa.

Continue reading “We have the technology, but…”

Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change

James Powell has produced a Kindle eBook, Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change, which in brief compass links climate change to the extreme weather events increasing across the globe.  As a Kindle Single it has the advantage of being right up to date with what has been happening in the US, including the visit of Hurricane Irene. You don’t need a Kindle to read it – apps are available for other devices and I read it on my PC. It cost 99 cents!

Powell is the author of the recent book The Inquisition of Climate Science which I reviewed here. He’s a former geology professor, college president and museum director who also served as a member of the US National Science Board for twelve years. In Rough Winds he writes for the general reader. He points out that scientists have been thinking about global warming for nearly two centuries. It is one of the oldest concepts in science, recognised first in the 1820s and then refined in the 1860s and 1890s and steadily throughout the second half of the 20th century. Moreover it’s uncomplicated and incontrovertible. There’s no escape from the elemental fact that the extra CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere will cause future temperatures to be higher than they would otherwise have been. And the warmer the earth, the more extreme will be the weather. Continue reading “Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change”

Support for greening the economy

It’s been interesting to see some NZ Herald articles bearing on the Green Party’s “100,000 green jobs” policy which I discussed a few days ago.

John Armstrong shared my view that the Green’s jobs policy deserved more than the “ritualistic slagging” offered by John Key and Steven Joyce.

National might still claim the Greens do not understand economics. The purpose of yesterday’s policy release was to demonstrate the Greens do understand – and are deadly serious about remedying the economy’s structural weaknesses, though not in a fashion National would favour. Continue reading “Support for greening the economy”

Sea level rise and the Christchurch rebuild

Jim Salinger delivered a timely warning in Christchurch this week when he pointed out that the city in its rebuild would be wise to work to at least a one metre estimate for sea level rise rather than the current estimate of 50 cm.

There’s a report on the Stuff website, and in the Waikato Times print edition there was a little more that evidently didn’t make it to the website.

The 50-centimetre estimate on which the council currently works is based on outdated science, Salinger said. Estimates of how much ice is melting in Greenland and Antarctica are more definite and the reviews are saying that we’re looking at a 50 to 160 cm sea rise. Some local bodies in Australia are now using a one metre estimate.

He illustrated with reference to areas like Brooklands “where you have the Waimakariri [River] coming out to the sea. You can have floods coming down the river at the same time as a storm surge, and they’re really at a lot of risk from inundation and flooding.”

In the Waikato Times piece he also referred to push-back from the insurance industry. “They may say, ‘If you build there we won’t insure you because the risk is too high’.”  The paper reported that Salinger had met with council staff the previous day to press the case for a one metre estimate, with a response from the council that it was “considering its options” and “would take Dr Salinger’s comments into account”.

Let’s hope they take them very seriously into account and incorporate them into their plans. It would be a supreme irony if the Christchurch rebuild paid attention to seismic safety but overlooked vulnerability to sea level rise. The infrastructure implications for New Zealand carried by a rising sea level are very great and very costly and will extend long into the future if global temperatures are permitted to rise to the height currently in prospect. If the Christchurch rebuild offers opportunity to pre-empt any of those future threats and costs, that’s an opportunity to be grasped.