Category: Climate politics

Keeping it pure: Prime doco examines NZ environment and climate challenges

When Tourism NZ began to brand the country as 100% Pure back in 1999, it almost certainly didn’t expect that 14 years later it would come back and bite the business in the bum. On Sunday night at 8-30 Prime TV starts showing a new documentary series from Greenstone TV that explores just how the NZ environment has suffered in the last decade, and how climate change will make matters worse. The producers describe it as:

…a series about the New Zealand environment and the way we treat it. It looks at some of the major problems facing the environment and the things that people are doing to protect it. With an eye on the economic implications of “greening” the economy, the series canvasses the opinion of leading scientists, environmentalists, farmers and business leaders as it examines the importance to New Zealand of Keeping It Pure.

It looks like compelling viewing. I’m told that the second episode will be devoted to climate issues.

Sea level rise, earthquakes, and flying PIGs

ChristchurchT T2013

The first major study to look at the impact of sea level rise on Christchurch and Banks Peninsula following the 2010/11 earthquake sequence projects a watery future for many parts of the city and its surrounding shorelines. The image above ((Fig 3-4, p15 in the report.)) shows changes in ground elevation between 2003 and 2011 in the Christchurch region. Areas in green/blue have moved upwards by half a metre – particularly noticeable to the west of the estuary – and areas in red and yellow down, in many places along the Avon and subsidiary streams by a metre or more.

The report, Effects of Sea Level Rise on Christchurch City (pdf), by consultants Tonkin & Taylor was released last week and suggests that as a minimum planners should take into account a 1m rise in sea level over the next 100 years. Combined with the elevations changes caused by the earthquakes, this would mean significant shoreline retreats, increased flooding in many areas and the loss of hundreds of hectares of land to the sea. It’s well worth digging into the report to get the full picture, and it will make uncomfortable reading for many in the city.

Tonkin & Taylor prepared their study before the IPCC’s AR5 Working Group One report was released, and so based their SLR numbers on a literature search and the Royal Society of NZ’s 2010 paper. They suggest a “plausible upper range” of 2m over the next 100 years, with the behaviour of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets in a warming world “probably the largest uncertainty in sea level rise projections”.

And now the bad news…

Continue reading “Sea level rise, earthquakes, and flying PIGs”

NZ climate cranks’ trust folded, Brill et al try to escape justice

The New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET), the body established three years ago to bring a legal case against the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), has been put into liquidation without paying the costs awarded against it after its case failed — confirming my suspicion when the trust was formed that it had been created purely to protect the litigants from the consequences of a failed action. The NZCSET owes NIWA at least $89,238.90, but Steve Kilgallon at the Sunday Star Times reports that no monies have been paid:

NIWA chief executive John Morgan said it was still considering pursuing two of the trust’s key players – former wine journalist Terry Dunleavy, a Justice of the Peace and MBE, and retired lawyer Barry Brill, a former National MP – for the money, but was waiting for the liquidation process to finish.

He added: “On the surface it looks like the trust was purely for the purpose of taking action, which is not what one would consider the normal use of a charitable trust”.

Kilgallon also spoke NZCSET trustee Bryan Leyland:

Trustee Bryan Leyland, when asked about its assets, said: “To my knowledge, there is no money. We spent a large amount of money on the court case, there were some expensive legal technicalities.”

Funding had come “from a number of sources, which are confidential”.

Leyland thus confirms — perhaps inadvertently — that the NZCSET was created solely to bring the court action, and to protect its own trustees from the consequences of their actions. It was apparently able to find “a large amount of money” to pay its lawyers to run the action, but not to pay the costs awarded against it.

A quick look back at some of the dates associated with the trust and its case against NIWA is instructive:

  • The NZCSET’s Statement of Claim against NIWA was filed in the High Court on July 5th 2010.
  • The NZCSET’s Deed of Trust is dated July 30th, so the trust did not exist at the time the case began.
  • The NZCSET’s registration as a trust was not granted until August 10th, shortly before news of the case hit the press.
  • In the two and a half years since the formation of the NZCSET there is no sign that the trust attempted to meet any of its stated educational objectives.

It is quite clear from the actions of the trust, and the glib statements made by its trustees, that it was never intended to do anything other than bring a case against NIWA. It was always a legal manoeuvre — an attempt to hide the perpetrators of a piece of politically and ideologically-inspired tomfoolery behind NZ trust law.

If NIWA decides not to pursue Dunleavy, Leyland and Brill for restitution of its legal costs, then the NZ taxpayer will have to pick up the bill. Even if funds are forthcoming, they will not cover the huge waste of scientist and management time spent in handling the case. Having failed to make warming go away by litigation, they must now face up to the heat of public outrage at their scandalous misuse of public money.

TDB today: 2014 – Won’t get fooled again

In my first post of the year at The Daily Blog, I abuse the lyrics to a great old rock song, and express general disbelief that new post-election boss will be any different to the old one.

We are living beyond our environmental and resource means. All our current prosperity and the ecosystem services that make it possible are being stolen from future generations. Delaying action is just making the final bill bigger, and the ultimate damage worse.
We face an existential crisis. If we screw this up, we screw up our entire civilisation, yet we have politicians of all stripes and ideologies who simply don’t take the climate problem seriously.

[The Who, of course]

Denial Tango 2014

Here’s a new recording by Aussie group Men With Day Jobs of their climate classic The Denial Tango, accompanied by a rather striking video. Men With Day Jobs are Rod Crundwell, Stafford Sanders and Kim Constable (from left to right in the pix in the video) and their new album “Deep in Denial” is due for release early next year.

I’d go with Tony Abbott, It’s just a load of crap

This round-the-world disaster is an evil greedy trap

‘Cause everybody knows the world is flat

I posted the full lyrics back in 2011…