Posting here will be a little more peripatetic than usual over the next few weeks, as I whizz off round the South Island to act as a tour guide for a bunch of friends from the UK. I will post as much as is consistent with a good time.
Category: Hot Topic
Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain
I usually save my thoughts on weather for On The Farm (the other blog), but this summer in the Waipara Valley – especially the last 24 hours – has set me thinking. As the climate warms, Canterbury is projected to see an increased frequency of drought conditions. At the same time, the rain that does fall will become more intense, which could lead to run-off and erosion problems. Summer 2007/8 has been dry and hot (2007 was the driest at Limestone Hills since 1998, only 496 mm in the farm rain gauge). The hills are brown, the sheep are thin, but grape growers are happy. Yesterday afternoon, the skies darkened, thunder started rumbling, and the rain came. At 8 am today we’d had 92 mm in 24 hours (most it fell overnight, and it’s still raining at the time of writing). Other places have had a lot more, and there have been flash floods. It’s nothing by West Coast standards of course, but it’s good and heavy in North Canterbury terms.
So if you were to ask me what will Canterbury’s climate be like in 2030, I’d have to answer – just like this summer…
[Caveat: Yes, I know that we’ve got a La Nina and that one year does not a climate make.]
Two gigs
I’ve been asked to take part in two conferences on climate change in Wellington in a couple of months time. The first is Climate Change – What To Do? (Westpac St James Theatre, Saturday 29 March), otherwise known as the World Peace Summit for Sustainable Development 2008, and is being organised by the Yoga In Daily Life organisation founded by His Holiness Mahamandaleshwar Paramhans Swami Maheswarananda (known as Swamiji). Speakers include Swamiji, David Wratt, Rod Oram, Rachel Brown, Andrew West and Nick Collins – programme here. The web site says I’ll be talking about “The issues for New Zealand: What are the predicted changes; what might it mean for our lifestyle; in terms of responsibility towards other nations? What can be achieved by a strong leadership role?” Tickets cost $60 until the end of January, then $75, and are available from Ticketec.
The following week I’ll be back in town for a two day legal conference organised by LexisNexis. The Environmental and Climate Change Legal Symposium is on April 2/3, and also features some very good speakers. I’ll have to put my best foot forward to keep up with the likes of Dave Brash, Jonathon Boston, Roland Sapsford and Karen Price. It’s a bit more expensive: $1095 + GST for the two days.
Clearing the decks #2
Time to catch up with some climate stuff that I’ve accumulated over the last couple of weeks.
- Auckland lawyers Lowndes Associates have become the first legal firm in NZ to achieve CarbonZero certification – which means that they’ve taken steps to measure their carbon emissions, actively reduce them, and then have bought credible offsets to cover the rest.
- The first hints of NIWA’s new regional climate projections are beginning to emerge. By the end of the century, Southland could be as warm as today’s Bay Of Plenty. And Jim Salinger, who first noticed that we were warming up, was given a good profile by the Herald.
- A belated mention for the Be The Change campaign, a climate change awareness campaign that trundled up the country in a bus in the last couple of months of the year. As the SST reported: “From Bluff to Kerikeri, the Be The Change bus tour is a Greenpeace, Oxfam, and Forest and Bird campaign to get ordinary New Zealanders working to stop climate change.”
- The NZ Stock Exchange’s carbon trading market, TZ1, is aiming for a mid-year launch, and has appointed former Vector CEO Mark Franklin to head up the operation.
- The German developed SkySail system for sail-assisted shipping (as featured in HT) is about to get an extended sea trial on a voyage from Europe to Venezuela, Boston and back: “Under favorable wind conditions, the 160-square meter kite shaped like a paraglider is expected to reduce fuel costs by up to 20 percent or more ($1,600 per day) and cut, by a similarly significant amount, its carbon dioxide emissions.” [Yahoo News, Guardian [UK]] There’s lively discussion of the pros and cons over at Frogblog.
- Some new science: another study confirms that IPCC sea level rise projections are conservative – pointing out that in the last interglacial levels rose by up to 1.6m per century. Work on the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago, considered the best historical analogue for the present situation, confirms that initial warming caused massive carbon cycle feedbacks that boosted temperatures even further. In the Arctic, warming peaked at about +24C.
- Some turn of the year roundups: Technology Review covers the year in energy and nanotech (good news for batteries), The Independent [UK] rounds up the climate news, New Scientist brings an earth science perspective, while NOAA presents a nice graphic of the year’s extreme weather events.
- At Gristmill, Tom Athanasiou takes a perceptive look at the post-Bali world, and Joe Romm explores some of the latest thinking on what sort of target we should be aiming for. Bottom line: we may already be overshooting. And at the New York Times, Jared Diamond explains the collision between population growth and consumption growth. There’s a crunch coming.
- Finally, NZine reviewed Hot Topic, and liked it: “I strongly recommend everyone to read this book, but especially recommend it to those who make decisions on action to counter the impact of global warming and those who are able to influence the thinking of others on this issue.”
May all your (northern hemisphere, high latitude) Christmases be white (if we’re lucky)
Hot Topic is about to over-indulge. In a few hours, I will be elbow deep in a raw turkey, inserting stuffing. It will take hours to cook and minutes to eat, and then we’ll fall asleep in the sun and in the evening complain about sunburn and dehydration. In other words, climate matters will be (with luck) far from my mind. There will be peripatetic blogging over the holidays, but don’t expect too much. Thanks to all the regular readers for showing up diligently, and may all your Christmases be white (if appropriate to your circumstances).