Groser underplays the real risks

I listened to Climate Change Minister Tim Groser being questioned about the ETS on The Nation last weekend and explaining that the government’s position on climate change action is that we will play our part in the global effort, doing our fair share but not more. It confirmed my impression that Groser’s focus is on our negotiating position, not on the reality of the threat of climate change. He is intelligent and articulate in his exposition and it all sounds reasonable as far as it goes. The fact that in terms of realistically tackling climate change the global effort doesn’t go nearly far enough was not mentioned during the interview either by the questioners or the Minister.

The government doesn’t deny the science. It doesn’t refuse to participate in global action. What more is it reasonable to ask? A good deal more, as I see it. The complacency which attends Groser’s defence of the government’s position is not justified when one considers the reality of climate change which is already unfolding around the globe and is only going to intensify.

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State of the climate 2011: extreme heat our fault

This year’s State of the Climate report [PDF], covering 2011, was published yesterday, and has made headline news around the world because of its focus on weather extremes. Can we blame some of the extremes of heat and heavy rain on continued warming? The answer — based on a new global effort to look at attribution of six of 2011’s extreme events — is yes. However, Dr Peter Dr Peter Stott, Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met Office, and one of the lead authors of the extremes research said:

… we didn’t find evidence that climate change has affected the odds of all the extreme weather events we looked at, [but] we did see that some events were significantly more likely. Overall we’re seeing that human influence is having a marked impact on some types of extreme weather.

The UK Met Office summarised some of the key findings:

  • December 2010 was the second coldest and November 2011 the second warmest in the Central England temperature record dating back to 1659. The extreme warm average temperature in November 2011 is 60 times more likely to have occurred than in the 1960s. The change in odds of the extremely cold December was considerably less, however, being only about half as likely. Even without climate change, unusual circulation patterns can still bring very cold winter months.
  • In 2011, Texas had its hottest and driest summer in records dating back to 1895. While the heat wave was associated with La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean, the heat wave was 20 times more likely in such conditions than it would have been only 50 years ago.
  • There were some remarkable temperatures across Western Europe in 2011. Comparisons to the temperatures previously associated with the weather patterns seen in 2011 reveal the year was almost 1.5 deg C warmer than can be attributed to weather patterns alone.

The paper dealing with the attribution exercise, Explaining Extreme Events Of 2011 From A Climate Perspective, by Peterson et al (BAMS, July 2012, pdf here) is well worth a read.

Below the fold: the full abstract of the State Of The Climate 2011 report – an excellent short form overview of the year…

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You’ll see with your own eyes

An interesting piece in the Huffington Post recently reported Mohamed Nasheed, former President of the Maldives, warning the United States: “You can’t pick and choose on science.” The Maldives is one of the most threatened nations in the world from the sea level rise accompanying global warming. While he was President, Nasheed worked to make the country carbon-neutral, as reported on Hot Topic a couple of years ago. That won’t save the Maldives, of course, but it will at least show willing to do what other much larger nations must do to keep climate change within manageable limits. With a population of 300,000-plus, he said his country needs to complete around 200 projects to reach that goal, a process he believes would take about 10 years.

He acknowledges the United States has a bigger challenge, but they need to face up to it.

“It’s going to be difficult for the U.S. to be a world leader unless they themselves embrace it.”

The population of the Maldives see all too clearly the effects of climate change, but Nasheed acknowledges that Americans may need the evidence of their own eyes. They’ll be getting it:

“You will probably see many aberrations in climate patterns. You’ll have to see that and you’ll have to experience that for you to take this thing seriously.”

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Welcome to the rest of our lives

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Here’s an excellent new video from Peter Sinclair, contrasting the recent weather disasters in the USA with the “we’ll adapt” line recently run by ExxonMobil boss Rex Tillerson. It’s a powerful message, to which I would only add one thought: this is only the beginning.

Roughan’s ready theory

John Roughan has a theory. The New Zealand Herald‘s columnist and leader writer waxes lyrical this week about the discovery of the Higgs boson bringing excitement back to science — science having been made dull by being “dominated by environmentalism” for too long. Others may wish to make fun of Roughan’s somewhat incoherent take on particle physics:

The glimpse of the ‘Higgs boson’, or something like it, allows minds to boggle on the existence of “dark matter” and the possibility there really is a dimension to the world that is beyond human sensory perception.

Who knows where that knowledge will lead? Next they will work out how to control the particle, then they will remove it to enable things – people – to travel at the speed necessary to explore the galaxy.

But bring it on, I say. Let’s get the Roughan-Higgs drive patented. That’s a new technology that could really drive the economic transformation of New Zealand. Truly ground-breaking stuff from a political columnist.

Roughan’s real theory, sadly, is much more mundane, and amounts to little more than an extended and ill-educated rant against environmentalism.

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