Tag: David Wratt

SOS tour adds Lakes dates; Wratt in Wellington

The Saunders Oram and Salinger climate roadshow continues to rumble on through the spring, and news reaches me that they’ve just added talks in Queenstown and Wanaka on Thursday Nov 3 to their already crowded itinerary. Venues are still to be arranged, but the Queenstown talk will be in the afternoon and the Wanaka talk in the evening. All the latest details (including a confirmed gig on Waiheke Island) are in this information sheet. Jim tells me they’ve been getting very good attendances — 70 in the recent Kaiapoi session and 70 at Omakau (probably the highest per capita attendance of the lot). By the end of November they will have completed a remarkable 37 presentations. Hats off to all three of them…

Wellingtonians with a lunch hour free on Thursday (6/10) might like to note that Dr David Wratt, Director of the NZ Climate Change Centre and NIWA’s Chief Scientist (Climate) will be giving a presentation on Assessing Scientific Knowledge about Climate Change as a part of the NZ Climate Change Research Institute’s seminar series. Time: 12 – 1pm in Cotton Building 304 on VUW’s Kelburn Campus. David will cover developments since AR4 and discuss the process of putting AR5 together. Contact Liz Thomas at the NZ CCRI for more information.

We call upon the author…

I must have been asleep last week when the IPCC announced its selection of authors for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), due in 2013/14. As usual, NZ scientists are making a significant contribution:

  • Tim Naish is a lead author for Working Group 1 (The Physical Science Basis) chapter 5, Information from Paleoclimate Archives.
  • Jim Renwick is a lead author for WG1 Chapter 14, Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change.
  • David Wratt is a review editor for Chapter 14 (as is Kevin Trenberth)
  • Phil Boyd (NIWA) is a lead author for WG2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability), Chapter 6, Ocean Systems.
  • Alistair Woodward is one of the two Coordinating Lead Authors for WG2, Chapter 11, Human Health.
  • Andy Reisinger is a Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 25, Australasia, Paul Newton (AgResearch) and Andrew Tait (NIWA) are lead authors, and Blair Fitzharris is a Review Editor.
  • Ralph Sims is a Coordinating Lead Author for Working Group 3 (Mitigation of Climate Change), Chapter 8, on Transport.
  • Harry Clark is a lead author for WG3, Chapter 11, Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses (AFOLU).
  • Complete author lists: WG1, WG2, WG3.

Congratulations to all. Now the hard work starts…

And a plug: Jim Renwick is giving a talk on climate change at the Hurunui Library (yes, the one in the heat pump ads) in Amberley on Monday, July 5th at 7-30pm. All welcome. I’ll be heckling from the cheap seats…

[Thanks to Frogblog]

[Nick Cave]

A blast from the past

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Two years ago I took part in the World Peace Summit: Climate Change – What To Do? in Wellington, at the Westpac St James Theatre. I blogged about it at the time (before and after), and promised to link to the video of my talk when it was available. Of course, I then completely forgot to check, and so when I stumbled upon myself on Youtube earlier today, I thought I’d finally keep my promise. Given that I was talking in 2008, I think my comments stand up quite well (I’m rather pleased with my remarks about warmer winters being snowier winters), though my technological optimism is now tempered by pessimism both about the state of the climate system and our ability to come up with policies to reduce emissions. If you follow the “more from” links on the Youtube page, you can also watch David Wratt, Pene Lefale, Rod Oram, Andrew West, and Rachel Brown’s presentations.