Tag: NZ

Bloomin’ marvellous

ChathamIslandbloom.jpg

A stunning image of a massive bloom of phytoplankton off the Chatham Islands (to the east of NZ — that’s Wellington and the Wairarapa in the top left corner), snapped by NASA’s Aqua satellite on December 5th and featured this week at NASA’s excellent Earth Observatory. Click on the image to see the full (4MB) image with lots more detail. NASA describes the region as a carbon sink, because the mixing of cold but nutrient rich deep water from Antarctica, with warm nutrient-poor (but iron-rich) sub tropical water provides the perfect recipe for large phytoplankton blooms — especially in spring and autumn. A major constituent of these blooms is usually huge numbers of coccolithophores, an important component in the oceanic carbon cycle, as I pointed out the last time the Chathams featured on the Earth Observatory.

The gas almost works (more methane)

Atmospheric methane levels continued to increase in 2009, the World Meteorological Organisation’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin (summary PDF) confirmed this week. Methane averaged 1803 ppb over the year, up 5 ppb on 2008, and now contributes 18.1% of the radiative forcing caused by current greenhouse gas levels. The Bulletin suggests that “likely causes were above average wetland methane emissions due to exceptionally warm temperatures at high northern latitudes in 2007 and heavy precipitation in tropical wetlands in 2007 and 2008. However, it cautions that the reasons for the recent increases are not yet fully understood.”

A hint that the rise might be continuing this year is contained in this rather striking graph of methane levels recorded recently at the Mt Zeppelin recording station (a misty mountain?) in Ny Ã…lesund, Svalbard…

Continue reading “The gas almost works (more methane)”

NZ regions planning for climate change

I opened the latest Environment Waikato news update to discover that a Regional Policy Statement (RPS) is due, ten years after the last one. As I thumbed through the publication a heading leapt out at me: “Our climate is changing, so we must too.” Underneath came this statement:

“Even if all greenhouse gas emissions were stopped now, we will still be affected by greenhouse gas emissions already in the atmosphere, and will need to adapt to changes for generations to come.”

 

Following paragraphs mentioned some of the specifics for our region.  It was comprehensive. Agriculture and forestry, our major commercial land uses, could be directly affected by climate change and climate policy. We can expect rising sea levels, more extreme weather, more droughts in the east, more intense rain and increased winds in the west, warmer, drier summers, milder winters and shifting seasons, increased risks from natural hazards such as river and coastal flooding, coastal erosion and severe weather.

Examples were then given of the kind of responses Environment Waikato will focus on. Flood management, the use and development of natural resources, planning, building regulations, infrastructure design and location. All sensible and appropriate.

I was pleasantly surprised by the prominence being given to climate change in the policy statement. It is listed as the second of six key issues facing the region, the first of which is the pressure being put on natural resources.  The third issue is energy sources, and here again reference to climate change and the need to cut carbon emissions figures strongly. Even in the fourth issue, land use, the question of carbon footprint gets a look in.

Encouraged, I went looking for other regions’ ten-year plans. Not with a great deal of success.  However I found Greater Wellington’s which was approved last year. It too identifies climate change as a key issue (page 29). It was more discursive than Waikato’s, and introduces mitigation more prominently. What it seeks:

“A resilient community that, as far as possible, is reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the effects of global warming, but is also adapting well to any changes caused by climate change.”

Among the likely changes it points to are increasing drought in the Wairarapa, increases in storm intensity across the region, increased fire danger and the serious implications of sea level rise for coastal areas.

In relation to mitigation measures it finds space to respond to the argument that because New Zealand is so small Wellington shouldn’t worry about reducing its emissions but simply concentrate on adapting to whatever results from the rest of the developed world’s activities:

“The countering argument is that if, to achieve a liveable future, we wish to persuade the rest of the developed world to mitigate the effects of global warming, we only acquire the moral right to do so by doing our bit.”

The counter argument seems to have won out, for the document goes on to set out the response of the regional body to the climate change issue:

“Greater Wellington is currently working with the city and district councils in the region and around New Zealand, and is leading the region’s planning for dealing with climate change. Local authorities have agreed to work collaboratively on developing goals and a shared plan for the region to reduce the region’s greenhouse gas emissions. We will also take the opportunity to develop strategies to support our communities to be resilient and adapt to the effects of climate change.”

It details steps which are under way or planned. Prominent  amongst them is the identification of potential renewable energy options for the region, such as marine and solar, and the intention to make Greater Wellington-owned land available for private developers to construct wind farms at Puketiro in the Akatarawa Forest and Stoney Creek in the Wairarapa.

Whether these two regional councils are representative of the long-term thinking of all the regions is unclear. Auckland’s planning is on hold pending the new governance set-up there. Canterbury, the other major centre of population, surprisingly doesn’t seem to address climate change specifically in its draft statement or identify it as a major issue. However, the major attention given to the matter in the Waikato and Wellington statements indicates that it is becoming integrated into their thinking and that they are being guided by the predictions of the science.  The Waikato draft notes that New Zealand’s response in terms of actions to reduce climate change is primarily a central government rather than a local government role, but nevertheless expresses some interest in emissions reduction within its bailiwick, particularly in relation to renewable energy generation and more climate-friendly transport. Wellington is quite bullish on the contributions it can make to mitigation as well as adaptation.

It is clearly worth keeping an eye on local government while agonising over the continuing evasiveness of central government.  Engagement with adaptation issues locally must surely impress people with the reality of climate change and the need to mitigate further damage. There’s an irony that the Minister of Local Government, Rodney Hide, should be a vocal climate change denier who laments what he describes as the massive costs inherent in climate change policy. He even goes so far as to say that the policy is designed to upend society and stifle industrial processes and progress. Fortunately there are limits to his authority.

NZ glaciers holding their own (just)

NIWAParkPass2010.jpg

New Zealand’s glaciers just about held their own over last summer, showing a very slight gain in mass on average according to NIWA’s annual end of summer snowline survey, released today. The Park Pass glacier (above) in the Mt Aspiring National Park between the Hollyford Valley and the head of Lake Wakatipu (map) is one of the 50 index glaciers in the NIWA survey. From the press release:

“A moderate El Niño developed in the tropical Pacific in spring last year. This brought more southwesterlies, with normal to below normal temperatures through last summer and into autumn this year. The overall effect was to hold snowlines in a near steady state this year,” says [NIWA scientist] Dr Hendrikx. The previous two years (2007–08 and 2008–09) had seen end-of-summer snowlines rise significantly as not enough snow fell to compensate for melting.

The impact of the El Niño shows as a (very) small uptick at the end of the ice mass graph, but the overall trend remains strongly downwards.

NIWAglaciermassbalance2010.gif

The full report (with lots of pictures from the aerial survey) can be downloaded from the NIWA web site. The Park Pass photo above was taken on March 6th this year on the fourth leg of NIWA’s alpine flight, and shows some spectacular icebergs in the proglacial lake. The extent of the glacier’s retreat can be seen in the Google Earth imagery at Mauri Pelto’s From A Glacier’s Perspective blog post on the nearby Donne Glacier. With a strong La Niña now influencing weather patterns in NZ, it’ll be interesting to see how the glaciers fare. I wonder if I can blag a seat on the 2011 flight? ;-)

Licking lignite

Jeanette Fitzsimons raised the alarm in a recent Herald op-ed over Solid Energy’s plans for Southland lignite. A very justified alarm. She wrote of well-advanced plans to use more than 3 billion tonnes of economically recoverable lignite from three fields in Southland. Big plans, of which New Zealanders are hardly aware. First off is the transformation of lignite, by drying it, into briquettes for Fonterra’s milk-processing plants and for export. Only 100,000 tonnes a year in the pilot plant to be built next year, followed by a full-scale plant many times larger. Next are plans to convert lignite to diesel, with the claim that all New Zealand’s diesel could be produced this way. The third big plan is the conversion of lignite to urea.

 

It’s the increase in greenhouse gas emissions associated with this vast development that concerns Fitzsimons. Her article rests on the arguments of James Hansen that the use of coal must be phased out over the next couple of decades. And she’s not buying the claim of carbon compliance:

“Solid Energy says all the emissions will be ‘offset’. But increasing the amount of biological carbon that cycles between atmosphere and plants can’t compensate for putting more fossil carbon into the system, even if our ETS scheme pretends it can.

“Paying money is, in the end, not a get-out-of-jail-free card for increasing pollution.

“These huge lignite developments are close – Solid Energy intends to start building next year. Any hope we had of reducing our greenhouse emissions would be lost.”

Her conclusion is robust:

“As citizens, we need to refocus our domestic action to tell Solid Energy and the Government by every means available to us to keep the coal in the hole. Every tonne of lignite New Zealand keeps in the ground is 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide that doesn’t get into the atmosphere.”

I agree entirely, and wonder what is going on in the mind of the Minister of Energy and others in government as they contemplate the proposed activity of the government-owned company. It’s not as if there is any requirement for lignite in something essential like our electricity generation, no lingering imperative that we carry on using it until we can replace it with renewables. The only imperative in the proposed lignite exploitation is that we not leave any resource stone unturned in the drive to greater economic wealth.

I don’t know how much thought the Minister gives to the counter imperative that we take every step open to us to prevent the continuing build-up of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. There is perhaps a cautionary note in the reference to coal in the Draft Energy Strategy, but it’s far from specific:

“New Zealand’s extensive coal resources currently contribute to electricity supply security. Coal is also utilised by industry and is exported. Coal could potentially contribute to the economy in other ways, such as through the production of liquid fossil fuels, methanol or fertiliser such as urea.

“This potential is more likely to be fully realised if an economic way to reduce high levels of greenhouse gas emissions is found. Carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) will potentially be an effective way of utilising resources while reducing CO2 emissions.”

Moreover there’s nothing in Solid Energy’s plans which suggests that the lignite development is going to wait on CCS (if the technology is ever developed successfully). Meeting the slack requirements of the ETS is all they appear to have in mind, and that’s clearly no impediment to proceeding.

The Minister has a wide embrace. He welcomes every renewable energy development that comes along. In the same breath he waxes enthusiastic at the prospect of the discovery and urgent development of fossil fuel resources. If the Draft Energy Strategy is as close to his and the government’s philosophy as we’re going to get it appears the thinking is that we can fully exploit the fossil fuel resources while alternatives are being developed. And we should be getting on with it smartly while it’s profitable. It’s an opportunity which we would be foolish to miss. Indeed according to Chris Baker, CEO of the mining and exploration lobby Straterra, who followed up Jeanette Fitzsimons’ article the very next day, the lignite resource could be worth $3 trillion. He didn’t say to whom, but no doubt there would be trickle down.

How does this wealth stack up against the release of more atmospheric carbon as a result of exploiting the lignite? That’s a rhetorical question. It doesn’t matter how many trillions of dollars we gain if we lose a habitable world for our descendants in doing so.

If the government is serious about tackling climate change it should instruct Solid Energy not to pursue the lignite plans and relieve them of whatever dividend expectations that makes them unable to fulfil. If regulation is necessary it should legislate for it. It should tell the public that unless full carbon capture and storage technology is possible there can be no exploitation of the lignite fields because of the seriousness of the threat of increased greenhouse gases. That threat, it should explain, far outweighs the transient economic gain of fossil fuel development.

We can’t have it both ways. We can’t reduce emissions by increasing them. We can’t say we recognise the threat of global warming and at the same time expect to carry on with all activities which give rise to it. If Gerry Brownlee and the government think we can, they are deceiving themselves and us. Jeanette Fitzsimons is absolutely right. Keep the coal in the hole.

PS. Take a few minutes to send Gerry Brownlee an email to that effect. Remind him that he has a responsibility to the future. I’ve done so.