Philip Duncan: Girl Guides have the right idea: Be ready
5:30 AM Sunday Nov 11, 2012
Farmers ignore climate change at their livelihoods' peril. Photo / APN
Climate change - it's time to stop fighting the mounting science and to start seeing how we can gain economically from it by being better prepared.
For over a decade I've been on the fence about climate change, because in my view both sides espoused alarmist theories. But lately (and not because of Superstorm Sandy) I've been wondering why, with 90 per cent of actively publishing North American climate scientists and most governments worldwide now embracing the science behind climate change, minority dissenters are getting an equal voice?
Evidence is mounting that global warming really is happening - not just from much of the scientific community, but also from business, like insurance companies. International insurance companies are noticing the rapid rise in payouts - some put this down to more people with more money who buy in vulnerable places.
However, the number of "one in 100 year" storms is happening, well, more than once every 100 years.
We no longer believe the sun revolves around Earth. We no longer believe the Earth is flat. Dinosaurs did exist. But, as US liberal comedian Bill Maher said on HBO this week: "How can we convince people who believe the Earth is 9000 years old that climate change is real?"
Climate change is a hot topic - excuse the pun. Every single time an article about it appears online the first comments often are negative. They attack the writer or the science itself. Or link to debunked papers or those that are not peer reviewed.
I work closely with the farming community and I know there is a lot of scepticism. However, those who ignore it may do so at a financial cost to their livelihoods. Accepting climate change is real doesn't make you a left wing nutter who wants to tax more; indeed, taxing more is the worst thing we can do.
It's time we planned better. Governments and councils need action plans that cover more worst-case scenarios. Power companies need to be ready for more storms and outages. Businesses and farmers need to think of the consequences of more extreme weather.
Current taxes and rates can be used smarter. Paying more money won't stop climate change and will only give more power to politicians and line someone else's pocket.
Common sense is all I ask for. It's time we realised the world is round and heating up - and that means more severe weather. What we need is to be better prepared.
Walking out of Kyoto and gutting the Emissions Trading Scheme is just crazy. What's worse outright climate deniers or those who talk the talk, but walk quickly in the opposite direction as our government is doing?
Becoming a low emissions economy is fairly easy for NZ and it's the best thing we can do to help encourage international action that protects our key exports.
A destabilising climate is oblivious to right or left, we just need to get on and essentially halve our emissions over this decade. Better a managed transition now than heavy-handed regulation later. I also agree that profits shouldn't be made out of selling the right to polllute the climate - any revenue should be plowed back into helping change, whether that's subsidising insulating low income housing, or supporting farmers to make changes quickly.
Ten percent a year is a good rule of thumb but more rapid reductions give us a bit more wriggle room if we need it later, as well as encouraging the technological innovations we also need urgently.
There's actually a body of astrophysical research pointing to solar activity along with cloudiness/aerosol changes that go a long way to explaining climate since the Maunder Minimum and this century so far in particular. Astrophysics is predicting grand solar minimum conditions over the coming decades which can only mean one thing - cooling.
The consideration is now two as yet unproven hypotheses - aCO2 vs solar/cloud - and cliimate scientists are by no means unanimous on the former. An increasing number are citing natural variability. Sea level rise is another very good example; the posited accelerating rise hasn't eventuated, in fact it is quite normal.
So any preparation should be for normal natural climate variation and not necessarily continued warming.