KEY POINTS:
Q. I read last week's article on your new book and a lot of what you say will happen in New Zealand (wine growing in Southland, dryer warmer climate in the east etc) sounds like what our cold, damp isles need. Am I being Pollyanna?
A. There
will be parts of NZ that benefit from some increased warmth over the next few decades, but there are others that will suffer. Droughts will increase in frequency down the east coast of both islands, for instance. NZ is expected to warm more slowly than most of the world, but we will still be vulnerable to what happens in the northern hemisphere. Damaging climate changes will affect the world economy, and have knock-on effects down here.
Q. If you were buying a family holiday home over the next few years, which you wanted to pass on to future generations, where would you buy and why?
A. I would be cautious about buying property on low-lying coastal land. Increased flooding caused by heavier rainfall is also likely, so I would be careful about buying property on river flood plains, or anywhere that has a history of flood problems.
Q. I'm a believer in man-made global warming who often ends up in arguments with those who say it is nothing more than a climate blip and will right itself. What is the best argument against these people?
A. About 25,000 years ago, in the middle of the last ice age, when ice caps covered Europe and North America, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 180 parts per million and the sea was 120m below the current level. The global average temperature was roughly 5C colder than today. Before we started burning lots of fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 was 280ppm. Today, CO2 stands at 383ppm - about a third more than in the early 1800s. A 100ppm increase in CO2 was enough to end an ice age, and we've just added another 100ppm. We have pushed the climate system a long way beyond "normal" conditions, so it's no surprise the world is warming up and the sea level rising.
Q. What has been the most startling global and local change in climate over the past 12 months?
A. Arctic sea ice is melting at an amazing rate. US scientists monitoring the ice reported a few days ago it had set a new record low - a month ahead of the end of the melting season when the sea ice is at its lowest extent. This year is going to "annihilate" the old record (set in 2005), they said. The prospect of a North Pole free of ice in summer, until recently not expected to happen in this century, now looks as though it could happen in a few decades. In NZ we've seen extreme weather - floods in Northland and tornadoes in Taranaki. That could be a sign of what we can expect as the climate warms.
Q. Do you think the NZ Government is doing enough to prepare for climate change? What should we be doing?
A. The Government will be announcing a lot of policy over the next couple of months, so it's difficult to criticise without seeing what's proposed. I'd like to see a cross-party accord on climate policy, but that doesn't seem likely in the run-up to an election. What NZ does to cut its emissions will have no effect on global climate - we're too small to make any difference - but if we want to continue to trade with the rest of the world, we'll have to take emissions cuts seriously. At the same time, our exporters will have to ensure they are "climate friendly" if they want to do business in Europe and the rest of the world.
NEXT WEEK: Food labelling. Send your questions
