Climate Change and the Actual Challenge to This New Government

Written By: - Date published: 1:49 pm, October 30th, 2017 - 10 comments
Categories: climate change, Environment, ETS, global warming, sustainability - Tags:

The recent Edgecumbe floods sent raw sewage floating through the streets, with some 500 houses still unliveable six months later. With an asset value of over $20 billion, New Zealand’s stormwater and wastewater systems were often not designed for the challenges climate change will bring, including sea level rise and changes in rainfall frequency and intensity. A new report from the Deep South National Science Challenge highlights the infrastructure issues and that adaptation could require significant and expensive changes to stormwater and wastewater networks.

I can’t seem to find a link to the full report, only the media release, but it looks like the speed of change is hitting hard here.

Quite naturally, the insurance Council of New Zealand welcomes the report.

Water New Zealand also agree.

And the report is being picked up in the media.

Another crisis that has been ignored for years that this GOvernment is going to have to get on top of, quickly.

10 comments on “Climate Change and the Actual Challenge to This New Government ”

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  1. RedLogix 1
    30 October 2017 at 3:44 pm

    Having worked in this sector for almost a decade I’ve always had a sense this would be a real sleeper issue. At last we see some numbers and scale put on it.

    And yes it’s one of those boring ‘rates, roads and rubbish’ issues that no-one gets outraged about … until the turds start floating in the front door.

    PS. The links to the reports are at the bottom of the media release article

    • Ad 1.1
      30 October 2017 at 4:22 pm

      Thanks – for some reason they just didn’t seem to work at the time.

      No doubt this kind of work is going to keep the likes of you and I in biscuits for a very, very long time.

  2. Matthew Whitehead 2
    30 October 2017 at 5:30 pm

    Shaw was saying on Twitter that he’s already reading up on it, which was a bit of a culture shock. Used to the govt being like “oh, yeah, that, no it’s not important.” and brushing it off. I really look forward to hearing his plans on it. It’s gonna be a blast watching them actually tackle these issues seriously.

  3. patricia bremner 3
    30 October 2017 at 10:14 pm

    Someone posted a comment saying they hoped the Government would listen as well as talk.

    Not only are they accepting feedback they are in a co-operative problem solving mode.

  4. patricia bremner 4
    30 October 2017 at 10:17 pm

    Someone posted a comment saying they hoped the Government would listen as well as talk.

    Not only are they accepting feedback they are in a co-operative problem solving mode.

  5. cleangreen 5
    30 October 2017 at 10:18 pm

    Yes and transport is a large emitter of CO2 as you will note.

    More use of raill is advised so why are they closing rail down all over the country????

    The Gisborne Napier rail and south to Palmerston is not being use either, so trucks are carrying all freight now which is the worst dirtiest olluter to use as it is ten times the emitter of greenhouse emissions than rail.

    Our letter to the author, James Renwick,

    24th October 2017.

    James Renwick,
    Professor School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences.
    BSc (Hons), Mathematics, Canterbury, (1977); MSc, Statistics,
    Victoria University of Wellington.

    Dear James,

    Such a pleasure to review your report on Climate change and NZ emissions of emissions it is very sadly needed to be highlighted today.
    http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018618970

    Of special interest to our committee is the large increase of freight truck use we are monitoring in HB/Gisborne regions NZ average of 6% annually is now at 12% in Gisborne/HB for freight movements of 36% of NZ exports of our products from both east coast provinces.

    I commend your report and will advance this document as signalling a return of freight back to rail in our regions as Hon’ Winston Peters has for several years attended meetings in both East coast provinces has pledged in Government to bring back our mothballed rail system into service again which will have an extremely useful method of helping to reduce our climate change emissions again.

    I would like to converse with you in the weeks ahead, and offer our study reports to you as we have conducted them often in collusion with other agencies and may be very useful for your continuing studies also.

    Warmest regards,

  6. Sparky 6
    30 October 2017 at 11:54 pm

    Oh who cares about floods and climate change. Sign the TPP11 and buy a row boat. She’ll be right…….

    • Richard Christie 6.1
      31 October 2017 at 12:19 am

      Sign the TPP11

      Exactly, true to form it looks like the invertebrate Labour party would sell the nation down the creek to avoid an argument or being scolded by Hosking.

  7. cleangreen 7
    31 October 2017 at 11:56 am

    Our letter sent today, but will they listen?????

    Sparky you have rocks in your head;

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/carbon-dioxide-levels-grew-record-pace-2016-u-100129353.html

    The UN report released today says we face a 3 percent temperature rise and a 10 to 20ft sea rise.

    I already have a 12ft boat, so that wont save us, as we need to go up to live on the hills now don’t we?????

    Public COMMUNITY letter

    TO;
    PM Hon’ Jacinda Ardern. Prime Minister of NZ.
    MP Hon’ Winston Peters. Deputy PM. Minister of SOE
    MP Hon’ James Shaw. Climate Change Minister. (CCM)
    Dear Ministers,
    31st October. 2017.

    Jacinda Ardern said “Climate change is the Nuclear free event of our generation”

    We have sent you all many reasons to use rail rather than trucks & curb our use of trucks to move freight around NZ, and our argument has been that using trucks for freight distribution is causing an increase our levels of CO2 ‘climate change gases.’

    Now that you are aware of the direct increase of CO2 levels that has been linked to using trucks last week by a report by Dr James Renwick, Professor of Physical Geography, School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences Victoria University, “Warnings over NZ’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions”
    http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018618970/warnings-over-nz-s-contribution-to-greenhouse-gas-emissions
    Quote; “due to people burning more fossil fuels for electricity generation, heat, transport, manufacturing and construction we have the fifth-highest level of emissions per person of the 35 countries in the OECD”

    Now this UN report, released today, our need for rail is more urgent than before due to this new UN report released today. (see below)

    Please as requested before, Restore our HB/Gisborne rail freight/passenger services.
    Warmest regards,
    ====================================================================

    Subject: Carbon dioxide levels grew at record pace in 2016, U.N. says potentially fuelling a 20-metre rise in sea levels and adding 3 degrees to temperatures, https://www.yahoo.com/news/carbon-dioxide-levels-grew-record-pace-2016-u-100129353.html

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/carbon-dioxide-levels-grew-record-pace-2016-u-100129353.html

    Carbon dioxide levels grew at record pace in 2016, U.N. says

    By Tom Miles
    ReutersOctober 30, 2017

    GENEVA (Reuters) – The amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere grew at record rate in 2016 to a level not seen for millions of years, potentially fuelling a 20-metre rise in sea levels and adding 3 degrees to temperatures, the United Nations said on Monday.
    Related SearchesCarbon DioxideWhat Is Carbon DioxideCo2 LevelsCarbon Dioxide Levels In BloodCarbon Dioxide Poisoning
    Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main man-made greenhouse gas, hit 403.3 parts per million (ppm), up from 400.0 in 2015, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said in its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.
    That growth rate was 50 percent faster than the average over the past decade, driving CO2 levels 45 percent above pre-industrial levels and further outside the range of 180-280 ppm seen in recent cycles of ice ages and warmer periods.
    “Today’s CO2 concentration of ~400 ppm exceeds the natural variability seen over hundreds of thousands of years,” the WMO bulletin said.
    The latest data adds to the urgency of a meeting in Bonn next month, when environment ministers from around the world will work on guidelines for the Paris climate accord backed by 195 countries in 2015.
    The agreement is already under pressure because U.S. President Donald Trump has said he plans to pull the United States out of the deal, which seeks to limit the rise in temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.
    Human CO2 emissions from sources such as coal, oil, cement and deforestation reached a record in 2016, and the El Niño weather pattern gave CO2 levels a further boost, the WMO said.
    As far as scientists can tell, the world has never experienced a rise in carbon dioxide like that of recent decades, which has happened 100 times faster than when the world was emerging from the last ice age.
    Scientists know prehistoric levels from tiny air bubbles found in ancient Antarctic ice cores, and they can derive even older data from fossils and chemicals trapped in sediment.
    The last time carbon dioxide levels reached 400 ppm was 3-5 million years ago, in the mid-Pliocene era.
    “During that period, global mean surface temperatures were 2–3°C warmer than today, ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica melted and even parts of East Antarctica’s ice retreated, causing the sea level to rise 10–20 m higher than that today,” the WMO bulletin said.
    Since 1990, the global warming effect of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases has risen by 40 percent. The two other main gases – methane and nitrous oxide – also grew to record concentrations last year, although at a slower rate of increase than carbon dioxide.
    (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

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