Storm warning

Keith Muir responds to Barry Brill's article, A Climate of Hope, in NZ Skeptic 108.

In his article A Climate of Hope, Barry Brill makes the following statement:

"It's pretty clear that the accumulated effect over the whole period until the 2.5°C level is reached (if ever) will be a positive experience."

This makes global warming sound rather innocuous, indeed, to be welcomed. A case of, buy shares in the makers of suntan cream and lie back and enjoy the heat. Sadly, it's not going to be like that and there is plenty of evidence to show that he is quite wrong.

As an aside, I am pleased though surprised to see that he appears to accept the reality of global warming, though not its likely impacts, while the body of which he is chairman, seems to take a quite different view. A brief look at their website will illustrate this clearly (www.climatescience.org.nz)

In evidence, I will first cite the very recent report from Sir Peter Gluckman, the Chief Science Advisor to the government. His report is titled New Zealand's changing climate and oceans: The impact of human activity and implications for the future (www.pmcsa.org.nz). It is brief and written in very measured terms. It recognises the many uncertainties in so complex an area, but is unequivocal in its view that anthropogenic global warming is real and will have major implications for this country.

Page 9 addresses the issue of climate impacts:

"While a change in the mean temperature of 1-2°C degrees may appear to be small, it is the change in the nature and pattern of New Zealand's climate extremes … that is likely to have a much more significant impact on New Zealanders and on the primary industries on which the country largely depends."

In the summary on page 19, the report says this:

"However, these marginal benefits are likely to be small compared to the adverse effects associated with climate change on society as a whole."

Let us look at this from a different angle, that of the insurance companies. Risk is their lifeblood. Their profitability, and indeed survival, depends on their ability to evaluate risks and price them accordingly. Munich Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, has compiled the world's largest database of natural disasters. Peter Hoppe, the head of their Geo Risks Research/Corporate Climate Centre said this:

"Our figures indicate a trend towards an increase in extreme weather events that can only be fully explained by climate change." (www.scientificamerican.com)

It is basic physics that the amount of water the atmosphere can hold is determined by its temperature. Thus higher temperatures equal more water vapour and this in turn means more rain-snow, but importantly, not uniformly. The following quote is taken from the National Geographic, September 2012:

"As moisture in the atmosphere has increased, rainfall has intensified. The amount of rain falling in intense downpours - the heaviest one per cent of rain events - has increased by nearly 20 percent during the past century in the US. 'You're getting more rain from a given storm now than you would have 30 or 40 years ago,' says Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Global warming, he says, has changed the odds for extreme weather".

I could bombard you with further quotes making essentially the same point, but let me give you a real life example of how global warming is affecting peoples' lives, right now. The island of Kutubdia, lies off Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal and it has halved in size over the past 20 years. Since 1991, six villages have been swamped by rising sea-levels and some 40,000 people have had to leave. There is no reliable sea-level data for Bangladesh, but sea surface temperatures have increased significantly. According to Sugata Hazra, head of oceanography at Kolkata's Jadavpur University, "There is a close correlation between the rate of sea level rise and the sea surface temperature"(www.the guardian.com). Forty thousand may seem like a large number, but if sea levels continue rising, as seems inevitable, that number will increase exponentially, with very great social and economic consequences.

I will finish with a brief look at the Philippines. According to an article in theGuardian in February this year, scientists are registering steadily rising sea levels round the Philippines and a falling water table. All this appears to increase the likelihood and incidence of extreme weather events. Mary Ann Lucille Sering, head of the government's Climate Change Commission, is in no doubt that her country faces a deepening crisis that it can ill afford. "Extreme weather is becoming more frequent, you could even call it the new normal," she said.

I would like to think that she will be proved wrong, but I fear she is right. As I was finishing this, I spotted an article in the Dominion Post with the headline: Storms 'fuel' more climate change. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute in Germany have published a paper in the science journal Nature, in which they argue that extreme weather events could themselves cause further climate change. Dr. Reichstein, one of the lead researchers said this:

"As extreme climate events reduce the amount of carbon that the terrestrial ecosystems absorb, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere therefore continues to increase, more extreme weather could result. It would be a self-reinforcing effect".

I rest my case.