Regional Climate Change preparation , are we willing to take the hard steps?
Along with about 120 others, I attended the regional climate change forum today (3rd June), at Southern Cross University.
Most of the presentations were great, but not new - i.e. repeats of the significant impact of climate change in terms of temperature and rainfall, presented with some quite detailed models and figures. And predictions that with pessimistic scenarios show up to 5-6 degrees rise by 2050.
However some of the presentations - by Rous Water, and DIPNR left me worried at the preparedness and planning of our government officials.
Unfortunately, like the Peak Oil and David Suzuki talks recently, the day concluded only with a sense of urgency and importance and with very little discussion of solutions and actions, both in order to reduce the change, and in order to reduce the impact of the change.
Personally I'm a techno optimist, which means that I believe there are technical and administrative solutions that would allow us to reduce our emissions by the 50% or more needed. However I'm a politico-pessimist, which means that I think it highly unlikely that the powers-that-be in Washington, Sydney and Canberra will take actions on the scale needed.
Hopefully here in Byron we can start a conversation on what we can do to reduce our impact on climate and set a good example. We have a council that could potentially back such actions, although the reaction by so-called environmentalists to recent proposals for a wind turbine in the area do not bode well for a willingness to take action ourselves.
See the full report for me detail on the presentations and my worries generated by them.
(p.s. if any of the presenters are reading this, please email me the presentations or their URL's, and I'll post them for people to draw their own conclusions.)
Full Story
Along with about 120 others, I attended the regional climate change forum today (3rd June), at Southern Cross University.
Most of the presentations were great, but not new - i.e. repeats of the significant impact of climate change in terms of temperature and rainfall, presented with some quite detailed models and figures.
For those not familiar with the models, they are based on scenarios that presume a variety of political decisions that would lead to optimistically stabilizing at 450 ppm of Carbon in the atmosphere, and pessimistically an exponential rise to 950 ppm by 2050. The optimistic scenario requires cuts in carbon emissions of 40-60% and still leads to between 1.5 and 2.9 degrees rise in average temperatures. The pessimistic scenarios lead to from 5 to 6 degrees rise by 2050. Of course, it isn't as simple as that, warming will be much more pronounced inland and to the north, i.e. the areas which are already hot. Predictions of rainfall are less certain but are typically on the Far North coast around 1-2% reduction in rainfall per degree temperature rise, at a worst case depending on location there could be up to a 30% reduction in rainfall.
However, there was one presentation which really made me worry - Wayne Franklin of Rous Water presented his management plan for the future, and then outlined the potential impacts on their supply of global warming - reduced rainfall, earlier cutoff of access to sources etc. The worrying thing was that their graphs for future management didn't show these impacts, showing a flat availability from each of their sources over the next 20 years. Clearly Rous Water hasn't really internalised the planning for climate change, also their demand planning graphs show an ever increasing demand, based on population increase, i.e. an ineffectiveness of demand-management.
I would have a lot more faith in the future integrity of our water supply if I was seeing planning that took account of likely climate change, and based on investment in demand management rather than in trying to get more pipes into rivers that are going to be challenged for environmental flows anyway.
I guess its time to buy a rainwater tank, and rely on my own supply!
A contrast was Yahya Abawi from DPI in Southern Queensland who had been developing models for predicting water availability in Southern Queensland. He showed the consistency in predictions for temperature rises, but also the very wide variation between the predictions of rainfall. He made the most important comment of the day, i.e. that we should not be taking the average of the results, but should use the range of predictions as a warning that we need to plan for water availability that range from a small increase, to a 30% decrease.
Des Schroder from DIPNR gave a report that was in places strong, but in others worrying. The positive side was DIPNR's strategies to reduce emissions and reduce impacts - for example by creating jobs near homes and supporting public transit, and the BASIX standards requiring improved energy and water usage.
But there was a distinct lack of risk-management planning for even the moderately bad scenarios, probably for fear of politically unpopular decisions. For example DIPNR's predictions are based on the middle ground of the IPCC scientist's predictions of 0.5m sea-level rise - leading to the coastline receding on average 50m. Prudent planning would have been to work on the worse case - about 1.0m, or 100m coastline change.
Of course these predictions are from around 1999, and they have been superseded by credible predictions at this year's Exeter conference of climate change scientists. That conference predicted the likely melting of the Greenland ice-sheet (7 meters sea-level rise) and the West Antarctic ice-sheet (5 meters) i.e. a total of 12 meters and a coastline receding by over a kilometer on average. A sea-level rise of this amount would put all of Brunswick, and New Brighton and most of Byron underwater, and not just during storm surges.
Unfortunately DIPNR's presentation ignored the need to look at transport that takes account both of climate change, and of peak-oil. The NSW state government is still committed to supporting and expanding the trucking and highways industries despite their contribution to climate change, and the coming shortages of oil.
The other significant deficiency in DIPNR's planning is that there is no serious question of the assumption that our cities have to grow whether or not there our environment has the carrying capacity for it.
The variability issue was raised again by Zvi Hochman of CSIRO - "the high level of uncertainty in future climate changes suggest that we need more resilient agricultural systems - including Socio-economic and cultural/institutional structures) to cope with a broad range of possible changes. Enhanced resilience comes with various types of costs or overheads such as increasing enterprise diversity and moving away from systems that maximize efficiency of production at the cost of broader sustainability goals. Adaptation is not enough. To reduce risk for future generations we all need to take steps to minimize our contribution to climate change."
Unfortunately the models Zvi used didn't take into account the more outlying predictions of up to 6 degrees temperature rise, and as he pointed out, when questioned, this means we need to work from a precautionary principle.
Roger Tomlinson from Griffith University's Center for Coastal Management, had some good images showing how coastlines and river mouths move around, partly periodically from the SOI and IPO cycles - long-term periodic oscillations of the Pacific Ocean. Most importantly Roger showed how the IPO cycle may be counteracting the effects of global warming so that as the cycle reverses in the next few years predictions are for the highest erosion ever experienced, from the combined IPO induced and man-made sea-level rise.
Roger stressed the importance of dealing with the variability and complexity of the likely results and the only long-term response is likely to be a significant retreat.
Unfortunately, like the Peak Oil and David Suzuki talks recently, the day concluded only with a sense of urgency and importance and with very little discussion of solutions and actions, both in order to reduce the change, and in order to reduce the impact of the change.
Personally I'm a techno optimist, which means that I believe there are technical and administrative solutions that would allow us to reduce our emissions by the 50% or more needed. However I'm a politico-pessimist, which means that I think it highly unlikely that the powers-that-be in Washington, Sydney and Canberra will take actions on the scale needed.
Hopefully here in Byron we can start a conversation on what we can do to reduce our impact on climate and set a good example. We have a council that could potentially back such actions, although the reaction by so-called environmentalists to recent proposals for a wind turbine in the area do not bode well for a willingness to take action ourselves.
Posted by mitra at June 4, 2005 3:42 PM
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