Nick Smith's 'moderate' message on climate change
Nelson MP Nick Smith says he is focused on climate change, but has told people to "beware of rhetoric getting ahead of the reality". Smith's annual speech given on Wednesday was a wide-ranging one, including as his "top priority" getting a new hospital for Nelson, followed by improved transport via the Southern Link and education goals like retaining regional control of NMIT. However, climate change was the main topic of the day, and Smith was mostly focused on a "moderate" message. "Climate change is a real problem, but I am not in the apocalypse camp." READ MORE: * James Renwick, climate detective * Ups and downs of rising seas in a shaky nation * Climate change and climate sceptics He said that greenhouse gas emissions had over the past 100 years increased global temperatures by 0.7 degrees and increased sea levels by 19cm, but "these numbers are not particularly scary". "The bigger concern is what will occur in future, on which there is some uncertainty ... New Zealand needs to deliver on its Paris commitment of a 30 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, and that this is going to be a big ask," he said. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has calculated that human-induced warming reached between 0.8 and 1.2 degrees higher than pre-industrial temperatures in 2017, and will likely reach 1.5 degrees higher between 2030 and 2052 if no intervention is made. Despite his "moderate" approach, Smith said New Zealand's politics were largely aligned on climate change, including the dedication to a 30 per cent reduction in emissions. "There are now no parties in Parliament seriously questioning the climate change science. The Government and National are now agreed on New Zealand's minus 30 by 2030 target," he said. "There will be a lot of hot air through this election year on climate change, but if you peel back the rhetoric, there is much common ground." Climate Change Commission Committee member and climate scientist Victoria University Professor James Renwick said it was "not true" that the temperature had only raised by 0.7 degrees in 100 years, and the global average rise in temperature was now over one degree, at about 1.1 degrees. He also said the important context for the change was how much even an apparently small change in global temperature could make. "A whole degree of warming over that period of time is very large. The difference between the sort of weather we've got now and the depths of the last ice-age is only about 5 or 6 degrees globally. So one degree of warming is about a sixth of the difference between ice-age and not-ice-age; it's a huge number." He said temperatures now were "the warmest they've been for well over a thousand years". Sea level as well, which rises both because glacial melt-water increased the amounts of water in the ocean and because warm water takes up more space than cold water, was already concerning according to Renwick. The IPCC found that between 1901 and 2010, the global sea level did rise by 19cm at a mean rate of 1.7mm per year. However, the rate was "very likely higher" between the years 1993 and 2010 than the mean, at 3.2mm per year. In other words: the sea level has risen, is continuing to rise, and is rising faster than it was before. "One hundred years ago, global sea levels were going up at about 1mm per year, and now they're going up by somewhere between 3.5 and 4mm per year, so there's been at least a tripling of the rate of rise and that's just going to keep going up," Renwick said. Renwick said the sea-level rise of 19cm had "already multiplied coastal hazards by a factor of nine", and predicted increases in sea level would increase that by "at least a factor of 27 or 30 in the next 30-40 years". "These are real, concerning numbers, it's not innocuous at all."