Barry Brill: JK’s Surf Park and Cognitive Dissonance

John Kirwan’s surf park/data centre project is opposed by the Auckland Council’s Water Department, which says their best forecast for Auckland regional warming by 2100 is 3.8°c – a big number which would require massive new stormwater infrastructure.

This is an early manifestation of my recent warning that using the ultra-extreme scenario (ie RCP8.5H+) was a recipe for endless waste. 

I commented there that:

“Our Government assures us that it will achieve “Net Zero emissions by 2050” so that global temperatures can be held to a maximum of 1.5°C.… other OECD governments also say that the 1.5°C aspiration is credible and achievable. 

 

At the same time, our Government (through NIWA) urges Councils to assume global warming will not actually slow down but will likely quadruple to 4.4°C or more….

 

They can’t have it both ways. Cognitive dissonance is the unpleasant emotion that results from holding two contradictory beliefs or behaviours at the same time.”

The NIWA website continues to describe RCP8.5 (SSP 5-8.5) as “essentially the business as usual case” (BAU) – ie the case with the core assumption that the world’s emissions trajectory since 1990 (when there were no climate policies) will never materially change.

Is BAU the most likely future?

Of course, nobody really knows what the future global average surface temperature anomaly (GASTA) will be in 75 years time.

Confusingly, the estimated figures always relate to the 250-year period 1850-2100 – of which about 1.2°C of warming is already in the past and needs to be subtracted.

Here is the best available GASTA 2021 advice available to guide Auckland Council:

The “Business as Usual” (BAU) case is arguably the appropriate choice for a policymaker (such as Auckland Council) that fundamentally believes that the climate change scare has run its course and that there will be no further significant climate policy changes around the world.

 The BAU chooser must be convinced that the OECD countries’ existing promises of “Net Zero by 2050” will never happen in the real world and can safely be ignored.

A BAU supporter must also take with a grain of salt all the pledges (nationally-determined contributions or NDCs) that have already been made to the UN under the Paris Agreement. They are also red herrings.

Above all, the BAU advocate must believe that the climate policies that have been adopted by scores of countries over the past 20 years have all been useless and haven’t made a jot of difference to the emissions trajectory 

If Auckland Council has really chosen this hard-nosed future scenario, it must be very cynical indeed about both the effectiveness of existing world-wide climate policy and the chances that any new policies will ever be introduced in future.

Fair enough. I personally have some sympathy for this approach.  Such cynicism is easily justified.

But …. this raises huge questions about internal policy consistency. The Council’s draft Long-Term Plan assumes that future warming can/will be reduced, while its Healthy Water department is calling bullshit!  One of them must be wrong.

The wholly incoherent views of the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) are a classic case of cognitive dissonance:

•    they advise their Minister that the 1.5°C target remains feasible, while they expect Auckland to warm by 3.8°C;

•    they told Parliament (PQ43864) that 8.5 was the “current policies” scenario while they now accept NIWA’s view that it is the “business as usual” scenario;

•    they uphold the IPCC as the “gold standard” but totally ignore its advice that 8.5 “should not be presented as business as usual”;

•    they cite (but cherry-pick) the IEA and UN reports and only to arrive at mutually exclusive outcomes           

Outcomes for the “current policies” scenario

The UNFCCC at its COP26 in Dubai just last December (including the New Zealand delegation) accepted that the mid-range emission scenario, RCP4.5/SSP2-4.5 had a greater than 66% probability of occurrence. This was based on the UNEP “Gap Report” and the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2023.

Based on the 2023 climate policies in place in 2023 (the “current policies” scenario) the IEA forecasts future (ie additional) warming of 1.5°C (see Table) while NIWA/MfE claims it means 2.6° – an uplift of over 170%. That is a huge difference!

All of these figures are global averages, so roughly half of the 194 member countries of the UNFCCC can expect to experience future warming greater than 1.5°C while the other half will have lower warming. New Zealand, surrounded by thousands of kilometres of Pacific Ocean, will be in the lower half. As NIWA told the High Court in 2012, we can expect our future warming to be about 33% below the global average.

So, if were to apply the “most likely” forecast, based on the best available international advice, Auckland should expect 1850-2021 warming of about 1.6°C (2.7-0.9) as opposed to the MfE guidance of 3.8°C.   

An Auckland Council civil engineer designing a NIWA-driven wastewater pipe will need a budget more than twice twice as large as her counterparts elsewhere who accept the forecasts of the international agencies. Over time, there will be tens of thousands of such pipes, and the potential for waste and over-design quickly runs into billions of ratepayer dollars.

And that’s not all. As the LIMs for valuable coastal properties increasingly carry over-zealous caveats and restrictions, their values will inevitably plummet – and their previous generous contributions to the rates burden will then move to other ratepayers. Resource consents and building consents will dry up. 

Getting this right really matters. JK’s Surf Park should be seen as the canary in the coal mine.

The ultra extreme scenario

During 2014-19 the ‘Billionaires’ Scam” successfully spent millions to falsely position the RCP8.5 (now SSP5 - 8.5) scenario as being BAU.  That deception was totally destroyed back in 2020. Everybody has now read the Forbes Magazine exposé – with the apparent exception of NIWA.

The new IPCC chair has stated plainly that 8.5 is not a BAU scenario. The UN has disowned the scenario entirely. The IEA says neither of the high scenarios is now plausible.

The recent scientific literature makes clear that 8.5 is flat-out impossible – there just isn’t that much coal in the whole world! Nobody believes the planet’s population will pass 15 billion (and climbing) by 2100. Its extremely implausible that there will be no technological improvements over the next 75 years.

New Zealand’s own leading climate scientists (outside of NIWA) have not been slow to share their opinions:

Professor Dave Frame simply says: “RCP8.5 is a scenario that nobody really believes in”.

Dr Kevin Trenberth (who has long been a consultant to NIWA) comments here that:  "Many climate models have been used to make projections and all have issues and uncertainties. There is no sound continuous research in New Zealand, including in NIWA, to improve this situation". 

Can anybody name an authoritative NZ ex-NIWA scientist who is prepared to publicly debate Frame and Trenberth (both of whom have been IPCC WG1 lead authors)? 

Planning Law

It is important to emphasise that this is not an area where Councillors or bureaucrats are free to follow their own personal ideological preferences.

As planning consultant Katherine Moody pointed out in her excellent article last week:

Our national statute, the RMA and its secondary legislation, the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement (NZCPS) require that regulators assess “the likely effects of climate change on the region or district” (NZCPS, Policy 24), not the unlikely ones" – and – "In managing hazards in developed areas under the statute, regulators are required to take account of “the expected effects of climate change” (NZCPS, Policy 27), not the worst-case, “implausible” ones".

 

The legal obligation to use the "likely" or “expected" outcome, as opposed to the "very worst case scenario”, was confirmed by the High Court in the Kapiti Council case over a decade ago. That is settled law.

The Government itself has recently warned Councils that picking extreme climate scenarios in the conduct of regulatory decision-making “risks lawsuits by requiring developers to design and build to overly stringent climate warming models”.

But so long as Climate Change Minister Simon Watts makes no effort to rein in his bloated and ideology-driven Ministry, we will have confused and litigation-shy local authorities gold-plating every item of new infrastructure.

Further, as Ms Moody points out: “The insurance industry is having a field day increasing risk premiums for homeowners”.

For NIWA to resurrect the Billionaires’ Scam in 2023 is nothing short of “scientific and policy malpractice”.

Ms Moody discloses: “For years, I have observed a small group of local experts pushing the worst-case emission scenario, RCP8.5 from the IPCC, on businesses and home owners across New Zealand.” 

Who are these faceless “experts”? 

Why are they doing this? 

Has political science finally obliterated objective and credible physical science?

Barry Brill OBE JP LL.M(Hons) M.ComLaw is a former MP and Minister of Energy, Petrocorp director, and chair of the Gas Council, Power NZ, ESANZ, and EMCO. He is presently the Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.