Which Winston was that?
temperature adopted as the neverexceed target for the IPCC’s efforts to get the warming under control. (Nobody said publicly how the scientists arrived at that number, but it was because they thought that
+2degC was about where the feedbacks would start kicking in.)
The scale and trigger points of the feedbacks have finally been calculated, more or less, and the news is just as bad as the scientists feared. We have already passed the point where a return to the stable climate of the past
14,000 years is possible, and we are on course for Hothouse Earth.
The best we can do is try to stabilise the warming at or just below +2degC, and that will not be possible without major human interventions in the climate system. The Stabilised Earth is not a natural stopping place: staying there would require ‘‘deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, protection and enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, efforts to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, possibly, solar radiation management’’.
You will notice that geo-engineering (‘‘solar radiation management’’) is already part of the package, and that it will be down to human beings to manage the entire ecosystem to keep it stable. As Jim Lovelock, the creator of Earth System Science (Gaia), wrote 39 years ago, we may ‘‘wake up one day to find that (we have) the permanent lifelong job of planetary maintenance engineer.’’
I haven’t bothered to ask Jim if we are there yet. Of course we are. Jane Bowron’s commentary on August 3 that Winston Peters would have thought he had the upper hand over the opposition during his sixweek tenure made me wonder if she was talking about the same Peters I was listening to.
That Peters was only interviewed on a few occasions and on those occasions was cantankerous when asked questions that he wasn’t comfortable with and generally evaded questions by asking a question himself when they could possibly be incriminating.
I hardly think the Nats were shaking in their boots by a performance that was really a nonperformance, with him not being put under the spotlight other than on the talkback shows. Whilst the latest opinion polls have Simon Bridges slipping two points as preferred PM, National was ahead again of Labour.
And I think the Nats would much rather that statistic than a popular PM vote but poor party vote.
J Higgins, Hamilton