A 2024 report from Columbia University titled ‘Key Ocean Current Contains a Warning on Climate ‘by Kevin Krajick details a massive research project that took 40 scientists on a research ship in the Southern Ocean over five years, drilling the seabed for sediment cores and the research has taken another four years to publish so it is a massive undertaking.
The research team of 40 scientists used the Joides Resolution research vessel and they took sediment cores from seven locations in remote parts of the Southern ocean. The cores were 150 to 200 metres deep, and the record goes back about 5.3 million years. The core samples were examined carefully and showed that with a strong ocean current there were more large items of debris deposited and in a slow current smaller pieces were found as they could settle in the slower water speed. In this way they could correlate with other data such as the Andril project that collected 1250 metres of sediment cores with records that went back went back 20 million years. The Andril project was looking to see when the ice repeatedly disappeared from the Ross ice shelf which is all part of the same scenario.
The Southern Ocean is the biggest atmospheric and ocean system on the planet and yet, because of its remoteness and extreme conditions relatively little is known about it, so that if we are to get a proper handle on climate change, we need to understand the mechanism of the ocean and its relationship with Antarctica.
The Antarctica Circumpolar Current (ACC) travels uninterrupted around the world, from West to East (Left to right looking at it from the South pole using Google Earth) , driven by the powerful winds that blow constantly and the current reaches right to the bottom of the ocean. This is a massive current of water as it is mostly 3000 kilometres wide and 3 to 4 kilometres deep and moving at 4 kilometres an hour making it the biggest driver of the global conveyor.
​The wind driving the current has increased by 40% over the last 40 years but so far this has not resulted in an increase in speed of the ocean current as it takes a lot to move such a vast body of water, but it has increased swirls and eddies.
What the research shows is that as the planet warms, the speed of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current speeds up and as it cools the ACC slows down. When combined with other research, speeding up of the current coincides with the loss of the Antarctic ice shelves, which are melted from below by warm water being brought up from the deep by the increased wind and currents.
Looking at Antarctica on Google Earth it is apparent that the Weddel Sea ice shelf is protected by being downstream of the West Antacrtica peninsular, while the Ross ice shelf is more exposed and will suffer melting sooner, which is exactly what is happening.

James Hansen of Columbia University is probably the leading scientist who alerted the world to climate change. He initiated a NASA project to investigate the atmosphere of Venus but when the satellite was on its way he realised that we did not know enough about the climate of our own planet so he resigned from the project and started studying Earths global warming and has been publishing papers for thirty years.
His latest paper released on 14/06/2023  http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/ElNino2023.14June2023.pdf discusses the coming El Nino and the current conditions that combine to make it very concerning. Much of Hansen’s work is on the biosphere and the thermal balance that measures how much heat from the sun is captured to create global warming.
The Earths atmosphere is a big and complicated subject but there are certain events that alter the atmosphere and can be measured and one of these was the Pinatubo volcano that erupted in 1991 the second-largest eruption of the 20th century. The ash plume height reaching more than 40 km (28 mi) high and ejecting more than 10 km3 of magma and the ash plume, plus the sulphur, cooled the planet by a global decrease of about 0.4 °C (0.7 °F).
The ash and sulphur in the atmosphere reflect the suns heat back out into space and cool the planet counteracting the CO2 that is warming the planet. The ash and sulphur are described as aerosols and they are not the only ones that help cool the planet. Coal fired power stations, dust from farming, industrial activity and jet planes are also contributors and as we switch to cleaner forms of energy, we reduce their cooling effect and it is this that Hansen describes as a Faustian bargain, and he suggests that a significant payment in accelerated global warming is now coming due.
Although we are most concerned about the atmosphere, 90% of the heat from the sun is absorbed into the oceans and here we have a fleet of 3500 Argo floats which are spread around the world’s seas and measure temperature and salinity of the top layer of the sea. They have a pattern of sinking one kilometre and stay there for ten days to get an idea of current flow and then they dive to two kilometres before coming to the surface to send the data to a satellite in space and then relayed to the Argo project.
Measuring the combined results of the Argo float from 2005 to2015 shows an energy imbalance for the planet of +0.71C watts per sq. mt but this has risen to +1.18C wattspsqm in the last decade but +1.33C Wpsqmin the last four years.
Hansen admits that there are many complex forces at play but the underlying figures show that we are in a very bad position with global warming and if we get a strong El Nino it may very well be much worse than predicted and go well beyond the 1.5C forecast.

A recent report in Nature Communications entitled ‘Observationally-constrained projections of an ice-free Arctic’ shows that even if we manage to curb our burning of fossil fuels to a moderate level we will still have an ice free Arctic ocean as early 2030 and almost certainly within the subsequent twenty years, to 2050. This is considerably earlier than the IPCC report which were estimating somewhere between 2080 and 2100.
The IPCC reports are the gold standard on climate research but their failure is that the report is made from almost every country on the planet and many of the countries have big oil and coal industries including the USA, Australia and Russia and they will not allow a report that impacts their industries adversely.
Being close to the heavily populated areas in the northern hemisphere the Arctic is one of the most comprehensively monitored regions on the planet and we have good satellite observations for some forty years. Climate models are becoming increasingly accurate and the Korean researchers combined the observations from several satellites and used three different models and no doubt a very powerful computer to crunch the data to get a series of results and they all came out with essentially similar results.
A Blue Ocean event in the Arctic would be a massive milestone to the planets climate as we have already lost 40% of the sea ice and it is influencing the weather of the USA, Europe and Asia by changing the polar vortex and bringing extremes of weather. As the ice disappears the dark blue ocean absorbs the heat from the sun and raises the temperature of the region.
The atmosphere to the top of the troposphere is higher at the equator than it is at the poles because the air is warmer at the equator and consequently thinner and to get a barometric pressure of 1000 millibars you need a higher amount of air than you do at the cooler poles.
In the stratosphere air flows from a high point at the equator towards the lower level at the poles and because of the spin of the planet the upper winds flow from the west to the east in a circular ring at 60 to 80 degrees of latitude in both north and south hemispheres.
If there is a good differential of temperature the Vortex flows in a steady ring but as the poles warm faster the differential gets smaller and the Vortex slows down and starts to wonder in big loops. It can also stall so that there is no progression of weather. The problem here is that if you have a rainy wet event it can stay for days or weeks and cause a serious flood. An extended dry period will become a serious drought and cause massive bush fires that burns thousands of acres of land.
These events are already happening increasingly more frequently with only a 40% loss of ice and we don’t want a milestone event like a Blue Ocean. 

The recent flood in Nelson and the other floods on the West coast illustrate how our weather has changed due to climate change and yet we have only increased the temperature by 1.1C whereas we are expecting 1.5C or even 2C within fifty years.
With the benefit of apps which show the weather pattern for the whole of the West Pacific it is possible to get a good overview of the what caused the flooding on the West coast of the South Island.
The warm, moisture laden weather originated near the equator and came in a stream down to New Zealand. We have had many tropical storms or cyclones come down from that region and we have been very lucky that most of them miss us but, of course this last event hit Nelson and had devastating results.
Using the website  https://earth.nullschool.net/ it is possible to see the satellite information for the whole world in real-time and get an overview of what is happening.
This last storm came down in a narrow line and missed Northland and Auckland by about four hundred kilometres but what if it had hit Auckland which has a population of 1.3 million people?
A quick look at Auckland Councils flood mapping https://geomapspublic.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/viewer/index.html  which is similar to our FNDC flood maps shows that there is an alarming amount of infrastructure, South of the bridge that is susceptible to flooding including Auckland airport, motorways and housing. Spending a bit of time looking at the flood maps with overlays that include flood prone areas, flood plains and overland flow paths I would suggest that thousands of houses will be flooded and this is not sea level rise, which is pretty bad, but rainfall.
The reason Auckland is so important to us is that it is one third of our economy and if it is incapacitated, we all suffer economically.
Damaging floods vary considerably from area to area so that Nelson has devastating floods with 271nn while Kerikeri had 209mm with minimal damage in the same period. This is because Kerikeri is accustomed to heavier rain storms, it is hilly and drains quickly and a major factor in flooding is the rate at which the rain falls.
My website http://climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/   explains how the rate at which rainfall causes floods but if Kerikeri floods at a rate of 25mm and hour I suspect that Auckland would flood at only 15mm an hour because it is so flat and there is nowhere for the water to drain away quickly.
The main point is that we can’t rely on what has happened in the past to predict the future but must build and protect for what is likely to come and, as we are finding, it is becoming very urgent and very expensive if we do nothing.
In the upcoming Mayoral elections, the contenders are talking about making millions from developing the waterfront but nobody is looking at the risks the city is facing. 
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​COP stands for the Conference of Parties which is a United Nations organised project to bring the world’s countries together and find a global consensus into solving the problems of climate change. The science shows us, and the worlds countries agree, we are heading towards a massive destruction of our civilisation unless we can stop burning coal, oil and gas and get our energy from greenhouse gas-free sources.
We have now had 27 meetings since the first in 1995 and are beginning to get some recognition that the problem is real and that it is cheaper to fix the problem than have to pay for the damage from the problems we are causing.
The problem is that the richer, CO2 production countries, such as the USA, Canada, Australia, Russia and the middle eastern countries send teams of lawyers and politicians to defend the money these countries make from the sale of fossil fuel products and these are also among the richer countries that donate money to the poorer countries that are going to suffer huge problems.
The COP27 meeting that has just concluded, managed to agree to provide a fund that would help the nations most likely to be affected by climate change and these would be, typically, the Pacific Island nations that are going to be flooded by sea level rise or the floods in Pakistan and Bangladesh. This is the first time that the consequences of burning fossil fuels and producing CO2 has been recognised as a serious danger so that, despite my pessimism, the worlds countries have made a common agreement to acknowledge the problem and signed a declaration to do something.
COP27 had a massive participation by the oil and coal lobbyists, which is where the abundance of jet planes delivering executives came from, and it was reported that their number exceeded those from the ten smallest nations. There are powerful forces at work and we were lucky that Biden was the President of the USA, that Russia was disgraced by the Ukraine invasion and Australia has a new government.
This type of negotiation is a slow and painful business but the UN is the only way to get the 193 recognised countries in the world to work together for a common good. The internet has made the world a more connected place and, despite the explosion in alternative facts, a science-based approach prevails. The USA pulled out under Trump but the people of the USA threw him out and a similar fate befell the Liberal government of Australia.
Our form of democracy is not adopted by China but the government has to deliver benefits to the people or they will rise up, just as Mao did, and the results can be catastrophic to the leaders. Killing citizens as Iran and Myanmar do to keep in power is not an option against 1.3 billion people so a form of democracy exists even in China. 

Recent research by NASA, published in Nature, Climate change, shows that insects will decline by 65% over the next 50 to 100 years if the temperature continues to rise as forecast. The scientists built a model based on what is known about the climate and then introduced insects that has actual research on their behaviour under increasing temperature conditions.
Many insects are in decline due to the destruction of their habitat, such as frogs disappearing due to wetlands being drained, but there is also research that shows a decline where the habitat is unchanged. An example would be some Monarch butterflies who live at higher altitude where their habitat was intact and yet their population still declined as the temperature increased.
At typical scenario would be that prolonged exposure to temperatures outside the creature’s critical thermal maximum would increase deaths and push their numbers below replacement rate leading to a steady decline.
Humans are warm blooded mammals and can survive in a wide range of temperatures by adjusting diet or habitat. Insects are cold blooded and, largely do not have the luxury of travel or the ability to change diet.
There are already many studies showing a serious decline in insect numbers but most research is short term and does not have the luxury of going back 50 years or more and insects are not a glamourous subject like lions or polar bears so funding for research is scarce. It is also not helped that we spend most of our time trying to kill insects in agriculture and in the home which makes the concept of protecting insects a difficult thing to grasp.
However, insects are vital to out survival as they pollinate our crops and without them our farming of crops for food would not be possible. Living in a horticultural region we are already familiar with the practice of introducing bee hives to a kiwi fruit orchards to pollinate the fruit flowers but if we had to do it to fields of wheat the immense scale would make it impossible.
Of the 550 gigatons of biomass on Earth most are plants and bacteria, animals make up about 2 gigatons, with insects comprising half of that and fish taking up another 0.7 gigatons. Everything else, including mammals, birds, nematodes and mollusks are roughly 0.3 gigatons, with humans weighing in at 0.06 gigatons.
While humans are statistically a tiny part of the planet’s biomass, there are 8 billion of us and we are rabid devourers of the planets resources and have a profound effect on the environment by draining wetlands, keeping vast herds of animals for food, shifting millions of tonnes of rock and soil for mining, agriculture, roads and buildings. Most importantly we have already raised the temperature of the planet 1.1 C and with an additional 1.4 C or more to come.
The UN, COP27 meeting in Egypt is supposed to solve this problem but it looks very doubtful.  
 

An epoch is a period where geological evidence of activity on the planet can be clearly seen in the layers of rocks. To put time into context the previous geological period was the Pleistocene epoch which lasted from 2.5 million to 12,000 years and was noted for its succession of ice ages and warm periods which cycle every 125,000 years. During the warm periods it was roughly the same temperature as today and 5C colder in the more common ice ages and the sea level would have ranged over 125 metres as water was locked up in ice or melted back into the oceans. CO2 levels ranged from 180 parts per million in an ice age to 280 ppm in a warm period. Evidence of this activity is clearly shown in rock and silt samples.
The Holocene epoch about 12,000 years ago during which the temperature has not varied more than 1 degree centigrade, CO2 remained at 280 ppm and sea levels have been very stable. It was during this period of stable temperature that humans flourished and spread further around the world and we have recorded history for most of it confirmed by archaeological digs.
Humans have always burnt the bush to regenerate plant growth and to make space for hunting and gardens and as this timing coincided with the Holocene epoch, I have always considered that the Anthropocene epoch commenced 12,000 years ago and that the two were the same. If it walks like a duck, it swims like a duck and it quacks like a duck then it’s a bloody duck. But apparently that’s not the case.
In order for the Anthropocene to be considered as a separate epoch there needs to be evidence in the layers of soil which can be clearly seen in thousands of years’ time. The whole process has to have evidence presented to a geological committee of peers and the evidence carefully considered before a decision is made.
Getting facts together indicates a start time of 1950 (when I was 10 years old) and this is because that was when modern human activity really took off. This is when the population expanded, water use and fertiliser use increased, ozone depletion started, there was an increase in floods, a big increase in paper production and car numbers, international tourism started and loss of the rain forests.
This activity is clearly shown with radiation dust from atomic bomb testing in the 1950’s, evidence is also in ice core samples with layers of carbon each year from burning coal and oil, evidence is in the sediment of ponds showing an increased number of floods and in the ocean floor with a layer of plastic.
Our activity is clearly shown in the samples taken from sites all round the world and we have changed the planet in ways that could not be anticipated when I was a boy and we really are in the Anthropocene epoch. 

A report on research by scientists in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Porto in Portugal drew some interesting conclusions about where climate change is heading.
The problem starts with the old story about a butterfly’s wings fluttering in the Amazon can affect the weather a continent away which is of course an exaggeration but to a degree that is what happens.
Mathematicians are constantly working with weather forecasters to develop computer models which take what is known about atmospherics and applies it to a detailed weather map complete with atmosphere pressure gradients and fronts. In its simplest form this would give a forecast for two or three days ahead but farmers, fishermen and many other industries and people are looking for longer periods.
If the old forecast used detailed information in squares of the earth surface which are 100 kilometres on each side, then to achieve a longer range forecast more information is needed and by the use of satellites, weather buoys, aircraft, ships and automatic weather stations forecasters are able to get squares down to one kilometre on each side. This is 10,000 times as much information and with all the information and calculations it requires some of the biggest computers on the planet.
Even this is not sufficient because there are slightly different ways of calculating weather which might give different emphasis to pressure, or clouds or wind strength or the upper atmosphere and so the forecasters might run fifty or a hundred different models to see what the differences are. If thirty say a different outcome is expected then that can be taken into account and a warning given.
If more information is available, say down to 250 meters on each side of the square, as it might over land where there are a lot of stations, then fuzzy logic can be applied. This is when the extra information taken into consideration in the main program but it becomes so vast that this entails leaving some of the information out so that fuzzy logic fills in the gaps.
Weather forecasts are not the same as climate change predictions but it does entail vast amounts of information being applied to known laws of physics and chemistry and what has happened in the past and then run foreword into the future and this gives us a fairly good idea of the future.
What the Porto scientists did was used was used phase transitions which is where a material, such as water behaves in a certain way when as a liquid but behaves differently when it becomes a gas after evaporation.
When this is applied to climate change the world is predictable to a certain point, like an increase of 3C, but then it swings violently and chaotically into severe storms or drought, and then returns to near normal for a while.
These swings are triggered by tipping points and when they are exceeded nothing is predictable again and the climate performs in a chaotic pattern which is outside our forecasting and comprehension. 

​Back in the 1990’s there was a lot of discussion about Peal Oil and how we would manage without our main supply of energy. Peak oil was supposed to happen in about the year 2000 and we waited for the crash but it never happened, or did it?
Conventual, easy to extract, cheap oil did diminish almost everywhere, except the Saudi reserves and we are not even sure about that, and for many years around 2010 we were burning oil at a higher rate than we discovered new sources but two things happened that hid the problems. These were the discovery of fracking practices in the USA which enabled the extraction of shale oil and propelled the USA into, once again, the biggest producer in the world, and the abundance and increasing use of gas.
A new book ‘Disruption. Hard Times in the 21st Century’ by Prof Helen Thompson of Cambridge University examines how the three pillars of Energy, Economics and Democracy are all intertwined and shape our macro world.
We all know that oil is a finite resource and we must run out eventually but because there are such huge finances involved in the production of oil and the massive economic and political consequence of every country that flow around it, that it is difficult to get real facts.
Russia produces about 14% of the worlds oil and gas supplies and supplies much of Europe’s supply of gas through pipelines that go through Ukraine but Germany and Russia have been building new pipes that go through the Baltic to reach Germany. The invasion of Ukraine has stopped that and now Europe realises that Russia is and unreliable trading partner and has declared policies that speed up the development of renewable energy and nuclear to reduce its dependence on Russia. This also brings forward the conversion to an electric economy which was bound to happen eventually anyway.
While all this happens the oil and coal industries, who have been a huge part of the worlds economy for a hundred years, are now having to relinquish this power to the new renewable energy companies which are much more scattered and located in each country independently.
New Zealand is typical of this shift in energy with an abundance of solar, wind, geothermal and hydro much of which is already in production. Rio Tinto at Tiwai point in Gore use 13% of our electricity production and get it really cheaply by threatening to leave but it might be better to let them go and use the electricity to start a hydrogen plant which we can then, either, use the hydrogen or export it and give the workers new employment.
This whole transition is going to be very disruptive as the power base of oil producing countries diminishes and new countries arise. The oil companies are not going to go quietly and will use their political clout to disrupt our democracy. This is not over by a long way.

Back in the 1990’s there was a lot of discussion about Peal Oil and how we would manage without our main supply of energy. Peak oil was supposed to happen in about the year 2000 and we waited for the crash but it never happened, or did it?
Conventual, easy to extract, cheap oil did diminish almost everywhere, except the Saudi reserves and we are not even sure about that, and for many years around 2010 we were burning oil at a higher rate than we discovered new sources but two things happened that hid the problems. These were the discovery of fracking practices in the USA which enabled the extraction of shale oil and propelled the USA into, once again, the biggest producer in the world, and the abundance and increasing use of gas.
A new book ‘Disruption. Hard Times in the 21st Century’ by Prof Helen Thompson of Cambridge University examines how the three pillars of Energy, Economics and Democracy are all intertwined and shape our macro world.
We all know that oil is a finite resource and we must run out eventually but because there are such huge finances involved in the production of oil and the massive economic and political consequence of every country that flow around it, that it is difficult to get real facts.
Russia produces about 14% of the worlds oil and gas supplies and supplies much of Europe’s supply of gas through pipelines that go through Ukraine but Germany and Russia have been building new pipes that go through the Baltic to reach Germany. The invasion of Ukraine has stopped that and now Europe realises that Russia is and unreliable trading partner and has declared policies that speed up the development of renewable energy and nuclear to reduce its dependence on Russia. This also brings forward the conversion to an electric economy which was bound to happen eventually anyway.
While all this happens the oil and coal industries, who have been a huge part of the worlds economy for a hundred years, are now having to relinquish this power to the new renewable energy companies which are much more scattered and located in each country independently.
New Zealand is typical of this shift in energy with an abundance of solar, wind, geothermal and hydro much of which is already in production. Rio Tinto at Tiwai point in Gore use 13% of our electricity production and get it really cheaply by threatening to leave but it might be better to let them go and use the electricity to start a hydrogen plant which we can then, either, use the hydrogen or export it and give the workers new employment.
This whole transition is going to be very disruptive as the power base of oil producing countries diminishes and new countries arise. The oil companies are not going to go quietly and will use their political clout to disrupt our democracy. This is not over by a long way.

​​In 1998 a mathematics graduate, Irakli Loladze, was in a biology laboratory at Arizona State University when he observed an experiment where a test tube of algae, which are the very base of the food chain and are fed upon by zooplankton, was exposed to extra light. This stimulated the growth of the algae and the zooplankton in the experiment thrived and multiplied on the new algae growth but after a while the zooplankton started to struggle and would not thrive.
This was the start of a puzzle that took years to gain interest for research but which eventually led to a very disturbing conclusion finally published in Nature entitled ‘Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition’.
The conclusion of the research was that, although CO2 stimulated plant growth, the plant had a higher level of carbohydrates but a lower level of micronutrients like zinc, potassium and iron which are vital to health.
The World Health Organisation reported that although malnutrition world wide had reduced by 15% the overall picture was not so good which led to the following statement. ‘Today, nearly one in three persons globally suffers from at least one form of malnutrition: wasting, stunting, vitamin and mineral deficiency, overweight or obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases.
This is a condition called ‘Hidden Hunger’ where we are missing the essential building blocks of life. For many of the poorer nations, where people are on a mainly plant based diet, a deficiency can have fatal results. 
Research on the subject is complicated because there are many factors at play that can reduce micronutrients such as deficient minerals in the soil from relying on artificial fertilisers, new strains that emphasise bigger growth of the crop and elevated levels of CO2 which stimulate growth and the glucose content of plants.
Research has been split into two eras, 1850 until today when CO2 grew from 280 parts per million to the present at 420 ppm, and from now until mid-century when CO2 is expected to reach 550 ppm.
One experiment in the USA, on the earlier period, used the wild plant Goldenrod where there were old samples of seeds and it had not been modified. Goldenrod flowers late in the summer and the bees use the pollen as a store to see them through the winter. The results showed a decline in nutrients of one third which might explain a poorer survival rate of bees through the winter.
Experiments that compare plants grown to day with CO2 at 400 ppm and with CO2 at 550 ppm show elevated growth, increased hydrocarbon content and a reduction in micronutrients of 10% to 15%.
In New Zealand where we have plenty of good food available it emphasises how important it is to have a balanced diet and just eating plenty does not guarantee good health and how important it is to look carefully at the contents of food and include plenty of green vegetables and adequate portions of dairy and red meat.  

We are all familiar with the way that we are changing the atmosphere by burning huge quantities of oil and coal and by doing so creating a greenhouse gas that is warming the planet but we are not so familiar with the way that the excessive production of the fertilisers, nitrogen and phosphorous, are altering the growing cycle in the wider environment.
Although nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere in its gaseous form it can not be used by plants and so needs an intermediary process to transfer it to the soil.
The various natural way of transferring atmospheric nitrogen to the soil where plants can use it is by lightning strikes, the breakdown of rocks by frost, erosion and glaciers, plus the growing of legumes.
With broadacre crops such as wheat and maize, nitrogen is an ideal fertiliser and in 1909 the Haber-Bosch production used nitrogen and hydrogen to produce ammonia which could then be used to deliver nitrogen to the fields.
There is no doubt that the production of ammonia and by extension nitrogen in huge quantities has increased food production many times over and moved many countries into self-sufficiency for food and massively reduced starvation.
The downside of nitrogen is that we produce over 100 million tonnes of synthetic nitrogen annually and only 50% is absorbed by crops and the rest is washed into the rivers and streams. This causes streams and lakes to develop harmful algae which steals the oxygen and kills aquatic wildlife.
Farmers are aware of the problem and are being more careful with the application of fertiliser and also aware that continuous use of nitrogen to stimulate growth depletes the natural minerals and fibre in the soil and they are moving towards the use of legumes and clovers to fix nitrogen in the soil and slowly regenerate the soil. Farmers are also reserving a riparian margin on the streams and planting trees to filter out nutrients and eroded soil to protect the stream and improve water quality. The trees also provide shade and keep the water cooler.
There is also a problem in that modern varieties of crops such as a short wheat and most modern varieties of vegetables have a lower content of minerals compared with the traditional old varieties. Farmer are paid by the weight and the look of their produce and not by the nutritional value of the food they produce so it is possible for apparently well-fed people to suffer from nutrition starvation.
On the upside there are huge improvements that can be made for more efficient food production so that we can use less land to feed our growing population and clean our rivers to make a better world. Scientific research can point the way to avoid disasters but as we have seen from climate change, businesses and politicians often prefer to take the money and forget about the future.
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 Let me say straight away that I am not a vegetarian, although I eat less red meat than I used to, and I am not anti-farmer as I fully appreciate that farmers provide the food that sustains us, especially the big farms that provide us with cheap food. I also appreciate that farmers cannot manage huge acreages without the use of crop protection chemicals and fertilisers.
A recent report showed that of all the mammals on the planet, farmed livestock makes up 60%, humans 36% and wild animals just 4%. There is much more living matter than mammals, but it does highlight the huge number of livestock need to provide part of our diet and the massive impact this is having on the planet. We can’t do much about the number of humans, which at the moment stands at 7.7 billion and is due to peak at 10.9 billion people later in the century. Put together with climate change we need to do something about the burden we are putting on the resources of the planet.
In the wealthier countries people consume animal products to get protein as this is a quick and easy solution to a healthy diet but it is a very inefficient method. Effectively we put a cow in the field to eat tonnes of grass and then we eat the cow. The problem is that the cow has to eat 24 calories of food for us to get one calorie in return, pigs need 15 calories and chickens about nine. It also takes 15,000 litres of water to produce a kilogram of beef.
Taken all together it shows that farming animals to get food is a very inefficient way of sustaining our diet and the time may come in the not to distant future when it will have to change, or it may be that, just like wind and solar electrical energy, the new sources are cheaper and cleaner and there is a market led change.
Scientists can analyse the nutrient content of meat and reproduce it as nourishing food and there are big strides being made in making it palatable and acceptable. The most likely type of alternative beef to be accepted is probably the minced beef we have in burgers and sausages but at the moment they are either expensive or not acceptable in taste. This will change suddenly when someone gets the formula right and commits to the volumes of production needed to get the price acceptable.
Milk is another product where alternatives are becoming available and oat milk is a good substitute for full cream milk in cereals or coffee. At the moment it is roughly the same price as cows’ milk but again, someone will get the price and volumes right and there will be a big change.
If we can get the formula right and make the change it will solve many of our water supply and quality problems and get us on a more sustainable path.
 

Predictably for 2021 the main thrust of the Labour budget follows the theme of Wellness and dealing with Covid with not a lot left for dealing with climate change. An allocation of $300 million is allocated for decarbonising the economy but the details of how it is spent will be critical. The plan for upgrading Scott base and converting schools that use coal for heating to a cleaner system is helpful but it pales into insignificance compared to converting our transport, which produces 47% of our emissions, to renewable home-produced electricity. 

​To give an idea of the scale of the problem, if we are to convert our car fleet to electric in thirty years, we need to import 70,000 battery powered cars a year. Its not expensive as we buy 100,000 petrol cars every year but we need a financial environment to achieve the changes as the upfront purchase price of an electric car is higher than an internal combustion engine vehicle. Batteries are coming down in price at the rate of 8% a year and should reach parity with ICE cars within three to five years but the market needs some short-term help to get the numbers up now.
​​A billion dollars on our ancient railway system will help improve or infrastructure but will it help with climate change? Our existing rail stock burns diesel and changing to electricity powered engines would be a game changer. Putting heavy transport on the rail separate this traffic from cars and saves lives and the cost of repairing roads from this heavy wear.  
New Zealand is starting from a reasonable position with each person producing 8 tonnes of CO2 a year which is similar to Europe and China and considerably better than Australians and USA citizens who are over 16 tonnes but we are not improving our position.
New Zealand has 2.5 gigawatts of wind farm energy consented, which is equivalent to two and a half Huntley power stations, but we do not need the energy because we are not using electricity for transport and instead we import $5 billion of oil a year. A few tweaks to our car import tax and GST could swing the purchase of cars to electric and we would be on our way.
We are burning coal at the Huntley power station because the climate induced drought means that our hydro dams are running out of water. We should have financial concessions for rooftop solar to boost home installations and save our hydro power for peak power when demand is greater than solar, wind and geothermal can supply. This would also manage our rivers better as we could supply water from the dam when the river needs it rather than use water to make electricity when electric power demands it.
Climate change is a relatively slow acting event but we have should have started forty years ago and now the situation is becoming urgent as temperatures are already rising dramatically.

Northland and other Eastern regions of New Zealand are currently suffering from drought and the worrying part is that it is becoming more common. So is this part of climate change and a permanent trend or just a short term fluctuation?
There are two pieces of research that would indicate that there are good reasons to believe that it is part of a more permanent climate driven pattern. The research with the longest record was started by Kevin Trenberth who as shown the long term wind direction records indicate a 20% increase in Westerly winds that bring rain the the West coast and drought to the East coast. http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/precipitation-changes-in-a-warming-world.html  .

More recent research regarding the Indian Ocean shows a trend of  warming of the water in the Western part of the ocean and a cooling of the Eastern side which has a similar effect as El Nino does to the Pacific Ocean, although the dynamics are completely different. 

The illustration shows the effect on the surrounding countries and although New Zealand is not shown on the graphic there would be some inclusion in the North Island. 
Most people are noticing the increases in droughts in the North and how food production is suffering and the number of trees that are dying and it is probably part of a climate change driven trend.