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Climate change, flooding link off the mark - Smith

Blaming specific weather events such as the recent flooding in Whakatane on climate change is off the mark, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith says.

NZPA
Thu, 19 Aug 2010

Blaming specific weather events such as the recent flooding in Whakatane on climate change is off the mark, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith says.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said this week that science was showing the east coast of New Zealand was becoming increasingly vulnerable to extreme climate events and flooding such as that in Whakatane would be seen more commonly in the near future.

He also called for central government to provide greater leadership on adapting to climate change-induced weather events through a national policy statement on climate change adaptation.

He questioned Dr Smith in Parliament today about whether he accepted international expert advice that flooding events would increase due to climate change and what he was doing to address the issue.

Dr Smith said extreme weather events had always been part of nature's natural processes and it was not scientifically robust to assign a particular event to climate change.

Advice from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research was that in the New Zealand context there was not sufficient evidence of an increased frequency of storm events for it to be assigned to human-induced climate change, Dr Smith said.

But he said he accepted that at a global level there was evidence from experts such as the International Panel on Climate Change of a link between climate change and adverse weather events.

"But I would caution, the sort of extreme statements that have been made by (Dr Norman) that the Bay of Plenty floods was a consequence of climate change is not scientifically robust."

Dr Smith also had a dig at Labour MP Charles Chauvel, who was critical of a speech Dr Smith made at a climate change conference Sydney last week outlining New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and progress being made on reducing emissions here.

Mr Chauvel, Labour's climate change issues spokesman, said the speech was lacking on credible ways to address climate change.

Dr Smith said the speech had in fact been well received and the chairman had praised it as "one of the highlights of the conference", along with giving credit to the Government for successfully implementing an ETS.

"The only criticism I heard at the conference in Sydney on climate change was from Charles Chauvel, which was a bit off given the long-standing convention that we keep our domestic politics at home," Dr Smith said.

NZPA
Thu, 19 Aug 2010
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Climate change, flooding link off the mark - Smith
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