One man’s concerns about climate change

Bulls asparagus and lucerne grower Peter Wells believes climate change is the number one sustainability issue facing all producers because of the possibility of sudden, dramatic climate chaos.

01-02-2003 |

The interview playing on National Radio during the short drive to Peter Wallis’ place couldn’t be more appropriate.

Well-known weatherman Augie Auer is being asked what he thinks about the Kyoto protocol, which the government has just ratified. He’s not a fan. He believes it’s being pushed by climate scientists who’ve hinged their careers on theories not facts about global warming.

That’s music to the ears of someone who spends at least 40 minutes in a car every day, grows asparagus that needs a fair amount of tractor and soil cultivation work, grazes methane belching sheep and cattle and has planted very few trees. I try to recycle plastic, Oscar the pig happily consumes all of our green waste but to be brutally honest I wouldn’t have a clue about our greenhouse gas emissions. Just what the government’s ratification of the protocol will mean for me isn’t clear, but I tend to believe it will simply add more cost for the sake of uncertain science.

It’s attitudes like that which fellow Rangitikei asparagus grower, Peter Wallis is trying to change. Wallis has used his academic background (a PhD in physics) to study and decipher findings from the IPCC (Inter-governmental panel on climate change) since its inception 10 years ago. He now subscribes to the theory that greenhouse gas heating could cause sudden, severe, world-wide climate change.

“The most important point about all of this is that we’re way outside the range for carbon dioxide levels in the past 20 million years. That’s really quite frightening.”

Last year during government consultation on the Kyoto protocol Wallis spent considerable time lobbying organisations such as Federated Farmers and Vegfed, which receives a percentage of Wallis’ asparagus income in compulsory levies. He believes both have buried their heads in the sand over climate change. They argue that the cost of ratifying the Kyoto protocol ahead of New Zealand’s major trading competitors is higher than the potential costs of global warming. But Wallis says climate change is the number one sustainability issue facing all producers and these organisations should be trying to persuade people to take urgent action to reduce their emissions.

A book written by Massey University friend, economist Peter Read (Responding to Global Warming) has fuelled Wallis’ sense of urgency. In a nutshell Read explores the mathematical phenomenon of Chaos. As scientists have gained more knowledge about the climate and added it to their mathematical models they have had to include ‘non linear feedbacks’. These can be either negative feedbacks leading to stability or positive feedbacks leading to instability and the behaviour they cause is called ‘chaotic’. Peter Read identifies a number of non linear feedbacks which are important in controlling our climate.

In other words if you’ve been reassuring yourself that global warming is a gradual process, think again. In the middle of 2001 the New Scientist reported this warning from a conference of 1800 climate scientists in Amsterdam:

“Many features of the earth’s atmosphere and ecology are now operating at temperatures not seen for hundreds of thousands of years, and changing at unprecedented rates. So human activities could at any time trigger changes with severe consequences for earth’s environment and its inhabitants.”(New Scientist, 21 July 2001)

In the same article German climate scientist, Victor Brovkin described how this chaotic change could affect the Sahara.

“A small increase in rainfall could trigger a self-perpetuating spread of vegetation. Plants absorb moisture that eventually evaporates, which helps clouds to form. This in turn triggers more rain, helping more plants to grow. The Sahara has two potentially stable states: desert and heavily vegetated. It could flip between the two, and only a little increase in rainfall could do it.”

The IPCC has stated:

“Greenhouse gas forcing in the 21st Century could set in motion large scale, high impact, non linear, and potentially abrupt changes in physical and biological systems over the coming decades to millennia, with a wide range of associated likelihoods.”

But back in Bulls Peter Wallis is critical of the IPCC for not making more of these possible ‘climate surprises’.

“The point about global warming is it’s no longer gradual, it’s exponential. And if we go on putting carbon dioxide from fossil fuels into the atmosphere the risk of sudden, dramatic climate chaos only increases.”

He believes if more scientists were prepared to stick their necks out and say dramatic climate change is now more likely than gradual global warming the “person in the street” would be convinced the problem needs a solution.

For his part Wallis and partner Sara run their daily life as sustainably as possible. Five years ago they invested about $20,000 in a wind turbine and solar panels to generate electricity into a 50volt battery for all of their household and farm power. The system can continue to supply power for up to 10 days without wind or sun. In the Rangitikei that’s a very unlikely scenario and in reality he only needs to recharge the batteries with a generator once each winter.

“I have considered buying an all electric car. But the problem is if we went to Palmerston North we couldn’t guarantee being able to recharge the batteries immediately on our return because batteries don’t like to be left discharged. And those hybrid electric cars are horrendously expensive too.”

They rely on a 1ha willow and poplar coppice planting in what was a “boggy patch” of the farm for firewood as their sole source of winter fuel.

But Wallis is not your stereotypical greenie. His 6ha of asparagus produces some of the highest yields in the country, 9-10 tonne/ha compared to the industry’s average of less than 5t/ha. He has developed his own crop and people (18 staff at the peak of a season) management techniques, which are the envy of many. On the remainder of his 16ha he grows lucerne, which is harvested four times a year and he runs a 12-month lucerne chaff operation with a neighbouring farmer.

“I’m making more money with 40 acres in asparagus and lucerne than when we were cropping on 200 acres with a hefty mortgage.”

He says he’d like the opportunity to generate income from his wind and solar generated electricity by feeding it into the national grid.

“If they made it worth my while.”

But Wallis says government has as yet only very weak policies on renewable fuels and energy and more importantly no incentives to encourage consumers to reduce their reliance on greenhouse gases.

“Essentially the government’s approach to the Kyoto protocol is good as far as it goes, but the protocol itself is very bureaucratic. It is far too little and may very well prove to be far too late, but we have no other way at hand to achieve the Protocol’s goal of reducing greenhouse warming.”

“As government policy (on Kyoto protocol) stands now it won’t affect me much. The government will impose a carbon tax to reduce my habit of using diesel fuel in my tractor whereas if they subsidised biodiesel that would be renewable.”

This from the man who’s calculated he could generate enough biogas from his weekly lawn clippings to run a gas stove!

Interestingly Wallis is less concerned about the major culprit for New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions, methane and nitrous oxide (55% of our total emissions).

“I’m seriously hoping scientists can come up with a fix for the digestion of ruminants, but don’t get me wrong, methane is a very dangerous greenhouse gas.”

As the interview draws to a close I admit to Wallis that I’m now slightly less tempted to put climate change into my too hard basket. And it’s credit to him that I’m also more likely to question Augie Auer’s opinion that global warming is a science beat-up.

“Unfortunately some people prefer to listen to Augie rather than 700 scientists who were all quite skeptical but now believe global warming is underway and are open to the possibility of sudden, dramatic climate change.”

“I have no axe to grind, my life doesn’t depend on selling this science. I’m just saying hey shouldn’t we be worried about this?”

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