Q+A’s Paul Holmes Interviews The Prime Minister’s Science Advisor, Sir Peter Gluckman.

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A is repeated on TVNZ 7 at 9.10pm on Sunday nights and 10.10am and 2.10pm on Mondays.

SIR PETER GLUCKMAN interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL Professor Sir Peter Gluckman is the Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor, and he's been attending meetings from Washington to Wellington on how to combat climate change, and to produce more food with fewer agricultural emissions. Now the Global Research Alliance recently met in Wellington and this New Zealand led initiative to cut greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, was set up during the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and so far has 28 member countries including China, India, the United Kingdom and the United States, which has bought into it as well. Sir Peter Gluckman is with me now, good morning. The Global Research Alliance how is it going to work?

SIR PETER GLUCKMAN – PM's Chief Science Advisor
Well what it is is an agreement for now some 30 countries to cooperate to do research which is aimed primarily to reduce the amount of emissions that come from agriculture, and in doing so to do so in the environment knowing that we have to increase the global world food supply by about 50% over the next 30 years.

PAUL With as few emissions as possible. So New Zealand is part, with the Netherlands I understand of the livestock group, the methane from the ruminants group reducing emissions from livestock. How far away is anything positive going to be there?

SIR PETER Well there's already positive evidence coming from the science that we can do things that will reduce emissions, but research is a process which takes a number of years. The Alliance is creating three large cooperative groups, one around livestock, one around crops, and one around rice, which have particular issues.

PAUL What is the paddy field business that the Japanese are going to be working on?

SIR PETER A lot of the Asian countries – rice produces a lot of methane because the water is associated with the rotting of the rice grass so to speak.

PAUL So the grass rots under the water, produces methane. And the Americans are looking at crop production.

SIR PETER All the countries are involved insofar as the Americans will lead that part of the consortium associated with selling crops and arable, how we improve carbon sequestration, how we reduce nitrous oxide production and so forth, in arable farming.

PAUL Would genetic modification speed up reductions in the methane in the cattle quicker?

SIR PETER Well I think genetic modification will be an important experimental tool in understanding how the carbon and nitrogen cycles operate. Some countries are clearly going to use genetic modification in different ways in their agricultural systems, that’s clearly not part of the New Zealand agenda.

PAUL So what are you really hoping that we'll be able to produce, I mean what directions does it seem most likely we'll go in regarding reducing methane emissions from cattle and sheep?

SIR PETER Well we've got to understand the interaction between the soil, the forage, the bacteria inside the tummies of the sheep and the cattle, and the biology of the cattle themselves. Already the groups in Palmerston North in particular are making enormous progress, and I think we can see ways using not very sophisticated technologies over time that will lead to significant reduction.

PAUL You touched on it at the start Sir Peter about the amount of food the world is gonna need with the dramatic predictions of people increase, and this gets on to something else, the Americans and perhaps the Chinese as well have become particularly concerned about, which is food security. So climate change becomes not just a thing about climate change, but about the extra food we're going to have to produce and making that food secure for our populations, can you expand on that a bit?

SIR PETER Yes well the population of the world's predicted to increase over nine billion people within the next 30 years, clearly we need therefore to produce about 50% more food than we do now. If anything is gonna bring regional and sub regional conflict it's going to be insecurity over food or water, and therefore every nation is worried about food security, and countries with large populations are worried about securing their own food supplies.

PAUL Is this why the Chinese are buying Crafer for example?

SIR PETER I couldn’t comment on that but certainly the Chinese are investing a lot in have availability to grow crops in Africa.

PAUL Yeah they're leasing vast tracks of land in Africa. How much has been done nevertheless to the whole climate change struggle, the whole climate change and emissions reduction aspirations by Glacier Gate, this is where some retired scientist carelessly made the remark that all the glaciers in the Himalayas will be gone by 2035, but of course this is now completely demolished, but how much damage has been done by it.

SIR PETER None to the global commitment of countries to try to ameliorate the rate of emissions increase, a lot to the public understanding of the issue, and I think the media hasn’t done a particularly good job in handling that, but I think it's now clear that the IPCC see so-called errors were minor, that the so-called email debate was a matter around freedom of information not around data.

PAUL A couple of pages out of a 3000 page report.

SIR PETER So I mean I think that there remains absolutely no concerns amongst those involved in setting governmental policy, that they must act in this area.

PAUL However, it probably makes it harder for governments to sell Emissions Trading Schemes to their people.

SIR PETER Well I think that you're now separating two different issues, the issues governments need to reduce and encourage their populations to reduce the amount of emissions through – the issue is what incentives do they put in play to achieve that, that starts to be where you get into politics rather than science.

PAUL Well that is right, but it probably – I mean given the vigour of the sceptics internationally I'm sure Glacier Gate will make it harder for governments to sell emissions reductions to their people.

SIR PETER I'm not so certain, maybe in the short term but I think the international consensus of the leaders of the world's scientific community that action is needed is clear.

PAUL How can we be so sure, tell the people at home again, how can we be so sure that climate change, or current climate change is human induced?

SIR PETER I think that there is no other explanation possible for the rate of change in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, there's absolute lots of evidence that humans are degrading the planet in many ways, and the modelling and the analyses make it very clear that human activity is responsible for the way of the change in the planet.

PAUL Well let me put this to you. Just over a week ago the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition who I guess are anti emissions reductions, and they're sceptics, the Honourable Barry Brill who I think served in Sir Robert Muldoon's government, says you Sir Peter Gluckman are not qualified to pontificate about climate change, you have neither the expertise nor the personal attributes.

SIR PETER Well I won't comment on the last bit, I'm not a climate change expert, obviously not, I am an advisor to the Prime Minister and like other science advisors around the world we're responsible for interpreting what the scientific advice from the scientific community as a whole is to governments and what it means.

PAUL Yes but he says in writing your lengthy dissertation shortly after you became the Chief Science Advisor, and not being a climate change scientist that you became political, not technical, not scientific.

SIR PETER I'm not going to debate with this Dr Brill or Mr Brill, all I'm gonna say is every science advisor in the major democracies concurs that climate change is an important issue and has to be addressed now.

PAUL You have been in Washington talking to the Chief Science Advisor there, what kind of reaction did you get to a suggestion that we can get scientific initiatives like the Global Alliance Fund going, I mean is he keen on that idea, based so much on science and business of science in New Zealand?

SIR PETER A lot of the discussion with Dr John Holdrum was about the fact that science is an international activity, and the Americans see that they already have a large number of scientific activities jointly with the New Zealanders such as in the Antarctic and clearly they’ve been along with New Zealand the leaders in promoting the Global Research Alliance in climate change. A lot of our discussion however wasn’t actually about that, it was actually about the harm, around the issues you’ve raised before, has done to the public confidence and the integrity of the science system, and what John and I were discussing was initiatives that people like himself and myself need to take to restore and to ensure that the public has confidence in the science system as a whole.

PAUL Sir Peter Gluckman I have to leave it there and I thank you very much indeed.

ENDS

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