INTRODUCING BRYCE WILKINSON I am a Wellington-based economic consultant. My firm is Capital Economics Limited. The family owns the property at 65 Manly Street, Paraparumu. I have a PhD in economics from the University of Canterbury and did post-doctoral study at Harvard University. I am a member of the Institute of Directors, the New Zealand Association of Economists, the American Economics Association and the Institute of Finance Professionals NZ Inc. I am also a member, Fellow and past president of the Law and Economics Association of New Zealand. Recognition of my expertise in public policy analysis is reflected in my appointments in recent years to the government-appointed ACC Stocktake Group, the Regulatory Responsibility Taskforce and the 2025 Taskforce. I was acting executive director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable from late 2011 to March 2012. I have worked on public policy issues for much of my career, starting with the New Zealand Treasury in 1970. Although I specialised in monetary policy and macroeconomics during the next 15 years, I got involved in helping run and teach Treasury's residential course for public servants on cost-benefit analysis during that period. Leaving Treasury in 1985, I spent the next 12 years working in the finance sector, with the most senior operational roles being head of research and head of First NZ Capital's economic advisory unit. I left investment banking to set up Capital Economics in 1997. I have followed the global and local public policy aspects of the debate about human-induced climate change, including sea-level rise, closely since the mid-1990s. I assisted the New Zealand Business Roundtable with many submissions on the policy issues over the years. In my view, the quality of the public policy analyses produced by the key advocacy agencies - NIWA and the Ministry for the Environment - has all too often been deplorable. This is only partly because the politicisation of the topic, domestically and internationally. Politicisation is the eternal enemy of sound analysis within government agencies. Nevertheless deplorable analysis and guidance at central government level is the key external driver of the mess that the KCDC has created for itself and for its community over this issue. What might not be commonly widely appreciated is that:
The Shand report is not predicting the likely sea-level for the Kapiti Coast in the next 50 or 100 years, despite the 'prediction-line' terminology used in that report. Instead it is merely makes 'what-if' projections, leaving others to assess their realism in key respects.
The International Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) global sea-level rise projections for the next 50-100 years are a key starting point for NIWA's assessments, the Ministry for the Environment's (MfE's) guidelines, and thereby the Shand Report.
The IPCC is clear that it does not predict likely future global sea level rise. Instead it uses its 'what-if' projections to make the case for international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to stop what is being projected from occurring.
The international community has responded, agreeing that global warming should be kept below 2°C compared to the temperature in pre-industrial times, according to the European Commission
at http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/brief/eu/index_en.htm. The effectiveness of that response is yet to be determined.
Neither NIWA, the MfE, nor Dr Shand have any scientific basis for predicting the likely efficacy of such international action during the next 50 or 100 years, let alone how Chinese and Indian carbon dioxide emissions are likely to evolve. As a result, no reasonable person could expect any of them to reliably predict the global or local sea-level rise during the next 100 years.
NIWA has released a June 2012 report that determines that the long-run average rate of sea-level rise in the Wellington region is 0.203 m per century, with no statistically significant acceleration yet detectable.
Yet the Shand Report is assuming a rise of 0.3 m in the next 50 years and a monumental further rise of 0.6 m in the following 50 years, making 0.9 m for the century (see page 18). With no statistically significant acceleration yet discernible, such input assumptions are highly speculative and contentious.
Yet in its letter to property owners of 25 August 2012, the KCDC asserted that the Shand Report's 100 year line was where the shoreline was likely to be in 100 years and that around 1,800 properties were likely to be at risk of significant erosion or inundation within 50 years.
On 30 August 2912 I wrote to Dr Shand asking if he or anyone else was certifying that these ostensibly unconditional predictions were reliable. After some unproductive initial correspondence, on 10 September 2012 I wrote to the KCDC asking who is certifying that the assertion of such a likelihood was reliable. Dr Shand subsequently responded that his report did not use the word 'likely' with reference to future erosion lines. Some weeks later, in a letter dated 13 November 2012, the chief executive of the KCDC, stated that the KCDC's letter of 25 August 2012 had relied upon Dr Shand's report! The same letter lamely added that the hazard 'information' so gratuitously and hastily written into property owners' LIMs did not use the phrase "likely risk".
In short, the Shand Report's speculative 'what-if' shoreline projections have been acted on and presented to actual and potential property owners as if they are reliable, unconditional shoreline predictions. The KCDC has treated the Shand Report as being authoritative in this respect, yet it cites is no evidence that Dr Shand himself believes, or claims, that this is so. Is 'deplorable' too strong a word for this situation? 16 November 2012