Wrong models can cause costly mistakes

In the wake of what is generally described as a “weak” outcome of the Copenhagen conference on climate change at the end of last year, the whole debate about the reality of mankind’s contribution to global warming has been kicked wide open again. The United Nations’ climate panel, known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), admitted flaws in a 2007 report, while erroneous predictions can lead to bad and costly business choices.

The IPCC made a mistake when it said the melting of the Himalayan glaciers will see them disappear by 2035. It was misquoting a report, which said they might disappear by 2350.

Reports about this mistake led to renewed attacks by so-called “climate change skeptics” on what they call alarmist scare stories. The UN’s climate chief, Yvo de Boer, in response hinted that there might be a concerted attack in progress “on the scientific community”.

“I don’t know if there is a campaign. I know that there are companies and countries that are seriously concerned that ambitious action to address climate change will harm them economically.”

The climate change skeptics, however, argue that the facts are on their side. Philip Lloyd of the Energy Institute at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology for instance, stating that the world has been warming for at least 150 years, wrote in a recent article for Business Day: “Whether man is responsible (for global warming) is still an open question. Humanity started burning fossil fuels to excess only after 1950. The warming pre-1950 cannot have been driven by fossil fuels. The best guess is that the warming is natural.”

Some climate change skeptics argue that all the hype about climate change and man’s (read fossil fuels’) share in the process, at its core has very little to do with climate change per se, but all about the fact that the globe’s sources of especially oil based fossil fuels are starting to run out. The hype is aimed at scaring communities into accepting the development cost of alternative energy sources.

Danger of costly miscalculations

The dilemma is that while scientists across this divide are arguing about what the future might hold for mankind on the climate change front, there is a serious risk that costly miscalculations could be made on other fronts.

This well is illustrated by what is happening globally in the insurance industry, which is starting to calculate risks based on the predictions of institutions like the IPCC.

South African short-term insurers only weeks ago announced that they will be following in the footsteps of insurance companies in Europe and the United States who are re-examining the rating of insurance risks in certain areas “where the affects of climate change were already being felt”.

Santam’s chief executive Ian Kirk told a forum, organised by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainable Leadership in Cape Town, that his organisation is paying claims now to farmers and property owners in the southern Cape for fire damage, “Two and a half years ago they were under water. It is affecting us and we have to rise up to this.”

The insurer was working with the University of Cape Town’s climate change specialists to plot areas of high risk, particularly regions vulnerable to sea level rise and flooding. Infrastructure built to close to the coast and in flood plains are particularly at risk.

Implications for municipalities

Municipalities that continued to allow housing and infrastructure to be built in floodplains and too close to rivers and the coast, were being irresponsible “because we’re going to have to deny cover on that,” Kirk said.

The metropolitan council of the City of Cape Town (CCT) recently identified 16 prime coastal areas, including Milnerton Harbour, Green Point, Sea Point, Camps Bay and the entire Strand beachfront as “high risk” areas from rising sea levels in the not too distant future.

These areas were identified in the CCT’s latest sea-level risk assessment.

If sea levels rise, as they are predicted to do in the next 25 years, billions of rands of coastal infrastructure will be damaged.

In the report, submitted to the council’s planning and environment portfolio committee, it is stated that the sea level risk can no longer be viewed as something to be addressed in the future, but must be considered as a priority in city planning.

Research already done for the city on sea levels, predicted an 85% chance of a 4.5 metre storm surge sea-level rise in the next five years, which would cause about R20 billion damage to infrastructure alone, the report states.

In his article Lloyd, however, posses the question: “Do we face devastating droughts and alamitous floods?” He then goes on to write:

“We may, but one thing is certain – the climate change modelers cannot tell us. Their models lack the detail essential to predict local conditions. As the IPCC admits, ‘advances have been made in developing probabilistic information at regional scales – but these models remain exploratory.’

“Such predictions as they have made, in an exploratory way, have shown huge swings in rainfall. When we check these predictions against what has happened over the past 150 years, during which time the world has been warming naturally, there is no evidence for such huge swings.”

On the proposition that storms are getting more violent, he also points out that the World Meteorological Organization, parent organisation of the IPCC, says that “the recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of populations and infrastructure in coastal regions”.

“If there is more to be damaged, then more will be damaged,” Lloyd wrote.