■ While we watch the senseless wars on our TV screens and the horrific human suffering that they cause, and we are confronted with the possibility of nuclear war, we pay less attention to the only war humans really should be waging, and that is the war to save our environment and the ecosystems on which we depend, says Dr Victor Luca.

I suspect that many people find it a stretch to believe that the extreme weather we increasingly see flash across our TV screens is linked to human-induced climate change. This year, like past years, records are being broken all around the globe, with floods in Southern China (Xiamen in Fujian Province) and floods and record temperatures in Northern Spain (Navarra and Zaragoza).

Floods are also causing mayhem in the Madya Pradesh province of India and in Texas and New Mexico in the United States and Columbia. We are also having a few floods of our own at the moment.

In New Zealand, we copped a dose of extreme weather in February 2023, that caused untold anguish and cost the country in excess of $14.5 billion.

Although this event may be fading from memory, the ramifications, especially for the East Coast of the North Island, and to a lesser extent for Auckland and the Coromandel, will continue to linger.

Yet, even that event could prove to be just a small taste of things to come according to the latest science.

For those that don’t believe the science, then just try to imagine what life you would have had were it not for human scientific achievement.

For a start, 99 percent of us would be working all day in the fields trying to eke out a meager existence. And we are on the cusp of further technological revolution.

These records are being broken every year and are not figments of our imagination.

The accurate measurement of temperature is something we have been able to do for hundreds of years. And the amount of water falling in a certain area in a given time interval is easy to measure, as is storm intensity and frequency.

US data collected by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the magnitude of disaster events over the period 1980 to 2024, and the associated costs, shows an alarming exponential trend (hock stick shape) that is impossible to deny, pictured top.

In the past I have shown similar graphs for extreme heat events in Australia.

Regrettably, the NOAA web page on which this data can be found now features a red banner indicating that NOAA will no longer be updating the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product.

This is a result of the extremely egregious climate denial by the Trump administration. It would seem that they simply don’t want us to know what is going on.

Although I have never done the experiment myself, I am led to believe that a frog brought close to the surface of a pot of boiling water will quickly try to escape the heat.

However, a frog placed in a pot of warm water that is slowly brought to boiling will be cooked to death because the frog doesn’t perceive the temperature to be increasing. I would try to verify this if I could actually find a frog these days.

Climate change is a bit like the frog being brought slowly to the boil. From day to day, the sun rises and sets and the weather changes with the seasons.

We notice little difference from one year to the next. This makes climate change psychologically distant for most of us.

However, over the longer haul scientific measurements tell us that climate is definitely changing as a result of an increasing greenhouse effect caused by humans altering the composition of the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels on a massive scale. This is not something new. Science has been giving this message for more than 100 years.

Sporadic extreme weather events such as Cyclone Gabrielle catch our attention for a while and then the event fades into the past.

Scientific evidence that human-induced global warming is increasing the frequency and severity of such weather events is overwhelming.

The scientific consensus on human-induced climate change is nowadays 100 percent among climate scientists.

The psychological distance of climate change is possibly one reason why society is so slow in taking serious action to address the causes of climate change; emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

As more people directly experience these extreme weather events, attitudes may change. The problem with climate change however, is that effects are not linear.

By that I mean that the effects don’t increase progressively but rather abrupt changes in the climate system can occur rapidly.

For instance, the melting ice in the polar-regions reduces the surface reflectivity which causes more radiation to be absorbed, which then causes more heating, which causes more melt and so on.

In other words, a feedback loop is triggered that can cause accelerating changes.

These sorts of effects are referred to as tipping points, of which at least nine have been identified and we wouldn’t want to be betting against them.

If all ice were to melt from the polar regions, then that would translate to over 120 metres of sea-level rise, in which case we should start thinking about building arks.

Officially, 2023 was the planet’s warmest year on record, according to an analysis by scientists from NOAA’s National Centres for Environmental Information (NCEI). The data for 2024 is not yet in but it is likely to take the record.

Recently, the COP29 conference on climate change held in Baku, Azerbaijan (an oil-rich nation) concluded as usual with lots aspirations, platitudes and promises, and tepid commitments to modest financing for vulnerable nations, for the most part those that have least contributed to the problem.

That an energy transition of sorts is under way is hard to deny but global emissions continue to climb.

Countries such as Uruguay, for example, now produce more than 80 percent of their energy using solar and wind.

Solar being the cheapest form of energy generation.

In New Zealand, we do even better, with most of our energy produced from renewable sources, in particular hydro.

While we are world beating in terms of how clean our electricity generation sector is, we are also world beating when it comes to per capita emissions for which we are in the top 10.

Fifty percent of those emissions come from agriculture and a big chunk from transport.

And yet, the current Government has essentially killed the transition to electric vehicles, which have much lower emissions over their lifetime; greater than 70 percent for an EV driven in New Zealand.

It is now very clear that we in New Zealand will not meet the emissions reduction goals that we signed up to in Paris.

By focusing on climate resilience and doing little or nothing in the emissions reduction space we have effectively run up the white flag.

NZ Post is the latest organisation to throw in the towel.

It is difficult to call throwing in the towel leadership.

A recent study in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Climate Change has shown that experiencing extreme weather and disasters is not enough to change views on the need for climate action.

Using data from around the world, the study suggests simple exposure to extreme weather events does not significantly affect people’s view of climate action – but linking those events to climate change can make something of a difference.

The link is getting stronger and stronger and harder and harder to deny.

In countries such as Australia, climate change makes up only about 1 percent of media coverage.

By comparison, sports make up between 40 and 60 percent of media coverage.

I suspect New Zealand is very similar. It’s not too difficult to see where the priorities are.

And yet, Australia is such a fragile continent. I can still recall the day in 2013 when I was living in Sydney that it reached 46C at Sydney Airport. It was brutal and hammered home how terrific it is to live in a temperate climate.

A reluctant admission that humans are changing their environment in ways that can result in catastrophe is not enough, especially for future generations.

It is action and a willingness to make profound changes that can pull us back from the brink.

For us to respond effectively will require us to make significant changes to our socio-economic and value systems.

■ The views expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of any organisation with which I am associated.