Science Media Centre

Stern talk on climate change
British economist Nicholas Stern will bring his “get serious” message on climate change to New Zealand next week, when he undertakes a lecture series hosted by the University of Auckland.
Lord Stern is best known for the 2006 Stern Review, a 700 page document commissioned by the UK Government [...]

Overnight in New York, an independent report was released which recommended a major overhaul of procedures and management of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report, undertaken by a 12 person team from the InterAcademy Council which represents the world’s major science academies, outlines some sweeping changes, such as the installation of an executive committee [...]

Wrangling over water issues
Polluted rivers, dirty dairying, greening the MacKenzie Country, dams for hydro-power and water allocation — these are just some of the big water issues that have been in the headlines in recent months.
Although freshwater is relatively abundant in New Zealand, uneven distribution of water resources and increasingly intensive use have led to [...]

A major review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report by the Netherlands Environment Agency wrapped up this week, finding no significant errors in the report’s main conclusions on regional impacts of climate change. It is the latest in a series of reviews that have largely validated mainstream climate science [...]

Q+A’s Paul Holmes interviews the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor Professor Sir Peter Gluckman about the Global Research Alliance, an international initiative set up by New Zealand to investigate how best to reduce agricultural emissions.
The GRA’s first meeting took place recently in Wellington, and Gluckman commented on the GRA and its purpose, as well as [...]

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, has asked that the work of the IPCC be reviewed by the world’s science agencies.
An excerpt: (read in full here)
“Mr Ban said the overall concept of man-made climate change was robust, and action to curb emissions badly needed.
“Work will be co-ordinated by the Inter-Academy Council, which will convene a panel [...]

The Australian Science Media Centre rounded up questions on climate science from journalists and put them to leading scientists in the field. Below is the resulting Q&A.

1) There has been conflicting messages about warming in recent years – is it or is it not getting warmer?

Professor Steven Sherwood, Climate Change Research Centre at the [...]

Nutrigenomics – what is it exactly?
Genes, diet and gut health will be the focus of discussion in Auckland next week as scientists, nutritionists and food technologists gather for a conference looking at what the latest research says about how foods affect gene expression and therefore human health.
It is early days for nutrigenomics, but a group [...]

DNA Pioneer in SMC briefing
As New Zealand forensic scientists prepare to mark 20 years of DNA testing in New Zealand the Science Media Centre is pleased to host an online briefing for journalists featuring one of the founding fathers of DNA forensics, Dr Peter Gill. As this Times article explains, Dr Gill was part of [...]

Last year saw the start of the ‘Climategate’ email controversy, in which it was claimed that top climate scientists from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia had behaved inappropriately.
Since then, an official enquiry has been launched to look into the issue, and our colleagues at the UK SMC gathered comment from [...]