<h1>Dr Andy Reisinger: Agricultural emissions: their role in climate change</h1>
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<p><strong>Synopsis</strong></p>
<p>Andy Reisinger, the Deputy Director of the NZAGRC, spoke to attempt to clarify how much livestock actually contributes to global warming. It turns out that this is more difficult to quantify than it might at first appear. This is due to the need to convert methane into carbon dioxide equivalents in order to compare sources of the emissions, and there being a number of ways to do this. Agriculture contributes about 9% of current global emissions, but does this contribute 9% of the warming? Using different conversion factors, the warming potential of agriculture can range from 7-22%. By using actual historical temperature data and modelling, it can be shown that agricultural methane and nitrous oxide contribute about 19%. Andy has been involved in work looking at different future scenarios for global warming. These show that under business as usual conditions, where no changes are made to try to reduce emissions, agriculture&rsquo;s effect gets smaller over time as other sectors emissions grow comparatively more rapidly. If all sectors take steps to reduce their GHGs, then agriculture&rsquo;s contribution becomes more important as other sectors with more mitigation potential reduce their emissions. Andy highlighted that if nothing is done about non-carbon dioxide gases by 2050, we will have to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to achieve the 2 degree Paris Agreement target. On a positive note, international initiatives are growing. 119 countries included agriculture in their Paris commitments and 64% of these are developing countries. Andy&rsquo;s closing points were that agricultural GHGs are important and not just an artefact of the accounting techniques. In order to achieve the Paris targets, all sectors need to work together and make some positive changes.</p>
<p><strong><span class="mix_file">Download slides</span></strong></p>
<p><span class="mix_file"><a title="2017NZAgGHGMitigationConference_Reisinger.pdf" href="user/file/1391/2017NZAgGHGMitigationConference_Reisinger.pdf"><img src="images/icons/icon_pdf.gif" alt="pdf" width="16" height="16" align="absmiddle" border="0" vspace="1" />&nbsp;2017NZAgGHGMitigationConference_Reisinger.pdf</a>&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 80%;">(2.02MB)</span></span></p>
<p><strong>About Andy</strong></p>
<p><strong>DR ANDY REISINGER, Deputy Director (International), New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre</strong></p>
<p>Dr Andy Reisinger joined the NZAGRC team in November 2010 from the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute, based at Victoria University of Wellington.</p>
<p>Andy earlier spent six years working for the Ministry for the Environment as Senior Adviser on climate change and has also worked for the Intergovernmental Panel</p>
<p>for Climate Change (IPCC) in the UK and in India. Andy served as Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and currently is the New Zealand representative for the Global Research Alliance Livestock Research Group. Andy provides strategic support to the NZAGRC Director and leads New Zealand&rsquo;s science contribution to the Global Research Alliance and NZAGRC&rsquo;s input into the Global Research Alliance Livestock Research Group. He works from the NZAGRC Wellington office to enable robust interaction of the Centre with MPI.</p>
<h3>Further reading (updated Nov 2017)</h3>
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<h3><a href="media,listing,433,new-research-shows-significant-impact-from-livestock-on-actual-warming.html">Media release: New research shows significant impact from livestock on actual warming</a></h3>
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<h3><a href="science-publications,listing,434,how-much-do-direct-livestock-emissions-actually-contribute-to-global-warming.html">Scientific publication: How much do direct livestock emissions actually contribute to global warming?</a></h3>
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