Less than a decade to put in place measures
The world now has less than a decade to put in place measures that would prevent damaging and irreversible changes to global climate, a new science-based report delivered to the Australian parliament warns.
The report from a government-appointed commission of climate experts tables the latest evidence in climate science and also targets what it says is ill-informed debate that is confusing the public and holding back action.
The report’s authors conclude there is “strong and clear” scientific evidence of global warming and humans’ role in it. The “fingerprints” of greenhouse-gas forcing are increasingly there to see, they argue.
In a report entitled The Critical Decade, the report warns that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must reach their peak as soon as possible if the plus-2-degrees “guardrail” warming limit is to be met to avoid irreversible alterations in the climate that will make it “a struggle to maintain our present way of life”.
On the latest available science, it argues, if the generally accepted target of peaking emissions by 2020 is followed then steep reductions in emissions of 9 per cent per year will be required thereafter – something that would appear impossible unless economies were put on a war footing.
Canberra’s Climate Commission was established by the Gillard Labor government in February as an expert, independent body to help build a nationwide consensus on the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The Commission is led by noted scientist and commentator Professor Tim Flannery and the report’s lead author is Professor Will Steffen, head of the of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University.
The government is making heavy weather of its plan to introduce a carbon tax mid next year in transition to an emissions trading scheme around 2015 or 2016. The Commission’s report arrives at a time of divisive national debate over what form the country’s response to climate change should be.
The government is hoping the report will help arrest waning support among Australians for a price on carbon and action on climate change. The report aims to cut through what it describes as a “noisy and confusing” public debate fed by attacks on climate science “in the media by many with no credentials in the field”.
The Commission report updates data in the landmark 2007 fourth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It defends the IPCC report against accusations that it was not reliable, which arose during the climate-gate hacked emails scandal and the revealing of an error about the forecast rate of Himalayan glacier melt.
Source: Carbon Positive
