Science has facts on climate change and we should listen before it's too late

Age Wednesday
24/1/2007 Page: 8
By Tricia Phelan.

Sceptics keep trotting out the same old arguments that don't hold water.

LEN Walker (Business, 19/1) was right arguing that cool heads and rational discussion and decision-making are required when it comes to climate change.

Unfortunately, he offered little. Instead of engaging with the community - governments, industry and the public - in a constructive discussion to take us forward, he tried to take us back into a quagmire of myths and confusion long since discounted by most of the world's leading scientists.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, representing hundreds of scientists from 120 countries, will next month release its fourth report that is predicted to produce even stronger evidence of climate change and its human causes. This group has been working for almost two decades to provide technical knowledge of climate change to underpin sound decision-making.

To ensure the IPCC reports are credible, transparent and objective, they must pass a rigorous two-stage technical and scientific review. As a result, the worldwide scientific community backs the IPCC's work.

Science academies in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Britain. Canada, the Caribbean China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand and Sweden released a statement of support in May 2001. It stated: "We recognise the IPCC as the world's most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving consensus."

The US National Academy of Sciences followed later that year with its own endorsement: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue."

Only a tiny minority of voices continues to dispute the IPCC's findings and, coincidentally, many of these are connected to industries whose profits would be adversely affected if action was taken to mitigate climate change risks. These include Mr Walker, a fellow of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. The institute represents the views of mining companies such as BHP Billiton, and Mr Walker condemns leading scientists for their "alarmist view".

Over the past decade, climate sceptics such as Mr Walker have repeatedly used the same arguments and "evidence" to support their view. Those who monitor climate change have seen Mr Walker's arguments, and their comprehensive rebuttals, many times, but unfortunately this does not stop them reappearing.

Citing the 1975 Newsweek "climate cooling" article is an old favourite. But a staff writer wrote the article, not a climatologist, and it appeared in a popular magazine that is not part of the scientific press, and was not subject to a robust peer review. The article reports on cooling as a speculative scientific curiosity, with grave potential implications - but, importantly, without any resolute scientific consensus supporting the hypothesis.

In any case, like many areas of science, we have learnt a lot in the past 30 years. Meanwhile, across the world, businesses, communities and governments have accepted the facts on climate change and are looking for practical, reasoned responses at individual, industry-wide and government levels.

In April, some of Australia's leading companies from a range of industries - BP, Origin Energy, Westpac, Swiss Re, Visy and IAG - launched the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change. It released a report stating climate change was a major business risk, and outlined the strong financial case to take action.

It found that early action could be taken while maintaining strong economic growth, but delaying action would produce lower real gross domestic product growth, and concentrate any disruption over a shorter period. The Business Council of Australia and the National Farmers Federation have both publicly recognised climate change and the need for action.

In November, the broader community added its support when 40,000 people in Melbourne took part in the Walk Against Warming, calling for legislated targets to reduce Victoria's greenhouse pollution.

Governments across the globe are implementing laws, some better than others, aimed at reducing greenhouse pollution and lessening the impact of climate change. The US and Australia are the only industrialised nations that have failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Despite this, about half the American states have implemented greenhouse and/or renewable energy targets.

South Australia and Victoria have announced targets, and doubtless more will follow.

So let's bring on a reasoned and rational discussion about climate change. Surely such an approach includes listening to the majority of experts? Surely clear thinking involves dispassionately assessing the risks - not ignoring them because we don't like the action we must take to avoid them? And surely wise heads, once risks have been identified, will take action to avoid those risks, particularly when they will dramatically affect our economy and lifestyle?

What we need is an intelligent way forward. Armed with the facts on climate change, the risks and many solutions, we must cast off outdated attitudes and embrace practices that will mitigate the worst impacts of climate change and open up business opportunities.

Tricia Phelan is the climate change director of Environment Victoria.