Scientists hit back at climate scepticism

Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday 1/8/2009 Page: 5

FIFTEEN senior Australian climate scientists have hit back at the resurgence of climate scepticism among the nation's politicians and the media, warning that the threat from climate change is real, urgent and approaching a series of "tipping points" where it will feed on itself.

"New findings suggest that the situation is, if anything, more serious than the assessment of just a few years ago", say the scientists, who include the CSIRO's Dr Michael Raupach and Dr John Church, along with the Australian National University's Professor Will Steffen, who recently completed a report on climate change science for the Federal Government.

Writing in today's Herald, the scientists, many of whom worked with the top United Nations scientific body on climate change, argue "rapid, sustained and effective" cuts in the world's greenhouse gas emissions are needed to avoid dangerous climate change. Dr Raupach, who monitors greenhouse gas emissions globally, said the scientists joined together because of their growing concern about climate scepticism in the Australian debate. "It's a concern that I think is widely felt among many climate scientists in Australia," he said.

He referred to sceptics' claims that the earth was cooling and that solar flares and sunspots were responsible for increasing warming, not human-caused emissions from burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. "These arguments keep being recycled even though they have been rebutted in public many times," Dr Raupach said. "We felt the need to state the evidence based position as we see it."

Last week the senior shadow cabinet member Tony Abbott repeated many climate sceptics' claims in The Australian, even though he argued the Liberal Party should pass the Government's emissions trading scheme for political reasons. Leading National Party figures, including the party's Senate leader, Barnaby Joyce, are vocal climate sceptics, as is the Liberal Party Senate leader, Nick Minchin.

The Family First senator, Steve Fielding, returned from a conference in Washington in June, at which scepticism about climate science was discussed, to express his doubts about human induced climate change. The Senate is due to debate the Government's emissions trading scheme within the next fortnight.

The scientists are particularly concerned about claims that the earth is cooling because temperature increases since 2002 have not happened as fast those in the previous few years. "Some people have seen that as evidence that the whole game is off, that climate change is not an issue," Dr Raupach said. "In fact it's normal climate variability." The overall warming trend has been inexorably upwards, the scientists say.