Climate science 'may have underestimated' damage from rising levels of carbon dioxide
* Sid Maher * From: The Australian * March 10, 2011 5:15PM
GLOBAL warming may push sea levels rises to the upper limit of current projections and temperatures above previously anticipated levels, Julia Gillard's top climate change adviser has warned.
Ross Garnaut today issued a pessimistic assessment of likely climate change effects, suggesting recent updates to climate science showed previous research may have underestimated the effects of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Professor Garnaut flagged the "awful reality" that global political leaders may have to go further than the emissions reduction targets they have been aiming for in international negotiations.
These targets aim for a concentration of carbon dioxide equivalent of 450 parts per million, which would limit temperature increases to 2 degrees celsius.
"There is a case in managing the risks of climate change for seeking to reduce emissions concentrations below 450ppm carbon dioxide equivalent," Professor Garnaut said.
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"But that would first require a credible program to get to 450ppm."
Australia has currently made a bipartisan unconditional commitment to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.
But this cut would be increased to 25 per cent - Australia's proportional effort in a global deal to get to 450ppm - if an international agreement was struck on cutting emissions.
"There is increasing discussion in the legitimate scientific literature of the possibility that large damage will occur at smaller increases in global temperatures," Professor Garnaut said.
His paper, the latest in his series of updates for the Gillard government, said the latest science shows "the statistically significant warming trend has been confirmed by observations over recent years".
While global temperatures continue to rise around the midpoints of the range of projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "the rate of sea level rise has accelerated and is tracking above the range suggested by the IPCC", Professor Garnaut says.
"There is an awful reality that no major developments in the science hold out realistic hope that the judgments of the 2008 review erred in the direction of overstating the risks of climate change," he writes.
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