Climate Change is reality. From an issue that started as a small voice of science questioning whether our carbon emissions could alter climate, it evolved into a political and social issue. Now, it is only a small voice, usually funded by vested interests that question that human impact is affecting climate change. The previous Government, who once questioned this, is now admitting that the changing climate is related to human activity. It is possibly the greatest challenge to face the planet. The average temperature of the Earth is now about 0.7 degrees higher than it was 100 years ago. Rainfall patterns have also changed dramatically, with increased rain in the Pilbara and less rain along most of eastern Australia. Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth now restrict water use because of prolonged shortages. Sea level has risen about 10 centimetres in the last century. Extreme weather events like droughts, floods, severe storms and unusual temperatures have become more frequent. And there have been significant changes to natural systems, putting much of our unique biological diversity at risk.
All of this foreshadows much greater impacts across the globe if there isn’t a concerted international response. The most likely further increase in average global temperature this century is between two and three degrees: three or four times the change of the last hundred years. Recent regional studies by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology predict dramatic local impacts: more very hot days, fewer frosty nights, further changes to rainfall patterns and more frequent extreme events. The reason is clear. Over the last half million years, the carbon dioxide level in the air has ranged between 180 and 280 parts per million. It is now 380 and rising rapidly. The emissions from the developed world are still growing. They are now being supplemented by the results of rapid industrialisation in China and India. A recent report from the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program warned that science cannot predict the consequences of this massive change to natural systems and concluded that we might trigger catastrophic changes in the climate system. A 2004 international conference in the UK focussed on the likely damaging consequences of climate change. It sounded an urgent warning to decision-makers. Large-scale changes are under way. The Atlantic circulation is slowing, the chemistry of the oceans is changing and the west Antarctic ice sheet is thinning. The situation is really urgent. We can no longer delay our response.
History shows that we suffer needlessly if we ignore the warnings of science. The science showed early last century that clearing of trees in the WA wheat belt would cause salinity. The warning was ignored and we are now paying the price. Science warned in the 1960s that smoking caused lung cancer. The failure to respond resulted in an epidemic of preventable disease. Science warned in the early 1970s that CFCs would deplete the ozone layer. Nothing was done until the ozone “hole” was measured nearly fifteen years later. The science was cautiously warning us nearly twenty years ago that our energy use would change the global climate. The problem has become more acute through twenty years of inaction. Australia is in the perfect position to embrace renewable energy – and turn its back on greenhouse pollution, climate change and energy insecurity. But right now Australia is caught in an economy based on brown coal, diesel, and other polluting energy sources. Without community pressure, Australia could be stuck with an economy which depends more on polluting our environment than on efficient, clean and safe energy.
On the Sunshine Coast the effects could be devastating. If the sea levels rise by a metre, combined with increased threats of storm surges, much of coast and flood plains could be lost. SCEC will endeavor to educate the community and promote green power and technologies.