The end of the world is nigh? It’s just a matter of degrees, says one expert

As Liberal Leader Tony Abbott warns that the end of the Australian world is nigh with Julia Gillard’s Carbon Tax, climate scientist Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, warns that the end of the world is indeed, nigh. But it’s got nothing to do with a carbon tax. It’s all about carbon …

DRAWING on forecasts of a 4-degree warmer world within a lifetime, Professor Hans Joachin Schellnhuber – one of the world’s most cited and outspoken climate scientists – opened a Melbourne University conference yesterday by painting a bleak picture of an unrecognisable Australia, circa 2100.

Agricultural systems have broken down, crops yields decimated. Human health is tested by extremes beyond the endurance of many citizens. Shorelines and the island homes of Pacific neighbours – communities who have contributed nothing to rising greenhouse gases – are consumed by rising tides. Coral reefs erode and lifeless oxygen-starved ”holes” grow in the ocean depths, the physics and chemistry of the water having been utterly changed.

Professor Schellnhuber, the director of the Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chairman of the German Scientific Advisory Council, conjures up the future with a selection of graphs and tables composed from observations and modelling.

Around each of the lines on the graphs – plotting the dramatic rises in atmospheric CO2 since the pre-industrial era, the upward trend of surface temperatures, the downward spiral of Arctic sea ice – are the shadows of scientific uncertainty, drawn into the graphs to calculate the outside extremes of the various models.

Such uncertainties are often seized on by people urging against action, or to cast doubt on the authority of the science, but Professor Schellnhuber argued to the ”Four Degrees and More?” conference that scientists ought to be very proud of such publications.

”This is the body of evidence. It’s clumsy, it’s cloudy, but millions of hours of work have gone into producing this hazy picture, and we’re very proud of presenting that in all its uncertainty,” he told the mostly scientific audience.

”I’m a sceptic regarding my own work every day,” he said.

”You always scrutinise what you have done yesterday, and you are never confident.” This, he said, was ”the best level of science”.

Despite the caveats, he argued the science clearly showed that urgent, deep action by the nations of the world to pull back emissions in the next decade, and to move to decarbonise economies and power generation by 2050, was the only avenue to avoid catastrophic 4-degrees-rise scenarios.

These also summoned up the potential for ”surprises” and tipping points, which could kick planet systems into self-perpetuating, runaway scenarios of warming – the disruption of monsoons, the collapse of the Amazon rainforest or the Greenland ice sheet, the release of powerful greenhouse agents such as methane from under the ocean floor..

The graphs also show how if emissions were curbed hard, temperature and atmosphere could gradually return to safer, known territory in the next century.

”But it will still take millennia to approach anything near a pre-industrial level,” he said.

”The planet has been changed [by human action] for good, more or less, at least for the next 50,000 years, when the next ice age is due.

”We are already in a situation where only the most dramatic of all climate protections can we hold the 2-degrees line.”

Effective climate action would not bring about economic cataclysm, Professor Schellnhuber argued. Germany had begun a complete power revolution, but boasted healthy industry and strong GDP growth.

”This is an encouraging message – that trying to protect the climate, trying to make your domestic national contribution to saving the planet – does not mean necessarily that we will be all de-industrialised and poverty stricken, that the end of the world is coming soon – quite the contrary.”

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• Coming to a beach near you … High tides which battered Howrah Beach at the weekend … beach stones dumped on the walkway of a new toilet block at Howrah Point … sand dune trees toppled … and the Howrah Primary school footy oval is just centimetres away …

• Dr. Thomas Moore, Coasts Coordinator, Environment Tasmania Inc

TIME RUNNING OUT FOR TAS GOV TO ACT ON COASTAL POLICY REFORM
After years of failure to deliver long overdue reform on coastal policy in Tasmania the distressing
flooding and coastal erosion events in the Clarence City Council municipality over the weekend
brings into sharp focus the urgent need for an effective and integrated response from
Governments.

The review of the State Coastal Policy was initiated in 2004. Seven years later, in May 2011, Premier
Giddings gave clear and immediate direction to the Minister for Planning calling for a fresh way
forward after the failure of the then current Draft State Coastal Policy.

“It is fundamental that Premier Giddings and the Tasmanian Government now act on their
commitment to coastal policy reform and it’s urgent that the Premier delivers within the current
term of Government.” said Dr. Thomas Moore, Environment Tasmania’s Coasts Coordinator,

“The rejection of the Canal Estates (Prohibition) Bill 2011 last week is another failure given what is
being faced today by coastal residents in Tasmania.” he continued,

“Premier Giddings and the Tasmanian Government must deliver strong and comprehensive
coastal policy reform to protect Tasmania from the environmental and economic risks that
threaten our coastal values and communities.” he concluded.