Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

CSIRO and BoM Report: Too Late to Avoid Warming

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Thanks to Luke Walker for alerting me to this:

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Too late to avoid warming: climate report

Sydney could face an annual temperature rise of up to 4.3 degrees by 2070, and a tripling of the number of days a year when the thermometer soars above 35 degrees, if global greenhouse gas emissions are not cut steeply, a new report has found.

It is too late for the city to avoid a warming of about 1 degree by 2030 as well as a 3 per cent reduction in annual rainfall because of polluting gases already in the atmosphere.

More droughts, fires, and severe weather events, and less rain and snow across the country are also on the horizon, according to the report, Climate Change in Australia, which contains the most detailed and up-to-date climate projections produced by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology.

Its findings, released at the Greenhouse 2007 conference in Sydney this morning, include projections of up to 20 per cent more drought months over most of Australia by 2030.

Read the report ‘Climate Change in Australia’ here.

Report with animation here.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. rog says

    Yeah and the recent fires around Port Stephens, which has had big winter rains, were lit by an arsonist.

  2. Louis Hissink says

    Oh, if it’s too late to stop it, then signing Kyoto and dereasing CO2 emittance therefore becomes irrelevant.

    So what are the Chicken Littles on about then?

  5. Peter Lezaich says

    Gavin,

    Clearly you have never hadd to manage a large forest estate on the urban fringe or you would not be making silly statements such as “rog: arsonists only operate when the country is tinder dry.”

    Gavin arsonists are quite happy to light fires regardless of the weather or the state of the fuel load.Only some of their fires are lit during bad fire weather.

  7. SJT says

    “Wonder how that drought is going …”

    Last I heard here, the rain was going to be excellent for the farmers in the Hunter Valley, and it was all just part of the seasonal cycle. That was the last I heard, anyway. If I only read were the comments on this web site, I wouldn’t even know there was a drought.

  8. Ian Mott says

    Did I hear the ABC let slip the fact that the report indicated only a probability of 0.3 that temperatures would increase by 4.3C by 2070?

    And as this was, in fact, the ScumBC, we can be certain that prominence was given to the worst case “scarenario”.

    The truth of the story is that the report found a probability of 0.7 that temperatures would NOT rise by 4.3C by 2070.

  9. Luke says

    I have to agree with Ian (cripes) that the science here needs to be exactly reported and they should give a range. We would have to check in this instance but in prior cases they have not attributed a “probability” to any particular number. readers should be clear on exactly they are saying (whether you agree with it or not).

    In an election environment I would have also thought a duty to be precise and careful with any communication would also be professional.

  10. Ian Mott says

    Just checked the pretty pictures at CSIRO and was surprised to learn that the projections are based on the IPCC’s OLD gonzo emissions scarenarios.

    “Emissions scenarios are from the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios. Low emissions is the B1 scenario, medium is A1B and high is A1FI.”

    Remember the crap that assumes that India, China and Africa will be fully developed on the USA urban sprawl model rather than the Japanese/Taiwanese/Singaporean model?

    Remember the ones that failed to account for peak oil? Remember the ones that had zero input from nuclear energy and which failed to factor in any emission reductions from technology gains? And dropkick central has the gall to recycle the same old crap WITH NO EMISSION IMPROVEMENTS BETWEEN NOW AND 2070?

    Note also from the maps at http://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/nattemp1.php (enter “national” and “2070”) that the claimed increases are from the period 1980/99 not from the present period. So some of it has already taken place.

    This is not research. It is nothing more than a slick reworking of the same old dogs vomit.

  11. bikerider says

    It was interesting to hear the guy who reads the newspaper headlines on the ABC’s Breakfast show this morning say that they were all relaying the doom and gloom of the report. However, the Australian (I think it was) suggested that BOM and CSIRO were scaling back their predictions from an increase of 6 degrees to 5. Thank heavens for that!

    The Canberra Times article Gavin mentions says Tuggeranong’s long term September average is 72mm. According to the BOM it is 62mm.

    I guess all this means you can’t believe everything you read in newspapers.

  12. Malcolm Hill says

    http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/

    Motty,

    Even if it was being passed off as research there are others who would also point out that they are dammed by their own evidence.

    This latest post by Gustof would show by his stats analysis they, CSIRO and ABM, are nothing more than publically funded porky peddlers–or incompetent.

    BTW Motty, if one plays around with the data in their web site you will see that at the extremes the rainfall increases enormously.

    So it might be the case that some global warming may make it drier, but a lot will make it wetter.Much wetter. How strange.

  13. John says

    Usual nonsense from the CSIRO and the alarmist part of BoM. I’ve only heard of one independent analysis of previous CSIRO reports and it was not favourable. It would be nice to properly analyse this report but where would the funding come from for such an exercise??

    Yesterday’s Australian (via Breaking News) reported the CSIRO’s Penny Wharton as saying “Some climate change for Australia is certainly inevitable, so we’re going to need to adapt to its impact,” she said.

    How much is she paid to speak the bleedin’ obvious – that climate changes and we keep adapting ?

    Today’s Australian quotes the BoM’s Scott Power saying that temperatures in the Murray-Darling Basin for the period January to September were a record, as was the temperature over southern Australia. “The warming is consistent with climate change,” he said.

    (Never mind that a January-September record might only be since 1950 or that other regions might be quite different)

    “Consistent with” is no proof and “climate change” is a generality that doesn’t assign blame to humans.

    What is it with these people?

    The report just looks like a triumph of marketing over verifiable substance.

  14. SJT says

    John

    in what way is the report nonsense? Consistent with was not meant to be proof, but it’s consistent with what they have been telling us for the past decade.

  15. gavin says

    Peter: On your arson issue, one has to wonder why we had a total fire ban day so soon after winter.

    Readers may be interested that the average wind speed was 40-50 km/h with gusts at 90 km/h.

    Last week was much the same.

  17. Luke says

    Gavin – they reckon the price hike is yet to come through fully. Be some whinging when it hits.

  18. Peter Lezaich says

    Gavin,
    In response to your question “Peter: On your arson issue, one has to wonder why we had a total fire ban day so soon after winter.”

    Because these days the bureaucrats will call a total fire ban inmuch more benign circumstances than in the past. 10-15 years ago, say pre-koperberg, weather conditions such as we experienced this week would not have been deemed sufficiently alarming to call a total fire ban.I suspect that it is due to a number of factors including the loss of field staff actively working in forests. The creation of large regional offices at the expence of small district offices has resulted in the loss of local knowledge and the creation of a gulf between managers and field staff. They do not know or understand each other as inthe past.

    It all addds up to a reduced fire fighting capacity and therefore a reappraisal of the risk.