



Garnaut lambasts climate debate


Lenore Taylor

SCIENTIFIC evidence of global warming has become more certain and more alarming but the public has become less convinced about it, according to the government's expert adviser, Professor Ross Garnaut.

As debate rages over Labor's proposed carbon tax, Professor Garnaut said the latest evidence showed global temperatures rising as predicted and sea levels rising faster than forecast in the last intergovernmental report.



'''On the balance of probabilities' would understate my current view of the likelihood that the mainstream science is correct. I would now say it is highly probable,'' he said, adding that there was no ''genuine'' scientific dissent from ''the main propositions of the physics of climate change''.

But he said the ''debate'' under way in newspapers and blogs in Australia was often ''antithetical'' to science because it had become ''divorced from scientific rigour, quality and authority'' with one opinion or book being seen as just as good as another.

''If you take our mainstream media, it often seeks to provide balance between people who base their views on the mainstream science and people who don't. That's a very strange sort of balance, it's a balance of number of words but it is not a balance of scientific authority,'' Professor Garnaut said.

Many scientists were starting to question whether the international goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees would be enough to avoid ''dangerous climate change'', although talks had so far failed to reach an agreement to achieve even that goal.

Australia's target of reducing emissions by at least 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020 - agreed to by both main parties - is seen as appropriate in the absence of a full international deal.

If there was a deal to limit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million - required to limit warming to 2 degrees - Australia's ''fair share'' would be a reduction target of 25 per cent.

Professor Garnaut said there was ''no prospect'' of a tougher goal than 450 parts per million being agreed upon.

The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network, which represents companies responsible for 90 per cent of Australia's emissions, denied reports it was calling for a delay to the imposition of a carbon price.

''We are not calling for a delay in the start date and we are certainly not asking that the tax be put on hold,'' the network chief executive, Michael Hitchens, said. ''We simply want to ensure the government gets details of the scheme out in time''.


The Coalition climate spokesman, Greg Hunt, said the opposition's policy was that ''the science is real, confirmed and significant'' but it did not justify a petrol and electricity tax.

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