Thursday, February 3, 2011

Australian science advisor suggests there's much worse to come

Sid Maher in the Australian: The government's climate change adviser Ross Garnaut has warned that the severity of the cyclones and floods which have devastated Queensland in the past month could be the result of climate change and that the science predicts "you ain't seen nothing yet".

As Queensland counted the cost of Cyclone Yasi yesterday, Professor Garnaut said climate-change science warned that as global temperatures rose the number of extreme events would intensify. "There's never been a strong assertion in the climate science that you'll get more frequent cyclonic events. There is a strong element in the climate science that you will get more frequent extreme cyclonic events," he said.

Professor Garnaut also warned that the latest scientific trends suggested increases in temperatures and sea-level rises were worse than predicted by the Inter- Governmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. "I think the general tendency is to confirm the IPCC under-estimated the impacts," Professor Garnaut said….

Crystal ball shot by Eva K. / Eva K., Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons2.5 GenericAttribution-Share Alike

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