We only have five or 10 years now in which to actually stop the rise in global emissions |
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Dr. Bill Hare - a physicist and environmental scientist attached to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany since 2002. A lead author of the IPCC's working group on mitigation of climate change. March 13, 2008 Interview with Kerry O’Brien, 7:30 Report "Well, there's been quite a few changes observed (since the latest IPCC report) such as the accelerating loss of Arctic sea ice. Some are even saying that we could lose the arctic sea ice within a few years in the summer, something which we projected would happen in 60 or 70 years in the IPCC report. We're also seeing evidence of crop production being adversely affected around the world in the last years to the extent that perhaps the IPCC forecasts of crop losses occurring after two degrees warming are a bit optimistic. On the emissions front, we're also seeing emissions growing much faster than we thought possible in the IPCC report, principally due to growth in China and other developing countries. So, overall, the risk assessment is definitely larger". "I would say that we only have five or 10 years now in which to actually stop the rise in global emissions before we run out of the chance of limiting warming to two degrees or below. We're simply out of time". KERRY O'BRIEN: The Rudd Government has until later this year to bite the bullet on exactly what its 2020 and 2050 greenhouse emission reductions will be. But already, it's under pressure from the first interim report of the climate change review by Professor Ross Garnaut, which suggested the targets will have to be significantly higher than the 2050 reduction of 60 per cent promised by Kevin Rudd before the last election. A higher target will inevitably mean tougher measures to change the way we deliver and use energy in Australia and presumably the price to be borne by the community to do so. Well, one of the scientists who helped write the recent reports by the UN inter-governmental panel on climate change warned in a speech in Canberra today that the most recent data is even more alarming than the story told by the IPCC reports. Bill Hare is a physicist and environmental scientist attached to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany since 2002. He was a lead author of the IPCC's working group three on mitigation of climate change. He is also an adviser to Greenpeace International. I spoke with him in our Canberra studio late today. Bill Hare, what is the evidence that the global threat of climate change is already significantly worse than the picture painted by the latest IPCC reports including the ones that you were involved in? BILL HARE, CO-AUTHOR, IPCC: Well, there's been quite a few changes observed such as the accelerating loss of Arctic sea ice. Some are even saying that we could lose the arctic sea ice within a few years in the summer, something which we projected would happen in 60 or 70 years in the IPCC report. We're also seeing evidence of crop production being adversely affected around the world in the last years to the extent that perhaps the IPCC forecasts of crop losses occurring after two degrees warming are a bit optimistic. On the emissions front, we're also seeing emissions growing much faster than we thought possible in the IPCC report, principally due to growth in China and other developing countries. So, overall, the risk assessment is definitely larger. KERRY O'BRIEN: And when you are talking about the ice sheet, you are talking about the Arctic ice sheets in the west Antarctic, ice sheet. If those continue to accelerate at the rate they are now, what essentially would that mean? BILL HARE: Well, the loss of ice from Greenland and the west Antarctic ice sheet in particular is already raising sea level quite significantly. If the losses of ice from these ice sheets continue at an accelerating rate then it's very hard to predict the overall consequences. What we know from the past, for example, is that the Greenland ice sheet contributed up to four metres of warming of sea level rise in several centuries. This is definitely a risk we face unless we can limit the warming to, I would say, below two degrees in the future. KERRY O'BRIEN: Well, that two degree Celsius increase seems to be the benchmark beyond which the risk becomes too great. Are we now at greater risk of reaching that benchmark sooner than the UN reports had suggested? BILL HARE: It looks that way. I think with every year that's passing now it's quite clear that limiting warming to this level is getting harder and harder. I would say that we only have five or 10 years now in which to actually stop the rise in global emissions before we run out of the chance of limiting warming to two degrees or below. We're simply out of time. I think that's the point that Professor Garnaut makes continuously throughout his report that is so fundamental to policy in Australia. KERRY O'BRIEN: Well, he says that developed countries, he's suggesting that developed countries will have to embrace targets to reduce greenhouse emissions by around 90 per cent by 2050 to have even a 50/50 chance of staying with that two degree limit. Is it fair to say that that is the mainstream position now? BILL HARE: Well that's definitely come out of the fourth assessment report. These are the numbers that we found from a review of the entire scientific literature. The point too which I think is very important to understand is that we need to get into an interim emission reduction stage of between 25 and 40 per cent below 1990 levels and emissions in 2020. That is also very important to having any chance of limiting warming to two degrees. And I think that's one of the issues which I think the Garnaut report needs to take up in its final report and which the Government needs to take extremely seriously. BILL HARE: Well, it will mean that a lot of vested interests are affected. But if you look at the economic numbers for Australia, the potential for emission reductions is actually quite large. Because the Australian economy is so energy intensive, it's had a luxury of being able to be quite inefficient. So actually, if you look in economic terms, it's relatively cheap to make the first reductions in Australia compared to countries like Japan where already a lot has been done. So, actually, there's a lot of potential to reduce emissions here. The other side of it is that there's a great potential for new technologies like wind and solar in Australia. We have an enormous resource in this area and there's thus enormous economic potential to actually take advantage of that resource, to build the technologies that the world needs in order to safely reduce emissions. So, you know, there might be a dark side, but on the other side there's a very silver lining there. If only we can get the policy settings in place to get the technologies moving into our markets here. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/ |