Climate trouble brewing in Aus
2007-08-13 12:02
Canberra - A report questioning climate
change and calling global warming a "natural phenomenon" on
Monday led to accusations Australia's Prime Minister John
Howard was a climate sceptic, possibly denting his re-election
hopes.
A group of four government lawmakers - two of them former
ministers - released the report debating the science of carbon
capture and underground storage, or geosequestration, opening a
climate rift in the government.
"Climate change is a natural phenomenon that has always
been with us and always will be," they said in a document
challenging the findings of a cross-party parliamentary report
looking at carbon capture options for Australia.
"Whether human activities are disturbing the climate in
dangerous ways has yet to be proven."
Howard, 11-years in power, is fighting accusations he has
been slow to respond on climate change, which is shaping up as
a key issue for national elections widely tipped for November.
He has announced projects to combat climate change as polls
show eight in 10 Australians are concerned about global
warming. International reports say the already drought-stricken
country will be hard hit by rising temperatures and greater
extremes in weather.
The four lawmakers - a majority of the six government MPs
on Parliament's Science Committee - took issue with the
parliamentary report recommendation calling for government
funding and tenders backing major carbon storage and capture
projects.
A climate dinosaur
The Australian Greens said the leader of the four - former
scientist turned MP Dennis Jensen - was a climate "dinosaur",
while Howard remained a self-confessed global warming sceptic.
"His language has changed because he recognises the opinion
polls show that Australians are really worried about climate
change, are angry that he's done nothing," Greens Senator
Christine Milne told radio, referring to Howard.
"While these are the musings of Liberal backbenchers, what
they demonstrate is how climate scepticism goes to the heart of
the Liberal Party and indeed the coalition," she said.
In a major report, the UN climate panel said in February
that there was at least a 90% probability human
activities were the main cause of global warming in the past 50
years.
Delegates who approved the UN report at a meeting in
Paris agreed a "best estimate" that temperatures will rise by three
Celsius by 2100 over pre-industrial levels,
the biggest change in a century for thousands of years.
Science Committee chairman Petro Georgiou, a Liberal and
frequent critic of Howard's tough immigration policies, said
his party colleagues were wrong to question climate change.
"I totally affirm my conclusion that the evidence is
compelling and that the link between greenhouse gas emissions
from human activity and higher temperatures is convincing," he
said.