“THE world’s top climate scientists have cut their worst-case forecast for global warming over the next 100 years. A draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained exclusively by The Weekend Australian, offers a more certain projection of climate change than the body’s forecasts five years ago.”

Don’t worry, the pointyheads were wrong after all. Our pundits and climate denialists get big kisses and a rain of golden stars.

Later on, the same article gets to the real point:

“The report projects a rise in sea levels by century’s end of between 14cm and 43cm, with further rises expected in following centuries caused by melting polar ice.

The new projections forecast damage by global warming, such as stronger cyclones, modest sea-level rises and further shrinking of the arctic sea ice.

CSIRO research predicts the biggest impact of sea-level changes of this scale would be to increase the effect of storm surges, particularly on Australia’s tropical northern coastline.

The forecast temperature rises would also result in lower rainfall over most of the Australian mainland and exacerbate the threat to the survival of coral reefs and shellfish by increasing the risk of bleaching and increasing the acidity of the ocean.

I reckon that can be translated into seven words: we’re fucked if we don’t do something. But, our beloved Murdochistas are so full of compassion for our overburdened nation they tell us in the gentlest way possible:

“The new projections put paid to some of the more alarmist scenarios raised by previous modelling, which have suggested that sea levels could rise by almost 1m over the same period.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 4th, 2006 at 1:35 am and is filed under Austrapolitics, journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.