AUSTRALIA: Britain's top scientific advisor sees global climate change agreement in 2009

Britain's top scientific adviser Professor Sir David King says he is optimistic there will be a new global climate change agreement by 2009 which will be in place for 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol is due to end. Britain's chief scientific adviser said on Tuesday (October 2) he was optimistic a new global climate deal would be reached by 2009, but warned new energy technologies aimed at reducing greenhouse gases need to be economically driven. Sir David King said he believed nations like the United States, Australia and China, which are not party to the Kyoto Protocol, are becoming sympathetic towards a new climate pact. "I am quite optimistic of the new deal coming into place in 2009. The point is it really needs to be in place by 2009 if we're going to have a process to operate from 2012," King told Reuters in an interview in Sydney. King, a chemist who has held the chief science adviser post since 2000, has been an outspoken advocate of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming, describing climate change as a greater threat than terrorism. The U.N.'s 1997 Kyoto Protocol obliges 36 industrialised countries, including Russia, the European Union, Canada and Japan, to cut their overall emissions of greenhouse gases to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The United States is the world's biggest emitter of carbon, but President George W. Bush has rejected mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Last week Bush told a meeting of the 17 biggest emitters of climate-warming gases that new environmental technology and voluntary measures were central to tackling climate change. Bush's remarks prompted some of the biggest greenhouse polluting nations to questioned his leadership on the problem of global warming. King said it would not be possible to reach an agreement without the United States being a major player, and that he was optimistic that Washington was beginning to soften its position. "I think that's cause for optimism. We've still got a long way to go to get agreement for example on the limits in carbon dioxide globally. So, I think it's quite clear there is a thawing and movement but we've got some distance to go," he said. But King warned that science and technology was not the sole answer to tackling climate change, adding new cleaner energy must be economically viable. Also on Tuesday, an Australian report into climate change found that the country, the driest inhabited continent in the world, will get even hotter and drier due to climate change triggered mainly by greenhouse gases. The report, "Climate Change in Australia" produced by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Bureau of Meteorology, found that at low emissions of greenhouse gases, warming of between 1 degree Celsius and 2.5 degrees was expected by 2070, with a best estimate of 1.8 degrees. At high emissions, the best estimate was warming of 3.4 degrees, in a range of 2.2 degrees to 5 degrees. Rainfall is forecast to decrease by up to 20 percent by 2070 in southern Australia if greenhouse gas emissions are low and by up to 30 percent if gas emissions are high. Australia was likely to be hit harder by climate change than other sub-tropical parts of the world, including South Africa, the Mediterranean and parts of South America, because it was already very dry, said Penny Whetton, head of climate impact and risk at the government-backed CSIRO. "We're a very dry continent and the projected change in precipitation are ones of decrease for the southern areas of Australia so compared to some other parts of the world where climate change is more likely to bring increases in rainfall, Australia has the potential to be more negatively affected by climate change," she said. Frequently recurring Australian droughts will be more severe because of higher temperatures, while periods of high fire danger are increasing, as is coastal flooding from storms.

ITN Source | October 2, 2007

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