Australian Broadcasting Corporation


LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1468875.htm

Broadcast: 26/09/2005

Paleontologist outlines his plan for the future

Reporter: Mike Sexton

MAXINE McKEW: With a series of bestsellers to his credit, palaeontologist Tim Flannery is probably this country's best-known scientist since the late Professor Julius Sumner Miller. An adviser to the South Australian Government and a member of the respected Wentworth Group, Tim Flannery is now weighing in to the debate over global warming in a book that promises to be his most controversial yet. Dr Flannery has titled his new work The Weather Makers, and he argues that the human race is damaging the environment so badly through greenhouse gas emissions that it's become the driving force in climate change. The book paints a desperate picture of a future of rising seas and extreme weather, unless we make dramatic changes to the way we live. But already, his critics are suggesting the book is over the top and that the Flannery plan for the future would be an economic disaster. Mike Sexton reports.

TIM FLANNERY, AUTHOR: I was first of all really shocked by the science. It felt almost like a physical assault when I started to read, two or three years ago, what was being predicted for our planet from climate change. I went through a phase of being quite angry about that.

MIKE SEXTON: Tim Flannery first captured public attention with his controversial theories about the past. Now, the scientist turned bestselling author has gazed into the future, and he's terrified by what he sees.

TIM FLANNERY: I wrote the book really because I am so concerned about the future of our biodiversity and our cities, and just the future of the whole thing that we call planet Earth, over the next century, unless we can get on top of this problem.

MIKE SEXTON: That problem is global warming. And while warnings about the impact of climate change are hardly new, Tim Flannery wants to share his own alarm at the massive changes he foresees within his own lifetime.

TIM FLANNERY: A few thousand years ago, when the world was five degrees cooler, this coastline, this beach here was 100 kilometres south of here. In this century, if we go on as we are, we're going to make this planet three degrees warmer. So where does that leave the coast? There is enough ice on this planet to raise the sea level by nearly 70m if we melt all of it, so it is a very important question for our future.

MIKE SEXTON: According to Tim Flannery, we are to blame. He is convinced climate change is being driven by the greenhouse gases building in the atmosphere, chiefly the carbon dioxide that's released when we burn fossil fuel such as oil, gas and coal.

TIM FLANNERY: The pollutants we're putting in the atmosphere, these greenhouse gases, are changing the way the atmosphere works. And at some stage during my lifetime, if I'm lucky enough to live another 40 or 50 years, we'll become the dominant influence on the way the atmosphere works. We will be the weather makers at that time.

MIKE SEXTON: Tim Flannery even cites the devastation caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita as a foretaste of the volatile weather patterns generated by a hotter planet.

TIM FLANNERY: What climate change has done is change the underlying conditions, so if you look at the northern Gulf of Mexico and how warm it was right through this last summer, it was at 30 degrees Celsius. That's enough to power the most powerful storms we know about. It has been a ticking bomb all along.

PROFESSOR BOB CARTER, JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY: We need many more facts and a lot less hysteria.

MIKE SEXTON: But once again Tim's dramatic views have their critics. Professor Bob Carter from James Cook University is not convinced humans are a driving force in climate change. He says geological records show the planet has always had dynamic weather patterns that swing naturally between periods of hot and cold.

PROFESSOR BOB CARTER: If, for example, at the moment the world is going through a phase of warming slightly, which it has done in the late 20th century, then the key question is: is that outside the magnitude or the rate of warming that we've seen in the past geological record? And the answer to that question is completely clear. The answer is: no. The rate of warming in the late 20th century is one to two orders of magnitude less than earlier natural rates of warming and cooling.

TIM FLANNERY: I can agree and say yes, look, climate has always been changing. But what we're facing now is a period of extremely rapid and very large-scale climate change and typically in the geological record, that's when you see lots of extinctions.

MIKE SEXTON: Professor Carter not only rejects idea that humans are becoming the weather makers, he argues reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would have virtually no impact.

PROFESSOR BOB CARTER: It's a non-solution, because even if all the signatory nations do what they've said they'll do, by 2050, we will reduce the temperature by .02 degrees Celsius. I'll say that again, two hundredths of a degree. We can't even measure that with most thermometers we use. The idea that we can manage the climate is frankly hubris.

MIKE SEXTON: But Tim Flannery is convinced greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change and wants Australia to break its addiction to fossil fuel. More than 85 per cent of our electricity is generated by burning coal, which is cheap and should last for several hundred years. Dr Flannery believes a carbon tax should be levied immediately to move power generation away from coal to solar, wind and possibly even nuclear power.

TIM FLANNERY: The single most important thing that could be done now would be to say, no more coal-fired power plants for Australia, ever. And over the next 20 or 30 years, a phase-out of the worst polluters. That will then allow the rest of the energy sector to start slotting in and taking part of the action.

ALAN MORAN, INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS: The alternative is we stick with what we can know or become relatively poorer. And we enjoy lower standard of living, we enjoy less industry, etc. We can do all these things, they're all doable but we are poorer for doing them.

MIKE SEXTON: Alan Moran is an economist with the Institute of Public Affairs and a one-time deputy secretary of the Victorian Department of Energy. He worries a radical shift away from current energy practice, as proposed by Dr Flannery, would hit the economy hard and believes current government subsidies for alternative energy sources are enough.

ALAN MORAN: I don't think it would make a great deal of sense to give more. Given the various uncertainties about the costs and benefits of doing anything, I think it would be premature to actually think in terms of doing any more at this stage.

TIM FLANNERY: No government has actually looked at the cost of doing nothing. What are the economic costs of doing nothing? Until you have those two lots of studies done, you've got to say that governments aren't taking things seriously.

MIKE SEXTON: But it's not gloom and doom. After painting an apocalyptic picture of our future, Dr Flannery found salvation in the realisation that the problem could be solved through the actions of every individual. Do you think you're going to upset people with this book?

TIM FLANNERY: I hope I can empower them, maybe some people will get upset, but I think ultimately it's about giving people a gift, it's giving them the understanding they need to secure their future and their children's future.

MAXINE McKEW: It's a sobering debate, isn't it?