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Thursday 6 December 2007 (EMBARGO lifted at 3pm AEDT)

RAPID ROUNDUP

Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists - Australian scientists respond

More than 200 of the world’s top climate scientists have signed a Bali Climate Declaration released at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Bali Today (Thu 6 Dec). The declaration is being led by scientists from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW.

The full declaration and list of signatories are available at www.climate.unsw.edu.au/bali/

Three of the signatories spoke from Bali at an AusSMC online briefing earlier today. Feel free to use any of the discussion in your broadcasts.

Presenters were:
Professor Matthew England, Climate Change Research Centre, University of NSW
Professor Andy Pitman, Climate Change Research Centre, University of NSW
Professor Diana Liverman, Oxford University, UK

Listen to the briefing and discussion (mp3) | See their presentation (pdf)

The main announcement in Bali was streamed live on the UNFCCC website at 3.30pm AEDT on Thursday. To see an archived copy of the press conference click here.

Meantime, other Australian climate scientists respond below. Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. If you need assistance tracking down an expert, contact us. Any further quotes will be posted here.

Footnote: Dr Susannah Eliott from the Australian Science Media Centre is currently in Bali for the United Nations Climate Change Conference which started today and is available to help facilitate for Australian journalists. Contact us for further information.

Professor David Karoly is a Federation Fellow in the School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne and was a lead author on the IPCC WG2 report.

“The Bali Declaration by Climate Scientists provides very important policy recommendations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions aimed at avoiding dangerous climate change, which the IPCC cannot do because it is not allowed to provide policy recommendations.

I chose not to sign the Bali declaration because it may not go far enough. The situation is worse than indicated, as concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere already exceed 450 ppm CO2-equivalent and are growing rapidly. Even if we could stabilise concentrations at that level, there is still a significant risk of dangerous anthropogenic climate change occurring in some regions even at that level.”

Graeme Pearman is a Private Climate consultant in Melbourne and a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University in Victoria.

“The assessment of all peer-reviewed and published research on climate change over the past six years was summarised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in four volumes earlier this year. The message is clear; mainstream science is confident that the climate is changing and that this is highly likely to be due to human emissions of greenhouse gases. Further change through this century could take the global climate into conditions that are more like those of 3 million years ago, during a period referred to by geologists as the Mid-Pliocene, when average global temperatures were between 2 and 3 degrees C warmer than at present, the Arctic Sea was free of ice and much of the Greenland ice sheet melted, with sea levels higher by between about 10 and 40 metres.

The strength of this new science has been such that even scientists who have been engaged in this research over decades have become more concerned about the importance of what they have discovered. This is partly because of the higher confidence levels now associated with this work, but it also reflects the fact that this understanding has heightened awareness of the importance of what might appear to be relatively small shifts in average global temperatures in terms of the details of geographical distribution of climatic conditions. Changes of 2 degrees or so threaten the livelihood of hundreds of millions of humans, to say nothing of the survival of the millions of species with which we share the planet. In addition, this new knowledge has made us more aware of things that might possibly go wrong. That is, triggers to changes that could occur rapidly once certain warming takes place. It is not that we know with scientific certainty (>99% certain) that these will take place, but rather that the magnitude of these effects, if they occur, means that we should not wait until we are certain before acting.

This Declaration of over 200 experienced and mainstream scientists in the field is consistent with these findings and the growing conviction in scientific circles that political action is now urgent, if not overdue. They could have easily added hundreds of more names to this list; scientists from oceanography, atmospheric physics, biology, geochemistry, economics, and many other fields that have contributed to this state of understanding. Indeed, this Declaration is supported by similar statements that have been made over recent years by key learned academies around the world. This is not a conspiracy as some might say, but a time when our knowledge says, we must act on this issue now.”

Professor Neville Nicholls is in the School of Geography & Environmental Science at Monash University in Victoria, and was a member of the writing team for the IPCC Synthesis Report.

"For many years the scientists involved in the IPCC have been careful to avoid comments about what governments should do regarding global warming. We have spelled out the facts about how the climate is changing and how humans are contributing to the warming through increasing carbon dioxide emissions. We have assumed that politicians would act to protect the planet and its people, once we had given them the facts. But it is too late to wait any longer for politicians to ‘do the right thing’, so the scientists have decided to make absolutely clear what needs to be done: ACT NOW!"

Professor Barry Brook is Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide.

"The sentiment behind the Bali Declaration is admirable, but I think the minimum targets they quote are inadequate. If the long-term aspirational goal is suggested to be 'at least' a 50% reduction in global emissions, then I'd argue that 50% is the number that wavering parties will latch on to - and no more. That is, why argue for a target that is 43 years distant and set at a level that has just barely a chance of being sufficient to avoid dangerous planetary heating? If the conclusions drawn by the 2007 IPCC working group III are accepted, then the stabilisation scenarios indicate that for reasonable chance of avoiding 2 to 2.4°C warming, we need global emissions reductions of 50-85% by 2050, relative to year 2000 emissions. So the 50% mentioned in the Bali Declaration is at best a minimally adequate target. It also does not acknowledge the fact that to achieve this target on a globally equitable basis, the burden on developed nations will be higher (80-90% by 2050) because of our disproportionately high per capita emissions.

Also, I wish the declaration had been more specific about the 10-15 year targets - it currently reads too much like a motherhood statement and the response time is too slow. The stabilisation needs to occur between 2000-2015, not between 2017 and 2023 as the statement implies. Indeed, a target of 25-40% emissions reductions by 2020 for developed countries has been put on the Bali negotiating table for discussion - this would be a fantastic outcome if agreement on this could be reached. It is just what is needed - a focus on significant short-term achievement. So why aren't we scientists saying so?"