World may be heating quickly: scientist

Climate change is happening faster than predicted and the world could be as much as seven degrees hotter by the end of the century, a CSIRO scientist says.

New Australian research showed current policies did not go far enough to manage the risks posed by climate change, according to Dr Roger Jones, a climate risk analyst with CSIRO’s energy transformed flagship.
Global action was needed by 2015 to adequately reduce those risks, he said.

The research, conducted by CSIRO and Victoria University, showed even if severe emissions cuts were implemented from 2030, warming of 2.2 to 4.7 degrees could still happen by 2100.

If the present high emissions path was followed, the most likely warming was between 3.4 and 7.2 degrees.

The risks posed by climate change were worse than had been predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2000, Dr Jones said.

The world had moved on to a new economic path, driven by developing countries and commodity-producers like Australia, which would lead to more serious emissions scenarios than the panel’s scientists had forecast.

Sydney Morning Herald