CSIRO's Horror Show - Latest Projections For Australia's Climatic Future - Tasmanian

[hatrack]

HEAT waves that kill thousands, gigantic bushfires and regular 100-year storms are part of a frightening new climate change forecast for Australia. A leaked CSIRO report into the impact of global warming predicts a century of climatic horrors for Tasmania and the rest of Australia. The doomsday scenario will form the basis of the Australian chapter in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the Federal Government's key stocktake on global warming due for release in April.

The United Nations' IPCC reports into climate change represent the world's most up-to-date assessment of how rising global temperatures will change our planet. The CSIRO report found that extreme fire days will be more common across Australia. The report predicts Tasmania and Victoria's east coast will be battered with massive 100-year storms, adding to beach erosion and the destruction of coastal properties.

Eucalypt forests will start to disappear, along with the delicate habitat necessary to sustain Australia's native animals. Human lives in bigger cities will come under increasing threat, with the annual death toll from heat waves expected to reach 1300. And refugees from Pacific Islands submerged by water will flock into the country. Without solid rain, Australia's crops will be affected, despite the higher temperatures helping increase the yield.

EDIT

At a Global Warming and Politics seminar in Hobart yesterday, scientific experts and politicians agreed the clock is ticking. "Climate change is real, its effects are happening now in many forms," visiting expert Stuart Rosewarne, senior lecturer in economics at Sydney University, said yesterday. Dr Rosewarne said many effects were already having an impact on Tasmania and yesterday's seminar heard the more populated areas and major agricultural and farming regions would be hardest hit.

EDIT

http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,21206062-5007221,00.html