Boom sees CO2 danger level reached 10 years early

THE global economic boom has accelerated greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold not expected for a decade and could cause irreversible climate change, said one of Australia’s leading scientists.

Tim Flannery, a world-recognised climate change scientist and Australian of the Year in 2007, said a UN climate change report due in November will show that greenhouse gases have already reached dangerous levels.

He said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report will show that greenhouse gas in the atmosphere in mid-2005 had reached about 455 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent — a level not expected for another 10 years.

“But the new data indicates that in about mid-2005 we crossed that threshold,” he said.

“What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that could potentially cause dangerous climate change.”

Mr Flannery, from Macquarie University, said he had seen the raw data in the panel’s report.

He said the overall measurement of greenhouse gas included not just carbon dioxide, but nitrous oxide, methane and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

“Probably 75% is carbon dioxide but the rest is that mixed bag of other gases.”

Mr Flannery said global economic expansion, particularly in China and India, was a huge factor in the acceleration in greenhouse gas levels.

“We’re still basing that economic activity on fossil fuels. You know, the metabolism of that economy is now on a collision course, clearly, with the metabolism of our planet.”

The report adds an urgency to the UN climate change meeting of environment ministers in Bali in December, as reducing greenhouse gas emissions may not be enough to halt climate change, he said.

“We can reduce emissions as strongly as we like — unless we can draw some of the standing stock of pollutant out of the air and into the tropical forests, we’ll still face unacceptable levels of risk in 40 years’ time,” he said.

Mr Flannery suggested the developed world could buy “climate security” by paying villages in countries like Papua New Guinea not to log forests and to re-grow forests.