Climate Change

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (15:47): I and, I assume, other members recently received an invitation from Flinders University's—the greatest university in the world—Southgate Institute to an oration in October to be delivered by Adjunct Professor Peter Sainsbury on the question of 'Are humans smart enough to avoid making themselves extinct?' Unfortunately, most of us will not be able to duck out to attend as it will be on a sitting day, but the topic struck a chord with me because, unfortunately, there is evidence to suggest that maybe we humans are not smart enough to avoid making ourselves extinct.

Research published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters has revealed rapid loss of Antarctic ice driven by warming seas in the Southern Ocean. Professor Andy Shepherd from Leeds University, who led the study, told the Guardian that 'the speed of drawing down ice from an ice sheet used to be spoken of in geological timescales'—hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years—'but that has now been replaced by people's lifetimes'.

Research suggests that the Antarctic Peninsula has experienced faster air temperature increases over the past century than any other place in the Southern Hemisphere. A review of research published in January in Science journal concluded that 'multiple lines of evidence from four independent groups thus now suggest a stronger observed warming' in Earth's oceans, which is an obvious threat to the huge masses of ice lying below Antarctic waters.

This will have significant consequences for us all. The loss of Antarctic ice sheets and similar melting in the Northern Hemisphere are clear consequences of climate change. Just this morning, I was doing a bit of light reading and came across further research from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography highlighting the Arctic's reflective sea ice will advance global warming by 25 years. Given our limited time, I will not go too much through this article. I encourage members to check it out for themselves. It is from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, published again in the Geophysical Research Letters in 'Radiative Heating of an Ice-Free Arctic Ocean'. I quote from them:

'Losing the reflective power of Arctic sea ice will lead to warming equivalent to one trillion tons of CO2 and advance the 2°C threshold by 25 years. Any rational policy would make preventing this a top climate priority for world leaders,' said Ramanathan, a professor of atmospheric and climate sciences at Scripps.

We used to think, just a few years ago, that we had 50 years to address these issues; now we are being told we have less than 25.

This is not a question of ideology, of values or, indeed, of beliefs; this is a very simple question—it is an existential question: will we, the human race, actually be smart enough to act on the information being given to us by scientists and leading experts in the field to reverse global warming in time to prevent a greater than 2.5° increase in global temperature? Asking such a question is Adjunct Professor Peter Sainsbury. I hope that he will tell us at his oration that we will be smart enough but, quite frankly, I have my doubts.