Professor explains what United Kingdom is doing to limit Co2 emissions

Sir Prof Brian Hoskins deliver
 the Miegunyah Lecture at
the Carrillo Gantner Theatre
in Melbourne.

The United Kingdom’s plans to limit carbon dioxide emissions were explained at last night’s Miegunyah Lecture at the University of Melbourne.

Sir Prof Brian Hoskins told a near full Carrillo Gantner Theatre that it was now law in the UK to restrict emissions with the goal of reaching 80 per cent of 1990 emissions by 2050.

That law, he said was implemented with overwhelming support with just three parliamentarians voting against what was proposed and 450 voting in support.

Targets taking the country to that goal have been established and now a working part of government at all levels.

He said the goal provides a 50/50 chance of staying within the two degree limit, but admitted that by the end of the century the earth could warm to 3.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Prof Hoskins’ presentation was sweeping, illustrating his broad and deep understanding of climate change and its manifest complications with him admitting, several times, that many outcomes were something those in his position were unsure of, both in terms of timing or their gravity.

He came to Melbourne with a reputation and resume almost without equal and was introduced to those in the theatre by Prof David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Sciences, who said the visiting professor and he knew each other well as he had been his PhD supervisor.

The near full Carrillo Gantner Theatre for
last night's Miegunyah Lecture - 'Climate
 change: are we up for the challenge?'

Prof Hoskins is recognised as one of the world's leading atmospheric scientists. He became the first Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London in January 2008, and now shares his time between Imperial and Reading University, where he is Professor of Meteorology.

His research is in weather and climate, in particular the understanding of atmospheric motion from frontal to planetary scales.  His international roles have included being President of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences and involvement in the 2007 IPCC international climate change assessment.

He is presently a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change and the science academies of the UK, USA, China and Europe and has received a number of awards including the top prizes of the UK and US Meteorological Societies. He was knighted in 2007 for his services to the environment.

What bugs you about the climate change conversation?

What is it that bugs you most when talking with someone about climate change?

Personally, discontent arises when those who are absolutely unqualified to comment, make sweeping observations about the climate, weather and present events and qualify those comments by pointing to one historic and isolated similar event – it’s the “we live in a land a sweeping plains, droughts and flooding rains” syndrome.

Many with an innate reluctance to change, to make the necessary changes if we are to ever mitigate climate change draw some strange, and as time will show, perverse comfort from their adherence to that Dorothea McKellar inculcation.

Now, The Guardian has asked just a few of the world’s leading climatologist and researchers a similar question and their responses can be read in the story headed: “What really annoys scientists about the state of the climate change debate?”

-      Robert McLean

Commemorating human failure - we need to shift our focus

Today we commemorate and lament the tragedy that is war.

We dote on Anzac Day - we need to shift our
attention to addressing climate change.

Thousands of people gathered at ceremonies throughout Australia to remember events that are clear evidence of humanity’s failings.

Another event of a magnitude sufficient to make all the wars resulting from those failings appear of little consequence is about to rush over our horizon to disrupt and disable humanity and leave unimaginable carnage strewn about the planet.

The door through which we can access the solutions brought upon us through the damage we have done to our atmosphere is closing – our opportunities to address climate change are quickly becoming fewer and fewer.

The time, effort and money invested in commemorating our mistakes is misplaced for if we re-directed that trio, accompanied by the massive and sweeping media coverage war and its commemoration is given, then we would at least have some chance of mitigating, or adapting to climate change.

Among those things which will disable much of society and bring with it costs almost beyond comprehension is see level rise.

ClimateProgress discusses the consequences of sea level rise in a story headed: “84,000 Lives threatened by sea level rise in New England”.

The troubles facing New England are just one of an intricate mosaic of troubles facing people around the globe in this and the next decade.

Commemorating wars is a relatively simple emotive process as for once a year you assemble, illustrate your concerns, have your thoughts assuaged, secure endorsement from  your fellows (that’s most people), endorse business as usual and then return to live your life largely unchanged.

Nothing has effectively happened, unlike what is required when you become a climate change advocate and to say you endorse the science that unquestionably illustrates the reality of a damaged atmosphere, means you are stepping aside from society’s momentum and effectively saying “there’s another and better way”.

That takes courage, dramatically different from that exhibited by those who stormed the beaches at Gallipoli nearly a century ago, but still an aspect of courage about which people have little, or no understanding.