Tuesday, December 12, 2006
We're already paying the price of global warming
Victoria and Tasmania are on fire. All Australian capital cities but Darwin are facing water shortages. Many parts of Australia are hotter and drier than they have been in recorded history.

The financial cost to the nation is huge:

• Drought payments for [continuing] exceptional circumstances are being paid to farmers who simply can’t produce
• Dry weather is pushing up farm gate prices, as produce becomes increasingly scarce and the costs to producers (water charges, for example) rise
• Water infrastructure projects are being brought forward
• There is direct damage to private property from bush fires
• The fire fighting effort in the affected States is costing tens of millions of dollars, as fire fighters and equipment are brought in from inter-State and New Zealand
• Tourism operators in the region are closed

The recent Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change handed to the United Kingdom government indicated that left unchecked, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions will cost the global economy billions of dollars and cause severe recession, as global warming damages ecosystems and directly threatens human habitation in the future.

Climate change models have predicted that many parts of the eastern seaboard of Australia will get progressively drier as atmospheric CO2 levels rise and the atmosphere warms. This is due to the increasing prevalence of El Nino conditions in the South Pacific over El Nina.

Although climate modelling as a method of prediction is disputed by some, most climate scientists support it as a statistically valid way of peering into the future. And as computing power and the models they run become more sophisticated, the predictions become more certain.

Thus the conclusion is that global warming, thanks to continuing high greenhouse gas emissions from continued population growth and growing affluence, is steadily drying out eastern Australia.

Officially, the ‘drought’ is in its 10th year. Dams in South East Queensland are now well below 25% capacity.

You could argue that responsible governments should have forseen this crisis and invested in new capacity earlier, but supply models built on previous assumptions of average summer rain have proven to be way off the mark. For example, in South East Queensland, current storage – factoring in population growth – was supposed to last another 20 years.

But unless there is good summer rain, it’s not going to last another year. So far, this rain has not been forthcoming.

You could also argue that misguided fire management practices or artificial fire surpression has led to a dangerously high build up of combustable forest litter in the bushland of Victoria and Tasmania. But whatever the local circumstances, the ultimate cause of the current bush fire catastrophe is simply no rain; again thanks to El Nino.

Political rhetoric continues to focus on the future costs of not doing anything about global warming: what the price will be tomorrow, if we don’t do anything today.
The apparent truth – as evidenced by the fires in the Victorian bush or the barren dirt bed which used to be Lake Wivenhoe - is that we are already paying the price for global warming.

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