IPCC launches fifth climate assessment report (AR5) The report confirms that climate disruption now being experienced is largely caused by human activity, with the same degree of certainty as there is that smoking causes lung cancer. It also explains the cause of the slowdown in the rate of atmospheric warming over the last decade and a half, in that it was influenced by a decline in solar activity, sulphur aerosols in the atmosphere and a continued warming of the deep ocean, and that without the greenhouse warming caused by the continued burning of fossil fuels, the global average temperature would have fallen noticeably, but it kept rising, albeit at a slower rate. Tim Flannery relaunches scrapped Climate Commission as a community funded body, the Climate Council The climate science body abolished by the Federal Government is relaunching as a community-funded organisation. The Climate Commission was set up to advise on the science and economics of carbon pricing, but was scrapped by the Government last week. The group's former chief commissioner, Tim Flannery, says thanks to enormous public support, it has been relaunched as the Climate Council. |