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Author: Neville

  • Expert assessment: Sea-level rise could exceed 1 meter in this century

    Expert assessment: Sea-level rise could exceed 1 meter in this century

    Posted By News On November 22, 2013 – 2:30pm

    In contrast, for a scenario with strong emissions reductions, experts expect a sea-level rise of 40-60 centimeters by 2100 and 60-100 centimeters by 2300. The survey was conducted by a team of scientists from the USA and Germany.

    “While the results for the scenario with climate mitigation suggest a good chance of limiting future sea-level rise to one meter, the high emissions scenario would threaten the survival of some coastal cities and low-lying islands,” says Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “From a risk management perspective, projections of future sea-level rise are of major importance for coastal planning, and for weighing options of different levels of ambition in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.”

    Projecting sea-level rise, however, comes with large uncertainties, since the physical processes causing the rise are complex. They include the expansion of ocean water as it warms, the melting of mountain glaciers and ice caps and of the two large ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, and the pumping of ground water for irrigation purposes. Different modeling approaches yield widely differing answers. The recently published IPCC report had to revise its projections upwards by about 60 percent compared to the previous report published in 2007, and other assessments of sea-level rise compiled by groups of scientists resulted in even higher projections. The observed sea-level rise as measured by satellites over the past two decades has exceeded earlier expectations.

     

    Largest elicitation on sea-level rise ever: 90 key experts from 18 countries

    “It this therefore useful to know what the larger community of sea-level experts thinks, and we make this transparent to the public,” says lead author Benjamin Horton from the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “We report the largest elicitation on future sea-level rise conducted from ninety objectively selected experts from 18 countries.” The experts were identified from peer-reviewed literature published since 2007 using the publication database ‘Web of Science’ of Thomson Reuters, an online scientific indexing service, to make sure they are all active researchers in this area. 90 international experts, all of whom published at least six peer-reviewed papers on the topic of sea-level during the past 5 years, provided their probabilistic assessment.

    The survey finds most experts expecting a higher rise than the latest IPCC projections of 28-98 centimeters by the year 2100. Two thirds (65%) of the respondents gave a higher value than the IPCC for the upper end of this range, confirming that IPCC reports tend to be conservative in their assessment.

    The experts were also asked for a “high-end” estimate below which they expect sea-level to stay with 95 percent certainty until the year 2100. This high-end value is relevant for coastal planning. For unmitigated emissions, half of the experts (51%) gave 1.5 meters or more and a quarter (27%) 2 meters or more. The high-end value in the year 2300 was given as 4.0 meters or higher by the majority of experts (58%).

    While we tend to look at projections with a focus on the relatively short period until 2100, sea-level rise will obviously not stop at that date. “Overall, the results for 2300 by the expert survey as well as the IPCC illustrate the risk that temperature increases from unmitigated emissions could commit coastal populations to a long-term, multi-meter sea-level rise,” says Rahmstorf. “They do, however, illustrate also the potential for escaping such large sea-level rise through substantial reductions of emissions.”

     

    Harbinger (not verified) | November 24, 2013 – 12:08am

    “We report the largest elicitation on future sea-level rise conducted from ninety objectively selected experts from 18 countries.” The experts were identified from peer-reviewed literature published since 2007 using the publication database ‘Web of Science’ of Thomson Reuters, an online scientific indexing service, to make sure they are all active researchers in this area. 90 international experts, all of whom published at least six peer-reviewed papers on the topic of sea-level during the past 5 years, provided their probabilistic assessment.”

  • Make the rich change their ways to avoid a 2C rise, says top scientist

    Make the rich change their ways to avoid a 2C rise, says top scientist

    Nations should give up growth obsession and focus on making the few who emit the most change their consumption patterns
    Planet Oz Blog at COP19 in Warsaw : Extreme weather, flood damage in Colorado

    Receding floodwaters in Loveland, Colorado, reveal the extent of damage to the old highway 34. Photograph: Chris Schneider/AP

    One of the world’s leading climate scientists has outlined a radical plan to hold temperatures to a 2C rise, the threshold that governments have agreed to limit rises to – but he accepts it may cause consternation among the very rich.

    Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester and deputy head of the Tyndall Centre, has argued previously that industrialised countries may need to go into recession to reduce emissions enough to ensure temperatures do not rise over 2C.

    But as a 4C rise, which is looking increasingly realistic, would be “catastrophic” and must be avoided at all costs, he now says that political and personal efforts should be concentrated on changing the consumption patterns of the very few who emit the most – and that includes most of the people at the climate talks currently underway in Warsaw.

    “We think it is still possible to avoid 2C rise. It’s feasible, but only just. We think that there are economic but not financial benefits,” he told a side meeting at the UN talks.

    “Annex 1 [industrialised] countries need a 70% reduction in emissions consumption in 10 years to give us an outside chance of holding temperatures to a 2C rise. They need to cut emissions by 10% annually. We need to be fully de-carbonised in the 2020-30s, and that means planes, fridges, everything [must emit far less] to give a bit of an opportunity for poorer parts of the world to develop.

    “If we had started in the 1992 it might have been different. But now it needs a complete shift in mindsets,” he said.

    Anderson argues that governments have become obsessed by growth but should abandon this and concentrate on the things that matter to people like health and food and shelter. “We have to think differently, look at the things that matter and make them better.

    “The financial world has failed completely to cut emissions. The self-regulated market hasn’t regulated. We’re awash with capital [but] finance has failed in its own backyard. It cannot deliver the cuts needed. Carbon pricing will not work because it cannot drive prices fast enough.”

    The problem is consumption, not supply, he says. “Only a very small percentage of people is responsible for most of the emissions. It’s about the few not the many. Mitigation to 2C is a consumption issue. There are things you can do on the demand side, [yet] we spend all our efforts on the supply side.

    “It’s not about 2030, 2040 or later. It’s about what we can do now. How many people really need to reduce emissions? The Pareto’s 80:20 rule [a principle named after the economist Vilfredo Pareto] implies that 80% of emissions come from 20% of the global population. That means that 50% of emissions come from 1% per cent of the population.” This 1%, says Anderson, includes climate scientists and nearly everyone at the UN talks and just about all the rich.

    The same 80:20 rule applies to technology, too, he suggests. “An A-rated fridge uses over 80% more than a an AAA-rated machine. The best available [of everything] is usually far, far better than what we usually buy.

    “On average cars emit around 150gm of CO2 per kilometre. But the best, already available, are 85-110. If you put in a standard of 85g/km by 2015 and tightened it by 10% a year you would get a 40-50% reduction [in transport emissions] in just 10 years.

    “We cannot rely on technologies like nuclear or wind power to reduce emissions in years to come. We start now. We must escape the shackles of the 20th-century mindset.”

  • Sustainability movement will fail unless it creates a compelling future vision

    Sustainability movement will fail unless it creates a compelling future vision

    We will only create prosperity within planetary boundaries if we start to really believe it is possible, writes Jo Confino
    An evening sunset

    We need to look further into the horizon and develop a new narrative for sustainabilty, argues Jo Confino Photograph: Alamy

    “It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble now because we don’t have a good story” – Thomas Berry

    The greatest risk to the sustainability movement is that it is struggling and so far failing to articulate a vision of a future that is both prosperous while remaining within planetary boundaries.

    Until it is able to showcase a plausible paradigm shift, then no-one is going to feel safe letting go of the current system that is driving us towards the edge of an environmental and social abyss.

    This goes to the very heart of the explanation why large businesses are doing no more than incremental tinkering with their operations and also explains the growing evidence that corporate sustainability is hitting a plateau; companies just don’t know where else to go before they have to start challenging their core business model and that is scaring the shit out of them.

    Even leaders such as Unilever are unable, within the current framework, to articulate a future that does not include continued growth; in its case, a doubling of its size by 2020. Even if it also meets its ambitious objective of halving its environmental impacts, that’s still no overall emissions reduction.

    The lack of a credible alternative also explains the sense of disconnection that many feel to the scale of the sustainability challenges we face. I was at the annual CEOs meeting a few weeks ago of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development listening to a talk by Johan Rockstrom, head of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

    His portrayal of the environmental and social disaster we are hurtling towards should have had all the senior executives weeping into their handkerchiefs. But there were no tears and precious little mention of his warning as the conference progressed.

    How could that possibly be? Because our minds don’t allow us to look to the far horizon when we can’t see more than a few steps ahead so instead we tend to look down at our feet. This explains why even environmental catastrophes only hold our attention for so long.

    It is true that there are a number of interesting sustainability initiatives such as the circular economy and a growing number of cross-sector collaborations. But none of these offers a truly systemic solution.

    At its worst, this means that sustainability professionals are essentially operating in the dark, frantically seeking to change the world without really understanding whether ultimately their initiatives or projects are causing more harm than good.

    So what can we do about this? What I am hearing from numerous experts is that we need to find a new narrative that creates a sense of confidence to take more radical steps.

    This was also the conclusion of a day-long experiential roundtable of 24 diverse global experts I chaired recently in Copenhagen. We discussed more than a dozen key sustainability solutions, ranging from natural capital valuation to education initiatives, but what was felt to be most important was being able to tell the story of the future we all want and which we believe is feasible.

    Let’s be honest; we are not there yet. Who among you is really able to convincingly describe a world which is both economically prosperous and has conquered the numerous challenges of runaway consumption, population growth, climate change, extreme poverty, resource scarcity, ecosystem collapse an the loss of biodiversity?

    We talk about moving beyond GDP as a measure of success but which politicians in their right mind are going to welcome the idea of a steady-state economy?

    Just look at what has happened after a few years of economic downturn; unemployment social upheaval and a revival of fascism. How are we going to avoid even greater dislocation and conflict by moving to an entirely new form of capitalism.

    Doug Tomkins, the radical environmentalist, told me: “We need to do a proper systemic analysis of the system we are in. We introduced a mega economic technology called capitalism which brings with it a structure and imposes a certain behaviour on society.

    “Capitalism is based on a notion and a logic of growth. It goes nuts when it starts to contract. There’s a small body of thinkers who are looking into this, and of course, there has been systemic analysis made of capitalism going way back to Marx and Engels. From that new analysis I believe that we will be much better informed to make specific and detailed strategies on how to get out of this predicament. But it takes a long time. Big paradigm shifts have taken centuries.

    “People say about Bhutan’s focus on wellbeing: ‘they’re irrelevant as they’re just a little kingdom out there in the foothills of the Himalayas. How are we going to deal with the overdeveloped nations and highly industrialised nations?’ Of course, it’s a different scale but what it does is it simply opens up the imagination that this kind of thinking is possible and that’s a little step in the right direction.”

    So who are some of the thinkers focusing their minds on creating a new narrative? There’s Tim Jackson, the author of Prosperity without Growth, and think tanks such as the New Economics Foundation.

    Another is John Fullerton’s Capital Institute, which is developing the idea of regenerative capitalism, which will make the sustainability of today look even more outdated than the CSR of a decade ago.

    Fullerton says: “Dana Meadows suggested that the most important leverage point for enabling system change is to change the paradigm, or belief structure, within which a system operates. We must evolve beyond the outdated mechanistic worldview and impossible exponential growth paradigm which defines contemporary economics and finance, to a regenerative paradigm grounded in the holistic ecological or living systems worldview of contemporary science.”

    Fullerton identifies eight elements of regenerative capitalism, ranging from the recognition of the sacredness of life and the need for entrepreneurialism to shared prosperity and resiliency.

    Whilst some of these are already being incorporated into many small-scale initiatives, Fullerton argues that this new thinking can only be embedded in large companies if there is a fundamental transformation in the finance sector.

    This would involve, amongst other measures, finance being grounded in a culture of service, whilst also valuing relationships over transactions and transparency over complexity.

    From where we currently stand this all may look hopelessly optimistic and we have seen examples in the past of the slow pace of change, such as Copernicus and Galileo spending uncomfortable lives trying to replace the outdated notion that the sun revolved around the earth with a heliocentric model of the universe.

    But as Fullerton says: “That isn’t to say that paradigm shifts can’t happen quickly. The end of apartheid in South Africa, and the fall of the Berlin Wall are but two contemporary examples illustrating how the impossible can become the inevitable seemingly overnight when belief systems change.”

    So let’s get on with building and mainstreaming this new narrative for as Rob Cameron, executive director of SustainAbility said to me the other day: “Above all else, we need to move from an era of change to a change

  • Climate change: when ignorance is a recipe for disaster

    Climate change: when ignorance is a recipe for disaster

    Date
    November 12, 2013
    Peter Hartcher

    Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor

    View more articles from Peter Hartcher

     

    <i>Illustration: John Shakespeare</i>Illustration: John Shakespeare

    The Philippines had several days’ notice that a super typhoon was on its way and it warned its people long and often. Many evacuated. But, for an estimated 10,000 who today lie dead, there was no defence against its brute force.

    As tropical cyclone Haiyan continued across the South China Sea to assault Vietnam, where the government had evacuated some 900,000 people in anticipation, one question being asked is whether it is the strongest on record.

    The answer? Based on the estimate by the US military’s installation on Hawaii, the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre, it was the most powerful recorded cyclone to make landfall. It hit the Philippines with sustained winds of 305km/h to 315km/h.

    People stand among debris and ruins of houses destroyed after Super Typhoon Haiyan battered Tacloban city in central Philippines. Click for more photos

    Typhoon Haiyan slams the Philippines

    People stand among debris and ruins of houses destroyed after Super Typhoon Haiyan battered Tacloban city in central Philippines. Photo: Reuters

    Japan’s Meteorological Agency, however, estimated it to be much weaker, at some 230km/h. That wouldn’t put it in the top 10. There were no direct observation points on the Philippines to settle the matter. But to the dead, and to the living who must try to rebuild from economic damage estimated by Bloomberg Industries at $US14 billion, it is a distinction without a difference.

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    Another question being asked is whether climate change has contributed to the cyclone’s ferocity.

    It is a pregnant moment to ask. Negotiators from around the world are starting to arrive in Warsaw for the next round of United Nations talks on climate change. This round will culminate at the end of 2015 in new commitments on carbon emissions covering the years beyond 2020.

    Australia is sending an official and not a minister; the Abbott government is preoccupied. The new Parliament opens on Tuesday and Abbott’s first priority is to try to repeal the carbon tax.

    ”Haiyan should be a five-alarm wake-up call for negotiators in Warsaw and the capitals that sent them here,” writes Jamie Henn – co-author of the book Fight Global Warming Now and co-founder of 350.org – for US news website The Huffington Post. ”Climate change is loading the dice for extreme weather events like Haiyan.”

    But some climate activists have developed an unfortunate habit of latching on to every weather-related disaster as a promotional device for their agenda.

    This is a subject too important to be left to the hysteria of frustrated carbon activists or to what former prime minister John Howard ”instinctively” feels may be exaggerations.

    So is it true? The Rosetta Stone for interpreting climate developments is the methodical work of the thousands of scientists who contribute to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The global framework of negotiations is based on its findings. It has a high degree of confidence that anthropogenic or man-made global warming is real and damaging.

    Last year the IPCC issued a report, Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. In its summary for policymakers, it reports: ”There is evidence that some extremes have changed as a result of anthropogenic influences, including increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.”

    Fair enough. But, specifically on tropical cyclones like Haiyan, it finds: ”The uncertainties in the historical tropical cyclone records, the incomplete understanding of the physical mechanisms linking tropical cyclone metrics to climate change and the degree of tropical cyclone variability provide only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences.

    ”Attribution of single extreme events to anthropogenic climate change is challenging … There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity (i.e., intensity, frequency, duration) after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.”

    In other words, the state of knowledge is that man-made climate change has not made any clear difference to tropical cyclone activity.

    But what of the future as the planet warms? ”Average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely to increase, although increases may not occur in all ocean basins,” the IPCC reports. ”It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged.”

    But that’s not the end of the story. Climate change might not have made cyclones more frequent or more intense. But it is having other effects that threaten to be force multipliers for cyclones.

    The IPCC report again: ”It is very likely that mean sea-level rise will contribute to upward trends in extreme coastal high water levels in the future … There is high confidence that locations currently experiencing adverse impacts such as coastal erosion and inundation will continue to do so in the future due to increasing sea levels, all other contributing factors being equal.

    ”The very likely contribution of mean sea-level rise to increased extreme coastal high water levels, coupled with the likely increase in tropical cyclone maximum wind speed, is a specific issue for tropical small island states.”

    The chief meteorologist for the Weather Channel in the US, Paul Walsh, asked to summarise the effect of climate change on Haiyan, told CNBC: ”I wouldn’t say that climate change is a direct contributor to this. That’s something that’s still being discussed.

    ”But one of the things that makes these storms, particularly for the US east coast, more potentially damaging is that sea levels are rising and continuing to rise and even smaller storms can have a devastating impact.”

    In other words, climate change is working to make ordinary weather patterns more dangerous. It doesn’t seem to be happening through any direct causal link to cyclones. But it doesn’t need to. A rising sea level will intensify the power of cyclonic winds to create bigger storm surges, according to the IPCC.

    Man-made climate change is real and dangerous. Is it causing more or bigger cyclones? There’s no evidence that it is. But, again, it’s a distinction without a difference. Because it’s making normal cyclones more damaging. Rising sea levels will supercharge them.

    There is no need for exaggeration and there is no excuse for inaction.

    Peter Hartcher is the international editor.

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    144 comments so far

    • A balanced article, except that it overlooks the increase in wind speed records. Only two weeks ago a seemingly ordinary autumn storm over Western Europe broke the existing speed record at 195 km per hour. Wind gusts of 380 km per hour have been observed a few hours before landfall of typhoon Haiyan. We should not, cannot wait for another decade of painstaking scientific research to come to the conclusion that the top wind speeds in these storms are on the increase!
      STEEP WORLDWIDE CARBON PRICING NOW!

      Commenter
      rob de laet
      Location
      salvador brazil
      Date and time
      November 12, 2013, 12:26AM

      • STEEP… ? Did I miss something??

        Commenter
        Wha?!
        Location
        Date and time
        November 12, 2013, 5:54AM

      • Steep me!! Is that right?? I just can’t steep it out. I’m going back to steep.

        Commenter
        hodster
        Date and time
        November 12, 2013, 6:39AM

      • Good luck with global carbon pricing.
        I m sure climate change is first priority for Indians Chinese who r hard at work lifting millions of people out of poverty and into middle class. NOT.
        Australia is not the global policeman and has no right to give a lecture to others on benefits of carbon tax. Leave that to UN to come to an agreement.

        Commenter
        Goodluck jonathon
        Date and time
        November 12, 2013, 6:44AM

      • What to expect from the climate change negotiations in Poland – absolutely nothing. There is no chance that the delegates will do enough to significantly change the trajectory of our climate – we are off for the trip of a lifetime; where ever our climate goes, we will follow.

        We refuse to admit that our efforts are futile,
        Our response to reality nothing more than puerile.
        Like Canute, we stab at the climate change wave,
        In our determined efforts this world to save.
        Most things suggest that climate change is here,
        Yet, our desperate reaction nothing more than fear.

        Commenter
        Howe Synnott
        Location
        Sydney
        Date and time
        November 12, 2013, 6:48AM

      • Yes, you did!!!!

        Commenter
        Lesm
        Location
        Balmain
        Date and time
        November 12, 2013, 6:52AM

      • Great if all this real then let’s do something REAL to stop it. Do not fool yourself that $10-20 a week for which compensation was going to be given was going to stop the CO2 emission. No try $100-200 a week per person to stop the CO2 emission that are being caused by YOUR lifestyle. That is right it is not big industry that is the problem it is OUR lifestyle. Unless you are prepared to make REAL changes Peter get off your high horse. Giving up 2 coffees a week just does not cut it !

        Fact. Bob Brown has a lifestyle that places him in the top 5% of CO2 emitters. Happy to pay for this analysis to be done scientifically but sure Bob will not accept the offer. Offer is open to Christne as well ( love your DIAMOND ear rings Christne whichdirty mine did they come from)

        Commenter
        abc
        Location
        Date and time
        November 12, 2013, 7:28AM

      • Quickly someone throw big bundles of money at the wind!

        Commenter
        MyPetMonkey
        Location
        Sydney
        Date and time
        November 12, 2013, 7:42AM

      • @Howe Synnot

        How much carbon did you generate just to type that and submit it? If anyone commenting on this column had any regard for the environment, they would have turned their PC off as soon as they had finished reading the article.

        Myself? I have no regard. So I will be posting comments on SMH for the rest of the day, the end result being a net contribution to greenhouse gases. Sure I feel guilty, but I’m taking a leaf out of the larger economies handbook: no care taken, no responsibility accepted.

        Commenter
        Malik the magic sheep
        Location
        Perth
        Date and time
        November 12, 2013, 8:08AM

      • @ Rob,

        The article clearly shows how convoluted the assumptions for climate change are, the data is often incomplete and the time of accurate record keeping is minimal when we look at global weather patterns which have occurred over thousand year cycles.

        This assumption that foreign governments must put carbon taxes in place is ludicrous and wishful thinking of the west. Can you seriously see people in developing countries give up affluence over extreme green ideals, I.e a chance to make bucket loads of money over none at all.

        The zealous preaching from the religion of climate change very often fails to understand basic human behavior and base their arguements on alarmist predictions. Whilst sipping champagne, snacking on smoked salmon and enjoying their already aquired affluence.

        Commenter
        Jack
        Date and time
        November 12, 2013, 8:18AM

    More comments

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  • Board Chair of Global Footprint Network,

    Dear NEVILLE,
    As the Board Chair of Global Footprint Network, I wanted to take a moment to reflect as the end of 2013 draws nearer. As I look back on our first 10 years, there are so many achievements that we can be proud of.Thank you so much.

    Your support has helped us accomplish many great things over the past decade. Here are a few highlights:

    • The Ecological Footprint method – in widespread use by national and regional governments, corporations, and NGOs – has contributed to an on-going paradigm shift in managing environmental assets.
    • Over a million people every year use our Ecological Footprint calculator to measure their personal Footprint.
    • Our annual Earth Overshoot Day campaign is educating the public about our planet’s ecological limits. More than 200 million people on the internet alone learned about the Earth’s annual limits during Earth Overshoot Day 2013.
    • Our researchers calculate the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity for 234 countries every year, using 6,000 data points for each country in our National Footprint Accounts. This data set serves as the basis for the myriad Ecological Footprint analyses conducted at all scales all over the world.
    • Eleven nations have officially adopted the Ecological Footprint – with more on the way.

    We need your help to take our work even further.

    National governments, international agencies like the United Nations, states, regions and the business community are seeking our advice and decision making tools as we grapple with an uncertain future on this planet. The risks of damaging or depleting our planet’s natural resources are becoming increasingly clear.

    Donate Now

    It has never been easier for you to help make a difference.

    Our partners at the Skoll Foundation and Huffington Post have launched a crowd funding challenge that highlights our award-winning social entrepreneurship. When you give to us online through this campaign until November 22, your donation makes us eligible for a matching gift. And you also increase our visibility among important stakeholders around the world. So please click the link to give as much as you can. And share our campaign with others in your social networks so that your friends and family can learn about the work you are supporting.

    Of course, you can also continue to donate securely online. When you donate $50 or more annually, you are automatically enrolled as a “Friend of Global Footprint Network,” and included in our most important events, announcements, and progress reports.

    With your support, our impact can be even greater in 2014.

    Having you on our team makes our exciting and important work a tangible reality throughout the world. We are grateful to have earned your continued trust and commitment to our vision.

    With warmest regards,


    Terry Vogt
    Chair, Board of Directors


    P.S. Your support today will help us accelerate the shift towards a sustainable economy.

  • Bandt raises bushfires climate link again

    News

    Bandt raises bushfires climate link again

    AAP Steve Lillebuen – November 17, 2013, 1:24 pm

    Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt has warned the deadly Black Saturday disaster could be repeated every two years unless the federal government takes global warming seriously.

    Mr Bandt was accused of politicising the NSW bushfires tragedy last month when he linked climate change with the crisis.

    He again raised the politically charged point on Sunday ahead of a debate on the carbon tax repeal.

    He told a climate change rally in Melbourne that the 2009 Victorian fires, which killed 173 people, could happen far more frequently.

    “Unless we get global warming under control, the kind of horrific tragedies that we saw during Black Saturday might start happening once every two years here in Victoria,” he told a crowd of thousands.

    Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described attempts to link bushfires with climate change as “complete hogwash” and a “bizarre” argument, given Australia has always had bushfires.

    But Mr Bandt accused the coalition of not taking real action on climate change.

    “Yes, (Mr Abbott) is right that we have always been a country prone to bushfires, but I say, why the hell would you wish more of them on us?” he said.

    “That is what is in store unless we get global warming under control.”

    Labor opposition environment spokesman Mark Butler and Tim Flannery of the Climate Council also addressed the crowd.

    No one from the coalition spoke, but organisers said they were invited.

    The event was one of hundreds throughout Australia as part of a national day of action.

    United Firefighters Union secretary Peter Marshall attended the event.

    He said he believed in the link between bushfires and climate change.

    “There is no sceptic at the end of a fire hose,” he said.