Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

The need for action on climate change has been clear for quite some time; it is not new. Leaders and policymakers have had plenty of time to get their heads around it—even those at that end of the chamber. It has been more than 115 years since the realisation that increased carbon dioxide concentration could cause increases in global temperatures. Ever since then the evidence has been getting clearer that climate change is directly linked to carbon pollution, culminating two years ago in the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including the work of around 1,250 climate experts from over 130 countries—a rigorous, peer reviewed scientific exercise there for the world to see.

This report found that there is a more than 90 per cent chance that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. No matter how much some senators down that end of the chamber or opposite want to rail against the science, the fact is that is what the weight of scientific opinion internationally tells this government, just as it tells other governments around the world. Since that time there have been fresh warnings from scientists, notably through the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen this year, that climate change is only accelerating, with the ANU’s Professor Will Steffen saying:

The climate system appears to be changing faster than earlier thought likely.