Climate Change: A Discussion Paper
 The overwhelming majority of scientific experts are convinced that human actions are the main cause of climate change. A build up of carbon in the atmosphere has lead to global warming, leading to far-reaching changes in our climate-the greenhouse effect. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, has played the most important part in this.
Tackling climate change involves both costs and opportunities. The cost of many products including electricity and petrol will increase, encouraging us to use them more carefully.
In the NT, pastoralists and indigenous communities (may) have the opportunity to benefit from their development of improved land development practices.
The Northern Territory Government recently issued a Discussion Paper on NT Climate Change Issues. It is an 84 page document, and if you wish to read it in Chole or in part, you can find it on the NT Government’s Climate Change website.
Please read
NTAgA's summary of issues contained in the Northern Territory Government's Discussion Paper on Climate Change.
 The Science of Climate Change (August 2010)
"The science of climate is at the intersection
of a number of science disciplines and
sub-disciplines. At its heart are physics,
chemistry, biology and mathematics – each with
their sub-disciplines of atmospheric physics and
chemistry, oceanography, hydrology, geology
etc – and each of which can be considered
as mature within the framework required to
discuss climate. It is at this intersection of the
disciplines where uncertainty can and will arise,
both because of the yet poorly understood
feedbacks between the different components
of the climate system and because of the
difficulty of bringing these components together
into a single descriptive and predictive model.
This would include, for example, the biological
consequences of how increasing carbon dioxide
(CO2) feeds back into climate and into the
climate model, or how the consequences of
atmospheric warming on water vapour, cloud
cover, ocean warming and circulation feedback
can be described and quantified in a coherent
and integrated theory. It is these feedbacks and
interactions that make it difficult to realistically
quantify the uncertainty in the outputs of climate
models at levels that the experimental scientist
is usually accustomed to. In a process as
intrinsically complex as climate it should not be
surprising that the path to understanding is long
and arduous."
Prof. Kurt Lambeck
President, Australian
Academy of Science
May 2006 – May 2010
(source: www.science.org.au/reports/climatechange2010.pdf)
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