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page regenerated:
15 Jun 2009

A 34 page booklet compiled by Dr Michael Gabriel and Jacqui Willcocks, with additional material by Steven Crimp, Ken Brook, Beverley Henry, Greg McKeon. Jozef Syktus, Alan Peacock and Ken Day.
Editing, design, proof reading and production by Web and Publishing Services and Public Affairs, Department of Natural Resources and Mines.

[Acrobat versions available at the end of this page]
Hard copies are available by emailing to rouseabout@nrm.qld.gov.au

Minister's forward
Climate science informs our future
Over the past decade, a group of Queensland Government scientists has turned their attention to the phenomenon of climate change. They are striving to understand it and to measure its effects.

They have worked on a range of projects with their colleagues in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Bureau of Meteorology, other Australian institutions and through international collaborations. Some of these projects have confirmed locally what other eminent scientists have been saying for decades – that the Earth's climate is changing because of the higher levels of carbon dioxide and other 'greenhouse' gases in the atmosphere, brought about by human activity, principally industrialisation.

Locally, this scientific effort is also producing some groundbreaking results, such as the development of hypotheses, and more recent firmer findings, about the role of stratospheric ozone depletion in influencing the climate of the Southern Hemisphere.

While world leaders draw closer to a resolution on what we need to do collectively about the causes of climate change, there is now a strong consensus that climate change is happening. For example, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has described it as 'the world's greatest environmental challenge', while Britain's chief scientist David King has described climate change as the planet's biggest problem.

International business is also concerned. Shell chairman Lord Oxburgh said that climate change makes him 'very worried for the planet', while chief executive of Rio Tinto's energy group Preston Chiaro has described climate change as a 'deadly' threat to humans.

The debate has moved on from dissecting what changes in our weather patterns mean, to a realisation that we need to get on with developing strategies to deal with it on a daily basis. In Queensland, this means dealing with the implications for the broader economy and in specific areas as diverse as public health and transport planning.

This booklet presents in a straightforward way what the current science tells us about climate change, particularly in Queensland, and what the Queensland Government is doing. While the focus is on the Department of Natural Resources and Mines and the implications for natural resource management, the effort necessarily involves many other agencies and policies. The debate about what we need to do to adapt to climate change is only just beginning. As we consider our recent efforts and current activities, we hope to set in place signposts for the way forward.

Acrobat document(s). You may need to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.