Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The UK Energy White paper (Department of Trade and Industry 2003)
contains such a target for the United Kingdom and similar targets have been
established in Germany and France. The Australian energy white paper
(Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet 2004) does not set a target.
Subsequently a target of 50 per cent reduction by the middle of the century
has been advocated by the Australian Chief Scientist (Peatling 2004).
Challenges in predicting climate variability
I have worked for many years in atmospheric science, in an institute well
equipped to understand and, in recent years, to predict year-to-year
climate variability. Throughout, it has been difficult to capture people's
attention so that they accept the concept that Australia has a massively var-
iable climate, that we understand some of that variability, and that through
both statistical and mechanistic forecasting we could better manage how
we live and exploit our resources. Climate knowledge that contributes to
foresight would appear to have the potential for multiple benefits for
society in a wide range of areas, including water management, insurance,
energy demands, health, and improved management of agricultural and
natural systems.
Challenge: to establish better access to predictions of climatological variability
through observations and modelling (beyond observational experience) so that
the risk of climatic extremes is based on fact rather than personal perception.
Every time we have major drought, there is an outcry (soon forgotten) of
'How do we drought-proof Australia?' There are calls for the use of dubious
technologies such as long-range weather forecasting or cloud seeding. (The
latter has potential but this is quite limited.) Somehow, it appears that there
is acceptance that good and bad years come and go and we are adapted to
this. My own position is that actually we are very poorly adapted, for a
number of reasons.
First, there is the lack of knowledge of the true characteristics across the
whole spectrum of climate variability. It can be argued that at best human
population growth and the concomitant expansion in agriculture, water use
and economics has been built on about 100 years of hard climatological
observation. This means that any natural variability related to physical/
dynamic characteristics of the climate system that work on longer time scales
is beyond this time period and not incorporated into risk strategies. At
