A new book promises to help inform business, government, and the community about the many issues that need to be addressed in response to climate change.

• 07 April 2011

A new book launched by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) highlights the importance of climate change as a matter of significant economic, environmental and social concern in Australia.

Climate Change: Science and Solutions for Australia provides the latest information on international climate change science and potential responses.

According to CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Megan Clark the book seeks to provide a bridge from the peer-reviewed scientific literature to a broader audience of society while still providing the depth of science that climate change demands.

“This publication draws on the latest peer-reviewed literature contributed by thousands of researchers in Australia and internationally,” Dr Clark says.

“It also provides a synthesis of CSIRO’s long history of publicly funded research into climate change.”

The book’s 168 pages provide scientific insights including:

•     Evidence from many different sources shows human activities are contributing to the Earth’s changing climate

•     Some of the impacts of climate change on Australia are already apparent

•     We are committed to some degree of climate change as a result of past greenhouse gas emissions, so we will need to adapt on a far more extensive scale than is currently occurring

•     Energy saving technologies, demand reduction and distributed power generation will help to lower national carbon emissions

•     Agriculture and forestry hold great potential for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through afforestation, soil-carbon management, and better management of livestock and cropping emissions

•     Action within the next decade to lower greenhouse gas emissions will reduce the probability and severity of climate change impacts.

You can download the full book as a PDF here or read it online, chapter by chapter at the CSIRO website.