BAMOS June 2017
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Average snow depth and cover in Australia have declined since the 1950s as temperatures have risen rapidly. Under high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, climate models show severe reductions, with snow becoming rare by late in the century except on the highest peaks.
The Australian ski season could shorten by up to 80 days a year by 2050 under worst-case predictions, with the biggest impacts likely to be felt at lower-elevation sites such as Mt Baw Baw and Lake Mountain in Victoria.
As temperatures continue to rise, our alpine plants and animal communities are in real danger of being pushed off mountain tops, having nowhere to migrate to and no way of moving from or between alpine“ islands”.
James Gleeson’ s surreal apocalyptic painting Delenda est Carthago( bottom, previous page) is a provocative work that got us thinking about a future marred by unmitigated climate change. The title refers to Rome’ s annihilation of Carthage in 149 BC. According to the ancient historian Polybius, the conquering Roman general, Scipio Aemilianus, famously wept as he likened the event to the mythical destruction of Troy and to the eventual end he could foresee for Rome.
As climate scientists, we are disturbingly aware of the threats to society not only here in Australia, but all over the world. Unmitigated human-induced climate change could potentially see the planet warm by more than 4 º C by the end of the century.
In Australia, inland regions of the country could warm by more than 5 º C on average by 2090. In Melbourne, the number of days over 40 º C could quadruple by the end of the century, causing extreme heat stress to humans, wildlife, plants and infrastructure, especially in urban areas.
Warming of this rate and magnitude is a genuine threat to our civilisation. Gleeson’ s artwork made us consider that the unimaginable may happen, as it has in the past.
On a more optimistic note, Imants Tillers’ work New Litany( below) highlights the importance of communities taking a stand for environmental protection. Over our history Australians have fought against logging of native forests, nuclear power, whaling, and for the restoration of dammed river systems like the Snowy.
Public concern in Australia about climate change reached a peak in 2006, largely in response to Al Gore’ s film An Inconvenient Truth and Tim Flannery’ s book The Weather Makers. Yet the decade since then has brought political turmoil, and national greenhouse emissions continue to rise.
The recent March for Science is a reminder that the stakes are now higher than ever before, and that many people really do care about the future.
The science is telling us that our climate is changing, often faster than we imagined. The range of CSIRO’ s latest climate change projections reminds us that the future is still in our hands. We can avoid the worst aspects of climate change by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we need to act now.
Art has always been a powerful portal to understanding how we feel about our world. Let’ s hope it helps safeguard our climatic future.
This article originally appeared in The Conversation on 4 May.