Droughts, Expensive Water To Become Australia's New Normal - News.Com AU

[hatrack]

TEMPERATURES will rise, rainfall will dwindle and the weather will become more erratic in the last decades of this century, a leading climate researcher has said.

Professor of Biology at Texas Tech University David Tissue said drier countries like Australia will become more susceptible to drought while malaria and other tropical diseases will spread beyond the tropics into temperate regions. He said the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation have combined to increase the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

"Unless we take collective action now, things are going to change dramatically over this century," said Prof Tissue, who will speak at the ComBio 2006 biological science conference in Brisbane this week. "Greenhouse gas is driving global climate change and it will have a significant impact on plants and ecosystems. "Australia can expect to be a much drier continent with potential for extreme droughts with episodic intense storms causing flooding."

But he said there was still time to make a change. "It should not be a matter of throwing our hands in the air and saying we can't do anything to make the world a better place in which to live," Prof Tissue said. He said cutting the use of fossil fuels and using renewable energy technologies, such as solar and geothermal power, could also make a difference.

EDIT

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,20473240-5005962,00.html