Australia's top climate advisory panel has warned strongly
against letting the recent mild and wet weather encourage
complacency about climate change, insisting the long-term trend
remains as alarming as ever. Following yesterday's CSIRO report
that warned greenhouse gas levels were the highest in 800,000
years, the Climate Commission - a scientific agency set up to
inform Australians about global warming - expressed concern in a
discussion paper that people were confusing weather patterns
with long-term climate change. The climate commissioner and
Australian National University academic Will Steffen said 2011
had been dominated by La Nina, the weather effects produced by
cool ocean surface temperatures around the equator in the
eastern Pacific. 'After a couple of years, the dams are full,
everything is green around you, the soil moisture is topped
up,'' Professor Steffen said. ''And you say, 'This is looking
pretty good. What happened to all the droughts and dry periods
that we thought were associated with c