15 November 2007
The University of Melbourne study was commissioned by The Climate Institute.
It found temperature rises and ice cap melting are occurring faster than the worst-case scenarios predicted by the United Nations.
The Climate Institute's John Connor says the predictions of dangerous temperature rises for Australia are alarming.
"A rise of three degrees above pre-industrial levels for Australia will be disastrous," he said.
"It'll see increased droughts, wildfires affecting our capital cities and it will also put at risk the Greenland ice sheets and some of the Antarctic ice sheets which are the real biggies in terms of sea level rises if they slip into the oceans."
Mr Connor also says the Australian Government must take responsibility for the black mark on the nation's environmental record.
"First of all, we've got to draw a line in the sand and make sure there's no new dirty energy," he said.
"We then have to have policies to bring in cleaner energy sources and retrofit the existing plants when existing dirty coal plants run out of their life, and some of that might have to be accelerated then we bring in newer technologies."
