Thanks for leaving your comments. You’re right about our leaders, it is frightening. Tthey’re not being stupid in encouraging us to ignore the facts and pretend that climate change is not happening, they are doing it because they know that what they have to do to fix the problem will make them unpopular and eat into the profits of the big companies that support them.

Sadly they know how to manipulate people and they will probably continue to do so for as long as they can. If Howard could turn the Tampa Crisis from a simple rescue at sea into an impending invasion of refuge hordes then convincing us that global warming can be fixed but turning up our airconditioners is child’s play.

On a local level all those blue patches between Eli Waters and Dundowran at the modest increase of between 1 and 3 metres might look relatively harmless at the moment because it’s all open farmland but no one should be fooled. A lot of that area is already zoned for residential and will be built on in the next few years.

The research and data relating to Global Warming and Climate Change is incredibly frightening. So many people are yet to realise that this will affect most of us - SERIOUSLY - in ours and our children’s lifetime.

What is even more frightening is that leaders such as John Howard and George W Bush are presented with all the facts and they still claim to need more evidence before they act. Australia and the US STILL haven’t signed the Kyoto Protocol. They say the cost of changing is too high…

What will be the cost of doing nothing?

I think we are slowly starting to realise that global warming is not just something for the scientists to take care of. We all need to make changes and the government needs to start looking at alternatives.

The maps that you’ve linked in your entry is just one example of how global warming will affect us, and I thank you for making it user-friendly.
Tim Flannery gives us terrific insight into what our world could very soon be like, in his book ‘The Weather Makers’, but more importantly, gives advice on what we can do as individuals - now.

Anyone doubting the seriousness of global warming, or just wanting know more, should get their hands on a copy of this book.