Peter Raven Slaps Climate Pollyannas On Australia Visit

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VAST tracts of northern Australia will turn to desert, the nation's alpine vegetation will disappear and thousands of plant and animal species will become extinct this century.

These predictions were made by internationally renowned botanist Peter Raven as he arrived in Brisbane to deliver the keynote address today to the International Congress of Entomology. Dr Raven said he was concerned the public was becoming complacent about global warming because a "small handful" of scientists were generating widespread publicity for their view that world temperatures are not rising.

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Dr Raven said present rates of rainforest destruction globally would leave just 5 per cent of the world's rainforests intact by mid-century. Rainforests are home to half the world's estimated 10 million species of plants and animals, of which only about 1.6 million species have been described by science.

"We ought to be very con cerned," Dr Raven said. "With medicines alone, there is enormous potential for all sorts of things we don't even know about." He was disturbed by the growing tendency of Western governments to claim that environmental, population and related problems were under control. "You can't pretend that when 800 million people are starving, when half the world's people live on less than $2 a day ... that everything is fine," Dr Raven said. "To assert that things are getting better is verging on insanity."

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