Climate change Is it already too late?

As George Bush signs off from the G8 with the "words goodbye for the world's biggest polluter,perhaps he should be reading Nicholas Shakespeare's piece on first post this morning.

anyone who believes that the world can afford to drag its feet any further should make a trip to Australia, where an English scientist called Jill Cainey is in charge of the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station in north-west Tasmania

He relates a conversation with Jill Cainey .Back in 1983 carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere were 330ppm.Twenty years later they were 372 and today they are 382.The danger level has been put at 400

The climate change that we experience today is the result, explains Cainey, of carbon dioxide emissions from 30 years ago. The most recent measurement of these emissions taken at Cape Grim shows that we haven't modified our behaviour, quite the opposite

and she says quite bluntly

If we don't do anything in the next two to five years to change our behaviour and stop carbon emissions, it's probably too late."