Climate Scoreboard

Climate Interactive
 

The Climate Scoreboard shows the progress that national contributions (INDCs) to the UN climate negotiations will make assuming no further action after the end of the country’s pledge period (2025 or 2030). Our analysis shows that the national contributions to date, with no further progress post-pledge period, result in expected warming in 2100 of 3.5°C (with a range of uncertainty of 2.1 – 4.6°C).
The Climate Scoreboard uses the C-ROADS climate policy simulation model to analyze the impact of the “Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions (INDCs)—pledges to limit greenhouse gas emissions—to the UN climate negotiations. The Scoreboard analysis above shows the expected impact of the pledges nations have made to date, assuming (1) the pledges are fully implemented, and (2) assuming no further reductions beyond those that have been formally pledged, specifically, actions after the end of the country’s pledge period (2025 or 2030).
Any analysis, including ours, that offers an expected temperature change in 2100 includes assumptions about what will happen after the formal contributions end in 2025 or 2030. Thus, we also analyze scenarios in which nations are assumed to pledge and implement additional action beyond 2030. Greater ambition leads to further reductions in expected warning. For example:

• No change after national contribution pledge period: 3.5°C, 2.0-4.5 (6.2°F, 3.6-8.2);
• Plus, pledged reductions continue after pledges end (2025 or 2030): 3.2°C, 1.9-4.3 (5.8°F, 3.4-7.7);
• Plus, China includes other GHGs and China and India reduce emissions after peak in 2030 at 2%/year: 2.8°C, 1.6-3.8 (5.1°F, 2.9-6.8);
• Plus, countries without commitment also peak by 2035: 2.4°C, 1.4-3.3 (4.4°F, 2.4-5.9);
• Plus, all countries peak and then reduce 3.5 – 4% per year: 2.0°C, 1.1-2.7 (3.6°F, 1.9-4.9).

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On the Scoreboard:

• Yellow line –  represents the “business-as-usual” scenario, which is what the estimated global temperature increase in 2100 will be if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced. Based on IPCC’s RCP 8.5 scenario.

• Green line – represents the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°-2.0°C.

• Blue line – represents the estimated global temperature increase in 2100 if current INDCs are fulfilled and no further action is committed (this follows the ‘INDCs strict’ pathway). The shaded blue curve shows the uncertainty in the climate system’s response to emissions.

Graphical Summary
The image below shows potential emissions pathways and their long-term impacts in temperature.

Explore the data and analysis.
With action to reduce fossil fuel emissions and greenhouse gas emissions from other sources, the world can still realize the pathway that keeps warming below 2.0°C this century.

How can you help?

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• Exercise your power as a citizen. Based on what the Climate Scoreboard is reporting, you can thank those governments that have made responsible pledges, and you can demand more from those governments who need to do more.
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Financial Stability Puts Climate Change On The RBA

Australian Financial Review - Philip Baker

Climate change may move onto RBA governor Glenn Stevens' agenda after a speech by his peer at the Bank of England. Louie Douvis

Central banks are normally too busy tackling issues like monetary policy, the economy and inflation to talk publicly about the long-term problems of global climate change.
But a speech this week by Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, might signal a change in that style of thinking.
It could also make climate change a key focus for the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Over the past few years the Reserve Bank has been very anxious and very vocal about high house prices and the Australian dollar but climate change hasn't been a topic discussed widely by the bank.
It comes as increasingly there is a call to discuss the economy and climate change together rather than handle them as two separate topics.
Carney raised more than just a few eyebrows when he said this week that companies must be more open about their "climate change footprint" to avoid abrupt changes in asset prices that could destabilise markets.
Financial stability is of course a key concern for all central banks so if climate change is going to have an impact on financial markets then it does matter to them, big time.
In addition to his role as the governor of the BoE, Carney also chairs the Financial Stability Board, which co-ordinates financial regulation for the Group of 20 economies.
The Reserve Bank of Australia is also a member of the FSB and the topic of climate change was discussed at the latest board meeting held on September 25 in London.

Disclosures on carbon intensity sought
The FSB has now agreed to consider recommending to G20 leaders that more should be done to develop consistent, comparable, reliable and clear disclosures by companies on the "carbon intensity" of their assets.
Carney also pointed out that UK insurers potentially could be looking at "huge" exposure to any moves in climate-change policy and laid down the challenge to G20 countries that they need to do more to tackle any risks that would jeopardise financial-stability.
"A wholesale reassessment of prospects, especially if it were to occur suddenly, could potentially destabilise markets, spark a pro-cyclical crystallisation of losses and a persistent tightening of financial conditions," he said.
"The speed at which such repricing occurs is uncertain and could be decisive for financial stability."
Investors only have to look at how financial markets reacted this week to talk that Glencore could be worthless due to its $US50 billion debt pile to understand the importance of financial stability.
The three underlying risks to markets from climate change include physical damage, liabilities arising from compensation and transition risks.
A report released in September by the UK Prudential Regulation Authority identified the same three risks and said that climate change is becoming increasingly relevant to financial regulation.
"The PRA's approach will focus on promoting resilience to climate change and supporting an orderly financial sector transition to a lower carbon economy. The PRA will do this through a combination of international collaboration, research, dialogue and supervision."

Natural disaster insurance payouts rising
The PRA also said there was evidence to suggest that insurance payouts arising from global natural catastrophes are increasing which has an impact on local companies like Suncorp.
"The number of registered weather-related natural hazard loss events has tripled since the 1980s and inflation-adjusted insurance losses from these events have increased from an annual average of around $US10 billion in the 1980s to around $US50 billion over the past decade" the report said.
At around $25 billion Suncorp is the largest buyer of weather reinsurance and yet the Queensland Government is looking to provide some additional cover given the lack of private policies that are available.
Suncorp is one of about 10 insurers that operate in North Queensland, and, on average, they deal with up to five cyclones every summer.
Carney's speech also pointed out that any sudden changes in policy could leave many of the biggest companies in the world out of pocket, if, for example, the fight against climate change meant that some oil and gas reserves would have to stay in the ground and therefore couldn't be mined.
If governments around the world decided to get really serious about restricting carbon emissions, billions of dollars invested in oil and gas would be worthless.
It would also undermine the finances of oil-producing regions.

India Unveils Climate Target Ahead Of Paris Summit With Pledge To Cut Carbon Emissions 'Intensity'

ABC

India has promised to cut carbon intensity but not an absolute reduction in emissions. (Reuters: Arko Datta)

India has promised to cut its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 33 to 35 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. In its statement to the UN, New Delhi also said it aimed to source 40 per cent of its electricity from non-fossil fuel sources by the same year, though it said it would require UN financial support to do so.
"It is a huge jump for India, therefore it is a very ambitious target," environment minister Prakash Javadekar said, after the government submitted to plan to the UN.
India is the world's third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide and its pledges made it the last major economy to announce its climate target ahead of a key global change summit in Paris this December.
All countries had agreed to submit their planned targets by Thursday October 1.
However, India is not yet prepared to go as far as China — the world's largest emitter — which pledged in June to reduce its carbon intensity by 60 to 65 per cent by 2030, partly through the use of carbon emissions trading.
Beijing also said it would bring its absolute emissions to a peak by "around 2030."
Earlier this week, Brazil became the first major developing economy to announce an absolute cut in greenhouse gas emissions.


It pledged to reduce emissions by 37 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025, and by 43 per cent by 2030.
India, by comparison, made the pledge to cut emissions 'intensity', the ratio of a country's carbon emissions to its economic output.
As well as not setting absolute emissions cuts, India did not give a commitment to establishing carbon emissions trading.
New Delhi said coal would continue to dominate power generation for its population of more than one billion people into the future, though it stressed its commitment to clean energy technologies.
"We are much too dependent on fossil fuels now," Mr Javadekar said.
It planned to develop 25 solar parks, supply 100,000 solar pumps to farmers, and convert all 55,000 petrol pumps across the country to solar.
It also promised to "aggressively" develop hydro and nuclear energy.

Pledges a 'sign of progress' but countries not going far enough
Experts said the pledges mark progress in climate action but — even if fully implemented — would not be enough to prevent the planet from warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, compared to pre-industrial times.
Christiana Figueres, the UN's climate chief, hailed the wide participation as a sign that Paris could be a "turning point" towards 2C, the level accepted by governments as the threshold beyond which the Earth would face dangerous changes including more droughts, extinctions, floods and rising seas.
She said this offered opportunities for investments in "resilient, low-emission, sustainable development".
"Despite huge developmental challenges, India has put forward a climate action plan that is far superior to ones proposed by the US and EU," Sandeep Chachra, ActionAid India's executive director, said.
"The ambitious focus on energy efficiency and dramatic increase in renewable energy deserves credit but must lead to enhanced energy access for the poor."
India's plans were "fair and ambitious considering the fact that [it] is attempting to work towards a low carbon emissions pathway while endeavouring to meet all the developmental challenges the country faces today," its statement said.
"India's climate actions have so far been largely financed from domestic resources. A substantial scaling up of the climate action plans would require greater resources.
"A preliminary estimate suggests that at least $US2.5 trillion ... will be required for meeting India's climate change actions between now and 2030."
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi met US president Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain last month to call for a climate change agenda that helps developing countries with access to finance and technology.
Reuters

Clean Energy Growth Is ‘Off Track’ To Avert Climate Change, Says Energy Agency

The Washington Post - Chris Mooney

Rain clouds are seen in the sky where a Haliade 150 offshore wind turbine operates at Alstom’s offshore wind site in Le Carnet, on the Loire Estuary, near Saint Nazaire, western France, April 27, 2014. (REUTERS/Stephane Mahe)

First the good news: In a new report on the near term future of the global renewable energy industry, the International Energy Agency is projecting impressive growth. Renewable sources like wind, solar, and hydropower should constitute nearly two-thirds of new net power capacity brought online across the globe between now and 2020. That’s equivalent to 700 gigawatts of new capacity or “more than twice Japan’s current installed power capacity,” according to the IEA.
That would mean that overall, renewables would grow from providing 22 percent of the world’s total electricity generation in 2013, to providing an impressive 26 percent of it by 2020.
But then, well, there’s the bad news. According to the IEA’s new Renewable Energy Medium-Term Market Report, the rate of renewables growth, which has been explosive of late, is actually set to “level off.” It’s hardly opportune time for that to be happening, with the world about to assemble in Paris to try to tackle climate change.
[Why storing solar energy and using it at night is closer than you think]
“This flattening of the annual new installations means that renewable electricity is off track from the pattern that we would need to meet ambitious climate change mitigation goals,” says Paolo Frankl, who heads the IEA’s renewable energy division and oversaw the report.
The core problem, says IEA, is a bevy of policy uncertainties and other renewables integration problems in various countries — what you might collectively call the sector’s growing pains. In the U.S. alone, such growth-thwarting uncertainties include the unclear fate of several tax incentives, the expectation of extensive battles over the implementation of the Clean Power Plan, and state-level fights over how individual homeowners will be credited on their bills for solar energy they generate and feed back to the grid.
Still, renewable electricity growth will be considerable. Strikingly, two-thirds of the new renewable deployments are expected to occur in developing countries like Brazil, India, and China. The latter will be responsible for a staggering 40 percent of all of the world’s growth in renewable electricity capacity by 2020, says the IEA, “an amount triple the current total power capacity of the United Kingdom.”
Of the top sources of new renewable energy deployments, onshore wind is expected to lead the way — accounting for more than a third of the total — followed closely by solar photovoltaics. New hydropower installations are expected to account for a fifth of the total, and to be particularly prevalent in developing countries.
For Sub-Saharan Africa, the report verifies that the phenomenon dubbed “leapfrogging” — in which some countries will pass over fossil fuel based electricity and go straight to renewables — appears to be a reality. “With huge resources, improving economics and policy momentum, renewables should meet almost two-thirds of power demand growth in [Sub-Saharan Africa] through 2020,” it finds.
Yet the IEA report is very critical of lingering policy gaps and other hurdles that are interfering with growth, such as those in the U.S. Financing hurdles are also an issue. Consider, Frankl suggests, the same solar photovoltaic installation but in one case located in Dubai and in another case located in central Africa. “The interest rates will be so much higher that the same PV electricity, the costs would double,” Frankl says.
Overall, if both developing and developed countries solved some of the problems that bar the investment in, and the integration of, renewable sources, then IEA suggests that the growth of renewable electricity could be 25 percent greater from here out to 2020.
Indeed, the IEA’s Frankl notes that with its recent announcements in conjunction with the U.S., China has actually taken a step in this direction. The country has just announced a “green dispatch” plan that will mean “giving priority, in distribution and dispatching, to renewable power generation and fossil fuel power generation of higher efficiency and lower emission levels.” This should help put China — and thereby, the world — on a much more ambitious path.
“Whatever they do better, the world will do better,” says Frankl. “They are really 1 order of magnitude higher than anyone else.”
All in all, then, the IEA’s new findings reaffirm that we are moving more and more into a world powered by wind, water, and sun. But at the same time, they also provide still more evidence that the world is not moving fast enough — either in its planned emissions cuts, or in its renewable energy deployments — to keep global warming within a reasonable range.

Questions Over Direct Action As Greg Hunt Reveals Paris Target Needs Industrial Emissions Cut

The Guardian - Lenore Taylor

Experts doubt environment minister’s assumption that ‘safeguards’ mechanism can deliver cuts required to meet Australia’s emissions reduction target

Steam billows from the cooling towers of the Yallourn power station in the Latrobe Valley in Victoria.
Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Australia is calculating that its big industrial emitters will be forced to reduce greenhouse pollution by 200m tonnes between 2020 and 2030, an assumption experts say will require major changes to the Direct Action policy which is not designed to force cuts from existing plants.
The environment minister, Greg Hunt, has revealed the 2030 emissions reduction target Australia will take to Paris in December – a cut of between 26% and 28% of 2005 levels – is based on an assumption that the so-called “safeguards” mechanism will deliver 200m tonnes of emission reductions between 2020 and 2030, or almost a quarter of the total cuts required.

Australia overstating greenhouse gas forecasts, making
climate targets easier. Read more

The confirmation that Australia’s long-term target will require cuts to industrial emissions stands in contrast to the current stated objective of the “safeguards” mechanism, which is to impose caps that stop “rogue” companies from dramatically increasing emissions, but not to force them down.
Analysts like Reputex say the very lenient baselines proposed will allow big emitters such as brown coal-fired power stations to significantly increase emissions. Major business groups have complained they cannot see how the government can meet the new target, and have been privately assuming that the government must be intending to use a 2017 review to toughen the rules. Given that the policy also allows businesses who exceed their baselines to buy permits from businesses who come in under their limits, this would also potentially set up a version of an emissions trading scheme.
But Hunt refused to say whether achieving 200m tonnes of greenhouse gas cuts from the companies covered by the safeguards scheme would require tougher rules than those he has on the table for existing plants.
He said the government would “allow for adjustment of the best practice rules [which say new plants must use best available technology] and technological change” but “any other changes would be a matter for future governments”.
“I would not want to bind the hand of future governments,” he said.
Asked whether tougher baselines could usher in a type of emissions trading scheme, he said: “We are not mandating an ETS. I do not see any circumstances in which this government would create an ETS.”
Under the safeguard rules, companies which exceed their baseline can pay a penalty or buy carbon offsets from other companies. Hunt said that “what private companies do is entirely a matter for them within the law. By definition they own their own units and they can acquire them and dispose of them as they see fit.”
Experts are clear that a 200m tonne cut could be achieved only with much tougher safeguard rules.
“The draft rules we have seen would not deliver that,” said Bret Harper, head of research at Reputex. “Most new plants, we should assume, would be built using best practice in any event, so they aren’t likely to deliver much abatement. To get that result would require much tighter baselines.”
Elisa de Wit, who heads the climate law practice at law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, said, “The only way to get substantial cuts like that would be to change the baselines so they reduce over time.

Coalition’s climate policy 'best and most efficient' in the
world, says Greg Hunt.  Read more

“We assume this will happen after the review in 2017-18. But the safeguards, as they are currently designed, won’t drive any significant emission reductions.”
The chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, Innes Willox, said, “To date the safeguard has been designed to catch ‘rogue emitters’, not as a constraint on ordinary business activities. The draft rules certainly reflect that.
“If the government wishes to evolve the safeguard over time into a major driver of abatement, that will be complex and need deep consultation, particularly on dealing with trade competitiveness issues and avoiding excessive administration and compliance costs.”
The independent senator Nick Xenophon has criticised the safeguard rules and promised to use the threat of Senate disallowance to give them more teeth.
But Hunt said Xenophon was proposing “only minor changes”.
“I am engaged in discussions with Nick and his office and there may be minor technical changes,” Hunt said. “No major changes have been proposed although I am not presuming to know Nick’s final position.”
In a wide-ranging interview Hunt also said:

• He wanted the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) – both of which have been transferred into a new unit in his department – to “bring forward’ the widespread deployment of battery storage to help households store energy from solar panels. He sees this both as an emissions reduction policy and a productivity policy, since storage would help reduce the huge “peaks” in electricity demand which force spending on additional capacity in electricity “poles and wires”, with the costs passed on to consumers.
• The environment department deputy secretary, Rhondda Dickson, former head of the Murray Darling Basin Authority, will head the new office of climate change and renewable innovation, which will include Arena and the CEFC.
• The new investment mandate for the CEFC would meet a promise made to crossbench senators, that the investment bank would concentrate on emerging technologies, but this would not preclude some investments in wind power or solar as had been suggested by the previous responsible ministers, Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann. “The final mandate for the CEFC will reflect the language of the letter to the senators. There was a draft mandate which is not operative. The final draft will reflect faithfully and fully the letter to the Senate,” Hunt said.
• Australia was likely to be one of the very first countries to adopt new Montreal protocol rules on the phase-out of greenhouse-potent refrigerant gases, which are estimated to deliver another 75m tonnes of emission reductions between 2020 and 2030.
• The new wind commissioner – a position promised to crossbench senators – will be announced soon. “The National Health and Medical Research Council has said there is no evidence of detrimental health effects, but also that there should be further research, so we are doing that,” Hunt said.
• The so-called “lawfare” changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to prevent environmentalists taking legal challenges have no chance of passing the Senate. “We have made no changes to policy but, as I have said, we know the chances of that getting through the Senate are limited.”

Bank of England Governor Warns Of Risks From Climate Change

The Guardian -  Larry Elliott

Bank of England governor tells Lloyd’s insurers that ‘challenges currently posed by climate change pale in significance compared with what might come’

Mark Carney said: ‘Once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late.’ He proposes that firms ‘would disclose not only what they are emitting today, but how they plan their transition to the net-zero world of the future’. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, has warned that climate change will lead to financial crises and falling living standards unless the world’s leading countries do more to ensure that their companies come clean about their current and future carbon emissions.
In a speech to the insurance market Lloyd’s of London on Tuesday, Carney said insurers were heavily exposed to climate change risks and that time was running out to deal with global warming.
The governor said that proposals would probably be put to the G20 meeting in Turkey in November urging the world’s leading developed and developing countries to bring in tougher corporate disclosure standards so that investors could better judge climate change risks.
“The challenges currently posed by climate change pale in significance compared with what might come,” Carney said. “The far-sighted amongst you are anticipating broader global impacts on property, migration and political stability, as well as food and water security. So why isn’t more being done to address it?”
Carney added that there was a growing evidence of humans’ role in climate change, noting that since the 1980s the number of registered weather-related loss events had tripled. Inflation-adjusted losses for the insurance industry had increased five fold to $50bn (£33bn) a year.
France will host the latest global attempt to combat climate change at a summit in December, and Carney added to the pressure for action by pointing to the threats to “financial resilience and longer-term prosperity. While there is still time to act, the window of opportunity is finite and shrinking”.
The governor, who is chairman of the Financial Stability Board, the international body set up by the G20 in 2009 to monitor risks to the financial system, said losses would be higher than expected if recent weather events proved to be the new normal.

A man by the Qiantang river after Typhoon
Dujuan hit China. Claims for flood damage
could affect financial stability.
Photograph: Imaginechina/Rex Shutterstock

“Climate change is the tragedy of the horizon. We don’t need an army of actuaries to tell us that the catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors – imposing a cost on future generations that the current generation has no direct incentive to fix.
“The horizon for monetary policy extends out to two to three years. For financial stability it is a bit longer, but typically only to the outer boundaries of the credit cycle – about a decade. In other words, once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late.”
Carney said there were three ways in which climate change could affect financial stability: physical risks, such as claims from floods and storms; liability risks that could arise if those suffering climate change losses sought compensation from those they held responsible; and transition risks caused by the revaluation of assets caused by the adjustment to a lower-carbon economy.
The governor said that global action to tackle climate change could have a profound impact on companies if their business models were challenged by the move away from fossil fuels.
“Take, for example, the International Panel on Climate Change’s estimate of a carbon budget that would likely limit global temperature rises to 2 degrees [centigrade] above pre-industrial levels.
“That budget amounts to between a fifth and a third of the world’s proven reserves of oil, gas and coal. If that estimate is even approximately correct it would render the vast majority of reserves “stranded” – oil, gas and coal that will be literally unusable without expensive carbon-capture technology, which itself alters fossil fuel economics.
“The exposure of UK investors, including insurance companies, to these shifts is potentially huge.”
Carney said that, following a meeting in London last week, the FSB was “considering recommending to the G20 summit that more be done to develop consistent, comparable, reliable and clear disclosure around the carbon intensity of different assets”.
One proposal, he added, was the creation of an industry-led group, a climate disclosure taskforce, to design and deliver a voluntary standard for disclosure by those companies that produce or emit carbon.
“Companies would disclose not only what they are emitting today, but how they plan their transition to the net-zero world of the future. The G20 – whose member states account for around 85% of global emissions – has a unique ability to make this possible.”

Fairfax Video

RAW VIDEO: Bank of England governor Mark Carney warns "climate change threatens financial resilience and longer term prosperity."

Shark Culling And Overfishing May Be Contributing To Climate Change

ABC - Sarah Sedghi

Research finds shark culling is contributing
to climate change (AAP: ScreenWest)

 New research has found that sharks play an important role in preventing climate change, warning that overfishing and culling sharks is resulting in more carbon being released from the seafloor.

A paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change has found that the culling and fishing of sharks and other large fish is leading to an overabundance of their prey, such as turtles, stingrays and crabs.
Larger numbers of these marine creatures means that vegetation which stores carbon is being eaten in greater quantities.
"Sharks, believe it or not, are helping to prevent climate change," said Dr Peter Macreadie, an Australian Research Council Fellow from Deakin University and one of the paper's authors.
Several years ago researchers found that carbon is stored in blue carbon ecosystems in the marine environment.
"They are the seagrasses, the salt marshes, the mangroves and they're among the most powerful carbon sinks in the world," Dr Macreadie said.
"So they will capture and store carbon at a rate 40 times faster than tropical rainforests like the Amazon and they'll store that carbon in the ground for millennial time scales."

He said as predators were culled and overfished, other marine life consumed more and more vegetation.

"Turtles, crabs, certain types of worms, stingrays — these animals that are overabundant to do with loss of predators used to keep their numbers in check," Dr Macreadie said.
The researchers used Cape Cod in Massachusetts as an example of where this process had been observed.
"There had been overfishing in the region, so a lot of the big fish had been removed and then what we saw was an increase — a remarkable increase, a huge increase — in the number of crabs that bury and borrow down in the system, in the salt marsh which sequestered all this carbon," Dr Macreadie said.
"And we'd found that in an area there, the crabs had become so abundant that they had pretty much destroyed the salt marsh, and it was a small area, it was only 1.5 square kilometres, but it liberated 250,000 tonnes of carbon that had been stored in the ground."

Release of ancient carbon would have 'catastrophic' effect
He said with the culling of huge numbers of sharks and other top ocean predators, researchers had discovered many other examples of this occurring.
"There's been some 90 per cent loss of the oceans' top predators and so we've learnt this link between sharks and other top predators and the cascading effects they will have down to other animals in those ecosystems that are eating themselves out of house and home.
"They're eating the blue carbon ecosystems that have sequestered so much carbon and this is causing release of ancient carbon as a consequence."
Dr Macreadie said it would have a catastrophic effect on the environment.
"We've only just scratched the surface here," he said.
"These blue carbon ecosystems are so critical for sequestering carbon and they support these important food webs, and when these food webs are disrupted it's a bit like playing a game of Jenga — you pull out a few pins and the whole thing falls apart.
"If we just lost 1 per cent of the oceans' blue carbon ecosystems, it would be equivalent to releasing 460 million tonnes of carbon annually, which is about the equivalent of about 97 million cars.
"It's about equivalent to Australia's annual greenhouse gas emissions.
"So I think it's time to take a good look at the way in which nature helps mitigate climate change for us and trying to do everything we can to let that natural process operate in full force, and if sharks are a part of that, if predators and a part of that we need to take that into consideration."