New IPCC findings a 'rebuff to alarmists' THE "sensible" and "moderate" predictions expected to be made in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fifth update report tomorrow would open the way for more constructive discussions on how best to combat climate change, according to Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist Dr Lomborg, adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, said the anticipated temperature and sea-level rise in the new report did not support earlier "alarmist predictions." This is a chance to steer the climate conversation in a more realistic and constructive direction. He said the report's June draft showed similar temperature rises to earlier reports, at about 1C to 3.7C by the end of the century. For sea-level rise, the IPCC had added 3cm to 20cm to the projections to take into account melted ice from glaciers, leading to a higher total estimate of 40cm to 62cm by the end of the century. "This shows that the IPCC's predictions do not support alarmist predictions of global temperature rise that are often in the order of 5C and 1m to 2m of sea-level rise," Dr Lomborg said in a statement. These sensible and moderate findings contradict the alarmist rhetoric. Since 1980, the models have overestimated actual temperature rise by 71 to 159 per cent. This does not mean there is no global warming. It just makes the alarmist scenarios ever more implausible. The new report was a chance to change the climate conversation from being "dominated by end-of-the-world thinking" to focusing on global warming being a problem. "While panic is a great way to raise awareness and to win votes, it is a terrible starting point for making smart policies," he said. Rather than continuing their focus on carbon taxes and subsidies for renewables, political decision-makers should pursue a new approach. "What we need is investment in research and development to reduce green energy's cost and boost its scale," he said. Opening discussions to finalise the fifth assessment report in Stockholm this week, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said the meeting marked a "new milestone" in the understanding of climate change. He said approval of the report by governments, scientists and the IPCC had set the stage for a global agreement on carbon emissions by 2015. International aid agency Oxfam Australia urged the Abbott government to focus on the implications of the IPCC report for the world's poor.. Oxfam Australia's climate change policy adviser Simon Bradshaw said the report was likely to conclude with even greater confidence than the fourth assessment report that human activities were overwhelmingly responsible for rising global temperatures.