Each year the summer in Adelaide seems to be getting hotter. 2005 was the hottest summer ever in Australia. 2005 was the hottest year for the planet.

Getter hotter means soaring temperatures, and more bush fires across southern Australia.

Bill Leak

More accurately, we are expecting a doubling in the number of very hot days in the coming decades and drought conditions to become the norm. Very hot in Adelaide is over 40degrees.

Getting hotter also means less water, more airconditioning in energy inefficient houses, more energy use and more coal-fired stations pumping out greenhouse gases.

If climate change in southern Australia means more heat searing days and more extreme weather conditions, then the relentless growth in carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels in Australia will continue, as little effort is being made by federal and state governments to reduce greenhouse gases emissions from coal-fired power plants. They don't seem to understand that global warming is a big challenge facing Australia; or if they do they are will not do anything that harms our economy.

The coal and oil industry are engaged in the work of disinformation in earnest and we have a few scientists and scientific hangers-on to write Op-Ed pieces and appear on talk shows to provide a "balanced" view to the IPAC consensus in 2001 that the balance of evidence suggests that there most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities" and its prediction that the planet's average temperature might increase as much as ten degrees Fahrenheit before the century was out.

As for me I've accepted the idea of living in a hotter world.