“The key message from the conference is that climate change is real, there is no silver bullet to solve it, and there is a need to adapt to unavoidable climate change in the future,” says the Director of CSIRO Climate, Dr Bryson Bates.

The four-day Greenhouse 2005: Action on Climate Change conference provided a forum for a frank exchange of ideas between Australian scientists, policy makers and industry leaders.

Bates says conference participants agreed that inaction on climate change was no longer an option.

“The good news is that the energy industry is willing to change,” Bates said.

“However, it could be years before we see a change to low-emission technologies.

"Geosequestration was presented as a significant potential part of the solution. However, we need a portfolio approach. We need a combination of alternative energy sources, improved energy efficiency and mitigation options if we are to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.”

With climate change inevitable, delegates agreed that Australia had to make moves to adapt.

“Scientists need to provide policy makers with detailed regional climate projections and adaptation research to help understand how systems will respond to rising global temperatures and what options we have to respond to climate change,” Bates said.

The Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre's Dr Scott Power says evidence that human activity has increased the greenhouse effect has mounted rapidly in recent years.

“It is now difficult to believe that humans have not played a role in the warming of the planet over the last 50 years,” Power says.

“Further warming and sea level rise seems inevitable even if we stabilise carbon dioxide at current levels.”