The head of the federal government's climate commission says the latest science makes the case for human-induced global warming indisputable.
The commission released its first major report, The Critical Decade, on Monday.
It says global warming could cause the global sea level to rise up to one metre by the end of the century - higher than previously thought.
The commission, established by Labor to help tackle climate change, is also calling for a fresh approach to reducing carbon emissions.
Chief commissioner Tim Flannery said there was no doubt anymore about what was happening to the globe, saying the report's findings were based on a peer review of the latest science.
"The planet's warming, that is incontrovertible," he told ABC Radio.
"All the data points that way, that humans are causing it, again that is incontrovertible."
Professor Flannery said anyone who doubted that was "doubting the basics of science".
"We are in the middle of an unintentional experiment at the moment, which is changing the way the world works ... we have to limit the damage."
'CRITICAL DECADE ON CLIMATE CHANGE'
Greens Senator Christine Milne said the message from the report is clear, that this is the critical decade on climate change.
"What we now need to do is be having the conversation about how to decarbonise the Australian economy as quickly as possible," Senator Milne told reporters.
She said the report will hopefully be a driver for a package which will see a consistent, whole of government approach to climate change.
"So it doesn't matter whether you're talking about landscape, whether you're talking about cars, whether you're talking about factories we will all be going in the same direction. I hope."
Senator Milne called for an end to the debate over whether climate change is real.
"What this report will do is actually help the Australian population see that what we've been having is a phoney debate in Australia that's been run by the sceptics, financed by big business, by coal, by oil around the world," she said.
"This whole debate has been characterised by `Oh no, look what's going to happen to the old economy'. It should be `Oh wow, look what can happen with the new economy'".
Nationals Senate Leader Barnaby Joyce said Australia alone cannot affect climate change.
"We are not going to change the climate from this building," Senator Joyce told reporters.
"We can make people poorer. We can definitely do that.
"We can make people's lives more difficult, but we are not going to change the temperature of the globe."
Senator Joyce said Mr Flannery's report is just a gesture.
"If you get yourself tangled up in gestures that have no effect but make people's lives more miserable ... then I think there's something not quite right about that."
He said a high carbon price will reduce emissions "because it will shut everything down."
Liberal backbencher Dennis Jensen, a renowned climate change sceptic, said global temperatures were flatlining.
"The point is that if you get the hottest 10 years on record, it has not been heating this decade," he told reporters in Canberra.
"It's stabilised. It's effectively at the top of a curve that has gone up and it has flattened out."
Introducing a carbon tax was not prudent for an event that may or may not occur, Dr Jensen said.
"The point is that there are scientists that say at some stage it is inevitable that we are going to be hit by a meteor, by an asteroid," he said.
"Does that mean taking action against that?"
Dr Jensen said it was more prudent to be putting research and development money into other forms of energy to replace fossil fuels.
"It is not prudent to be putting taxes in that are completely punitive and won't achieve anything."
Opposition industry spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella said the commission's report would end manufacturing in Australia.
"This report wants to go further than the Greens say publicly," she told reporters.
"This report will shut down Australia as a modern industrialised economy."
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