The ABC loves Tim Flannery - last night they gave more than 15 minutes airtime during Lateline to the climate story-teller, here's the first bit of the transcript:

Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: The floods ravaging New South Wales have claimed a fourth life tonight with a woman's body pulled from the floodwaters.

Over the past 48 hours homes and cars have been washed away and the State Government has declared 12 disaster zones with the town of Dungog the worst hit.

BRIAN TRACEY, NSW POLICE: NSW Police divers have just retrieved the body of an 86-year-old female. We can confirm that there was only one person in the car.

MIKE BAIRD, NSW PREMIER: There's more rain that has come there in the last 24 hours than they have seen in a 24-hour period for the past century. It is a huge unprecedented amount of water, which is why we have seen some of the impacts we have.

BRIAN TRACEY: We've got a four-month-old baby who's seriously ill and needs to get to hospital.

JOURNALIST: And so is the baby being brought to this side? Does it need to get to a hospital over here?

BRIAN TRACEY: That's exactly right. It's coming back here and we're going to Maitland Hospital.

TONY JONES: Well it's the biggest storm to hit Sydney and other parts of NSW in a decade. So are we likely to see more extreme weather events like this in the future, as many climate scientists have argued?

This week's storms will certainly feed the debate over how much climate change is already affecting Australia. 

Today the Government's own Climate Change Authority weighed in with a report arguing that Australia is especially at risk and must ift its game by accelerating efforts to cut carbon emissions. 

BERNIE FRASER, CLIMATE CHANGE AUTHORITY: And it matters because even at present levels, we're having more heatwaves, more strokes from people suffering heatwaves, we're having more bushfire weather conditions and all sorts of things of that kind.

TONY JONES: The authority says the current Australian target of a five per cent emissions cut by the year 2020 is way too low. It wants the Federal Government to commit to a new target of 19 per cent by 2020, rising to a 30 per cent cut by 2025.

But the Government has ignored key recommendations from the authority in the past.

In response to this latest advice, a spokesman for the Environment Minister Greg Hunt said this: "We're currently undertaking consultation with the community on the setting of targets for the post-2020 period. The Climate Change Authority report will be considered as part of this process."

Well Tim Flannery is a scientist and environmentalist who was the chief commissioner of the Climate Commission, a body which provided information on climate change to the public, before it was disbanded by the Federal Government. He's now a member of the Climate Council, which is independent and funded by the community. Tim Flannery's also the author of a number of books, including The Weather Makers and he joins us from Melbourne.

Thanks for being there.

TIM FLANNERY, THE CLIMATE COUNCIL: It's a pleasure, Tony.

TONY JONES: Now, when we get weird weather like this once-in-a-decade storm, inevitably, there's a question over whether climate change has played a part in it. What do you say?

TIM FLANNERY: I say as far as that storm goes, it's too early to say. But it's important to look beyond that storm. I mean, people tend to forget that parts of NSW are still in record drought at the moment as we speak. And the long-term drying trend is now well entrenched. You know, rainfall in April overall compared with, say, 40 years ago or so is about 15 per cent down. Rainfall in May's 25 per cent down. So there's a long-term drying trend. That is being strongly influenced by climate change, by these warming conditions. It doesn't mean we won't see extreme storms every now and again. Whether those storms themselves are an effect or being influenced by climate change or to what extent, it's too early to say, but we need to look at that bigger picture.

TONY JONES: Yes. I mean, you know your own critics essentially make the argument that these huge kind of storms, these huge dumps of rain put the lie to the idea that it's going to get drier in Australia.

TIM FLANNERY: Well that's right. Every time it rains I seem to cop it from someone about this sort of thing. But the fact is it's going to rain in the future. We'll have intense storms in the future. But what I was talking about a decade ago and what continues to be absolutely true today is that south-eastern Australia overall is losing rainfall, it's starting to dry out, there's a drying trend which is strongly tied to the influence of greenhouse gases.

There's more at the ABC here.

Here's Stu of NT's take on Professor Flannery 

In February 2011 I set myself a simple task - to interview and to compare the CVs of two prominent climate change spokespeople - here are the links, compare and contrast

Professor Timothy Fridtjof Flannery - click here

The Alfred P Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Richard S Lindzen - click here

Love to know what you think!