Australia's most respected climate scientists have condemned the advice of greenhouse adviser Ross Garnaut and urged the Federal Government to take a more aggressive position at global climate change negotiations.
Three authors with the UN's climate change panel say Professor Garnaut misjudged his role by advising the Government to accept a deal that would all but guarantee environmental and social disaster.
Speaking separately, Bill Hare, David Karoly and Amanda Lynch - all authors with the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - criticised Professor Garnaut's approach, describing it as inconsistent, disappointing and wrong.
All believe Australia, as the developed country expected to be worst hit by climate change, should be aiming for a cut in emissions of 25pc to 40pc by 2020.
Professor Garnaut last week recommended the Government set a target of cutting emissions by 10pc below 2000 levels by 2020 as part of a modest but achievable global deal.
He said Australia should make a proportionate commitment within a global framework based on per capita pollution levels.
He believed Australia should be willing to commit to a more ambitious global deal, under which Australia would make a 25pc cut, but said it could not be achieved in the short term.
Dr Hare, based at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said adopting Professor Garnaut's recommendation would devastate ecosystems, dry up Asia's water supply and trigger huge sea level rises.
He said Professor Garnaut had taken the wrong approach: he should have made a case for a strong global deal, not give a political assessment.
Professor Garnaut has acknowledged under his best short- term target - an atmospheric carbon dioxide level of 550 parts per million - the "odds are not great" for the Great Barrier Reef or communities on the Murray River.
But Dr Hare said a stronger global treaty might still be possible in Copenhagen next year, when a new agreement was due. Global negotiations were yet to get to realistic discussions of what was achievable, he said.
"Ross Garnaut's report is effectively putting off the cost of climate change to another generation, who will have to deal with a 3-degree rise in temperature," he said.
"It has failed to face up to this risk issue … As a highly vulnerable country, I would have thought it would have been better for Australia to be going forward with a more aggressive position."
Professor Lynch, a federation fellow at Monash University, said the latest Garnaut report would confirm perceptions that Australia's rhetoric about climate change was not backed by action.
"I think they will take it as another piece of evidence that Australia is not really interested in walking the walk," she said.
There were technical problems with Professor Garnaut's modelling.
For example, it failed to recognise that Australia's per capita emissions would fall as its population grew through immigration, enabling it to take on a more ambitious target.
Australia needed a strong carbon price to help discourage coal-fired power.
"How much is it worth to us to have a Great Barrier Reef? How much is it worth to us to be self-sufficient in food?" Professor Lynch said.
Professor Karoly, federation fellow at Melbourne University, said Australia would abandon any claim to international leadership if it adopted the Garnaut position.
He said Australia's minimum 2020 target should be a 20pc cut.
"I would anticipate the Government would take an even weaker approach than Garnaut, which is going to essentially be no change whatsoever," he said.
The Government is due to set its targets for 2020 before the end of the year.
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