From AP via CTV.ca:

Worldwide economic growth has accelerated the level of greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold scientists had not expected for another decade, according to a leading Australian climate change expert.

Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels.

Flannery is not a member of the IPCC, but said he based his comments on a thorough review of the technical data included in the panel's three working group reports published earlier this year. The IPCC is due to release its final report synthesizing the data in November.

"What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change,'' Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday.

"We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change. That's what these figures say. It's not next year or next decade. It's now.''

Flannery, whose recent book "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth,'' made bestseller lists worldwide, said the data showed that the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions had reached about 455 parts per million by mid-2005, well ahead of scientists' previous calculations.