"MY COUNTRY", a famed poem by Dorothea Mackellar, is known to generations of Australian schoolchildren. They will know by heart the stanza

I love a sunburnt country,

a land of sweeping plains,

of ragged mountain ranges,

of droughts and flooding rains.

Forthcoming generations of Australians will know ever more sunburnt, drought-stricken and flooded lands, if the predictions of a report from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Bureau of Meteorology are realised. Those sweeping plains, especially in the country's centre, will become much hotter and their soil will degrade.

The report, released last week, is Australia's most comprehensive yet. It is also the most worrisome. Its worst-case predictions have average temperatures rising by 5.1°C by 2090, a shade above the global worst-case prediction. The report predicts less rain on average but far more of it when it does come. On land, more fires and heatwaves are projected; at sea, expect higher surface temperatures and acidity, and higher sea levels overall—all things foreseen with a “very high confidence” unless emissions are steeply cut.

The report also remarks on the effects of a global temperature rise of 2ºC over pre-industrial times, a goal many still believe is an attainable limit that would curtail worst-case scenarios in many regions. But it would most likely be terrible for Australia's mainland and “very challenging” for the Great Barrier Reef, according to Kevin Hennessy, one of the CSIRO's chief research scientists.

To many the report's dire predictions will come as no surprise; the number-crunching is based in large part on models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the outcomes are not so different from the last version of the report. The hottest year on record in Australia was 2013; the third-hottest was last year. Seven of the ten hottest years have occurred since 1988. The report quiets naysayers who would suggest this is natural climate variation, admonishing that "the signal is clear”.

As with the whole of the globe, though, there will be regional winners and losers. Tasmania’s agriculture, for instance, is likely to improve even as farming degrades elsewhere. Fewer people are projected to die from the cold, but elsewhere more will die from heat stroke. The report is divided into eight geographical locations because there is no one-size-fits-all prescription.

Except, of course, for the now-standard clarion call: reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally in a “large and sustained” effort. Without that, even the second-worst-case scenarios are likely, and likely to be unpleasant. Australia must make its pollution-reduction targets more ambitious after 2020, the report says, and push for more action at the upcoming UN climate conference in Paris.

That will be tough. Tony Abbott, the prime minister, is an unapologetic climate-change sceptic who has been quoted saying coal—on which the country depends disproportionately—is "good for humanity". He campaigned on a promise to "axe the tax" set up by the previous government to make carbon emitters pay. In July, he succeeded. He promised it would save 9% on electricity and gas—an annual household savings of about A$550 ($430). As pundits predicted at the time, that was an overestimate. Other knock-on savings, such as cheaper air tickets, have not materialised.

In light of reports such as last week's, Mr Abbott's position will become trickier to maintain. Other big per-capita emitters are making big changes that literally hit home. On the sidelines of last year's G20 summit in Brisbane, Barack Obama spoke at the University of Queensland about the threats climate change poses to the Great Barrier Reef. This came shortly after America and China had agreed a new climate-change deal. The "wilful, lavish land" that Dorothea Mackellar described can expect a less lavish future the more wilful Mr Abbott is.