In decades to come, historians wondering how Australians found themselves with dangerous climate change may well be puzzled.

How was it that inhabitants of a continent prone to wild swings in annual rainfall, severe heatwaves and bushfires weren't more wary of greater climate chaos? Hadn't we led successful global action to ban ozone-depleting chemicals after a big hole was discovered in the 1980s over Antarctica, leaving southern Australia facing a surge in cancer-causing ultraviolet light?

How long has the Great Barrier Reef got?: An AIMS researcher surveying thermal stress and bleaching at Taylor Reef off Mission Beach. Credit:Eric Matson, AIMS

Yet decades of warnings about threats posed by rising greenhouse gas levels appear to have done little to stir us into demanding our leaders implement necessarily ambitious action to curb climate change.

Another of those trenchant alerts will be issued on Monday when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its assessment of the impacts on the world of 1.5 degrees of global warming.