Sydney- Senior scientists on Tuesday lambasted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's top climate-change adviser for recommending only a 10-per-cent cut in Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

In an interim report delivered last week, economist Ross Garnaut said even his 10-per-cent cut should be conditional on a global deal committing all other countries to join in setting targets for reducing emissions.

"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 as well as sucking carbon dioxide out of the air," said Bill Hare, now working at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Impact Research.

Shooting for just a 10-per-cent reduction on 2000 levels, Hare said, would not be enough to stop seas from rising and water supplies from being affected.

Rudd's first act in government after the November general election was signing the Kyoto Protocol. He also pledged a 60-per-cent reduction in emissions by 2050. He postponed setting a 2020 target until receiving Garnaut's report.

Melbourne University's David Karoly, lead author for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Garnaut was sending a "message that Australia doesn't want to seriously consider or address the fact that it has the highest [per-capita] greenhouse gas emissions in the world."

Karoly said Australia, by aiming for a low target, was "leaving it to other countries and other generations to solve the problem."

Rudd responded to the criticism, saying, "Some people will say we've done too much. Others will say we've done enough."

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said it would be later in the year before Rudd set a definitive target and Garnaut's was not the only advice the government would consider.

"Government has to strike the right balance," she said. "We have to ensure that all parts of our economy contribute fairly to the task of reducing emissions." (dpa)