We have hit a new milestone in carbon dioxide levels: the average for February topped 400ppm. It's the first time this has happened in the northern winter, when levels are typically lower than in summer.
The face of climate evil, or just a juicy steak?
Sheila/Flickr
Going vegetarian might help reduce your personal footprint - but it won't save the climate. Richard Eckard explains.
Renewables or oil? The former means betting each-way on energy storage. The latter means hoping to pull off a trifecta on carbon storage.
Hans Engbers/Shutterstock.com
The question of whether the future will be powered by coal and oil or by renewable energy is crucially important, both to the medium-term future of the Australian economy and to the long-term future of…
Chinese president Xi Jinping and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
EPA/Harish Tyagi
At the UN Climate Negotiations underway in Lima, Peru, foreign minister Julie Bishop has called on China and India to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In her address to the conference on Wednesday…
Another million tonnes of this and we can cancel that ski holiday.
Jimmy Thomas
We know the world is warming and that, unless things drastically change, we will keep emitting more carbon. We know the two are linked. But exactly how much warmer will it become as we emit more carbon…
CSIRO’s solar-concentrating mirrors can be used for several purposes, including creating high-energy ‘SolarGas’.
CSIRO
As climate negotiators meet at the United Nations’ Lima summit, which comes hot on the heels of the landmark US-China climate deal, there is a renewed focus on how the world can move to a lower-emissions…
To match the US, Australia would have to increase its emissions reduction target to 25% below 2000 levels.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
If you use the full Kyoto period — 1990 to 2020 — the US is minus 5% and Australia is almost exactly the same. Environment minister Greg Hunt, Radio National, November 17. *We and the United States are…
The real background would be too polluted.
EPA/Petar Kujundzic
The joint US-China announcement on tackling climate change has been described as “historic”, a “turning point” and a “positive signal”. It has also been written off as insubstantive or even “hype”. The…
Some great news at last, as China and the US announce a secretly negotiated deal to reduce their carbon emissions. After years of seeming to get nowhere at all it looks like we have the beginnings of meaningful…
Plants use photosynthesis to build molecules and energy they can use. By copying plants, humans can make cleaner fuels.
Ranjit Bhatnagar/Flickr
Most of the energy that fuels our lives comes from plants. Whether it is a fossil fuel that was formed hundreds of millions of years ago or the food we eat, all carbon-borne energy has its ultimate origins…
The Earth is finite - so are there limits to growth?
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center/Flickr
“But who do you think’s right, Prof? The optimists or the pessimists?” At the end of my sustainability economics course in 2007, students were challenging me to end 20 years of professional fence-sitting…
Could carbon capture and storage be the way to clean up coal power stations, such as this one in Australia’s Latrobe Valley?
Monash University/Flickr
To have any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change we’ll have to reduce the carbon emissions from our energy sectors — currently the largest human source of greenhouse gas emissions globally. And…
A new study shows plants may absorb more carbon than we thought.
Jason Samfield/Flickr
Through burning fossil fuels, humans are rapidly driving up levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which in turn is raising global temperatures. But not all the CO2 released from burning coal, oil…
Having two children could leave more carbon emissions than you can save by changing lightbulbs.
p.Gordon/Flickr
You’ve changed your lightbulbs, you recycle, you’ve retrofitted your house, cycle when you can, and drive an electric car when you can’t. You’re doing your bit to reduce your carbon emissions and prevent…
Demography is destiny. It’s an old idea but it remains as true as ever, despite the fact that it doesn’t get anything like the attention it deserves. It’s not hard to see why: not only is there a crowded…
World greenhouse emissions reached a new record in 2013 and will be even higher in 2014, driven largely by the continued use of fossil fuels such as coal.
nito/Shutterstock
As heads of state gather in New York for tomorrow’s United Nations climate summit, a new report on the state of the world’s carbon budget tells them that greenhouse emissions hit a new record last year…
The world’s economy is becoming less carbon-intensive, but not nearly fast enough.
AAP Image/Julian Smith
China’s use of coal for electricity could peak as early as next year, then decline until 2020 in a turnaround of “global importance”, according to economist Ross Garnaut in a lecture presented at the Melbourne…
If press coverage is any measure, it appears that electric vehicles (EVs) have finally arrived. Tesla’s Model S was named Automobile Magazine’s Car of the Year, the Nissan Leaf is topping the EV sales…
The Alpha Coal Project in Queensland’s Galilee coal basin. The Carmichael project is the second to be approved in the region.
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