So large are the nation’s daily greenhouse gas emissions that if yours is a typical Australian lifestyle you’re contributing disproportionately to climate change.
Carbon Visuals/flickr
It would take a lifestyle upheaval to drop most Australians' household emissions to a sustainable level. Even many of us who urge equitable action on climate change act as if this doesn't apply to us.
Exxon funded climate scientists while the bulk of its public-facing advertorials argued the science and cause of climate change was uncertain.
AP Photo/Mark Humphrey
A new study confirms what many already know: Exxon for years sowed uncertainty and doubt about climate change in the public. Should scientists reject certain funding sources?
When Tony Abbott went too far in his advocacy for the coal industry, his government faced a public backlash.
Dan Peled/AAP
While climate denialism impedes policymaking in both the US and Australia, there are key differences in their political and public cultures.
People reject science such as that about climate change and vaccines, but readily believe scientists about solar eclipses, like this one reflected on the sunglasses of a man dangerously watching in Nicosia, Cyprus, in a 2015 file photo.
(AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
People universally believe scientists' solar eclipse calendars, but vaccine warnings or climate predictions are forms of science that strangely do not enjoy equivalent acceptance.
Thredbo, scene of the latest attack on the Bureau of Meteorology’s methods.
AAP Image/Alison Godfrey
Three years ago The Australian newspaper launched a broadside at the Bureau of Meteorology. But when it did it again this week, it seemed to get less traction from the top echelons of government.
Children play in the DDT fog left by the ‘fog truck’ in a New Jersey neighbourhood.
George Silk/LIFE 1948
The undermining of environmental science, and the creation of lies and bribes to distort public policymaking, is as old as industries that know their products do harm, but lie to keep them in use.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses G20 health ministers in Berlin in May.
Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch
If the G20 is to remain relevant in the quest for more inclusive and fair global governance, Africa offers an historic opportunity for collective action, despite the absence of the US under Trump.
People gather outside the White House in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, June 1, 2017, to protest President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate change accord.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
While many people are willing to happily gamble with pharmaceuticals, which may offer the most trivial of benefits, they are not ready to believe the facts on climate change.
A shot of fake news now and your defenses are raised in the future?
funnyangel/Shutterstock.com.
Does science have an answer to science denial? Just as being vaccinated protects you from a later full-blown infection, a bit of misinformation explained could help ward off other cases down the road.
Science is not religion, and we should not have blind faith in its powers.
Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters
What if extreme weather events could be attributed to human-induced climate change with confidence?
Nobody can observe events in the future so to study climate change, scientists build detailed models and use powerful supercomputers to simulate conditions, such as the global water vapor levels seen here, and to understand how rising greenhouse gas levels will change Earth’s systems.
NCAR/UCAR
Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research and Reto Knutti, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich
People worry Washington is losing respect for science and even the centuries-old scientific method. Two climate scientists explain how science can be done when talking about the future.
Scientists address the prime minister at last year’s Science Meets Parliament.
Mark Graham
Scientists are concerned that politics will trump evidence in the new administration. A researcher of political psychology explains why these worries matter far beyond questions of science.
Pardon me while I blow this out of proportion.
Blowfish image via www.shutterstock.com.
Laser-like focus on a tiny, unimportant detail can mean you miss the gorilla in the room – a tactic climate change deniers use to cast doubt on the science.
Janna Rose, Grenoble École de Management (GEM) and Marcos Barros, Grenoble École de Management (GEM)
There's never been greater need for the study of what we don't know, and why we're not supposed to know it.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called the ‘father of the atomic bomb’ who chaired the ancestor of today’s Department of Energy, had his security clearance revoked during the ‘Red Scare’ of the 1950s.
AP Photo
A historian of science and technology says Trump team's request for names of Department of Energy employees working on climate change recalls worst excesses of ideology-driven science in government.
So many voices but who should you listen to in any debate on science matters?
Shutterstock/coffeehuman
Modern science can be difficult or complex for one person to understand and verify, especially a non-scientist. So who should we believe when scientific evidence is met with denial?
NASA has a long history of conducting climate science. Here, a NASA camera captures a storm over South Australia.
NASA
One of Donald Trump's senior advisers has recommended cutting NASA climate research because the science has become “heavily politicised". The question is: by whom?
Not exactly a sustainability agenda.
AP Photos/Evan Vucci
Trump has promised to abolish Obama's Clean Power Plan and back out of the Paris climate accord. But business could become a key firewall that won't let Obama's sustainability legacy die.
