The most important issue raised by Lord Monckton’s controversial appearance on two Western Australian campuses is not the limit of free speech or Monckton’s scientific competence. Rather it is whether…
All the energy in our climate comes from the sun: it’s bound to have an influence.
foxypar/Flickr
Climate science has now thoroughly outlined the risk associated with increasing greenhouse gases. Significant and rapid warming of the climate system is now expected to occur over the next century and…
Al Gore’s launched a new campaign, but is anybody listening?
Juampe López/flickr
With the momentum of his Inconvenient Truth gradually fading, Al Gore has launched a new climate change action campaign - the Climate Reality Project. The centrepiece of the campaign is a day of action…
Budgetary constraints and climate change are putting the Antarctic in peril.
AAP
Does Australia have strategic interests in Antarctica? Do we really think of the region as the “common heritage of mankind”? The Antarctic Treaty states that it is “in the interest of all mankind that…
Julia Gillard was confronted by a shopper about the government’s carbon tax.
AAP/Patrick Hamilton
Before the details of the carbon tax were released this week, the government was fighting with one hand tied behind its back. Sometimes it looked like it had both hands and feet manacled as Prime Minister…
The scientists are talking and the Prime Minister is nodding, but is she really listening?
AAP
Amid the hullabaloo about the carbon tax and Clean Energy Future plan, few seem to spot its critical discrepancy. It recognises that maintaining a safe climate requires stabilising carbon pollution in…
Money is the key theme across the climate change debate: what happened to sustainability?
louisa catlover/flickr
The Government’s equation for creating a prosperous and sustainable Australia includes four key factors: carbon price, renewable energy, energy efficiency and land use efficiency. But it is evident that…
Locking carbon dioxide in soils and crops also stimulates emission of other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide, a study found, meaning the capacity of land ecosystems to slow climate warming may have been overestimated.
Flickr/AndyCarvin
The ability of land ecosystems like crops and soils to slow down climate change may have been overestimated because some of these ‘carbon sinks’ actually emit more greenhouse gases than first thought…
Data from satellites have fuelled debate over climate science.
NASA via Wikimedia Commons
If you’ve followed climate contrarian talking points over the years, you’ll be familiar with the argument over satellite observations of global warming. In 1990 it was reported that the satellite record…
A survey of 140 economists found 60% were in favour of the Gillard government’s carbon tax policy.
AAP
A survey of 145 economists released today found that 60% believe the Gillard government’s carbon tax is good economic policy. The carbon tax package, announced on Sunday, penalises 500 heavy polluters…
Scientific debate isn’t about ‘if’, but about ‘when’ and ‘how much’.
Matti Mattila/Flickr
In 2100, will sea level be one metre higher than now, or only 50cm? The Thames Barrage is designed to protect London from flooding by storm surges in up to one in a thousand year events. With 50cm higher…
Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet address a press conference on Sunday. A carbon tax package announced today includes compensation measures and a radical overhaul of income tax policy.
ABC News24
The Australian government announced on Sunday it would introduce a carbon tax at $23 a tonne next July, rising 2.5% annually plus inflation and moving to a market-based emissions trading scheme in 2015…
She’s got the book, but did she read it? Ross Garnaut explains the advice he gave.
AAP
Top Conversation author Professor Stephan Lewandowsky and former Western Australian Premier Carmen Lawrence were part of a group that sat down with Ross Garnaut during his recent visit to UWA. During the…
When we debate a carbon tax, how much thought are we giving to our fragile, drought-prone continent?
Raiden256/Flickr
As the old saying goes, “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions”. On Sunday, the exhausting, almost decade-long battle to put a price on carbon pollution enters a new phase, when the MultiParty…
Will Steffen (left) in conversation with academic Will Grant (right): “The misinformation campaign that’s been prominent in the media … really is having an impact.”
Welcome to “In Conversation”, our series of discussions between leading academics and major public figures in Australian life. Today, we’re In Conversation with the academic whose research informed the…
Climate researchers hoping to collect monsoonal wind data off the Somali coast have been thwarted.
Flickr
Somali pirates roaming the seas in the Gulf of Aden have claimed another victim: climate research. Climate scientists hoping to collect data on monsoonal wind patterns off the Somali coast have been thwarted…
Demanding climate data won’t provide a new window into global warming.
nasa hq photo/flickr
When it comes to obtaining research data, Canadian academic Steve Easterbrook said it best: “Any fool knows you don’t get data from a scientist by using FOI requests, you do it by stroking their ego a…
Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia, the institution at the centre of “Climategate” and the focus of a recent data Freedom of Information request, responds to Clearing up the Climate Debate. There…