Their jobs may not be as glamorous as digging up ore or building cars, but public servants’ work on protecting Australia from climate change is even more important.
Natural Step Online
Yesterday’s announcement that one-third of jobs in the Department of Climate Change will be cut is yet another step back in the ALP’s half-hearted dance with climate change policy. Former Prime Minister…
Who’s responsible for this? Better disaster law could answer that question.
AAP
On 28 March the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its full report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). The IPCC’s essential…
There will be “winners and losers in the oceans” as its chemistry changes.
AAP
Internal “pumps” found in some corals may help them to endure gradual ocean acidification, giving rise to hope that coral reefs might escape climatic devastation, according to new research. A team of scientists…
Studies of prehistoric climate change in Victoria’s western lakes imply that future changes might not be smooth.
Dacre Smith's painting of Lake Gnotuk, from Views of Victoria in the steps of von Guerard.
Step changes in warming of a few tenths to 1°C can produce rapid changes in risks such as extreme heat and fire danger. Yet, adaptation-planning that follows the dominant model of smooth climate change…
Elephants in the room, part one For all our schemes and mantras about making this or that part of our lives environmentally “sustainable”, humanity’s assault on the planet not only continues but expands…
The ALP should be talking about getting a headstart on the industries of the future.
AAP
One of the arts of politics is storytelling, establishing a narrative that people can engage with. It is why politicians often talk about great teachers when explaining education reform, cancer patients…
Australia has become more reliant on polluting activities.
AAP/Dave Hunt
Australia is the only country in the Group of Twenty nations less prepared for a low carbon emissions world than it was almost two decades ago, a report has found. Since 1995, Australia’s reliance on polluting…
Some parts of Australia will experience more drought, while others will receive heavy rainfall.
AAP/Dave Hunt
Greenhouse gases have increased at more than 3% a year for the past decade to reach their highest level in 800,000 years, according to the latest summary of Australia’s long term climate trends by CSIRO…
The long-term warming trend has not changed.
Guillaume Brialon
Australia’s land and oceans have continued to warm in response to rising CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. This is the headline finding in the State of the Climate 2012, an updated summary…
Climate change is coming - do we plan to just carry on regardless?
AAP
When thinking of the challenges we face in responding to climate change, it is time to admit that our political focus has been fairly narrow: limiting emissions and moving beyond carbon-based energy systems…
When it comes to addressing climate change, the Green Climate Fund falls drastically short.
AAP
John Mathews, Macquarie Graduate School of Management
If no-one argues against the proposition that it was capitalism that created the global warming problem, then no one can argue that it must therefore be capitalism that will solve the problem. But how…
Australia’s revised dietary guidelines must consider environmental sustainability.
Wonderlane
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is currently revising the Australian Dietary Guidelines. Yet, despite expert advice from public health and environmental sustainability groups…
For whom the bell tolls: a Little Penguin.
Belinda Cannell
Little Penguins off the coast of Perth are being found dead - starved, battered, and in some cases almost completely beheaded - as elements both natural and manmade conspire against them. Penguin Island…
Warmer temperatures, drier soil and changing management practices are causing wine grapes to ripen sooner.
AAP/Jordan Chong
Wine grapes in Australia’s south are ripening on average 20 days earlier than they did in 1985, according to a study that attributes the trend to climate change, smaller harvests and improved technology…
You have to go back to the time of the dinosaurs to see where Earth is heading.
Mr Kimberley/Flickr
Why have mass extinctions of species occurred since the late Proterozoic (from 580 million years ago) and repeatedly through the Phanerozoic? Integral to these extinctions were abrupt changes in the physical…
No one said it was going to rain like this… or did they?
AAP
Recent wet weather and flooding across eastern Australia has caused many to ask, wasn’t climate change supposed to cause more droughts, not floods? Critics of climate change science have suggested that…