While most people now understand that the enhanced greenhouse effect means a much warmer planet, communicating regional shifts in weather remains a significant challenge. As with most complex science…
A quarter of the extreme precipitation that led to the Queensland floods has been found to have come from a third, until…
Natural records taken from coral, tree rings and ice cores helped to provide a “climate picture” for the past 1,000 years.
AAP Image/ARC Centre of Excellence, Natalie Rosser
Update October 2012: The manuscript “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium” by Joelle Gergis, Raphael Neukom, Ailie…
One of the benefits of using the health frame is that it makes the issues more tangible – here and now and about people, not just polar bears.
Roderick Eime/AAP
Climate change is a complex problem but appears to many people as lacking immediate impact on their lives. Reconceptualising it as a health issue may allow for both better understanding of the issue and…
Cows’ methane emissions can be measured with lasers, but it’s not that easy to measure emissions from an extinct sauropod.
Mark Witton
Last week my colleagues and I published a paper showing how methane emitted by dinosaurs could have affected the world’s climate. The media response was huge, with 100+ interviews by email and phone, and…
The floods that engulfed Sydney on March 8 this year are expected to become a more common occurrence.
AAP/Paul Miller
Rising sea levels could threaten up to 60,000 houses, 1200 commercial buildings and 250 kilometres of highway in NSW by the end of the century, a report by the federal government’s Climate Commission says…
Courageous dissent? “The MTC is patting itself on the back for staging The Heretic. But the MTC is not being bold … it is being cowardly.”
Flickr/Carlton Browne
Who would have thought the Melbourne Theatre Company would get into bed with Andrew Bolt? The MTC’s new play The Heretic, which premieres on 17 May, tells the story of climate scientist Dr Diane Cassell…
We need to know more about how ice sheets interact with the warming oceans and warming atmosphere.
Greenpeace/ADavies
Satellite and in situ observations show sea level is continuing to rise. In the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, earth system model projections indicated global sea-level rise by…
Knocking down forests and planting palm oil makes sense in Asia. Providing alternative income sources for villagers could make it less attractive.
Simon J. Rowntree
Reducing poverty in developing countries through economic development is often contrary to addressing climate change. In countries like Indonesia, many of the strongest drivers of the economy – palm oil…
People put up all kinds of psychological barriers to changing their minds.
Thomas Galvez
Ullrich Ecker, The University of Western Australia and John Cook, The University of Queensland
Last night’s ABC documentary I Can Change Your Mind About Climate was about two people — conservative former politician Nick Minchin and youth activist Anna Rose — exposing themselves to information that…
Scientists say the supply of freshwater in Australia could eventually be at risk.
AAP/Linda Silmalis
The cycle of evaporation and rainfall over the past 50 years has intensified at twice the rate predicted by climate change models, according to a report by US and Australian scientists of ocean salt levels…
Choose your experts carefully, lest they make you look foolish.
Pete Prodoehl
Last night the ABC premiered the fascinating documentary “I can change your mind about climate”, in which Nick Minchin, the recently retired Liberal senator, and Anna Rose, the co-founder of the Australian…
Lovelock’s recent statements on climate change don’t seem to take account of the latest data.
Jonathan Cobb
Recent statements by James Lovelock, the distinguished physicist, are not easy to reconcile with his statements, writings and books over the years, including The Vanishing Face of Gaia; The Revenge of…
Across Asia, climate change could cut agriculture in half by 2030. What will Australia do to help?
Gabriele Quaglia
AUSTRALIA IN THE ASIAN CENTURY – A series examining Australia’s role in the rapidly transforming Asian region. Delivered in partnership with the Australian government. Here, Dr Tim Stephens looks at how…
Imagine a six-sided die with four red faces, one green face and one blue face. I am going to roll the die, and before rolling I will ask you to predict which colour it will land on: red, green or blue…
Tiny humans would consume less and emit less, but who’s ready to genetically engineer their kids?
Dylan Luder
You know the situation is getting desperate when three bio-ethicists propose genetically modifying humans to reduce our environmental impact. In a bizarre paper titled Human engineering and climate change…
The evidence for a rapid shift in state of the terrestrial atmosphere-ocean system over the last two centuries (see figure 1) requires a deep time perspective, beyond events of the day. Tracing the original…
Questions of planetary power: a mere 0.3% of transnational corporations control 40% of global revenue.
Flickr/paul (dex)
The Planet Under Pressure 2012 Conference was held in London a fortnight back and released the first State of the Planet Declaration. The conference aim was to set out the science (in a broad sense) in…