Emissions fell by six times the rate in the five years before the carbon tax than they did under the carbon tax. – Environment minister Greg Hunt, The Guardian, January 17, 2015. Australia’s total greenhouse…
Hurricane Sandy pummeled cities along the east coast in 2012, causing billions of dollars of damage.
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Climate change is as much an economic problem as an environmental one. The effects of climate change, such as damage from more severe weather or health problems from higher temperatures, will impose a…
Harvard and Rutgers scientists propose a new, potentially more accurate way, to measure the rate of sea level rise.
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When you ask yourself what the biggest unanswered scientific questions are, “how did sea levels change over the past 100 years?” is unlikely to appear at the top of your list. After all, haven’t we already…
David Cameron’s decision to champion the Green Party’s inclusion in the general election debates has, regardless of his motives, considerably raised the stakes. It has also opened up broader questions…
After mass bleaching in 1998, more than half of coral reefs in the Seychelles have slowly recovered.
Nick Graham
Coral reefs are the poster child for the damage people are doing to the world’s oceans. Overfishing, pollution and declining water quality have all taken their toll on reefs around the world. Perhaps the…
A depot used to store pipes for Transcanada Corp’s planned Keystone XL oil pipeline is seen in Gascoyne, North Dakota.
Andrew Cullen/Reuters
Big energy infrastructure projects – power plants, coal mines, long distance transmission lines – take time, resources and, typically, some political muscle. They create highly visible if short-lived construction…
This is the area that holds strategic importance
Reuters/Balazs Koranyi
In a few short months the United States assumes Chair of the Arctic Council (AC). This is a two-year long opportunity to shape the future of the Arctic, an opportunity that will likely not come around…
Could climate change be making flying more unsafe?
KamrenB Photography
On December 28, AirAsia flight QZ8501 crashed into the sea between Indonesia and Singapore. Shortly before the crash, the pilots requested an alteration to the flight route due to severe weather. While…
Mountain Pygmy Possum numbers are declining due to environmental changes, including earlier snow melt.
AAP/Tim Arch/DSE
Every Spring, the blanket of Australian alpine snow starts to melt, and the Mountain Pygmy Possum wakes up from its seven-month-long hibernation. Naturally after so long under the snow, its first thought…
Horses cool off during an Adelaide heatwave in January 2014.
AAP Image/David Mariuz
2014 has been confirmed as Australia’s third-hottest year, capping off a record-breaking decade, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement, released today. Seven of Australia’s…
Voluntary programs are all the rage. From ratcheting up cybersecurity to fighting obesity, firms in the United States and elsewhere voluntarily make pledges to do better than governmental regulation. Firms…
‘Plates of the Outback’ - A supercell thunderstorm near Urana, NSW drifts over the landscape.
John Allen
The supercell that hit Brisbane on November 27 this year caused more than A$500 million worth of damage, produced hail up to 7.5 cm in diameter, and lashed the city with winds of more than 140 km an hour…
This lot survived rapid global warming – so why can’t we?
Jay Matternes / Smithsonian Museum
It is often said that humans have caused the Earth to warm at an unprecedented rate. However researchers have discovered another period, some 55m years ago, when massive volcanic eruptions pumped so much…
Energy supply including nuclear is the best way to fight climate change and conserve wildlife and ecosystems.
James Marvin Phelps/Flickr
Should nuclear energy be part of Australia’s (and many other countries’) future energy mix? We think so, particularly as part of a solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent dangerous climate…
Two weeks of international climate negotiations in Lima, Peru, are over, with an agreement pulled out of the bag at the eleventh hour. While Lima has been seen by many as a mere curtain-raiser to talks…
Imagine the smokestacks without the billowing clouds of greenhouse gas pollution.
JuergenGER
Earth’s climate is changing rapidly. We know this from billions of observations, documented in thousands of journal papers and texts and summarized every few years by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental…
The Gold Coast is one of Australia’s climate “hot spots” — vulnerable to rising seas, storms and erosion.
Phalinn Ooi/Flickr
The world’s population could reach almost 10 billion by 2050. Most people will live in cities. To accommodate an additional 3 billion people, we’ll need to build the equivalent of one new city, that can…
Australian farmers apply nearly a million tonnes of nitrogen-based fertilisers every year.
Pete Hill/Flickr
Peter Grace, Queensland University of Technology and Louise Barton, The University of Western Australia
When we talk about greenhouse gases we usually talk about carbon dioxide. When media reports depict climate change, we invariably see the cooling towers of a coal power station. Which is fair, because…
Global environmental and social welfare per capita has not improved since the 1980s.
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The focus of the recently concluded G20 summit was economic growth. The final communiqué begins: “Raising global growth to deliver better living standards and quality jobs for people across the world is…
A properly designed cap and trade scheme could lift Illinois out of the fog.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Don Fullerton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
So-called cap and trade may be a solution to a problem it was not intended to solve: state budget crises. Cap-and-trade policy was designed to address climate change by putting a “cap” on carbon dioxide…