Humans have so much influence over the global environment today that we have crossed a major threshold in Earth’s long history, entering a new stage in geological time which some scientists call the Anthropocene…
Enjoy the color while you can before climate change makes a mess of this too.
chensiyuan
One of nature’s most spectacular events occurs every autumn, when the leaves of hardwood trees burst into brilliant color before falling to the ground. These autumnal displays in the eastern United States…
How much more glacial melting can the planet stand?
NASA
Industrial civilization must become technologically, economically, politically, and morally sustainable to hold the earth’s temperature below 2°C (3.6°F) higher than its preindustrial average. The problem…
Opening a mine in Queensland this week, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said coal was “good for humanity”.
Dan Peled/AAP
News emerging from Washington last week suggests climate change may amount to more than an FAQ in the appendices of this November’s G20 leaders’ summit agenda. President Obama’s deputy national security…
Science can’t tell us exactly when the rising oceans will swallow up the Maldives, but it can give us a good idea.
Hiroyuki-H
Former environment minister Owen Paterson has called for the UK to scrap its climate change targets. In a speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, he cited “considerable uncertainty” over the impact…
Could carbon capture and storage be the way to clean up coal power stations, such as this one in Australia’s Latrobe Valley?
Monash University/Flickr
To have any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change we’ll have to reduce the carbon emissions from our energy sectors — currently the largest human source of greenhouse gas emissions globally. And…
Better get our heads out of the sand and run.
Peter Byrne/PA
The consistent message from those who would seek to exploit shale gas is that it has three distinct advantages over existing forms of fossil fuel energy: it is cheap, it has a lower influence on global…
A new study shows plants may absorb more carbon than we thought.
Jason Samfield/Flickr
Through burning fossil fuels, humans are rapidly driving up levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which in turn is raising global temperatures. But not all the CO2 released from burning coal, oil…
Australia’s Commonwealth marine parks were designed to protect marine life, including important foraging areas for sea birds.
In June 2012 the Labor government announced the “world’s largest” system of marine parks, adding 2.3 million square kilometres and taking the overall size of Australia’s Commonwealth marine reserves to…
A king tide in New Zealand, part of a project documenting what future sea level rise might look like.
Witness King Tides/Flickr
Human activity is driving sea levels higher. Australia’s seas are likely to rise by around 70 centimetres by 2100 if nothing is done to combat climate change. But 2100 can seem a long way off. At the moment…
Having two children could leave more carbon emissions than you can save by changing lightbulbs.
p.Gordon/Flickr
You’ve changed your lightbulbs, you recycle, you’ve retrofitted your house, cycle when you can, and drive an electric car when you can’t. You’re doing your bit to reduce your carbon emissions and prevent…
Demography is destiny. It’s an old idea but it remains as true as ever, despite the fact that it doesn’t get anything like the attention it deserves. It’s not hard to see why: not only is there a crowded…
Shark Bay is one of Australia’s 19 World Heritage Areas, home to dolphins, dugongs, and sharks.
Matthew Fraser
In the summer of 2010-2011 Western Australia experienced an unprecedented heatwave — but not on land. Between December 2010 and April 2011, sea temperatures off the WA coast reached 3C above average, and…
Bad news for icebergs: oceans in the Southern Hemisphere have been soaking up more heat energy than previously thought.
Andrew Meijers/BAS
The upper layers of the world’s oceans have been warming much faster than oceanographers realised over the past few decades, according to a new study. Sparse sampling of the Southern Hemisphere’s oceans…
In 2012 and 2013 parts of New Zealand suffered the worst drought in 70 years.
Dave Young/Flickr
Jim Salinger, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Over 2012 and 2013, parts of New Zealand experienced their worst drought in nearly 70 years. Drought is the costliest climate extreme in New Zealand; the 2012-2013 event depressed the country’s GDP by…
For Klein, it’s all about mobilising the grassroots.
Stephen Melkisethian
Earth is “fucked” and our insatiable growth economy is to blame. So argues Naomi Klein in her intentionally provocative best-seller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Klein is the latest…
Conspiracy theories are so hard to debunk because they use science.
Flickr/dexterd
As the United Nations warns of the dire consequences of global warming, the commitment of the current Australian government to the reality of climate change remains unclear, with a history of disturbingly…
The need for caution when any anomaly is revealed in new research.
Flickr/Adam Gerard
UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH: What do we actually mean by research and how does it help inform our understanding of things? What if research throws up a result that calls for a new way of thinking? How do we…
New research shows 2013 would not have been as hot without human-caused climate change.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
2013 was Australia’s hottest year on record, but how much of that was due to human-caused climate change? Today scientists publish five research papers that reveal the extent of human influence on Australia’s…
Naomi Klein’s third attack on capitalism, This Changes Everything, has put the urgency of climate change front and centre. As ever for Klein, unrestrained capitalism is the root problem and has to be dealt…