The findings of a new study suggest mistrust in climate science and uncritical faith in “alternative science” lead people to reject consensus science and generate alternative explanations.
How do people respond to media coverage of weather influenced by climate change?
AP Photo/Andy Newman
Media reports are starting to directly connect climate change to its weather effects in local communities. But how you respond to those linkages depends on what you already think about climate change.
While Tony Abbott’s London climate speech has been widely criticised, research suggests his views have long had a sympathetic ear in Australia’s coal heartland.
So large are the nation’s daily greenhouse gas emissions that if yours is a typical Australian lifestyle you’re contributing disproportionately to climate change.
Carbon Visuals/flickr
It would take a lifestyle upheaval to drop most Australians’ household emissions to a sustainable level. Even many of us who urge equitable action on climate change act as if this doesn’t apply to us.
Thredbo, scene of the latest attack on the Bureau of Meteorology’s methods.
AAP Image/Alison Godfrey
Three years ago The Australian newspaper launched a broadside at the Bureau of Meteorology. But when it did it again this week, it seemed to get less traction from the top echelons of government.
President-elect Donald Trump’s stance on climate change is very different to Barack Obama’s.
Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
If Trump forsakes US support for the 2015 Paris Climate Accord as well as Obama’s bilateral climate agreement with China, the resultant rise of global warming will wreak havoc throughout Africa.
Electricity is only one of the marvels brought to us by science. But even that’s not enough to convince some of its value.
Michael Wyszomierski/Flickr
Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty’s new book explores why so many people today selectively reject science, and in the process gives a behind the scenes look at how science really works.
Science denial can come in many forms, but you need to be careful when debunking it.
Bryan Rosengrant/Flickr
Over the past week or so, the Bureau of Meteorology has stood accused of fudging its temperature data records to emphasise warming, in a series of articles in The Australian. The accusation hinges on the…
A little while ago I had managed to grab a half hour cuppa with a previous vice chairman of the IPCC. Topics of discussion roamed far and wide but with an understandable focus on climate change. As I sat…
It is difficult to make a conclusive link between human-caused climate change and the record drought in California, record freezes in parts of Canada and the US, Britain’s wettest-ever winter and Australia’s…
The report released jointly by the Royal Society in the UK and the US National Academy of Sciences provides a guide to current climate change science for a non-scientific audience. In this respect it is…
The sight of speakers known to dispute the scientific evidence supporting climate change being called to speak at a parliamentary select committee on the latest IPCC report last week has raised certain…
The sky is falling! Oh wait, no: it’s just the clouds moving…
Sarah Smith
Several Australian corporate figures have recently disparaged climate scientists. First, former banker David Murray questioned the integrity of climate scientists on national TV. Casting such aspersions…
A new study finds a third of Australian newspaper articles reject climate science.
Flickr/pasukaru76
Australia has the most concentrated press ownership in the world. What does that mean for significant issues such as climate change? In 2011 and 2012 we at the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism…
Why would more science make any difference to people who don’t care about science?
Larry He's So Fine/Flickr
This week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will be compendious, cautious, thorough and as authoritative as a scientific report can be. But it will not make much difference. In…
Dead science lives on, thanks to the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change.
Scott Beale
The warm start to Australian spring has been accompanied by a deluge of pseudoscience. Anti-vaccination campaigners and aliens made appearances, but the deluge was primarily climate pseudoscience in the…
Hands up if your research endorses the existence of human-caused climate change.
Flickr
Today, the most comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed climate research to date was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Our analysis found that among papers expressing a position…
Believing climate change isn’t happening won’t make it go away.
Image from www.shutterstock.com
As we head into an election, you’d be justified in asking what your local member is basing their climate change decisions on. If your MP says “I don’t support policies to prevent dangerous climate change…
Remember the Theory of Relativity sceptics? As with the Einstein debate, the modern climate debate is based on politics and strawmen, not facts and details.
Flick/beautyredefined
It is hard to imagine a scientific breakthrough more abstract and less politically contentious than Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Yet in Weimar Germany in the 1920s it attracted fierce controversy…