http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/barry-brook/ Professor Barry Brook holds the Foundation Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and is Director of Climate Science at the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute. He has published two books and over 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and received a number of awards in recognition of his research, which addresses climate change, computational and statistical modelling and the synergies between human impacts on Earth systems. Barry believes presenting hard-won technical scientific evidence to a broad audience in an intelligible way is the best path to provoking social change towards long-term sustainability. He runs Brave New Climate, a blog on climate and energy. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fukushima-situation-critical-information-scarce/ The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station has been unfolding for about a week. The on-site situation remains extremely serious, with glimmers of hope being shrouded by a shadow of deep uncertainty. If you’ve not been following the situation on BraveNewClimate, please visit the site, which contains assumed knowledge for understanding the rest of this post. As predicted, attention over the last couple of days has focused on the critical situation with the ponds used for temporary storage of spent nuclear fuel at the individual reactor units, before it is moved to a centralised facility on site. Although this old fuel has lost much of its original radioactivity, the decline is exponential, which means that thermal energy must continue to be dissipated for months. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Barry Brook) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fukushima-situation-critical-information-scarce/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fukushima-situation-critical-information-scarce/#item5408 Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:40:21 +0000 Barry Brook | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/counterpunch-its-complicated-but-its-real/ Dylan Malloch laments that understanding climate change is difficult, with the forecasts sometimes appearing to be contradictory or having a bit both ways, and therefore seeming all rather confusing! It’s easy to sympathise with him. Unfortunately, this is the nature of science. Let’s consider another example. Newton’s laws of physics work just fine for the everyday world, but if we tried to use them in the timing system of our global positioning satellites, the resulting drift error would be about 10 kilometres every day. So, the engineers at GPS mission control need to use Einstein’s relativistic theories to make sure your iPhone tells you precisely where you are, whenever you want to know. Similarly, neither Newton’s or Einstein’s equations allow scientists to properly predict the subatomic interactions within the electronics of satellites or iPhones. For that, you need to reference the weird world of quantum mechanics. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Barry Brook) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/counterpunch-its-complicated-but-its-real/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/counterpunch-its-complicated-but-its-real/#item5102 Thu, 10 Feb 2011 19:45:25 +0000 Barry Brook | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-flawed-assumptions-that-threaten-the-planet/ The Australian Government likes to claim we are doing our part to avoid dangerous climate change. Australia’s current target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 to 25 per cent by 2020, compared to 2000 emissions levels, with a 60 per cent drop by 2050. This sounds impressive enough, and there is no doubt that this will require transformative changes in energy use if it is to be achieved. Other developed countries have similar targets. President Obama’s aim for the USA, for instance, is to get back to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 per cent lower by 2050. So we’re doing our bit. But is this bit enough, or fair, or feasible? In short, no, no and no. Let me explain. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Barry Brook) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-flawed-assumptions-that-threaten-the-planet/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-flawed-assumptions-that-threaten-the-planet/#item239 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:30:58 +0000 Barry Brook | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/cant-see-the-new-environment-measures-for-all-the-smoke/ So, “clean energy” stands as one of the infrastructure centrepieces of the Federal Budget. It’s an investment intended, we’re told, to both pull the economy out of recession and get us on the pathway to a low carbon economy. A princely sum of $4.5 billion is directed to renewable energy, infrastructure for climate-observing systems, and funds for low emissions technology development. It sure sounds impressive, but under scrutiny, it turns out to be mostly just smoke and mirrors. Breaking down the numbers, we find that $1 billion is a rollover of existing funds, while $2.4 billion has been directed towards research, development and demonstration of low-emissions coal technology, or “carbon capture and storage” to us scientists. A little under half a billion will go towards establishing a body to support research into renewable energy. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Barry Brook) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/cant-see-the-new-environment-measures-for-all-the-smoke/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/cant-see-the-new-environment-measures-for-all-the-smoke/#item105 Wed, 13 May 2009 00:52:46 +0000 Barry Brook | Author bios | The Punch