Global Warming

I remember vividly a very long (and unbelievably frustrating) conversation I once had with someone who was genuinely convinced that he was “playing it safe” by not wearing a seatbelt whilst driving.

I told this man that seatbelts are one of the most simple-yet-effective life-saving devices ever invented in modern societies, and, backed-up by mountains of independent research, any road safety expert will tell you that you’re crazy not to wear one every time you get in a car.

But, this clown thought that the experts were “idiots”, and that he knew better.

Continue reading "FOOI #11: Listen to the experts, they know their stuff" »

Islands may sink beneath seas; coral may die; species may become extinct. Floods and droughts and heat-related deaths may soar. But sit down, people – climate change is also threatening our wine industry!

Such a shame that the so-called chardonnay socialists are probably on the climate change bandwagon already – but maybe all those doctors’ wives we hear so much about at election time will see their beloved niche varietals under threat and decide the time to act is upon us.

According to climate change scientist and wine expert Leanne Webb temperature increases mean grapes ripen earlier, creating more full-bodied wines, while consumers are keener on more elegant drops.

Continue reading "Who would you turn ‘warmist’ for?" »

The climate change debate has never been hotter, with family groups outraged that Cate Blanchett (among others) has thrown her not-particularly-substantial weight behind carbon pricing. Here, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition’s Anna Rose talks about the need for urgent action.

Sixteen-year-old Alana volunteers with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. When asked why, she tells the following story: “When I was 14 my brother was born. When I first saw him, I thought about his future and I almost couldn’t face it. I couldn’t bear to think about the world that he was going to grow up in to. So I decided to do something about it.”

Life is very different for young Australians today. Gone are the days when young people can plan our futures without factoring in an ominous shadow looming over our plans for our lives, careers and families. Not since the Cold War have young Australians faced a future so uncertain.

Continue reading "Climate change: Bugger Cate, we must ALL act" »

The internet’s made everyone an expert, so now all these self-professed sceptics believe climate change is bunkum because Google told them so.

The vast sea of information online means that any conclusion is possible; just phrase your search string carefully and it will tell you what you want to hear.

And then you have all sorts of links as ‘evidence’ that you are right and all the world’s top scientists are wrong. Without the right tools of critical thought, a poorly written blog by Dr Bumfluff from the Convenient Truthiness Association trumps anything the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could come up with.

Continue reading "All climate change theories were not created equal" »

Tony Abbott does not accept the concept of human-induced climate change, even though he says he does and has presented a policy to combat it.

He has merely acknowledged enough of the concept to, he hopes, stall the scientific debate in mainstream politics. It is a convenient truce.

Or, to borrow a condemnatory phrase from his mentor John Howard, he is trying to walk both sides of the street.

Continue reading "Abbott blows hot and cold on climate change" »

I have lived in Tully and Innisfail and survived cyclones when I resided there. I was evacuated in the recent Brisbane floods for five days but fortunately the water surrounding my house stopped just before it entered. I am currently in North America and been bombarded with weather warnings about the “Snow storm of the century”

I admit that during the time that Cyclone Yasi was crossing the North Queensland coast I was listening to ABC radio here in North America on the internet as I was concerned for the welfare of friends and relatives living there.

The aim of a severe weather warning is to prevent a weather hazard from becoming a disaster. I am amazed however at the national extent of the weather hysteria devoted by the media and politicians both here and in Australia when accurate and credible warnings for potentially affected areas are all that are required.

Continue reading "How much weather porn can we watch?" »

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.

Continue reading "COUNTERPUNCH: It’s complicated, but it’s real" »

Pythagoras and his theorem, which has withstood the test of time and is readily remembered as “The square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides” (a² + b²= c²).

Scientific method has historically required a theory to be put forward and tested essentially by trying to knock it down.

Even evolutionary theory is still called just that – The Theory of Evolution. How then did we arrive at what is now popularly referred to as “The Science” and as a corollary “The Science of Global Warming”.

Continue reading "Whatever happened to theories and theorems?" »

What started as a ripple is now growing into a powerful protest wave sweeping across our great nation.

In the space of a week, it has been fed by a series of fiery meetings in outback Queensland and southern States, a symbolic funeral service in Perth and gatherings in Brisbane and Melbourne.

At first glance these might seem unrelated, but beneath the surface they are connected by a strong under current of people pushed to the limits. The Perth “funeral” on the steps of Parliament House involved the “death” of property rights, complete with wreath laying, a piper in full regalia and a cortege to Cottesloe Beach for symbolic burial.

Continue reading "The farmers’ revolution against climate bureaucrats" »

Watching the way every bloke and his dog is weighing into the climate change debate these days has got me wondering: are we now living in a world where expert knowledge is meaningless?

I recently changed my by-line on this publication after prodding from some colleagues. I was previously called an ‘arts, popular culture and ethics writer’ - now I’m an ‘arts writer and social commentator’.

What a joke. ‘Social commentator’ is a meaningless job description for which there are no obvious qualifications – certainly I don’t remember sitting the exams.

Continue reading "Welcome to the Culture Wars, science" »

Here’s a fact you might hear repeated quite a bit over the coming months. The past 12 months were the hottest ever.

Data from NASA reportedly confirms the period from May 2009 to April 2010 was the hottest 12-month period in its records. This does rather challenge the view, which has been increasingly fashionable, that climate change is questionable or might not be happening at all.

The embarrassment of the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia and evidence of dodgy studies being cited by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were hugely damaging to the standing of the scientific arguments that the world is heating up. But the scientists are back in the saddle, publishing a stream of evidence that climate change is still doing quantifiable damage to the planet. This week there have been some doozies.

Continue reading "The global warming debate heats up again" »

Climate scepticism is all the rage these days and it’s become very fashionable to doubt the scientists and suspect global fraud.

The sceptics will denounce mainstream opinion for attempting to supposedly silence them, all the while loudly denouncing their opponents on talkback radio, the internet and mainstream press. They criticise minor errors in massive reports and loudly attack sloppy emails, but they play fast and loose with the facts themselves.

Sceptics are rarely accountable for their statements on temperature, on climate or carbon dioxide levels, preferring instead to rely on unsophisticated arguments like ‘it’s crap’.

Continue reading "Climate changes sceptics a threat to national security" »

August 2009 was Australia’s warmest on record. Temperatures averaged over the country were 2.47C above the long-term average, nearly a degree above the previous August record set in 1998, and 25% of the country had its hottest August day on record at some stage during the month.

Some places, such as Collarenebri and Murwillumbah in NSW and Gatton in Queensland, broke their previous August records by 5C or more. Temperatures reached as high as 37.8C at Mungindi in NSW and 38.5C at Bedourie in Queensland, both of which were all-time state records for August.

Such an exceptional month leads to many people to ask: is this climate change?

Continue reading "Record heat and climate change: what’s going on?" »

In his first appearance on The Punch, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd blogs on climate change. This piece also appears on his new blog at www.pm.gov.au.

I decided to kick off my blogging career with a focus on climate change. The latest scientific research on climate change confirms our worst fears.  Climate change is happening faster than we previously thought, creating a more serious threat to our economy, our environment and to future generations. 

I recently returned from a meeting of leaders of the world’s major developed and developing countries in Italy, where our discussions focused on our global efforts to tackle climate change.

This meeting - the Major Economies Forum on Climate and Energy – made some important progress. In particular, it recognised the clear message from climate science that the increase in global average temperature must not exceed 2°C.

Continue reading "Here’s why Fielding should support us on climate" »

Well I suppose there are so many things one could talk about this week but if we didn’t talk about the ETS being Emission Trading Scheme, or the Employment Termination Scheme depending on your opinion, then we would definitely be ignoring the political elephant in the room.

For Australians working in the productive section of the economy like our farmers and those working in the mining industry and are part of the economy that actually puts produce on the boat to pay for the standard of living in Australia, then for this scheme to have affect you will have to be affected.

China and the US have now got themselves into terminal mire as they try to work out how to look good without going broke.

Continue reading "Only winners from an ETS will be cashed-up traders" »