Eats plants
I've had some comments on my blog in this post - Fish unaware of global warming hoax - that have raised too many points for me to address in a comment alone, so I am writing a new post specifically for this. In my post I wrote about a new paper by Cheung et al.… Continue reading Fish and Al Gore
Someone forgot to tell the world's fish that global warming is a hoax as they are now responding to warmer waters by swimming to higher latitudes and greater depths. A study published in the journal of Nature this week finds, Signature of ocean warming in global fisheries catch. The study measures the mean temperature of… Continue reading Fish unaware of global warming hoax
You'd think that scientists would know exactly where all of the world's power plants are located and how much carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit but the truth is that they don't. There are estimated to be some 30,000 power plants around the world but accurate locations for these and how much CO2 they emit are… Continue reading Do you live near a power plant?
Another week and another incorrect news article about climate change. I'm starting to enjoy this - reading something, checking to see whether it's correct (isn't this what the sceptics are supposed to do?) and discovering that actually, the facts are wrong, biased, misrepresented or misquoted. The article in question is in the Wall Street Journal… Continue reading Is global warming good for plants?
The scientific journalist Peter Hadfield (a.k.a potholer54) has a couple of informative and entertaining youtube videos that explain and attempt to verify the claims made in blogs and mainstream media that the hacked emails of climate scientists are proof of a big conspiracy. If you somehow managed to miss the whole climategate saga, as I… Continue reading Climategate for dummies
There's an Australian journalist called Miranda Devine who writes for the Sydney Telegraph. Last month she wrote a piece titled, Climate damage doomsdayers have led to a surge in hocus pocus ideas. If you can't be bothered reading the article, I can tell you that in it she argues that climate scientists are responsible for… Continue reading Miranda's Devine hocus pocus
... says General Motors who has just become the first car company in the US to sign the Climate Declaration. From their press release, “We want to be a change agent in the auto industry,” said Mike Robinson, GM vice president of Sustainability and Global Regulatory Affairs. “As our world faces issues like congestion and climate change,… Continue reading Tackling climate change is good for business …
Lately, there's been much discussion about this thing called climate sensitivity. But what the devil is it? Climate sensitivity refers to the amount by which the temperature is expected to increase with each doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from pre-industrial levels. It's important because if it turns out that the climate is very sensitive,… Continue reading How hot will it get?
Physics was my favourite subject in high school. I still find it fascinating. This week I learnt something new about our Earth and its temperature and I want to share it, because explaining something to someone else, is often the best way of understanding it yourself. If we want to know what the temperature of… Continue reading The higher you go, the hotter it gets below
Today is Earth day and the official launch of the Thin Ice Climate movie, which is downloadable for free from here - Thin Ice Climate. It is the creation of geologist and amateur cameraman, Simon Lamb. The spiel: In recent years climate science has come under increasing attack, so geologist Simon Lamb took his camera… Continue reading Thin Ice Climate Movie
There's an article in the Financial Post today titled, "Arctic sea ice back to 1989 levels, now exceeds previous decade". The author is Lawrence Solomon and he goes on to say that arctic sea ice is higher today than on April 14th, 2013. He ends his article with, "The only evident trend in the ice,… Continue reading Ethics and journalism
Once upon a time, crocodiles roamed the arctic1, along with turtles, fish and other warmth-loving creatures. How do we know this? Because bones from these animals have been found there. The bones of a Champsosaur - an extinct crocodile-like animal - were found in the high Canadian Arctic by researchers from the University of Rochester… Continue reading A world of giant snakes
http://vimeo.com/46397395 A great video (<3 minutes) from Myles and Wally about how other factors can modify the impact of rising greenhouse gases. Myles Allen is a Professor in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department at the University of Oxford. Wally Broecker is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia… Continue reading Factors besides CO2 – Myles Allen and Wally Broecker
Ben Martin is going to explain how academics get their work published in peer-reviewed journals. He is Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Auckland. He is also an associate editor for the Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society and has himself published a number of peer-reviewed papers. Rachel: Let's say, you've written a paper. You… Continue reading Peer review and hot cross buns
There are expected to be 9 billion people on this planet by the year 2050. I may be one of them. Without sounding too much like a brainless beauty-pageant entrant, I hope that one day, we might see an end to world poverty. But is this view inconsistent with the part of me that also… Continue reading My plan for our planet
One argument I've heard in the climate change debate is that scientists around the globe are in on some kind of conspiracy, the purpose of which is to gather research funding for themselves. As the wife of a University academic, I find this argument quite amusing. Here's why. My husband, Ben, has applied for and… Continue reading Whose conspiracy is it?
I have a solution for all of society's ills. It involves getting fat arses out of cars and onto bicycles. If I were Prime Minister, I'd redirect our colossal spending on roads and motorways to spending on cycling infrastructure instead. When I say cycling infrastructure, I don't mean painted lines on roads or share-and-care footpaths,… Continue reading How to save the world by bicycle
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