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The world’s climate is inherently dynamic and changeable. Past aeons have borne witness to a planet choked by intense volcanic activity, dried out in vast circumglobal deserts, heated to a point where polar oceans were as warm as subtropical seas, and frozen in successive ice ages that entombed northern Eurasia and America under miles of [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts | 59 Comments »
On Friday night, 13th August, I was awarded the 2010 Community Science Educator of the Year. On September 8, 2010, I will be speaking on nuclear and solar energy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The BraveNewClimate.com blog is 2 years old! Details below… —————————- I got back from China at midday [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 18 Comments »
So now I’m about to fly out to China for 5 days – probably the last of my international trips for 2010. I may not see you here on BNC until I get back to Australia, because WordPress blogs are blocked by the ‘Great Firewall of China’. It is possible, though difficult, to punch through [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy | 62 Comments »
Guest Post by Rob Parker. Rob is a civil engineer with over 30 years experience in both design and engineering construction of dams, freeways, water treatment and general infrastructure. More recently, when confronted by the environmental impacts of our patterns of consumption and growth, he decided to look at ways to influence our political policies. [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy | 79 Comments »
This is part II, on impacts of climate change. Be sure to read climate change basics I – observations, causes and consequences, and for more on pragmatic energy solutions, see here. Climate change impacts on ice, rain and sea level The term “global warming” says it all – a heating of the atmosphere right across [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts, Future shock | 20 Comments »
Thanks to some strong community input, I now have a F.A.Q. page on BNC, which current has three posts: Take real action on climate change – Part 1: The strategy and Part 2: Frequently Asked Questions, and A checklist for renewable energy plans. In its current form, the FAQ focuses on the action we should take [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A | 49 Comments »
This post follows on directly from part 1, which you can read here. Here, a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) on climate change and nuclear energy are answered. These are quite deliberately not technical – you won’t find explanations of adiabatic lapse rates, actinide isotopes or Brayton cycle efficiency here! Nope… these are ‘big [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 281 Comments »
Despite what some may like you to believe, the nuclear renaissance is upon us. Don’t let anyone get away with telling you otherwise — they are badly misleading you. Indeed, given that the the real-world facts are so readily available, one really does have to wonder how long these ideologues imagine they can pull the [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy | 249 Comments »
The recent reports in the media and the spin-off commentaries on sea level rise have been enough to confuse anyone. Here, I wish to set the record straight on a few key points. Last week, a journalist emailed me with the following: In a recent New Scientist article you’re quoted as saying that sea-level rise [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts, Future shock | 50 Comments »
Guest Post by Rob Parker. Rob is a civil engineer with over 30 years experience in both design and engineering construction of dams, freeways, water treatment and general infrastructure. More recently, when confronted by the environmental impacts of our patterns of consumption and growth, he decided to look at ways to influence our political policies. [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy | 231 Comments »
The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) has now broadcast my debate with Ian Lowe over nuclear power, on Radio National’s Counterpoint program. The discussion lasts 50 minutes, and includes various questions and answers from the Why vs Why: Nuclear Power book, moderated by Paul Comrie-Thompson. We cover issues of waste management, weapons proliferation, adequacy of renewable energy alternatives, [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy | 67 Comments »
This is an update on some recent media I’ve been doing — and will be presenting in the near future — on nuclear power and climate change. I’d also like to recommend some excellent pamphlets I’ve just read. ——————————– I’ve completed the first round of media promotion of my new co-authored book, Why vs Why: [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy | 25 Comments »
I have a post/media release prepared which describes my upcoming book: Why vs Why™ Nuclear Power (by Barry W. Brook and Ian Lowe). However, I’m can’t post this until Tuesday — when the book arrive back to Pantera Press from the printers and binders! (Also, check out this image: Planes vs Volcanoes — a REAL carbon [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A | 13 Comments »
Tony Kevin, author of Crunch Time (refer to this BNC guest post), recently published a review of two climate-change-related books in The Age newspaper (Melbourne’s daily broadsheet). Unfortunately, the review only made the print edition — there is no permanent online record. As such, Tony asked me if I would reproduce them here on BNC, [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A | 25 Comments »
How do you dig down to the core of a person’s beliefs? Can you really hope to influence ‘the unpersuadables’ (a term recently coined by George Monbiot)? Is it worth arguing science and empirical evidence with ‘non-greenhouse theorists’ (you know, the really way-out-there kooks, who won’t even acknowledge that CO2 traps and re-emits infrared radiation)? [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Non-greenhouse theorists ('sceptics') | 70 Comments »
If you ask Jim Hansen to name the single most important thing required to avert catastrophic climate change, he’ll say this: don’t burn all the coal (nor unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands and oil shales). Ideally, we would also prefer to leave some of the oil, and much of the natural gas, in [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Emissions reduction | 92 Comments »
The following question (or variants thereof) have come up so many times in the comments on this blog that I think the answer deserves a post in its own right: If we had thousands of nuclear power stations, the heat they produced would cause significant global warming — as such, nuclear power is not a [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy | 46 Comments »
Guest Post by Dr Paul Babie. Paul is is Associate Dean of Law (Research), Adelaide Law School. He holds a BA in sociology and politics from the University of Calgary, a BThSt from Flinders University, a LLB from the University of Alberta, a LLM from the University of Melbourne, and a DPhil in law from [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Future shock | 54 Comments »
This is the second of a two part post by Geoff Russell. Part I sketched the quantitative features of the global fire regime, biomass flows, while this part looks primarily at Africa. Boverty was defined in the previous post as the human impact of too many bovines overwhelming the local biosphere’s ability to feed them [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts, Emissions reduction | 25 Comments »
I’m sometimes asked to describe what science is. Well, there are many definitions and philosophical positions which cover this question, but to me, as a working scientist, one stands out above all others as relevant to what I do. Science constrains uncertainty. Or, to put it in a slightly longer form, science is the method [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts | 67 Comments »
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![[1/5] Fitting the Steam Engine](http://static.flickr.com/4134/4947531347_120a565eaa_t.jpg "[1/5] Fitting the Steam Engine")
