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Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. His recently published book is CSIRO Perfidy. His previous article on BNC was: Feeding the billions on a hotter planet (Part III). He also wrote a brilliant recent piece for The Punch: Fukushima was no disaster, no matter how you spin it […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Impacts | 45 Comments »
Before I write a scientific paper, I always try to identify: (1) my main message [MM], in 25 words or less, and (2) my target audience [TA]. Doing this helps focus the ‘story’ of the manuscript on a key point. Papers that try to present multiple messages are typically confusing and/or too long for busy […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 37 Comments »
So the year 2011 draws to a close. What a tumultuous year it was, particularly for nuclear energy! For climate change, alas, the freight train just keeps gathering steam. For 2012, I will expect the unexpected, but also hope to see some better signs of progress towards the downfall of fossil fuels. But really, let’s […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A | 19 Comments »
Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and most other long-lived greenhouse gases (i.e., barring short-lived water vapour), are considered ‘trace gases’ because their concentration in the atmosphere is so low. For instance, at a current level of 389 parts per million, CO2 represents just 0.0389% of the air, by volume. Tiny isn’t it? How could such […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Sceptics | 53 Comments »
Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. His recently published book is CSIRO Perfidy. His previous article on BNC was: The Swiss army nuclear knife —————— During the past few years, all the world’s major science journals have had a steady stream of papers on the challenge […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Impacts | 41 Comments »
I saw two particularly depressing trend lines this week. Both were confronting enough to make me stop, sit back and just contemplate. It was not as though these came as a great surprise — I’d been following these data for years. But for some reason, the seriousness of them really struck home like never before. […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Hot News, Nuclear | 121 Comments »
I have given lots of talks on climate change over the last few years. In these presentations, I typically focus on explaining the basis of the anthropogenic climate change problem, how it sits in the context of other human and natural changes, and then, how greenhouse gas emissions could be mitigated with the elimination of […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Policy | 59 Comments »
A common refrain from politicians and members of the business community is that moving from coal to natural gas is an effective way to cut carbon dioxide emissions and therefore address global warming. This argument is flawed, as I detailed last year in two posts, Santos Chief’s gassy vision (Parts I and II). Yet, gas is […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Policy | 78 Comments »
Here are some figures to illustrate the latest global data on global warming. Data are from NCDC and GISS. First, a 12-month running mean of global surface temperature anomalies since 1980 (i.e. for each month, an average is taken of the previous 12-month period – ‘calendar year’ is irrelevant): The IPCC AR4 model results track […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Hot News | 51 Comments »
Climate change and sustainability of the global human enterprise are two of the most critical issues of the 21st Century. If we are to tackle these problems effectively, we need to make prudent, evidence-based choices about energy. This is the story told by this short (2 min, 35 sec) animated video: ————————- Please share the […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 61 Comments »
The Conversation is a recently established website set up to provide an independent source of information, analysis and commentary from the Australian university and research sector. Over the last few weeks, a group of climate scientists and academics from other relevant disciplines, have been running a series at The Conversation on ‘climate change scepticism’. I’ve been […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Sceptics | 92 Comments »
The Open Thread is a general discussion forum, where you can talk about whatever you like — there is nothing ‘off topic’ here — within reason. So get up on your soap box! The standard commenting rules of courtesy apply, and at the very least your chat should relate to the general content of this blog. The sort of things […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Future, Hot News | 593 Comments »
Apart from getting on with my life (e.g., building a new computer, catching up with my backlog at work, spending time with the family, etc.), I’ve been spending the last few days reading widely on what other people have had to say, in reflection, on the Fukushima crisis. Here are some highlights: 1. Bill Tucker, […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear | 178 Comments »
I was asked to reflect very briefly (<400 words) on the implications of Fukushima Daiichi to my local city newspaper, The Adelaide Advertiser. The focus was on what it means for Australia, but the basic message resonates for any number of other countries. —————————- If you study the history of modern energy, there is only […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear | 133 Comments »
There have been some slow but positive developments in Fukushima Daiichi today (Saturday 19th March), despite the ongoing seriousness of the situation. Engineers are now on the brink of getting external AC power restored to parts of the site, and water dousing operations on the spent fuel ponds continue, as does cooling by sea water at […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear | 104 Comments »
The following is not a significant new update on the situation at Fukushima (see here for the 18 March morning update), because so little information has emerged since my last update this morning. But there is some new information. Below I summarise what news and data I’ve gathered today, and then provide a 25 minute […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Hot News, Nuclear | 384 Comments »
Guest Post by Ben Heard. Ben is Director of Adelaide-based advisory firm ThinkClimate Consulting, a Masters graduate of Monash University in Corporate Environmental Sustainability, and a member of the TIA Environmental and Sustainability Action Committee. After several years with major consulting firms, Ben founded ThinkClimate and has since assisted a range of government, private and […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Future, Nuclear | 122 Comments »
A little over two years ago, I wrote the following post on BNC: How hot should it have really been over the last 5 years? In it, I did some simple statistical tinkering to examine the (correlative) relationship between global temperatures and a few key factors, namely greenhouse gases, solar irradiance, and ENSO. In the next […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Future | 39 Comments »
I was recently invited to provide a response to an opinion article on climate change that was offered to “The Punch” website. The lead article can be read here: It’s just too hard to understand climate change. My response, reproduced below (original here), should be read with this context in mind. It seems that many of […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Sceptics | 232 Comments »
One of the new initiatives I’ll be trying in 2011 is an audio podcast series (I use the term ‘series’ loosely, as there’ll be no fixed schedule). This is now fairly straightforward to do, via my iPhone 4 and the Audioboo app. This type of media/blogging is quick and flexible to do on the fly. […]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, podcast | 48 Comments »
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