The most important issue raised by Lord Monckton’s controversial appearance on two Western Australian campuses is not the limit of free speech or Monckton’s scientific competence. Rather it is whether…
Climate science has now thoroughly outlined the risk associated with increasing greenhouse gases. Significant and rapid warming of the climate system is now expected to occur over the next century and…
With the momentum of his Inconvenient Truth gradually fading, Al Gore has launched a new climate change action campaign - the Climate Reality Project. The centrepiece of the campaign is a day of action…
Does Australia have strategic interests in Antarctica? Do we really think of the region as the “common heritage of mankind”? The Antarctic Treaty states that it is “in the interest of all mankind that…
Before the details of the carbon tax were released this week, the government was fighting with one hand tied behind its back. Sometimes it looked like it had both hands and feet manacled as Prime Minister…
Amid the hullabaloo about the carbon tax and Clean Energy Future plan, few seem to spot its critical discrepancy. It recognises that maintaining a safe climate requires stabilising carbon pollution in…
The Government’s equation for creating a prosperous and sustainable Australia includes four key factors: carbon price, renewable energy, energy efficiency and land use efficiency. But it is evident that…
The ability of land ecosystems like crops and soils to slow down climate change may have been overestimated because some of these ‘carbon sinks’ actually emit more greenhouse gases than first thought…
If you’ve followed climate contrarian talking points over the years, you’ll be familiar with the argument over satellite observations of global warming. In 1990 it was reported that the satellite record…
A survey of 145 economists released today found that 60% believe the Gillard government’s carbon tax is good economic policy. The carbon tax package, announced on Sunday, penalises 500 heavy polluters…
In 2100, will sea level be one metre higher than now, or only 50cm? The Thames Barrage is designed to protect London from flooding by storm surges in up to one in a thousand year events. With 50cm higher…
The Australian government announced on Sunday it would introduce a carbon tax at $23 a tonne next July, rising 2.5% annually plus inflation and moving to a market-based emissions trading scheme in 2015…
Top Conversation author Professor Stephan Lewandowsky and former Western Australian Premier Carmen Lawrence were part of a group that sat down with Ross Garnaut during his recent visit to UWA. During the…
As the old saying goes, “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions”. On Sunday, the exhausting, almost decade-long battle to put a price on carbon pollution enters a new phase, when the MultiParty…
Welcome to “In Conversation”, our series of discussions between leading academics and major public figures in Australian life. Today, we’re In Conversation with the academic whose research informed the…
Somali pirates roaming the seas in the Gulf of Aden have claimed another victim: climate research. Climate scientists hoping to collect data on monsoonal wind patterns off the Somali coast have been thwarted…
When it comes to obtaining research data, Canadian academic Steve Easterbrook said it best: “Any fool knows you don’t get data from a scientist by using FOI requests, you do it by stroking their ego a…
Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia, the institution at the centre of “Climategate” and the focus of a recent data Freedom of Information request, responds to Clearing up the Climate Debate. There…