The Garnaut Climate Change Review delivered in 2008 was a massive document — 630 pages — and possibly too much to digest, comment on and report on in one go. Professor Ross Garnaut clearly thinks Australia has been a slow learner, so he plans to deliver his 2010 update in installments, writes Giles Parkinson.
Global warming
Making an icy story difficult to tell
Global warming is a difficult story tell in the mainstream media. The northern hemisphere fits in easily enough with the simple truth. Ice in the Arctic is declining at 3.5% per decade. It is the southern hemisphere that makes it complicated to explain, writes Richard Farmer.
Opposing the flood levy is not a moral failing
While opponents and supporters of the flood levy have reduced it the issue to the personal level, there are longer-term issues at stake in this debate.
Political snippets: Heavy medal band … that’s Labor for you
Labor’s attempt to milk a national disaster to its own advantage knows no bounds.
2010 the equal warmest year on record, says the WMO
The Geneva based World Meteorological Organization has determined that 2010 temperature data confirm the Earth’s significant long-term warming trend. The year 2010 ranked as the equal warmest year on record, writes Richard Farmer.
Emergency response needed for more than floods
We need to leave Mother Nature alone, and stop loading the atmosphere with carbon emissions, so that more extreme climate events do not tumble down upon us with increasing frequency, writes David Spratt, co-author of the book Climate Code Red.
Mungo MacCallum: For Gillard and Abbott, it’s storm clouds at 20 paces
For the first couple of weeks of 2011 the big story has been the weather — it well and truly pushed politics off the front pages.
The money men believe in global warming
A total of 950 natural catastrophes were recorded last year by the major re-insurance company MunichRe. The company says nine-tenths of the incidents were weather-related events like storms and floods, reports Richard Farmer.
Not so icy in the northern hemisphere at all really
We’ve seen all those pictures of snow bound New York, all those travellers stranded at airports. Must be a really cold snap in the northern hemisphere, right? Well, no, actually, explains Richard Farmer.
Political snippets: November and the heat is on
The monthly global temperature data from NASA shows that it was easily the hottest November in the temperature record.
Crikey Says: Over to you, Combet
Just before the Mexican dawn on Saturday, the UN got its mojo back in guiding global action on pollution and climate change…
Ask a climate scientist How is the global average temperature calculated?
A State of the Climate – Global Analysis report declared Jan-Oct 2010 as the hottest period on record just last month. How is an “average” temperature found in a planet where there is no such thing as “typical”? Amber Jamieson asks the scientists.
Ask a climate scientist Was Greenland actually green?
Let’s get global warming and long-cycle natural climate change put in a little historical perspective for us today. Yes, the Medieval Warm Period and whether Greenland was actually green will be examined by two different climate scientists, writes Amber Jamieson.
Crikey Says: No more excuses
For much of this year, and primarily due to the ineptitude of federal Labor, serious action on climate change by Australia has been a lower-order policy priority.
The heat is on: Jan-Oct 2010 warmest on record
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for January–October 2010 was +0.63°C above the 20th century average and tied with 1998 as the warmest January–October period on record. Yet so little is being done by governments, notes Dr Andrew Glikson.
Crikey Says: Just get on with it
This government allowed public sentiment on the issue of climate change to fall off a cliff. Now they need to work twice as hard to earn it back.
It’s not easy being Green in Victoria, especially for scallops
It is certainly not easy being green in Victoria if you happen to be in a bird, mammal, fish — or especially a scallop, writes Crikey naturalist Lionel Elmore.
Hamilton: more Aussie climate beat-ups
According to The Australian’s letter writers, the prestigious Royal Society now has “serious doubts” about the science of climate change leading it to a “startling retreat” from previous statements.
Kloppers reignites climate debate
Politicians should be wary of business leaders - such as BHP CEO Marius Kloppers - urging action on issues like climate change.
Crikey Says: Climate debate is back with a bang
Suddenly, serious action on climate change is forcing its way onto the political agenda.
Taking stock of climate change — what now?
Greg Combet’s arrival as Climate Change Minister provides the opportunity to rethink where we go from here, given Labor has so badly botched the issue in its first term.
Carbon to take economy’s breath away by 2015
, writes Phil Preston, the principal of Seacliff Consulting
Cross party consensus on climate change, it IS possible
The recommendations of the Climate Change committee will have pervasive impact. So it is appropriate to seek cross-party consensus, writes the University of Tasmania’s Professor Ian Marsh.
Pearse: Greens should let this government fall and learn
The Labor Party might ultimately agree to brave a carbon levy, but you can bet it will be one that is as polluter friendly as its CPRS, writes Guy Pearse.
Electorate send a message on climate change
The Australian electorate have chosen wisely by not choosing at all. The delivery of a hung parliament presents, for the first time in living memory, an opportunity to deal with the substantive policy issues that have been ignored in this campaign. This is something the three conservative independents, Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, […]
