Category Archives: Environment and climate

US economics professor Jeffrey Sachs has slammed the Australian federal government as “unbelievably irresponsible” for its inaction on climate change, and suggested that policy progress in the Coalition – alongside the current US Trump administration – has been held hostage … Continue reading →

  Hello, I’m Paul Barry, welcome to Media Watch. And last week’s dramatic report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change really sounded the alarm on the future of our planet, with scientists predicting the Great Barrier Reef could be … Continue reading →

The Liberal party’s biggest con was the idea that reducing emissions could be done without pain and at little cost. 

This week’s release of the special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has put scientific evidence on the front page of the world’s newspapers.

Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicate that global temperature rise of 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures would constitute a threshold the planet cannot cross without suffering the worst effects of climate change. Yet according to the U.N. … Continue reading →

Australia has been described as the “front line of the battle for climate change adaptation”, and our farmers are the ones who have to lead the charge. Farmers will have to cope, among other pressures, with longer droughts, more erratic … Continue reading →

It wasn’t too hard to predict what the Coalition government’s responses to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report would be – you just needed to know where they would be making them.

When cattle and sheep are dying in vast number across Eastern Australia, how sane is it for the driest inhabited continent in the world not to capture and redirect wastewater and stormwater from our cities and towns into food and … Continue reading →

The New South Wales government’s decision to back away from establishing no-fishing zones in waters around Sydney leaves significant question marks over the plan, which is open for public consultation until September 27.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Australia is on track to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target “in a canter”. But it’s not, and Mr Morrison is either being blindly optimistic or he is an outright liar. More fake news from Scott Morrison.

Scott Morrison said it would be about as useful for the electricity system as the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour or the Big Prawn at Ballina in NSW. He has a habit with fake news.

The Morrison government stands accused of trying to sneak-release the latest greenhouse gas emission figures – they’ve gone up, again – by making them public on the eve of the footy grand finals.

Australian rural communities face hardships during extended drought, and it is generally appropriate that governments then provide special support for affected landholders and communities. However, some politicians and commentators have recently claimed that such circumstances should be addressed by circumventing … Continue reading →

Current temperature trajectories are on par with or exceed the IPCC’s dangerous projections (Figure 1). Acting as the lungs of the biosphere, over tens of millions of years the atmosphere developed an oxygen-rich carbon-low composition, allowing the flourishing of mammals. … Continue reading →

If we accept the premise that humans are rational beings and have a reason for doing what they do, then in my first article I tried to throw some light on what motivated the National Party, and the Coalition, to … Continue reading →

New Zealand’s coalition government under Jacinda Ardern has made dealing with climate change one of its highest priorities.  It is planning dramatic new legislation and to the surprise of many observers, no doubt including some watching from Canberra, there is … Continue reading →

Greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and the devastating consequences of climate change for the environment and humanity march on. The Morrison government is set to continue Australia’s disgraceful inactivity in combating climate change. The election of a Labor government and … Continue reading →

Australia’s new energy minister Angus Taylor made a claim about carbon emissions this week that looked on the surface to be fantastic news, but on closer inspection is false.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack last week suggested the government would look at changing the law to allow water to be taken from the environment and given to farmers struggling with the drought.

A common framework for crime fiction builds on the notion of a heavy character leaning on target persons in order to ‘encourage’ them to fund the provision of protection from even heavier characters.  Hoping for security, the targets oblige and … Continue reading →

The history of Earth is marked by at least seven major mass extinctions,  including asteroid impact effects 580 million years ago, the end Ordovician glaciation, late Devonian asteroid impacts, end-Permian volcanism and ocean anoxia, end-Jurassic volcanism and Cretaceous-Tertiary asteroid impact—mostly … Continue reading →