Writer
Andrew Glikson
Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleoclimate scientist.
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A climate of insanity
Inherent in the nature of insanity is the fact that those inflicted by it are unaware of their mental state. Continue reading »
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Act, or die: the climate and nuclear juggernaut
“When elephants fight the grass dies” – African proverb. At 90 seconds to a midnight and a few decades to +4oC will ’sapiens’ end up on the beach? Continue reading »
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Betrayal: The threat to life on Earth
It has been overlooked during Garma festival that, under current policies, global warming would render aboriginal lands in central and northern Australia unliveable and the top-end a nuclear target… Continue reading »
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Planetary Inferno
The fast rise in global warming manifested by current extreme weather events betray a dangerous underestimation of the Earth’s liveable climate, while governments ignore climate science, claim to set limits on domestic emissions but allow major export of fossil fuels and emissions worldwide on a scale threatening life on Earth. Continue reading »
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A climate of betrayal
“All grimly true, but they can be sure that they won’t be recorded for their crimes in history – because there won’t be any history” (Noam Chomsky) Continue reading »
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Nuremberg trials for imperiling mass extinction of species
While “leaders” fail to protect the people from global warming and nuclear war, they have succeeded splendidly in hiding the truth through the denial of climate change, accounting tricks and claims of reduction in domestic emissions, while in fact opening new coal mines, oil wells and fracked coal seams, exporting hydrocarbons through the entire global atmosphere. Continue reading »
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The present risks to life on earth
“The splitting of the atom has changed everything, bar man’s way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophes” – Albert Einstein Continue reading »
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Insanity: governments betray what climate science demands
No one knows what was on the mind of Labour leaders discussing emission limits while approving near one hundred new coal mines and gas wells, thus betraying future generations and eroding the life support systems of the planet. Continue reading »
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The global climate change suicide pact
There was a time when leaders fell on their sword when they were defeated in battle or lost their core beliefs, nowadays most do not even resign their privileged positions to resist the existential danger posed to advanced life, including human civilisation. It is long past time to declare a global climate and nuclear emergency. Continue reading »
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The short lifespan of technological civilisations and the future of Homo sapiens
In his book ‘Collapse’ (2011) Jared Diamond portrays the fate of societies which Choose to Fail or Succeed. On a larger scale the Fermi’s paradox suggests that advanced technological civilisations may constitute ephemeral entities in the galaxy, destined to collapse over short periods. Continue reading »
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Radioactive portents on a burning earth
According to Fermi’s Paradox, the failure to date to achieve radio communications between Earth and extraterrestrial civilisations can be attributed to the short-term self-destruction of technological civilisation by means of contamination of air, water and land by lethal substances, and the creation of deadly weapons. In the 20-21st centuries this includes saturation of the atmosphere Continue reading »
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The threat of nuclear winter hangs over our warming planet
Even a limited nuclear war would inject enough smoke and dust into the atmosphere to threaten the survival of our species. Continue reading »
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Climate of betrayal: fossil fuel subsidies cost $5.9 trillion in 2020
Despite promises of tackling climate change, governments around the world are still allowing new oil, gas and coal mines. Continue reading »
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The climate change runaway chain reaction process
Amplifying feedbacks are leading to runaway global warming. Continue reading »
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‘Gas-led recovery’: methane and the risk of mass extinction
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum” – Noam Chomsky (1998). Continue reading »
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The unreality of the pledge for “zero emissions by 2050”
Orwellian Doublespeak is a language which deliberately distorts the meaning of words, using contradictory weasel words allowing an assault on reality. In the present, in order to pacify public opinion, authorities are pledging “zero emissions by 2050” (or some other date), an empty promise undermined by current investments in mining hydrocarbons, by large scale export Continue reading »
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ALP climate policy: from the “great moral challenge” to conservative-lite
Deputy ALP leader Richard Marles, seem to studiously avoid any mention of the need for massive action order to avoid a rise towards +4 degree climate warming despite promoting science. Continue reading »
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Snow storms in North America and Europe: real-time consequences of climate change
Snow storms in North America and Europe may give the impression that “global cooling” is taking place. Nothing is further from the truth. The cooling is a consequence of the weakening of the Arctic jet stream boundary, allowing freezing air masses to flow out of the Arctic circle. Continue reading »
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A “gas-led recovery” leads to dangerous atmospheric methane
A US study showed that children born within a mile or two of a gas well were likely to be smaller and less healthy. High levels of methane reduce the amount of oxygen breathed from the air, with health consequences. And still the Coalition pushes its fracking plans for the nation. Continue reading »
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The myth of “zero net emissions by 2050”
It should raise people’s hopes to believe “zero net emissions by 2050” will arrest or at least slow down global warming, had it not been yet another cruel hoax perpetrated in the wake of more than 50 years of obfuscation and denial of environment and climate science. Continue reading »
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Crossing irreversible climate tipping points
If the history of the 21st to 25th centuries is ever written, it will record that while dangerous a climate tipping point was crossed, the powers that be in Australia opened some of the world’s largest coal basins and undertook an Orwellian-titled “gas led recovery”. Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. A climate of betrayal
“During times of universal deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” (George Orwell) Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Problems with and for achieving the Paris climate accord
Since its inception the Paris climate accord has been in question due, among other factors, to (1) its broad definition, intended to keep mean global temperature rise this century to below +2oC above the pre-industrial level and efforts to limit the temperature increase to below +1.5oC above the pre-industrial level; (2) its non-binding nature, and (3) accounting Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Portents of continental-scale fires
The effects of encroaching deserts and of fire storms on terrestrial forests, originally developed under moderate conditions distinct from those emerging under rapid global warming and extreme weather events, may have been underestimated. Average global temperatures do not tell the story — it is the increasingly frequent weather anomalies which do. Powerful psychological factors prevent Continue reading »
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CO2 is rising at the fastest rate since 66 million years ago.
As the CO2 level rises to 408 ppm and the total greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, including CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, reaches about 500 parts per million CO2-equivalent, the stability threshold of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, currently melting at an accelerated rate, is exceeded. Under warming drought conditions, firestorms currently engulfing California, large parts of South Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. “The emperor’s new clothes: Greta Thunberg versus the climate contrarians”
It is not an accident that fascist philosophies and movements willfully ignore human-induced global warming leading to the Sixth mass extinction of species, the largest since 56 million years ago. The nature of denialists is manifest in their venting of hate on the 16 years-old Gerta Thunberg, the voice of a generation destined to Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. The ALP and the great moral challenge of our generation
There was a time when leaders fell on their sword if they were defeated in battle or lost their core beliefs. Nowadays they would not resign their privileged positions to take a stand against even the existential danger posed to advanced life on Earth, including their own civilization. While large parts of Earth are burning, Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. From climate denial to planetary arson. The planetary consequences of injecting >910 billion tons CO2 into the atmosphere
Last night (6 September) as fires were raging through the desiccated granite belt of southern Queensland, not a single reporter, politician or anyone else had the “temerity” of pointing out the inevitable relation between coal mining, carbon emissions, global and regional heating and the incendiary consequences. Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. The global significance of the Amazon and Siberian fires
As fires rage across tens of thousands of square kilometers of the Amazon forest, dubbed the Planet’s lungs as it produces some 20 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere, some 72,843 fires are burning in Brazil this year. Fires on a large scale including through Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, southern Europe and elsewhere, herald a world Continue reading »
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The changing face of planet Earth
With atmospheric CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas concentrations now above 500 ppm and average global warming approaching 1.5oC, there is a clear shift in the world’s climate zones, displayed for example on maps of the expanding wet tropical zones, drying sub-tropical latitudes and polar-ward migration of temperate climate zones. Large parts of southern Europe are suffering from droughts, heat Continue reading »
