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14 March 2010 SET POPULATION AT INFRASTRUCTURE, ENVIRONMENT CAPACITY THROUGH NATIONAL INQUIRY On Monday the Greens will move a motion calling on the Government to establish an independent National Inquiry into Australia’s Population to 2050. “Australia’s population should be determined by the capacity of our environment and our infrastructure,” said Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown. Continue Reading →
Antarctica once had tropical climate, scientists say ABC March 12, 2010, 3:06 pm ABC News © Enlarge photo An international team of scientists who have arrived back in Hobart from Antarctica say they have evidence the icy continent once had a tropical climate. The team studied ice and mud cores from the Antarctic sea Continue Reading →
Dan Falk, contributor
When science was young, the experiments were simple and the breakthroughs came easily – or so it seems in hindsight. Think of Galileo rolling a ball down an inclined plane, or aiming a simple tube, with a lens at each end, at the night sky. Or picture Michael Faraday discovering electromagnetic induction just by tinkering with a battery, an iron ring and some coils of wire.
Times have changed, and these days it takes a lot more work to shift a paradigm. For one thing, ground-breaking discoveries in physics are now typically made by teams rather than individuals. And, as we strive to peer more deeply into space or further inwards to probe the make-up of matter, we have been forced to build larger and more complex instruments. The scale of experiments has grown from table-top-sized to building-sized – even city-sized. Moreover, these experiments are often located in some of the remotest places on Earth. From these isolated outposts, men and women work under harsh conditions to collect the data that will, perhaps, change the way we conceive of the universe.
Emissions figures don’t stack up: professor
THE Rudd government ramped up the environmental benefits of its botched $2.45 billion home insulation scheme by grossly overstating the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that could be achieved by households, expert independent analysis says.
The independent analysis undermines claims by Kevin Rudd and Environment Minister Peter Garrett that the retrofitting of insulation into 2.7 million homes would produce reductions of 49.4 million tonnes of carbon by 2020.
The Department of Climate Change – which did much of the modelling for the Rudd government – has told The Australian the claim of 49.4 million tonnes came from working out that new insulation would result in each household cutting its emissions by 1.65 tonnes a year on average.
But the benefits claimed by the government were twice the size of the benefits claimed by the two biggest beneficiaries of the insulation scheme, manufacturers CSR and Fletcher, when they were vigorously lobbying the government to fund a national rollout of insulation. Further, the benefits claimed by the government were four to five times higher than the number derived from conservative calculations by associate professor Terry Williamson, a thermal performance expert at the University of Adelaide.
Another election promise broken
March 11, 2010
THE Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, now seems unlikely to meet another big election pledge – to introduce a national dental scheme.
The scheme was to have delivered a million services to Australians in urgent need of treatment.
The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, has blamed the Coalition for ”blocking” the necessary legislation in the Senate.
But sources have told the Herald that the government and opposition came close to agreement for an expanded scheme. Negotiations stalled over a relatively minor issue concerning measures to curb rorting.
Only a carbon tax and nuclear power can save us
AUSTRALIA will suffer if fossil fuel use continues unabated. Climate extremes will increase. Poleward expansion of the subtropics will make Australia often hotter and drier, with stronger droughts and hotter fires, as the jet stream retreats southward.
But when ocean temperature patterns bring rain, the warmer air will dump much more water, causing damaging floods. Storms will become more devastating as the ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland begin to disintegrate and cool the neighbouring ocean, as I describe in [my book] Storms of My Grandchildren. Ice discharge from Antarctica has already doubled in the past five years.
Science has shown that preservation of stable climate and the remarkable life that our planet harbours require a rapid slowdown of fossil fuel emissions. Atmospheric carbon dioxide, now almost 390 parts per million, must be brought back to 350ppm or less. That is possible, with actions that make sense for other reasons.