Jennifer Marohasy

It was hailed as proof that the world has warmed, the preliminary findings released with much fanfare just a week ago from a new and more accurate method of computing changes in world temperatures. At least that was the claim made at the time by the head of the expert team, Professor Richard Muller, that [...]

You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs and you can’t grow food without water – and lots of it. That’s reality. But fashion dictates that farmers pretend otherwise. Consider the ‘Rice and the Environment’ page at the Ricegrower’s Association of Australia website. It says that the rice industry was “the first to initiate a [...]

IF the saying ‘it takes one to know one’ has any truth then the extraordinary attack by Cardinal George Pell on the science of anthropogenic global warming in a recent lecture given in Westminster Cathedral Hall, London, has special significance.   Not because the Cardinal is a scientist, but because he apparently recognizes a competing belief [...]

ON October 31, 2011 the world’s population will top seven billion. That’s according to expert opinion and a recent article in Nature.[1] Writing in 1798, when there were less than one billion people on planet earth, Thomas Malthus suggested that misery, vice and poverty would keep population in check. [2] Malthus was wrong. Where there [...]

I don’t usually touch on economics at this blog, unless there is a clear science link, because it is not something I know much about. But I was so pleased to read the following piece by Adam Creighton this morning at On Line Opinion. It clearly articulates what I perceive to be right about the [...]

“Global warming is real, according to a major study released today. Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1°C since the mid‐1950s.” The media release continues: “Analyzing temperature data from 15 sources, in some cases going [...]

“THE very idea that science best expresses its authority through consensus statements is at odds with a vibrant scientific enterprise. Consensus is for textbooks; real science depends for its progress on continual challenges to the current state of always-imperfect knowledge. Science would provide better value to politics if it articulated the broadest set of plausible [...]

“THE Greens will support the Gillard government’s $300 million steel transformation plan in both houses of parliament, ensuring Labor’s entire carbon tax plan will be passed into law. “The party’s support will be conditional on an amendment requiring the government to pay regard to green jobs in allocating steel restructuring funds. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/carbon-plan/coalition-in-bid-to-delay-carbon-tax-bills-as-labor-offers-extra-time-for-debate/story-fn99tjf2-1226163940257 And while the [...]

WE may live in the information age, but how true are many of the scientific claims we read and hear?  For ten years the World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF, has been campaigning to ‘Save the Great Barrier Reef’. [1,2,3] When the WWF campaign was first launched in June 2001 it was claimed Diuron was [...]

NICK Heath is worried about the future of the Great Barrier Reef.  He has a Bachelor of Commerce and after ten years in business and consulting, moved into political and policy advice for government.  He’s now the national program leader for water at WWF-Australia.   He’s been spearheading the ongoing WWF campaign to ‘Save the Great [...]