Jennifer Marohasy

THERE is a new forecast from a panel of international scientists who study the sun.  In a media release from Science@NASA, Tony Phillips explains they predict that the sun will remain generally calm for at least another year and this means low solar activity which can have “a profound effect on Earth’s atmosphere, allowing it to [...]

Every penny that leaves the hands of consumers does so by design, the final step in elaborate and often brilliant orchestrations of public policy, all the more brilliant because the public, for the most part, does not know who is profiteering on climate change, or who is aiding and abetting the profiteers.  Read more here.

THE clothes we wear tell something about us including our likely prejudices.  Clothes no doubt also enable others with similar likes and dislikes to find us. 
A regular visitor to this blog sent in this cartoon of Keith in costume for the ‘Defining the Greens’ series.  The cartoon is titled ‘pigeonholed’ which is apparently a transitive verb that [...]

A VERY large American philanthropic organisation based in Philadelphia, PEW, has a few projects on at the moment.  In Washington DC it’s renovating and refurbishing a building in what it describes as “the heart of the nation’s capital”.  According to its website seven floors will be for its staff and three floors for other NGOs (non-government, non-business [...]

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s desire to appoint an outspoken climate-change sceptic to a new French super-ministry of industry and innovation has drawn strong protests from party colleagues and environmentalists… Putting him in charge of scientific research would be tantamount to “giving the finger to scientists”, said Nicolas Hulot, France’s best-known environmental activist.  Read more here.

Correlation is not causation.    But it is always exciting to see a good correlation between two variables that one assumes will correlate because of some theory or other.   
According to the ‘Saturated Greenhouse Effect’, a controversial theory developed by Hungarian physicist Ferenc M. Miskolczi, adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will result in a reduction in [...]

Canada’s governor-general Michaelle Jean has sparked anger from animal rights groups by gutting a seal carcass and eating a piece of its heart.  Read more here.

I first learnt about The Coorong – a narrow lagoon that runs parallel with coastal dunes for 140km in southern Australia – when I saw the 1976 film ‘Storm Boy’, the story of a boy and a Pelican. 
The impression I got from the film, and then later from media reports and environmental campaigning is that the lagoon [...]

THE idea that the earth’s physical and biological systems adjust to perturbation through feedback systems is central to James Lovelock’s Gaia theory. Let me declare upfront that I don’t subscribe to this theory because I don’t see the earth as a living entity, but rather as a place where life is lived. I do agree, [...]