This review of Climate Change: The Facts 2020 is from Dr John Maunder, President of the Commission for Climatology of the World Meteorological Organization from 1989 to 1997, and author of Fifteen Shades of Climate. More information on Dr Maunder and his book is available at the end of the post. Climate Change: The Facts 2020 is […]
Knowing the truth has always been a challenge requiring an amount of discipline. And it is getting that much harder in this age of disinformation. How can we distinguish reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda? Science used to be so useful for this. But many government-funded reef research programs now amass data to prove a […]
The IPA’s Dr Bella d’Abrera and Daniel Wild discuss the kooky “requiem” event held by the University of Sydney’s Environment Institute.
This article from the Spring 2020 edition of the IPA Review is written by IPA Adjunct Fellow, Matthew Lesh. Environmental catchcries of the early 21st century are apocalyptic: “Billions of people are going to die,” “life on Earth is dying,” and “Governments aren’t addressing it”. Religious undertones are abundant. It is good and evil. The end is nigh. Human […]
Late last year, I went on an expedition in search of a type of very old coral known as massive Porites. Stuart, Shaun and I dived five very different coral reefs between Cairns and Townsville. The first was an inshore fringing coral reef to the leeward side of High Island. High Island is close to […]
It is often reported that the Great Barrier Reef is half dead, specifically that the corals are bleached, and the water quality is degraded with pesticides and plastics. If I didn’t know better, I might never want to visit a coral reef, lest I be forced to confront this reality – apparently all our fault. […]
Fundamental to science is measurement. It is a way of objectively assessing something, anything, even the state of a coral reef, even of an individual coral. Historically coral growth rates were measured by coring the really old massive Porites. Like tree rings in temperate forests, the massive old Porites can be cored to see the […]
The word ‘unprecedented’ is often applied to destructive climate-related events, as though they could not have been predicted, and have never happened before. Last summer’s bushfires were no different. But were they really unprecedented? This narrative creates anxiety because it follows that there really is a climate emergency and that we have pushed nature out […]
A new scientific paper, received with great fanfare among international media and Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC, claims half the corals of the Great Barrier Reef are dead. The paper is by academics at James Cook University’s ARC Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. It is a scary headline. But is it true? This […]
Saturday night, I was eating chocolates at Catherine’s (remember my friend who tutors kids in maths), when Rowan phoned. Not any Rowan. The Rowan Dean from Sky Television. He was working late. We had just been talking about him at dinner, because I was meant to be on his Sky TV ‘Outsiders’ program the next morning, […]