Climate extremes threaten Australia wine industry – ‘The science projections do not point to Australia’s climate getting any more favorable’

By Colin Packham; Editing by Richard Pullin14 January 2016 SYDNEY (Reuters) – Winemakers in Australia’s oldest growing region fear a ruined harvest after heavy rainfall, while vineyards in the country’s west are under threat from bushfires, undermining efforts to recover from a near decade-long run of lower exports. Just weeks out from the 2016 harvest, […]

Australia’s carbon emissions jump in 2015 – ‘There can be no new coal mines anywhere in the world’

By Latika Bourke28 December 2015 (Stock & Land) – Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by nearly 1 per cent in 2015, a federal government report quietly released in the lead-up to Christmas showed. The Climate Council said the increase showed Australia urgently needed to transition to renewables and justified calls for a worldwide moratorium on […]

Record El Niño and climate change drive extreme weather – ‘It is probably the most powerful in the last 100 years’

By Marlowe Hood 28 December 2015 PARIS (AFP) – Deadly extreme weather on at least five continents is driven in large part by a record-breaking El Niño, but climate change is a likely booster too, experts said Monday. The 2015-16 El Niño, they added, is the strongest ever measured. “It is probably the most powerful […]

Graph of the Day: Australia carbon dioxide emissions, projected to 2020

22 December 2015 (Department of the Environment) – Figure 5 shows domestic emissions by sector. The key changes expected in emissions by sector to 2019–20 are: expected growth in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) production will result in emissions from this subsector increasing by over 27 Mt CO2-e. This represents around three quarters of the expected […]

Video: Torres Strait Islanders on ‘the trauma of climate change in the land of our ancestors’

8 December 2015 (The Guardian) – In the second of a series of films for Guardian Australia, two health workers who live in the Torres Strait Islands explain the impact of climate change on the local people and the trauma and uncertainty of king tides and annual flooding. But relocation would bring its own challenges […]

Japan under fire over decision to resume illegal whale slaughter in Southern Ocean – ‘The pristine waters of the Southern Ocean are once again under threat from poachers’

By Paul Gallagher28 November 2015 (The Guardian) – Japan is set to resume whaling early next year, after a break of more than 12 months, in defiance of an international court of justice ruling that it cease the practice. The Japanese government says it has taken into account the court ruling and its “scientific” whaling […]

Many fear the worst for humanity, so how do we avoid surrendering to an apocalyptic fate?

By Melanie Randle 11 October 2015 (The Conversation) – A new, four-nation study has found people rate the risks of global threats to humanity surprisingly high. These perceptions are likely to be important, socially and politically, in shaping how humanity responds to the threats. The study, of more than 2000 people in the US, UK, […]

More than half of the world’s sea turtles have eaten plastic – ‘It is only a matter of time before we see the same problems in other species, and even in the fish we eat’

16 September 2015 (Plastic Pollution Coalition) – A new international study published on 14 September 2015, led by a University of Queensland researcher, has suggested that more than half the world’s sea turtles have ingested plastic or other human rubbish. The study, led by Dr. Qamar Schuyler from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, found the […]

Bjørn Lomborg, just a scientist with a different opinion?

By Stefan Rahmstorf31 August 2015 (RealClimate) – Bjørn Lomborg is a well-known media personality who argues that there are more important priorities than reducing emissions to limit global warming. In a recent controversy centering on him, the Australian government (known for its contradictory position on climate change) offered the University of Western Australia (UWA) $4 […]

Study finds 90 per cent of all seabirds alive today have eaten plastic of some kind

1 September 2015 (CSIRO) – Researchers from CSIRO and Imperial College London have assessed how widespread the threat of plastic is for the world’s seabirds, including albatrosses, shearwaters and penguins, and found the majority of seabird species have plastic in their gut. The study, led by Dr Chris Wilcox with co-authors Dr Denise Hardesty and […]

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