Instead of replying to the details of the Rudd-Swan Budget, I decided this year to use their backward-looking, future-phobic presentation as the launching pad for a broader discussion of what we might do if we had a Government with the vision and guts necessary to take on the twin challenges of climate change and peak [...]
Professor Aitkin laments he has been called a 'denialist', yet labels climate scientists as quasi-religious and says they are protecting their funding and influence.
According to Asahi Shimbun yesterday.
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Just published (2008-05-15) in Nature (doi:10.1038/453257a) is The Next Big Climate Challenge, which argues that significant funding is needed for climate modellers, indeed so much that climate modelling and the supercomputing grunt it requires, should be considered as international "big science", with projects funded internationally in the same manner (although hopefully more effective) than CERN’s hadron smasher and space telescopes. Read more »
The fierce discussion about the pros and cons of human-caused climate change has finally started to spread to the mainstream press.
One of the little cuts in the budget was to means test the solar panel rebate. For households that earn over $100,000, the $8,000 rebate will no longer be available. Not surprisingly, this threatens that industry. Why? Because solar hot water systems, for example, cost between $13,000 and $22,000 and even with the rebate are out of the reach of households earning less than $100,000. Read more »
Genetically modified crops, if they escape or behave in an unexpected way, can cause damage to plants and biodiversity.
Against the backdrop of several appalling Rudd Government Budget decisions that will undermine the renewables industry in Australia even further (some of which are detailed here), Christine Milne introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the Senate this morning to establish an comprehensive national feed-in law.
Feed-in laws support the rapid and unlimited growth of the renewables [...]
Crikey published this piece from me today, in the lead up to my Budget Reply speech tonight, which I will post to the blog as soon as the Hansard is available.
Tuesday night’s Budget was a slap in the face for all those Australians who voted for the Labor Party at the last election in the [...]
Tim Lambert and I have a piece in the online edition of Prospect, defending Rachel Carson against the tobacco/DDT lobby. It was cut down for publication from a much longer article, which I’ve appended over the fold. Read more »
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