Bryan Walker • Sep 30, 2012 •
Tony Eggleton’s A Short Introduction to Climate Change is an excellent account of climate science for the general reader. The author is a retired geology professor from the Australian National University. Two widely read climate change deniers, Ian Plimer and Bob Carter, are also retired Australian geology professors, but Eggleton is not of their ilk. […] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jan 29, 2012 •
“A cliché,” according to the late Brian O’Nolan, “is a phrase that has become fossilised, its component words deprived of their intrinsic light and meaning by incessant usage. Thus it appears that clichés reflect somewhat the frequency of the same situations in life. If this be so, a sociological commentary could be compiled from these [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Oct 17, 2011 •
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a retired conservative politician with a penchant for writing opinion pieces and a limited understanding of certain issues will one day start talking bollocks — and that day has arrived with a vengeance for Michael Cox. The former National MP and Waipa district councillor let rip in the [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Nov 02, 2010 •
Dealing with global warming is difficult, but it shouldn’t be impossible. What we need to do is well understood. Yet a campaign to prevent and delay emissions reductions, which began in the 1980s almost as soon as science began warning there might be a problem, has been so successful that two decades later it seems [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • May 09, 2010 •
Alert readers may have noted my absence over the last few days: Bryan’s been doing all the hard work while I swanned off to Sydney (wedding anniversary, 25th, for the celebration of). And so I’ve been reading the Sydney Morning Herald. Saturday’s edition featured this “interesting” take on the state of denial in Australia, [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Feb 04, 2010 •
Plimer’s bronzed body arced through the brutal Brisbane air and knifed into the pool with a barely perceptible splash — no belly flops for the silver-haired Adonis of climate scepticism. Monckton, in solar topee and camouflage Army & Navy shorts, clutched his glass of gin & tonic and tried to repress boarding school thoughts. He [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Jan 04, 2010 •
Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, the man who put the pier in peer review, is on his way to Australia at the end of January to make “a barnstorming three-week lecture-tour” designed to reassure audiences in major cities that “‘Global Warming’ is Not a Global Crisis“. His fee? A$20,000 (£11,000), plus all flights and hotel [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Oct 26, 2009 •
I popped into my local Paper Plus at the end of last week, and noted that were a few copies of Ian Plimer’s Heaven + Earth stacked up in the pre-Christmas display. Described by the NZ publisher (Ian Wishart’s Howling At The Moon imprint) as “the world’s #1 climate change book”, it makes a good [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Aug 29, 2009 •
Australian scientist and coral reef expert John Veron reckons there’s a “great big gorilla in the cupboard†— advancing ocean acidification. It cleans out reefs, leaving them “horrible places – dead, empty, slime-covered.†He paints this grim picture in a lecture given to the Royal Society in London last month. It’s available on line and [...] … Read More