10daysofscience

By Alex Serpo

Alex likes to listen to shells because they sing the song of the sea. He is interested in the bit of science between chemistry and biology.

As I write this, it seems the world is in a bit of a pickle. Greenhouse gas concentrations are rapidly rising and it’s thought if they cross some hidden threshold we will no long be able to stop ‘runaway’ climate change.

Runaway climate change. Image: Holyrood 350 (http://holyrood350.org)

This means we need a simple solution to a complex problem – and fast. Experts say if we are going to solve the problem, we are going to need a mixture of different renewable energy sources. Options include: wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, wave and tide.

Of all the renewables listed above, one stands as different. Did you say biofuels? Well you’d be right.

Why? Because biofuel is the only renewable energy source listed that isn’t a direct source of electricity. Now, before you jump up and down about rising food prices and destruction of rainforest to grow palm oil, let’s take a closer look at the black sheep of renewable energy.

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By David Finnigan

Thanks partly to Fiona McDonald’s ‘Are humans still evolving?‘ piece on this blog, and partly to Portopolitico’s ‘The Failings of the Green Left‘ post on his Armchair Critique, I have been needled into looking around me at the situation of the environment circa 2009 AD.

It’s surprisingly difficult to assess the situation with any objectivity.

For the last 20 years, the public discussion around climate change has been dominated by the increasingly-shrill carbon lobby funding one climate denier after another, until they have no-one left but the dregs and the lunatics.

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By David Finnigan

Since the Club of Rome published its 1972 treatise The Limits to Growth, there has been a steady trickle of scientists and writers producing plausible accounts of the consequences of Global Warming. It doesn’t seem to have stuck.

People had no difficulty visualising the consequences of a nuclear war. But the concrete impacts threatened by climate change seem vastly harder to grasp.

Pandas. I've never seen one, I could live without them.

One minor quibble is that the issue is frequently framed in terms of the charismatic megafauna we stand to lose. Of course no-one wants the Giant Panda, the Blue Whale or the Polar Bear to become extinct. But at the same time, it’s quite easy to envision a world without whales, bears or pandas, which is virtually unchanged.

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By Erika Dicker

In nature there is no such thing as waste. Everything gets used and reused in great natural cycles. For millions of years, water and carbon have flowed through the air, sea, land, plants, and animals. Continue Reading »

By Kate Hennessy

As Ric Morante from the NSW Department of Education (DET) explains the Climate Change video conference series he is planning for schools around the state, I am vividly reminded of an episode of TV series, The West Wing.

Extremely V.I.P: The West Wing cast

In the episode, a delegation of be-suited school children file into an White House meeting room to be greeted by somewhat baffled presidential aid, Toby. You get the impression Toby’s got (literally) bigger things on his mind. Until one precocious tween presents his case for lowering the voting age in the U.S. with surprising persuasion.

Among other arguments, the youth says: “I’m gonna be breathing the air and drinking the water after you are long gone. But I can’t vote to protect the environment?”

The kid has a point.  And Ric Morante couldn’t agree more.

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