A group of volunteers have given up their time over the last few years to answer the question, once and for all, as to whether the “science is settled”.
People will generally defer to the judgment of experts, and they trust climate scientists on the subject of global warming.
To resolve this question once and for all, we reviewed the abstracts (paragraph-long summaries) of over 12,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers published between 1991 and 2011 with the keywords “global warming” and “global climate change.” Our team was comprised of a citizen science team of two dozen volunteers from around the world. Team members’ home countries included Australia, USA, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Germany, Finland, and Italy.
Most of the ratings were done by a dozen team members, who each read more than a thousand abstracts in their spare time over the span of several months. Analysing the data and writing the paper took close to another year after that. We didn’t receive any funding or compensation for our efforts; it was entirely a voluntary effort driven by the desire to settle the issue of scientific climate consensus once and for all.
Says he is embarrassed for his past anti-science stance.
Australia’s newly appointed Minister for Energy and Resources, Gary Gray admitted he was once a fierce climate sceptic, but now says he is embarrassed by his former position on climate science.
Asked on ABC TV’s Lateline program, Gray admitted that he had once branded climate science as a global conspiracy, as pop science, and he had attended the inaugural meeting of the Lavoisier Group, an Australian group dedicated to repudiating climate science.
“I was a vocal climate skeptic,” Gray said. “I said things that frankly embarrass me when I hear them played back.”
He added later: “I attended the inaugural meeting of the Lavoisier group. I count as friends members of that organization. I just don’t agree with them any more.”
Gray said there was “no doubt” about the climate science and there was undeniable link between carbon pollution and industrial activity, which the world should address and “we can address.”
As the Minster for Resources, Gray – a former executive with Woodsdide Petroleum – will oversee projects worth several hundred billion of dollars in coal mining and liquefied natural gas.
1. The majority of venomous species are ectotherms, cold-blooded creatures whose internal temperatures are governed by their surroundings.
2. This means they have limited periods of activity - mainly while it’s warm out, and can only exert short bursts of energy, so they are generally “sit and wait” predators. This may explain why they, more than mammals or birds, evolved venom.
3. It also explains why there are more of these species in warm climates. There are more of all species in warm climates, but this trend is especially pronounced for ectotherms.
4. So there are a greater number of venomous species in warm places, simply because there are more species in warm places. Cold climates still have venomous creatures, like the rattlesnakes of Canada and European vipers.
5. But history also has a role to play. In Australia, there were no snakes until 20 million years ago when a venomous sea snake from Asia encountered the land, sending venomous species to all corners of the continent. Later non-venomous arrivals have done well in the tropics but not as well in Australia’s colder climates, so venomous types still dominate there. Hawaii has no venomous land snakes and nor does Jamaica.
6. The recent ice age also would have driven ectotherms from the northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere. This is why there are no snakes in Ireland, for example.
Up to 15 workers at the Agnew gold mine in the Goldfields [Australia] have been sacked [fired] and banned for life from every Barminco project in the world after performing the Harlem Shake dance craze on site
The story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition is one of the greatest survival stories in the history of exploration. We just published Alone on the Ice by David Roberts that tells Mawson’s incredible story.
Melting roads, evaporating gasoline(!), and huge wildfires in Australia. Four minutes with Melissa Block of NPR and Dr. Karl Braganza, manager of climate monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre in Australia. Via NPR
Big dust storms like this are called haboob, a quirky African word for huge wind storms. The haboob is not the same as a regular dust storm; it’s bigger and more dangerous.
“A haboob is different from an ordinary dust storm in that’s it’s generally much more ominous appearing and much more threatening,” Dr. Gill said. “A haboob is like a giant wall or front of dust that blows in often to a clear, calm sky. Sometimes it almost comes out of nowhere.”
According to David J. Passman, senior vice president and national director of the National Property Claims Strategic Outcomes Practice at Willis North America, the size and powerful wind make a haboob much more formidable.
“What differentiates a haboob from a normal dust storm is first of all the size. Haboobs have been determined to be as much as 60 miles wide, can blow at a rate of anywhere between 20 to 60 mph and have lasted up to three hours. There’s a very hard downspout of wind which then picks up sediment and other matter that is on the ground and pushes it forward on a high velocity,” Passman said. Via.
Anonymous asked: Mate, the reason why it's so hot down here is because it's an El Niño cycle which is causing hot temperatures and dry conditions in the central/northern parts of the country. Due to it being so dry in these parts with no cloud cover it's frighteningly hot in the interior which is normal for deserts. As per a normal Australian summer bands of low pressure move across the central/northern parts and due to their clockwise rotation push this hot air into the southern and eastern states.
Hey Mate!
You’re right, but with a caveat. I wont belabor my readers how the El Niño cycle works. The bottom line is it does create a drier seasonal weather pattern throughout Australia. Droughts, high-temps, clear skies, and bush fires are common, well-established issues.
I did a quick search on Google Scholar for:< “el nino” “climate change” Australia >. I got over 8,000 hits. (I’m too lazy to search PNAS, SSRN, or NASA directly. Plus I have a tasty burger in front of me that deserves my loving attention). (Also, of course many of those hits are results from slushy research projects like, “Influence of El Niño on the giant mud crab.”)
There are hundreds of researchers collecting and scouring climate data to find out how El Niño changes from GHGs.
Heat, high wind create ‘catastrophic’ fire condition in Australia
Firefighters battled scores of wildfires raging across southeast Australia on Tuesday as authorities evacuated national parks and warned that record-level, blistering temperatures and high winds had led to “catastrophic” conditions in some areas.
“We are shaping up for one of the worst fire danger days on record,” New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said. “You don’t get conditions worse than this. We are at the catastrophic level and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option.”
Catastrophic threat level is the most severe rating applicable.
Firefighters hope cooler weather sweeping up the Australian east coast late Tuesday, which dramatically dropped temperatures in a matter of hours in some coastal towns, would ease the incendiary conditions. Monday was the hottest day on record for Australia, with the average temperature across the continent reaching 104.6 degrees F., Australia’s 7 News network reported
Temperatures have changed so much in Australia, that the country’s weather service had to increase the size of it’s thermometer. Australia, now in summer time, is experiencing a record heat wave that’s scorching the land, causing brush fires, habitat destruction, and loss of human life. Around 100 people have died this year from bush fires in Australia (a ‘bush fire’ about the same as a ‘wildfire’ in the U.S.).
So severe is the heat that the Bureau of Meteorology had to update its mapping system to accommodate very high temperatures. They’ve added two new colors to their range of their temperatures, purple and pink. Previously, the map was capped at black, which represented the highest temp at 50c. But temperatures are breaking records on a near daily basis, regularly exceeding those highs. (In fact, climate scientists have warned officials that Australia should prepare for even worse temperature swings.)
You can see the two added colors on the graph on the right of this map.
The nation has suffered a week of extreme heat; heat that has shattered record temperatures while also sparking hundreds of bushfires.
Monday was called the “hottest day on record” after the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) calculated a national average high temperature of 40.33 degrees C (104.6 degrees F), the Australian ABC News website said.
A blog about the interactions between the built environment, people, and nature.
I'm a climate change consultant specializing in climate adaptation, environmental law, and urban planning based in the U.S. In addition to traveling and hiking, I research, publish, and lecture on how cities can adapt to climate change.
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