Around The Web
Birdwatching from space
If renewables target is met this year, what’s next for wind and solar?
S3X sells – but is it causing trouble for Tesla?
Secretive spore shooter prized by gourmets
Wolsingham, Weardale We were about to give up when we spotted the first morel, its convoluted, toffee-coloured, cap not much larger than a golf ball
Every winter this gently sloping bank on the outside of a bend in the Wear is swept clean by flood water. When spring arrives buried plant life reasserts itself through layers of sandy silt deposited when the river has swirled through the alders.
First the snowdrops spear through the surface. Last time we passed this way yellow star of Bethlehem flowers had appeared among emerging wild garlic leaves. On this day, less than a month later, the vegetation was a waist-high mosaic of butterbur, sweet cicely, ground elder and cranesbill leaves.
Continue reading...Albatrosses counted from space
Energy Action launches mobile energy monitoring app in Australian first for businesses
Free exhibition brings leading energy innovators to Sydney
Global warming scientists learn lessons from the pause that never was | Planet Oz
New study finds there never was an unexpected lull in climate change but says the science community needs to communicate better
People don’t talk about how global warming has stopped, paused or slowed down all that much any more – three consecutive hottest years on record will tend to do that to a flaky meme.
But there was a time a few years ago when you couldn’t open your news feed without being told global warming had stopped by some conservative columnist, climate science denier or one of those people who spend their waking hours writing comments on stories like this.
Continue reading...Graph of the Day: Germany’s record 85% renewables over weekend
Big bang theory
Recycled denim making your jeans more environmentally friendly
Can art put us in touch with our feelings about climate change?
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/167666/width496/file-20170503-4120-glqivv.jpg)
What does climate change look like in Australia? Are we already seeing our landscapes shift before our eyes without even realising it?
Perhaps thought-provoking art can help us come to terms with our changing world, by finding new ways to engage, inform and hopefully inspire action. For hasn’t art always been the bridge between the head and the heart?
With that aim, the ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2017 festival, organised by CLIMARTE, features 30 specially curated exhibitions running from April 19 to May 14 in galleries across Melbourne and regional Victoria, following on from their previous award-winning festival in 2015.
Changing landscapesOne of the festival’s exhibitions is Land, Rain and Sun, featuring more than 100 landscapes dating from the 19th century to today, curated by gallery owner Charles Nodrum and captioned by us to offer a climate scientist’s perspective on the works. We also collaborated with CLIMARTE directors Guy Abrahams and Bronwyn Johnson to bring the idea to life.
The exhibition, featuring Australian artists including Sidney Nolan, James Gleeson, Eugene Von Guerard, Louis Buvelot, Russell Drysdale, Fred Williams, Michael Shannon and Ray Crooke, is designed to help start a conversation about what climate change might look like in Australia.
Curating an exhibition of artworks as seen through the eyes of a climate scientist poses a challenge: how can we help make the invisible visible, and the unimaginable real?
As we sifted through scores of artistic treasures, there were a few works that confronted us in unexpected ways. The first was Cross Country Skiers, painted in 1939 by renowned South Australian artist John S. Loxton. It depicts the Victorian High Country heavily blanketed in snow, as two skiers make their way through the beautiful wintery landscape.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/167641/width754/file-20170503-4128-1i86jfl.jpg)
When we saw this image, we realised that in decades to come this work might be considered a historical record, serving as a terrible reminder of a landscape that vanished before our eyes.
Average snow depth and cover in Australia have declined since the 1950s as temperatures have risen rapidly. Under high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, climate models show severe reductions, with snow becoming rare by late in the century except on the highest peaks.
The Australian ski season could shorten by up to 80 days a year by 2050 under worst-case predictions, with the biggest impacts likely to be felt at lower-elevation sites such as Mt Baw Baw and Lake Mountain in Victoria.
As temperatures continue to rise, our alpine plants and animal communities are in real danger of being pushed off mountain tops, having nowhere to migrate to and no way of moving from or between alpine “islands”.
James Gleeson’s surreal apocalyptic painting Delenda est Carthago is a provocative work that got us thinking about a future marred by unmitigated climate change. The title refers to Rome’s annihilation of Carthage in 149 BC. According to the ancient historian Polybius, the conquering Roman general, Scipio Aemilianus, famously wept as he likened the event to the mythical destruction of Troy and to the eventual end he could foresee for Rome.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/167642/width754/file-20170503-4124-1s7zr9n.jpg)
As climate scientists, we are disturbingly aware of the threats to society not only here in Australia, but all over the world. Unmitigated human-induced climate change could potentially see the planet warm by more than 4℃ by the end of the century.
In Australia, inland regions of the country could warm by more than 5℃ on average by 2090. In Melbourne, the number of days over 40℃ could quadruple by the end of the century, causing extreme heat stress to humans, wildlife, plants and infrastructure, especially in urban areas.
Warming of this rate and magnitude is a genuine threat to our civilisation. Gleeson’s artwork made us consider that the unimaginable may happen, as it has in the past.
On a more optimistic note, Imants Tillers’ work New Litany highlights the importance of communities taking a stand for environmental protection. Over our history Australians have fought against logging of native forests, nuclear power, whaling, and for the restoration of dammed river systems like the Snowy.
![](https://cdn.theconversation.com/files/167643/width754/file-20170503-4135-af2wbw.jpg)
Public concern in Australia about climate change reached a peak in 2006, largely in response to Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth and Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers. Yet the decade since then has brought political turmoil, and national greenhouse emissions continue to rise.
The recent March for Science is a reminder that the stakes are now higher than ever before, and that many people really do care about the future.
The science is telling us that our climate is changing, often faster than we imagined. The range of CSIRO’s latest climate change projections reminds us that the future is still in our hands. We can avoid the worst aspects of climate change by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we need to act now.
Art has always been a powerful portal to understanding how we feel about our world. Let’s hope it helps safeguard our climatic future.
![The Conversation](https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/77084/count.gif)
Joelle Gergis receives funding from the Australian Research Council
While at CSIRO (1989-2014) Penny Whetton's research team received federal government funding for climate projections research.
New York Times wants to offer diverse opinions. But on climate, facts are facts | Jane Martinson
Facts, truth and opinion, always at the heart of journalism, are now the cause of an existential crisis over why it exists
Right after the election of Donald Trump, a man widely considered a fake and a fool by many of its writers, the New York Times issued an extraordinary statement promising to “strive always to understand and reflect all political perspectives”.
In April, amid criticism that the Times, along with others in the mainstream media, had ignored the concerns of the American masses, the paper appointed a conservative columnist known for controversial views on climate change, race and gender. Welcoming Bret Stephens, the opinion page editor said that Times’ subscribers “want their views to be challenged.”
Continue reading...Rare Russian tiger returns to the wild
Keystone XL: Republican ranchers join the fightback in South Dakota – video
After Trump’s revival of the Keystone XL pipeline project, some communities along its route are getting ready to fight back. Others see the US president keeping his promise to ‘make America great again’. The Guardian drove along the proposed route of the pipeline, through three red states – Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska – to hear what those who will be affected have to say about it
- Keystone defiance triggers assault on a constitutional right
- Life on the Keystone XL route: where opponents fear the ‘black snake’
Adani may face fine over sediment released in floodwaters after Cyclone Debbie
Queensland environment department says it is considering action against mining giant with fines of up to $3.8m possible
Adani faces a possible multimillion-dollar fine for environmental breaches over floodwaters released from its Queensland coal port after Cyclone Debbie.
The Queensland environment department said it would consider “compliance action” against Adani over discharges of water containing more than eight times the level of sediment allowed from Abbot Point terminal.
Continue reading...Is the climate consensus 97%, 99.9%, or is plate tectonics a hoax? | Dana Nuccitelli
A new study argues the 97% climate consensus estimate is too low, while deniers claim it’s too high
Four years ago, my colleagues and I published a paper finding a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature on human-caused global warming. Since then, it’s been the subject of constant myths, misinformation, and denial. In fact, last year we teamed up with the authors of six other consensus papers, showing that with a variety of different approaches, we all found the expert consensus on human-caused global warming is 90–100%.
Most of the critiques of our paper claim the consensus is somehow below 97%. For example, in a recent congressional hearing, Lamar Smith (R-TX) claimed we had gone wrong by only considering “a small sample of a small sample” of climate studies, and when estimated his preferred way, it’s less than 1%. But in a paper published last year, James Powell argued that the expert consensus actually higher – well over 99%.
Continue reading...My dog is a registered waste collector, says critic of lax regulation
Environmental consultant says light-touch approach is leading to record levels of waste crime, costing £600m a year
Regulatory failings are contributing to fly-tipping and waste crime costing more than £604m a year, according to an investigator who was able to license a dog as a rubbish collector.
A report by an environmental consultancy, Eunomia, says “systematic failure” to regulate the more than 180,000 waste carriers, brokers and dealers is leading to record levels of crime.
Continue reading...Crab invasion in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba – in pictures
Every year, after mating season, millions of red, yellow and black landcrabs invade Playa Girón, on the eastern side of the Bay of Pigs or Bahía de Cochinos. The crabs migrate from the surrounding forests to the bay to spawn in the sea
Continue reading...