Veganuary: Go Vegan in January to Avoid Future Coronavirus Pandemics
Guest essay by Eric Worrall According to a group of ageing rockers, green organisations, Vegan food sellers and mostly B-grade actors, going Vegan will not only save the planet from……
Eastern Alps may have been ice-free in the time of Ötzi the Iceman
Glaciers in the Ötztal Alps in Austria are currently melting and may be lost within two decades, but this might not be the first time humans have seen this kind of change. A new analysis reveals that glaciers in this region formed just before or perhaps even within the lifetime of Ötzi the Iceman, a mummified body found just 12 kilometres away in 1991.…
Viewing the ‘Star of Bethlehem’ tonight – the Great Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction
Jupiter and Saturn are about to have their closest conjunction in modern history. Don’t miss this once-in-a-millennium event. In an event that hasn’t occurred in 800 years, Jupiter and Saturn……
Of Warm Poles and Cold Tropics
Why are the poles warm and the tropics cold, and compared to what? An equivalent question is: what determines the difference in temperature between tropics and poles, and can we understand why that difference has the magnitude it has on the real planet Earth? Just for the record, there is not a single climate simulation model that tells us what that difference should be, let alone why its magnitude is what it is; it is one of the boundary conditions at the start of a climate ‘run’.…
Weekly Climate And Energy News Roundup #436
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”― Mark Twain [H/t Ron Clutz]…
Reef Heresy? And the Importance of Asking Questions
I am so privileged to have written the introduction to Peter Ridd’s new book, ‘Reef Heresy?’. In it I explain that it is of great concern to both Peter, and myself, that those who claim the Great Barrier Reef to be in terminal decline are so unwilling to engage in any form of debate.…
Study: “Venus was once more Earth-like, but climate change made it uninhabitable”
Despite the unsettling title, the authors are not trying to say Earth will end up like Venus if we don’t mend our wicked ways. But the Forbes article and study models positing an early ocean covered Venus appear to make a lot of assumptions, with very little evidence to guide those assumptions.…