167 Tiny Maps Tell the Major Story of Climate Change
Climate change just got another telling visual courtesy of the famed temperature spiral creator. But rather than a graph, it’s a series of 167 maps. Alone, they each tell the story of whether a year was mostly hot or mostly cold or mostly average. Together, they show unequivocally how much our planet has warmed since the 1850s, including the rapid rise over the past three decades. These maps show how much the planet has warmed every year since 1850. Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, is responsible for the latest visual. Using a technique called “small multiples” developed by data visualization expert Edward Tufte, Hawkins mapped out the annual average temperature anomaly for every year from 1850 through 2016 using data from the UK Met Office. The technique allows viewers to consume a lot of information and then start searching for patterns in the data. There are patterns galore to dissect. Taken together, these images tell a bigger story.
154 Australian scientists demand climate policy that matches the science
154 Australian experts have signed on open letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull demanding urgent action on climate change that matches the dire warnings coming from climate scientists. The letter, organised by Australian National University climatologist Andrew Glikson, calls on the federal government to make “meaningful reductions of Australia’s peak carbon emissions and coal exports, while there is still time”. Signatories include leading climate and environmental scientists such as the Climate Council’s Tim Flannery, Will Steffen, and Lesley Hughes, as well as reef scientists Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Charlie Veron. They point out that July 2016 was the hottest month ever recorded, and followed a nine-month streak of record-breaking months. Average carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million (ppm) in 2015, and are rising at a rate of nearly 3 ppm each year.
Coming of age: The heroes and villains of the circular economy
The circular economy is growing up; moving beyond simple radical resource efficiency, towards an authentic triple-bottom-line. As with any transition, not everything is great. Business model innovation is the battleground for success - and while there are heroes, there are also villains holding back the real transformation that is needed. The real heroes of the resource revolution are the people and businesses that are ready to address the real challenges and make real shifts The Circular economy is coming of age. The circular economy is also moving up the maturity profile; beyond the initial attractions of radical resource efficiency and more sustainable production – although these are still important dimensions that we need to retain and build upon – towards the necessary evolutionary link with more sustainable consumption. We will be heroes I’m also increasingly impressed with the level of circular innovation in smaller enterprises. There are even heroes in the world of banking.
Storm Spaces - Views of the World
Tropical cyclonic systems are generally referred to as tropical storms. They are better known by their regional names, such as hurricanes in the Caribbean and North America, or typhoons in parts of Asia. They form near the equator over larger bodies of warm waters that evaporate from the ocean surface and fuel these emerging storm systems. (click for larger version) For this cartogram, the observed tracks of storms in that period were analysed and their frequency and intensity was plotted onto a grid which provided the basis for the map transformation. A modified version of this feature was published in the July 2015 issue of Geographical Magazine.
Cigarettes, asbestos, now fossil fuels. How big business impacts public health | Kingsley Faulkner | Opinion
The decisions reached at the recent Coag energy council meeting are reminiscent of a long series of failures to understand the impacts of powerful business on the health of the community. The failures extend historically from tobacco, to asbestos to the health scourges of coal, and now to the health and community impacts of the unconventional gas industry. It is too much to believe that governments fail to understand the implications. Just 30 years ago, Australia was awash with tobacco advertising and promotion by tobacco companies and their agents through multiple media outlets and sporting organisations, supported by newspaper editorials opposed to any restrictions. Major political parties readily accepted large donations, and some individual politicians were not immune to personal gifts and favours. The tragedy of asbestos mining, transportation and usage in Australia is another cautionary tale still being played out. This is nothing short of outrageous.
Holocene Hangover: Time for Humanity to Make Fundamental Changes
As a child growing up in the early 1980s, I often daydreamed of space exploration and interstellar frontiers. The leap into outer space seemed tantalizingly close. In the science fiction stories I read, the chronology of the future was also the potential biography of adulthood. One story projected a settlement on Mars in 1995; another depicted the grim labor of asteroid mining a decade later; a third imagined an encounter with alien artifacts in the Alpha Centauri system after 2020. Now the science fiction dream of leaving the planet behind appears to be coming true. Our new planet is emerging quickly. To call attention to this unprecedented danger, the atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and the ecologist Eugene Stoermer in 2000 proposed a new name for the geological epoch we inhabit: the Anthropocene. The Great Acceleration, like the Anthropocene, is a concept of fairly recent coinage. According to Ghosh, the cause of the “great derangement” is a certain kind of rationality.
A Brewing Storm: the climate change risks to coffee | The Climate Institute
Synopsis Aug 29, 2016 - 12:01am The evidence is clear that climate change is already beginning to impact on coffee production. As the world continues to warm, market and climate volatility will combine to cause problems for coffee producers and consumers. Fairtrade Australia & New Zealand commissioned this report by the Climate Institute to better understand the extent to which climate change is impacting coffee production globally. It is hoped that insights gained from this report will lead to greater engagement, from the coffee industry and consumers, with key initiatives that aim to protect this valuable commodity, and the millions of livelihoods it supports around the world, for future generations. On this page you'll find the report and related infographics. To access the media release click here. Read Report Video Coverage ABC News package on A Brewing Storm. Partners This report was commissioned by Fairtrade Australia & New Zealand.
Australia among the climate laggards as G20 action falls far short of goals
The world's 20 largest economies need to increase their 2030 climate commitments six-fold to keep within the two-degree warming curb agreed at the Paris summit, and Australia is among the worst laggards, a new global report argues. The Brown to Green study of the decarbonisation plans of the G20 nations by the Climate Transparency group was released on Thursday ahead of the G20 summit in Hangzhou, eastern China, on September 4-5. Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% Climate warming began 180 years ago Lindt siege police response in question Skinner: 'I have a soft spot for families' Rogerson, McNamara 'overwhelmed by greed' Airbnb owner returns to find 'junkie den' Rogerson, McNamara trial: What happened in unit 803? City of Sydney election: the elevator pitch Bays Precinct industries warn Baird An international research project has found human-induced climate change is first detectable in the Arctic and tropical oceans around the 1830s, earlier than expected. Big emitter
