By Michael McGreevy and Fran Baum | – Less than two decades ago, South Australia generated all its electricity from fossil fuels. Last year, renewables provided a whopping 60% of the state’s electricity supply. The remarkable progress came as national climate policy was gripped by paralysis – so how did it happen? Our research set […]
Gulf War: As Biden bombs Iraqis, 30 years on the consequences of Desert Storm are still with us
By Lorena De Vita and Amir Taha | – It was a short message to end a short war. On February 26 1991, Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz put his signature to a letter addressed to the United Nations Security Council: I have the honour to notify you that the Iraqi Government reaffirms its agreement […]
Facebook’s news blockade in Australia shows how tech giants are swallowing the web
By Jennifer Grygiel | – When Facebook disabled Australians’ access to news articles on its platform, and blocked sharing of articles from Australian news organizations, the company moved a step closer to killing the World Wide Web – the hyperlink-based system of freely connecting online sites created in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Though the […]
Texas blackouts show why energy should be a universal right
By Gordon Walker | – An unprecedented cold wave in the US state of Texas recently left several million households without power for days on end, as temperatures dropped well below freezing. Dozens of people died from hypothermia, car crashes, house fires or carbon monoxide poisoning from running cars or generators simply to keep warm. […]
Saving the Planet: Why a net-zero future depends on the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon
By Anya M. Waite, Brad deYoung, Chris Milley, and Ian G. Stewart | – Most of us growing up along Canada’s East Coast never worried about hurricane season. Except for those working at sea, we viewed hurricanes as extreme events in remote tropical regions, seen only through blurred footage of flailing palm trees on the […]
Biden and the Iran nuclear deal: what to expect from the negotiations
By Ali Bilgic | – As Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, speculation was rife that one of the first things his administration would do would be to seek re-entry to the Iran nuclear deal that had been quit by his predecessor in the White House. The Joint […]
WHO Busts Wuhan Myths: Pandemic started with wild Animal, not Lab, and Wet Market wasn’t Ground Zero
By Dominic Dwyer | – As I write, I am in hotel quarantine in Sydney, after returning from Wuhan, China. There, I was the Australian representative on the international World Health Organization’s (WHO) investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Much has been said of the politics surrounding the mission to investigate the viral […]
How the Texas electricity system produced low-cost power but left residents out in the cold
By Theodore J. Kury | – Americans often take electricity for granted – until the lights go out. The recent cold wave and storm in Texas have placed considerable focus on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the nonprofit corporation that manages the flow of electricity to more than 26 million Texans. Together, […]
40,000 BC: Earth’s magnetic field flipped, causing massive sudden climate change and Extinction of Neanderthals
By Chris Fogwill, Alan Hogg, Chris Turney, and Zoë Thomas | – The world experienced a few centuries of apocalyptic conditions 42,000 years ago, triggered by a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles combined with changes in the Sun’s behaviour. That’s the key finding of our new multidisciplinary study, published in Science. This last major […]
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