Climate Tasmania

A Tasmanian take on the thorniest global issue since the dinosaurs. Based on Peter Boyer’s newspaper column in the Hobart Mercury.

Ruminations on extreme nature

The Murray-Darling floods may seem like an anomaly, but they fit within the IPCC pattern for climate change in Australia. [13 March 2012 | Peter Boyer]
The long-suffering people of the Murray-Darling basin don’t need to be told that Australia’s biggest river system is now awash with water.
Two years ago the system looked broken, barely alive [...]

The battle for science

Powerful interests in the US and Australia are seeking to silence our scientists and anaesthetise us against the impact of their findings. [14 February 2012 | Peter Boyer]
Human enlightenment is a fragile thing, and don’t ever think otherwise. Here’s a sobering story about how ignorant, self-serving ideology can destroy good science.
In 1934 a distinguished Russian biologist [...]

Where Antarctic ice meets the Southern Ocean

Mawson’s scientific venture gets the credit it deserves as modern science seeks to understand what’s happening to the Antarctic ice sheet [17 January 2012 | Peter Boyer]
A hundred years ago this summer, an expedition led by a South Australian geologist named Douglas Mawson made this country a world leader in the science of the far [...]