Climate Tasmania

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

The power in our rivers

Hydro power was a good idea back then, and it still is, as Nigel Tomlin is showing. [15 May 2012 | Peter Boyer]
It seemed like a pretty good idea at the time. In 1878 the world’s first hydro-electric plant near Rothbury, England, started producing power, and here in the Antipodes were all these rivers cascading [...]

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 [...]

Getting down and dirty: soil carbon and the future of farming

Whatever the truth about the soil carbon debate, we have every reason to attend to the health of our rural sector. [6 September 2011 | Peter Boyer]

I had a transformative experience last week from some unexpected sources. Farmers and soil scientists aren’t the first people most of us would look to for insights into [...]