Climate Change Archives - Cool Australia

We found methane-eating bacteria living in a common Australian tree. It could be a game changer for curbing greenhouse gases

Author: Luke Jeffrey

Date: 9/4/21

Shutterstock Trees are the Earth’s lungs – it’s well understood they drawdown and lock up vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But emerging research is showing trees can also emit methane, and it’s currently unknown just how much. This could be a major problem, given met...

Cows fed small amount of seaweed burp 86 per cent less methane in trial

Author: Nick Kilvert

Source: ABC News

Date: 18/3/21

Feeding cattle a small amount of a seaweed species found in Australia has been shown to reduce their methane emissions by up to 86 per cent. Key points: Red seaweed contains a compound that can reduce the production of methane Proponents say it could be the equivalent of rem...

Climate change pushed ocean temperatures to record high in 2020, study finds

Author: Ben Deacon

Source: ABC News

Date: 18/01/21

The world's oceans absorbed 20 sextillion joules of heat due to climate change in 2020 and warmed to record levels, a study has found. Key points: Last year the world's oceans absorbed 20 zettajoules of heat Higher ocean temperatures can lead to an increase in extreme weather Seas are w...

ABC News: Our latest climate report card is here, and it’s not like we didn’t see it coming

Author: Kate Doyle, Clint Jasper

Source: ABC News

Date: 13/11/20

There will be more wild weather in our future, according to the latest State of the Climate update.(Supplied: Bureau Of Meteorology And CSIRO) The Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO have teamed up for the latest biannual report on the climate, and the findings are cle...

Aussie invention could save old coal stations by running them on zero-emissions ‘Lego’ blocks

Author: Erich Kisi, Alexander Post

Source: The Conversation

Date: 8/9/20

As climate change worsens, the future of fossil fuel jobs and infrastructure is uncertain. But a new energy storage technology invented in Australia could enable coal-fired power stations to run entirely emissions-free. The novel material, called miscibility gap alloy (MGA), stores energy in the fo...

Just how hot will it get this century? Latest climate models suggest it could be worse than we thought

Author: Michael Grose, Julie Arblaster

Source: The Conversation

Date: May 18, 2020

Climate scientists use mathematical models to project the Earth’s future under a warming world, but a group of the latest models have included unexpectedly high values for a measure called “climate sensitivity”. Climate sensitivity refers to the relationship between changes in carbon dioxide ...

While we fixate on coronavirus, Earth is hurtling towards a catastrophe worse than the dinosaur extinction

Author: Andrew Glikson

Source: The Conversation

Date: 3/4/20

At several points in the history of our planet, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have caused extreme global warming, prompting the majority of species on Earth to die out. In the past, these events were triggered by a huge volcanic eruption or asteroid impact. Now, Earth is he...

A major scorecard gives the health of Australia’s environment less than 1 out of 10

Source: The Conversation

Date: 30/3/2020

Albert Van Dijk, Australian National University; Luigi Renzullo, Australian National University; Marta Yebra, Australian National University, and Shoshana Rapley, Australian National University 2019 was the year Australians confronted the fact that a healthy environment is more than just a pretty w...

The last ice age tells us why we need to care about a 2℃ change in temperature

Author: Alan N Williams, Chris Turney, Haidee Cadd and more

Source: The Conversation

Date: February 25, 2020

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that without a substantial decrease in our use of fossil fuels, we are on track for a global average increase of 2℃ in the next few decades, with extremes of between 3 to 6℃ at higher latitudes. But 2℃ doesn’...

The burn legacy: why the science on hazard reduction is contested

Author: Kevin Tolhurst

Source: The Conversation

Date: February 20, 2020

When it comes to reducing the extent of bushfires, scientists disagree on the best way to do it. Hazard-reduction burning (also known as “prescribed burning” or “controlled burning”) is controversial and, depending on the scientific paper, it’s shown to either be effective or not work a...