freelance science journalist and author
From Nature, 5 February 2024: The planet has already passed 1.5 °C of warming, according to a new measuring technique that goes back further in time than current methods. At the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, nations agreed not to exceed 1.5 °C, a guardrail of climate change. “We have an alternate record of global warming,” … Continue reading The world has warmed 1.5 °C, according to 300-year-old sponges
From Nature, 12 March 2024: Indigenous Australians have been using fire to shape the country’s northern ecosystems for at least 11,000 years, according to charcoal preserved in the sediment of a sinkhole. The study was published on 11 March in Nature Geoscience1. The practice of cultural burning, also known as ‘fire-stick farming’, is integral to … Continue reading Indigenous Australian fire-stick farming began at least 11,000 years ago
From The Guardian, 26 January 2024: Last year was the hottest year in recorded history. Global average temperatures over 2023 nudged towards 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, and for two days in November, they reached 2C above those levels. With a hotter planet come more intense – and therefore more deadly – heatwaves. Extreme heat is already … Continue reading What happens to your body during extreme heat?
From Nature, 13 December 2023: When it comes to renewable energy, India is lucky to have an abundance of natural resources. It is the seventh-largest nation on Earth, occupying around 2% of the planet’s land mass, and has a mainland coastline that stretches for 7,500 kilometres. Most regions experience between 250 and 300 sunny days … Continue reading Renewable energy for the subcontinent
From Nature, 19 November 2023: The southern hemisphere is facing a summer of extremes, say scientists, as climate change amplifies the effects of natural climate variability. This comes in the wake of a summer in the northern hemisphere that saw extreme heatwaves across Europe, China and North America, setting new records for both daytime and … Continue reading Record-breaking summer set to hit southern hemisphere
From The Guardian, 22 July 2023: A couple with a brand-new electric Lexus stand blankly at the EV charging station, walking from one charger to the other with cables in hand. Within minutes, a crowd of EV drivers gathers. The strangers offer to help the couple with charging their car, showing what plugs and apps … Continue reading A post-servo highway? How electric vehicles are changing the Australian roadscape
From WIRED, 15 August 2023: One hundred miles west of Johannesburg in South Africa, the Komati Power Station is hard to miss, looming above the flat grassland and farming landscapes like an enormous eruption of concrete, brick, and metal. When the coal-fired power station first spun up its turbines in 1961, it had twice the … Continue reading This Bold Plan to Kick the World’s Coal Habit Might Actually Work
From the Guardian, 24 June 2023: Martu desert country, north-east of Wiluna in Western Australia, is green right now. “We had a big rain in this area,” says Yvonne Ashwin, Martu woman and coordinator of the Martu rangers, who care for this country. Normally the desert is dry, the red soil tufted with spinifex and … Continue reading Beyond the fence: what does it mean to rewild the Australian desert?
From WIRED, 8 June 2023: IN THE CRUSHING, cold depths of the oceans, something unimaginably huge flows inexorably, barely a few centimeters per second, along a path it has traveled for millennia. Dense, dark rivers of water toil ceaselessly around the world, making up around 40 percent of the total volume of the deep oceans. … Continue reading Ocean Currents Are Slowing, With Potentially Devastating Effects
From WIRED, 22 May 2023: Half a century ago, a small group of esteemed thinkers that called itself the Club of Rome got together to chew over a thorny question: What would happen if humanity continued to consume the world’s finite resources as if they were limitless? Their efforts generated the now-famous 1972 paper “The … Continue reading The Planet Can’t Sustain Rapid Growth Much Longer
Bianca Nogrady 