Cool: An astronomer has just been named as Australia’s new Chief Scientist. Penny Sackett, who ran the rebuilding of the Mt. Stromlo observatory after devastating fires in 2003.
Also cool: she said that global warming is the biggest issue we face today.
Again also cool: She’s a woman. I wonder what she wanted to be when she was 13? Well, now she’s the chief scientific advisor to the Australian government.
Cool all around.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
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October 5th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Knock, Knock: Where is the Evidence for Dangerous Human-Caused Global Warming?
http://www.eap-journal.com/download.php?file=671
October 5th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Watch out that you don’t freeze from all this cool!
But yeah, with all this depressing anti-science news, it’s nice to be reassured that there’s still plenty of cool in the world
October 5th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Man, this is really off topic but…Phil…I am listening to a dog barking in your blog and no, I have not drink…
It happens only when on the main page, did you left your mic on?
Weird stuff…
October 5th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Wikipedia quoted some sources:
“Born in Lincoln, Nebraska—the daughter of an accountant and a business machine technician— Sackett spent her childhood in Omaha. [4] While Sackett was interested in science from a very young age, her original inclination was towards biology or medicine.[4][5][6] While initially unenthusiastic about physics, she developed an passion for the discipline through her high school physics teacher.”
4 ^ a b c d e Harrison, Dan (2008-10-04). “On a universal quest”, The Age. Retrieved on 2008-10-03.
5 ^ a b c d Corner, Stuart (2008-09-30). “Penny Sackett is Australia’s new chief scientist: full time”, iTwire. Retrieved on 2008-09-30.
6 ^ “Forum - Science as a career”. The Science Show. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2006-10-07). Retrieved on 2008-09-30.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Rui, that must be coming from the embedded streaming link from my friend’s webcam.
October 5th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I just hear a buzz from my speakers whenever I’m here now.
Phil Plait: “Also cool: she said that global warming is the biggest issue we face today.”
Really? You think that’s a true statement?
October 5th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
” . . .global warming is the biggest issue we face today.”
Yeah–not malaria/emerging diseases, or terrorism, or finding alternative energy sources, or poverty . . .
October 5th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
“Yeah–not malaria/emerging diseases, or terrorism, or finding alternative energy sources, or poverty . . .”
Emerging diseases are pretty much next to nothing compared to existing diseases. We haven’t had a terrorist attack on US soil for how long now? Alternative energy sources are very much in line with global warming concerns in the context of CO2 emissions. You may have a point with poverty, but I can’t imagine how a Chief Scientific Adviser would be involved in that. But I’m not actually aware of Australia’s poverty situation, so it may be much more or less serious that I’m assuming.
October 5th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Good to see a very important position being filled with a true scientist, not some corporate mouthpiece.
Off-topic but has been mentioned in this thread, I too, sometimes hear a god-awful buzz when I come on to the site. Are aliens invading the blog?
October 5th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
The buzz is coming from the streaming webcam of The Pilot Episode in the post “Help my friends take hot showers” that is (at the time of this comment) a little bit less than half way down the main page.
October 5th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Easily the biggest problem facing the environment, and us is over population. You wouldn’t have climate change if you didn’t have 6 and a bit billion people using resources I reckon.
October 5th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Oh. You noticed? Few days late…
http://podblack.com/?p=954
October 5th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Cows of Australia, you better watch out!!!
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/taxing-farts-and-burps/
October 5th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
@Brain
You will still have climate change with 1 billion people or even less. Climate change happens all the time.
Does the 14th century ring a bell, it was a time when the Anasazi left their beautiful cities in the Western USA because of a prolonged drought, the last Vikings left their colonies in Greenland and New Foundland because increasing sea ice made it difficult if not impossible to navigate the waters overthere.
And overhere where i live, in Europe we had the great famine of 1312-1317wich killed several millions of people and was caused by several bad summers in a row when the Medival Warm Period ended. In fact famines where pretty much standard in the 14th century. Much worse was to come because in 1347 the plaque would strike europe and the rest of the world killing somewhere between 20-25% of the world population, Europe lost a third of its population. The average lifespan of European dropped from 35 years in 1275 to just 17 years in 1350.
The deniers are those who claim that there was no Medival Warm Period and the following change into the Little Ice Age, its all in the History books. Climate change is of all times, the only question is now how much are we contributing to it, and I would say not much.
October 5th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Too bad Penny Sackett did not consult some of her colleagues who have published a paper indicating that the world is going to experience 20+ years of cooling. Global warming is not even close to the most challenging issue we face today. And it doesn’t rate with the average Joe Australian as the biggest issue either.
October 6th, 2008 at 12:08 am
I hope she advises that we build some bloody nuclear power stations. And undertake some research into Fast Breeders.
Since Australia possesses a full third of the world’s uranium, and are required (by international law) to dispose of the nuclear waste produced from the uranium we export, I think it’s worthwhile.
We cannot rely on coal and we cannot afford to keep burrying that waste out in the desert.
October 6th, 2008 at 3:43 am
“That waste” Hugo? What’s “that waste” …
The worst sort of waste is nuclear waste which hangs around for hundreds of thousands of years, is carcinocenic, mutagenic and highly toxic plus can be taken by terrorists and used to make “dirty bombs” - or even nuclear bombs.
Uranium fission produces far more problems than its solves - and uranium is non-renewable and will run out faster than anything. Nucleraenergy justain’t thesolution -poarticularly nuclearfission -but is theproblem.
We need alternative energies instead - solar, wind, geothermal, He3 from the Moon, Ocean Thermal Gradient System and others.
I agree without bright new cheif scientist -and I’m prouder than ever to be an Aussie with this news!
I am also disgusted that so many fools are still stupidly denying the reality of the anthropogenic Greenhouse Effect. Yes, the climate has changed naturally in the past - but what our industrialised modern societies are doing now in pumping all this massive amount of C02 and other gases is clearly having an effect as you’d expect - does anyone seriously think we can put all this stuff out forever and it’ll have NO impact at all? Come on!
Note too the anology of how human produced CFC’s and what they did with the ozone layer - and how when we made laws and phasedthem out things have worked and are being slowly corrected now.
Look also at the evidence : glaciers melting at record rates globally, Arctic sea lice shrinking fast, Antartica ice shelves disintergrating, Tuvalu and other pacific islands starting to disappear .. My own home town of Adelaide having arecord two-week heat spell in March this year. Global temperatures - & sea levels rising .. and so on and so forth.
Penny Sackett and the vast majority of climatologists who concur with
the fact of global warming are right - the minority of oil-industry funded, almost always unqualified Climate Change Deniers are wrong. Period.
October 6th, 2008 at 3:49 am
#@@!#$$@@ typos & NOT being able to edit here.
What I meant to write was :
Nuclear energy just ain’t the solution - particularly nuclear fission - but rather is part of the problem.
I agree with our bright new cheif scientist - and I’m prouder than ever to be an Aussie with this news!
October 6th, 2008 at 4:26 am
@ Richard Steckis whostupidly said :
October 5th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
“Too bad Penny Sackett did not consult some of her colleagues who have published a paper indicating that the world is going to experience 20+ years of cooling.
So who would these dubious “collegagues” be Richard (or can I call you Dick?) and where are they coming from - the Neo-Con Big Oil Institute of Climate Denialism and Warmongering’ perhaps?
Most of Chief Scientist Penny Sackett’s collegaues like most reasonable and intelligent people have long since concluded on very good evidence that the Anthropogenic GreenhouseEffect is very real and ominous indeed.
Oh & Ricjhard youarealso evry wrong in claiming :
“Global warming is not even close to the most challenging issue we face today. And it doesn’t rate with the average Joe Australian as the biggest issue either.”
Because Australians recently voted out the Climate-Change Debying Howard govt and voted in Kevin Rudd’s labour party based, among other things, on its promise to sign the Kyoto Treaty and act against global warming. Clearly it very much *does* matter to most Australians as I almost all polls on the issue say.
Not “the most challenging issue”, mate? I suppose that’s a personal subjective judgement call but almost everybody I know rates the AGW issue very seriously and well above such over-hyped over-exploited threats as that of terrorism.
Just imagine how much better off we’d all be if all the obscene amounts of money wasted in illegally invading and occupying Iraq and Afganistan in futile, needless wars (& supporting and funding Israel’s similarly illegal and futile occupation of Palestine) were instaed spent on tackling the real environmental issues thatthretaen torwreckour planetand our lives.
Heck there’s enough money burnt in those avoidable wars for the NeoCons gain to fund serious environmental action, fix up theeconomy and fund a Lunar colony, plus manned missions to Mars and the Near Earth asteroids too!
Pity one of the Congress bail-out passing conditions wasn’t immediately ending those wars and withdrawing all the troops - and ending all funding of Israel too ..
October 6th, 2008 at 4:32 am
StevoR Says:
October 6th, 2008 at 4:26 am
@ Richard Steckis who stupidly said :
“Too bad Penny Sackett did not consult some of her colleagues who have published a paper indicating that the world is going to experience 20+ years of cooling.”
So who would these dubious “colleagues” be Richard (or can I call you Dick?) and where are they coming from? The ‘Neo-Con Big Oil Institute of Climate Denialism and Warmongering’ perhaps?
Most of Chief Scientist Penny Sackett’s colleagues - like most reasonable and intelligent people - have long since concluded on very good evidence that the Anthropogenic Greenhouse Effect is very real and ominous indeed.
Oh & Richard you are also very wrong in claiming :
“Global warming is not even close to the most challenging issue we face today. And it doesn’t rate with the average Joe Australian as the biggest issue either.”
Because Australians recently voted out the Climate-Change Denying Howard govt and voted in Kevin Rudd’s labour party based, among other things, on its promise to sign the Kyoto Treaty and act against global warming. Clearly it very much *does* matter to most Australians as almost all polls on the issue say.
Not “the most challenging issue”, mate? I suppose that’s a personal subjective judgement call, but almost everybody I know (& I’m an Aussie living in Australia) rates the AGW issue very seriously and well above such over-hyped over-exploited threats as that of terrorism.
Just imagine how much better off we’d all be if all the obscene amounts of money wasted in illegally invading and occupying Iraq and Afganistan in futile, needless wars (& supporting and funding Israel’s similarly illegal and futile occupation of Palestine) were instead spent on tackling the real environmental issues that threaten to wreck our planet and our lives.
Heck there’s enough money burnt in those avoidable wars for the NeoCons gain to fund serious environmental action, fix up theeconomy and fund a Lunar colony, plus manned missions to Mars and the Near Earth asteroids too!
October 6th, 2008 at 8:25 am
@StevoR
Does spit come out of your mouth when you type?
October 6th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
~Meh~ I still think Humans are the biggest danger to earth and humankind. Which is why we need robots to run this show.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
What, no tip o’ the hat?
October 6th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
StevoR:
Read in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 25(2): 85-93:
Does a Spin–Orbit Coupling Between the Sun and the Jovian Planets Govern the Solar Cycle?
I. R. G. Wilson A , C , B. D. Carter B and I. A. Waite B
A Education Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia
B Centre for Astronomy, Solar Radiation and Climate, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia
C Corresponding author. Email: irgeo@ozemail.com.au
Oh. And Rudd’s popularity rating is plummeting. We are about to go into a global recession. Climate change scaremongering rubbish and Rudd’s carbon tax will go down the toilet along with the mighty economies of the world.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Oh. And StevoR. I think when the recession does come that people will be far more concerned with meeting their mortgage commitments, retaining their jobs and whether there will be a global conflict. All this when the earth is about to go into a multi-decadal cooling phase. We know that a cooler climate is actually more dangerous than a warmer one particularly for those who live in the northern parts of the northern hemisphere.
October 7th, 2008 at 7:55 am
@Dr Buttocks, sorry no cigar I beat you on that one by a full 3 hours
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/09/30/the-big-picture-baikonur/#comment-122115
October 7th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
@Shane, next time, Gadget. Next time…
October 7th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Sweet. WE have our first female Governor General, also our first female premier (in QLD) … and now a female chief science advisor. (I wonder if she is the first) Seems like Aussie is going to be run by women soon
… even New Zealand (across the ditch) has a female PM. All these women in charge of stuff over this neck of the woods, and the place is working fine. Yep, women can be awesome leaders.
Sad thing is but, the boofheads that run this country don’t really listen to out science advisors. They pretend to, but they don’t. But it’s nice anyway. *points at the Murray-Darling river system*
October 7th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
The deputy PM is a woman too and what with the PM out of the country so much to “save the world” she’s been left pretty much in charge. Or that appears to be the case.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
No, David D I’m obviously unlike you in that respect too!
Incidentally, nice to see that when you, David D, can’t attack the arguments you attack the person. Look up thelogical fallacy of ‘ad hominam’ mate, you might learn something.
@ Richard Steckis who said on October 6th, 2008 at 8:37 pm :
“StevoR: Read in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 25(2): 85-93:
Does a Spin–Orbit Coupling Between the Sun and the Jovian Planets Govern the Solar Cycle?
I. R. G. Wilson A , C , B. D. Carter B and I. A. Waite B
A Education Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia
B Centre for Astronomy, Solar Radiation and Climate, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia
C Corresponding author. Email: irgeo@ozemail.com.au.”
Hmm ..an astronomer NOT a qualified practicing climatologist, I see -from a uni. in Queensleand - Australia’s Deep North.
Well I guess that’s one source - now look at the thousands of scientists directly involved inclimatology who disagree, look at Hansen, at Tim Flannery, at all the IPCC members at well the vast majority of scientists who’ve devoted their time and effort to seriously studying the matter. They all wrong? I don’t think so!
Spin-coupling with the Jovian planets and the Sun? Hmm .. Yeah I can see the connection with the Anthropogenic Greenhouse Effect right there - NOT!
As to the 85-93 part of that - would those happen to be the years of publication - & was that paper 1985 or 1993? Either way, it’ would seem to be well about twenty years out of date. Hmm .. Got anything recent? No? Didn’t think so.
Plus I’m still not sure who funded that research either. Was it Shell or Exxon?
Plus, one last thing it he paper asked the question - did it answer it in the affirmative or the negative?
The solar forcing mechanism - or the idea that our Sun drives our climate -has been shown to break with recent climatological history. At one time our Sun was the major factor along with Milankovitch cycles and the positions of our continents. This is no longer the case - solar activity has been declining yet global warming has been increasing.
Why? Well, gee, it just might have some connection with all that stuff we’re putting into the atmosphere y’know! In fact it clearly does and only a handful of Deniers are saying otherwise and that’s just because they - or their patrons - simply can’t handle the truth.
“Oh. And Rudd’s popularity rating is plummeting. We are about to go into a global recession. Climate change scaremongering rubbish and Rudd’s carbon tax will go down the toilet along with the mighty economies of the world.”
Well ‘plummeting’ isn’t really the word - Rudd is still far more popular than Turnbull and the Liberal party - and you can’t sustain record popularity forever esp. when making tough decisions and facing troubled times as we are now.
That unfettered capitalism is imploding in a fall of its own making is very little to do with understanding climate change or the Anthropogenic Greenhouse Effect. Much as you - and everyone - may want the AGE to be “scaremongering rubbish”; blocking your eyes to its reality won’t make it go away. Its real, its happeneing and its better to face up to that stark truth sooner and act sooner rather than scream and shout and cover your eyes - & shut your mind - in denial until its way too late.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Ha. Good point Shane. So … at the moment … Aussie is being run by girls. ( no I dont mean all those ‘girls’ at question time … well … they act like school girls sometimes … I used to love how Howard would turn his back when the opposition was speaking and … oh yeah .. digress … um)
Apparently our newly elected PM has been out of the country more days than he has been in … or more days than anyone else … or something like that.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:15 am
BTW. Richard Steckis, Rudd’s proposal wasn’t a “carbon tax” but an emissions Trading scheme so youmay want to do your research & try and get some basic facts right before writing more.
Plus when you wrote :
Richard Steckis Says: October 6th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
“Oh. And StevoR. I think when the recession does come that people will be far more concerned with meeting their mortgage commitments, retaining their jobs and whether there will be a global conflict. All this when the earth is about to go into a multi-decadal cooling phase. We know that a cooler climate is actually more dangerous than a warmer one particularly for those who live in the northern parts of the northern hemisphere.”
Hmm .. I live in the Southern hemisphere so
!
We’ll see I guess but your claim to “know” a cooler climate is more dangerous than a warm one and that “the Earth is going into a multi-decadal cooling phase” is based on what exactly?
The records and the evidence as well as the real experts all seem to disagree with you there.
Don’t forget too that humans - homo sapiens as well as Neathethals - actually evolved in an ice age. If anything, I’d think ice age conditions suit us better.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:31 am
D’oh italics stuff ups! Please BA, let us edit here for Freyas sake!
——————————————————-
BTW. Richard Steckis, Rudd’s proposal wasn’t a “carbon tax” but an emissions Trading scheme so youmay want to do your research & try and get some basic facts right before writing more.
Plus when you wrote :
Richard Steckis Says: October 6th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
“Oh. And StevoR. I think when the recession does come that people will be far more concerned with meeting their mortgage commitments, retaining their jobs and whether there will be a global conflict.”
That’s quite possibly true - we always focus on our own lives first and on our immediate short-term rather than long-term problems. Its a flaw in human thinking that may be our ultimate downfall. But just because our economic problems add to our environmental ones doesn’t mean we should or even can stop worrying about the latter. I think many, perhaps even most, people will still be concerned about the Greenhouse Effect *in addition* to worrying about the economic crisis and its impact. Ultimately, the environment is moreimportant than theeconomy -the formeris tehrealconcrete world about us, our airt, water and shelter - the latter is our artificial, arbitrary, non-functional system which give sus money based on tokens and ideas - NOT the real world of this bit of food or that bit of water.
Richard (or can I call you Dick?) Starkis contuinued :
“All this when the earth is about to go into a multi-decadal cooling phase. We know that a cooler climate is actually more dangerous than a warmer one particularly for those who live in the northern parts of the northern hemisphere.”
Hmm .. I live in the Southern hemisphere so
!
We’ll see I guess but your claim to “know” a cooler climate is more dangerous than a warm one and that “the Earth is going into a multi-decadal cooling phase” is based on what exactly?
The records and the evidence as well as the real experts all seem to disagree with you there. You may perhaps quote one or two dubious &usually outdated papers from dubious sources - but us Climate Realists can point to a mountain of others by people who know what they’re talking about - & the hard data is on our side. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Effect is pretty much clearly as real as Gravity or Evolution despite the Deniers attempts to claim otherwise.
Plus don’t forget too that humans - homo sapiens as well as Neathethals - actually evolved in an ice age. Whereas the last hothouse world era was the eocene - and before then the Dinosuars. If anything, I’d think ice age conditions suit us better.
Besides I like our planet with two icecaps and alpine glaciers - don’t you?
October 8th, 2008 at 12:35 am
“carbon tax” ….. “emissions Trading scheme” …. either way … they are both half arsed solutions.