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Sydney declares a climate emergency – what does that mean in practice?

Sydney declares a climate emergency – what does that mean in practice? Chris Turney , UNSW Late on Monday night, the City of Sydney became the second state capital in Australia (after Hobart a week earlier ) to officially declare a climate emergency . With climate change considered a threat to human life, Sydney councillors unanimously supported a motion put forward by Lord Mayor Clover Moore to mobilise city resources to reduce carbon emissions and minimise the impact of future change. The decision sees Sydney join a variety of local and national governments around the world, in a movement that is increasingly gaining momentum . In total, some 658 local governments around the world have made the same declaration, with the UK and Canada committing their national governments to the global movement in just the past two months . An official declaration of climate emergency puts a government on a “wartime mobilisation” that places climate change at the centre of policy and plannin...
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UK becomes first country to declare a 'climate emergency'

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UK becomes first country to declare a 'climate emergency' Days of protest by Extinction Rebellion have brought parts of London to a standstill. Shutterstock Chris Turney , UNSW On Wednesday night a bipartisan UK Parliament passed an extraordinary measure: a national declaration of an Environment and Climate Emergency. The UK is the first national government to declare such an emergency. The decision marks a renewed sense of urgency in tackling climate change, following a visit to Parliament by teenage activist Greta Thunberg , the broadcast of David Attenborough’s documentary Climate Change: The Facts and 11 days of protest by environmental group Extinction Rebellion that paralysed parts of London . Read more: Extinction Rebellion: disruption and arrests can bring social change There are now some 49 million people living under national, city and local declarations of a climate emergency aro...
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Australia’s epic story: a tale of amazing people, amazing creatures and rising seas

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Australia’s epic story: a tale of amazing people, amazing creatures and rising seas We have so much more to learn about Australia. Shutterstock/Lev Savitskiy Michael Bird , James Cook University ; Alan Cooper , University of Adelaide ; Chris Turney , UNSW ; Darren Curnoe , UNSW ; Lynette Russell , Monash University , and Sean Ulm , James Cook University The Australian continent has a remarkable history — a story of isolation, desiccation and resilience on an ark at the edge of the world. It is a story of survival, ingenuity, and awe-inspiring achievements over many years. Shortly after the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, Australia was torn from the supercontinent of Gondwana by immense tectonic forces and began its long, lonely, journey north towards the equator . The lush temperate forests of Gondwana slowly disappeared as the Australian landmass pushed north, preserving a snapshot of faunal life from a much earlier evoluti...
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How a change in climate wiped out the 'Siberian unicorn

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How a change in climate wiped out the 'Siberian unicorn' An artist’s impression of Siberian unicorns ( Elasmotherium ) walking in the steppe grass on a cloudy day. Shutterstock/Elenarts Kieren Mitchell , University of Adelaide ; Adrian Lister , Natural History Museum ; Alan Cooper , University of Adelaide , and Chris Turney , UNSW A mysterious shaggy giant species of rhinoceros – named the Siberian unicorn due to its enormous single horn – turns out to have survived in western Russia until just 36,000 years ago, according to research published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution . This extinction date means that the Siberian unicorn’s final days were shared with early modern humans and Neanderthals. Previously, little was known about the creature thought to have become extinct more than 200,000 years ago. But genetic analysis and radiocarbon dating have begun to reveal many aspects of how it lived, and when it died out. A k...
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Will 2018 be the year of climate action? Victorian London's 'Great Stink' sewer crisis might tell us

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Will 2018 be the year of climate action? Victorian London's 'Great Stink' sewer crisis might tell us Chris Turney , UNSW In the late 19th century, the irrepressible Mark Twain is reputed to have said in a speech : Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it. He’s said to have borrowed that quote from a friend, but if Twain were alive today he would no doubt have more to say on the subject. In a time when we are becoming increasingly accustomed to extremes in the climate system, the events of this year have risen above the background noise of political turmoil to dominate the global headlines. While global leadership in dealing with climate change may be depressingly limited, I can’t help but wonder if 2018 will be the year our global tribe feels threatened enough to act. Encouragingly, there may be a historical (and largely unknown) precedent for tackling climate change: Victoria London’s handling of the “Great Stink”, where growth had...
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Anthropocene began in 1965, according to signs left in the world's 'loneliest tree'

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Anthropocene began in 1965, according to signs left in the world's 'loneliest tree' Pavla Fenwick , Author provided Chris Turney , UNSW ; Jonathan Palmer , UNSW , and Mark Maslin , UCL On Campbell Island in the Southern Ocean, some 400 miles south of New Zealand, is a single Sitka spruce. More than 170 miles from any other tree, it is often credited as the “world’s loneliest tree”. Planted in the early 20th century by Lord Ranfurly, governor of New Zealand, the tree’s wood has recorded the radiocarbon produced by above ground atomic bomb tests – and its annual layers show a peak in 1965, just after the tests were banned. The tree therefore gives us a potential marker for the start of the Anthropocene. But why 1965? The 1960s is a decade forever associated with the hippie movement and the birth of the modern environmentalism, a sun-blushed age in which the Apollo moon landings gave us the iconic image of a fragile planet fra...
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Why remote Antarctica is so important in a warming world

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Why remote Antarctica is so important in a warming world Chris Fogwill , Keele University ; Chris Turney , UNSW , and Zoe Robinson , Keele University Ever since the ancient Greeks speculated a continent must exist in the south polar regions to balance those in the north , Antarctica has been popularly described as remote and extreme. Over the past two centuries, these factors have combined to create, in the human psyche, an almost mythical land – an idea reinforced by tales of heroism and adventure from the Edwardian golden age of “heroic exploration” and pioneers such as Robert Falcon Scott , Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton . Recent research , however, is casting new light on the importance of the southernmost continent, overturning centuries of misunderstanding and highlighting the role of Antarctica in how our planet works and the role it may play in a future, warmer world. Heroic exploration, 1913. wiki ...
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