Few things annoy me more than the description of carbon dioxide emissions as “pollution”, a pejorative misdescription which has even become enshrined in some laws. You’re talking about one of the two basic chemical building-blocks of life, the other being water, which is present in the atmosphere in miniscule quantities. If emitting carbon dioxide is […]

Every now and then you pass a milestone that is worth celebrating. Last week we had one of those. It is now over 12 years since On Line Opinion started life as a five articles once a month publication. Now, in our 12th year, we have published article number 12,000. That article was The war […]

Would Late Night Live have interviewed Willhelm Riple and Michael Kravcik a year ago? These two academics have views on global warming which is at odds with the IPCC consensus. Ripl’s view of climate focusses on the water cycle and the way energy is dissipated via circulation. He wasn’t saying much that Bill Kininmonth hasn’t […]

For two weeks or more it was just too hard to record my thoughts on this trip. Time and access to the Internet were in short supply. We were seeing things you don’t often see in Australia, like this car on fire: I’ve had a chance now to digest some of my impressions and the […]

I am amazed at how poor some of our prominent “analysts” are at analysing, particularly when it involves other countries, or even other people. I think it is a failure of imagination, which is not to take away from the fact that it is a catastrophic failure. If you can’t get into your opponent’s mind […]

Travelling may expand the mind, but it can also shrink time. In less than two weeks the sound of the ocean in the distance, and Skippy’s mates thumping around at night has been replaced by the much more varied noises of a city with as many residents as in all of Australia. The bigger the […]

Barry O’Farrell has taken over the collapsed state of NSW and set his unique mark on the new regime. As in the past, there’s bravado, some logic and specific pratfalls. People who know him are not surprised and are setting a safety zone, a no man’s land, around him which looks surprisingly like “circling the […]

Perhaps the apex in the global warming debate was when Al Gore used a scissor lift to take his pointer to the top of the “Hockey Stick” graph in his movie, and the IPCC featured the same hockey stick on the cover of their Third Assessment report. After that it has tended to be downhill […]