Joining the Dots:
This section will highlight related and/or interesting links.
The Conversation
Follow scientific and environmental debate and ideas at The Conversation.
Environment +Energy, Science +Technology ideas and research presented with academic rigour and journalistic flair for curious minds.
The Climate Commission
Professor Will Steffen, Executive Director, ANU Climate Change Institute
He is currently a Climate Commissioner with the Australian Government Climate Commission; Chair of the Antarctic Science Advisory Committee and Co-Director of the Canberra Urban and Regional Futures (CURF) initiative.
Professor Will Steffen is a climate science expert and researcher, and the Executive Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, Canberra. He is on the panel of experts supporting the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee and has also served as the Science Adviser to the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.
From 1998 to 2004, Professor Steffen served as Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, an international network of scientists studying global environmental change based in Stockholm, Sweden. His research interests span a broad range within the fields of climate change and Earth System science, with an emphasis on sustainability, climate change and the Earth System. He is the author of numerous publications on climate science.
See all articles written by Will Steffen
Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment
The impact of humanity on the planet is in danger of sacrificing the very ecosystems that provide the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. Failure to make changes will provide a planet which can no longer sustain our civilisation. Rapid change is required in order to address the fresh challenges posed to mankind in the 21st century.
Opportunities for businesses and governments lie in addressing these challenges. The Smith School led by the Director, Professor Sir David King, works with academic researchers and with businesses and government to find solutions.
The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment are intelligent users of the knowledge base generated in universities, and work interactively and across disciplinary boundaries to find and create sustainable routes into the future.
Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station
The Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station was established in 1976 to monitor and study global atmospheric composition. It measures:
*greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Measurements have shown more than a 15% increase in carbon dioxide since first taken in 1976
*stratospheric ozone depleting chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
*concentrations of natural and anthropogenic aerosol particulates, reactive gases, radon and solar radiation
*wind speed and direction, rainfall, temperature, humidity and air pressure
*solar radiation, including harmful UV-B radiation.
Cape Grim Greenhouse Gas Data
View the latest greenhouse gas data updated monthly from one of the cleanest air sources in the world.
http://www.csiro.au/greenhouse-gases/
Ignite Your Imagination
Ignite Your Imagination lists events, science resources and career profiles in the state. As great science resources and the source of many science events in Tasmania, we encourage you to register to the program through the website. Once registered, you can add and promote your public events, register as a science resource so interested people can get in contact with you easily, and individuals can add their career profile (the aim of which is to show the huge array of careers that involve science).
Solastalgia
Professor Glenn Albrecht
Glenn Albrecht is Professor of Sustainability and Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University in Perth. He is a transdisciplinary philosopher with a focus on the intersection of ecosystem and human health. His concepts of “solastalgia” and “solaphilia” are now widely applied in academic contexts and have also inspired creativity in art, literature and music.
Solastalgia: the homesickness you have when you are still at home; the home environment being changed by forces you cannot counter; a form of human distress created by negatively perceived environmental change resulting from industrial development, mining, drought and climate change.
Glen Albrecht predicts a rise in what he has termed psychoterratic and somoterratic disease as a result.
To counter Solastalgia, Albrecht has coined:
Soliphilia: defined as the love of and responsibility for a place, bioregion, or the planet and the unity of interrelated interests within it.
Soliphilia goes beyond left-right politics and provides a universal motivation to achieve sustainability.
Lynchpin is a project of Soliphilia.
TEDx Sydney – Glenn Albrecht – Environment Change, Distress & Human Emotion Solastalgia