freelance science journalist and author
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
From WIRED UK, 24 April 2023: In the dry, red dust of Western Australia’s vast Pilbara region, something green is growing. In October 2022, construction began on a massive solar photovoltaic and battery installation, around 40 soccer fields in size, that will soon power a 10-megawatt electrolyzer—a machine that uses electricity to convert water into … Continue reading Forget cars, green hydrogen will supercharge crops
From WIRED UK, 23 March 2023: Alaska isn’t supposed to be an inferno—but its summers are now so warm that apocalyptic wildfires are almost inevitable. In June 2022, lightning strikes set the drought-stricken land ablaze, winds whipped up flames, and long curtains of fire soon ripped through previously untouched tundra, pushing plumes of thick smoke … Continue reading Climate freeloaders are destroying the planet
From WIRED, 17 February 2023: New Zealand is grappling with two consecutive extreme weather events—massive flooding followed by a cyclone—that have claimed at least 12 lives and left hundreds of thousands of people without power. The high winds and waters of Cyclone Gabrielle have washed away coastal roads on the north island and left bridges … Continue reading New Zealand faces a future of flood and fire
From The Saturday Paper, 24 September 2022: A showdown is looming between local and state governments over who is financially responsible for nearly $150 million worth of Rural Fire Service trucks and firefighting equipment in New South Wales, the so-called “red fleet”. On one side are 68 local governments who argue the law that puts … Continue reading Stalemate over rural fire fleet
From The Saturday Paper, 27 August 2022: They’re as familiar to Australians as a stop sign: the semicircular, multicoloured warning signs that indicate the level of danger posed by bushfire on any given day. But after more than half a century of use, the Australian fire danger rating system is being completely overhauled to bring … Continue reading Rethinking fire ratings
Bianca Nogrady 