freelance science journalist and author
I was recently invited to give a talk for an Environment Week assembly at Katoomba High School in the Blue Mountains. I’m kind of proud of this speech, so here it is: “Thank you Luke and Ainsley for inviting me to speak today, and I hope you don’t regret it at the end. I acknowledge … Continue reading Environment Week speech to Katoomba High School
From Nature, 20 August 2025: From the smiles, bouquets and cheers among the crowd gathered outside the Higher Regional Court of Hamm in Germany on 28 May, it might have looked like those present were celebrating a win. In fact, they had just lost a ten-year legal battle. In 2015, Saúl Luciano Lliuya, a mountain … Continue reading Securing climate justice in the courtroom
From Nature, 5 February 2024: The planet has already passed 1.5 °C of warming, according to a new measuring technique that goes back further in time than current methods. At the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, nations agreed not to exceed 1.5 °C, a guardrail of climate change. “We have an alternate record of global warming,” … Continue reading The world has warmed 1.5 °C, according to 300-year-old sponges
From The Guardian, 26 January 2024: Last year was the hottest year in recorded history. Global average temperatures over 2023 nudged towards 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, and for two days in November, they reached 2C above those levels. With a hotter planet come more intense – and therefore more deadly – heatwaves. Extreme heat is already … Continue reading What happens to your body during extreme heat?
From Nature, 13 December 2023: When it comes to renewable energy, India is lucky to have an abundance of natural resources. It is the seventh-largest nation on Earth, occupying around 2% of the planet’s land mass, and has a mainland coastline that stretches for 7,500 kilometres. Most regions experience between 250 and 300 sunny days … Continue reading Renewable energy for the subcontinent
From Nature, 19 November 2023: The southern hemisphere is facing a summer of extremes, say scientists, as climate change amplifies the effects of natural climate variability. This comes in the wake of a summer in the northern hemisphere that saw extreme heatwaves across Europe, China and North America, setting new records for both daytime and … Continue reading Record-breaking summer set to hit southern hemisphere
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 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 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
Bianca Nogrady 