Monday, November 16 2009, 16:35

Just call me 'trophy boyfriend'

I think 2009 might just go down as John's annus mirabilis, which is noice. Not only did he get that Eureka Prize nomination back in August (which I only just blogged about), but John's magazine, Cosmos, won another bunch of awards at Publishing Australia's Bell Awards last Friday, including Magazine of the Year, and Best Analytical Writing - which John won personally.

But even more exciting than that... 900 people from 148 countries submitted their articles to the Earth Journalism Awards this year, and John is one of the fifteen winners! Imagine getting an email at work one day and being told you are one of fifteen people in the whole world who are being rewarded for excellence in your job! There are no other winners from Australia, and even the UK with its much larger science journalism community has no winning entries. I'm not given to gushing (well, maybe only a little), but this is HUGE!

His reward is to be flown out to Copenhagen for two weeks in December to cover the climate change negotiations that will be attended by presidents and prime ministers, secretaries of state and ministers, and all their flunkies and hangers on. The world's media will be there and John will be in the thick of it, working hard, wearing the letters off his laptop, and certainly having no time to check out the local gay bars at weekends. No. Time. At. All.

So here's where I need to ask for your help... I may have already bugged you about this on facebook - in which case I'm sorry, but I'm going to keep bugging you until it works... There is a sixteenth prize - the public gets to vote on which of the fifteen winning articles gets the Global Public Award. You can read John's article on the awards website and vote at the foot of the page. If you're a facebook member, you get an additional vote; if you're a twitterphile, you get yet another vote! You can vote in all three ways at the foot of the article page.

Obviously, you ought to read all the other articles and decide which for yourself is the best, but I certainly don't insist on it ;) I don't even insist that you read John's - it's about ocean acidification and the Great Barrier Reef - but if you have the time, you'll agree that it's a great piece of writing.

John is currently in fourth place, so my last begging request (if you're still reading) is that you help me get the votes out. I'm not sure what kind of workplace you have, but would you consider emailing colleagues (and friends) to vote for him too? To make it super-easy, here's some text you can bung in an email and send to everyone you know ;)

My friend, John Pickrell, is one of only fifteen people in the world in the running to win the Earth Journalism Global Public Award for climate change journalism. The award is decided by public voting until Dec 9th, so it would be great if you could spare the time to vote for his article, Oceans of Acid, at the awards website. You can read his article here: http://awards.earthjournalism.org/finalist/oceans-acid-australia, and vote for it at the foot of the page. You can additionally vote using facebook and twitter (three votes in total), and the instructions are at the foot of the article too. Thanks!

The voting closes on December 9th, so I'm going to be checking the tallies several times a day until then. TOO MUCH EXCITEMENT! Thanks so much in advance!

Tuesday, November 24 2009, 22:55

Thousand dollar 'tache

Summer is here again, and I'm starting to attune to all the things that announce the end of spring down under. There's the unmistakable change in weather, but the season is also heralded by the bristling of moustaches on upper lips around the country (mostly men). Once again, I'm growing a charity moustache, as probably all of you facebookers are already aware. This year I'm going for more of a Charles Bronson look than the YMCA effort of previous years, as you can see here. Thanks so much to everyone who has donated - you have made this a thousand dollar 'tache! But Movember isn't over yet, so if you're still feeling generous, you can donate at my mospace.

Pete and Jamie were briefly in Sydney last weekend after a couple of weeks of travelling around, and Pete remarked on how unexpected it was to find himself sheltering from the scorching Cairns sun under a Christmas tree. I can't argue with that! The ubiquitous Christmas decorations are the other harbinger of summer, and this year the decorations have arrived early at our place. Since John is swanning off to Denmark in the first week of December, we bought ourselves a FABULOUS new tree last weekend and spent Monday evening adorning it with various spangly gewgaws to add a festive feel to our home. The result was instant excitement. Trimming a tree plus Mariah's "All I want for Christmas is you" equals ecstasy way surpassing anything brought on by chocolate. [sigh]

Speaking of Denmark, thanks to everyone who has voted for John in the Earth Journalism Awards. He's just about clinging to second place at the moment, so if you haven't used all three of your votes, they will still be much appreciated in the next two weeks; every Tweet, every Facebook fan counts. Special thanks to those who've spread the word and got their friends who don't even know John to vote for him. This aspect of the competition is all about raising awareness, so thank you for your part in doing this.

Wednesday, December 2 2009, 10:58

Wilfully ignorant people

I yesterday read with shock and amusement that Liberal Party MPs ditched their progressive (possibly obnoxious and autocratic) leader, Malcolm Turnbull, for the arch-conservative, violently Catholic, gaffe-prone Tony Abbott (also affectionately known as 'the Mad Monk'). British Conservatives could have told their Aussie counterparts that you need to retake the centre ground to become re-electable, but maybe it would have fallen on deaf ears. The reason for this lurch to the right was dissatisfaction with the (Labor) government's Emissions Trading Scheme, which Turnbull had whipped his Lib MPs to support. Now, with climate-sceptic Abbott in charge, the Liberals face an election on the issue, espousing the point of view which (according to polls) 60% of Australians reject.

What is it with climate-sceptics? Responses to Abbott's leadership (which he only won by 1 vote) are pepperered with deniers claiming that the jury's still out on human-induced climate change. But why do they think this? It beggars belief! Professional associations of scientists the world over are in no disagreement whatsoever on this topic. Thousands of members (of every political affiliation) of the UK's Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Institut de France, Australia's CSIRO, the Royal Society of Canada... (etc., etc.) are all in consensus. You can't open a respected scientific journal or even a science magazine that has any column inches devoted to denying climate change, because for the overwhelming majority of scientists the question of climate change cause is a no-brainer. The debate has moved on to what should be done about it. John is off to Denmark this weekend for two weeks to cover that debate at the Copenhagen climate change summit.

So where do these sceptics find their evidence? By ignoring the vast majority of scientists and digging out scientists on the fringe; of course you can find some - you can even find scientists who believe that the world was created 7000 years ago as described in the Bible. But conspiracy-theorists, bloggers, commentators, politicians, journalists - loads of them have jumped on this bandwagon (which proportionally ought to be less a wagon and more a rollerskate) with the result that, incomprehensibly, such disproportionate weight is given to these oh-so-minority opinions that some people can actually misguidedly believe that the debate is still ongoing.

In coal-exporting Australia (which has the highest per capita emissions of ALL developed nations), the Liberals are going to brand the government's Emissions Trading Scheme as an unfair tax on the electorate. Blah blah blah. Do these people think that weaning ourselves off coal is going to cost nothing? I have the lucky perspective of knowing that energy bills here are unbelievably cheap compared to the UK, but the rest of Australia is about to find out how spoiled it's been thus far. But a country with so much potential for solar and geothermal energy and so many vast spaces with no-one to complain about eyesores, a country like this could plausibly build an industry based around renewable energy and become a world leader in those technologies. If only someone would show some leadership...

PS. A massive thanks to all my movember donors - I have overgrown my 2007 total and raised $1372.50 for charity. You guys rock! And you can still donate if you want to.