Alice Springs

The great carbon credit con: A shonky system exposed

7 February 2025 / 5 Comments

Carbon offsetting is an honesty system coupled with a financial incentive for dishonesty.

– Ketan Joshi

Carbon credits, once hailed as a cornerstone of Australia’s climate change strategy, have been unmasked as a financial sleight of hand. They are marketed as a tool to curb emissions, yet in practice, they have become a glorified accounting trick, enriching a select few while diverting funds from genuine climate action.

The year Santa never made it to Darwin

20 December 2024 / 1 Comment

It began as a deep distant rumbling, like the stirring of some gargantuan subterranean beast.

It was unsettling at first, ominous, something you felt in your guts more than you heard with your ears, an eerie subsonic vibration that seemed to rise from the bowels of Hades.

As the she-devil crept closer, the wailing began.

Tales of a Twentieth-Century Explorer

9 December 2022 / 2 Comments

Madigan’s Career at a Glance

Dr Cecil Thomas Madigan (1889-1947) studied and later taught Geology at the University of Adelaide.

Are Australia’s deserts really deserts?

3 December 2021 / 5 Comments

When I imagine a desert landscape, I conjure thoughts of endless sand dunes under a blue sky with a relentless sun beating down. And not much vegetation.

Travelling inland through some of the arid red centre for the first time in 2007, I was shocked at how different the reality was from my imaginings.… Read more

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Traversing the outback with singing wire

12 November 2021 / 2 Comments

Ever since the invention of an electric relay in 1825, the opportunity to communicate long distances in a brief period was provided. When Samuel Morse invented the morse code in 1838, a revolution in communication began – it was akin to the internet in the late 19^th century. Around the world, a system of underwater sea cables enabled countries to communicate with each other much quicker.… Read more

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A tale of two grasses

5 November 2021 / 7 Comments

How buffel grass changed the dead heart of Australia

When you enter the Northern Territory from South Australia the landscape changes immediately from mulga scrub to more open savannah woodland dominated by the introduced buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris).

Buffel grass landscape at MacDonnell Ranges.
Photo courtesy-Tony-Faithfull-https-www.faithfull.id_.auindex.phpweeds13-buffel-grass-changing-the-ecology-of-the-west-macdonnell-ranges-2.jpg

Buffel grass is a deep-rooted perennial native to Africa, the Middle East and India.… Read more

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