Turning down the heat

CSIRO scientist and desert Knowledge founder Mark Stafford-Smith still has his heart in the right place: Alice Springs. His soon-to-be published book Blueprint for Red Land looks at what the arid zone can teach the rest of the country about dealing with the variability of climate change. In this first part of this conversation with Alice Online’s Dave Richards he imagines what the future might hold for us.

One of Alice’s hottest Novembers on record may have convinced some global warming fence-sitters that global warming is accelerating. But meanwhile the USA recorded one of its coldest winters and hard-line climate Global Warming crusaders such as Der Spiegel are acknowledging that global warming appears to have been stalled. In the second part of this interview Mark Stafford-Smith explains why he’s a believer .. when scepticism is OK and when it “borders on treason

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With several doctors threatening to leave Alice Springs if uranium mining at Angela Pamela near the town goes ahead, the intensity of the debate about nuclear issues can seem as great as it was in the 60s. Yet some of the world’s leading environmental heroes and credible scientists say nuclear power is an essential part of the power mix for sustaining our warmed-up globe without adding more carbon to the mix. Mark discusses the issue with Dave Richards from Alice Online