Hi all, and welcome. I want to begin with a little introduction of this blog and the topics I plan to cover during our time here together.

First a little about me: I’m a student pursuing a PhD degree in earth sciences. I’ve been living here in Sydney for more than a year, but I’m originally from the US. My primary interests are geochemistry and geophysics, but I’d like to think that I have a broad background in geology and I’d like to speak to as many geology- related topics as I can throughout this blog. This will primarily take the shape of me picking something that I find interesting and then writing comments about it. I’m also nursing an (unhealthy) obsession with politics, especially those related to science policy. So as a bonus feature, I’ll occasionally write about politics and science policy as I observe it, with a special emphasis on Australia.

In this vein comes today’s topic: Australian perceptions on climate change. The way I see it, Australia has a lot to lose if there are changes in climate. I’m thinking a lot more about the important food producing areas than about coastal effects. The already drought-stricken “bread basket” of Australia stands to become much drier. I think many people here realize this. So much so that they have named a climate change scientist (Tim Flannery) as Australian of the Year. This does not prevent him, however, from being an idiot. You gotta love the politicians misquoting scientists to make them look bad (e.g. “It’ll never rain”) at exactly the same time as the west is getting their first sip of rain in ages. I thought this kind of trickery was more firmly entrenched in the American political sphere, but I was far too naive to realize that politics and “idiocy” are more universal.