Heat seems to make us stupider

When the temperature rises, you get sweaty and sticky. But hot weather can harm more than your comfort. During a heat wave, even healthy young adults can lose their ability to think at their best.

Warmer days have a measurable impact on our ability to think clearly

Jose Guillermo Cedeño-Laurent of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health studied 44 Boston-area college students. Some of the students lived in air-conditioned dorms, and some did not.

Each morning, he tested the students’ cognitive speed and working memory. And he found that as it got hotter, the students without A/C fared worse on the tests.

Read the Yale Climate Connections story by Diana Madson - “Heat seems to make us stupider.”

Tony Abbott speech: Allies go to ground and Labor lashes 'loopy' ex-PM over climate change views

Labor, the Greens and climate change activists have rounded on Tony Abbott for a "loopy" London speech in which the former prime minister suggested temperature rises caused by climate change could be beneficial because "far more people die in cold snaps”.

"Loopy" London speech by former
Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.

Political allies and friends of the former leader went to ground on Tuesday following the incendiary speech to the sceptic Global Warming Policy Forum, which is the latest in a series of dramatic interventions from Mr Abbott into the energy debate, including a recent warning that he could cross the floor rather than vote for a clean energy target.

The Coalition has effectively signalled it will not adopt a clean energy target and an alternative policy proposal, designed to ensure greater reliability in Australia's electricity networks and force down prices, could go to cabinet and then the Coalition party room as soon as next week.

Read the story by James Massola and Latika Bourke in the Melbourne Age - “Tony Abbott speech: Allies go to ground and Labor lashes 'loopy' ex-PM over climate change views.”

'Overstated?' No, quite the contrary

Our climate, and so our
 weather, is most definitely
deteriorating.

Concerns that the impacts of our changing climate had been personally overestimated were somewhat assuaged with the publication of a story today in Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

The story, headed: “Climate change 'likely to be more severe than some models predict'”, warns readers that scientists analyzing climate models say we should expect high temperature rises – meaning more extreme weather, sooner.

“Climate change is likely to be more severe than some models have implied, according to a new study which ratchets up the possible temperature rises and subsequent climatic impacts”, the story says.