Climate Change, My Microbiome, and Me

Those of us who believe in climate change (and maybe some who don’t) jokingly blame all kinds of things on it, from flat tires to summer hailstorms. Case of the flu? Climate change. Mudslide? Climate change. (Usually, we’re right.)

Illustration: Amelia Bates

But I was mostly fooling the other day, when I once again said: “Must be climate change.” I was in yet another doctor’s office, doling out obscene amounts of money to be told yet another time that there’s no official diagnosis for what ails my stomach.

The doctor laughed, bemused and dismissive. He was the fifth person I’d seen on behalf of a tummy that no longer properly digested most of the ingredients in the modern American diet — especially the tastiest ones, like dairy, sugar, and wheat.

He mumbled something about the industrial food supply. Though the doc hardly seemed to believe what he muttered, I had a light bulb moment.

Read the Medium story by Lisa Selin Davies - “Climate Change, My Microbiome, and Me.”

Global warming is settled science, but what does that mean?

One of the regular back and forths between people who accept the science of global warming and climate change and those who are ‘skeptical’ of it is the question of whether it is settled or not. This isn’t helped by the completely reasonable communication around nuanced and complex topics by scientists in which they are careful to say what we don’t know, how much is still to be learned and to caution over-reliance on any single result.

But the science of global warming and climate change is settled in the most part, and the parts where it isn’t are almost entirely a matter of degree not of kind. The relatively minor uncertainty is picked up by the ‘skeptics’ who claim that they are defending science and the conservative post-modernists who claim it is all relative with no authority. The former say things like “no true scientist every says the science is settled” and “science isn’t based on consensus”. The latter say things like “climate change isn’t falsifiable so it isn’t really science” and “anthropogenic global warming is a failed scientific paradigm and will be overturned shortly”.

Read the story from Medium by Michael Barnard - “Global warming is settled science, but what does that mean?”

'Beneath the Wistertians' gather for the first time this year on Saturday

“Beneath the Wisterians” gather again on Saturday, January 27, for the first time this year.

We will meet at the northern end of Shepparton’s Maude St Mall at 11:00: it’s free, all are welcome and although some public seating exists, those attending are advised to bring a folding chair.

And what will we discuss? Well, the year that was and the year ahead.

The aim has always been to ensure Beneath the Wisteria was politically neutral, but that has become rather difficult as our political classes have made it so, encouraged all along by those who dispute climate science.

Sadly, few of those who gather in Canberra, or Melbourne’s Spring St, or even in the chambers at Shepparton’s Welsford St, appear to take climate change seriously other than to make the occasional proclamation, which is little more than a fiction designed to appease those vaguely aware of climate change and convinced that we need to do something, and declarations by the PM to save the Great Barrier Reef is often enough, although everyone who really understands what is really happening sees what is planned as abject failure, and little more than a distraction.

Please join me on Saturday as despondency can only be repaired by optimistic friends.

The predicted temperature on Saturday is 39 degrees, but as the maximum usually arrives about mid-afternoon, I’m expecting about 37 degrees at 11:00 am. 

We meet in the middle of winter, let’s meet in the middle of summer.

Any questions call me, Robert McLean, at 0400 502 199.