The rise of a right-wing polemicist

Bolt is credited with being an important factor in the collapse of the political consensus for action on climate change that existed in 2007. Just five years ago, a Lowy Institute poll found 68 per cent of respondents agreed that global warming was a serious and pressing problem, and that ''we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs''. This year, that number had fallen to 41 per cent.

''The strange distortion of the climate change debate is down to a few people and he's one of them,'' Jonathan Green says. Bolt gives no quarter, dismissing ''warmists'', the scientific consensus on climate change and, in 2008 quoting Christopher Monckton, one of his preferred sources: ''The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.''

You would never guess Bolt used to write for the ''Environs'' column in The Age. Or that his younger brother, Richard, helped develop Australia's first comprehensive national cap-and-trade scheme.

Rethinking climate change as a security threat - AlertNet

But while the notion that climate change could lead to conflict is widespread, it is based on very little evidence and questionable sources.
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The truth is that there are, as yet, no concrete examples of violent conflicts induced by climate change, and a limited understanding of what the future holds.

CO2 is good for you – Telegraph Blogs

Imagine a world where CO2 was not a deadly poison in need of urgent regulation by the European Union and the Environmental Protection Agency but a hugely beneficial trace gas which helped plants to thrive…

If you've read Watermelons – or indeed hung around this column for any length of time – you'll know that that world already exists. What you might not know, as I certainly didn't until a few months back, is that CO2 can also make you healthier. I learned this from reader Christopher Drake wrote in to ask whether I'd heard of the Buteyko Method.