They say people often look like their pets and that scientists sometimes look like the creatures they study. Overlooking his unruly beard, Dr Duck, more formally known as Professor Richard Kingsford from the University of NSW, is no exception.
Right now he is even behaving like a bird. Dr Duck is on a mass migration around the continent – flying around Australia like a magpie goose whose electromagnetic GPS has gone awry.

For the past month Kingsford has been e-mailing in reports to Real Dirt about his progress – from the Northern Territory, Cape York and other far flung waterbird outposts. He and his colleagues are conducting a national stocktake from a Cessna of the continent’s bird populations and therefore they are effectively taking the ecological pulse of the nation..His website is well worth a look.

And as the Age reported this week:

WATERBIRDS were always going to have a hard time on the driest continent, but a national survey has found they are having the hardest time in Victoria.
In our state’s west, preliminary results have found bird numbers have decreased by 80% over the past 25 years.
Scientists from the University of NSW have taken to the air to criss-cross Australia over the next two months for what they say is the world’s largest waterbird aerial survey.
A team of 12 spotters flying in three light aircraft, mostly at treetop level, has begun counting the birds on every important wetland and river in the country.
They started in south-western Victoria and the findings are alarming. Team leader Professor Richard Kingsford said the 80% drop was not from climate change.
“It is mainly due to the alienation of the natural river flows and the over-allocation of river water to uses such as agriculture,” he said.

I think the award for the strangest story yet covered by Real Dirt, Fast goes to the Daily Telegraph…It is about carbon guilt…

A DARK side to being carbon-conscious has been discovered, with a growing number of people becoming green to the extreme.
Experts are warning the global warming panic is promoting obsessive compulsive disorders among some.
Dubbed “carborexics” or “dark greens”, these individuals will factor their carbon impact into every aspect of their life and go to extremes to avoid using energy.
According to a study conducted by Porter Novelli this month, four per cent of Americans now fit the profile of a carborexic.
Participants of the study who were considered dark green included a man who relieved himself on his lawn to save water, and a woman whose family slept en masse to save on heating.

[Here Real Dirt has to confess I have been known to pee in my paddock]

Head of the University of Sydney Anxiety Disorders Clinic Dr Mairwen Jones had seen an increase in patients suffering from climate change-related obsessive compulsive `checking’ disorders.
She explained that some patients had begun checking their gas and power meters constantly to monitor their usage, while others worried about their petrol consumption and their car’s odometer reading.
“A person who says: ‘I constantly check the tap’, now it’s not that they’re worried about a flood, but they say ‘I don’t want to waste water with elevated temperatures and drought, and I’m worried about my impact on the environment”’.

And that is a bad thing?? But I especially love the footnote at the end of the story…. 

People with signs of OCD should contact the Sydney Anxiety Disorders Clinic on 9351 9426.

Real Dirt subscribes to a completely different philosophy, conceived with Climate Institute CEO, John Connor, around a campfire a few years back – Ecologically Sustainable Hedonism. In other words being a greenie is not about sweating under a horse hair jumper and condemning yourself to a life of grimacing condemnation. Where’s the fun in that?!!

On a serious note, one of the worst things about climate change is what it means for places like the Great Barrier Reef and other iconic World Heritage Areas. The Australian reported there is now debate about the impact global warming will have on coral reefs….

University of Queensland marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said yesterday that sea temperatures were likely to rise 2C over the next three decades, which would undoubtedly kill the reef.
But several of Professor Hoegh-Guldberg’s colleagues have taken issue with his prognosis.
Andrew Baird, principal research fellow at the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said there were “serious knowledge gaps” about the impact rising sea temperatures would have on coral.
“Ove is very dismissive of coral’s ability to adapt, to respond in an evolutionary manner to climate change,” Dr Baird said.
“I believe coral has an underappreciated capacity to evolve. It’s one of the biological laws that, wherever you look, organisms have adapted to radical changes.”

Last week I watched a documentary about the Apollo Moon missions – In the Shadow of the Moon. What made it so fascinating was that the story was told by a group of extraordinary old men, the astronauts themselves. One of the best anecdotes was the well-known account of first looking back and seeing the Earth as a full but fragile disk. Another one of the men told a story about how, while standing on the moon, he put his thumb up and the entire Planet Earth was hidden behind that one small digit. It made him realise how relatively insignificant everything is compared to the universe…Behind his thumb was all the wars, all the worries, the economic woes and all of humanity. I thought of this recollection when I read a story in the Age about the cost of not acting to halt climate change…How can we put a dollar value on Earth or our extinction? Have a read, scratch your head and imagine standing on another world blocking out this planet with your thumb:

THE world could face a bill of more than $15 trillion if it chooses to let atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration reach a dangerous level before trying to wind it back, Treasury modelling suggests.

And finally here is a story guaranteed to get you rushing for the phone to call the Anxiety Disorders Clinic and confess your sin of concern….According to the Herald, we are all super-sized-bigfooted Ian Thorpes when it comes to the environment…

AUSTRALIA’S ecological footprint has just gone up a few shoe sizes. It is now the fifth-largest in the world, and expanding fast, an international report has found.
It takes an average of about 7.8 hectares of land to sustain the lifestyle of each Australian – significantly more than citizens of Britain, Canada or France – up from about 6.7 hectares in 2006.
The Living Planet report, produced by WWF, ranks nations by the level of their impact on the environment, and found that more than three-quarters of the world’s population take more from the planet than they put back. The average citizen of the globe requires just under three hectares to keep consuming at the current rate.
Along with agriculture, Australia’s soaring greenhouse gas emissions, largely fuelled by burning coal to generate electricity, contribute most to the nation’s comparatively poor performance.
In sustainability terms, Australia ranks ahead of only the United Arab Emirates, the US, Kuwait and Denmark, and behind 146 other nations.

That number again for people worried that they are worrying too much is 9351 9426