Ro Randall is founder and director of Cambridge Carbon Footprint, a Cambridge based charity that uses approaches drawn from psychotherapy and community work to engage diverse audiences in work on climate change. She blogs at rorandall.org. Behaviour change is the new black – although the idea has been around for a while it is increasingly theRead more
All posts by Rich:
Watch this: Big History 2
How well do you know your BIG history?
UK’s total emissions set to rise: new data obtained by PIRC 3
The UK’s total emissions are set to rise, PIRC can reveal – as shown in yet-to-be-published calculations by the government’s Carbon Trust. Whilst on paper, Britain’s carbon emissions have declined, in reality they have grown – once emissions from imported goods are factored in. From a consumption perspective, the UK’s emissions have risen by 19%Read more
Life without carbon: A play with no script 1
There is no shortage of authoritative documents advocating for a low carbon future. Nick Stern gave us a price tag for decarbonisation. The Sustainable Development Commission (RIP) gave us ‘scenarios’ and ‘pathways’ to a low carbon future. And dozens of engineering and policy analyst groups have put together compelling estimates of the sorts of energyRead more
Climate change breaks NASA’s temperature charts 1
Guest post by Kate at Climate Sight. The Arctic is getting so warm in winter that James Hansen had to add a new colour to the standard legend – pink, which is even warmer than dark red: The official NASA maps – the ones you can generate yourself – didn’t add this new colour, though. They simply extendedRead more
Carbon and the common good: values in green policy 4
A new report released yesterday, Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs): a policy framework for peak oil and climate change, makes a valuable contribution to the debate about how policies affect public values.
Why environmentalists should stop taking Martin Luther King’s name in vain 6
This is a guest post by Jon Alexander, who writes for Conservation Economy, a blog about what the marketing & communications industry should do in an economy not based on consumption. This post appeared in its original form back in October 2010. Jon’s view has shifted somewhat since then, so if you want to engage more withRead more
Green Investment Bank: too little, too late
George Osborne’s Spending Review, just announced in Parliament with the full document available online here, makes provision for a new Green Investment Bank (GIB). This is a vital piece of policy to take forward the low-carbon transition. But the announcements look to be too little, too late. The Government has pledged just £1bn of directRead more
Climate change: where are we now? 2
With the number of polls I’ve written about here, it’s been a while since I’ve taken stock of the different results and what we can learn from them. Fortunately, MORI produced a handy collection of slides (a few months ago), which brings together a lot what we’ve seen into a single place: My conclusions fromRead more
No Pressure: An ill-advised piece of climate change communication 6
Imagine you were part of a highly successful environmental campaign group, that had spent the best part of the last year enthusiastically building a broad coalition of organisations – from schools, to local councils, to football teams – committed to cutting their carbon footprint. How might you choose to mark such a successful 10 months?Read more
This week’s top climate science links
Dive right in: Why positive feedback doesn’t necessarily lead to runaway warming – Positive feedback happens when the response to some change amplifies that change. For example: The Earth heats up, and some of the sea ice near the poles melts. Now bare water is exposed to the sun’s rays, and absorbs more light thanRead more
Great Johan Rockström presentation on planetary boundaries concept 4
Johan Rockström recently appeared on TED to present the ‘planetary boundaries’ approach, published in Nature last year. It’s a great presentation well worth the time. (You can get the paper the approach is based on, or read Nature’s special feature.) I’ve heard a few scientists complaining about what they see as arbitrary boundary choices, orRead more
Arctic sea ice in context (video)
The great Peter Sinclair puts Arctic sea ice in context:
This week’s top climate science links
Dive right in: And yet it works. Adam Corner on ‘ClimateGate’, transparency & peer-review. – “Open access is based on the premise that there are those outside the inner circle of peer reviewers who are competent enough to provide a second opinion on the science. This is indisputably true. But while talk of throwing openRead more
Watts Up With That & SPPI promoting the BNP
Joss Garman at Left Foot Forward reports that Watts Up With That – arguably the world’s number one climate sceptic site – yesterday cited the BNP in one of its ludicrous stories: Anthony Watts’ latest source of information is none other than the British National Party – yes, those known to the rest of usRead more
