Wednesday 5th October 11 My Cafe Scientifique presentation

Spent bits of the day tweaking my presentation.

At midday I arrived at my dentist's and had a clean, didn't take long.

Home via Richard's and then spent most of the afternoon indoors, and dealt with several phone calls, including one from a place near Easingwold which is hoping to put on events, and I spent quite a while talking through my show so the enquirer understood what I offered.

I got a message from my contact at City Screen suggesting I should get there at 6.30pm, to be ready for doors open at 7pm, to start the talk by 7.30.  I took my laptop down and got there on the dot of 6.30pm.  My laptop and their data-projector worked perfectly together, which was pleasing... and I got hooked up to their wireless internet to show WorldClock, which I knew would be of interest for illustrating part of my presentation.

Carolyn arrived, and shortly after, David plus Pauline, one of his PAs, and a few other Cafe Scientifique regulars.  I chatted with Stephen, from the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, who are now sponsoring Cafe Scientifique.  I told him I thought I could get my talk done in 20 to 30 minutes, and then we'd have a break and a discussion.  About 20 people turned up, and I started by zeroing Worldclocks, and then using my slides, started my presentation which I'd called 'Climate Change, Peak Oil, Sex and Death'.

My first topic was climate change, and I explained that climate had changed naturally over geological time, and was driven by a variety of factors but mainly by the composition of the atmosphere.  I introduced the greenhouse effect, and explained that water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane were the main gases which trapped heat. I explained that over many millions of years, plants had absorbed carbon dioxide, changing it into solid lignin and cellulose, and some of this had become coal and other fossil fuels... and that we humans were extremely rapidly putting huge quantities of this carbon back into the atmosphere by burning oil, gas and coal.  I touched on some interesting feedback effects such as a warmer Arctic region allowing permafrost to melt, so releasing lots of trapped methane, which would warm the region still further, a 'positive feedback'.  A less easy to understand feedback mechanism would be that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour, and more clouds are likely to form, and clouds can both trap heat in the atmosphere and also reflect the sun's energy back into space, having a cooling effect.

I then showed a video which shows really well how CO2 absorbs heat,and then a video of a graph showing how CO2 levels have changed over time.  So these set the scene for a bit about what is likely to happen on a warming planet: climate in chaos, with various feedback mechanisms (two of which I explained), more floods, droughts and more energetic storms, seasonal changes and shifting habitat zones, and sea level rise due mainly to the thermal expansion of water, but probably to be exacerbated by terrestrial ice melting.  Not easy things to talk about without getting emotional, but I think I held it together. I mentioned changes in forest cover, as it is possible the Amazon rainforest could become grassy savannah, that patterns of disease would change, that crops and food availability would become an issue, and that the biggest centres of population were close to current sea-level.  I think I mentioned the end of civilisation.  I don't think I was over-dramatic, though.

My next slide was about peak oil, so I gave a brief overview of King Hubbert's prediction about oil extraction in the US, and that being uncannily accurate, and his prediction for peak production globally being 2005-2015, and the fact that over the past 6 years production hadn't actually increased, despite consumption continuing to go up.  Basically my suggestion was that we are at the peak of oil production now, and that it can really only go down from here on in.

The next slide was a graph of oil consumption, going inexorably up, and then one of those two graphs sort-of superimposed, with the line of oil availability falling off, and the consumption still rising.... showing what I sometimes call 'the scary gap', as it indicates rising commodity prices, shortages, rationing, and worse.

However, this 'energy gap' might have some positive consequences, including making renewable energy more competitive, and a re-localisation of how our communities run. Travel and imports would become too expensive, and might be possible for people to develop healthier lifestyles, with more exercise, stronger communities, local food, growing their own food!  Well, I'm an optimist, and try to find positivity even in the face of somewhat potentially difficult circumstances.

So, we'd done climate change and peak oil, so now the sex and death.  Well the 'sex' bit was simply the fact that the global population is still rising, and to demonstrate this, I had found a graph of this and put it on my presentation.  I also clicked back to Worldclock, to show how much the global population had increased in the 30 minutes since the start of the talk. I firmly believe that population pressure is the other side of the resource-use and pollution emissions coin.  If the world had fewer people, we wouldn't be using so much oil, or emitting so much CO2.  I suggested that if everyone in the world had a carbon footprint of the average Indian, we might be OK, or if we had only a couple of billion people, we might all be able to have the footprint of the average American.  But with close to 7 billion people on the planet, it just wasn't sustainable to have so many people with two and three planet lifestyles. 

And so to death, our final footprint. As both cremation and burial have considerable pollution impacts, there is a new technology being worked on, which I feel very positive about: the freeze-drying and composting funeral, Promession. This has a much lower carbon footprint, as the liquid nitrogen used is a waste product from the oxygen industry, and the remains are recycled into soil in an aerobic process.  Although this isn't yet available, it should be soon and I'm already excited about it.... not sure why, but we can't help what we're interested and moved by.

After the talk, there was a short break and then some questions.  There was only one anthropogenic climate change denier there, but most people seemed pretty au fait with the science and asked how I got my carbon footprint so low, and there were some other interesting queries and observations.

I went for a drink afterwards and had some more good conversations, but I didn't stay long.  I was happy with how it had gone and so were the organisers.

Friday 20th November 09

I got up in time to get to Pauline's for 10am. But whilst I was eating my breakfast I was watching the news, about the 'freak' rain and devastating floods in Keswick and Cockermouth in the North West of the UK, I heard someone say that this was a 'one in a thousand year event'. The floods which affected the same region in 2005 were apparently a 'one in a hundred year event'. So I changed my facebook status to:
2005 'one in a hundred year event'
2009 'one in a thousand year event'
c'mon folks, when are we going to understand that something is going on?

I just hope some good comes from this horrible time, with houses and property trashed, four bridges swept away, at least one life lost. If it takes a tragedy to get people to realise that we have to change our ways, or suffer much much more of this kind of thing, then it is worth it. But we have a long way to go before we can reduce our CO2 levels back down to 350 parts per million, which scientists suggest is a 'safe' level which will only increase our average global temperature by about two degrees Celcius. However, the level of CO2 today is 385 ppm, up a third since pre-industrial revolution levels of about 280 ppm. The current level of CO2 will give us an increase in temperature of possibly 4 degrees, and as the levels of CO2 are still rising, we might expect an increase of 6 degrees, which would probably give us runaway climate change due to amplifying feedback loops. This CO2 count isn't the only greenhouse gas which is increasing. Methane is probably the best known 'other greenhouse gas' but there are quite a few others, see green living tips for a good simple overview, and Micheal Bloch's other website carbonify has lots of information too.

Anyway, I cycled round to Paulines to help her remove her exuberant potato vine tree, as requested. Her delightful 4 year old great grandchild was there, and she helped in a cute way. As per usual with Pauline, I was rewarded for the work by a good 'real' coffee and soya milk plus chat. I regard Pauline as one of the 'wise women' in my life as she often gives me sound and sensible advice.

I came home via Country Fresh and Freshways and had lunch. As it then started to pour with rain here I did a wash up, and went outside once it had cleared up a bit. I split the logs I collected yesterday and then, as I wanted to stack these, I needed to move the bricks that the chimney removers had left where my logpiles normally are. There were about 60 whole bricks, most of them with mortar still attached. If we're going to reuse these bricks, they have to be mortar free, so I found a hammer and did about 45 bricks in an hour and a quarter. Four of them broke but these might still be useful as hardcore in the wall/fence build foundations. But, as my concentration perhaps wandered towards the end, I hit my thumb nailbed with the hammer, and although it broke the skin, it wasn't painful at first. But a couple of hours later, the pressure under my thumbnail was very painful. I think the nail might come off.

But a happy family evening with good food (yummy fruit salad!) and telly watching together.

Started a game of Scrabble with both my lads... both of whom look like they're going to be good players. I was pleased with how well they did. We didn't finish the game though, but left it on the table to finish tomorrow.

Later, had a lovely long phone chat with a friend whom I've met through facebook, not in 'real life', and it was good to do this. We may never meet but that doesn't mean the friendship is any less enjoyable.

Friday 13th March 09, Yorks+Humber Climate Change Plan

Up early to go to the Climate Change Plan and Regional Adaptation Study launch event at the Royal York Hotel next to the station. I took my bike trailer off as one part of it had broken, I'll try to find time to take it in to repairs sometime.

The conference was organised by the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly about the 2009-2014 Climate Change Plan for Yorkshire and Humber, see yourclimate.org, and the Y + H Regional Adaptation Study, see adaptyh.co.uk. After a coffee at 9.30, and an introduction by the chair of the Y+HA Sustainable Development Board, the Rt. Hon. Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spoke in his usual quite animated and enthusiastic way... he really does understand the enormity of the situation and the difficulty we're going to have reducing emissions (mitigation) and dealing with what climate change throws at us (adaptation). There was a short Q+A afterwards, and I managed to be one of the two people to ask a question. The question I originally intended to ask was partly answered when he answered the first person (it was about whether he saw the economic recession as a good thing as it caused reduced resource use and therefore carbon emissions, and whether he could see any opportunities to address the greenhouse gas issues as part of the recession). So when my time came with the microphone, I said I was pleased to see him again, as I'd first met him as a winner of the Oxfam Carbon Footprint Competition, and I asked if the Government had any plans to adopt The Green New Deal? He seemed genuinely pleased to be reminded of the Oxfam/CRAGgers visit a year ago, and praised my 'extraordinary' attempts to live a low carbon lifestyle. He did partly answer the question and came to chat to me afterwards.

My favourite quote from him today was "The future will be inherited by the low carbon and the resource efficient."

After a short break we were introduced to the Climate Change Plan by Jeremy Walker, chair of the Regional Flood Defence Committee, and he explained why this region is especially vulnerable to climate change, and briefly went through the priority areas of strategy and monitoring, our built environment, transport, health services, businesses, land management, and the importance of engaging us, the citizens and decisionmakers.

He handed over to the Nick Cooper from Royal Haskoning, the agency which co-ordinated the Regional Adaptation Study, who took us through some of the projected climatic changes we might expect by 2050. These include average temperatures up 2 Celsius (doesn't sound a lot but it actually is) and extreme temperatures up 3 degrees C. There will be 17% more rain in the winter and 26% less in the summer (read winter floods, summer droughts) and sea level up by 35cm with much higher surge events. The mean wind speed stays much the same but with storm events more likely, expect higher destructive peak winds. The impacts of these variables are flooding, erosion, buildings damaged from wetting/drying stresses plus storms and floods, agriculture and forestry affected by changing seasons, differing yields, new crops possible/necessary and irrigation needed in summer, possibly by trapping winter rainfall in reservoirs. Also pests and diseases with new vectors (for instance 'blue tongue' in cattle, transmitted by a fly which originated in Africa and, due to mild winters, has come through Europe and crossed the Channel to the UK, damaging our livestock industry). Then there's the impact on the emergency services, with floods and moorland fires, and heatwaves like recently happened in France, which killed many people. Our transport will be affected... rail tracks buckling or being washed away, 'roadmelt' and even lorries being blown over, a surprisingly serious problem. And then there's biodiversity... many species will need to move, needing corridors, and many niche species will just die out. The importance of our peatlands was mentioned, as they are a vast store of carbon, and drainage lets that oxidise into yet more CO2, keeping it wet allows them to grow, absorbing carbon.

Then, a quick dash through how we adapt to the inevitable climate change, with planning, monitoring, innovating and taking any opportunities it throws up. Implementation of these was discussed, with the different sectors such as green infrastructure, land management, the private sector and public services all playing their part. How to enable change and engage stakeholders, collecting and publicising evidence and pioneering pilot studies... all enormously complicated and far from easy.

Then a presentation from John Clubb, about how to take forward the delivery of this.... after all, we have no time to waste and don't want to come back in a year to hear more of the same. We need action. For me, one of the most telling graphs of the whole morning was one showing the effects of the current policies of the Y+H Assembly (creating jobs, prosperity, improving infrastructure, etc) with regard to carbon emissions.... the projections are that they will just go up and up. And what's needed is a swift reduction. Which, if that's to be achieved, means a radical rethink in what the Y+HA stands for, in my view.

Finally, a short Q+A session with a panel of people from the Environment Agency, Yorkshire Forward and the agencies already mentioned. The best question was from Dylis Cluer, a Green Councillor from Scarborough Borough Council, who mentioned that at a previous meeting like this, that there was a suggestion that aiming to reduce meat consumption by 1% a year would be one way of helping to reduce overall greenhouse emissions. She asked whether or not that was in the Climate Change Plan. The Chair of the meeting, Cllr Arthur Barker, confessed he was a beef farmer, so he wasn't positive about this, and the another panel member also said it wasn't included. A pity really, as the UN suggested that it would be a very effective way to cut our footprint, and called on Westerners to have 'one day a week without meat'.

I had a quick lunch there, and was disappointed to see lots of bottled water there, and meat too, which meant that the carbon footprint of the event was much higher than it needed to be.

I cycled away bearing loads of interesting documents from UK Climate Projections, the Environment Agency, the Nottingham Declaration, Yorkshire Futures, Natural England, the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly, the Local Government Association, the Friends of the Earth (including response to this Climate Change Plan), Royal Haskoning, Yorkshire and Humber Biodiversity Forum and AEA. A lot of reading!

Called in on the Building Society on the way home and then to the welders on James St, who said if I left my broken trailer with them over the weekend, they'd fix it on Monday. So before they closed, I cycled down carrying the trailer and left it with them.

Tea was more mushroom soup, with a chunk of Gill's quiche and another avocado sandwich. Spent a long time during the evening looking through the documents I got today, looking through websites, and familiarising myself with the subject.

Monday 8th December 08

A very slow start to the morning as was late to bed last night and had a hard-working day. Gill had got up earlier, as usual, and had decided that both boys were unwell enough to go to school. One had a definite temperature and the other, well, don't really know what's wrong with him, but I wasn't arguing! When Gill rang the schools, both reported lots of people ringing in sick, so it's probably a bug going around.

So the whole family lounged around. I was delighted to hear the news about Plane Stupid heroes once again disrupting an airport and again putting the issues of LACK OF ACTION re climate change on top of the agenda. I am at one with these brave young people, and have huge respect for them. The politicians have had plenty of time to DO SOMETHING about cutting emissions and have done very little apart from producing a lot of hot air... including doing a hell of a lot of flying to climate change conferences (such as the one in Poland, happening now) and the like, and some of us are fed up and angry that selfish people are continuing to trash this planet without a thought to future generations or those in developing countries who don't deserve to suffer because of the actions of a few people in 'developed' countries. So I wrote my paid blog on this news plus what I had intended to write about, which was solar hot water panels.

During the afternoon I cycled into town and put in a cheque from Anita for her SUMA order, and got some medication for my children and a new battery for one of the few battery-using gadgets in the house, a TV remote control. Visited a juice bar called JuicyMoosey which is owned by my newly found friend Bruno, and met a possible friend-to-be called Jade who runs a vegan recipe website. I also went looking for a pair of specific drawing pens for one of the boys. The make of pen requested by him was unavailable so I got something similar... but when I got home and explained to the child in question, he threw a huge paddy about this and started hitting out and being violent. I had to sit on his legs and hold his wrists, and told him that if he decided to strike any of us like he has been doing, that I would ring up the police. I of course do not want to resort to this, but he has to take responsibility for his actions, and if it takes a visit from the police to shock him into not hitting us, then we will do this. Parenting is not easy.

However, he did calm down within a couple of hours, and apologised, and we had a peaceful evening. Watched a programme about steam trains and then University Challenge.

Tried to continue doing assorted paperwork, putting cheques in the post etc.

I slept downstairs as our youngest was in our bed, feverish and not sleeping well.

Wednesday 3rd September 08

Both boys off to school today.

I decided to read a daily email I've subscribed to, about the trial of the protesters accused of damaging Kingsnorth Power Station. Their defence that it was (is) necessary to cause some damage in order to prevent greater damage, likened to breaking a window to rescue a person from a burning building. If you would like to get a daily blog entry about this interesting trial, click here. On October 7th, there is another trial of climate change protesters, those who stopped and occupied a coal train near Selby, the 'Drax 29'. That trial is in York Crown Court and it's important that it receives lots of publicity, as climate change is the most important threat ever to face humanity. I believe that these individuals are bound to be looked back upon as brave heroes with insight, not criminals, and their claim that causing a little bit of disruption or damage is necessary to draw attention to the importance of this issue. For an interesting take on the global crisis of too many people emitting too much pollution and possible 'geoengineering solutions, see this article by James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis, written in The Guardian.

I did a lot of 'house admin' today, including taking our meter readings to put on The Carbon Account, to record the household's carbon footprint. I really do recommend this way of keeping a check on your transport and energy-related carbon footprint. Join up and become my Carbon Account friend!!!

I had brought back a load of plastic tubs of grapes, each with a few mouldy ones and mostly good ones, so I sorted through and washed and blanched the good ones, balancing a tray of them on the woodstove to make nice little sweet (and free!) raisins...

Gill went to pick up our youngest from school and I got ready to go down to the station to get the 4.12 to Hull to attend the 'Co-operative membership Co-operation in Your Community meeting, which starts at 6ish in the Feren's Art Gallery. The idea was to let individuals and organisations know about the Community Fund, and as two organisations I'm involved in have received money from the Co-op, I was a speaker. I arrived a bit early and sat in the gallery reading my NewScientist, trying to catch up as I'm 5 weeks behind!

The food arrived and I ate heartily and hopefully healthily... and at 6.30 we were invited into the lecture theatre to hear presentations from Darren the local Co-op person, Stefan who told us all about the funding streams and how they work, and then three community groups who've benefitted from their money... Yvonne from Harrogate Car-Free Day on 24th September, David from Ryedale Special Families and Michelle and Becky from Goole's Hinge Centre. Finally, I did my bit!

Got the 8.56 train back to Doncaster, cursed when the possible connecting train up to York pulled out of the station as we pulled in, sat in the waiting room for over an hour (finished a NewScientist) and got the 11pm train back to York. Fortunately I'd made a friend on the train, a 20 year-old chap working as a night-time secyrity guard in York, so we chatted. Home by midnight...