These are the five defining questions of the next 20 years, according to the British government’s chief scientific advisor John Beddington. As a one page summary of the challenges we face, I think it’s pretty good. HT Duncan Green
Archive | August, 2010
Plankton, oxygen, and how little we really know about our planet
A few weeks ago I read a book called Seasick, which looked at the effects of climate change on the oceans. In it, I learned that plankton create 50% of the world’s oxygen and are a major carbon sink, but that we don’t know how warming waters and rising Ph levels in the seas will [...]
What we learned this week
Half of the world’s supplies of helium are stored in a natural reserve in Amarillo, USA. The reserve is being privatised, the helium sold off at a flat rate, and this market distortion means we could well be all out of helium in a few decades. Hold that balloon tightly. A 100 kilometre traffic jam [...]
Poll: help choose a new strapline
You’ve probably missed it because it’s on a more obscure post, but there’s been a long and heated discussion about Make Wealth History on this post. We’ve gone back and forth on climate change and growth and all sorts. It’s been a helpful discussion, and it’s reminded me of a couple of things. One of [...]
London’s bird city
Not sure what the human residents will make of it, but the wildlife should appreciate it – artists have created a bird city in the trees on an estate in London. It’s part of a series of ‘secret garden’ art projects that highlight the biodiversity of the city, and it should provide a home for [...]
Christians and catastrophe, by Johnathan Ingleby
As a christian I’ve often been disappointed at how slow the church has been to catch on to environmental issues, something I’ve written about elsewhere, but I was pleased to hear about the book Christians and Catastrophe. Not only is it addressing the above question, it’s from a new imprint that specialises in marginal voices [...]
Keep space tidy: the space debris problem
Having written about the Atlantic trash patch earlier this week, I thought I’d highlight another little known pollution problem: space debris. In 2008 the European Space Agency released this image of the known pieces of debris orbiting the earth. Of the millions of fragments out there, about 18,000 are larger than 10cm and trackable, and [...]
Upcoming events
I’ve just been updating the events pages, something I don’t do quite often enough. A few interesting things for your diaires: First up, put down the 10th of October as the 10:10 global day of action, and check out the website for activities near you. I’ll come back to this one, but look – they’ve [...]
The Wilberforce Award – because endless growth is not sustainable
There’s been an unexpected twist to the economic growth debate in the last couple of weeks, with the launch of the Wilberforce Award. Australian businessman Dick Smith has offered $1 million to “a young person under 30 who can impress me by becoming famous through his or her ability to show leadership in communicating an [...]
The North Atlantic garbage patch
The Pacific gyre has received a fair bit of attention in recent years – the great floating ‘seafill’ spirallying between the US and Japan. Last week scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute confirmed that there’s one in the Atlantic too. A new study compared 22 years worth of water samples and found a comparable [...]
Books
No data found
