Tag: climate
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Fed up with hot and dry
I miss winter. I truly do. Yes, I like watching the garden come to life in spring and the buds blossom but I love the muted lighting of winter more and feeling the cold air on my cheeks. It has been hot and dry here. It has been the driest first half of summer for…
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Why do they get all the space?
At the Sustainability festival last weekend I received one negative comment that has been on my mind ever since. Overall the community was very supportive but one person approached me and said indignantly, “Why do they [cyclists] get all the space?” I was unsure how to respond because all I could think of was this cartoon.…
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But I once saw a cyclist go through a red light …
Why do people feel the need to tell me this? It’s not my job to defend cyclists who go through red lights just as it’s not my job to defend motorists who go through red lights. Or motorists who drink and drive. Or motorists who speed. Or motorists who go the wrong way down a…
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Recap of the Sustainability Festival in Aberdeen
I had a great day at the Sustainability Festival in Aberdeen yesterday. I was there with Hoss, my new e-cargo-trike, and lots of literature from Cycling UK. The very lovely Fiona from Cycling UK also came to lend a hand. I was amazed by how many people had not heard about the campaign for a…
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Sustainability
I’ve been thinking a lot about sustainability recently both through my work at Award Force and also on a more personal level. It has become fashionable for corporations to talk about sustainability and I think, when done sincerely, it represents the best of humanity. I know there’s a certain level of green-washing where corporations will…
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McPiggy and the meaning of life
Aberdeen Climate Action recently had a competition to design a mascot. Children completed entries at Climate Week North East earlier this month and the runner-up is my favourite. Meet McPiggy who eats plastic and poops paper. Designed and illustrated by the 8-year-old Ashton. I thought of McPiggy this morning when I read about a true…
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Growing your own food
Climate Café no.5 was on in Aberdeen last night. If you live in Aberdeen I highly recommend this series. It’s an initiative of Aberdeen Climate Action, a community organisation for which I’m a volunteer, and we are spreading inspirational messages to encourage our communities to tackle the problem of climate change. Inspirational is absolutely the…
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Living without a family car
It has been three years since we dispensed with the family car and I don’t regret it, not even a little bit. Car ownership is governed by the same law that rules chocolate: when there’s chocolate in the fridge it will be eaten and when there’s a car in the garage it will be driven,…
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Aberdeen’s Climate Café Series
About 6 months ago I started volunteering for a local community organisation dedicated to inspiring real action on climate change. The organisation is called Aberdeen Climate Action and my first task has been to build them a website which promotes sustainable living. It’s still a work in progress but it’s looking good so far. Feedback is…
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Is Donald Trump right to claim unfairness over Paris?
There’s a brilliant article from Peter Singer in Project Syndicate this week about Donald Trump’s whinging over the unfairness of the Paris climate agreement. Trump is basically the fat kid who ate 3/4 of the cake and then complained that it’s unfair he didn’t get more while 3 other kids shared the 1/4 remainder between them.…
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$5 million up for grabs!
I thought I’d share this. It appeared in my Twitter feed yesterday and even if you have no intention of participating there are some interesting questions there. How are we to solve the problems of today? Humans are good at solving problems but so far we’ve failed to address the problem of climate change despite…
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Greenhouse gases: not just a bunch of hot air
I saw this last week on the Australian Sydney Morning Herald site and it’s good and needs to be shared. It explains the greenhouse effect and how we can tell it’s us making the planet warmer in less than 4 minutes.
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Frozen
We had our first frost last week and there’s another heavy frost this morning. I went outside to take some photographs. It’s very pretty. I used to miss frosty mornings like this when we lived in Auckland. Here are my cyclamen surrounded by frozen leaves. Can you see the pink flowers? Despite the frost in…
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Old people don’t care about climate change
I saw this video last night on Grist – Old people don’t care about climate change – and it was funny yet there’s some truth to it. Unfortunately I can’t post it to my blog so you’ll have to click through to Grist and watch it there instead. I really like Grist.org. They have an interesting assortment…
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Castle playgrounds and central heating
Yesterday I booked a car and took the kids for lunch and a play at Drum Castle. Drum Castle is displaying some of the art from Aberdeen Art Gallery while renovations are underway at the gallery and so the castle is now open all through the winter. It’s so nice to be able to go to a castle for lunch…
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The sun came out
Daniel said to me yesterday as we were cycling home, “Why is it sunny? It’s not usually like this”. I laughed so much I nearly crashed into a parked car. It has been a particularly dark winter this year with lots and lots of rain and even flooding. However I don’t mind the dark at all.…
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Interview with Professor Kevin Anderson – part 1
I enjoyed watching this video interview with Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research in Manchester (Thanks to Manchester Climate Monthly). It’s about the recent Paris climate talks. From what I understand, although the Paris talks resulted in a very ambitious target – 1.5°C – there’s no plan to actually reduce our…
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Global meat consumption
I saw this graph in my Twitter feed today. It comes from an article in the World Economic Forum: I’m not surprised to see Australia at the top but the numbers are still mind-boggling – 93kg of meat per person, per year. I almost doubt their accuracy but the numbers come from here. They’re extraordinary and…
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The age of science denial
A commenter on the …andThenTheresPhysics blog has shared a terrific excerpt from a 100-year-old science book by Huxley and Gregory he found in his attic. It’s about the greenhouse effect and how we knew way back then that adding CO2 to the atmosphere would increase the surface temperature on earth. The atmosphere surrounding the earth…
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Cousins, Provence, wine-making, and climate change
I’m back in Aberdeen after an amazing trip to France for my sister’s wedding. We landed in Aberdeen last night to heavy snow! I’m feeling very tired today and think I need a holiday to recover from my holiday 🙂 I got these nice photos of the cousins together yesterday: As we drove back through…
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