rachel.blog

Tag: climate

  • Job losses at the University of Aberdeen

    Aberdeen University are calling for voluntary redundancies in a bid to save money. At this stage it is just voluntary but typically in these situations, if enough people don’t volunteer, they progress to forced redundancies. The physical sciences and mathematics are usually fairly safe so I think the chances of Ben losing his job are quite small,…

  • How whales change climate

    This is a wonderful 5 minute video about the many wonderful things whales do for our planet.

  • Enchantment on a bicycle

    It’s getting close to the shortest day of the year now and according to BBC weather, sunrise is at 8:36am and sunset at 3:26pm in Aberdeen. However it’s light at both of these times, I guess because we get the sunlight before the sun appears on the horizon and also after it disappears. The temperature range…

  • Thin Ice kickstarter campaign

    Thin Ice is a brilliant documentary made by geologist and amateur cameraman, Simon Lamb. I’ve seen it a couple of times and it’s my favourite climate science film. It’s informative, clear, and it doesn’t have the Hollywood drama of some of the other climate documentaries which is a good thing in my view. I think…

  • I will be a hummingbird

    This is a nice story with an important message. The world needs more hummingbirds.

  • Hot Air: New Zealand climate change documentary

    Another day, another climate change documentary. This one follows the story of New Zealand’s climate change negotiations which were first born back in 1989. Since then, like in most other places, New Zealand’s emissions have grown. However the challenges here are slightly different to those in other nations as renewable power already makes up more than half of the domestic…

  • The difference between weather and climate

    This is a great two-minute video in which Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the difference between weather and climate (h/t HotTopic). It’s a preview from National Geographic Channel’s Cosmos series. The difference between weather and climate is important to understand because people have a tendency to see variations in the weather as a reason to dismiss climate change. For instance,…

  • So this is it, we’re all going to die

    Ok, so we’re not really all going to die – not yet anyway – but the IPCC did release Part II of report number 5 last week and there’s lots in it which should be cause for concern. The first part – released last year – was about the science of climate change. This one…

  • Is climate change responsible for recent flooding in the UK?

    I’m not going to answer this question because I can’t but you can help to answer another question which is has climate change made extremely wet winters like the last in the UK more likely? Oxford University early this month launched the weather@home project which seeks to answer this question. The winter of 2013/2014 was…

  • Does climate change need a new agenda?

    I was speaking to some friends of mine recently about climate change (I know what you’re thinking, those poor souls). They understand and accept the science of climate change but were not particularly interested in the topic or its solutions. One thought wind farms were ugly and the other felt the answer lay with reducing…

  • Ethics and journalism

    There’s an article in the Financial Post today titled, “Arctic sea ice back to 1989 levels, now exceeds previous decade“. The author is Lawrence Solomon and he goes on to say that arctic sea ice is higher today than on April 14th, 2013. He ends his article with, “The only evident trend in the ice,…

  • A world of giant snakes

    Once upon a time, crocodiles roamed the arctic1, along with turtles, fish and other warmth-loving creatures. How do we know this? Because bones from these animals have been found there. The bones of a Champsosaur – an extinct crocodile-like animal – were found in the high Canadian Arctic by researchers from the University of Rochester…

  • Factors besides CO2 – Myles Allen and Wally Broecker

    A great video (<3 minutes) from Myles and Wally about how other factors can modify the impact of rising greenhouse gases. Myles Allen is a Professor in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department at the University of Oxford. Wally Broecker is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

  • Peer review and hot cross buns

    Ben Martin is going to explain how academics get their work published in peer-reviewed journals. He is Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Auckland. He is also an associate editor for the Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society and has himself published a number of peer-reviewed papers. Rachel: Let’s say, you’ve written a paper. You…

  • My plan for our planet

    There are expected to be 9 billion people on this planet by the year 2050. I may be one of them. Without sounding too much like a brainless beauty-pageant entrant, I hope that one day, we might see an end to world poverty. But is this view inconsistent with the part of me that also…

  • How do you analyse horse shit?

    I can’t resist posting a link to an article I read in Desmog recently. It includes the contents of a letter written by environment editor of the SMH, Sam Cubby and sent to an Australian climate change conspiracy theorist. He begins, “In considering your request that I identify errors in the report you sent to…