Latest posts
Lobbying – what’s missing from the olive oil debate
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If you haven’t heard yet, you probably live under a rock or in a cottage in Northern Finland – the EU is to ban restaurants from serving olive oil for dipping in bowls from 1 January. Instead, olive oil has to come from tamper-proof bottl...
Nucleophobia strikes again
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It’s the second anniversary of the Japan earthquake and the resulting problem with the Fukushima nuclear plant. A quick reminder, this earthquake, and the Fukushima problem (which was contained as well as possible), caused such a surge of &ldqu...
The rains are coming
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If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend Louis Bromfield’s The Rains Came, a story about an overly strong monsoon in colonial India. This is a riveting, and astonishingly useful read, considering that extreme rainfall events are likely to...
Why Kyoto is not a total failure
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Much ado this week about the weak outcomes of the Doha climate negotiations. It’s been disappointing, on the whole, to see so little progress in the negotiations. As usual, there was lots of talk about commitment, but little action. But the on...
Critical, not cozy—Why warm Earth is not good
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Anyone else got the feeling that climate change deniers have shifted their patterns? They don’t actually deny climate change anymore, which, I guess, could be seen as some progress. Instead they acknowledge it, but say that it’s not a problem, be...
Greenhouse gas concentrations reach record
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World Meteorological Organization warns that greenhouse gas concentrations have reached 390 parts per million in 2011, that’s 140% more than the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million. Link The ugly truth: never before has the greenhouse...
How clean is your house’s international trade record?
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As a western European country, the UK might pride itself in its efforts to lower emissions. And there has been success on this front. Carbon emissions in Great Britain have fallen since 2008, following a steady increase for over 100 years in line wit...
How corporate greed hinders climate action
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I just want to draw your attention to this brilliant article on Mother Jones (courtesy of my class mates): Solnit on Climate Change: Our words are our weapons Says it all!
An encounter with the skeptics
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Phew! I have actually started university. You may have noticed that it’s gone a bit quiet around this blow. I’ll do my best to keep posting. For my last lecture I had to deal with climate skeptics, which was a really … interesting...
Less cow is like driving a good car
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My course is starting next week, so I am frantically reading up on everything climate-changey that I can get my hands on. While perusing the Wiley’s research paper database I came across an amazing fact box on meat consumption and CO2 productio...
Sea levels rise by 3mm a year – new data
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Just a quick post to highlight some new data from the European Space Agency. Global sea levels have been rising by 3mm a year in the past 18 years, according to satellite data gathered by ESA and the French space agency CNES. In some areas, sea lev...
The poisoned tea of global warming
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There’s been two scary news items this week – the first one being that coral reefs are declining much faster than previously expected, the other one is about research showing that the North Sea is warmer than ever before (both in German).
Don’t phase out nuclear power now – but do it soon
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Checking the news this morning I come across a story on Severe Abnormalities founding Fukushima butterflies. The implications of this make me cringe. The Fukushima nuclear incident has long been held up by nuclear power supporters as proof that the t...
Earth is NOT too big to fail
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Does it also annoy you when climate sceptics, or even just those who suffer from a sparsely furnished upper storey, tell you they don’t care about human impact on nature, because “the Earth is just sooo big. There is no way human life could hurt...
Eurobee migration
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Hello readers, I have just migrated all Eurobee content into this blog, so it’s all coming together now. Dear Eurobee followers, I will continue to write about the EU, so stay tuned. Dear Climate Change readers, you might be interested in the o...
China ups the game on solar panels
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Just a quick note to draw your attention to the fact that European solar panel producers have submitted a complaint to the European Commission about price dumping from Chinese producers. The complaint is being led by the German Innovationsallianz Fot...
Fueling the biofuels debate
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The German academy of Sciences, the Leopoldina, has issued a report on biofuels that is going to add some fuel to the debate. The report issues several warnings about this fuel source, saying that it is unlikely to be sustainable, and may not be as...
The importance of small things
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There is an inherent problem with conservation – only big is beautiful. It’s the large, well-known animals that get the attention. The potential extinction of tigers, polar bears, dolphins is what gets people worried about global warming,...
ShellFAIL – a story of love and hate
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If you haven’t yet checked out #ShellFAIL on Twitter, please do so. It makes for an interesting story of attack, shock and backlash. I’ll summarise: Greenpeace produces fake video of Shell PR stunt going horribly wrong (widow gets sprayed...
