Intrepid Science Blog

At 8pm yesterday, my family and I joined the world for an hour as we turned off the lights as part of Earth Hour, an initiative launched last year by World Wildlife Fund Australia in Sydney. A relatively small event in 2007, it has kick started a global phenomenon that has become far larger than anyone seems to have anticipated. It’s estimated that some 30 million people took part last night, representing some 26 cities and 300 other locations from across 35 nations. Sydney during Earth Hour Starting at 8pm local time in Suva (Fiji), the lights went out across the west Pacific. Two hours later they were turned off on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. After another eighteen hours had passed, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge was plunged into darkness. It was an inspiring evening. At 8pm across 14 different time zones, people turned off their lights and other appliances. It seems to have captured the imagination of people and groups around the world: Parliament in Canberra turned off...

The great American mechanical engineer Frederick W. Taylor once said “It’s easier to make a reporter into an economist than an economist into a reporter.” I must confess I’ve often sympathised with this view; I’ve often found it rather hard on the grey matter to follow the reasoning of some economists. I can see they have a series of logical arguments but getting my head round all of it in one go is often a challenge. On the 12 March I was fortunate to find a seat in a packed lecture at the University of Exeter where economist Professor Lord Stern of Brentford spoke on getting a global deal on climate change. This was not a dry, hard-to-follow monologue on the minutiae of economic theory. Instead, Lord Stern gave a lucid and convincing talk on the challenges we face in minimising the the risks of significant climate change. The economics were there but it was refreshingly understandable. Lord Stern is arguably best known for heading up what is known as the Stern Review ; publishe...

Grass root strategies for minimising our impact on the environment are developing around the world. One of the most inspirational initiatives being developed in the UK are Transition Towns, with the southwest England town of Totnes being the first of what are now many. Here, Chris Turney talks to Naresh Giangrande about the pioneering work involved in making Totnes a Transition Town (often shortened to TTT). Totnes High Street Chris Turney: So what is a Transition Town and how did the initiative begin? Naresh Giangrande: Totnes is the UK’s first town exploring how to prepare for a carbon constrained, energy lean world. TTT is a community-led initiative which is working towards the creation of an Energy Descent Action Plan for the town. The thinking behind TTT is simply that a town using much less energy and resources than we presently consume could, if properly planned for and designed, be more resilient, more abundant and more pleasurable than the present. The p...

You might be forgiven for opening your Sunday newspaper and thinking the world was saved. The announcement from Bali that the international community had agreed a roadmap for negotiations on climate change appears to be a momentous event. On the face of it things look like they’re going in the right direction. Unfortunately, however, the agreement has a long way to go. Essentially the 12,000-strong contingent in Bali had a meeting to agree to have another meeting. There was no explicit statement on cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 as the European Union had hoped. Why? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just won a Nobel Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change” (NobelPrize.org). Larsen B, 2002 (Antarctic Peninsula) Their message couldn’t have been clearer: human activity is having a significant impact on the w...

It was around 18,000 years ago that the climate pendulum swung in favour of warmer times. The Earth continued to orbit the Sun as it had done through the ice age but summers in the northern hemisphere started to see a little more warmth. At first, it was just a glimmer; a little extra warmth here and there. Over the next few thousand years, however, the heat from the Sun continued to rise inexorably over the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. The effect was striking. Temperatures rose 4° to 7 °C and many of the ice sheets in the north began to melt. In North America, the Laurentide Ice Sheet persisted longer than most, although by 9,000 years ago it was a shadow of its former self. As the ice shrank back to the Hudson Bay, some of the water ponded up inland over what is now central north Canada, building a vast lake known as Lake Agassiz. It was only a matter of time before the ice barrier gave way. The Black Sea Sometime between 8,700 and 8,200 years ago the dam ...

It’s been a mixed news week for greenhouse gases. After last month’s ‘revelation’ that levels were dangerously high, there is a glimmer of hope that it’s not too late to act. But crucially, a new piece of work shows the window of time for dealing with the problem is becoming increasingly small. A natural offset to warming On an Australian Broadcasting Corporation program called Lateline it was suggested that greenhouse gases were now beyond the level considered likely to cause dangerous climate change. Although the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is dangerously high, this is just part of the story when it comes to warming our planet. Other factors also play a role in controlling the temperature of our atmosphere and some of these help to cool things down - a phenomenon known as ‘Global Dimming‘. One example is sulphur dioxide given off during volcanic eruptions; this can react with moisture in the air to form a fine mist of sulphuric acid droplets. These aerosols...

Imagine a world of wildly escalating temperatures, apocalyptic flooding, devastating storms and catastrophic sea level rise. This might sound like a prediction for the future or the storyline of a new Hollywood blockbuster but it’s something quite different: it’s our past. In a day and age when we’re bombarded with worrying forecasts for future climate, it seems hard to believe that such things could come to pass. Yet almost everywhere we turn, the landscape is screaming out that the world is a capricious place. The problem is if we don’t tune in, the message is lost. We need to decipher the past and learn from it. George Washington heroically crossing the Delaware In some parts of the world, a few early snapshots of the weather, recorded by enthusiasts, help us. In the eighteenth century, an interest in meteorology was highly applauded. You didn’t have to be hairy and middle aged. A clean-shaven and young Thomas Jefferson kept a weather journal; from this we know it was pret...