Intrepid Science Blog

To shamelessly pinch a Mikado song title from Gilbert and Sullivan, there’s a bit of a how-de-do going on in Britain at the moment.  The UK Government has been saying for some time that the nation must significantly reduce its carbon footprint. In 2003, it pledged to reduce the country’s 2050 emissions of carbon dioxide by 60% and has hinted this target might be increased further. As part of the country’s long-term aim to achieve major reductions, the Government recently announced that it would increase the tax on fuel by 2 pence a litre (the first since 1999) and raise the excise duty on high-emission vehicles by £200. From these new initiatives on fuel and vehicles, the UK Government is estimated to raise somewhere on the order of £2 billion. Wouldn’t it be great if this was actually used to make a greener Britain? Unfortunately, with oil hitting $135 a barrel and the fear that production has peaked, the country is feeling the high costs of UK living on the back of a credit cru...

I’ve just finished reading a fascinating research paper in this weeks issue of Nature .  Researchers in Germany, headed up by Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, have looked at the importance of circulating water in the North Atlantic on global temperatures .  By running a climate model that included the natural rhythm of the ocean they’ve investigated what might happen to future temperatures. What they found demonstrates once again just how important natural climate variability is in the debate about global warming.  Before we look at the new results we need to understand how ocean circulation has an influence on the world’s temperature. The global conveyor belt When travelling around Britain you’ll often read tourist brochures waxing lyrically about the virtues of the Gulf Stream and why it makes the western coastal resorts so unusually warm for their latitude. Usually there’s a picture of something that’s mistakenly described as p...

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 ...