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Showing posts with the label Climate Change

Climate Change: the cooling solution

The Cooling Solution is a photographic and scientific project that aims to show how people are adapting to high temperatures and increasing humidity across different countries, cultures and socioeconomic conditions. It was featured in today's Observer.

Passed the point?

  Since June, there has been an acceleration in the number of stories related to the climate emergency and some frightening weather extremes and hazard events. The scale of events is increasing, return periods are narrowing and unprecedented data points are being recorded in places from the extreme North to the extreme South and everywhere in between. I started a new blog today which has been brewing up over the summer break as I saved stories from my news feeds as draft posts to work up into completed posts. It will be a place for a mixture of pessimism and optimism. Of news items, mapping, culture and a diverse worldview. There will be some cross-posting from this and other blogs. Have we passed the point of no return?

Eastenders Credits Sequence

I was alerted to the fact that the end credits of Eastenders on Wednesday this week were subtly (ish) changed to act as a trailer for Frozen Planet II. You can see the video of the credits here. The new end credits saw London’s East End transformed to show the river Thames bursting its banks with parts of the capital under water in a hypothetical scenario of what London could look like in the future. It then zoomed out to capture a satellite image of the Arctic and point to the last episode of Sir David Attenborough’s series, underlining the message that the challenge of melting ice in this frozen region could one day affect us all close to home.  

New comic: Everyday Stories of Climate Change

A few years ago, I made use of a comic which had been created by Gemma Sou, working with an illustrator called John Cei Douglas, called 'After Maria'. It was useful during the lockdown to encourage students to consider the impact of a hazard. There is a new comic that has now been made available which contains a series of Everyday Stories of Climate Change - vignettes of places which are affected by the Climate Emergency. This has been developed by Gemma again, but this time it has been created with the help of different people. Travel to Bangladesh, South Africa, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, & Barbuda to discover how low-income families experience climate change, & their strategies to adapt & recover.  The comic is based on research by Adeeba Nuraina Risha, Gina Ziervogel & Gemma. Illustrated by Cat Sims. It can be downloaded from here.

An Hour before it's Dark

Out today... I bought Marillion's first album on the day of release in March 1983, and saw the band play live quite a few times, including some early gigs with Fish... Grendel and all. The new album came out today, and references climate change, COVID, Greta Thunberg, blood diamonds in Sierra Leone and a whole range of other issues of the modern day, with a reminder that as well as being kind to ourselves it might be better to be hard on ourselves... Interestingly, I'm seeing Tangerine Dream later this month, and their special guest guitarist for the final improvisation session of the concert is Steve Rothery: the Marillion gutarist. Here's the video for the opening track: 'Be Hard on Yourself'

Svalbard's Cultural Heritage

This has been threatened by the Climate Emergency.  

The Last Igloo

This was shown on BBC4 last night and can be found on the iPlayer currently. An excellent film following an Inuit hunter in Greenland as he heads out into the landscape surrounding his home town to hunt and fish, and constructs an igloo for shelter. It explores the threats to this culture from the rapidly changing climate as sea ice thins and traditional skills are lost.  The opening scene where he says goodbye to his daughters as they play on their smartphones, before heading out to harness his huskies was a lovely way to set up the cultural changes taking place, and the drone filming of the landscape was incredible. The music was also excellent:

Arctic Icebergs

A nice piece in the Geographical magazine on "artist and geographer" Nick Jones.  He travelled up to the Arctic to paint icebergs in the Arctic Ocean and the results are rather wonderful. Check them out.

Drawdown by Ben Sheppee

  Coming to King's Lynn for the next month or so... This consists of projections which will be shone onto 4 key buildings in the town between next weekend and the end of November. I shall be heading over once the clocks have gone back to take a look at this... More details here. The impact of the 2020 national lock-down has shown us that change can be made and some positive effects have been experienced including people commuting less and becoming more aware of their environment… Can this be the beginning of an influential change? The work aims not to emphasize the problems of climate change, but highlight some of the solutions and provide empowerment through awareness. The project draws on research from Drawdown, a 2017  comprehensive plan to reverse global warming , developed by an international coalition of leading researchers, scientists and policymakers. Their report ranks the top 100 ways to reverse climate change, with #1 being the most effective in sequestering carbon ...

The new urgency of climate change - Al Gore

"Getting informed consent from 7.8 billion people who have no voice and no say, who are subject to the potentially catastrophic consequences of this wackadoodle proposal that somebody comes up with to try to rearrange the entire Earth's atmosphere and hope and pretend that it's going to cancel out the fact that we're putting 152 million tons of heat trapping manmade global warming pollution into the sky, every day that's what's really insane." New from TED for June 2020. An important interview with Al Gore. I remember 'An Inconvenient Truth'. The coronavirus brought much of the world to a standstill, dropping carbon emissions by five percent. Al Gore says keeping those rates down is now up to us. In this illuminating interview, he discusses how the steadily declining cost of wind and solar energy will transform manufacturing, transportation and agriculture, offer a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear energy and creat...

Climate and Nature Emergencies Poll

If you teach, or parent young people - or you are one yourself, please fill in this survey - the more respondents the better. Thanks in advance. We have a new  Geographers for Life @Geo4Life Twitter feed too, where we will be releasing the results of our work. Loading…

New Poetry prize announced by Simon Armitage

"I’ve always written poems about the area where I live, and my interests in things like the Antarctic and the Arctic and geography generally, all those subject matters are shaded now by the environmental situation."  Simon Armitage is a geographer, and the Poet Laureate. He grew up near Huddersfield, where I studied for my degree. His job carries a salary of £5000, and he has announced a new Poetry prize called the Laurel Prize for works on the theme of the environment and climate change. He has a lot of geographical credentials. He produced an excellent book around a visit to Iceland with Glyn Maxwell, following an early journey by W H Auden. He created some excellent radio programmes with a geographical theme, including one on the volcanic island of Surtsey His book 'All Points North' explored conceptions of the north. He has produced two books describing long distance footpaths and his experiences of the Pennine Way and the SW Coastal Path. He rece...

Carbon City Zero Game

Carbon City Zero is a new Kickstarter project which is developed by the people behind 10:10 Climate Action. It's a card game which explores the idea of carbon reduction. Here's the description. As a newly appointed city mayor you have been tasked with creating a carbon neutral city. It sounds easy, but you'll soon discover that your carbon budgets are hard to balance. Can you hit the zero carbon target before your rivals? The race to become the first zero carbon city is on... Carbon City Zero is a deck-building game for 2-4 players, in which players develop a sustainable city by building factories, managing people, lobbying government ministers, and raising public awareness. Each player starts with an identical Draw Deck (and a Carbon Level of 40), buying additional cards from a shared Marketplace to create a more sustainable city. Balancing the need to generate income with reducing carbon, players can follow numerous paths to victory, creating synergies between Gov...

UN CC Accreditation - put your school on the map

There seems to be a growing consensus now about the importance of teaching climate change in schools. And from my personal perspective, and Steve Brace of the RGS agrees , it's perhaps the geographers who are best placed to do that within the curriculum. However, all curriculum subjects could bring their own perspectives to the issue: the scientists exploring the atmosphere, mathematicians exploring the data behind changing temperatures, the English teachers studying appropriate books, and Historians exploring the Little Ice Age and the widespread impacts of previous changes in climate over a short time period. You may also have other ideas of how your subject can support the teaching of climate change. Are you on the map of climate change teachers yet? It may be that the summer is the perfect time to go through the accreditation, or perhaps you prefer to wait until the new school year? The accreditation involves a range of quizzes, following working through a series of m...

Research informed work on Climate Change - thanks to Saffron O' Neill

You'll have noticed a Climate Change trend appearing in recent posts on the blog perhaps, following my starting work as a UN Accredited Climate Change teacher which has meant a lot of behind the scenes work to develop some new support options which will be made available to all schools in time. This is a critical time for influencing public behaviours, and ensuring that students are aware of the realities of Climate Change, which is going to change the world they live in, and require certain changes in their lifestyle, purchasing, transport options and potentially far greater changes. I've been following up various leads to new Climate Change resources, which are different to the norm. Saffron O' Neill replied to one of my requests for help with some research she is doing on how  people view Climate Change, and how it is represented in the media. She developed some work about how people respond to climate change. The tweet I saw was this one... Paper just accep...

Climate Change and Landscape change

Another Climate Change related post. Permafrost is thawing around the Arctic. This interactive website explores the impact of this on the landscape, and on the people who live within it. Excellent work by the Toronto Star. It includes a quote by Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit environmental, cultural and human rights advocate and author of the book ' The Right to be Cold ', which I have a copy of, and is excellent. "Our identity is strongly linked to the ice, cold and snow. Our right to hunt, our right to health, our right to educate our children, our right to safety and security … in fact, all of our human rights as Indigenous peoples would be minimised and destroyed by climate change.” Here's Sheila talking about this aspect of Inuit life.

Show your Stripes

We have been using the warming stripes for some time in our department, and I also have a natty warming stripes tie. I shall be wearing it on Friday when we Show our Stripes It's time to #ShowYourStripes by visiting: https://t.co/xZmp3uP2OQ ! We have made warming stripes graphics available for virtually every country, and including US states and UK regions. These are free to use however you like! These are my #warmingstripes : England (1884-2018). pic.twitter.com/v5C6GD3koL — Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) June 17, 2019 Ed Hawkins is behind the stripes. He has created a new website where you can download stripes for your own home region. We will all be wearing the Stripes on the 21st of June. Posters are up in the Geography Classroom. Stickers are printed for everyone to wear. Annual average temperatures for England from 1884-2018 using data from UK Met Office. Graphics and lead scientist: Ed Hawkins , National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading. Dat...

Weddell Sea Expedition 2019

I've blogged about the Weddell Sea Expedition before, and it's now underway, and has been getting quite a lot of coverage as well.  It was on today's ITV Local news. The Agulhas II is the vessel which is heading for the Larsen C ice shelf to explore the huge berg which broke off last year, and carry out other research, with an additional aim of trying to get to the area where Shackleton's ship 'Endurance' sank. Follow the expedition's Twitter feed here. Visit the expedition's website. The RGS has created some really excellent resources to accompany the exhibition. These include maps, lesson resources, videos and other media . An impressive effort. I've also got some copies of the posters which are being sent to all schools by the RGS-IBG. Image: copyright SPRI and other expedition partners - sourced from Facebook conversation "We've just received our expedition kit after arriving safely in Cape Town. The first of three fl...

Lost ice and lost meaning

A New York Times article which has a relevance for the work I am doing on Polar regions at the moment, but also a tremendous resonance about the connection between people and ice. I will be adding this to some articles from the ' Earth' magazine , which explore the changing lives of Inuit hunters, and the changing landscapes they now need to navigate. “Inuit are people of the sea ice. If there is no more sea ice, how can we be people of the sea ice?”

Ice Flows Game - my current project

I've spent quite a bit of time over the last week or so working on a new resource to accompany the IceFlows Game which was developed by Anne Le Brocq of Exeter University. Follow the Twitter feed @iceflowsgame to find out more... The game is available online, and also as an app. It is taking shape now, and should be completed by the end of the month and available for download. The game models the processes going on in ice shelves and ice sheets, and there are plenty of associated resources that will form part of the pack, to help explore the implications of them melting away. With Larsen C close to breaking off to form a huge iceberg, this is an area that is likely to make the news in the coming days.... Why not take a look at the game in the next few weeks as an end of term activity Update Larsen C finally calved a huge iceberg yesterday, just as I was finishing the first draft of the resource pack. There is a tool to measure just how big it actually is by comparin...