Although I know London tends to be warmer when I visit the city, I did not know about Urban Heat Islands, or why measures to counteract them can be so effective, such as trees and green spaces, or painting roofs and other surfaces white. Surely, solar panels also reflect infra-red rays back into space?
Today in UK we're already seeing the impact of climate change on food production, with large areas of prime agricultural land submerged below the water in the Somerset Levels, Thames Valley & Kent. Some estimates say it will take well over a year for the land to dry out and become productive again.
It started me thinking that perhaps food security is an even more urgent issue that climate change. The farmers who have been forced to leave the Levels appear mostly to produce dairy and beef products, which humans can live without, at least for much of the time.
I had a small difficulty in the quiz: Prof Gurr's transcript says that pathogens are moving towards higher latitudes at 7km per year, rather than 3km per year in the quiz. Which figure is correct?
I spent some time revisiting books I read in the 1980's about food supplies, such as Buckminster Fuller's "Ho-Ping Food for Everyone", and more recent writings on Permaculture from the Transition movement.
Once again, Wikipedia has a good body of articles on Agriculture, incliuding on Permaculture, Polyculture, Aquaponics. The UK government initiated a project to reduce food waste, which has excellent suggestions for reducing waste - see WRAP Waste & Resources Action Programme - http://www.wrap.org.uk
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