Week 8 - Final week

8.11 Reflections

Week 8 - Final week

Important themes this week included appreciating the uncertainties which accompany climate forecasts, particularly forecasts of ice melting and hence sea level rise, and how much/by when we will act to curb fossil fuel extraction.

The greatest hazard facing UK (as we've seen this winter) is flooding, which could have a dramatic impact upon population centres including London, as well as reducing areas of prime agricultural land for growing food. These in turn will severely impact our economic system.

I was pleased to achieve 29/30 in both of the quizzes, although I needed to do a little research!

It was rather sobering to update the number of times the Thames Barrier has been closed since I first investigated this in Week 3 on 27th January. I shall be watching closely for news of further government actions to protect London from flooding.

Regarding the course as a whole:

I am already actively working to build resilience to climate change in my local community, through involvement with Transition in Kings (TiK) (www.transitioninkings.org) and Grand Union Community Energy Ltd. (www.guceltd.org)

At 73 years old I am not overly concerned about remembering all the facts and figures covered in the course, although I'm pleased to have learned several new concepts in the science of climate change, such as ocean acidification and urban heat islands, as well as gaining a better understanding of the uncertainties which accompany predictions.

Two new ideas will be particularly useful in future Transition work: the application of Carbon Budgets as a spur to action in a locality, and the individual Carbon Footprint Calculator on the DirectGov website.

Week 7

Activity 7.3 - Building design near you

A building or part of an urban landscape that indicates a design that is adapted to a changing climate.

A well-known building that has been adapted to a changing climate is the former Ovaltine Egg Farm in Kings Langley, Herts, WD4 8LR. In 2002 the farm buildings were converted into headquarters offices for Renewable Energy Systems Ltd. (RES)



The building is now known as Beaufort Court, and as you would expect, the conversion incorporates a number of features which adapt it for climate change.

A comprehensive description of the building can be found online, but the main features are:

Energy generation

225 kW wind turbine (visible from M25 motorway)
54 sq m of hybrid photo-voltaic / thermal (PVT) panels
116 sq m of solar thermal panels.
5 hectares of 'Elephant Grass' to fuel biomass boiler in winter
75m deep borehole for cooling in summer

Energy storage

A large underground seasonal heat store allows heat generated from the PVT and solar thermal panels in the summer to be used later during cold weather.

"Greening"

The inner office areas are covered by a grass roof
Boxed Hornbeam trees in front of windows provide shade in summer, and allow light into office during winter.

Activity 7.8 - Reflection

Week 7 covered three main themes:

1. The huge variety of factors that must be considered when designing new buildings to survive through expected climate changes, and even more when looking at making existing buildings more resilient
    
2. Advantages of bottom-up approaches for gaining acceptance of renewable energy systems which change the appearance of familiar landscapes and buildings, compared with top-down approaches which generate resistance to change
    
3. An example of "carbon budget" approach, whereby everyone in a locality can see how their own actions contribute to reducing carbon emissions.  I think this approach can be usefully applied where I live.

Clearly, mastering all the aspects of building for climate change is obviously a lifetime career!

I hadn't realised the extent of UK government efforts which stem from the Climate Change Act of 2008, such as individual Departmental Climate Change Adaptation Plans, Energy Roadmap to 2020, Technology Strategy, Building Regulations & materials, Planning guidance, and so-on. I wonder how well these plans have survived under the government's austerity programme.

As someone who suffers more than many from cold, it hadn't occurred to me that keeping cool in summer is likely to be more important than keeping warm in winter.

I was puzzled why there seem to be relatively few campaigns against wind turbines in our local area. On a recent flight over Portugal we could see large numbers of turbines on every hill, and I was told that 70% of that country's energy demand is no met from renewable sources.

However, our area is relatively flat and average wind speeds are below 7m/sec, which seems to be a critical factor, so there aren't many locations where turbines are financially viable around here. The turbine at Beaufort Court shown above may have been approved because it is near the motorway, rather than "beautiful unspoilt countryside".

Particularly useful documents this week are the Design for future climate and Beating the Heat, and the Guardian article by Rebecca Willis on developing the Lake District's carbon budget.

Week 6

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

Week 5

At my second attempt I got through the course (15/15 again) and here are my reflections:

1. Themes:

a) Besides reducing the amount of sunlight reflected back into space, loss of ice cover on land at the N & S Poles will cause large sea level rise, much greater than loss of ice cover on mountains

b) It is difficult to predict future loss of polar ice caps with accuracy, for example, Arctic sea ice has retreated more rapidly than expected. Hence it is essential to monitor developments closely and improve understanding of ice loss mechanisms at the poles.

c) Ocean acidification (OA) occurs because CO2 is being absorbed in sea water at faster rates than the production of carbonate ions through weathering of rocks and dissolving shells of dead organisms. The resulting chemical interactions leave higher concentrations of acidic hydrogen ions, reducing the pH value of seawater.

d) Invertebrate organisms will be slow to adapt to harmful effects of OA. They are at the bottom of aquatic food chains, so loss of these organisms will lead to loss of larger aquatic species.

2. Difficult:

New terminology & processes: positive/negative mass balance, basal lubrication, phytoplancton, chemistry of OA.

3. Interesting:

OA is a completely new area to me.

4. Research:

Proportion of world's population living in coastal areas likely to be affected by sea level rise:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/impacts/sea_level_rise/

5. Useful sites:

 

Wikipedia has many pages on climate change and related issues, e.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_the_Arctic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

Week 4

Reflections on Week 4

This week's sessions were about better understanding the physics and mathematical elements of climate models, and gaining an appreciation of  several geoengineering schemes for Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) as well as assessing the value of these schemes.

I successfully download the BOINC climate modelling client to my Linux laptop, but encountered difficulties connecting it to www.climateprediction.net via Gridrepublic. The client seemed to report there was no data to process on the tasks I selected.

Downloading the ZEMB spreadsheet was more successful, I completed 60% of the exercises before running out of time. However I did enough to understand the tipping points which might have caused the ancient climate to shift between "snowball earth" and ice-free conditions.

I find working with simulation models and spreadsheets extremely helpful to understand how models work and the role of different variables.

Wikipedia helped me find the number of "boxes" in HADCM3, and what is meant by "Ocean sulfur cycle enhancement". Pleased again to achieve 15/15.

The website at earthobservatory.nasa.gov has a fantastic collection of images, and useful articles on many aspects of climate change which we have already covered.

John Englart's Climate Citizen blog has an alarming article (http://goo.gl/zCTpkh) about very recent decisions by the Australian Government to develop coal mining at the Galilee basin in Central Queensland, coupled with destruction of part of the Great Barrier Reef to enable coal shipments. I am shocked that so few organisations are having such a huge impact, and would like to know about any campaigns to stop them.

Week 3

Week 3

I've devoted more time to this week (6 or 7 hours instead of just a morning) and was pleased to score well in the test.

My responses to previous sections were entered in the comments, so here are my reflections on today's course:

1. Most important themes:

I think it's becoming very hard for the average person to avoid "connecting the dots" between extreme weather events and climate change, but I also wonder whether our growing awareness could also be in part a result of today's global 24/7 news coverage? Would we have been so aware of hurricane Sandy, or Australian heatwaves, etc. 50 years ago? For example I didn't know that the North Sea surge of 1953 killed over 1800 people in Holland.

It was interesting to see the graphics projecting future temperature & precipitation changes with different future levels of CO2. It's amazing this information is all available online!

While I knew about the carbon cycle, I wasn't aware of the significant part played by the deep ocean.

2. Difficulties:

The questions in 3.4 were all phrased in the present tense, e.g "What places on Earth have experienced the largest warming from 1980-2004? Are the areas that are experiencing the most warming..."

The charts show future projections for 2050-2074, and I wonder whether "will have experienced" and "will be experiencing" would be clearer. Or did I miss something?

3. Most interesting:

I enjoyed looking back and remembering several extreme weather events in UK during my lifetime, and relating them to where they took place, and to the storms and rainfall at the time.

4. Further research: 

I used Google and Wikipedia to find out about the Thames Barrier, and potential future flood damage in UK. Between 1983 when it was built and 2000, it was closed on average twice a year. Between 2000 and 2010 the average was 8 times a year. During every one of 11 days this past January, it was opened before the high tide, and on one occasion the tide rise high enough to spill over the river bank wall at one side of the barrier.

5. Useful websites:

The World Bank datasets are a fantastic resource with a vast amount of economic and population data by country.

Friends of the Earth - www.foe.co.uk - have good booklets and reports to support local activism.

On that note, I attended a talk last week by Polly Higgins about her campaign for Eradicating Ecocide, and urge everyone to sign up here: www.eradicatingecocide.com/wish20/

Week 2

Monday 20 January

Ancient past climate

Water & water vapour played a key role, enabling the creation of life forms but also nearly wiping them out through at least two extreme temperature swings caused by positive feedback effects. See http://www.snowballearth.org/ & http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/ancient_earth/Snowball_Earth

BBC site noisily illustrates how extreme temperatures came about, and left evidence in rock formations.

Here is my feedback diagram:

Another course participant, Takver Takvera writes a climate change blog with a very full description of this process: http://takvera.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/exclimate-ice-albedo-feedback-mechanism.html

Recommended reading about climate records:

What are climate change records?

Met Office: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-change/guide/science/explained/observations

Rocks, ice cores and tree rings provide evidence for the state of the atmosphere at different times and locations, including temperature, amount of radiation and atmpspheric composition

How do volcanoes affect climate change?

Volcanos: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Aerosols/

Volcanic eruptions deposit vast amounts of dust in the atmosphere over large parts of the glove, causing increased albedo and short term reduction in temperature.

How is today’s warming different from the past?

"Natural variations" in the past several thousand years have not included the sudden rise in temperature accompanied by the similar sudden rise on atmospheric CO2 taking place over the past 100 years, and occurring even more rapidly today.

What is the role of isotopes in determining temperatures from the past?

Role of isotopes: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_01/

The rate of radioactive decay of isotopes can be measured very precisely, enabling samples of rock or ice which contain an isotope to be accurately dated, which in turn dates the climate evidence contained in the samples.

How have trees been used to reconstruct different climate variIce cores: http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Paleoclimatology_IceCores/ables across the world?

Tree rings: http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/principles.htm#1

The spacing and contents between the rings which grow around the tree every year, provide evidence of the amount of biological activity resulting from solar radiation, humidity and temperature during that year. Counting the rigs inwards dates each ring, or in older tree relics, carbon dating is used.

How can ice cores provide a record of atmospheric composition?

Ice cores: http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Paleoclimatology_IceCores/

Snow is deposited on the ice surface each year, and its texture and chemical compositon changes in summer and winter. As each layer of snow is overlaid by another, the lower layers become compressed so that many thousands of years of ice layers may be examined by extracting a deep ice core.

400 parts per million

Two things are remarkable about CO2 reaching 400ppm:

1. No previous climate records reached this level with similar rapidity,

2. It is correlated closely with the known output of CO2 caused by extraction and burning fossil fuels during the industrial era

The last time CO2 reached similar levels was during the Pliocene period between 3.3-3.0 mya, when the average climate was 2-3 degrees C warmer and sea levels were 25 m higher. The higher temperature resulted from near-complete absence of ice, however this period was marked by overall cooling and appearance of polar ice caps. It began with extensive forestation which disappeared as the climate cooled.

Reflection:

Disappointed to achieve 9/15 in the test, having dropped 6 points on the aerosols and proxy records. I should have gone for only one answer rather then try to find all the correct answers. Instead, I scored 0, and need to study the correct ones. I believe volcanic eruption and desert dust to be aerosols, and trees rings and ice cores provide climate proxy records.

Important themes: Climate history, how it has been determined, and causes of variation
Most difficult: Multiple choice questions with more than one correct answer - can I get a correct score with just one answer? Also, video segments include lots of entertainment but I get impatient looking out for the key points.
Most interesting: What kinds of changes or events cause positive feedback loops to stabilise and then  reverse? Volcanic eruptions, asteroid impact, Milankovitch cycles
Own research: Geo-engineering by seeding water vaapour - to do
Websites: Takver Takvera's blog at http://takvera.blogspot.com.au He has a whole day ahead of me to develop his website in Melbourne, but it's very impressive even so! I'm interested to see what other course participants are producing.