Notices by Helen Czerski (helenczerski@fediscience.org)

I have just discovered that those odd waste/recycling bins that are all over the oldest bits of Bergen, Norway, link to an UNDERGROUND PNEUMATIC WASTE TRANSPORT SYSTEM. The waste collects for a bit and then WHOOSH... it's off to the recycling centre. All underground. No bin lorries (garbage trucks), fewer road vehicles, less noise... amazing. @davidho says that my (considerable) excitement about this is entirely unreasonable. I disagree.
https://www.envacgroup.com/how-it-works/the-envac-system/

#climate #waste #Norway

Ooh, look... for International Womens Day, Fully Charged is offering 50% off tickets for women to the Everything Electric shows is London (28th-30th March) & Harrogate (24-26th May).

These shows are all about the future of clean energy & transport - home heating, micromobility, wind power, an electrified world, but also just better ways to live sustainably. Do join us!

"Use code WOMEN for 50% off tickets* to Everything Electric LONDON and Everything Electric NORTH! "

https://everythingelectric.seetickets.com/content/ticket-options

University College London shoutout! UCL is unwilling to set up a Mastodon account now, but they say that if there's lots of UCL presence here already it will nudge them in this direction. If you're at UCL or know someone who is, and you're on here, please reply to this to let us know! Current chief plotters: @sellathechemist , me and maybe more)

#UCL #Mastodon #Universities

Reading about the history of river regulation for this week's Rare Earth, and you've got to love the practicality of early English laws:

"A statute... from the 12th century declared that English rivers be kept free of obstructions so that a well-fed three year old pig could stand sideways in the stream"

#law #river #pigs

Just found a new (to me) psychology phrase: "pluralistic ignorance". It refers to people holding one view but mistakenly assuming that the majority of others hold a different view, so they keep quiet. Very relevant for climate change action, where lots want action but think they're in the minority.

#climate #science #action

And for anyone who still thinks that nuclear power is automatically the best way to a low-carbon future, I encourage you to read the brilliant description of what happens to nuclear waste in Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis and consider whether it really is worth it.

Also read the rest of the book - it's essential stuff for understanding the modern world.

#nuclear #energy #waste #books

I've been meaning to post this pair of books for a while. They complement each other perfectly with everything you need to know about the material world - both where it comes from and where it goes to. Both great, but the combination is even better. They're both brilliantly written & a joy to read (well, from a writing perspective - the message isn't always comfortable).

#books #climate #environment #science #materials

The key point that I think a lot of engineers still don't get is that their job is not about making widgets that get plonked on top of the world. This is about changing the shape of things inside a working system (Planet Earth) to shift how it operates. Those widgets become part of that system - it's like operating on a living human. The engineers of the future mustn't see their job as creating things external to the world. #science #engineering #climate #Earth

I look forward to the day when we have to explain the oil industry to the next generation in the same way that our history teachers explain that yes, it used to be common to use lead in makeup, to smoke on planes, and to teach workers using radioactive paint to lick their brushes.

#science #oil #history

Maybe you all knew about this, but @davidho has just introduced me to this useful tool for expanding your Mastondon world:

https://followgraph.vercel.app/#searchForm

It looks at the people you follow and the people they follow and ranks them by the number of follows from your followed. Hopefully you will find some people who were on here all along but who you hadn't found yet - I did.

#mastodon #network

The UK oil industry has mostly operated in near-invisibility, and now it's time for it to go. So what actually is this thing that needs to be dismantled? The second episode of our 4-part IQ2 podcast series on all this is out now, asking who *owns* oil.

https://www.intelligencesquared.com/tides-of-transformation/

If you think oil should go (and I do) you need to know what we're up against. Making this was fascinating, because this is the stuff that tells you where the effective levers are.

This is a horrendous decision: Rosebank, the largest untapped oilfield in UK waters, has been approved by the UK government. This comes via the regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority, which is in severe need of reform.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a podcast series about the structure and ownership of the UK oil sector, because this is essential understanding for dismantling it. It’s been eye-opening, but empowering. It’ll be out in 2-3 weeks.

#Rosebank #oil #climate

Listen up, UK. THIS is how you do bikes on trains. Well done Germany.
#bikes #train

The solution to “autobesity” is NOT to change car parking spaces. It’s to fix the root of the problem and get rid of these over-sized, wasteful, dangerous and unnecessary vehicles.

“More than 150 car models are now too big to fit in average car parking spaces, according to analysis conducted by Which?.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/26/more-than-150-car-models-too-big-for-regular-uk-parking-spaces?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#cars #cities #SUV

An academic colleague, a bio-engineer who builds artificial heart valves, just said to me that he likes this sort of engineering because it’s about repairing and maintaining existing systems (the human body) rather than just building new widgets. It had never occurred to me that a far better attitude to what engineers are for already exists in the engineering world. I think that all engineers working on anything related to climate should also have this attitude. #engineering #sustainability

Some questions that should be asked about every new piece of tech:

- Does it actually work?
- What are its side effects, especially for ecosystems, communities and the physical/chemical state of the natural environment?
- What’s the lifetime carbon cost?
- What’s the lifetime energy cost? If renewables, how much capacity is that taking away decarbonising the grid?
- Will scale-up cause damage?
- Who benefits most from it and who will control/regulate it for the public good?
#climate #tech

“By announcing hundreds of new oil and gas licences, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has become a “dangerous radical” pursuing “moral and economic madness”.

That is not the judgment of Just Stop Oil, or any other environmental campaign group, but the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/31/new-oil-gas-licences-rishi-sunak-un-climate-crisis?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#climate #oil

The evidence that cars don’t work as primary mass transport in cities is everywhere: traffic jams, air pollution, accident rates, the shocking fraction of city space taken up by parking spaces, safety barriers/bollards etc. This 100 year experiment should be declared over, and we should put proper effort into the systems that HAVE been shown to work and scale: walking, cycling, e-cargo bikes, cheap/accessible/reliable public transport. This “argument” about LTNs is just lazy delay. #LTN #cities

So many reasons for forbidding deep sea mining, but I think one of the biggest is also least discussed: accountability. Yes, some mines on land are bad, but we can look, check, demand explanations. In the deep sea, it’s incredibly hard to track actions/impacts. If miners behave badly when seen, how badly will they behave when invisible? #ocean https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/james-cameron-supports-deep-sea-mining-activists-say-its-a-disaster-whos-right?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Very good point made at a launch event yesterday for UCL’s new Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education - we might teach the Industrial Revolution in schools as a critical transition period, but really, it’s 1950 onward (the “Great Acceleration”) that really made the biggest difference. Why aren’t we teaching that in history classes?

#climate #education #schools