pdf version: blog2 I have an admission to make: I’m a weather freak. I find the daily weather bulletin (dwb) as riveting a read as Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy and browsing through climate statistics as exciting as watching the IPL final. There was a time when watching the evening television weather forecast was the highlight… Read more »
CSAG student blog
Medicine for the planet… or ourselves?
So far, several geoengineering options have been proposed to counter the effects of global warming. Anders Sandberg, an ethicist at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, recently considered a ‘safer’ route: although (admittedly) not entirely serious about the idea, he thinks that human engineering poses less danger than altering our planet through radical geoengineering options…. Read more »
The road from Copenhagen… Renewable energy in SA: how are we doing?
Citing President Jacob Zuma’s pledge at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, South Africa promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 34 % in the next decade and 42 % by 2025 (with support from developed countries with regards to finance, technology and capacity-building). However, due to the large uncertainty surrounding the… Read more »
Learning from history: moving towards clean energy
In the April episode of his ‘How to Talk to an Ostrich’ climate change series, Richard Alley (the renowned climate change scientist and activist) discussed that a shift to clean energy can be achieved, using an analogy from 18th Century Scotland. In short, the story deals with a Londoner visiting Edinburgh and being confronted with… Read more »
Extreme weather: The frontier of human climate change acceptance.
frontier |ˌfrənˈti(ə)r| noun the extreme limit of understanding or achievement in a particular area The impacts of climate change pile up in the extremes. This is the opening line in the IPCC video “In Harm’s Way” for the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate… Read more »
Losing perspective on carbon-footprinting: misuse and misapplication
In 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) urged hospitals to reduce their carbon footprint as the health sector is one of the most energy-intensive sectors (click here for article). Now it seems that not only hospitals must reduce their carbon footprints, but certain GP practices in the UK (and doubtless in other parts of the… Read more »