The international monetary fund no longer wants to leave carbon business to the world bank: Its director Dominique Strauss-Kahn announced at the WEF the IMF was working on
a set of proposals to create a multi-billion dollar “Green Fund” that would provide the huge sums—which could climb to $100 billion a year in a few years—needed for countries to confront the challenges posed by climate change.
Given the great record of the IMF in devastating countries of the global south with structural adjustment programs, this can only be considered good news… (remember the financial crisis in Argentina, anyone? Or Somalia? Keep reading →
While publications from the World Wildlife Fund that are referenced to in the last IPCC report have recently received some public attention, sources related to corporate (eg nuclear) interests seem to be of no concern – even though they are used to sustain more central claims than the infamous WWF report. The IPCC’s claim that nuclear energy “is therefore an effective GHG mitigation option” seems to be entirely based on reports by nuclear corporations and their lobbying organisations….
Chuck Norris makes nuclear power plants safe - and carbon neutral...?
An error in the IPCC’s fourth assessment (AR4) report (well explained here) has recently been reported by a number of newspapers and caused some excitement within the blogoshpere (mainly amongst climate sceptics, who claim they ‘do not believe’ in the scientific evidence of global warming that is due to human activities such as burning fossil fuels): Keep reading →
I started reading for an essay in one of my modules that is supposed to answer the question why carbon trading has become the policy instrument of choice in global climate policy (I chose this topic out of a list of proposals) and discovered quite a number of interesting things – the nice little details about people first helping to set up carbon trading schemes for UN organisations and then making their money in carbon trading business, but also some deeper facts I wasn’t fully aware of:
The story of cap and trade – nice clip explaining some of the problems around carbon trading
Right now, there is a number of articles in English online-media about (more or less) scientific knowledge speculation about (intelligent) extraterrestrial life. What happened? Any new reports about humans meeting aliens? No, the royal society – a very well-established body of scientists – is holding a conference on extraterrestrial life, that is admittedly announced in a slightly sensational manner on their homepage. Does that mean they can be blamed for journalists turning this into
It is the classic sci-fi scenario: discovering aliens, not in outer space, but right here on Earth, sitting next to you in the workplace, serving food in your local restaurant, or, scariest of all, in your own home.
The premise might sound like the film Men in Black, but this week it will consume the great minds of science at a meeting of Britain’s most venerable institution, the Royal Society.
… was clearly the winning question in yesterday’s game evening on european geography. Wrongly assuming that Zaragoza (Saragossa) had something to do with the Sargasso sea, which in turn I vaguely knew was some part of the Atlantic ocean, I still got the conclusion right: Zaragoza is west of Valencia. I won the game, by the way.
I also got my coursework back – the three pieces I wrote down and handed in in a rush before leaving for Copenhagen – and not all of them are rubbish. Unluckily, I got the worst one back first Keep reading →
back, in Norwich, back at uni and finally back on my blog – I haven’t updated it since a bit for a number of reasons, but if people are still interested, further updates may follow.
So, what have I been doing all these weeks? I went to the UNFCCC climate change conference cop 15 in copenhaguen, there is a number of reports out there in the internet, so I’ll just point out some that might be interesting for you: A report I wrote about the big march on december 12, an article I wrote some days before, and a video of the solidarity demonstration at the end of the summit. After another two weeks in Germany, Keep reading →
and I will be on a coach back to the continent, heading to the COP15 summit in Copenhaguen. Really strange feeling – three weeks isn’t a long time at all, especially compared to the amount of coursework to do until then. But that’s not what worries me – I rather feel as if I had not even arrived properly and was already leaving again (and I will be away for almost a month, two weeks at the climate summit and another two in Germany). A year in a different country probably isn’t such a long time any longer as it was when you were nineteen and just leaving a school – but Keep reading →
When coming back from the Fell Club mountain leader training in the peak district this weekend, I felt like coming home to Norwich for the first time (I spent two other weekends away before, but never had that sensation of arriving back home before). And yet I still feel like someone studying abroad, not where he is really living. Too much of my life, of what makes me happy or sad still happens in Germany, although I’ve got quite some things to do around here: studying – with people I catch on with quite more easily than with average chemistry students in Bremen – Kayak and Fell Club, where I met quite an amount of interesting people as well, Keep reading →
Yes, this was week six of my first term at UEA – and a term only has twelve weeks. I handed in my second piece of coursework (a review about ice dynamics in Greenland and Antarctica – great but scary topic) and I am working on a worksheet and a lab report for weeks 7 and 8. After that, I’ll pass to an essay, a lab report and my modelling project, all due in week 12 but a bit more challenging than the earlier pieces. Today, it has been raining all day, but not that much – when I went for a half-an-hour run round the university broad, I got wetter from sweat than from rain. Notice it’s haloween – Keep reading →
This weekend, I went on my first trip with UEA Fell Club – some interesting things probably happened last week, but they are somwhat overwritten by that wonderful weekend in my memory. According to the fotos in my camera, there was a least one sunny day I used to take some nice pics of UEA. Apart from that, I’ll mostly tell you about the weekend: We met at uni at five – I was in quite a hurry preparing my stuff and just arrived few minutes before five. I almost joined a group of people in outdoor gear standing around a minibus, but then realized they had ropes and helmets – that was the rock climbing society, not fell.
The other people with rucksacks were fell people, however – we had to wait for the minibuses a bit, Keep reading →
