Cop26

Posted on October 29, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Celsius, Climate, cop26, Earth, global warming, Heat, Life, Temperature, Time, World7 Comments

Glasgow is about to host the climate change talks between nations to discuss how to prevent the increase in Earth’s temperature going on average higher than 1.5°C above pre industrial times.

Average means across the whole globe. But some area have been experiencing the rise of temperatures more. For instance a high temperature of over 18°C in Antarctica was recorded this year.

In other places people are trying to live at 50°C, halfway to boiling point. Weather systems are getting more fierce, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, forest fires, the melting of the permafrost. The extinction of insects and other animals and plants as they fail to survive the hotter conditions is increasingly worrying. The years after 2000 have been the hottest on record.

Let us hope that the politicians come together, stop denying climate change and get organised. Otherwise…. I don’t know.

The Trick, a review.

Posted on October 18, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged BBC film, Bbc TV, Climate change, global warming, Life, Review, The Trick, Thinking, Time1 Comment

I’ve just watched a TV programme about climate change called the Trick. I don’t know if you can get the BBC but it was very informative and interesting. It was about the way anti climate change supporters hacked into scientific information and twisted it to try and discredit the scientists. These were scientists who had produced the hockey stick graph which shows that global temperatures were relatively steady on Earth until the industrial revolution and then started a steep increase.

The Trick is based in 2015. A scientist and his colleagues are accused of exaggeration of global warming, based on emails that were hacked and deliberately misinterpreted to throw doubt on the reality of climate change.

The programme showed how the scientist had to defend his reputation and the serious harm it did to his mental health and to his family while investigations were ongoing.

In the end his insight was accepted. He was exonerated and he was reinstated in his job. But it did mean that public opinion was skewed and that it cost at least ten years in fighting global warming because of the actions of vested interests.

An intelligent BBC film that is very worth watching. Don’t expect car chases, do expect strong acting and thought provoking ideas.

Trees are lungs

Posted on January 9, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Ancient trees, Carbon Dioxide, Fires, Forest fires, global warming, Life, Oxygen, Plants, TreesLeave a comment

We breathe in breathe out…. Carbon Dioxide. But trees and plants breathe out oxygen after taking in carbon dioxide. Why? Because they photosynthesise. They turn gas and water into food and grow. Oxygen is a biproduct.

Looking at a tree in winter you can almost see the bronchial tubes of lungs, the alveoli would be the leaves in summer.

That’s why we need to plant trees not cut them down. In the Amazon and other rainforest millions have been cut down. All over the world trees and plants are burning, either at the hands of humans or through fires caused by global warming.

We must change this. We must care. Even my government is cutting down woods and forests for stupid fast railways and roads.

Not in my name is the phrase isn’t it?

Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent challenge today

Posted on August 11, 2020August 12, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged #uskstoke, Digital drawing, Environment, Excess energy, Flashes of lightening, global warming, Hot, Humid, Quick sketch, Torrential rain, Urban Sketchers, Usk Stoke-on-TrentLeave a comment

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Drawn on my tablet in a sketching app.

I didn’t write much because I continued to watch and video the storm. The little films are on my Facebook page, I might try adding them to my Instagram page too.

I’ve never experienced lightening like that. Like a pot on the boil, every couple of seconds there was a flash or actual forked lightening across the sky. Just checked Facebook. Someone’s power went out and their hair stood on end. More worryingly a chimney pot blew off. We then had torrential rain for a while. It’s quieter now but my friends in America said that it looked like the kind of storm they get in Arizona? Still a few bright flashes. Still hellishly hot and humid. Glad I unplugged my computer….

Australian fires

Posted on December 21, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Australia, Bush fire, Climate change, Fire, global warming, Life, South East Australia, Southern Australia, Sydney, Western Australia19 Comments

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I’ve been watching the news about the bush fires in Australia an it is awful and devastating. Not only are there hundreds of fires, but they have spread over a huge area. The started around Sidney which has been smothered in smoke for weeks. But then more have started in the West and South of the continent. The Southern hemisphere is moving into summer and the temperatures are rising. They have measured the highest ever temperature there in the last couple of days. Over 40°C and rising. The fires are being fanned by 40 mile an hour winds. They are burning out of control in some places, and the drought affected land is so parched there isn’t the water to put them out. I have friends out there and I worry for them. Meanwhile their prime minister went away on holiday to Hawaii and is only coming home because of the outcry from its population.

Blue horizon

Posted on December 7, 2019December 7, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Air, Blue, Clean air, global warming, Heating, Sky, Smog, Smoke, WorldLeave a comment

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Misty sea and sky, on the coast, this summer. I think we were staying in Wales, in Llandudno, before the fires across the world, before the yellow clouds of smoke obscured other peoples views. Before rainforest burnt in South America, or woods burning in Australia. People, animals, birds, need clean air to breathe, like the air at the coast. They need gentle breezes, or moderate winds, not storms that are getting faster, tornados that rip houses apart, hurricanes that drown landscapes, Tsunami and mega Cyclones. But we keep burning gas and electricity, chopping down forests.

The world’s scientists say we only have twelve years before we reach a tipping point where we won’t be able to stop global warming. Yesterday it was announced that Carbon Dioxide levels have risen again to something like 147% of what they were in pre industrial times. We knew about this in the 1970’s but no one did anything to resolve it….

Well this has got cheerful….

I don’t remember…

Posted on October 20, 2019October 20, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Consequences, Creative writing, global warming, Land, Life, Memories, Rain, Sci fi, Short story, Storm, Thought, Water, WritingLeave a comment

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I don’t remember it happening. It must have been long ago, before the sky fell, before the Mirohs arrived. When I was young?

The world had been burning, literally, fires everywhere. Ice melting. One day it was cold, the next boiling hot.

I don’t remember the day we reached 3..

Three degrees of global heating. They had said two was bad, but we got it even hotter. The seas won’t rise. My Mom told me that, it will never happen said Dad.

It’s all a blur. Running from the sea, trying to find homes in the hills. Millions crushed in the cities that were not on rivers…

They could have called it the great flood, but the papers said the sky was falling. What it meant was the rains and storms, so heavy they flattened towns in seconds, crops died. We started growing rice in paddy fields, it was the only way to get some sustenance in all the wet, dank weather.

Two years of hell passed. I was growing up and worked in the fields. All of the children worked. No schools, just back breaking work, bending and shoveling.

We hated it, but we were not polluting anymore. Life seemed to pause and take a breath…

Then the Mirohs came, an alien race. We saw their ship, huge, like a great storm cloud. They looked down at us. Like bugs we were to them. Then the killing started. The message, you didn’t care for your precious planet. So we will take it. Humanity is a pestilence. They put something in the water. Now no one can have children. In a hundred years or so…. We will be gone.

Will anyone remember us?

Climate change

Posted on September 20, 2019September 20, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Climate, Climate change, Engineering, global warming, Heat, WeatherLeave a comment

Walking round Trentham Gardens yesterday I saw a banana plant in flower, in this country, in mid September?! It is usually 5 or 10 degrees Celsius cooler than this.

The last four years have been the hottest in Britain (and the world?) ever. Climate change is a massive problem, its complex, but people are coming out on strike. Children have been showing today how much it means to them. Everyone needs to push the people in power to take action. To share technologies that reduce the need for power in the form of fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Sustainable engineering like wind and wave power need integrating into the worlds power grids. Solar energy should also be exploited. We have got to solve global warming fast if we can.

Candle light

Posted on March 27, 2019March 27, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Climate, Death, Environment, global warming, Life, Short story, Snow, Thought, Very short story, Winter4 Comments

The candle flickered and guttered as the front door opened. Jim entered the room with a flurry of snow. The cold air made a hole in the warmth.

‘You OK’ he asked? ‘Yes just about’ , said Sarah. ‘I kept the wood stove burning all day, but the power went out half an hour ago so I lit a candle ‘.

The weather had been mad since the 20’s. Global temperatures had continued to increase, but this winter had been wild. Snow had fallen for three months now. Sometimes they managed to get out to the shops, but they had to walk down the hill over the fields because the lane was full up with snow. It was one of those deep lanes which had been worn away over the centuries. The land around it was about 6 foot higher. In this snow it was impossible to get along because of the drifts.

‘So how many tablets have you got left?’ asked Jim. ‘Five’ she said. ‘I will have to get down to the village soon’ he thought for a second. ‘What about the weather?’

‘I heard the report before the power went off – bad for two days, then it might break?’

Jim looked at his wife, pale and thin. She was shivering with cold. ‘I’ll fetch you a blanket’ .

Later as they lay on a mattress infront of the wood burner, he looked at the ceiling and watched the last glimmers of the candle. He listened to her uneven breathing, a harsh rattle sometimes breaking into the rhythm of sleeping breath. ‘ Oh lord ‘ he thought, ‘let the snow stop, let me get her medicine, let things get better’ .

Three weeks later as the snow turned to rain, and the land flooded, the local police came looking for them. Inside the living room they found their bodies..

A note was on the table under a burnt down candle. ‘I can’t live without her’ was the simple message he had left.

Dawn chorus

Posted on February 23, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Birds, Birdsong, Black birds, Blue tits, Coal tits, Collared doves, Dawn chorus, Ecology, global warming, Great tits, House sparrows, Music, Nesting box, Robin, Singing, Wood pigeonsLeave a comment

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It’s twenty to five in the morning and I can hear birds singing outside on this cold February morning. We have been feeding the birds over the winter and last week my partner invested in an extra long bird feeding tube to accommodate them.

We have had house sparrows blackbirds, blue tits and great tits robins, and a tiny wren visiting the feeders. There are also wood pigeons and a collared dove that visits and a grey squirrel that hangs upside down from a branch and takes food from the feeders too.

When a blackbird sings its usually on top of the neighbours chimney or high in the branches of a tree. You can tell the age of a blackbird by its song. As it gets older the song becomes longer and has less repeats in it. Robins are also beautiful singers with sweet liquid notes which are a high volume considering how small they are. The other tiny birds make less interesting cheep cheep or tsee tsee songs, one makes a teecher teecher song, and there are individual whistles and tunes. There are sometimes magpies which chatter away. I always know if the blackbirds have been disturbed because they make a loud pink pink pink noise to confuse predators such as cats.

In fact urban birds are apparently louder singers because of having to sing above traffic noise.

This year we have bought an extra nest box and placed it in the ivy next to the window. This offers cool shade when the sun gets hot in the spring..

Well I go back to bed now as the chorus seems to have died down. Other early things happening are blue bells coming into flower in February (they are in a box by the house) there must be a bit of a microclimate but everything, including the temperature, seems too soon this year. Maybe it’s to do with the jet stream and global warming?

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: global warming