If you fancy a leisurely drive around a new city…

Choose from any of 872 at the last count.

It’s a bit like the ‘view-from-my-window’ site. This one I find absorbing and relaxing in equal measure; all remaining powers of concentration must be ebbing away quickly now :(

https://drivenlisten.com/city/?typ=Drive#

Telescopes and Meteorites

I still find it hard to get my head around the ingenuity and technology involved in sending a probe to an asteroid, collecting a sample of it, and safely returning some of the material back here for analysis. A recent lecture here at Jodrell Bank helped a bit…but it’s still mind-boggling.

Anyway…radio telescopes are always good photo-porn.

Bluebells & Flamingos

It’s bluebell time again and the local bluebell woods are resplendent. I love this time of year.

In other news, up until yesterday I had no idea what colour a flamingo’s kneecaps were. Nor their feet. Now I do…they’re pink, and the rest of the legs are grey.

See…this is why I never knew. They always stand in water that deep, just to keep me guessing.

Goodness me...

Two years passes very quickly. Much water under the bridge.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I should either step up the pace in posting here or just pass on the bloggy stuff on the internets altogether. I have enough of a problem trying to keep Day One up to some sort of date.

It’s not as though there isn’t anything to write about!

Anyway…memo to self; try to do better, more frequently.

<Time Passes>...

…as it all too easily can.

Here’s a thought:

Focus only on the next move. The next move makes the future easier or harder.

Book Reviews

In an effort to improve both quantity and diversity of reading, I’ve been reviewing books on Goodreads for a while. It seems to be working if the number of completed books is anything to go by.

More recently I’ve accessed some advance review copies of forthcoming publications and am working my way through these, posting reviews as I go. Here’s one I put up today for The Carbon Almanac, a collaborative effort that’s due for release in the next few weeks that will be of benefit to all.

I commend it to you (the book, not the review.)

The Carbon Almanac - Glynn’s review.

Fixing poverty 101

The average carbon footprint of the top 1% of emitters on the planet is more than 75-times higher than that in the bottom 50%.

Lifting hundreds of millions of people out of “extreme poverty” – where they live on less than US$1.90 per day – would drive a global increase in emissions of less than 1%.

Here’s why.

Starter for 10...so, why don't we?

The Cost of War

Someone on LinkedIn asked me about this and I sent a comment…this is the more fulsome version:

Supply chains aren't my thing really, but I'd say overall that, as far as the UK is concerned, our global supply chains have held up pretty well throughout Brexit and the pandemic. So, I'm naively optimistic that common sense will prevail and accommodations will be made on all sides to keep (most) things flowing. However, it's not clear to me how nuts Putin has become, and whether all sense of pragmatism and reason has disappeared. If that's actually the case then things could get very, very difficult for all of us, very quickly.

Assuming that he can keep his hand away from the big red button, we face the prospect of many people struggling desperately with the very high oil/gas/energy prices that will inevitably be with us for some time. Building out renewables and nuclear is not going to happen overnight - it's something we should have been doing for decades (along with insulation, conservation, education etc.) But we haven't...and we don't seem to be able to move fast enough.

Lots of oil and commodity price volatility and the continuing increase in disparity of income between the 'rich' and 'poor' will require thoughtful, intelligent governance. That is something that, to my mind, is way beyond the crowd we have in place at the moment.

1.5 degrees by 2050 is beyond us now, and it will take a miracle to hold things to less than 2 degrees. If that in and of itself wasn't sufficiently catastrophic, we now find ourselves drifting into an even more parlous state because some nostalgic monster from the Cold War thinks that invading a neighbouring country or two is going to make the USSR great again. Aside from the human cost and misery, the loss of trust and engagement between nations (or rather their governments) will set us back further.

I think we're heading into the final stages of one of the 'big' cycles that Ray Dalio writes about so powerfully, and it couldn't be happening at a worse time given the global challenge we face with the climate crisis, and the global solutions we need to agree and implement to fix it.

Tunisia

Fascinating - I visited and worked in Tunisia a lot in the noughties; his picture was everywhere. The BBC has acquired taped calls off Ben Ali’s final hours in ‘power’.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172xv32n7tyzxq

It just goes from bad to worse…

I wrote this to make myself feel better, but I may as well share it...life's too short and I'm too old to need to bother about upsetting people.

Anyone with a passing interest in politics will know things are getting choppy. For saddos like me, who've followed things fairly closely since 2016, things have inexorably gone downhill and, in the last 6 months, they've become terminal for Johnson - culminating in this evening's announcement of Frost flouncing out of cabinet due to creative differences. Johnson is wholly unsuited to be a PM...always was....he'll never change.

With the possible exception of Gove (who has other significant defects) Johnson's 3rd rate government ministers are dysfunctional, divisive and grasping lickspittles, any one of whom would be thrown under a bus by Johnson in a heartbeat if it suited him.

Those naïve enough to think of him as an asset, a breath of fresh air, someone doing his best in difficult circumstances, well think a bit deeper next time. Anyone who understood what the deal was but just went along with it for self-advancement, well shame on you.

'Getting Brexit Done' was an inane slogan that could never be made real. We never can or ever will 'get it done' - our modern, JIT, interconnected supply-chain real world just doesn't work like that.

My point?

Whichever way you look at it, despite 50% of us feeling or having been persuaded otherwise, for a modern 21st century UK, Brexit has become, and always was for those of us who made an effort to think it through from the outset, a really REALLY shit idea.

COP26

I was asked to write down some thoughts for an upcoming conference series, starting next week.

So I did.

The recent IPCC report could not have put it more plainly. Without immediate and sustained deep cuts in emissions of GHGs, curbing global warming during this century to 2C (let alone 1.5C) above pre-industrial temperature levels will be out of our reach. Things are that bad.

A rise in sea-level, too much or too little precipitation, a lack of availability or the human and financial costs of accessing clean water - all will affect us in ways that we can only begin to imagine. Temperature rise on this scale will have devastating consequences for the earth's water and the ecosystems that depend on it. Whether it be in our rivers or oceans, underground or at the tap, pump or well, our water is vital for life and for the wellbeing of all flora and fauna on the planet.

It's clear that a voice from the water sector should form a critical piece of the political jigsaw which will influence the leaders of countries and businesses. We need to encourage and support them to put in place and enact the policies and regulations that we will be depending upon to fix our climate problems. Unless we work and succeed in turning their current rhetoric into reality, as individuals we betray ourselves and hand our children an earth that, increasingly, we will be unable to recognise. The saddest thing is that we understand the problem. We understand what needs to be done and we have the technology available to us that can address it.

So now we must act, and quickly.

Availability, access, storage, production, distribution, use, treatment, habitat and the amenity value of water - all play a unique and pivotal role on our planet. In the run-up to COP 26, please join us in helping to craft a Call to Action on behalf of everyone who cares about the enormous contribution that water will play in our gathering climate crisis.

Influence the discussion and focus the urgency of our feelings into a statement of intent and commitment - something that will require a hearing and a response from those who are able to influence and make the decisions to deliver the massive short- and longer-term adjustments needed, in the all-too-short time still available to us.

Join us in capturing all the necessary water climate-related issues, help us to brainstorm solutions, and commit to a Call to Action. Click through to register for the conference, beginning next week:

https://rsc.andeye.com/WCD

Play your part and help us to make change happen...before it's too late.

It really is perilously close to the last chance we'll have.

Puffballs

Puffballs are not something that you’d instinctively reach for when considering Sunday dinner.

However…

When you see them for sale at a farmer’s market and you’re feeling edgy (as pensioners do from time to time) then why not?

An interesting dish, which would have been much improved (and vastly more calorific) by frying off with a really well seasoned breadcrumb coating.

One for the fading memory banks and probably not to be tried again prior to receiving the Queen’s telegram.

Puffball1.jpeg
Puffball2.jpeg

Tomorrow’s IPCC report…

…will no doubt make the hairs on the back of our necks stand on end. We really do have to get our collective shit together very soon.