24.09.13 Check out this vid, Reading Climate Action Network:
Reducing your greenhouse gas emissions by 7% per year on year for seven years.
All who live, work or study in #RDGUK are invited to get involved @ClimateRDG http://sdrv.ms/1b8OOJM
Author: Deslin
Climate change: Challenges and solutions — University of Exeter — FutureLearn
This course aims to explain the science of climate change, the risks it poses, and the solutions available to reduce those risks.
Join this course, Starts on 13 January, Duration: 8 weeks, 3 hours pw
Watch the trailer
The course will set contemporary human-caused climate change within the context of past nature climate variability. Then it will take a risk communication approach, balancing the ‘bad news’ about climate change impacts on natural and human systems with the ‘good news’ about potential solutions. These solutions can help avoid the most dangerous climate changes and increase the resilience of societies and ecosystems to those climate changes that cannot be avoided.
EDUCATORS
Tim Lenton
No previous experience or qualifications required
via Climate change: Challenges and solutions — University of Exeter — FutureLearn.
Reading 2050: Revealing Reading’s Potential
Following our inaugural Reading 2050 networking event for young property professionals, this report examines Reading’s standing in the UK, areas where the town could be improved and ideas for development going forward.
Barton Willmore have compiled thoughts and ideas from the June networking event alongside some interesting statistics on Reading in the Reading 2050 Introductory Report.
REVEALING READING´S POTENTIAL
You can download the report here: http://www.bartonwillmore.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GA-Reading-research-doc-version-3D-low-res.pdf
Journalism and Climate Change: A conversation about this bad…faunkime.com
There are some big changes happening on the ol’ “Brace For Impact” blog and I thought I’d introduce them myself in my first ever “vlog!” It’s a bit long, for which I apologize, but as they say: “If I’d had more time, I would have…
Tipping Point from Faun Kime on Vimeo.
UN-Water – Water Thematic Consultation report
This report is a result of sifting through and distilling the hundreds of contributions made in response to dozens of practical questions raised during the 6-months “World We Want” stakeholder consultation. Recommendations emerged for a new development framework that calls for reducing inequalities around water through rights-based approaches to service provision and governance. These approaches should integrate the management of water resources and wastewater, and improvements in water quality, requiring all sectors to break out of their narrow silos.
Download the report here: The Post 2015 Water Thematic Consultation (69 pages)
http://www.unwater.org/downloads/Final9Aug2013_WATER_THEMATIC_CONSULTATION_REPORT.pdf
via Welcome to UN-Water.
Empire State Building
Future Research
After nine months of extensively studying and evaluating the Empire State Building, the project team has discovered several research topics that could help accelerate greater carbon savings across the U.S. and global existing commercial building stock.
The project team realizes many other groups and projects are attempting to address similar issues. To comment on your work in these areas, please email info@esbnyc.com, and we will update the research site accordingly.
- Developing the Business Case and Approaches to Capturing Tenant Energy Savings
- Broadening the Types of Retrofit Energy Efficiency Measures that are Commonly Adopted
- Diagnosing When to Retrofit or Retro-Commission a Building
- Optimizing the Whole-Building Retrofit Process
- Your Comments on Energy Efficiency Research in Commercial Building Retrofits
via Visit > Sustainability & Energy Efficiency > Process: Future Research | Empire State Building.
Science and Engineering for Sustainability: New One World Trade Center
Panoramic view of new OWTC
Source: Architecturaldigest
Green building
OWTC incorporates not only new architectural and safety standards, but new environmental standards as well, setting a new level of social responsibility in urban design. According to the New York Port Authority, the OWTC has already been certified to LEED Gold and will set the global standard for sustainability. Once the building is fully operation, it’s expected to draw as much as 70 percent of its power from green energy. Some other green facts are:
Fuel cells, waste steam recycling, harvest rainwater, landscaping with more than 400 trees, waste material recycling, use of green cement, renewable wind and hydro power energy, indoor air quality, daylighting, low water bathrooms, green port a potties
References and Further Reading
Green facts about New York’s new one world trade center
via Science and Engineering for Sustainability: New One World Trade Center.
Letter from the Chairman of Balcombe Parish Council | Balcombe Parish Council
Letter from the Chairman of Balcombe Parish Council
Posted on August 12, 2013 by balcombe1
Over next weekend, from 16th to 21st August, the No Dash for Gas protest group is planning to hold their Reclaim the Power action camp somewhere in Balcombe. As yet the location for the camp has not been disclosed and remains a mystery.
There have been reports in the media and on the group’s website that they will be here in response to a call from Balcombe to protect our interests. I have yet to establish who, if anybody, issued this invitation. It most certainly was not the Parish Council, and the local anti-fracking group, NoFibs, has confirmed it was not them.
For perhaps too long I have been sitting on the fence balancing the opinions in our village and tolerating extreme views, but the time has come to speak up.
Whilst villagers have voted that we oppose any future fracking and whilst having respect for those who wish to protest peacefully, there are three issues that arise from the intentions of the No Dash for Gas group.
Firstly will the camp itself be a trespass?
Secondly, and making the first pale into insignificance by comparison, is the promise of direct action on Monday 19th August to stop the drilling by acts of civil disobedience. It is likely that this will include an attempt to enter the site and physically stop the operations, an action that could result in injury to people on either side of the fence and /or to the police.
At a public meeting held last Friday evening the group sought to justify such actions on the grounds that the company that is drilling is acting illegally and that in consequence illegal actions to stop it are justified. This is quite simply not the case. Like it or not, the drilling operation is entirely legal. All the necessary permissions and permits have been sought and are in place.
Thirdly the group seeks to legitimize such actions by saying that whatever is done is in response to Balcombe residents’ call for help. This is just not true.
So here it is. Balcombe strongly opposes any actions which may be taken which involve civil trespass and/or illegal acts. And I further state this, if the No Dash for Gas group is coming here in the full knowledge that it intends to break the law then it should stay away. It is not wanted in Balcombe! It is duly uninvited.
Alison Stevenson
Chairman
Balcombe Parish Council
via Letter from the Chairman of Balcombe Parish Council | Balcombe Parish Council.
The sound of the flare
Fracking in Sussex – What is Fracking?
Fracking in Sussex – What is Fracking?
@DECCgovuk “Just don´t believe what you read on the Internet”~Francis Egan was not right. Information is Knowledge STOP F-g IT’S OIL OVER #Balcombe
Source BBC
Write to your MP
Write to your local councillor
Pls show a little support to the Community Villagers #Balcombe over the weekend (majority voted against fracking in the BPC).
Pls RT facebook-Climate Change Centre Reading (CCCRdg) Pls “Like” us by visiting our new page https://www.facebook.com/CCCRdg #Balcombe #fracking