Climatebase Fellowship - Week 2

Learnings

Climate History

  • The history of climate change science mainly revolves around dead white men
  • Eunice Foote mentioned again
    • We don't have a photo of her
    • If you do a search another woman shows up
    • Still a middle class white privileged lady
    • Did not realize the importance of her discovery
  • Svante Arrhenius
    • Distant relative of Greta Thunberg
    • Did climate maths on the side
    • He was actually worried about the world getting colder
    • Thought burning coal would be a positive
  • Guy Stewart Callendar noted a 0.3 degree temperature increase in his lifetime
  • Roger Revelle ran the first funded, professional climate science project
  • Wallace Smith Broecker published a paper in 1975 which popularized the phrase "global warming"
  • We've been left with a mess, but we've been left with resources
  • Often the debate is framed on science, but we also need to look at people

Global Politics

  • Let's switch the view of Africa being a problem to a solution
  • Africa has creativity, youth and growth to offer
  • Doesn't make sense to make decisions without the people most affected in the room
  • Global north is bound to the fate of the south
  • Should biggest polluters pay reparations for crises in other countries?
  • The story of the hummingbird and the forest fire

Climate

  • CO2 is being released at the fastest rate in the last 66 million years
  • Extremely hot days are around 150x more likely than they used to be
  • The biggest greenhouse gas emissions are: carbon dioxide (76%), methane (16%), nitrous oxide (6%), hydrofluorocarbons (<2%), perfluorocarbons (<1%), sulphur hexafluoride (<1%), nitrogen triflouride (<1%)
  • Drawdown is the point where greenhouse gas emissions start going down
  • Main sectors where emission reduction is required are: electricity, energy, food, agriculture, land use, industry, transport & building
  • There is already hundreds of billions private climate funding. But it's not enough, we need a lot more & huge public funding
  • Transport is over funded right now in comparison to other sectors
  • If people cared, they'd do more is a myth
  • Climate change association with mental health is now well known
    • Sometimes called ecological grief / anxiety
  • Coral has annual spawning event when eggs are laid
  • Closing the ozone layer was a very successful goal
  • Carbon credits can be an excuse for not changing destructive behavior
    • But its not possible for all companies to meet net 0. That's where offsetting can help

People

Speakers

Fellows

Links

Misc

Articles

Interesting companies

Climatebase Fellowship - Week 1

Learnings

Climate

  • Climate change discovered all the way back in the 1850s, by an american woman - Eunice Foote
  • Emission cuts should make up about 96% of the distance to net 0, and the bulk of the cuts are needed in the next decade
  • Carbon removal isn't making a difference yet - all removal that has been done to date is equivalent to around 30 seconds worth of worldwide emissions
  • The best climate solutions are:
  • Evidence based
  • Cheap
  • Ready to go
  • Targeted (geographically)
  • Granular (IE. not huge projects that need too much funding and red tape)
  • Nature doesn't have a design problem, people do
  • In general people are aware that climate change exists and is a problem, but the messaging can be scary.
  • Net 0 is about measuring how poorly we're doing, why not switch it to measure the good we are doing?
  • When building products, don't just think of the now, think about what happens after
  • Time to stop taking from the earth and instead reusing what we've already taken

Work & Projects

  • Energy, transport, food and agriculture make up over 75% of current climate jobs
  • Work should not be an obligation, you should be able to find a sense of purpose and fulfillment in it
  • All the fellows are new here, don't worry about being inexperienced
  • Just ask if you want help. The worst they can say is no.
  • When coming up with project ideas:
  • Notice problems in your day-to-day
  • Become an expert on your passions / something valuable
  • Pay attention to changes in the world around you (covid, AI etc.)
  • Talk to people and organizations about their problems
  • Launch fast, get evidence to see if it will work
  • Competitions isn't necessarily bad, but if there is none why so?
  • Never do the "same as x but cheaper". Do things different, not cheaper
  • Most ideas don't work out, but it's a learning process

People

Fellows

Speakers

Links

Eventually got around to finishing GTA V in 2024. Still a great game.

I'm fully on board the web component train now 🚂

My little personal UI library is coming along quite nicely using Lit, now to see I get on exporting them for use in other projects...

Could 2024 be the year I get back to posting to my own website? I've got a bad track record, but maybe this is the year...

Reposted https://twitter.com/momodraws/status/1570028351112318978

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So there I am walking along an empty street, not really paying much attention to where I'm going, and I kid you not I step directly on a banana peel, slip and fall on my arse. I thought it was a myth or a nonsense joke. But now I know it's a real life danger.

After 5+ years of messing around with it, I think I'm finally approaching an actual launch for https://todomap.xyz Please feel free to try it out and let me know what you think 🙏

Murcia 2018

Some photos from a short stopover in Murcia

Madrid 2018

Some photos from a visit to Madrid before deciding to move there.