CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
sticky“
“We have an outstanding mayor, who is committed to tackling climate change. She said the 15-minute city will be the backbone for creating a new urban plan. The last time Paris had a new urban plan was in 2000, so this road map will be relevant for the next 10 or 15 years at least,” he explains. “I said to Hidalgo, the 15-minute city is not an urban traffic plan. The 15-minute city is a radical change of our life.”
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It has been an exceptionally wet 18 months. According to the Met Office, 1,695.9mm of rain fell from October 2022 to March 2024, the highest amount for any 18-month period in England in recorded history. The Met Office started collecting data in 1836.
Yet, no mention of the climate crisis?
I thought the Guardian were enlightened enough to make the connection and that the “climate crisis” is actually the “food crisis”
But everyone keep flying and driving, y’all
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Government recovery fund stipulates affected areas must be less than 150 metres from a ‘main’ river
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Climate target organisation faces staff revolt over carbon-offsetting plan
Employees at SBTi have called for their CEO to resign over controversial plans which they fear will enable greenwashing
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The announcement was met with fury by many SBTi staff and advisers, who say they were not consulted on the decision and that the move is not based on science.
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Yet back home in the sub-polar world, the idea that “business as usual” is the only sensible option not only persists, but seems to be gaining strength; and green politics often seems to have hit a new wall, not of complete denial, but of absolute resistance to all and any specific climate policies, which are often dismissed as counter-productive, oppressive, or even unpatriotic
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In my view that claim was totally unfounded and there was evidence that significant natural regeneration was being established across the site before it was fenced (see here). Scottish Forestry, however, chose to accept this claim and the associated plan, which set aside limited areas for natural regeneration, instead of getting their own staff to check what was happening on the ground. Scottish Forestry’s own assessors have now shown that naturally regenerated trees are doing far better than planted trees in the very areas where it was claimed natural regeneration wouldn’t work due to a lack of seed source etc. Proof that there was indeed a “Lost Forest” waiting to return and all that was needed to make this happen was to keep deer numbers low.
Instead, Scottish Forestry and BrewDog decided to plant a new forest, financed with large sums of public money, with disastrous consequences for nature (see here) and carbon emissions (here).
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The UK faces food shortages and price rises as extreme weather linked to climate breakdown causes low yields on farms locally and abroad.Heavy rain likely to cause low yields in Britain and other parts of Europe, with drought in Morocco hitting imports
It has been an exceptionally wet 18 months. According to the Met Office, 1,695.9mm of rain fell from October 2022 to March 2024, the highest amount for any 18-month period in England in recorded history. The Met Office started collecting data in 1836.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/10/uk-food-production-down-record-rainfall-farmers
But keep on flying and driving everyone... who cares about tomorrow?
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The real explanation, perhaps, is that the stock market (sadly) is deeply sceptical about the pace of energy transition and the returns on capital in renewables. Thus, the most oily firms, such the two US titans, are prized over those with a sideline in renewables, such as Shell, which in turn is valued more highly than those with a slightly greener hue, such as BP. This price signal is terrifying from a climate perspective, but the point is that a mere relisting of Shell’s shares wouldn’t change the make-up of its assets.
Maybe Sawan would like to water down further Shell’s emission-reduction targets and thinks it would be easier to do so from the US. But if that’s the case, he should say so openly. There is a strong whiff here that what Shell and Sawan really dislike is the climate policies of European governments.
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Desert city of Dubai floods as UAE hit by heaviest rainfall in 75 years
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The rains began on Monday night, and by Tuesday evening, more than 142mm (5.59in) had soaked the desert city of Dubai – normally the average amount it gets in a year and a half.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/17/dubai-floods-uae-rainfall-weather-forecast
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The UAE, which heavily relies on energy-hungry desalination plants to provide water, started cloud-seeding operations in 2002 to address water security issues, but the lack of drainage in many areas can trigger flooding.
Cloud seeding involves using aircraft or drones to add small particles of silver iodide, which has a structure similar to ice, to clouds. Water droplets cluster around the particles, modifying the structure of the clouds and increasing the chance of precipitation.
Cloud-seeding experiments have taken place since the 1940s but until recently there was little certainty the method had any positive impact.
Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, driving more frequent and more deadly disasters from heatwaves and wildfires to floods. At least a dozen of the most serious events of the last decade would have been all but impossible without human-caused global heating.
Extreme rainfall is more common and more intense because of human-caused climate breakdown across most of the world. This is because warmer air can hold more water vapour. It is most likely that flooding has become more frequent and severe as a result.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/17/dubai-floods-uae-rainfall-weather-forecast
We're doomed aren't we?
This city only exists because of the fossil fuel industry. It needs to be returned to the desert and the handful of indigenous nomads that once occupied the area
It isn’t clear from the article whether seeding took place or not. No doubt the “cloud seeding explanation” is a fossil fuel industry distraction technique to sow doubt over whether these disastrous effects were caused by their products.
the lack of drainage in many areas can trigger flooding
It’s almost like the lack of drainage caused the rainfall not seen in at least 75 years! And it’s all a bit, “if we just add this one other techno-fix on top of all these other techno-fixes, we can easily solve this problem”
Nooooooo!
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Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, according to a new study that shows the costs of damage are six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C.
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The Scottish government is to ditch its flagship target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030.
The final goal of reaching "net-zero" by 2045 will remain, but BBC Scotland News understands the government's annual climate targets could also go.
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We’re doomed aren’t we?
https://news.stv.tv/politics/scottish-government-set-to-ditch-2030-climate-crisis-target
Scottish Conservative shadow secretary for net zero, energy and transport Douglas Lumsden said: “If this report is correct, it amounts to an abject humiliation for the SNP-Green Government.“For all the boasting about their supposed environmental credentials, the reality is a succession of missed targets – and being forced to throw in the towel on this flagship pledge represents the biggest failure of the lot.
“This climbdown is not a surprise, given the damning report from the Climate Change Committee, but it is symptomatic of a Nationalist coalition that routinely over-promises and under-delivers.
“Mairi McAllan must be cringing at the thought of delivering this statement after her absurd claim that world leaders were seeking out the Scottish Government for advice on reaching environmental targets.”
Not that the Tories have any strategy for climate targets anywhere but expect this will be used by hostile media.
It's a pity that the University of Reading were not able to state it outright: That the cloud-seeding hypothesis is straight out of the fossil fuel industry playbook of distraction - distraction from the harm their products cause
Yeah they don’t tend to cloud seed clouds from which rain is already falling
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SNP and Green ministers are drawing up plans to allow councils to potentially charge motorists for using roads as part of a "new package of climate action measures” after ditching a landmark legal target
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SNP's scrapping of climate change target is a failure as pathetic as their excuses – Scotsman comment The Scottish Government has always talked a good game on climate change but its inability to make progress on its 2030 target is the latest in a long line of failings
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Interesting times
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Here’s my email with personal info redacted.
3.1.6 c) of the party constitution says that a General Meeting may be called by, “A written request to SGP Executive that has been signed by 100 members or 10% of the current SGP membership, whichever is fewer.”
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"SNP's scrapping of climate change target is a failure as pathetic as their excuses .... is the latest in a long line of failings"
Could equally go into "Next General Election" thread, along with the alleged stealing.
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The strength of feeling from @scottishgreens members this week has been very clear. Several issues have come to a head together, but most clearly the need for a reset of climate policy, following @theCCCuk advice on the 2030 target.
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https://twitter.com/patrickharvie/status/1781429223699157326
The Climate Change Committee did not recommend the scrapping of the 2030 target or annual targets. It actually said:
...the Scottish Government should build on its high ambition and implement policies that enable the 75% emissions reduction target to be achieved at the earliest date possible.
Don’t remember seeing this before
I watched yesterday's Parliamentary statement and debate, and it seemed to me that while the 2030 target was essentially unachievable it was being reframed or reworked - postponed or delayed, if you will.
To me this is analoguous to the trajectory of throwing a ball towards a target. Instead of throwing underarm, in which the height is lost most quickly at first - that is, doing more action early on to reduce emissions - it's now throwing overarm. The target is still the target but the trajectory at every instance is higher off the ground.
It follows that this is incompatible with any approach in which the total amount of emissions released over a given time period is limited, or capped. We can't carry on with business-as-usual, cranking out carbon and methane and all the other greenhouse gases until the target date, and then suddenly drop to zero (or net zero) and say to ourselves, haven't we done well? The world is in its current state precisely because that has been the global approach ever since coal was invented. You don't need to understand integral calculus to grasp that concept. "Redoubling our efforts" in the past hasn't worked, or we wouldn't be having to reframe a target that is still (or only) six years away, even as the CCC consistently warned of ambition being at odds with action.
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