CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 16years 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.
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“On climate, the hour for collective action has already arrived. The science is here. What we need now is courage – courage scaled to the enormity of the task – so we may gift the next generation not only carbon capture, but a planet worthy of their hopes,” he said.
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Can anyone understand/explain the science here?
Can anyone understand/explain the science here?
I've only spent less than 5 minutes reading about this, but the gist seems to be that the new materials are particularly effective dehumidifiers because they can be made with a very high porosity/surface area.
A dehumidifier works by pulling air through a cooled material. Water in the air then condenses onto the surface of the material, and can then be collected as a liquid. If you have a material with a higher surface area for a given volume (think of a sponge - lots of internal surface area compared to a solid block of the same size), then you will be able to collect more water, more quickly.
I don't know what it is about the new chemistry that allows the particularly high surface area materials.
Thanks
My initial thoughts are - ‘whatever it is, you’ll need a lot, so won’t be cheap’(?)
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Many of the same cost increases apply to bananas. Anna Pierides from the Fairtrade Foundation says costs for producers have been going up, and they have faced pressures from the climate crisis. There have been floods in Peru and droughts in the Dominican Republic, countries that produce the most bananas. She says it’s “not a pretty picture in banana production globally” and 30% of farmers in the Dominican Republic have left the sector.
Smith says bananas are “undervalued, underpriced” and that, in the UK, where they are now about £1 a kilo typically, if they were priced to make sure everyone in the production chain got what they should, they would be £1.50. Fairtrade has helped tens of thousands of workers to get a living wage, but producers and workers outside that system are still losing out as the price we pay is not enough.
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Peter Hawkins, cycling bio...
Peter, a long-time stalwart of Spokes Maps Group, Planning Group and former Pathways Group, has had to hand over his main Spokes responsibilities due to recent health issues. He intends to continue his involvement and promotion of bike travel, but we'd anyway like to take this opportunity to mark and celebrate his major and longstanding contribution to Spokes and to the cause of encouraging more people to cycle for their everyday travel. Not least because this also introduces some interesting Spokes Maps history.
Peter sees getting about by bike not just as an issue of health, safety and enjoyment, but also, increasingly in recent years, as a vital contribution to tackling the climate crisis: he did not hold back in his tough words on this when responding to government consultations
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http://www.spokes.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/2602-17-action-update.pdf
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The group first identified a series of issues that are making access to food vulnerable in the UK, including the climate crisis, low incomes, poor farming policy and fragile just-in-time supply chains. These have left the UK dangerously exposed, the researchers said.
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A UK government spokesperson said: “Food security is national security, and our high degree of food security is built on both strong domestic production and imports through stable trade routes. This government is investing billions in the development of new technology to increase yields or create climate-resilient crops, streamlining regulation, and helping farmers produce food for the nation.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/feb/23/uk-food-security-cyber-attack-riots-tinderbox-analysis
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Jenkyns said she was “very supportive of fracking” in her message asking how she could help the company, sent to Egdon’s general inbox in June last year. The company’s CEO, Mark Abbott, responded 11 minutes later, offering to meet her to “discuss the potential for gas in Lincolnshire and the surrounding area”.
Jenkyns is a staunch critic of net zero who has described the concept as a “con” and lodged several objections to energy projects such as solar farms and pylons in Lincolnshire.
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Jess Ralston, the head of energy at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, said: “New homes in the UK can be notoriously shoddy and for too long housebuilders have got away with it because, for the last decade or so, there’s been no significant changes to energy standards in building regulations. The future homes standard is a real opportunity to ensure that new homes are better quality and cheaper to live in, but limiting the ability for local authorities to set higher standards mean that more ambitious projects are stunted – meaning less benefit to the household while lining the pockets of the builders.”
Ralston added: “The government might be in thrall to the major housebuilders lobbying but it’s households that could suffer as a result.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/24/uk-government-housing-lobbying-local-councils
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JAHAMA Highland Estate's announcement of a major native woodland recovery plan across its 32,500 hectare landholding in the Scottish West Highlands, including ranges around Britain’s highest mountain, is being described as a "genuinely big and ambitious scheme" of impressive scale.
JAHAMA, part of the GHG Alliance group, is owned by Sanjeev Gupta, an international steel tycoon whose business troubles have made headlines in recent years. Only last year, his South Yorkshire steel operations went into liquidation.
In 2016, the GHG Alliance bought the UK’s only working aluminium smelter in Lochaber and two nearby hydropower plants from Rio Tinto in a controversial deal backed by a Scottish Government power purchase guarantee that reportedly risked £586m of public money.
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Reform’s local councils are bringing climate denial into the mainstream
Top polling party’s moves to ‘undeclare’ the climate emergency and scrap net zero targets could be a sign of things to come
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https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026-02-25/reform-local-councils-climate-denial-uk
Just a reminder
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Oil price expected to surge as result of US-Israel strikes on Iran
Markets around the world could tumble on Monday and motorists are likely to pay more at the pump
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/01/oil-price-surge-iran-us-israel-strikes-markets
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Datacentre developers face calls to disclose effect on UK’s net emissions
Campaign groups write to technology secretary amid concerns that sites could double overall electricity demand
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They said: “It has become increasingly clear that our current framework is contributing to instability, short-termist underinvestment and a lack of focus on long-term risks and opportunities.”
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UK programmes to protect nature and the climate in developing countries are suffering swingeing budget cuts despite ministers’ promises, the Guardian has learned.
The cuts belie the government’s claims to be fulfilling international obligations on climate finance and are veiled behind a system that experts have criticised as opaque.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/02/uk-slashes-climate-aid-developing-countries
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‘The digital colonization of flyover states’: how datacenters are tearing small-town America apart
The rapid rollout of datacenters across the US is creating a divide between municipal governments and residents
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/02/amazon-data-centers-small-towns
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Global economy must stop pandering to ‘frivolous desires of ultra-rich’, says UN expert
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“The scarce resources we have should be used to prioritise the basic needs of people in poverty and to create what is of societal value rather than serve the frivolous desires of the ultra-rich.”
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As part of this process, De Schutter is calling for a permanent UN body to be established to oversee the fight against inequality. It would aim to oversee a number of measures designed to ensure “the economy is redistributive and sustainable by design rather than encouraging destructive growth and then trying to make up for the mess that creates.”
He said this new body could operate like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was set up in 1988 and has overseen the international effort to tackle the climate crisis.
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The global fertiliser supply chain could face significant disruption if the effective closure by Iran of the strait of Hormuz persists, prompting concerns from analysts about crop production and food security.
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Worse, since the UK has to import virtually all the artificial fertiliser its intensive agriculture demands, as well as the energy needed to fuel tractors and warm greenhouses, the true dependency of food consumption on imports in Britain is far higher. Swati Dhingra, a Bank of England rate-setter, estimated the figure was closer to 80%. Defra’s national security report, finally released in January, emphasised the severe vulnerability of Britain’s food systems to climate breakdown and biodiversity loss.
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Climate campaigners are preparing to haul the Scottish Government to court over plans for a controversial “green” gas power station — after it emerged the project could produce almost three times more pollution than first claimed.
Environmental charity Friends of the Earth Scotland says it is ready to launch legal action if ministers approve the new plant at Peterhead, a project backed with millions of pounds in public funding.
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The British government should be stockpiling food, according to a leading expert on food policy, as it is not prepared for climate shocks or wars that could cause the population to starve.
Prof Tim Lang of City St George’s, University of London said the UK produced far less food than it needed to feed itself, and as a small island that relied on a few large companies to feed its giant population, it was particularly vulnerable to shocks.
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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/07/uk-stockpile-food-climate-shocks-war
Cheery
But undeniably possible
Will any Govs do anything/enough?
Food security is definitely a thing. Floods and droughts in places reducing crop yields. Supermarkets don't help with their obsession with 'good looking' veg of course. We had a mini taste of that in village as potatoes etc from the community garden had to be washed a bit to present at shop. Soil actually makes them keep better but Tesco shoppers aren't always used to it! The garden committee reckoned we produced quite a stack of potatoes, carrots, leeks, onions and beetroot from outdoor beds. The polytunnel produced lettuce and broccoli but the tomatoes stayed a bit green. Produce was bought by locals and visitors with donations. Some tensions as SSEN are partially funding and locals not involved want lower power bills.
Local primary school involved which must be a good thing. Family routines in the area often involve big Tesco run to Blairgowrie for food and fuel. Many younger couples too busy working to find the time for gardening plus rural life often means a house with a garden and car space attached to tend to.
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Reaching net zero would cost about £4bn a year, the CCC found, or close to £100bn by 2050, which was roughly equivalent to the energy-related costs of the fossil fuel shocks that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The findings contradict widespread claims made by rightwing thinktanks and populist politicians including the Reform party that net zero would represent a crippling cost of £9tn to the UK’s economy. As well as exaggerating costs, these estimates failed to take into account the cost of paying for the fossil fuels needed for energy if we do not reach net zero.
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