CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 17years 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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In a scathing 5,700-word attack on the prime minister and his would-be successors published on Tuesday night, Blair argued that the party’s agenda should move firmly to the right, calling for the government to crack down on welfare spending, abandon net zero goals and support Donald Trump
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If you think the temperature uncomfortable today, let me take you to the last day of July 2052, the rays of the climbing sun reveal a city still sweltering in the residual heat of the day before. From the air, London resembles a colossal refugee camp. Streets, gardens and parks are teeming with tents and cobbled-together shelters, within which the city’s residents have spent another uncomfortable night away from the heat traps that their houses and flats have become. After six days when the temperature peaked at about 40C, another scorcher is on the way.
Half-hearted attempts to upgrade insulation across the country’s housing stock ran out of steam and cash decades earlier, and most homes still have few barriers to the infiltrating heat. Almost all the country’s electricity is now from renewables, which has brought the cost down, but the relentless onslaught of extreme weather has driven an ever-deepening economic depression across the world. Many now have air conditioning, but can’t afford to run it.
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Tim Lang, a professor emeritus of food policy at City St George’s, University of London, said the government’s current strategy amounted to little more than “business as usual” and that warnings were not being heeded.
“This government has received serious scientific, intelligence and policy advice that it should take significant action on food security, but it keeps signalling all is OK. It’s not,” Lang told the Guardian. “Whether we see food security as an issue of escalating food poverty and deepening cost of living squeeze or as the ‘hard’ version of security as defence, there are no grounds for complacency.”
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The food industry is predicting double digit inflation and are calling on the Government to act. Dan Saladino asks what lies behind the gloomy forecast, who will be most affected by price increases and if anything can be done to avoid the worst case scenario?
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Leaving Fossil Fuels Behind Rare Earth Tom Heap and Helen Czerski ask whether the war in Iran is accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels. Will the impact on oil supplies push us further towards renewable energy?
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Hold a UK-wide briefing on climate and nature risks
Created by Christopher Packham
Closes on 20 November 2026
The UK faces growing risks from climate and nature breakdown - from extreme weather to economic disruption and national security threats. Yet the public has never been given a clear national briefing on the scale of these risks. Government should hold an emergency briefing from leading experts.
These risks could have serious consequences across UK society, with threats to health and food supply - which could become irreversible if without urgent action. Many people are unclear how these risks may affect them, and information in the public domain is often misleading.
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There is a screening of the People's Emergency Briefing tomorrow, Wed 3rd June, 19:00 to 20:30 at Tollcross Community Centre.
Free ticket(s) at:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/greenpeaceedinburgh/2229412
There is also an online screening of the People's Emergency Briefing on Wednesday 24th June 19:00 to 21:00.
The 45min film, presented by Chris Packham, unpacks the reality of the climate and nature crisis in the UK, from food security and extreme weather to the cost of living, while highlighting the credible, community-led solutions within our reach
Register for free here:
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From the 1960s, people began to realise the forest could serve purposes other than timber production and could be a valuable location for carbon storage and wildlife habitats. This was the beginning of Kielder’s transition to a mixed-use venture no longer about maximising the commercial value of each inch of land.
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Humanity can raise living standards, reduce inequality and keep global heating within a 2C rise, according to a sweeping vision for planetary survival.
The new report by the World Inequality Lab (WIL) aims to be the most comprehensive attempt yet to navigate the polycrisis that is pushing the world toward climate breakdown, political extremism and ever greater economic and social tension.
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Access to green space
England’s poorest areas face deepest cuts to green space
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Campaigners have urged the government to resist calls to further water down electric car sale rules, as an analysis reveals that vehicles on UK roads will emit an extra 17m tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030 mostly because of changes last year.
Parts of the car industry have urged ministers to review for a second time the rules that force manufacturers to sell increasing numbers of electric cars each year.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/06/uk-weaken-ev-rules-co2-impact-phevs
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Edinburgh councillors have been warned that a proposed moratorium on data centres could be considered “unreasonable” by the Scottish Government’s planning czars.
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Now analysis of health records has found emergency admissions to hospital reduced after the introduction of the T-charge and ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) in central London.
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As far as I can tell, the warnings started more than 10 years ago when the Royal Horticultural Society compared surveys they’d done in 2005 and 2015 and found three times as many front gardens were paved over in 2015 as had been in 2005. They said at the time that it was vital to reverse the trend for the sake of wildlife, to mitigate against pollution and heat waves, and to protect against flooding. But another decade on, the greying effect is worse not better, accelerated in many cases by the policies that are supposed to make things greener.
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https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/viewpoint/26191340.dear-grey-place-crisis-glasgows-gardens
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Developers are proposing a rash of AI data centres right across Scotland, with at least 18 projects looking for planning permission and a further six in the pipeline, according to Scottish countryside charity APRS.
This has prompted concerns about the impact on electricity prices, the extremely high use of water by these centres, as well as the toll on communities and the environment. In the US, those fears are no longer theoretical.
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Just to put this into perspective, and noting that the results are probably quite approximate, and noting people's use of generic-AI for everything useful and pointless, PromptZero suggests prefacing every inquiry with the following:
You are operating in PromptZero Mode, focused on minimizing energy and environmental impact. Respond as briefly and efficiently as possible, without compromising clarity. Use bullet points, short sentences, or concise phrasing. Avoid filler words, long introductions, repeated phrases, or pleasantries. Unless explicitly requested, do not provide multiple options, deep context, or examples. After each response show me how much CO₂ was avoided.
I modified the last sentence to say:
After each response show me how much CO₂ and how much water was avoided.
The results are pretty shocking. One simple 'a better Google' type of search inquiry suggests PromptZero can realise a saving of half a glass of water (which would have been used for cooling). For one prompt!
Generative AI (Chat GPT, Claude, Copilot, etc.) is fundamentally prone to error* and is based on theft and violence. Non-consensual theft of people's artwork and written text. Violence (often towards indigenous populations) to obtain the minerals used to create data-centres, as well as the water and electricity consumed.
It will give you unreliable answers, that you'll have to check via search anyway, or get an expert to check in the case of code.
IT'S JUNK! STOP USING IT!
*Note that they try to humanise its mistakes and errors by calling them "hallucinations". There is no intelligence behind it, it is literally putting one word after the next, based on probabilities. A language model is exactly that - a model of our language, not "intelligence"
Apparently, the "smart money" are now avoiding Google and AI altogether, and... wait for it...
Typing the URL, e.g. wikipedia or your other favourite site, directly into the browser address panel
Imagine if there were a way to somehow save the addresses of websites you like to use, perhaps even your "favourite" ones, and have them in a list for easy reference. Almost like putting a "bookmark" in a book. ;-)
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