Energy & Climate Change Update - May 2013

Clean British Energy
This campaign will come to an end shortly when MPs vote on the clean power target on 3rd June which we hope will cut carbon emissions and create thousands of green jobs. We currently have support from almost 300 MPs. We will no doubt containing with other aspects of climate change and energy throughout the year.

Climate Change Talk
The brutal logic of Climate Change - 3rd June 2013 at 19:00 - Showroom Cinema Cafe Bar

Just how worried should we be about climate change? What does the latest science say? And what should we be doing about it? Dr. Aaron Thierry reviews the latest evidence for Earth's changing climate; explores the gravity of future projections; and suggests that current emissions targets are not anywhere near ambitious enough to avoid extremely dangerous alterations to our environment. Dr. Aaron Thierry, Department of Animal and Plant Science, The University of Sheffield
See http://sheffieldsciencecafe.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-brutal-logic-of-climate-change-03.html

Tyndall Centre Meeting
The meeting with the Tyndall Centre (climate change experts) will take place on 13th June and it is aimed at key players in the council and health bodies etc. There will be a public meeting in the evening from 7pm - 9pm. More details for the public event are as follows:

Building our Response to the Climate Challenge
A public meeting co-organised by Sheffield Climate Alliance and Sheffield City Council
Venue: Sheffield University Mappin Hall, Sir Frederick Mappin Building, Mappin Street, S1 3JD
Thursday 13 June from 7 to 9 pm

Co-chaired by Councillor Jack Scott and the Sheffield Climate Alliance
Cllr Jack Scott is the Sheffield City Council Cabinet lead for the Environment, who will speak on starting a Green Commission for Sheffield.

It is time to talk about Carbon, we have:
400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere
CO2 rising exponentially (see 1 below)
Potential temperature rise of 4 to 6 degrees
Threat of financial bust from £4 trillion invested in un-burnable carbon (see 2 below)
The potential to add 6000 climate jobs and £300 milliom a year to Sheffield’s economy if we invest in low-carbon (see 3 below)

Speakers:

Dr. John Broderick:
From Tyndall Climate Centre at Manchester University, presenting current emissions trends, likely impacts and the action required to avoid them. http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/our-research/centres-institutes/tyndall-manchester/

Prof. Andrew Gouldson:
An author of The Economies of Low Carbon Cities: a Mini-Stern Review for Sheffield City Region from The Centre for Low Carbon Futures. www.lowcarbonfutures.org

1.    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/apr/19/carbon-bubble-financial-crash-crisis?INTCMP=SRCH
2.    ‘The Burning Question: we can’t burn half the world’s oil, coal and gas, so how are we going to quit?’ Mike Berners-Lee and Duncan Clark. Profile Books 2013
3. The mini-Stern

Climate Change Science
David reports that there IS overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes of current climate change.

A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by a team at Skeptical Science, lead by John Cook of the University of Queensland, has found a 97% consensus among papers taking a position on the cause of global warming in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are responsible. Mr Cook said the number of papers rejecting the consensus was "vanishingly small". Increasingly, he said, scientists did not see the need to express a position on the causes of climate change in journal abstracts "just as geographers find no reason to remind readers that the earth is round".

 This is a definitive follow up of Naomi Oreskes' study in 2004,  which reviewed 928 abstracts from peer-reviewed research papers in the previous decade and found that “75% either explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities whilst 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change”. Even then, ”Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position”.

Proposals for New Campaigns 
Aaron is to submit a proposal to Friends of the Earth for a new major climate change campaign to take place from 2014-2015.