The Transition Timeline

The Transition Timeline for a local resilient future by Shaun Chamberlin published by Green Books

This is the second book to emerge from the Transition Network, the first being, Rob Hopkin’s essential read the Transition Handbook. For people unfamiliar with the Transition Network it is basically a grass roots movement in which local communities prepare themselves for a future without oil in a changing climate.

Transition Timeline follows on from the Handbook.

The book is divided into five parts.

Part 1 deals with visions for the future and cultural stories. 4 visions are presented: Denial which is the business as usual model; Hitting the Wall which is business as usual but at least you know there is a problem; the Impossible Dream – fighting climate change but forgetting that oil is running out and finally the Transition Vision which accepts and responds to the challenges of climate change and peak oil.

Part 2 of the book looks in more detail at the Transition Vision by examining issues such as population and demographics; food and water; electricity and energy; travel and transport and finally health and medicine. This is radical stuff but unlike so many ‘environmental’ books it paints change as a positive and achievable goal.

Part 3 is written by Rob Hopkins and examines how to use and create Timelines. In a nutshell communities are encouraged to paint a positive vision of how their world might be in a post peak oil world and a world where mitigation against climate change is in full flow. The Timeline is then a backcast of the series of detailed actions that need to be taken over a 20 year period to achieve the vision.

Part 4 is a detailed summary of the science and politics of climate change and oil depletion. This is very up to date and readable – a very good introduction.

Part 5 concludes the book by putting the issues discussed in part 4 into a UK context. The peak oil and the UK section is pretty frightening and would motivate most to take action if they knew about it!

A great book and one you should read. Get it from here.

UK Climate Projections 09

The waiting is over and today saw DEFRA publish the UK Climate Projections. There is a comprehensive introductory website and a more detailed technical one where the data can be manipulated to meet the users needs. The Guardian summarises the headline findings: warmer drier summers and wetter winters along with many more extreme weather events, as follows.

The introduction to the project states

The UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) give climate information for the UK up to the end of this century. Projections of future changes to our climate are provided, based on simulations from climate models.

The purpose of providing information on the possible future climate is to help those needing to plan how they will adapt to help society and the natural environment to cope with a changing climate.

The Projections show three different scenarios representing high, medium and low greenhouse gas scenarios – and and this can help to demonstrate the importance of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation).

The data is presented in a variety of ways but maps perhaps show the projections most clearly.

The website states the following

These maps give a range of climate that we might expect, together with the probability of different outcomes based on the strength of evidence. The central estimate is given by the centre map. The changes are very unlikely to be less than the left hand map, and very unlikely to be more than the right hand map.

Click here to see the maps for summer and winter precipitation along with summer temperature which demonstrates the above explanation.

You will need to spend some time playing with the technical website to find out exactly what data it can produce for either the whole country, a region or a 25km grid square. There are many climate variables. Without doubt this is a major step forwards in probabilistic modelling and the UK must now have the best dataset of any country in the world about what is likely to happen as a result of climate change.

Many many organisations will now start using this data to prepare for the future - the UKCP09 website gives a few simple case studies which highlights various applications.

The critical thing that is needed now is action. David King, the former government chief scientist asks whether there will be the political will to act. Watch this space!

How many tonnes of CO2 in the atmoshere

Visit this website and watch how CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising in front of your very eyes. Data compiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.