helenczerski

helenczerski, 10 months ago to climate

Don’t tick the “next day delivery” box without really needing it. Urgent delivery means that delivery vehicles go out only partly full and travel further to get to delivery sites that are more spaced out. It basically chops off a large part of the energy, human and cost efficiency of mass parcel delivery, but it’s ooooh, soo seductive. Please don’t fall for it (it’s a marketing ploy), unless the sky is going to fall in if you don’t get widget A by tomorrow. #climate #Mail #Delivery

helenczerski, 8 months ago to science

I'm in Appledore in Devon, to give a talk later about Blue Machine and I've just discovered that they have a KNITTED OCEAN outside their church. And this is the Best Thing Ever.

#science #knitting #ocean

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helenczerski, 9 months ago to cars

The solution to “autobesity” is NOT to change car parking spaces. It’s to fix the root of the problem and get rid of these over-sized, wasteful, dangerous and unnecessary vehicles.

“More than 150 car models are now too big to fit in average car parking spaces, according to analysis conducted by Which?.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/26/more-than-150-car-models-too-big-for-regular-uk-parking-spaces?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#cars #cities #SUV

helenczerski, 9 months ago to cycling

My membership of British Cycling has come around for renewal and I have no hesitation in telling them to get lost. The fact that they took on a major sponsorship deal with Shell (SHELL!) in October and have refused to reverse that decision is appalling. This is classic greenwashing - Shell are continuing to extract all the oil they can. Cycling should not offer shelter to the fossil fuel companies putting profit ahead of the planet.

https://bikebiz.com/a-shocking-decision-industry-reacts-as-british-cycling-signs-deal-with-shell/

#Cycling #UCI #Shell

helenczerski, 8 months ago to science

Recruiting a postdoc to work on ocean bubbles and gas exchange stuff for the next three years in London. If you know of anyone who might be interested, please pass on the job advert here:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/search-ucl-jobs/details?nPostingId=6720&nPostingTargetId=15106&id=Q1KFK026203F3VBQBLO8M8M07&LG=UK&languageSelect=UK&mask=ext

And if you know of someone who might like to work as a paid research assistant just for the duration of the cruise (no previous experience of gas exchange studies necessary, just PhD level experience of physical science data collection), do reply here.

#science #postdoc #jobs

helenczerski, 1 year ago to random

Public service announcement, just in case anyone had forgotten: Covid is still out there and getting it still sucks. I didn’t wear a mask on a busy ferry last week and I am absolutely paying for it now by being stuck inside/sick/frustrated and having to cancel and rearrange all sorts of fun things this week. If you’re in a crowded space, FFP2 or N95 masks are definitely still worth wearing! #Covid #masks #LearnFromMyMistakes

helenczerski, 10 months ago to ocean

It still blows my mind that the last “Bovril Boats” didn’t stop operating in the Thames until 1998. 1998 ! Their job was to take Lordon’s sewage down the Thames from Beckton and to dump it into the North Sea (but oh, on the ebb tide, so that was ok). Dumping anything in the ocean is an admission that our systems on land have failed, but in this case it was failure by design. We cannot continue to treat the ocean like this. #ocean #sewage

helenczerski, 10 months ago to ocean

So many reasons for forbidding deep sea mining, but I think one of the biggest is also least discussed: accountability. Yes, some mines on land are bad, but we can look, check, demand explanations. In the deep sea, it’s incredibly hard to track actions/impacts. If miners behave badly when seen, how badly will they behave when invisible? #ocean https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/james-cameron-supports-deep-sea-mining-activists-say-its-a-disaster-whos-right?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

helenczerski, 10 months ago to climate

Whenever I need cheering up about the climate, things like this really help:

"During the 2010s the levelised cost (that is the average lifetime cost of equipment, per megawatt hour of electricity generated) of solar, offshore wind and onshore wind fell by 87%, 62% and 56%, respectively"

And that dramatic fall in costs isn't stopping.

Even the most short-term thinkers must be convinced by that!

(Quote from this paywalled Economist article: https://www.economist.com/schools-brief/2020/05/23/the-worlds-energy-system-must-be-transformed-completely )

#climate #energy #wind

helenczerski, 9 months ago to climate

Some questions that should be asked about every new piece of tech:

• Does it actually work?
• What are its side effects, especially for ecosystems, communities and the physical/chemical state of the natural environment?
• What’s the lifetime carbon cost?
• What’s the lifetime energy cost? If renewables, how much capacity is that taking away decarbonising the grid?
• Will scale-up cause damage?
• Who benefits most from it and who will control/regulate it for the public good?
  #climate #tech

helenczerski, 2 months ago to science

It's high time we redefined "exploration:". It should NOT be about being big - drawing a map of something named after your sponsor, planting a flag, being "first". It should be about being small: sitting inside a system/place and learning how it works with humility, looking at the way it does things, not at what we see most easily or want to see. A map is not the end goal of exploration. It's just the tool that tells you where the starting point could be.

#exploration #science #nature

helenczerski, 9 months ago to random

For many years, anyone associated with physics on tv or radio (including me) got regular e-mails/letters from people convinced they’d disproved Einstein’s theory of relativity, rewritten quantum mechanics, or invented a perpetual motion machine. They always involved crazy assumptions, (sometimes spectacularly) incorrect maths & an unwillingness to learn the basics.

Now there’s a whole new class of these e-mails from people claiming to have “solutions” to climate change, with all the same flaws.

helenczerski, 1 year ago to science

Probably unpopular point of view: I hate the phrase “science communicator” & always have. We don’t have history or policy communicators - just historians and policy experts who can share their subject. Saying science needs a “communicator” just serves to isolate it as a weird hard thing that needs special magic powers to access. It implies that communication isn’t a normal part of science, but it is (or should be). Also, it undervalues teachers, who communicate science all the time. #science

helenczerski, 9 months ago to cars

In the years to come, all Londoners are going to be proud that it led the way on low-emissions policies and reducing lethal air pollution. We will look back on the argument about the newly extended Ultra-Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) like we do on past rule changes to outlaw child labour, betting on animal fights & defecation in public places.

Of course highly polluting vehicles have to go. You can argue about the mechanisms for managing it, but not the principle behind it all.

#cars #ULEZ #London

helenczerski, 10 months ago to random

It’s not “a car” though, is it? It’s an SUV - a two tonne lump of metal with an incredibly powerful engine that is completely unnecessary in an urban environment.

“Eight-year-old girl dies after car hits London primary school”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/06/car-crashes-into-primary-school-in-south-london-wimbledon?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

helenczerski, 9 months ago to science

Today’s reminder that we are still very far from knowing everything: I have just found an odd gap in the scientific literature: the specific mechanisms of generating root pressure in trees and how this relates to the force that tree roots can exert on their surroundings (eg pavements/sidewalks), and what those forces actually are. As far as I can see, having done an extensive literature search, nothing has been done on this since the 1970s. Zilch. Not a sausage. Frustrating! #science #trees

helenczerski, 6 months ago to science

The key point that I think a lot of engineers still don't get is that their job is not about making widgets that get plonked on top of the world. This is about changing the shape of things inside a working system (Planet Earth) to shift how it operates. Those widgets become part of that system - it's like operating on a living human. The engineers of the future mustn't see their job as creating things external to the world. #science #engineering #climate #Earth

helenczerski, 7 months ago to climate

It is completely ludicrous that anyone is still talking about hydrogen for home heating - it’s far less efficient, less safe, more expensive and less flexible than heat pumps. This report is the last nail in a coffin that is already more nail than coffin.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/21/hydrogen-boiler-home-heating-uk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#climate #hydrogen

helenczerski, 8 months ago to space

Ooh, the winner of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition (run by the Royal Observatory at Royal Museums Greenwich) has just been announced.

“Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty discovered and photographed a never-before-seen oxygen arc next to our nearest spiral galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy. ”

The full exhibition of entries is open from today in London: https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-photographer-year/exhibition

#space #photography #science #stars

Close up of the blue arc

helenczerski, 10 months ago to climate

Very good point made at a launch event yesterday for UCL’s new Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education - we might teach the Industrial Revolution in schools as a critical transition period, but really, it’s 1950 onward (the “Great Acceleration”) that really made the biggest difference. Why aren’t we teaching that in history classes?

#climate #education #schools

helenczerski, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to ocean

I am often asked "what are some of the mysteries that we still don't understand about the deep ocean", because people are more interested in mysteries than the wonders we do know.

But it's just occurred to me that the one thing we REALLY don't know about the deep ocean is whether we can leave it alone.

Do we have the self-control to NOT mine, modify, meddle etc in the deep sea? And just for once, not spoil it and then regret it, like we have done with everything else?

#ocean #DeepSea

helenczerski, 7 months ago to climate

Just finished Chris vT's excellent book Ultra-Processed People & found these two paragraphs. They ring so true, because this is not just tobacco or health or food, but it's exactly the problem we have with COP28, with the UAE's national oil chief in charge:

"No-one thinks that tobacco legislation should be written by charities funded by British American Tobacco... the relationship cannot be one of partnership"

This needs to be written everywhere: regulators CANNOT be partners

#climate #COP28

helenczerski, 4 months ago to nuclear

And for anyone who still thinks that nuclear power is automatically the best way to a low-carbon future, I encourage you to read the brilliant description of what happens to nuclear waste in Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis and consider whether it really is worth it.

Also read the rest of the book - it's essential stuff for understanding the modern world.

#nuclear #energy #waste #books

helenczerski, 3 months ago to science

Well, this is hardly good news: a potential new storm category:

"[The Saffir-Simpson] scale may not capture the risk posed by the most intense storms as the world warms... They suggest a sixth category that encompasses storms with winds greater than 192 miles per hour."

https://eos.org/articles/weve-already-seen-category-6-hurricanes-now-scientists-want-to-make-it-official?utm_source=EosBuzz&mkt_tok=OTg3LUlHVC01NzIAAAGRLIJuWnB_JWME03WVPRdXZd5Wd_gK_bg3bWfHPBWrgw5StMjB1fbQ1beOtdGLX08gdJLyiM5IHtwf2hykesZ8uCI0wB4RoIg5-E9AUNpG

#science #climate #weather

helenczerski, 3 months ago to books

Just finisihed this & it's brilliant: Katalin Kariko's story of her life. She was convinced that mRNA therapies could work decades ago & did the foundation work, all while being ignored, never promoted & struggling for jobs.

Today, millions are vaccinated with mRNA vaccines & she has a Nobel prize.

It's a great story, and leaves a lot for the scientific system to think about. Highly recommended.

#books #mRNA #science #biography