The Rise of Icarus album 31 March 2015
The Rise of Icarus is my second acoustic album. I recorded it with some great musicians and friends, who I have been gigging with recently. The bulk of it was recorded live – on one hot day in July 2014… have a listen here.
About my Climate Change Pages (2007-14) 1 December 2014
I did a lot of work on this climate change website in the lead up to the United Nations conference at Copenhagen (Dec 2009), and in the year that followed. My aim was to create a useful information resource that would cover the whole subject of climate change, which is being intensified by human activities: what the issue is, what it means, and what we can do about it. I also wanted to present you with links to reliable sources of further information.
Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) 1 January 2014
The greatest source of uncertainty for anyone trying to predict how the climate will change is us. How will we behave in the future? Will we take the issue seriously and rapidly cut our emissions of greenhouse gases? Or will it be business as usual? There are a number of Emission Scenarios, which have been modelled to try and understand this. This section has been updated to include the new AR5 scenarios.
The aim of this section is to try and give you a picture of how the world will change through the effects of global warming. There are global consequences from the changing weather patterns, and other associated impacts. What will these mean to you and me? I focus right in on changes we can expect to see in my home town of Reading to help illustrate what climate change will be like. From this you can hopefully get a feel for how much things will change in other parts of the world. Notice that it will make a big difference to the future if we cut down on our emissions now!
Zero Carbon Britain 1 October 2013
The Center for Alternative Technology’s Zero Carbon Britain (ZCB) is a vision for our country. It is a very well thought out document that demonstrates a sustainable future for the UK, which is not only achievable but also very attractive. I can see – after years looking at the scale of the climate change challenge with a sense of resignation – this Zero Carbon future really is a ray of hope.
IPCC – Fifth assessment report (AR5)
The IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5) was released on the 30 September 2013. There have been improvements in the science since the last report, with 6 years of more data to analyse and more powerful climate models. It is the same story of global warming. Notably: there has been an increase in confidence that human activities are the principal cause; air temperatures a rising more slowly; but sea levels are rising faster than in the previous report.
What is climate change post? (2013)
The climate change we are talking about here is the change to weather patterns, which are being caused by human activities (for example: burning oil for energy). This change is serious and goes beyond any natural processes, particularly considering how fast it is happening. It will have consequences for ourselves and for much of life on Earth.
The Corn Stores’ Music Night 2 November 2011
These pages are from the live music night, at the Corn Stores, from early autumn 2005. It was an evening of intimate, acoustic music – very friendly and relaxed and, thanks to some great friends that I have from the music scene in Reading, the quality of music was brilliant.
UK Climate Projections 2009 for Reading 1 January 2011
When the UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) were released, I was really keen to understand them and work out what changes they predicted for my home town of Reading. Following this through in detail, I dig into the spatial and seasonal differences we can expect. As well what is underneath these big shifts in long term average temperature, rainfall, etc. The projections were updated in 2018 with the results of more powerful models and improved science. However the broad findings are similar, as is the way to access the data.
How will global temperatures change? 1 December 2010
Atmospheric scientists use the emission scenarios to predict how much greenhouse gas concentrations will increase in the atmosphere. They can then run Global Climate Models to predict how the temperatures will change in the future, alongside changes in other aspects of the weather like rainfall. Even medium emission scenarios predict increases in average global temperatures by 3ºC, by the end of the century.
Consequences