Archive for the 'climate change' Category
Settling
So the question we come to now, is well, how do you go about knowing the field of forces in which you live? How do you know which way the wind is blowing so you can sail properly, when it isn’t as simple a matter of wetting your finger and holding it up to see [...]
Filed under: Climate, climate change, omens and portents | 1 Comment
Via BoingBoing, comes this great assessment of the state of the world by Bruce Sterling in Seed magazine. As you know, I love a good apocalypse, and I’ve been watching this one coming for a while.
Sterling focuses on seven reasons we should all be panicking: the climate; intellectual property; currency speculation; the insurance market; the [...]
Filed under: Baby Boomers, Climate, Conspiracy Theories, Culture, anxiety, being chippy, climate change, omens and portents, paranoia | Leave a Comment
Tags: apocalypse, panic
Something Old Something Flue
room_with_a_flue, originally uploaded by mcmrbt.
The woodburner is in. The installation coincided with the best weather of the year so far.
The job is far from complete, so we won’t be paying for it yet. They’ve got some making good to do where the old gas fire was removed, and they need to fit some lead flashing [...]
Filed under: Climate, Education, Family, Flickr, Technology, climate change, happiness, summer, teaching and learning | 2 Comments
Tags: energy, fire, heating, stove, woodburner
Climate bites dog.
The Met Office has issued its forecast for Summer 2008, saying, in brief:
Temperature
Mean temperatures are more likely to be above the 1971-2000 average. However, there is a slightly enhanced chance of cloudier and cooler spells.
Rainfall
Rainfall is more likely to be either near average or above average. The risk of exceptional rainfall, as seen last summer, [...]
Filed under: Climate, Education, climate change, media studies, omens and portents, summer | Leave a Comment
I’ve been reading about the Honda FCX Clarity, which is a Hydrogen fuel cell powered car you may have read about last October, when it was announced at the Tokyo motor show. I always thought the main objection to Hydrogen power was the fear of Hindenberg-style disasters, but what do I know? Still, if they’re [...]
Filed under: Climate, Technology, anxiety, climate change, motoring, omens and portents | Leave a Comment
Tags: energy, the future
Fought for Fuel
We’re getting a Contura 510. It’s a Scandinavian design, and it’s 80% efficient, which means more of the wood gets converted to useful heat. We’re going to fit it into the corner of the living room, and have a flue installed, up through the corner of the bedroom above, and out through the roof. That’s [...]
Filed under: Climate, Technology, anxiety, climate change, happiness, omens and portents, paranoia | Leave a Comment
Tags: energy, inflation, the future
Review of the Year 2007
January. Very slight recollection of this month. Actually, make that zero recollection.
February. Was it a leap year? No.
March. Coming as it usually does straight after February, March was otherwise unremarkable. In a surprise move, 2008 sees March instead coming just ahead of April.
April. Cited by Martin Amis’ narrator in The Rachel Papers as the coolest [...]
Filed under: Climate, Family, France, autobiography, climate change, omens and portents | 4 Comments
Super-Conduct Me
I’ve been enjoying the documentary series Visions of the Future, presented by Dr Michio Kaku. It’s old school documentary making: a lot of him talking to the camera, a few stock images, and some talking heads. He’s no James Burke, but this is the first decent science series the BBC has done for several of [...]
Filed under: BBC, Climate, Education, Entertainment, SF, TV, Technology, Television, climate change, sci-fi, science fiction | 6 Comments
Recycled Post
I’ve resisted all temptation to write about waste management and recycling, mostly because it’s a subject a little too close to one of the chapters in my PhD, on Don Delillo’s Underworld. Brings back bad memories of an exceedingly dull book.
But it’s a subject that does vex me, whether it’s a news story about microchipped [...]
Filed under: Climate, Conspiracy Theories, anxiety, being chippy, climate change, media studies | 2 Comments
Tags: environment, recycling
Nostalgia Bulletin
It was 20 years ago today not that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play but that Michael Fish gave that weather forecast before the big storm. We’ve had a few since, I guess, but that was quite a night. I remember getting up the next day and driving down the motorway to Luton (from [...]
Filed under: Arrested Development, BBC, Climate, Nostalgia, ambitions in life, autobiography, being chippy, climate change, friendship, happiness, secret girlfriends | 1 Comment
