Category Archives: climate change

Hot Hot News – Capitalism is a Scam

The Financial Times and the Stock Exchange have long been the gold standard in economic data, underpinning the belief that capitalism and free enterprise are the optimum route to personal and national enrichment. Over the years a whole industry has … Continue reading

Posted in climate change, Irony, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

It’s the Demand, Stupid!

The kerfuffle in the UK this week about possible disruption to petrol supplies as a result of an industrial dispute involving tanker driver has turned into an astonishing political liability for the coalition government. In part this was because of … Continue reading

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UCL Chemistry water flow update – ups and downs

Annoyingly I pressed publish accidentally so an incomplete version may have been posted out to the few subscribers I have – apologies for wasting your time. Time for an update on the water flow situation in our Department. In case … Continue reading

Posted in carbon footprint, climate change, green champions, Uncategorized, water | Tagged , | 4 Comments

And the water flows on…..

Through the autumn and winter I wrote several times about our Department’s water use and our attempts to get a handle on where the water was going and then to find ways to stem the flow.  As I haven’t written … Continue reading

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Lord Monckton and the painful truth

You probably think I live in front of the television as, once again, I find myself commenting on a science documentary, this time from the wonderful BBC4. The programme, in the Storyville series,  “Meet the Climate Sceptics” by Rupert Murray, … Continue reading

Posted in bad science, carbon, climate change, public science | 6 Comments

James Delingpole and the Scientific Consensus

I’ve just watched the latest edition of the BBC’s Horizon programme, Science under Attack, in which Paul Nurse, the current head of the UK’s Royal Society goes out to try to understand why there is so little trust in science … Continue reading

Posted in bad science, climate change, public science | 35 Comments

And yet it flows…..

Christmas is in the air. Temperatures are dropping again. And we are only days away from the Departmental Christmas shut down. To my surprise, it didn’t prove too hard to get agreement to ensure that every single experiment in the … Continue reading

Posted in green champions, water | 2 Comments

Is Idealism dead?

Start of the academic year. Time for me to give my annual lecture on lab safety. As the person in the department who, I suspect, has done himself more damage doing chemistry or chemistry-related activities, I was fingered a couple … Continue reading

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Tipping Point 2010

Term is approaching at an alarming rate. But I get to take a couple of days off at Tipping Point in Oxford. I feel very privileged – I was asked last year by Mark Maslin of UCL Environmental Institute who … Continue reading

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Manpower – mp – a visceral unit

It’s that time of year when you look over last year’s handouts and try to think about what could go better next year. For my sins, I give five lectures in thermodynamics to Life Science students. The idea is to … Continue reading

Posted in carbon, carbon footprint, climate change, energy, thermodynamics | 1 Comment