Guardian

To boldly go… to a low carbon future

by Bryan Walker January 8, 2012

I liked the sub-heading to a Guardian article on Friday. “The theory that cutting carbon emissions costs us growth is bunk, in fact, it’s an economic opportunity.” The article itself is a little less exuberant in its expression, understandably given that one of its authors, Vinod Thomas (pictured), is director general for independent evaluation at [...]

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Vidal’s voyage to Durban

by Bryan Walker November 28, 2011

How better to journey to the climate conference at Durban than through the African countries along the way which are already grappling with climate change? That’s the route John Vidal, the Guardian’s environment editor, has been following over the past ten days and reporting on in a series of articles. He started in Egypt. The [...]

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Grim news on emissions

by Bryan Walker May 30, 2011

The Guardian, with the exception of the foolishness of its analysis of the climategate emails, is one of the world media’s bright spots when it comes to recognising and communicating the realities of climate change. It carried grim news yesterday. Environment correspondent Fiona Harvey reported International Energy Agency (IEA) unpublished estimates that greenhouse gas emissions [...]

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Ratcliffe coal protesters invited to appeal conviction

by Bryan Walker April 20, 2011

The defence of the Ratcliffe coal power plant protesters in the UK, charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass, was that they were acting through “necessity” to prevent death and serious injury caused by carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. James Hansen was among the defence witnesses, testifying to the reality of the danger from [...]

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Can Cancún’s COP deliver?

by Gareth November 30, 2010

Another year, another Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, number 16 in a series that looks set to run and run. Mexico is the host, Cancún the seaside resort where thousands of diplomats, negotiators, activists and apparatchiks are gathering to have another go at sorting out a successor [...]

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Under African skies

by Bryan Walker November 3, 2010

Guardian journalist Madeleine Bunting has been in Mali, learning how it is affected by climate change. In an article published on Sunday she wrote of her visit to the remote town of Anakila where an enormous encroaching sand dune threatens. “For years now, the elders explain, they have been worried by climate change. Disrupted rain [...]

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Anyway, anyhow, anywhere

by Bryan Walker October 5, 2010

Two modestly hopeful signs from the political world struck me when reading today’s Guardian news. One was the opening of the climate change talks at Tainjin in China aimed at refining possible goals for the Cancun talks in November-December. The comment of Oxfam observer Kelly Dent attracted my attention. Oxfam is a careful watchdog of [...]

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Tropical ice land: climate change hits Peruvians

by Bryan Walker September 23, 2010

It may not be strictly scientific, but anthropological observation like this is invaluable because in the end, people’s interpretation of the events they see around them count as much as or more than any peer-reviewed paper.” Guardian journalist John  Vidal has been with other writers on an Oxfam-guided tour of Peru and Ecuador  to see [...]

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IPCC report: done well, could do better

by Gareth August 31, 2010

The InterAcademy Council report on the IPCC — Climate Change Assessments: Review of the Processes and Procedures of the IPCC — released yesterday, calls for “fundamental reforms” to the IPCC’s management structure and review processes. Climate Central provides a useful summary of the key findings: The IPCC should create an Executive Committee to run the [...]

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A new journalistic fiction

by Bryan Walker July 9, 2010

Of all the comments on Muir Russell’s climategate report the one that resonated most with me was that of Oxford physicist Myles Allen (pictured). “What everyone has lost sight of is the spectacular failure of mainstream journalism to keep the whole affair in perspective.” When the Guardian is part of that failure the word ‘spectacular’ [...]

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