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In St Pancras! #COP21 & Paris awaits. Checking out the great things that Bristol has to offer at https://t.co/qC8WtKtWIB @cabotinstitute
— Rich Pancost (@rpancost) December 6, 2015
I am on the train from Bristol Temple Meads to Paddington and then on to Paris. It seems appropriate leaving from a station that was built by Brunel, a symbol of the industrial revolution but also innovation. Tomorrow, I will be joining George Ferguson, Stephen Hilton of Bristol City Council, Amy Robinson of Low Carbon Southwest and others at the Sustainable Innovation Forum. I appreciate that addressing climate change means changing some aspects of how we live, but it also requires some fundamentally new technology; I am excited to see where the cutting edge thinking is. Meanwhile, over a relatively calm weekend, the draft accord has been made public – there have been some significant advances but also a ways to go. Negotiations will be continuing in earnest! More on all of that tomorrow (I hope – it will be a long day).
Today, however, my attention is elsewhere as our postgrads, research fellows and academic staff make their final preparations for the Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The science goes on – as it must and will, regardless of the Paris negotiations. We still know far too little about the complexity of this magnificent planet, how to best live on it sustainably, and the imminent and the longer-term impacts of climate and wider environmental change.
New group photo of the Organic Geochemistry Unit. pic.twitter.com/4x5YMhSMnl
— OGU Bristol (@ogu_bristol) December 1, 2015
Through all of this, there is a persistent and recurring theme of constraining uncertainty as well as understanding uncertainty in the context of decision-making. Scientists, industry and leaders must develop better tools for navigating environmental uncertainty, a focus of the Cabot Institute in 2015 and for which the need has been aptly demonstrated by Storm Desmond’s impact on Cumbria.
The struggle to keep the lights on in Carlisle – an electricity substation underwater #StormDesmond pic.twitter.com/iXgRtIgJPF
— David Shukman (@davidshukmanbbc) December 6, 2015
A fantastic example of some research being led by our colleagues will be on display in London on Monday as part of a Royal Society Discussion Meeting on the Biological and Climatic Impacts of Ocean Trace Element Chemistry. The event is co-convened by our Oxford friend, colleague and frequent collaborator, Gideon Henderson. Chatting to Gideon a few days ago, he emphasised the importance of the ocean in regulating our climate: ‘The oceans consume 27% of the carbon we emit, after all, and the ocean biosphere naturally consumes 11 Gtonnes of C per year.’ This is a huge issue. Currently, the ocean buffers the atmosphere against human action – but it is unclear how long this will continue. Moreover, the ocean does so at a cost:
- As the ocean absorbs energy, it warms.
- As the ocean absorbs this carbon, its pH declines.
- As marine phytoplankton assimilate this carbon and sink, they change the chemical state of the ocean, from top to bottom, creating oxygen dead zones and transforming the redox state of trace but biologically vital elements.
This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol. For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Thursday 3 December: The politics and culture of climate change