Tag: University of Bristol

COP21 daily report: The politics and culture of climate change

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He and others Cabot Institute members will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.  All blogs in the series are linked to at the bottom of this blog.
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The main road in Tuvalu in September 2015, photographed by Viliami Fifita a PhD student in Policy Studies, University of Bristol.  His travel was funded by an ESRC Impact Acceleration Award to assist the Tuvalu government measure poverty and living standards in the context of climatic change and rising sea levels.
 
The Climate Change (COP21) conference in Paris is one of the most important gatherings of politicians, civil servants, academic experts, journalists, business and civil society representatives of the 21st Century – over 50,000 people are expected to attend.   The need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is clear as in 2015 global temperatures may rise to an average of 1oC above the pre-industrial level and atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels rose above 400 ppm for the first time in the past 800,000 years.  Some climate model results show that if greenhouse gas emission were stabilised, which would require a 60% reduction in global emissions immediately, then the World’s climate would still warm up to 1.6oC above the average pre-industrial level.
 
The natural sciences have made huge efforts to investigate the problem of climate change; unfortunately, the social sciences have not been so active.  This lamentable situation needs to change, so under the auspices of the IASQ (International Association on Social Quality) over 200 social scientists from around the world have signed the Sustainability Manifesto which argues that;

“one-dimensional solutions cannot address multidimensional problems like those we currently face….. environmental change is still viewed primarily in physical science terms, whereby the (interrelationships of) socio-environmental, socio-economic, socio-political and socio-cultural dimensions of sustainability receive insufficient attention”.

Interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research is needed particularly to fill the current knowledge gaps about socio-political and socio-cultural aspects of sustainability.  A lot is now known about the environmental and economic aspects of climate change but this has not been sufficient to persuade many politicians or some sections of the public that major actions are required which may affect their lifestyles.  Research is needed into how best to overcome these socio-cultural and socio-political barriers to sustainability.

The Sustainability Manifesto has received the unanimous backing of the executive committee of the International Social Science Council (the World’s governing body for the social sciences under the auspices of UNESCO) and the ISSC president, Alberto Martinelli, has called on all “scientists and colleagues all around the world to support the Initiative”.  I have helped to draft the Sustainability Manifesto and have signed it on behalf of the University of Bristol.  

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Professor David Gordon.  Prof Gordon studied environmental and climatic change for his PhD research and has worked at Bristol for 25 years in the School for Policy Studies.  He is the Director of the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research and was the editor of the European Journal of Social Quality for two years.

Prof David Gordon
 
This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:
 
Monday 30 November: COP21 daily report
 
Tuesday 1 December: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans
 
Wednesday 2 December: Reflecting on the science of climate change

 Friday 4 December: Be brave, work together and involve the next generation

COP21 daily report: Reflecting on the science of climate change

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.

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Bristol’s presence at COP21 started with a bang, with some of its most important contributions being showcased as it opened  the Bristol/Paris/ICLEI Cities and Regions Pavilion.  There is a lot to digest from that and that will be the focus of tomorrow’s or Friday’s blog.  Today, however, I am going to take a step back and revisit the climate science that is the basis for the political, entrepreneurial and social actions currently being discussed in Paris.

When I started by PhD in 1992, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere was about 355 ppm and already a huge source of concern to climate scientists.

About one year ago, depending on the station or the season, CO2 levels passed 400 ppm for the first time in human history.  And for the first time in ice core history, extending back nearly 1 million years.  And – based on our recent work using chemical proxies to reconstruct atmospheric carbon dioxide – probably for the first time in about 3 million years.

If we continue burning fossil fuel, even with reduced emissions, we will reach 550 to 700 ppm by the end of this century. Our work and that of others reveals that these are values that the Earth has not experienced for at least 10 million and maybe even 30 million years.

This is causing the Earth to warm.  That relationship is derived from fundamental physics and first articulated by Svante Arrhenius over a century ago.  Our climate models elaborate and clarify this relationship.  Earth history validates and confirms it – when CO2 was higher, the planet was warmer.  And consistent with that, this year is on track to be the warmest in recorded history, with human-induced warming now thought to have warmed our planet by 1C.

This is half of our agreed limit of 2C; and due to the slow response of the climate system, more warming will come.

These are some of the truly eye-opening facts surrounding climate change, the challenge we face and the need for this week’s negotiations.

There are many who will argue that the science of climate change is too uncertain to act upon.  The observations listed above, and many others, reveal that to be a manipulative half-truth.  There is an astonishing amount of knowledge about climate change – and global warming in particular.

Moreover, as Steve Lewandowksy (and Tim Ballard and myself) discussed in an article in the Guardian yesterday, the uncertainty that does exist in our understanding of climate change impacts is cause for mitigative action not complacency.  This was based on our recent volume in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, in which a great diversity of researchers highlight the impact of uncertainty on the economy, cooperation, action and creativity.

This has long been a focus of the Cabot Institute; Living with Environmental Uncertainty is a central tenet of our mission. ]We have hosted consultations and workshops on understanding, constraining and communicating uncertainty; advised decision makers and leaders; produced papers, reports and even handbooks. This year as part of the Green Capital, we framed much of our own activity, as well as our contributions to the Summits, Arts Programme and Festivals, around this theme: The Uncertain World.

A great example of this research is that of the Bristol Glaciology Centre.  Tony Payne was a Lead Author on the IPCC report on ice sheets and sea level rise.  Glacial biogeochemists, Martyn Tranter, Jemma Wadham and Alex Anesio, are studying how surface melting can create dark patches of algal growth which could absorb light and accelerate melting.  Jonathan Bamber led a fascinating expert elicitation study which suggested a wider range of potential sea level rise than previously thought.

All in all, this work is consistent with the most recent IPCC report that sea level rise will likely range from 0.7 to 1.1 m by the end of the century.  However, that range belies deeper and more frightening uncertainty. Professor Bamber spoke about this yesterday at COP21 as part of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative and Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research session on Irreversible Impacts of Climate Change on Antarctica.  Their presentation highlighted that the IPCC range of potential sea level rise is largely a function of the 2100 time frame applied.  Longer timescales reveal the true magnitude of this threat. The projected ~1m of sea level rise is probably already inevitable. It will be even higher – perhaps several metres higher – if we warm our planet by 2C, and even more so if it warms by the 2.7C that current Paris commitments yield. The geological record suggests even more dramatic potential for sea level rise: 3 million years ago, when CO2 concentrations were last ~400 ppm, sea level might have been 20 m higher.  These changes almost certainly would take place over hundreds of years rather than by 2100.  But their consequences will be vast and irreversible.

Flooding in Clifton, Bristol 2012. Events like these are likely to
become more common. Image credit Jim Freer
This uncertainty is not limited to warming and sea level rise.  Uncertainty is deeply dependent in rainfall forecasts for a warmer world; we know that warmer air can hold more water such that rainfall events are likely to become more extreme.  However, how will that change regionally?  Which areas will become wetter and which drier?  How will that affect food production?  Or soil erosion?

Of course, climate change is about more than just warming, sea level rise and extreme weather.  It is also about the chemistry of our atmosphere, soils and oceans.  Again profound concern and uncertainty is associated with the impact of coastal hypoxia and ocean acidification on marine ecosystems. In fact, it is the biological response to climate change, especially when coupled with all of the other ways we impact nature, that is most uncertain. Unfortunately, Earth history is less useful here.  Even the most rapid global warming events of the past seem to have occurred over thousands of years, far far slower than the change occurring now, a point that emerges again and again in our research and frequently emphasised by the Head of our Global Change Theme Dani Schmidt.

What is happening today appears to be unprecedented in Earth history.

We are creating an Uncertain – but also volatile, extreme and largely unknown world.  Some of that is inevitable.  But much of it is not.   How much will be largely decided in Paris.

But not just by nations.  Also by mayors and councils and LEPs, NGOs, citizens, businesses and other innovation and transformation leaders.  This is why the actions being proposed in the Cities and Regions Pavilion, not just by Bristol but by hundreds of cities and local authorities across the globe, are so very exciting.

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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
Prof Rich Pancost

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 daily report: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.

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On Monday, the Bristol Team arrived in Paris for the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21).  The Bristol cohort includes not just the Mayor and Bristol City Council, but also representatives from the Green Capital Partnership and an independent group from Love the Future (15 stalwarts who cycled from Bristol to Paris through typically British November weather). I’ll be joining them on Sunday… but some of the most exciting activity will happen today.

Bristol’s primary engagement with COP21 will be via the Cities and Regions Pavilion, hosted by Paris and Bristol and facilitated by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, with support from over 40 partners.  It is testimony to the stature of Bristol as 2015 Green Capital that it is able to share this venue with Paris. Moreover, the Pavilion is a fantastic opportunity for Bristol to share, connect with and learn from hundreds of cities from across the globe.

Bristol is one of 88 cities and regions in 42 countries to present innovative projects aimed at placing local and regional governments at the heart of positive and long-term climate action.  These Transformative Action Plans (TAPs) represent a 10-year initiative that aims to transform the lives of their citizens.  They arise from ICLEI’s recognition that local entities must take the lead in delivering but also extending the commitments emerging from the national-scale negotiations.  Bristol is pitching two projects, one on energy efficiency and one on smarter future planning of cities. The University of Bristol, including its Cabot Institute, has been closely involved with the development of both and former Bristol Professor Andy Gouldson will be sharing the stage with Mayor George Ferguson today.

George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol, said: 

“Bristol’s innovative plans, boosted by our year as European Green Capital, have been rated amongst the very best across cities and regions around the world thanks to their potential to transform the lives of our citizens. We’re proud to be among the world’s pioneering sustainable thinkers at COP21 and we look forward to bridging the gap ahead of the expected 2020 agreement with immediate actions that help reduce emissions, tackle poverty, improve lives and create new jobs through investment in low carbon projects.”

The first proposal, entitled ‘Energy efficiency for everyone’ (or Bristol Billion), is for a $1B (or £700m) investment to make Bristol’s buildings more energy efficient, thereby achieving significant carbon, energy, economic and even health savings. It will involve refurbishing 56,000 homes in Bristol – 30% of the city – and crucially it will not only make our city more sustainable but it will lift these homes out of fuel poverty and reduce health costs.  This proposal is based in part on a Cabot Institute-commissioned report that has also been released to the public today: The Economics of Low Carbon Cities: A mini-Stern Review for Bristol. This research shows that Bristol can achieve marked reductions in its emissions while saving money; in fact, the whole project could pay for itself in under a decade.  However, such a bold endeavour requires bold financing and hence the Bristol Billion proposition.

The Economics of Low Carbon Cities – report commissioned by the Cabot Institute

The Bristol Billion should achieve the energy efficiency gains necessary for the city to meet its 2015 to 2025 emissions reductions targets, but Bristol must also establish a foundation for the more challenging emission reductions to occur beyond 2025 and especially 2030.  Whether it be transforming the South West energy supply chain via the Bristol Energy Company or transforming its transport system, these changes will be more challenging and controversial. And that is the basis for the second project, the ‘Bristol Brain’, which seeks to reimagine how citizens and planners can work together to shape a sustainable future for the city. The Bristol Brain is ‘a physical and digital city model, on top of which, real-time data and sophisticated analytics can be projected and visualised, creating environments that can be explored through virtual and augmented reality. This will allow different scenarios for future developments to be explored as if they are real, and for the impact on energy, transport, air quality and other factors, to be fully understood.’

The Bristol Brain could facilitate city-scale planning decisions ranging from emergency services, road maintenance, and new public works. It could allow the social and economic impacts of major investments to be assessed and justified. Most importantly, it is a tool for testing and thereby empowering the radical reimagining of Bristol. It is the type of tool that citizens can use to justify maintenance of the M32… or its conversion into a bus-exclusive route… or even closing it and turning it into a city-scale garden.
This type of creative imagining is vital. Professor Colin Taylor, the head of the Cabot Institute’s Future Cities research theme, has argued that robust future city planning requires a city emulator so that we can truly explore the potential costs and benefits of truly transformative change. Crucially, the Bristol Brain would also support the more real-time interactive experiments that will be enabled by Bristol is Open and ensure that Bristol remains at the cutting edge of creative technology.
There remain challenges.  According to Bristol City Council, ‘The critical next step is to ensure these projects receive adequate financial resources to address urgent and evolving local needs to create a sustainable future.’ 

Another challenge is ensuring that such projects, especially the Bristol Brain, create an open and inclusive conversation about Bristol’s future. The University is committed to supporting these efforts.  If the Bristol Brain were to be made available to the public, perhaps via an allotment of the University’s High Performance Computing facility, then it becomes not just a resource for planning and consultation but for citizen-led propositions and inclusive innovation. 

The COP21 ambition, expressed by national governments via their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), is very likely to fall short of the global target of 2 degrees C warming. As such, it is crucial that other actors, including cities, take the lead in driving a more ambitious emissions reduction agenda. Moreover, they must work with universities, industry and civil society to stimulate, incubate and test new innovations. 

Bristol recognises that it can do more than follow an emissions path set by others. It can be a Laboratory for Change.
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Note: This blog is based partly on and includes text from a Bristol City Council press release.

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
Prof Rich Pancost
This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series:
 

Delivering the ‘Future City’: our economy and the nature of ‘growth’

Posted on by janet.crompton

In Bristol’s European Green Capital year, the University of Bristol and its Cabot Institute have been working with the Bristol Green Capital Partnership and its members to convene a series of four conversations between Bristol academics and city ‘thinkers’ from across public, private and civil society exploring how Bristol delivers the ‘future city’ –  what capacities it needs to be resilient, sustainable and successful and how it can start to develop these in times of changing governance and tightened finances. The conversations will be reflected in a series of four blogs (the fourth below) and then brought together as a policy report as well as discussing at the Festival of the Future City in November.  You can connect to the other blogs from this series at the bottom of this blog.
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Wordle of what we thought we’d talk about…

Cities such as Bristol are increasingly prominent in national growth strategies. The economic growth that Bristol helps to drive plays a fundamental role in shaping many aspects of life within the city. Different sectors, areas and social groups participate in and feel the impacts of growth in different ways. For some, the need for growth is unquestionable, particularly in an era of austerity, with the assumption that growth somehow underpins the pursuit of all other objectives. But for others, the pre-eminent growth logic is divisive socially and unsustainable environmentally. Growth therefore needs to be at least managed and possibly challenged more fundamentally. In this fourth conversation we considered what economic models make sense for the city and what capacity the city has to make changes in the context of a national and international economic system.

Growth – the elephant in the room?

In considering the future economy of the city, growth is the dominant idea but does this have to be economic growth with the associated ongoing increase of resource consumption? As we saw when discussing austerity, GDP growth is not contributing to long term stability environmentally or societally.   This debate was an opportunity to further explore growth and other measures of prosperity and how much is within the city’s control.

One participant drew an analogy with the natural environment and the way that living organisms are born, develop, mature and die – there isn’t enough space for everything to grow indefinitely. If we only talk about growth then we are only talking about half of life and missing the bit where some things die in order to make space to develop and nurture other life or something new.

There are two big reasons for needing growth, one is to service (interest bearing) debt – to pay back more than was borrowed needs growth. The second reason that growth is the mantra, particularly internationally, is that if a population is growing, you need economic growth otherwise by definition living standards are declining – and population growth is something else that is difficult to talk about. There is a common perception of growth as meaning success, an investment for your children.
What are the alternatives and how to we get to something that is more about leading happier, more fulfilled, healthier lives, something about development rather than growth?

International vs. local

One of the problems is that we are part of a global system, but there are things that a city controls and can change. The more business that is done locally or regionally, the more that power and funds move away from big corporations to something more transparent and locally based, where the organisations have a direct interest in the populations that they serve.

If the current systems seem too embedded and talk of developing alternative frames and narratives too difficult to achieve then don’t talk, just do things differently. The idea of ‘everyday making’ is that individuals just start behaving differently day-to-day, it has a cumulative effect and the end product is change. It’s an idea in academic literatures but it can be seen in real life too. Examples include buying food from local suppliers, ethically sourced clothing, and saving in green investment funds. In Bristol, the Bristol Pound is a manifestation of this idea – that by having a local currency people can gradually make more conscious consumption decisions. The new ‘Real Economy’ network has been developed through the Bristol Pound in an attempt to challenge the dominance of big business supermarkets. In the Real Economy, buying groups source food from local producers to start to create a food system that is fairer to all.

Talking about economics

Another issue is that many people feel disempowered when there is talk of economics, they feel that they don’t know enough, that somehow only the experts understand and can manage the system. It’s not really a conversation for the pub or at the school gates and that plays into the hands of the vested interests. The dominant free market right have captured the narrative with the idea that only growth can support ‘hard working families’.
There is such a dominance of growth as being the necessary outcome that it’s easy to portray everyone outside as excluded or naïve. In this narrative, growth translates as success and anything else is irresponsible.

Is it really a free market?

Could a true free market take account of climate change and value natural capital and social capital? These issues are not even really in the (mainstream) discussion yet whilst government subsidies support some industries and don’t let them die or change when they should. For example, banking; or the petroleum industry, which perhaps should be dying because of its costs – even before taking into account the environmental cost. Subsidies skew these markets.

There’s also a simplistic perception that everybody who is in the private sector (or at least the big business, multi-national part of it) must be bad but there are many entrepreneurs who act ethically and responsibly, who want to create good (local) businesses that employ people on fair wages and give back to their communities.

Part of the problem is that we’re all part of a very complex, interdependent system. This interdependency allows risk to be shared. For example if a city loses core industries, employment and income, shared resources from central government are there to help out. These interdependencies are highly complex which is why cities and businesses are not allowed to fail – for now at least, we’re all tied together in a global monetary system.

Politics, power and change

Our current political system draws some of its power from big business, paying taxes and providing employment, but also with the power to lobby to maintain the status quo. The powers in the system not only prevent things from dying but prevent change too and, although of course we need employment and tax receipts, there needs to be a mechanism whereby changes can happen more quickly. At a personal level, change is uncomfortable, so people vote for what is familiar, even if they don’t really like it, because it feels safer. It was suggested that the neo-liberal movement has succeeded in making all of us resistant to change. It’s scary, change takes us into the unknown and that feels risky, especially when we’re feeling vulnerable.

The constant growth narrative feels to some like a form of oppression. Individuals feel disempowered and that no-one else feels like they do, that they are all alone in being the good guy, all alone in arguing against the current system and narrative. There are many groups and conversations reflecting this view but they are fragmented and weak against the established power structures. Can a city bring its dissenting voices together into a more powerful collective? What is within its power to change?

…Wordle of what we talked about during the debate.

New approaches

This conversation started feeling a bit gloomy, that all the wrong people have the power, that we’re all alone in trying to make changes, that anyway we’re a bit powerless in such a globalised system and that the two big reasons for needing growth seemed unarguable.

A few good examples from around the world got us thinking about what could be done at the scale of Bristol. The examples from elsewhere included Ecuador which has legislation for the rights for nature, Sweden is experimenting with six-hour working days and Bhutan has a measure for gross national happiness. What could be the different ways of measuring economic welfare in the city – and which are not trying to put a monetary value on non-monetary issues such as quality of life or care for the natural environment?

The shift from growth to development or other forms of prosperity could involve a major change in how we see the economy and what we want from it. Rather than seeing growth as the end in itself, the economy should be seen as a means to achieve different development goals such as better public services, improved housing, increased inclusion, reduced inequality and greater levels of sustainability.  This would take a cultural and structural shift – overcoming the vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

What about Bristol?

There are already many parts of Bristol that are taking on big business and creating their own alternative economies with flourishing local enterprises and community-led prosperity coming out of them. The people of Bedminster are fighting against supermarkets and pawn shops, Knowle West are looking at pop up manufacturing and 3D printing, Lawrence Weston and Southmead have great momentum and visions for the future. Neighbourhood partnerships are working really well in some of the areas that need them most, and there are great social enterprises in many areas. BUT, there is still the dark side and, unlike some parts of the North, people across the city don’t feel like they’re all in it together, more like ‘us and them’. As we have observed before in these debates, there is significant racial tension and inequality in the city, high levels of child poverty and differences in life expectancy of 10 years between different areas – and, even more shocking, a 20 year difference in healthy years lived.

With these problems in the city it feels really important that we make efforts to work together better, to learn from the good examples and to join up this conversation outside the university and across the city. The big organisations in the city, such as the health sector, universities, council and businesses, have an important civic role in contributing to the wellbeing of the city. They have the resources and potential in their workforces, customers and supply chains to create new partnerships and city-wide change.

A new economic future?

When we talk about the allocation of limited resources there is no shared theory of value and no broader plan against which to share resources. So, for example in the health service, the budgets are boundaried and it’s easier to measure success of spending on cardiac surgery than it is to allocate resources to preventing heart disease with less predictable results somewhere in the future (that short-termism again). People across organisations collaborate in multi-agency partnerships but much of the actual resource allocation comes back to core service delivery. We need to understand where the power lies that can unlock these behaviours and allow longer term decisions to be made.

Again in this debate we talked about reducing inequality and creating a fairer system. The aim of the Bristol Pound was to support a green and fair economy – more equality and a more sustainable way of using resources. There is a wider role for business in contributing to life in the city, to have a positive impact. Local businesses and social enterprises are more connected with their communities and larger organisations have a civic role.

In the future we need to think more about what the economy is for – how to help pay for public services and improve housing, increased inclusion and greater levels of sustainability. We need to understand how to measure the real cost of environmental damage and that growth in itself is not the aim.

And sometimes we just need to do it, to make changes locally, to work together and to act on our beliefs in a way that supports the new economic system that we want to see.

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This blog is written by Caroline Bird, Future Cities and Communities Knowledge Exchange Manager at the Cabot Institute.
Caroline Bird
 
Other blogs in this series

Blog 1: Delivering the ‘Future City’: does Bristol have the governance capacities it needs?
Blog 2: Delivering the ‘Future City’: collaborating with or colluding in austerity?
Blog 3: Delivering the ‘Future City’: engaging or persuading?

What happened when students handed in a divestment petition to the University of Bristol

Posted on by janet.crompton
Students handing in a divestment petition to Hugh Brady, Vice Chancellor of
the University of Bristol

On 9 November 2015, Fossil Free Bristol University handed over their petition asking for fossil fuel divestment to the Vice Chancellor, Hugh Brady. The petition has been open since March and collected over 2,200 signatures. It was presented along with a Student Union motion and letter in support of the campaign, as well as a report on the case for divestment to be presented to the Pro Vice Chancellor at a follow-up meeting.

Students are hoping that the University of Bristol will capitalise on the city’s status as Bristol Green Capital and show subsequent Green Capital cities and universities what an important role universities can play in public climate change discourse. They are also keen that the university take positive moves towards divestment in the run up to COP21, and demonstrate to governmental leaders that they support strong action on climate change targets and regulation of the fossil fuel industry.

Students are keen that the university take positive moves towards divestment in
the run up to COP21, and demonstrate to governmental leaders that they support
strong action on climate change targets and regulation of the fossil fuel industry.

Fossil Free Bristol University was joined outside Senate House by Bristol University Sustainability Team (BUST), the Friends of the Earth Society, Bristol Energy Network, the local Fossil Free Bristol campaign and Bristol Left student society. It was a really positive and colourful event with loads of students turning up to show their support. As well as decorating their stalls with placards and banners created at the local arts centre the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft the students ran interactive information stalls and fun and games including pin the nose on the climate change sceptic.

The Vice Chancellor gave the campaign a fairly positive response, he talked about sustainability areas that the university was working on and said divestment was one area being investigated, and that we can expect a policy announcement in January. Fossil Free Bristol University will be keeping up the pressure on the University in the mean time.

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This blog is written by University of Bristol student, Rachel Simon from Fossil Free Bristol University.

Related links

Students in Bristol Uni divestment demands – Bristol 24/7

Open letter to the University of Bristol requesting divestment from fossil fuels

Read more about the petition hand in to Vice Chancellor Hugh Brady.

Watch the divestment petition hand in on Made In Bristol TV at minutes 5 – 7 of ‘The 6 09.11.15 Part 1’ News.

Read the Bristol Green Capital post.

Divestment at the University of Bristol?

Posted on by janet.crompton

Earlier this year I was approached by students who were involved in the campaign to petition the University of Bristol to divest from fossil fuel investments to see if I would be prepared to support their campaign and to encourage other members of the University’s staff to do so also.  I give lectures to students from the Faculty of Engineering on the subject of sustainable development, and through those lectures the students were aware that I have a good understanding of some of the challenges that face us.

I am a mechanical engineer by training, a specialist in engineering design, and I have worked in and with the transportation industries throughout my working life.  These industries– automobile, railway, aerospace, marine – are among the prime users of the fossil fuels with which the students are concerned, and although I am passionate about all things mechanical I have become convinced in recent years that we must be more radical in addressing issues of climate change than we have so far been prepared to be.  I was thus pleased to be able to give the students my support.  I felt at the very least the subject should figure strongly in debate and discussion within the University. I wrote emails to a number of members of the University staff inviting them to sign up to the campaign, using the letter reproduced below.

Dear Vice Chancellor,
We are writing to you to express our support for the open letter [1] that urges the University of Bristol to divest itself of investments in companies in the fossil fuel industry.  We acknowledge that exploitation of fossil fuels has enabled the remarkable developments of the industrial world, but we are now convinced that its continuation poses enormous threats to our planet and its population through climate change and through the pursuit of ever-more risky approaches to resource extraction.  We appreciate that reducing our use of fossil fuels is a tremendous challenge: we are ‘locked in’ to our current ways of doing things by the choices we have made at a time of fossil fuel abundance. Any change we make will be painful and might seem less than rational in terms of immediate short term financial impact (although not if fossil fuel assets become ‘stranded’ as the Bank of England has recently warned). But the longer we wait before we take decisive action the worse the negative impacts are likely to be, and for this reason we respectfully request that you give very serious consideration to the case for divestment.
[1] https://campaigns.gofossilfree.org/petitions/university-of-bristol-divest-from-the-fossil-fuel-industry

Those replies that I received were very largely supportive: over 50 members of staff have agreed to add their names to the petition. But I also received a number of thoughtful comments, and I thought I should share those through a Cabot Institute blog as a contribution to a debate on the topic.

Of those who declined to offer support, the most frequent reason offered was that the subject was too political – I received emails from colleagues saying that they were supportive in principle, but that it was “above their pay grade” or that they did not want to tie the hands of the University’s management.  For others, the University had important relationships with industry, especially with the petro-chemical industry – as sponsors of research and employers of our graduates – that might be threatened by divestment (and indeed an engineering student from the petro-chemical industry asked me why were we not also targeting the aerospace and automobile industries, among others, whose activities were leading to the demand for fossil fuels).

There were dissenters on technical grounds also.  A number of colleagues felt that to lump all fossil fuels together was much too indiscriminate, that natural gas and shale gas at least should play an important role in the transition to a low carbon future, and that technologies such as carbon capture and storage should be a part of future energy strategy.  For another respondent the difficulties in transitioning to alternative fuels were underestimated. Another felt that we should not divest until we have a viable alternative.  He believed that this could be nuclear, but that we needed to address the issues of the long-term storage of waste first (and he believed it was addressable).  Other colleagues admonished me for the way I wrote the statement of support.  I had suggested that divestment would be painful, but that I believed that the pain would be worth enduring because the consequences of runaway climate change were so unthinkable.  I was reproached by one writer for being too pessimistic – he said that the track record of market-based measures for reducing fossil fuel use is excellent: putting a price on pollution is very effective and it’s not even that costly.  For another colleague the letter was insufficiently assertive.  We should request that the University divest itself from investments in fossil fuel industries, not just consider it!

The responses that I received have caused me to re-examine my views, but I have not substantially changed them.  I still believe that we must very actively transition away from fossil fuels, even if it means significant changes in our lifestyles (and I remain convinced that it will).  As one colleague said we have reached a point where all scenarios are painful and that the logical thing to do is to act as quickly as possible to minimise the long term impact.  But the responses also demonstrated to me that there is an appetite in the University for an informed debate on the topic, and I hope that this blog entry and any responses that it attracts will be a helpful contribution to that debate.

 

Addendum

Kevin Anderson’s commentary in Nature Geoscience this month and reproduced in his blog at http://kevinanderson.info/blog/duality-in-climate-science/ is very relevant to the divestment debate.  His conclusion that ” . . even a slim chance of ‘keeping below’ a 2°C rise . .  now demands a revolution in how we both consume and produce energy. Such a rapid and deep transition will have profound implications for the framing of contemporary society” is in line very much with the sentiments behind the divestment campaign, and supports the need for urgent action.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Prof Chris McMahon from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Bristol.

The end of the road for diesel?

Posted on by janet.crompton
Smoggy day in Bristol
The Volkswagen (VW) emissions scandal is now into its second week, and with each day the enormity of the deception seems to increase. What started off as a few hundred thousand cars in the US has now become an astonishing 11 million cars worldwide that VW says may have to be recalled. In addition to the VW brand, diesel models of Audi, Skoda and SEAT cars have all been affected, with 1.2 million in the UK alone.
 
At the heart of this deception is the use of software, designed to be able to detect when a car was under test conditions, in order to reduce the emissions of a group of nitrogen and oxygen compounds, commonly referred to as NOx.  However, these emissions controls would not be switched on during normal driving.
 
Given that the cars were clearly built with the potential to emit less NOx, it’s not immediately clear why the emissions controls were applied only under test conditions.  Although VW have admitted they “screwed up”, they don’t seem to have said why. However, it’s a fair assumption that the emissions controls would affect the performance of the car, both in terms of drive and fuel economy. Since fuel economy is probably the main selling point of a diesel car, anything detrimentally affecting it, could easily lead to a decline in sales.
 
In addition to the flouting of the rules by VW, the wider issue is the NOx emissions themselves, which are a seemingly inevitable product of diesel powered vehicles.
 
The use of diesel as a fuel in cars has been on the up (in Europe at least) over the last couple of decades, with a supposedly superior fuel economy and hence lower CO2 emissions, meaning they have been incentivised in Britain with lower tax. However, this policy failed to take into account other pollutant emissions such as NOx and particulate matter that have been linked with thousands of premature deaths. Indeed, this push to diesel was labelled in a Channel 4 documentary earlier this year “the great car con” and just this week former science minister Lord Drayson called this policy a mistake.
 
Due in part to this push for more diesel vehicles on the roads in the UK and Europe, Bristol is just one of many cities which fail to meet the 40 μg/m3 annual mean WHO guideline level for NO2 (one of the collection of NOx gases). NOx levels in the UK have seen only a very small decline over the last decade or so, despite vehicle manufacturers telling us they make the cleanest cars yet. This contrasts with petrol vehicles, which have seen a dramatic decrease in NOx emissions over this time.
 

Why is NOx bad?

 
The presence of NOx in the lowermost part of our atmosphere, along with other pollutants such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) promotes the formation of ozone. Not to be confused with the protective ozone layer which is much higher up in the atmosphere, ozone near the surface has detrimental health effects, mostly involving the respiratory system, in addition to being a greenhouse gas. Furthermore, NO2 has itself been linked with certain respiratory health problems
 

Is there a simple solution?

 
Well, technologies exist to reduce NOx emissions from diesel vehicles, such as urea injection, only it seems that the VW group chose to cheat the system rather than use it, since it would add cost and weight to the car. If these technologies are implemented manufacturers claim to be able to filter out particulate emissions and greatly reduce NOx emissions. But, given the current furore, why on earth should we believe them?
 
In addition, a recent report from the International Council of Clean Transportation (ICCT) said that the real-world CO2 emissions of diesel (and petrol) cars are well above those in tests. There go the supposed CO2 savings of diesel then. Again you can’t help but question why diesel cars continue to enjoy a tax break in this country.
 

The death knell tolls for diesel…

 
…Ok, maybe not. Given the massive investment that the automobile industry has put into diesel over the last 20 years or so, they’re unlikely to suddenly jack it all in. What will probably follow is a splurge of marketing diarrhoea about how each new car is the ‘greenest yet’, all the while completely ignoring the fact that the simplest way to cut emissions would be to have fewer cars not more. Nevertheless, the current news story highlights how frivolously pollutant regulations, and the health implications, are taken when set against generating a profit. It also serves to impress the need for independent verification of emissions, such as those that uncovered VW’s fraudulent behaviour. The Atmospheric Chemistry Research Group here at Bristol, performs similar verification at the national level for greenhouse gases. It has been said that not taking the time to verify emissions statistics is like dieting without weighing oneself. Well, in this case I guess they did make it to the scales, but no one bothered to check they’d been calibrated properly. 
 
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This blog has been written by Cabot Institute member Mark Lunt, from the University of Bristol’s Atmospheric Chemistry Research Group.

Good Mooring!

Posted on by janet.crompton

Since the late 1990s, scientists at the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) have conducted annual cruises across the Fram Strait: the widest, deepest and most important exit point for sea ice in the Arctic. One of the main aims of the Fram Strait cruise (FS2015) is to recover, service and redeploy a sprinkling of oceanographic moorings- current profiling instruments and buoys tethered to hundreds of meters of cable, anchored to the seafloor. These have been continuously measuring the velocities of water masses within the East Greenland Current at preset depths. With continuous data over decadal timescales, the NPI are hoping to understand how the nature of the Arctic freshwater budget changes in an increasingly warming climate, how this will impact biological processes, and how it will affect other water masses on a broader scale as they interact in new ways.

1 of 6 oceanographic moorings being recovered for
servicing on FS2015.  Image credit: Laura de Steur /
Norwegian Polar Institute

I was lucky enough to lend a helping hand this September; my second cruise with the NPI after having had a blast working on the Norwegian Young Sea ICE 2015 (N-ICE2015) cruise for a month back in April 2015. After flying into Longyearbyen, Svalbard, and seeing the Research Vessel Lance waiting in the harbour for a second time, it felt very odd not seeing the ship surrounded by 1.3m thick pack-ice, which is how I’d left it after N-ICE2015. It wasn’t until I dropped my bag off in my cosy cabin and heard the familiar roar of the engines warming up (and having my room located right at the back of the ship I really mean roar…) that it felt like I was returning to my home away from home.

The mooring aspect of the cruise this time introduced a different dimension of risks that had to be accommodated: namely by the presence of sea ice above many of the moorings that needed to be recovered. This gave us an occupational risk that obviously only presents itself at the poles! On the N-ICE2015 cruise the engine didn’t have a huge part to play as we were passively drifting with the Arctic pack ice. This time round, whilst navigating the ice floes across Fram Strait towards Eastern Greenland, the Lance was actively smashing through and breaking up the ice above mooring sites to ensure that the mooring returned to the surface without being blocked on its ascent. As ice coverage can alter rapidly, it’s up to chance whether or not these moorings will be readily accessible. In the best case, there will be little to no coverage, so one only has to send a command to the mooring via radio signaling and the cable is released and brought to the surface- buoys and instruments attached. In a moderate case, ice will be extensive enough that the ship will have to meander round, breaking up the ice floes as best it can. For this reason underlying current speed and ascent rate of the mooring has to be considered carefully. It’s always a tense minute or two waiting for the buoys and expensive instrumentation to reach the surface, knowing it may never arrive if it gets stuck on an unfortunately located ice floe! In the worst case, the floes will be so thick and expansive that the mooring recovery process may have to be abandoned all together. For this reason, daily satellite images of ice extent were a very valuable necessity.

As well as observing the physical properties of the Atlantic and Polar Waters spilling southward into the Atlantic, extensive tracer sampling took place at and around the mooring locations by way of collecting water at standard depths. While it is common practice for oceanographers to measure parameters like salinity soon after the water is collected (the on-board salinometer quickly became a very close friend of mine, with 528 samples needing to be analysed during the cruise!) other tracers such as coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM), nutrients, and 18Oxygen isotope will be analysed ashore. These tracers can tell us something about the source of this water, and by looking at its isotopic composition whether it comes from melted sea ice or from other meteoric sources- that is, water derived from precipitation and runoff. Precipitated water at high latitudes is strongly depleted in 18O, while sea ice meltwater is slightly enriched in it. By looking at the mass of ice loss in the Arctic and how much of it is flowing through the Fram Strait year after year, we’re able to gauge how much is entering the Atlantic or staying in the Arctic basin [1].

The thickness of the ice flowing through Fram Strait has decreased by about 1/3 since 1990 [2]. Part of this melting is related to inflowing, relatively warm Atlantic waters travelling northwards via the West Spitsbergen Current. However, the amount of melt-water that is exported through Fram Strait hasn’t changed very significantly in the past decade. Evidence suggests that the melt water is being stored in the Beaufort gyre- a clockwise-rotating mass of water in the Arctic [3]. While the flux of melt-water into the Arctic Basin has increased in the past couple of decades, tracer analyses tell us the main mechanisms by which fresh water is supplied is by runoff from North American and Eurasian rivers, and by relatively fresh Pacific inflow through the Bering Strait, between Russia and Alaska [1].

The large-scale circulation around the Arctic Ocean.
Figure: Paul Dodd / Norwegian Polar Institute.

It is possible that with inter-annual changes in Arctic wind forcing this growing reservoir of cold, fresh water could be directed southwards across Fram Strait, where it could disrupt the thermohaline circulation of the Atlantic.

Routine sea ice stations were also carried out on suitable ice floes, giving us the chance to stretch our legs and take some ice cores for further tracer sampling. Once analysed, these will allow us to see how the chemical compositions compare with that of the underlying waters. Working 6-hours on, 6-hours off could get pretty exhausting, so it was nice to unwind with the occasional sled race across the floe or by sharpening our ‘selfie skills’ to let the world of social media know how our research was going. All in the name of science…
The FS2015 team and I (centre), exploring an ice floe.
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This blog is by Adam Cooper, Earth Sciences graduate at the University of Bristol.

What skills will we need to live in future smart cities?

Posted on by janet.crompton

Today, the idea that data can play a key role in the design and management of cities is widely recognised. Architects, planners and engineers are already considering how data can improve the planning and operational aspects of cities. However, we believe it’s now time to consider the skills that people will need to live in these smart cities.

The increasing digitisation of information, coupled with the impact of innovations such as the Internet of Things, will have a profound effect on all aspects of city life. This will include anything, from transport planning and energy use reduction, to care provision and assisted living. But it will also include new ways of social innovation, new ways of organising communities, and increased access to political processes. So, familiarity, if not proficiency, in ‘digital era’ skills will be an essential part of future citizenship.

This doesn’t only mean people should have the necessary digital consumption skills to help them make full use of emerging technologies. They should also have digital creation skills such as design, technology awareness, computational thinking and programming skills, as well as a risk-informed perception of data privacy and security. The challenges of delivering such a skillset are many, from designing a 21st century curriculum for schools and universities, to ensuring fair access to digital technology for everyone.

We believe that taking the time to consider these skills issues now is just as important as resolving the design and operational issues of the emerging technologies themselves.

Read the full report: Future of cities: smart cities, citizenship skills and the digital agenda
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Theo Tryfonas from the University of Bristol’s Faculty of Engineering and Dr Tom Crick from Cardiff Metropolitan University.  The blog was originally posted on the Future of Cities blog run by the Government Office for Science and has been reproduced with kind permission.

Theo Tryfonas

 

Fieldwork activities: A great opportunity to expose young scientists and engineers to novel technologies

Posted on by janet.crompton

Between 29 June and 7 July, three environmental monitoring stations have been installed in an organic farm approximately 15 km east of Swindon. The stations are part of the AMUSED project, funded by NERC and lead by me, Rafael Rosolem (Lecturer in Civil Engineering), with the ultimate goal being to identify key dominant processes that control changes in soil moisture and land-atmosphere interactions in the UK.

Each station is equipped with standard meteorological sensor as well as new technology for measuring soil moisture at spatial scales of approximately 600m diameter through cosmic-ray neutron interactions at approximately. The AMUSED network covers an area of approximately 1.7 square kilometers and will provide soil moisture estimates for hyper-resolution hydrometeorological modeling around the farm taking into account spatial scale heterogeneities not seen by satellite remote sensing products. The three sites are above chalk landscape and will improve our understanding of soil moisture and evaporation dynamics in such regions across a range of spatial scales.

Novel cosmic-ray sensor network will help estimate soil moisture at
hyper-resolution while accounting for differences in land cover and
soil characteristics. Source: Rafael Rosolem

An important aspect recognized in the AMUSED project is to expose young engineers and scientists to the novel cosmic-ray sensor technology. Our fieldwork was organized so that a small group of scientists and engineers carried out fieldwork and laboratory activities while learning more about environmental sensors.

The small group consisted of a post-doctoral researcher (Shams Rahman), a Civil Engineering PhD student (Joost Iwema), and a Civil Engineering undergraduate student (Juliana Koltermann da Silva) from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. Shams Rahman interests include understanding groundwater-atmosphere coupling through numerical models. He is currently working under the AMUSED project. Joost Iwema is a second year PhD candidate in the Department of Civil Engineering. His background is in Soil Sciences, and he has been directly working with cosmic-ray sensors. Juliana Koltermann da Silva is a Brazilian Sciences Without Borders undergraduate student with interest in Geotechnics.

While in the field, the group had a chance to interact directly with cosmic-ray sensor developer, Darin Desilets, from Hydroinnova, asking questions and learning more about this new technology. Fieldwork activities were also supported by the Faculty of Engineering and the University of Bristol International Office.

Woodland site: Left to right: Juliana (undergraduate student), Joost (PhD candidate),
Shams (Post-Doctoral Research Assistant), and Rafael (Lecturer in Civil Engineering).
Source: Rafael Rosolem
The group had an opportunity to interact with Darin Desilets (Hydroinnova; left in
the photo) during fieldwork and laboratory activities to learn more about the
new cosmic-ray sensor technology. Source: Rafael Rosolem

The fieldwork also involved collection of a large number of soil samples for analysis (more than 100 samples within 200m radius for each site). Soil samples are currently being analyzed in order to calibrate not only the cosmic-ray sensors but also cross-calibrate additional soil moisture sensors available in the site.

We collect approximately 60 soil samples to a depth of 30cm during the field
campaign. Each profile is further subdivided into 6 x 5cm thickness layers,
which are then used for calibrating the cosmic-ray sensors and numerical
models used in the NERC AMUSED project. Source: Rafael Rosolem.

One of the aims of the AMUSED project is to engage in knowledge transfer to young scientists and engineers, with a distinct backgrounds and at different stages of their careers, to novel technologies for environmental monitoring while providing a good balance between fieldwork and laboratory activities as well as numerical modeling approaches.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Rafael Rosolem (Lecturer in Civil Engineering).

Rafael Rosolem
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