Is the climate changing?

March 05, 2010 by Chris Goodall

The last few weeks have seen substantial questioning of the quality of the analysis of the global climate record. This presentation, made to the top year at a local secondary school, looks at the Oxford climate series and shows how the way the data is presented may significantly affect judgments on how fast warming is occurring at one particular point on the earth's surface. Apparently innocuous changes, such as varying the number of years in a moving average, can make substantial changes to the appearance of a temperature series. The notes to this presentation can be seen by downloading the PowerPoint file and clicking Notes Page in the View tab; or alternatively by downloading the PDF. Anybody wanting the raw data and the accompanying charts is very welcome to email Chris Goodall at chris@carboncommentary.com.

Maldives stance on renewable energy

December 17, 2009 by Chris Goodall

The Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed has become the most visible developing country spokesperson on climate change. Nasheed has continued to press for radical reductions in CO2 levels in the atmosphere, most recently arguing for a 350 parts per million target in a meeting with activist and author Bill McKibben in Copenhagen.

Why do global land use patterns matter so much?

March 06, 2009 by Chris Goodall

George Monbiot rightly observes that the earth's resources of biomass are limited and cannot be simultaneously claimed for multiple uses: liquid biofuels, fuel for heating, biogas, and biochar. This presentation looks at the globe's land and biomass production to assess how much space can be given over to non-food uses and how much energy this can generate. This is one of the crucial questions facing the world: how much energy can we use from biomass before this affects the ability of the world to provide enough food for nearly 7bn people, rising to at least 9bn by 2050?