Bill Gates has released a new book about Climate Change, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”, available for purchase here and in all bookshops. I have not read the book yet! However this evening I virtually attended a talk by Gates as part of the launch of the book. Gates was interviewed by Alok Sharma, MP who is president for the COP 26 talks that will be taking place in Glasgow in November this year.

The key figure from the talk was the annual global CO2 emissions of 51 billion tonnes. The challenge is to go to 0 tonnes while still meeting the needs of the global population. This is a constant challenge and one of the key metrics is the green premium (the fact it costs more to do the thing that is more environmentally friendly / carbon neutral). Gates gave the example of the cost per mile of electric vehicles, for the Chevrolet Bolt Electric Vehicle the cost is $0.73 per mile; whereas for the Chevrolet Malibu, it is £0.63 per mile. This is based on the total cost of ownership for over eight years. This green premium is relatively small, though still significant, whereas for other products it can be much higher, in many cases more than double. There is more information on green premiums on Gate’s website here.

He stressed the importance of considering all sources of carbon and use a graph similar to the graph below.

The talk then discussed the fact that there are solutions to many emissions, such as Electric Vehicles, Lithium Batteries, and Solar and Wind energy,all of which are reducing in cost. However thwere is no real green solution to som things for example steel and cement. 20% of our emissions come from Aviation Fuel, Steel and Cement so there needs to be solutions for all sectors. At the moment many things are so cheap that people don’t necessarily pay attention. The challenge for example for the electricyt sector is to ensrue that 20% of sources are non weather dependent, this either means investing in nuclear or improving battery storage.

There are signs of success, for example, the UK has grown its economy by 75% from 1990 to 2018 while reducing emissions by 40%. We are willing to legislate to make buildings more expensive for other reasons, for example, building codes to make buildings earthquake-proof. The same needs to be done to make buildings climate-proof. Governments need to drive this change, this is why COP 26 is needed. We need to accelerate innovation. Climate needs to be a bipartisan issue, and need to make it easy to reduce climate change by reducing the green premium.

Carbon capture and storage is a potential solution, but the key issue is cost per tonne. This is either carbon capture at source (e.g. on a chimney) or from the atmosphere at large. The current cheapest cost is predicted to be in the region of $100 per tonne; for it to be viable at a large scale the cost needs to come down to $10 or $20 per tonne.

There a three things that individuals can do:

1. Political voice and convince people you know about the cause.
2. Choice as a consumer – make effective choices.
3. Your employer – lobby your employer to make effective choices.

This is hard, so we have to be talking more about it, reducing our personal consumption will not be enough to get us to zero. If we don’t make progress cynicism will kick in and the green premium will be higher. We need to make short term sacrifices to make a long term change. This may end up with some skills being devalued, for example, coal mining and meat farming. There are trade-offs and new jo opportunities and this needs part of the government plans -there are transitional costs. The UK has reduced coal as a percentage of its energy production from 40% to 1%.

Overall this was an interesting talk and I am looking forward to receiving my copy of the book. This talk was hosted by the HowToAcademy (https://howtoacademy.com/) which look like they have a number of other interesting events that may be of interest to geographers.

When I first started teaching in 2005/6 VLE, or Virtual Learning Environments were to be the way of the future, all schools were to have one, and I believe there was ring-fenced funding for this initially. Then they died off in most schools, though most schools maintained some sort of online homework setting tools. In the current environment these tools have been pushed into the forefront.

We have for a number of years used ShowMyHomework (Satchel One), but as a school we use Office 365 so have teams available to us, and for a few years we had piloted teams. We have decided on a hybrid programme – for Years 7-9, ShowMyHomework, and for Year 10-13, MS Teams. Please find below a comparison document I put together to compare the two tools.

MS Teams vs. SMHW

Both:

• Allow teachers to set work and share resources that students can access at home.
• Link with our MIS to allow groups to be automatically populated and updated on class lists [for MS Teams this can be broken if group description is changed]
• Allow teachers to provide feedback to students [SMHW has just upgraded with this feature so it is more comparable to teams]
• Uploading documents.
• Sharing Links
• Both have iOS/Android Apps

Download Comparison as a Word Document:

Over the last week the examination boards have released DRAFT syllabuses for the new GCSE courses. These are for first teaching from September 2016, with examination from Summer 2018. However if your school does a three year Key Stage Four this will be for first teaching from September 2015.

Although the specifications still need to be approved by OFQUAL and therefore there will be some changes it provides an initial incite into government thinking.

I have created a one-page word document overview which is downloadable below.

Comparison of New Geography GCSE Specs

Draft Specifications

These have been provided here for ease of access – the most up to date version can be found on the examination board websites.

AQA Draft Spec

Edexcel A Draft Spec

Edexcel B Draft Spec

EDUQAS A Draft Spec

EDUQAS B Draft Spec

OCR A Draft Spec

OCR B Draft Spec

This was the first lecture I went to on the Friday morning and was a useful subject knowledge update.

The lecture was given by Professor Gerd Masselink, Professor of Coastal Geomorphology at Plymouth University.

Gerd began the talk by stating that last witner (2013-14) was fantastic for storms whereas this year, winter (2014-15) was disapointing, though I would imagine property owners and businesses in the south-west would feel differently!

Coastal Risk is caused by Hazard x Exposure, and coastal risk can take the form of erosion, damage to property, flooding and financial loss.

In the storms that cause the most damage large waves are found at the South of hte pressure system.

Fistral Beach, Newquay (source)

10m waves are 100 times more powerful than 1m waves.
In the four months between December 2013 and April 2014 there were 20 events where a 6m wave height was exceeded. The impact was larger when tide was high. Specific key events were Hercules 6/1/14 and Petra 5/2/14.
The 2013-14 winter was the most energetic period in the last 60 years (far exceeded the 1990 winter which was the previous highest).
The storm impact was not just a regional event; it also impacted Soulac, SW France.

Images of Damage

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The destruction of the SW Railway line at Dawlish cost between £1-20 million per day, the total cost over 60 days has been estimated between £60 million and £1.2 billion.

How can you compare impact of storm event?

• Beach survey – profile.
• Real time kinematic GPS
• Airborne LIDAR survey (from before or after)

These allow the researcher to quantify the sand lost (erosion) or gained (accretion).

In some beaches after the storm event a 1m strip of beach lost 200m of sand.

Where has the sand gone? (and will it come back)

1. Offshore Accretion – primarily happened in the North Coast. The sand was washed to 3-4m off low tide level. It is not lost and some is making its way back.
2. Alongshore (around the corner) – primarily happened on the South Coast, for example at Slapton.
3. Onshore (over the top) – particularly a feature of gravel beaches, where sediment is washed over the top. There is no natural mechanism to recover the sediment can only be returned by humans.

Conclusion

Storm waves are related to the Atlantic pressure system; storm frequency, intensity and path will be effected by climate change (this year two major storms have missed the SW as the centre of the storm was further North).

Storm impacts show a larger geographic variability – the North Coast with offshore sediment transport and beach erosion, has already half way recovered, and it is expected to be fully recovered within two years. The South Coast had longshore sediment transport and beach rotation will not recover unless there are storms of the same magnitude in the opposite direction.

Increase in coastal hazard due to climate change because of sea level rise, increased storminess (more and more energetic).

There can be be a decrease in exposure to coastal hazards due to coastal management this includes, zonation, protection and managed realignment.

Gerd also shared details of the following website: http://www.channelcoast.org/southwest/, the Plymouth coastal observatory which contains beach profile data.

This post was based on my own notes and any errors are my own.

This is a one of a series of posts on the GA Conference 2015; the main post is here.

This are the notes from the second book that I have been reading about the decline in American political parties.

• Parties have increasingly seen their major campaign services slip away one by one as historical eras and the nation’s needs have changed. Party services have also been severely curtailed because of modern technology. Candidates are relying increasingly on the mass media, public opinions polls, and public relations experts instead of the parties. The parties thus being challenged by non-party political actors for the delivery of campaign services.

• The function of the American political party can be summarised in six points:
  1. Educating the public.
  2. Mobilising and structuring the vote.
  3. Aggregating and articulating interests.
  4. Formulating policy
  5. Organising the government
  6. Recruiting leadership and providing campaign support for candidates.
• A number of changes in the parties’ environment have helped to bring about their decline. These changes have occurred since World War I and may be summarised as follows:
  1. Changes in the party-clientele relationship: The replacement of patronage systems with merit appointment programs.
  2. Changes in the electorate: The increasing education and political sophistication of the voter.
  3. Development of the “new politics”: The replacement of the candidate’s traditional campaign techniques with the political management firm’s use of public opinion polls, advertising techniques, and mass media.
  4. Changes in the government-electorate relationship: The increasing role of government in dispensing social and economic aid to its clientele.
  5. Changes in the relationship of parties to other political organisations: The proliferation and growth of alternative political and interest groups.
  6. Changes in finance: The new legislation limits parties in their acquisition and expenditures of campaign funds.
• Contemporary parties have lost their historical role of socialising Americans into the political system.
• Absentee ballots are available to those who cannot vote in their districts on election day. The complexity of the process, the need for far sighted planning, and the tendency of businessmen and travellers (often Republicans) to cast absentee votes leads to a majority of absentee votes being cast for Republican party candidates.
• Since the 1960s voters have shown their disdain for parties and candidates either by crossing party lines or by staying at home. In 1974 only about one in three Americans of voting age bothered to vote.Among those who did, ticket-spiting was at an all-time high.
• Parties perform several basic functions that are aimed at either promoting or blocking legislation:
  1. They  select leaders who are responsible for advancing the business of the chamber.
  2. Party leasers help choose those who will fill subsidiary leadership positions.
  3. The leaders appoint members to the various committees.
  4. The leaders control the legislative agenda.
  5. The leaders serve as liaison between Congress and the executive branch.

• The image below explains some reasons for incumbent advantage (click for larger image)