Categorie: climate

Fever: we are at 38.7, and rising

Lets look ate the climate problem in another way: At a 1.5-degree increase, you have a fever, 38.5 degrees. You stay stay indoors, and move as little as possible; you don’t want to cause further damage. Because in various activities, you quickly start sweating and get tired. You won’t train…

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Loss and damage fund, filled by miljonairs…?- COP28

Loss and damage fund, filled by miljonairs…?- COP28 The first result of COP28 seems to be already there, a loss and damage fund for ‘weaker’ countries. However, there was already an agreed-upon investment fund to help those countries get into transition. But that fund is not functioning, still largely empty,…

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Forget tech-optimism…

The newspaper article on Saturday on the front page of the economics section of the NRC national newspaper , opens with the headline:  “believing in growth or shrinkage.” With that, I was immediately on the fence. Because it’s not about believing. It’s physics. You can calculate how much energy and…

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Continue partying, or (CO2) lockdown ?

There are actually only two options (‘scenario’s’): Either we go into CO2 lockdown, or we party on until the whole thing collapses…. The latest IPCC report makes that perfectly clear again. What we are doing now is a case of “soft nurses make bad wounds”, with our decades-long unbridled optimism…

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Carbon storage: the land-time relation 2/2

There are many ways you can start “accounting” for CO2 (as comments on the previous article also showed), but at the end of the day what matters are absolute CO2 emissions, from whatever activity. And cutting down a tree and using it as a column (or a table, or a…

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Living of presents , all year round…

In the coming weeks, the Black-Peter discussion will undoubtedly re-surface: its a Dutch tradition celebrating Saint Nicolas assisted by “black Peters’ coming from ‘Spain’ and distributing presents for children in shoes next to the fire place, by Black Peters climbing down the chimney. Hence the black color. Recently there has…

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The UN SDG’s adapted for rich countries…

In recent years we have seen the Sustainable development goals of the UN appear more and more often as a stepping stone for all kinds of initiatives. [1] And that, however well-intentioned, is not always a good thing. I wrote before, along with others, that there should be a certain…

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Climate neutral Rugby…

There is a lot of discussion, how to ‘fight’ climateheating. Especially now, with massive investments in the economy. But what is clear, is that every sector has to make its contribution, to become carbon emissions free. Every sector? Yes. We were sitting together with some old rugby friends recently: So…

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Corona & Climate update: the R-value of Climate

There are many similarities between the Corona crises and the climate crises. But there is 1 difference: there is no vaccine against climate change, after which we can pick up where we left off. That is more or less the first lesson or observation that can be drawn from the…

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2020-2040: What goes up, must come down…

Last year I wrote about a publication from 20 years ago, in which prominent figures looked 20 years ahead. [1] The result was not that good, the future is always more different as expected. However, a number of reactions wondered what that would be like in 20 years from now,…

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