@sophievipond
Director of External Affairs at the Climate Change Committee. “Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? “You could make this place beautiful.”
NEW ANALYSIS: UK emissions fell 2.4% in 2025 as coal fell to a 400-year low. Incredibly, we used less coal last year than than in 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing Hamlet.
All the details in our article: www.carbonbrief.org/...
Tomorrow has arrived but there are things we - as individuals, business owners and government - can do about it. The CCC will be publishing a report in May about how the UK can adapt to the changing climate we’re experiencing. Stay tuned…
BBC headline utterly failing. ‘The saga of a £165m rail line that keeps causing travel chaos’
It’s not the rail line that “keeps causing travel chaos” its the shifting climate with more prolonged and intense rainfall and more frequent storms leading to landslips and the sea wall being washed out.
Screenshot from BBC News live text coverage of Trump press conference: 19:27 This news conference could go on for a very long time (byline: Gary O'Donoghue, Chief North America correspondent at the White House) This is the president in his most enigmatic and expansive mood. During the campaign this used to be called "the weave" – meandering from subject to subject, often the connections not immediately obvious.
going to use "at my most enigmatic and expansive" to describe the next time I have a few too many wines
Worth remembering: The world has been spending more on solar than oil for the last two years.
I really hate it when scientists keep saying that “we need to rebuild trust in science,” because it implies that scientists are to blame for the mistrust rather than the millions of dollars of dark money that have funded political attacks on science in order to advance a far right agenda.
You can argue a bit about correlation and causation with the Paris Agreement. It only got reached because governments could see a global clean tech boom was coming. But equally, it’s self evident that having an overarching global goal and system of national plans has helped drive progress.
This is a crucial point
And why the ‘stay on X/Twitter so you don’t cede the public square’ is such a nonsense argument
It isn’t Hyde Park, it’s a billionaire controlled algorithm *designed* to spread far right ideologies
We will regret not acting faster on climate change.
The UK Climate Change Commission has rejected claims by opposition politicians that it is giving a misleadingly low estimate of the cost of offshore wind power, which is expected to become the backbone of Britain's electricity system
www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/u...
x.com/ClaireCoutin...
This is a great cartoon of the illogical narratives I hear refuting climate warming. As I have said many times, it's not "either/or" when it comes to natural variability and human contributions, it's "both/and." Grass grows naturally and it grows differently when you fertilize the lawn....
This would be laughable if it wasn't so serious: yet again, the Tories are claiming that we can get "all our oil and gas" from the North Sea and that we should be doing even more to support the industry to extract.
There are several reasons why we should treat this with maximum scepticism:
10 years ago, my dad was 2+ years into his diagnosis of a glioblastoma. By this point, he’d lost the ability to walk, talk, and read.
Progress is possible. God bless Dr M, who perseveres on this horrid disease. For baby Mabel and the family in this story, I wish many happy, healthy years together.
Met Office-branded bar chart showing the top 10 warmest UK summers (average temperature for June, July and August) Year, degrees C 2025: 16.13 (average to 25th August) 2018: 15.76 2006: 15.75 2003: 15.74 2022: 15.71 1976: 15.70 1995: 15.62 1933: 15.38 2023: 15.36 1899: 15.29
Provisional statistics from the Met Office show that summer 2025 will ‘almost certainly’ be the warmest summer on record for the UK
It would move 2018 off the top spot and relegate 1976 out of the top five warmest summer in a series which dates back to 1884
www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/new...
NEW
Nigel Topping chosen as new chair of @thecccuk.bsky.social, pending formalities
Will bring experience from business world & UN climate talks to the role
Follows years-long delay after former Tory minister Lord Deben quit as chair and @piersforster.bsky.social steered ship in interim capacity
This is a pretty damning thread. The Telegraph opposes net zero, and that's its right. It can make the argument on comment pages and in leaders. But for the sake of its reputation, it needs to tighten up fact-checking in its reporting and stop eliding it with commentary.
The crisis for UK steel is exposing another – perhaps even bigger – crisis for the UK
Our news media seems incapable of even the most basic factchecking
YES energy for UK steelmakers is costly
NO it's not due to net-zero
YES it is due to GAS
Here's what UK media isn't telling you🧵
The Kyoto play is a reminder of how far we’ve come on climate politics. We should bank the wins. The play was also a great lesson in the forces that influenced the set up of the COP process - not all of who were acting in good faith. Educational, funny, sad, wildly engaging.
All of these “Can Trump run again” pieces, treating it as if there’s some legitimate way he could get around the 22nd amendment, are bizarre and misleading. There is no legitimate way around it.
I do a lot of thinking about community, about place, and about belonging. As Maya Angelou said: people remember how you make them feel. I grew up in the safest community - one where i was encouraged to pursue every weird question and wacky idea. God bless teachers like Bob.
On Friday, I went to the 80th birthday of the teacher who taught me history and drama at primary school, and ran the local youth theatre I went to till I was ~17. He was surrounded by the ‘children’ he had taught and our parents. A community he built over decades.
This week, someone said of the UK's net zero target: "Why is it 2050 in the first place? No-one knows."
It feels like a good time to be resharing this @newscientist.com primer, on what net zero actually means. Few years old but the basics stand👇
www.newscientist.com/question/net...
THREAD: How the Sun screwed up its "smoking gun" story on net-zero study
The Sun: "As much as 10% wld be wiped off economic growth by end of decade"
Source: "At no point does this study suggest there will be a drop in UK GDP. It talks abt a 10% transfer…within GDP"
Oops!
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'Anti-poison' ULEZ scheme has lowered air pollution most in London boroughs that opposed it
Big apprenticeship push from Energy UK, as net zero skills crunch continues to loom. www.businessgreen.com/news/4409708...
A pleasure to go for a stroll with CCC CEO @elpinchbeck.bsky.social to talk about the trade offs between nature and climate, what climate action means for the UK and the metropolitan fantasy of an unchanging English countryside. In the Sunday Times @thetimes.com
www.thetimes.com/article/b729...
High winds and lack of rain driving California fires, but climate change is increasing likelihood of conflagrations, say experts.
Researchers say that warming world increases number of "fire weather" days:
by @mattmcgrathbbc.bsky.social
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
+++NEW ANALYSIS+++
UK electricity was the cleanest ever in 2024, with emissions per unit falling by more than two-thirds in a decade
Highlights:
🏭end of coal power after 142yrs
🔥fossil fuels at record-low 29% share
🌄renewables at record-high 45%
www.carbonbrief.org/...
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