Edinburgh Science Festival 7 - Beginner's Guide to Climate Change

This is the 7th in a series of blogs from the Edinburgh International Science Festival. Myself and six other bloggers have been writing about the event during the fortnight.

Professor Richard Wiseman has cropped up a lot during the Science Festival. In addition to MC-ing the firewalking and hosting the comedy evening, he’s presented a series of Beginner’s Guides to various topics. “My role is to pretend that I know nothing, whereas in truth, of course, I am an expert in all these topics,” he said by way of introduction.

My final blogging event was the Beginner’s Guide to Climate Change, in which Richard interviewed the first professor of carbon capture, Stuart Heszeldine.

Stuart is a geologist and he began by introducing us to the concept of deep time, the geological timescales measured in hundreds of millions of years. Over this period, the Earth’s climate cycles between hot and cold temperatures; we’re currently in a minima. This gives climate change sceptics the opportunity to say that climate variation is natural, conveniently ignoring that this variation takes place over ten million years or so.

Real climate change, the sort we’ve initiated, is happening much faster. We’ve taken 400 million years of stored CO2 - stored in fossil fuels - and released it back into the atmosphere in a mere 200 years. There’s no end to fossil fuel use and the climate is changing at an increasing pace.

There will be several results:

The temperature is climbing 

The ocean is becoming more acidic

Sea levels will rise 1 to 5 metres

Populations will start to migrate and resource wars will increase

Globally, there will be a lower standard of living

Climate change has happened before; in fact, it may have been behind 5 previous world-wide mass extinctions. We could be heading for the 6^th.

Richard Wiseman was an excellent interviewer, teasing out the facts, allowing Stuart to explain the science and the implications. He managed to keep it upbeat, but the take-home message was clear: We need to do something now. Politicians need to treat climate change as a priority. We’re the ones to make them.

The Beginner’s Guide to Climate Change left me shaken. My view of the world has changed as a result of it. And that’s the power of the Edinburgh Science Festival.

Edinburgh Science Festival 5 - Fixing the Planet

This is the 5th in a series of blogs from the Edinburgh International Science Festival. Myself and six other bloggers have been writing about the event during the fortnight.

Climate change. Like many of you, I’d been aware of the worries, vaguely cogniscent of the science and had a hazy impression of the timescales involved.

Well, there’s nothing like getting up close and personal with the scientists involved to change all that. Now I’m definitely worried.

The first Edinburgh Science Festival climate change event I attended was panel featuring Jim Hansen, Stuart Haszeldine, Saran Sohi, Gary Clark and Richard Yemm. (Follow the links to see their respective specialities - and I particularly recommend Jim Hansen’s.) Each speaker gave a five minute presentation and then took questions. Some fascinating information emerged - Scotland seems to be at the forefront of renewables, with 30% of energy currently sourced that way. The way some of the speakers put it, having kicked started the industrial revolution with James Watt, it was Scotland’s duty to lead the way into the second, carbon-neutral industrial revolution.

But it was a mixture of upbeat and gloom. James Hansen in particular argued that politicians don’t lead, they react - it’s up to the public to reclaim democracy from big industry lobbyists and get something done before it was too late. He argued for a carbon tax and a move to 4^th generation nuclear power - the others were more keen on energy efficiency and renewables.

The event was sobering. It featured too many speakers to be truly coherent and questions had to be grouped to get through them all. Even so, it overran. But it was a good overview - and a prelude to the climate change event the following day, which was even more alarming. But for that, you’ll have to wait for Edinburgh Science Blog 7.

Edinburgh Science Festival 4 - Comedy

This is the 4th in a series of blogs from the Edinburgh International Science Festival. Myself and six other bloggers have been writing about the event during the fortnight.

It’s been a frustrating week. The Edinburgh Science Festival has been on and I’ve been elsewhere! However on Wednesday I remedied this and returned for an evening of maths, science and humour.


The first event was The Maths Olympics by Simon Pampena (click the links to watch part of the show or follow Simon on Twitter). This proved to contain less maths than I’d have liked and a little too much Ozzie shouting. He basically used number-crunching to prove that Oz was Top At Everything. The Q&A at the end was more fun, especially as someone had spotted a mistake in one of his slides. It’s not often you hear a heckle about 2-dimensional venn diagrams.


Afterwards I attended Humour Me, in which psychologist Richard Wiseman, evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar and stand-up comedian Robin Ince debated the psychology and evolution of humour. This was fascinating: Laughter and singing preceded speaking - how do we know? The structure of the chest cavity and lungs in fossil remains. Chimps laugh by inhaling and exhaling, whereas we laugh with one, long exhalation.


Laughter is a social bonding thing and we are much more likely to laugh if we do it in a group of four or more. Not many people laugh alone. Which makes me speculate about those of us who do laugh alone - does the ability to find something funny and then wish to communicate that to others predispose you towards getting involved in comedy professionally.


The evening was enlivened at one point by a woman who criticised the fact that there were no women on the panel. Richard Wiseman tried to damp down this protest but Robin Ince’s reaction was interesting - he was all for inviting her up on stage to join in.


The talk featured several clips to illustrate points about comedy. One clip from Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore’s 1960s TV series, apparently divides audiences straight down the middle - you either love it or hate it. I loved it and have since discovered it’s even funnier if you watch it without other people around!


I would have liked to have heard more from Robin Dunbar on the science and research into comedy - particularly his work with primates - but otherwise it was a cracking evening. Science and comedy; what’s not to like?


Here are a few sketches from the Maths Olympics: