Please visit this page again soon - it will be updated frequently in the coming weeks.
Because of global warming, the ice at the Poles and on Greenland is melting. The picture above shows a waterfall of melt water running into the sea off the Larsen-B ice shelf, Antarctica. In early 2002, 3250 km2 of the ice shelf collapsed and broke up into thousands of icebergs floating in the Wedell Sea. In February, 2008, scientists discovered that the Wilkins ice shelf had also begun to break up at an alarming rate.
Why a page about global warming and climate change on the web site of a charity to do with helping refugees and asylum seekers? Well, it’s down to every one of us to do whatever we can to reduce the amount of enrgy we use to save the planet from global warming caused by CO2 in the atmosphere. NNRF runs a building, the Square Centre, which uses about £4200 worth of gas and electric per year. Saving energy saves NNRF money but also cuts down the amount of CO2 the Centre's energy use adds to the atmosphere. But “...save the planet”?? – surely a little sensational even for this web site. Then you should take a look through the selection of links bottom right of this page. If these don’t get you switching off lights, turning down radiator thermostats, cycling to work and taking your holiday in Mablethorpe instead of Marbella, we don’t know what.
But if you still argue that it’s all a scare mongering plot by the wind turbine lobby and the science isn’t conclusive, suppose for a moment that the scientists' initial interpretations are right. Then by the time all scientific i’s are dotted and t’s crossed, it will be far too late to do anything about it. More of Greenland's ice will have slid into the sea, which will have risen about a metre by the end of the century. The extra fresh water from this and the melting polar ice caps will have slowed down the Atlantic currents which keep Europe warm. For the 100 million people that currently live less than one metre above sea level, many coastal towns or cities and island communities like the Tuvalu islands in the Pacific will cease to exist. Some scenarios predict that in 200 years time, Nottingham could be a very cold sea-side town – far worse even than Mablethorpe in the “summer”.
What happens to all the people who live in these
places? They become “environmental refugees”, a phrase you’re going to hear a lot more in coming years. Low-lying Tuvalu
is already having problems with rising sea level; New Zealand has promised to take the entire 11600 population when the time comes. But what about the
150 million environmental refugees that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate will exist in the year 2050?
The floods, droughts, rises in sea level, &c, due to global warming and climate change cause crop failures and force people to become environmental refugees. So an organisation such as NNRF which concerns itself with refugees should be doing as much as it can to reduce its contribution to global warming by reducing its carbon footprint. We can do this by cutting down the energy the Centre uses, and reducing waste.
An
estimate has been made of the ammount of electricity used by all the appliances in the Centre in the form a spreadsheet which can be downloaded
by clicking here.
The estimated total amount of electricity used by the Centre appears at the top of the spreadsheet - it's around 11100 kWh per year.
But the meter readings show that the centre is using double this amount - around 22000 kWh per year. This means 9.5 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.
The discrepancy between the estimate and the meter readings is because not all the Centre's equipment has yet been included and the "hours/week" are clearly not an accurate picture of what's actually going on. It must be that some high wattage appliances are heavily used - perhaps left on longer than need be - so, when you've finished with it:
SWITCH IT OFF!!!
There is also a chart (see above left) in the spreadsheet showing the distribution of
electricicty consumption between the various types of appliances used. At the moment, it shows that
lighting is the biggest consumer of electricity, followed by computers and fridges/freezers. Using the spreadsheet, it's possible to see what changes would make significant reductions in the total
amount of electricty used per year. You could have a go at this yourself. If you find something significant, report it to rms.titanic@hotmail.co.uk. Also
if, for example, you know full well that your group uses the cooker rings a lot more than 1.5 hours per week or you dissagree with any other figures on the spreadsheet, please tell us.
Where the power rating or weekly usage could not even be guessed at reasonably, figures were taken from the spreadsheet on the University of Strathclyde web site (click here to go to "Consumption guide instructions", then click "Household consumption guide download" at the bottom of the page). Estimates for some appliances will be improved by taking actual measurements with an energy meter, so as time goes on, the total estimate will be updated. The picture on the right shows an energy meter monitoring the electricity consumption of the photocopier in the Reception Office.
The only appliances in the Centre using gas are our two gas boilers, supplying heating and some hot water. From availbale bills, we estimate that they use about 60000 kWh equivalent of gas per year. This means 11.4 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.
The total contribution of the Square Centre towards making global warming and climate change worse because of the energy we use, is therefore around 21 tonnes of CO2 put into the atmosphere each year.
Listed below is a series of energy saving measures which will be implemented at the Centre in the coming weeks (and remember folks, you can do these at home too). It is by no means a complete list; If you have an idea for something
that could be done, then email the website engineers on rms.titanic@hotmail.co.uk. The condition of the Centre is such that
only "first-aid" measures have been considered feasible.
Measures for energy saving at the Centre
The proposed measures are as follows:
- Create general awareness of the need to save energy by all who work at, use or visit the Centre. Among the habits which need to be promoted are:
- Switching off lights: especially when leaving part of the building which no one else is using (eg training room; also downstairs rooms
and downstairs corridors have all been found deserted but with lights left on; smokers - is this you slipping down to the garden for a quiet puff and forgetting to turn lights off when you come back up??).
- Turning thermostatic radiator valves back down when finished using a room (it might not be used again for another week - that's a lot of gas).
- Not switching lights on if there is enough daylight to see what you are doing (eg toilets, upstairs kitchen, offices with large windows;
also lights in hall are usually on during the day).
- Switching off all PCs when not needed for long periods, eg lunchtime, at night. Switching off monitors when absent for a short time.
- Only boiling as much water in the kettle needed for the drinks you are about to make.
- Ensuring water boiler in hall is off if not needed for an event, session, meeting, &c.
- Ensuring cooker in downstairs kitchen is off after a cooking session.
- Switching off lights: especially when leaving part of the building which no one else is using (eg training room; also downstairs rooms
and downstairs corridors have all been found deserted but with lights left on; smokers - is this you slipping down to the garden for a quiet puff and forgetting to turn lights off when you come back up??).
- The pie chart in the electricity consumption spreadsheet shows that lighting is the biggest consumer of electricity at the Centre. Using the spreadsheet, it can be shown that:
- Disabling two 18 W tubes in every other 4-tube unit in the offices (achieved by removing one of the starters in the unit) and
- removing 6 selected 28 W compact fluorescent tubes from corridor fittings,
- Disabling two 18 W tubes in every other 4-tube unit in the offices (achieved by removing one of the starters in the unit) and
- PCs should be switched off if not being used for long periods (say more than an hour). Monitors should be switched off if there is to be a 10 or 15 minute break in use of the PC.
- Insulate the roof space over the offices with loft insulation. This should reduce the need for heating in the office area on cold days and cooling fans in the summer. About 250 mm of insulation would be laid over the office
ceilings, with bubble wrap over the skylights so that light is still let in. This work would form the major part of a grant application. As you can see from the photo below, the loft space is full of junk and rubbish which needs to be cleared before the insulation can be laid:
It is proposed to do this with a skip and a team of brave volunteers. We should try to recycle as much of it as we can - some of it looks as though it might be useful (no really). If you have any ideas, contact us. The skylights which let some natural light through into the corridors and some offices, also need to be cleaned and kept that way.
Heating controls: the programming controls of the two gas boilers need to be well understood so that the boilers only have to be
working when needed. Several people need to have this knowledge, so that it is likely that there is
always someone around who knows how to control the heating. Most of the radiators are fitted with thermostatic valves. At the moment, they all seem to be on full (see damning evidence in picture right). This is unnecessary, especially in corridors,
and especially after the roof space has been insulated. It is not proposed that people should be cold, but the thermostats could be turned down until an acceptable comfort level is achieved. If you're in a room that is used infrequently, and need to
turn the radiator up, remember to turn the radiator valve back down when you've finished.
- In the hall, there are four large, single-glazed windows. Secondary glazing could be effected by simply fixing clear acrylic plastic sheet (3 mm thick) over the windows. This could be done so that the upper
windows could still be opened in warm weather. Another job for volunteers, with the cost of the materials forming part of a grant application. We could also fix up some radiator shelves and stick
reflective panels behind radiators on the outside walls. The cost of the materials for these last two jobs would not be included in a grant application.
- photocopiers: ensure any energy saving modes in their systems are enabled and they are switched off at night. Recycled paper should be used and documents should be printed double-sided where possible. Does that notice or memo really need to be printed and shoved in everyone's pigeon hole - or could it be e-mailed??
As you may have spotted, soon we're going to be calling for volunteers.....
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You can keep an eye on how the implementation of energy saving measures at the Centre is going by looking at the following:
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Some Polar facts...
- The Arctic is in the far north and contains the North Pole.
- The Antarctic is in the far south and contains the South Pole.
- The Arctic is mainly floating ice with a few small islands dotted about. You used to have to walk to the North Pole across the sea ice, like Wally Herbert, Ann Bancroft or the great Nansen, but now, thanks to global warming, you can sometimes sail right up to it in a boat.
- The Antarctic (and Greenland) is mostly land covered in ice to a depth of several kilometres, with some great bays of floating ice attached, called ice shelves. These are several hundred metres thick. Larsen A, B and C, Wilkins and Ross are a few of them.
- If floating ice melts, the sea level doesn't rise. Try this for your yourself. Get a glass of water and drop an ice cube into it. Make a mark on the glass where the water level is with a felt tip pen. Watch the water level to see if it changes as the ice cube melts. So melting Arctic ice doesn't cause sea level to rise, but the influx of fresh water affects the ocean currents that in turn affects weather patterns, and also all sea life.
- If land ice melts and the melt water runs into the sea, eg off Antarctica, Greenland or Northern Canada, of course the sea level rises.
- Polar bears and walrus live in the Arctic but not in the Antarctic. Global warming threatens their habitat.
- Penguins live in the Antarctic but not in the Arctic. Global warming threatens their habitat.
- Seals live in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Global warming threatens their habitat.
- No one lives in the Antarctic except research station staff. If things get bad, they can go home.
- Various indigenous peoples live in the Arctic; eg the Inuit in Greenland and northern Canada; the Yupik in Alaska and the north coast of eastern Russia. Global warming threatens their livelihood. If things get bad, they are home.
YOU THOUGHT IT WAS BAD. BUT DID YOU KNOW IT WAS THIS BAD?
The number of web sites, articles, reports and books about global warming, climate change and the coming energy crisis is truly vast. Below are a very few links to web sites.
- The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are available by clicking here.
- For a world view on the effects of global warming, click here.
- Click here for an artical about environmental refugees on the Climate
Camp web site. The site also has much info about other climate change issues.
- Back in 2005, the UN warned that Rising sea levels, desertification and shrinking freshwater supplies will create up to 50 million environmental refugees by the end of the decade.
Click here for the full Guardian article.
- Also in 2005, in his paper "Environmental Refugees: an Emergent Security Issue", Prof. Norman Myers says "On top of all these sub-problems is the lack of official recognition, whether
on the part of governments or international agencies, that there is an environmental refugee problem at all....the issue... promises to rank as one of the
foremost human crises of our times". Click here for the full text.
- Professor Lloyd Peck gave the Royal Institution Christmas lectures in 2004. He describes how the delicate balance of Antarctic ecology is being affected by global warming and why we in Nottingham should be worried about what's
happening to tiny creatures far away in the Antarctic seas. Watch the appalled expressions on the faces of the young people in the audience. Click here for the Royal Institution web site.
- The Greenland icecap is melting fast; Robert Corell, chairman of Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in September 2007: "We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front 5 km
[3 miles] long and 1500 metres deep. That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one year to provide drinking water for a city the size of London for a year." Click here for
the full Guardian article.
- The Greenland ice sheet is all but doomed to melt away to nothing, according to a new modelling study. If it does melt, global sea levels will rise by seven metres, flooding most of the world's coastal regions. Climatologist Jonathan Gregory, says global warming could start runaway melting on Greenland
within 50 years, and it will "probably be irreversible this side of a new ice age". Click here for the full article on New Scientist web site.
- "I've never seen anything like this before – it was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble – it's like an explosion." In February, 2008, researchers in the
Antarctic noticed that the Wilkins ice shelf was breaking up because of global warming. Go to British Antarctic Survey web site for details and a link to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre.
- "During the last 25 years, satellites have been observing the Arctic and have witnessed reductions in the minimum ice extent... at the end of summer from around 8 million km² in the early 1980s to the historic minimum of less than 5.5 million km² in 2005, changes widely viewed as a consequence of
greenhouse warming." Click here for the full article on alarming change to Arctic ice.
- "Reading a scientific paper on the train this weekend, I found, to my amazement, that my hands were shaking. This has never happened to me before, but nor have I ever read anything like it. Published
by a team led by James Hansen at Nasa, it suggests that the grim reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see link above) could be absurdly optimistic". Click here for the rest of this artical
by George Monbiot, first published in the Guardian, July, 2007 and reprinted on the Climate Camp web site.
- WHAT??? You didn't say Penguins were under threat. But they're so cute! Click here for the full Guardian article.
- Click here for Guardian articles on how global warming is destroying the means of subsistance of the Inuit who live in the Arctic.
- Click here to listen to Sheila Watt-Cloutier speaking about environmental changes in the Arctic which are destroying the Inuit way of life. The Inuit are demanding "the right to be cold" and
calling for the Americans and everyone at the Square Centre to turn down their central heating.
Will these Inuit children be the next environmental refugees?