Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

This morning started with the ring of bells to communicate the start of the Olympic Games.   Communications have also been the focus of our work this week.   We now have the new website templates which I will populate over the Summer so we can re-launch the website in the new academic year.   We will have lots of new features including more video content, better layout and ease of use and we can’t wait to share it with you all.    This week we also met with representatives from across the faculties to help us with our new magazine which we hope to publish in the Autumn.   We have lots of good ideas and interesting material to put in.   We are working on content at the moment and will be pulling together case studies of work that has taken place within Cabot over the last year.  We also have a new webcam and microphone, courtesy of JISC , for doing more Skype calling and videoconferencing.   We are keen to embrace technology to cut down on national and international travel f

Last month I went to the House of Lords for a meeting of the All party group for international development and the environment.  The morning’s question was: Where next for sustainable development after Rio+20?  I’ll give a brief resume of who said what, with some of my thoughts following over the next weeks.... Joan Walley , MP for Stoke-on-Trent North opened the morning's reflections on Rio.  She chairs the Environmental Audit Committee which monitors action across different government departments. At the top level, Rio lacked vision and clear objectives. Her select committee really tried to engage with government, but there was no commitment from the PM that he was going, and no clear vision from them.  She felt the process needs to be reinvigorated - connecting, collaborating, and understanding the details - e.g. how the proposed Sustainable Development Goals will link with the Millennium Development Goals. Stephen Hale from Oxfam   asked how do we accelerate the p

Herbert Huppert This week we have been holding our Cabot Summer School on risk and uncertainty in natural hazards .   The week has gone very well and I have received some very positive comments from attendees.   We had some fantastic speakers including Herbert Huppert, Jonty Rougier, Steve Sparks, Willy Aspinall, Li Chen, Tamsin Edwards, Philippa Bayley and Thorsten Wagener.   Cabot would like to say a great big thank you to all of you for making the Cabot Summer School such a success.   We’re very much looking forward to next year. Paul F. Hoffman This week, Cabot member Rich Pancost secured Paul F. Hoffman of Snowball Earth fame as the next Science Faculty Colloquium speaker in September.   I saw the new templates for our website today.   Its all looking good and I’m quite excited about the implementation of its new look.   By the end of the summer I hope to have it all up and running. We would like to congratulate Cabot member Professor Mark Eisler and

I was on holiday last week in Cornwall when the Met Office gave a red weather warning for rain in the South West, saying there was immediate danger to lives.    Luckily I wasn’t too affected, it just meant more indoor pursuits than outdoor but it made me think more about the extreme weather events we are seeing globally this year.   Drought and heat in the United States, stupid amounts of rain in the UK and Russia and other extreme events elsewhere, shown very well by this map published by UNEP .   And funnily enough, while I was sitting in my caravan, rain pouring down, I thought of work.   The people I work with are trying to better understand the global environment, trying to find new ways to reduce environmental risk to lives and find ways to better adapt to the changing environment.   That red weather warning made me realise the importance of the work that Cabot does. Returning to work this week I was bombarded by news and events that we have been a part of or w