USEFUL CONTACT DETAILS

Matt Taylor Project Coordinator Low Carbon Innovation Centre University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ matt.taylor@uea.ac.uk 01603 592 838 Rachel Leggett Community Engagement Coordinator Broadland District Council Thorpe Lodge 1 Yarmouth Road Thorpe St Andrew Norwich NR7 0DU rachel.leggett@broadland.gov.uk 01603 430143

Community Climate Change Champions

Work book

Name Community Contact details

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WELCOME
Dear Community Climate Change Champion Welcome and thank you for attending the launch of Broadland Climate Change Champions on the 14th of May. The Community Climate Change Champions project is a collaboration between the University of East Anglia and Broadland District Council. Graciously supported by CUE- EAST it aims to give communities in the Broadland region the opportunity to engage, define and create new and innovative ideas to make the start to become informed low carbon communities. Todays inaugural event session aims to provide an informal opening to this pilot project by giving you with the opportunity to learn a little bit about The science behind climate change, to chat about the themes and to start to map out your community actions. As the day is about getting started we have created this work book to assist you to note your aims and objectives and collate your experience over the next few months. We hope that you have an enjoyable morning and look forward to working with you. Yours sincerely

SOME KEY ACRONYMS

IPCC: International Panel on Climate Change. This is one of the world body on climate change. Thousands of scientists are part of this panel. They review current science and feed it back to this international body. The IPCC has categorically stated that there is a 90% certainty that human behaviour is causing rising CO2 emissions and climate change. DECC: Department of Energy and Climate Change. This is the government body set up to look at energy provision in the UK and how we will need to act to combat or adapt for climate change. DEFRA: Department of Food and Rural Affairs. This is the government body that holds data. CRU: Climate Research Unit. A group of climate scientists based at UEA who have been looking at how CO2 emissions has been influencing climate change. In 2009 computers in CRU were hacked into and CRU found itself to be at the centre of climate gate (see above). UEA: University of East Anglia. Home to the world renowned school of environmental science and CRU.

Matt Taylor Low Carbon Innovation Centre

Rachel Leggett Broadland District Council.

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What are renewable technologies? Renewable technologies are those that create energy by transforming the energy they capture in natural resources such as sun-light, wind and sea power and turning it into electricity. Wind turbines create electricity from the energy in wind Hydro power produces electricity from water Solar panels (photo-voltaic) produce electricity from the energy provided by sunlight Solar thermal helps heat hot water by capturing energy from sunlight Wave power produces electricity by capturing the energy of the motion of the sea Tidal power produces electricity by capturing the forces of sea tides. What is the payback time for renewable energy? This is a question that is rightly often raised. If people are going to be spending money on new things for their homes they want to know how long it will be before they see a difference. There are systems aimed to assist: Feed in Tariffs (FITS) enable those with new solar electricity panels to provide electricity to the national grid which is bought at a higher rate. It can make the house an energy provider. But maybe looking for payback is just one way to look at it and an alternative view point is, how long will prices of fossil fuels remain affordable before renewable energies seem like a realistic alternative?

PROJECT TIME LINE

The project is to run over the next six months with a wrap up event to be held for the communities at UEA late in 2011. Today Inaugural event at UEA to welcome community groups to provide an overview of the project, climate change information and workshops to define community activity

May to October Champions disseminate knowledge within their community and look to galvanise support for their programme.

Over the next few months the champions will be expected to engage with the community, by hosting a series of community engagement activities (it is expected that there be at least two). A person from UEA can attend initial events in order to support the Champions. To assist the Low Carbon Innovation Centre (LCIC) in evaluating the project, activities of the champion should be recorded in this work book. Types of possible engagement: Speaking to local group e.g. Womens Institute, Parish Council, youth groups Producing a local leaflet Holding a local workshop Articles in parish publications and parish Create a website

October / November Providing evaluation materials

Communities to submit their work books to LCIC in order to: Evaluate the project results, looking to identify trends Produce a community pocket guide defining the work that is being undertaken in each community, their findings and experience Disseminate findings and results

Late 2011 Wrap up and thank you for participating event held at UEA
LCIC and Broadland to host a wrap up event to give presentation of the outcomes and: Thanks for participating Collation of experience from the Champions To give the communities the forum to exchange their experience and opportunities Present the pocket guide Define next steps

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YOUR INITIAL IDEAS

To help you define your actions please use the page below to jot down your initial ideas.

Is climate change already here? There are some low lying islands in the Pacific that have already started to be evacuated because they are being flooded. Even average sea level increases of a couple of centimetres can impact on the displacement of people. Low lying areas like Norfolk could find themselves susceptible to small rises of sea level. Sea level rise. It has been noted that of all the places on the globe which are experiencing climate change the greatest effect is being felt at the North and South Poles. The South Pole and Greenland are ice covered with fresh water ice fields many miles thick. As these warm they melt adding more water to the oceans, raising the sea level. CO2 - where did it all come from? Coal, gas and petrol are carbon rich fuels. The reason they are carbon rich is because they are the concentrated fossils of organic materials from million year old forests dinosaurs etc which have been over time crushed and baked by the processes of the earth. Since around the industrial revolution human activity has found these fossil fuels to be an excellent way to provide power and replaced previous less powerful natural sources such as water and wind with them. However, when we burn coal, gas or petrol there is a chemical reaction and a by product of this chemical reaction is the creation of CO2. So ever since the industrial revolution there has been in general increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. And because CO2 hangs around in the atmosphere for about 100 years the more we add the more it hangs about.

But isnt there loads of it left so lets use it? Well, yes and no. There are indeed a lot of fossil fuels left, but they are not a finite resource. Take petrol for instance. It is estimated that when the first car was invented there was around two trillion barrels of oil available. Now one hundred years later and with hundreds of millions of cars in use every day we are down to one trillion barrels. In one hundred years we have used half of all the estimated petrol. The result: oil is becoming increasingly difficult to find and this is being reflected in the increasing price we pay for it. I heard that global warming was all about cows farting. It is true. Cows are partly responsible for assisting in climate change, though I dont think they probably know it! The reason is that cows (as well as other livestock) produce a lot of methane from their digestive processes, in fact it is estimated that each cow produces around one thousand litres of methane a day. Methane is thirty times more potent green house gas than CO2. So what can we do? Well one thing that can be done is to reduce the amount of meat we eat and therefore reduce the number of cows and livestock produced. But I like it warmer It is true to say that the British climate can be temperamental and many enjoy the warmth of summer, but how hot is too hot? If it was 35 degrees for one, two months of the year would we still be wishing for it to be warm? The summer of 2003 produced record temperatures that melted roads and buckled rail tracks.

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380 parts per million doesnt sound a lot. Why is CO2 bad? CO2 levels are just 0.038% of the atmosphere. However the thing about CO2 is that once it gets hot it likes to stay hot. So CO2 once it has absorbed heat radiates it out over a long period of time. Its like when you do exercise, you heat up, get hot and if you have been particularly energetic it may take you an hour or so to cool down again. Well its like that for CO2 except when it gets hot it stays hot, for about 100 hundred years. And the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere longer the heat in the atmosphere is kept. Its like adding blanket upon blanket on your bed as sleep. How can we know for certain that the predictions for global warming are correct when they cant even get the weather right for next Tuesday? It is often said if the earth is warming why was December so cold?. There is a difference between weather and climate; weather is what is happening during a short period of time (now or over a few weeks) climate looks at things over a longer time frame (years, tens of years and hundreds of years). Climate looks at evidence to identify any changing trends; longer shorter seasons etc. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. What is a green house gas? There are a variety of gasses that are able to retain and radiate heat; carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of these. The reason they are called greenhouse gasses is that they assist the earth in keeping warm, by keeping heat in the atmosphere. For this reason they are good, they keep the planet earth at a temperature in which life can thrive. However, what is not known is what happens if they become too prevalent in the atmosphere. Currently levels are going up and this could be leading us away from an environment that is just right to one that could be too hot.

Targets? What targets? The government has set targets for CO2 reduction in the UK over the next 40 years. By 2050 it hopes to have reduced CO2 emissions by 80% on 1990 levels. But currently levels are higher than they were in 1990 and we are using more energy each year. In order to meet these targets we are going to have to start to reduce the amount of energy we use, part of this will be made possible though changes to the way energy is delivered to our homes, but we can all help meet these targets by starting to use less energy in our homes and for transport. By becoming aware of our energy environments we can start to identify where we can use less. It need not lead to less of a quality of life and could even be found to be improving. What was Climate Gate? In the summer of 2009 emails from the University of East Anglias Climate Research Unit were hacked into. Within many many emails were found to be a few choice words that could be construed that the evidence for climate change was being manipulated by scientists in order to make their data look correct. What followed was a worldwide media frenzy. It provided climate sceptics with ammunition to declare that climate science was rigged and there was a conspiracy amongst climate scientists to perpetuate this myth for their own benefit. Naturally this caused confusion in the public realm. The outcome was that after two independent studies of the sources the scientists were exonerated. Basically it was found that although their methods were sound they had been on occasion a bit sloppy, which when you look at it can be reassuring, they are only human after all.

RECORD OF YOUR ACTIONS

Action

Date

People involved

What you achieved

Next steps

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RECORD OF YOUR ACTIONS

Action

WHAT IS THE ANSWER? Frequently asked climate change questions and answers from the experience of Matt Taylor
It has to be said that when you talk to people they can sometimes ask some tricky (though pertinent) questions. Below are some questions and friendly answers that may help you when asked about climate change, carbon emissions and other related issues.
Its all just natural isnt it? Historically over the past couple of thousand years CO2 levels have been between 200 280 parts per million. They are now at around 380 parts per million. The last time it was like this was a very long time ago. Recent discoveries in sea bed sediment have indicated that when the earth did approach CO2 concentrations like this there was a very sudden climate change. What about volcanoes? Volcanoes emit CO2, but a recent report estimates that all the volcanoes on earth emit 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year. The UKs carbon emissions each year are 600 million tonnes (double all the worlds volcano yearly emissions). What about sunspots? There is a link to the suns activity and global temperatures. There are times when the sun is more active. However studies indicate that sun activity over this period during the past 100 years has not been different. What is this consensus on climate change? There is often an argument that there is still a debate on the causes of climate change between it being natural or manmade. In the scientific community the consensus is that it is manmade. Scientists generally never claim to be right, they generally claim that they are as close to right as they think at the time. Their claims are then read by other scientists and reviewed. Once it is thought that the scientists claims are sound there is deemed to be consensus that this is correct. Amongst climate scientists around the world the consensus is that the main cause of climate change is due to manmade activity. Climate science evidence. It is not just happening at UEA. There are many climate scientists, in many countries, all undertaking research. The evidence they gather points to the conclusion that CO2 emissions are going up. How much is too much? How much CO2 concentrations can we have in the atmosphere? Concentrations of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere are at around 380 parts per million. But the hard truth is that nobody knows at what point levels will make life difficult. The thing is that the earth has not been here for a couple of thousand years so no one knows what it will be like.

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People involved

What you achieved

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What about the way the earth rotates around the sun and ice ages? Yes, temperatures on earth do fluctuate as the earth circles the sun and the axis of the poles changes to be closer or further away from the sun. But these periods of fluctuation take tens of thousands of years and would not result in dramatic earth warming or cooling.

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FINANCES (how do we get the money?)

There is a small amount of money available for each community to assist them with their activities. We can only provide money upon the receipt of an invoice and this must include evidence on what the money has been required for by submitting receipts. Please address the invoice to: Angela Larke Office manager LCIC UEA Norwich NR4 7TJ Please mark the invoice BROADLAND CLIMATE CHAMPIONS. And please include an address for payment.

RECORD OF YOUR ACTIONS

Action

Date

People involved

What you achieved If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Angela Lark on 01603 591 379. A.larke@uea.ac.uk

Next steps

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RECORD OF YOUR ACTIONS

Action

RECORD OF YOUR ACTIONS

Action

Date

Date

People involved

People involved

What you achieved

What you achieved

Next steps

Next steps