International Events

Any event that involves two or more nations.

Keystone XL is Done, COP 21 Set to Start

- Adam Clare

You probably already heard the good news about the end of Keystone XL with Obama killing the proposal. This is a good symbolic step in ending the exploitation of the tar sands in Alberta, plus this comes just a few weeks before COP21.

COP21 is the upcoming United Nations climate change conference which is set to run from Nov. 30 to Dec.11. In the light of Keystone being killed it gives people hope that Obama will actually do something about climate change.

On the Canadian side of the border Prime Minster Trudeau (who loves pipelines, sigh) has cast Catherine McKenna as Canada’s minister of environment and climate change. A new title acknowledging that climate change is real and has to be dealt with – a step forward from the idiotic climate approach from the Conservatives previously in power.

Keystone XL being nixed may be just the thing North America needs to show up at COP21. With the pipeline project over, other countries may actually start respecting North America on environmental matters.

TransCanada first applied for Keystone permits in September 2008 — shortly before Obama was elected. As envisioned, Keystone would snake from Canada’s oilsands through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, then connect with existing pipelines to carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day to specialized refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.

Democrats and environmental groups latched onto Keystone as emblematic of the type of dirty fossil fuels that must be phased out. Opponents chained themselves to construction equipment and the White House fence in protest, arguing that building the pipeline would be antithetical to Obama’s call for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

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Using Comics to Explain Complex Economics

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Economix Comics

Economix Comix is a series of comics that looks at, you guessed it, economics. Using comics is a great way to translate really complex economic ideas into something which is more relatable and understandable. Late last year the artist (and brain) behind the series of comics released a look at the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Above is one of the pages from the comic looking at the chaos of a deal the TPP really is. It’s worth a full read if you’re new to learning about the TPP and you can read it all for free here.

Economix Comix stays current too! Here’s a brief look at the Greece situation in the Euro zone.

We Are in the Anthropocene Epoch

- Adam Clare

Human civilization has undoubtedly changed the surface of the planet on a massive scale. There will be evidence of our civilization’s impact for millions of years to come. This may not strike you as good news considering it implies we’ve altered the planet in a way only nature itself could have done.

The good news comes from the fact that the Anthropocene Working Group has reached the conclusion that we are indeed in this epoch. This means that geological research and theory has a new intellectual framework to better our understanding of the world and how we as a species interact with it.

“Like any geological boundary, it is not a perfect marker – levels of global radiation really rose in the early 1950s, as salvoes of bomb tests took place,” said Dr Jan Zalasiewicz, of the University of Leicester’s Department of Geology and chair of the Anthropocene Working Group.

“But it may be the optimal way to resolve the multiple lines of evidence on human-driven planetary change. Time – and much more discussion – will tell.”

The term ‘Anthropocene’ was first coined by Nobel Prize winning chemist Paul Crutzen who in 2000 suggested that man’s impact on the world was so substantial that we were no longer in the Holocene – the era which began at the end of the last Ice Age around 11,700 years ago and saw unprecedented human expansion and the emrgency of towns and cities.

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A Look Into the Ig Nobel Awards

- Adam Clare

The Ig Nobel Prize is dedicated to science that makes you laugh then makes you think. It’s a fun and great way to get people engaged in science while exploring questions that sound rather bizarre.

As founder of the Ig Nobel awards, Marc Abrahams explores the world’s most improbable research. In this thought-provoking (and occasionally side-splitting) talk, he tells stories of truly weird science — and makes the case that silliness is critical to boosting public interest in science.

LHC Data Freely Accessible from CERN

- Adam Clare

The Large Hadron Collider run by CERN is making huge insights into the fundamental workings of the universe. Already it has found evidence the Higgs-Boson and other groovy particles in physics.

Now CERN is setting all that data that’s been collected free to use! Now you can use research generated by one of the most complex machines humanity has ever created.

“Data from the LHC program are among the most precious assets of the LHC experiments, that today we start sharing openly with the world,” says CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “We hope these open data will support and inspire the global research community, including students and citizen scientists.”
The LHC collaborations will continue to release collision data over the coming years.
The first high-level and analyzable collision data openly released come from the CMS experiment and were originally collected in 2010 during the first LHC run. Open source software to read and analyze the data is also available, together with the corresponding documentation. The CMS collaboration is committed to releasing its data three years after collection, after they have been thoroughly studied by the collaboration.

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