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Between 1934 and 1940 the UK built 280 miles of cycle paths with Dutch guidance. A Kickstarter campaign to rescue these lost cycle paths needs support

In September 2012 the Google Street View car drove slowly along a road in Twickenham, London. It had to reverse when the driver found three wooden bollards blocking its way. The road was not a road at all, it was a cycleway. A cycleway built in – wait for it – 1937.

Originally surfaced with red concrete, the cycleway has faded to light pink but the granite kerbs are still in situ and, fooling the Street View navigation algorithms, it looks like a narrow road instead of the normal kind of “crap cycle lane” we are so unhappily used to in the UK.

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/ PRESENTER BIO
Sally Modystach | Director of Healthy Environs

Sally is the Director of Healthy Environs, a sustainability and community wellbeing consultancy. Her work focuses on promoting healthy communities through projects and partnerships at the local level. Sally holds a Masters in Public Health and has wide-ranging skills in community health strategy, health promotion and corporate social investment.

Deborah Davidson | Director of dsquared Consulting

Deborah is an ESD Consultant with over 15 years of experience in sustainable design, rating tools and environmental management. She is a Director of dsquared Consulting, a local consultancy with a reputation for assisting clients in minimising their environmental impact and improving sustainable outcomes on projects.
Deborah is currently working on projects that combine energy efficiency, indoor environment quality and wellbeing, in commercial office, education and healthcare sectors.

/ EVENT SPONSORS
Adelaide City Council | City Switch

/ MEDIA PARTNER
Environmental Science Media

/ ORGANISING GROUPS
Living Future Institute of Australia - living-future.org.au
Adelaide Sustainable Building Network - adelaidesbn.com.au

Cast: AdelaideSBN

Tags: sustainability, green cities, healthy building and wellbeing

/ PRESENTER BIO
Stephen Choi | Executive Director of Living Future Institute of Australia

Stephen Choi is a UK-qualified Project Architect and Australian-qualified Project Manager. He has led sustainable design teams at small and large practices before founding a not-for-profit environmental building consultancy and becoming the Living Future Institute of Australia's Executive Director. Stephen’s work has included the development of global environmental assessment methods, designing and managing building retrofits, and embedding sustainable development into educational curriculum. Several of his projects – both private and public sector – have been recognised in the industry for progressing “green building”.

/ EVENT SPONSORS
Adelaide City Council | City Switch

/ MEDIA PARTNER
Environmental Science Media

/ ORGANISING GROUPS
Living Future Institute of Australia - living-future.org.au
Adelaide Sustainable Building Network - adelaidesbn.com.au

Cast: AdelaideSBN

/ PRESENTER BIO
Darren Bilsborough | Studio Leader, Hames Sharley

Darren Bilsborough is Director of Hames Sharley and the Adelaide Studio Leader. Darren is highly regarded for his understanding of the economics of sustainability and creating competitive advantage in the development of city precincts and commercial buildings. A former Adjunct Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University in WA, he is widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of the green building movement in Australia.
Darren’s has built deep trust in Government over many years as represented by a direct appointment from the South Australian Minister of Environment to the Premier’s Round Table on Sustainability in late 2003 which allowed Darren the opportunity to provide input to State Government policy.

/ EVENT SPONSORS
Adelaide City Council | City Switch

/ MEDIA PARTNER
Environmental Science Media

/ ORGANISING GROUPS
Living Future Institute of Australia - living-future.org.au
Adelaide Sustainable Building Network - adelaidesbn.com.au

Cast: AdelaideSBN

Yet more remains are presented of the extraordinary naledi people who appeared to cache their dead.

The critically endangered orangutan is under threat from hunting and habitat deforestation. A new book, The Orangutan’s World, is a photographic celebration of this great ape and its rainforest home in southern Borneo

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Australia’s energy sector must be the source of the bulk of emissions reductions achieved through to 2030 if we are to reach our national target.

Waltham Brooks, West Sussex The golden reed along the river’s edge vibrates with the pulsing, chattering songs of the warblers

It’s a cold morning, and a glistening coating of frost clings to the green surfaces of the vegetation that is still in the shade. The sun is reaching through the trees, and plumes of mist rise from the river’s surface as it warms.

The golden reed along the river’s edge vibrates with the pulsing, chattering songs of reed warblers and sedge warblers – the sound of a wetland summer. They began to return to Waltham Brooks about a month ago, and now I count more than 30 singing around the reserve. I hear a whirring from a sedge warbler in the brambles next to me, and I turn to watch as it inches up to the top of the bush.

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Repower Port Augusta and the Australian Services Union SA/NT have expressed solidarity with former power station workers and are calling on the Weatherill Government to bring a new future to Port Augusta.

Coalition appears to be rapidly backtracking on Paris climate treaty as ABC's Four Corners falls into the same trap of relying too heavily on lobbyists. They interviewed the wrong people.

US utility that’s been powering its customers with coal for half a century has decided the best version of its future self is entirely coal-free.

By 2030, you probably won’t own a car, but you may get a free trip with your morning coffee. Transport-As-A-Service will use electric vehicles and will upend two trillion-dollar industries. It’s the death spiral for cars.

Nissan says it has developed a prototype EV that can run 550km while keeping the cargo capacity, external dimension as current LEAF.

Gemini windpark off the coast of the Netherlands will eventually meet the energy needs of about 1.5 million people, according to its owners

Dutch officials have opened what is being billed as one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms, with 150 turbines spinning far out in the North Sea.

Over the next 15 years the Gemini windpark, which lies some 85km (53 miles) off the northern coast of the Netherlands, will meet the energy needs of about 1.5 million people.

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Rooftop solar installations in Australia continue record-breaking trend in first four months of 2017, with WA the biggest mover.

Defending decision not to finance mine, Brian Hartzer says coal needed for economy to 2050 can be met by existing mines

The Adani Carmichael coalmine is not needed to support the economy, the Westpac chief executive has said in defence of his bank’s decision not to finance the mine.

On Radio National on Tuesday, Brian Hartzer said Westpac’s decision to set a climate policy, which in effect rules out financing the Adani Carmichael coalmine, was based on its acceptance that climate change should be limited to 2C by 2050.

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Friends of the Earth urges other retailers to follow suit after studies show damaging effects of neonicotinoids on bees

All flowering plants sold by B&Q are to be grown without using pesticides that are harmful to bees, the retailer has announced.

A series of scientific studies have shown that bees are exposed to neonicotinoid pesticides in fields and suffer serious harm from the doses they receive. The European commission has drawn up draft legislation to ban the pesticides, citing “high acute risks to bees”.

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A new study shows how a switch in a major climate system could accelerate global temperatures to a 1.5C limit, but some scientists are challenging the assumptions

In the Brazilian city of São Paulo, more than 80 experts, including dozens of climate scientists, gathered back in March for a giant planning meeting

As part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group from 39 different countries were starting their work on a major report that will tell governments and policy makers what kind of impacts they can expect when global warming reaches 1.5C.

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The tropical Pacific has a large say in how fast the world warms. GTS Productions/Shutterstock.com

Global warming is rapidly approaching 1.5℃, but according to our new research, conditions in the Pacific Ocean over the coming decades will determine how fast we get there.

In a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters, we use climate model simulations to quantify how fast global average temperatures will reach 1.5℃ above the pre-industrial average – one of the crucial benchmarks of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The Paris deal calls for governments to pursue the aim of keeping global warming below 1.5℃. But our results suggest that we could hit that level before the end of the next decade if the Pacific Ocean moves into a state we have nicknamed the “cranky uncle” for its effects on global temperatures.

Faster warming

Global temperature records have tumbled in recent years: 2016 was the world’s hottest year on record, the third record-breaking year in a row.

Although human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary driver of these rising temperatures, there are other factors at play. The climate system is an unwieldy beast, containing a variety of erratic feedbacks and complex mechanisms.

One mechanism with which many people are familiar is El Niño and La Niña, a see-sawing of warm waters across the tropical Pacific every two to seven years. Climate scientists were not at all surprised to see record global temperatures in 2015 and 2016, because of the large El Niño that ended last year.

Another, lesser-known cycle in the Pacific Ocean is the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Since El Niño and La Niña are Spanish for the “the boy” and “the girl”, we have nicknamed their slower-moving relatives the “cranky uncle”, El Tío, and the “kind auntie”, La Tía.

Like El Niño, warm phases of the IPO provoke a temporary acceleration in global temperature, but over much longer periods, lasting between 10 and 30 years.

The cool La Tía phase of the IPO since around 2000, and its associated slowdown in the rate of global warming, may have lulled us into a false sense of security.

Scientists are now concerned that the next El Tío phase could be on its way, which might sustain the relatively rapid global warming seen over the past few years.

Our research

With this in mind, we decided to investigate how soon we are likely to surpass the 1.5℃ level, both with and without the influence of the IPO.

We used climate model simulations to project global temperatures. The models show temperatures varying significantly from year-to-year and decade-to-decade, as we see in the real world. The centre point of the model projections indicates that the 1.5℃ level would be reached just before 2030, with 75% of the model projections crossing 1.5℃ before 2032.

With the recent slowdown period in mind, we wondered how the next IPO phase, El Tío or La Tía, would influence global temperature. We found that the rate at which global average temperature approaches the 1.5℃ level is influenced significantly by the IPO.

The influence of the IPO on global temperatures towards 1.5°C. Author supplied

El Tío phases are responsible for an acceleration in global temperature. The centre point of the El Tío projections passes the 1.5℃ level in around 2027, and a quarter of our projections pass 1.5℃ as early as 2024.

For La Tía, the projected rate of warming is reduced, and the centre year is 2031 – the kind auntie gives us a little more breathing space.

So, is the Paris agreement a failure?

No. The Paris agreement is a critically important step in the right direction.

Although we will soon surpass the 1.5℃ warming benchmark, we still have a chance to turn around and head back down the hill. But to reduce global temperatures, we need not only to reduce our net emissions to zero, but to move swiftly into net negative carbon emissions territory. That means that overall we will need to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, not add more.

But we are a very long way from that point. There is a lot of work to do.

The implications of swiftly rising global temperature are many and varied. Our group and other scientists have quantified the changing likelihood of extreme events such as heatwaves, coral bleaching, droughts and floods.

For the next few decades we have to accept that we are likely to see more extreme events as the effect of continued rising global temperatures takes its toll.

We can’t hide from our cranky uncle, but we can limit climate change and its impacts. Although the political will for evidence-based climate policy seems to be waning in some quarters, the message from climate scientists has not changed:

We need swift global cooperation to dramatically reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Ben Henley receives funding from an ARC Linkage Project and is an associate investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Malte Meinshausen receives funding from an ARC Future Fellowship.

Delegates are wary of changing the Paris climate agreement just to keep the Americans on board.