Open CO2 comment 2008 - 2009

2009

December 19


 * Failure at such a grand level means we have to act locally, Lord Hunt, visiting professor at Delft University and a former director general of the UK Meteorological Office, 19 December "Experience also shows that local actions can only be truly effective if measurements of climate and environment are widely publicised as well as information about targets, and projections of emissions. Such transparency is needed about what is happening, what is planned and how every individual can be involved..." topic

December 14


 * Bonn Center for Local Climate Action and Reporting - carbonn - aims at facilitating the access of local governments to climate benchmarking instruments on a global scale. 14 December

December 13


 * System change - not climate change: Mapping the People's Declaration from @Klimaforum09: http://bit.ly/4Wp54Q from Twitter

December 9

Comment re Copenhagen, draft for posting to Project Dirt, WiserUK, Transition Towns Forum, UKGovWeb


 * Open national and local carbon accounts

With news coverage of the Copenhagen climate summit there's more awareness of the necessary political dialogue between countries. What there's much less awareness of, including amonst the activist community, is the need for political dialogue, not just between countries but also, within countries.

As with Copenhagen, this dialogue needs to be underpinned by data, and specifically data by place. If we're serious about carbon reduction, and if in the UK we're serious about getting anywhere near within our carbon budgets we need sufficient data, by place, that enough of us can have sufficient confidence in. Black box stuff won't do. Transparency is essential.

More about open national and local carbon accounts on the Sustainable Community Action wiki http://sca21.wikia.com/wiki/Open_national_and_local_carbon_accounts


 * Climate change, Climate Sceptics and Open Data, Open Knowledge Foundation Blog, December 5


 * "To be validated, knowledge must also be subject to the scrutiny of an extended community of citizens who have legitimate stakes in the significance of what is being claimed", Mike Hulme of UEA and Jerome Ravetz of Oxford Univeristy, 1 December

November 22


 * "Transparency. Climate data needs to be publicly available and well documented. This includes metadata that explains how the data were treated and manipulated, what assumptions were made in assembling the data sets, and what data was omitted and why. This would seem to be an obvious and simple requirement, but the need for such transparency has only been voiced recently as the policy relevance of climate data has increased." Judy Curry, climate researcher, Nov 22 topic

June 12

Open national and local carbon accounts/Request and campaign

June 10

Sir Tim Berners-Lee who led the creation of the World Wide Web, asked to help government drive the opening up of access to UK Government data in the web over the coming month, June 10 topic

May 7

Government outline next steps in their Power of Information programme. Minister announces plans for an overhaul of Crown Copyright rules that will make it easier for citizens to re-use Government information. May 7 “They say information is power, but only distributed information is truly empowering. That's why the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) [External website] has looked again at the restrictions of Crown Copyright, and now a licence will automatically be granted to anyone wanting to use the information rather than having to apply beforehand." Tom Watson MP topic

April 7

With national and local carbon budgets likely to be announced or hinted at in the near future, perhaps a campaign to get Participatory carbon budgeting would be a more effective way to realise the aims of this plan?

March 31

Thanks to all who contributed to our wide ranging discussion at the we20 Nesta challenge event. After considering a range of options to take the plan forward it seems best to focus on one key aspect, which is something like making a clear, simple and compelling case for

Everyone who can help being able to help ... for which we need the data

which will enable us to gather support toward a positive outcome in time for the Copenhagen (UNFCCC) conference in November.

March12

Engage society in the transition, International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, March 2009

2008

"People power can beat climate change", Lord David Puttnam, October 28 topic, topic, forum

References