{"id":141,"date":"2013-10-07T08:40:51","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T08:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/?p=141"},"modified":"2013-10-07T08:40:51","modified_gmt":"2013-10-07T08:40:51","slug":"climate-change-and-our-built-environment-whats-going-on-and-what-do-we-need-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/2013\/10\/07\/climate-change-and-our-built-environment-whats-going-on-and-what-do-we-need-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate change and our built environment – what’s going on and what do we need to do?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"watkinsweb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dr Richard Watkins was invited to give a lecture to MSc students at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), Machynlleth, Wales on 20 September 2013. His talk, \u201cClimate change and our built environment\u00a0 –\u00a0 what’s going on and what do we need to do?\u201d was timely as the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change\u201d) was about to publish its fourth assessment on global warming.<\/p>\n

The students of CAT\u2019s MSc course \u201cRenewable Energy in the Built Environment\u201d were presented with the theory and the evidence behind global warming and its attribution to mankind\u2019s impact on the troposphere. The impact of the UK\u2019s emissions of about 0.5 Gt CO2\/year were put into perspective with the global emissions of 30 Gt\/year. However, much of the UK\u2019s emissions have been \u201cexported\u201d as much of our manufacturing is now carried out overseas in countries which often have poorer pollution control and less efficient power generation. It\u2019s important for the developed countries to set an example in reducing the environmental impact of their built environment and their economies in general \u2013 unless we want the rest of the world to attempt to adopt our energy profligate ways, which would have devastating consequences.<\/p>\n

Students were also given an insight into how the elevated temperatures of the urban environment (urban heat islands) should be viewed in relation to the current projections for future rising temperatures. Overall, the audience was advised to adopt a prudent approach and to design our future buildings to cope with a four degree rise in external air temperature this century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Richard Watkins was invited to give a lecture to MSc students at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), Machynlleth, Wales on 20 September 2013. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28911,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28911"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ksa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}