Keith Alexander

Pushing airport expansion while rail travel languishes – so much for Labour’s green agenda | Polly Toynbee The climate damage done by avoidable flying is huge, yet the government continues to see planes as the answer to its economic woes, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee

Airport expansion won't deliver the economic growth the chancellor is hoping for, but it will wreck our climate commitments. See NEF research in this article from @pollytoynbee.bsky.social.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The flip side of being able to tear it is, unlike the plastic tapes it doesn’t stretch at all, and that little bit of give can be really important when taping round awkward shapes, or taping junctions that may have movement (eg cables). So you want a varied toolbox.

A #retrofit product I’m finding quite useful is Pro Clima Unitape. Unlike most #airtightness tapes, it’s paper based, and you can rip it, which removes a lot of the friction with finicky taping jobs. You can fold it too, which makes corners easier. It’s also cheaper! One downside though…

Are Labour’s plans to offset Heathrow expansion emissions all pie in the sky? Government is counting on tech to provide a panacea, but there may be simpler ways to keep climate goals on track

QTWTAIY

“Wishful thinking about future tech is not a coherent plan, and certainly not a plausible basis to allow the huge increase in emissions from a third runway at Heathrow. It's kicking the problem down the road for a future government to deal with”

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

It’s hard to explain/envisage just how much extra time this all takes though.

Paint on membrane is a bit of get out of jail card. Takes time to dry though, and well-bonded flat tape feels (to me) more reliable maybe (and faster and cleaner where you have nice flat surfaces).

So much of #retrofit air tightness is trying to make bumpy heterogeneous surfaces smooth and uniform enough to bond to

Another major source of particulates: Tire wear Surprise! The amount of PM2.5 and PM10 is proportional to the weight of the vehicle.

Tire wear is a huge source of PM2.5 and ultrafine particle emissions, which everyone studiously ignores. Piles of studies conclude that we should be building lighter and smaller cars and encourage alternate forms of transport, but nobody wants to do that.

Probably until we’re living in The Road.

Genuinely curious why "businesses and individuals" making money out of tackling climate change doesn't count as "economic growth". I mean, I know the reason - her brain is a "million percent" rice pudding - but even so, their inability to make sense even within the same sentence is impressive.

Reform-led Durham county council scraps climate emergency declaration Durham is thought to be first UK local authority to rescind its statement, in a move condemned as a ‘very dark day’

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Play Discourses of Climate Delay Bingo as you read the quotes from Reform Councillors (including “prolific tweeter” Darren Grimes). “We had vineyards here in Roman times”; “virtue signaling while China burns coal”; “slave labour mining materials for batteries”…

‘Keeping us hooked on fossil fuels’: how can we negotiate with autocracies on the climate crisis? The bulk of global greenhouse gas emissions come from countries that are not democratic, and many big oil and gas exporters are also authoritarian

“While states drag their heels on their Paris agreement commitments, state-owned companies are dominating global emissions – ignoring the desperate needs of their citizens.”

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The big emitters: which countries are holding back climate action and why? Ahead of Cop30, the Guardian will profile each of the top 10 emitters and their plans – good or bad – to tackle emissions

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Great angle for covering COP30

A line graph of world newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming from 2004 to 2025 in continents around the world.

Newspaper coverage of climate change around the globe dropped 6% from May to June 2025 -- and by 28% compared to June 2024, despite increasing frequency and severity of climate-fueled extreme weather events.

Read more from the @media-climate.bsky.social here: mecco.colorado.edu/summaries/is...

For this next bit I’m going to experiment with extending the joists with rigid woodfibre offcuts in order get a deeper insulation between. It seems to work well so far, though the VCL layer will be trickier and require more taping.

I’ve used 20mm board offcuts to box under the pipes, glued on with this special Steico woodfibre adhesive, which works well but I found quite “fumey” despite being solvent free, and I’d be wary of using it in tight spaces for prolonged periods, because it’s a bit unpleasant #retrofit

‘One day I overheard my boss saying: just put it in ChatGPT’: the workers who lost their jobs to AI From a radio host replaced by avatars to a comic artist whose drawings have been copied by Midjourney, how does it feel to be replaced by a bot?

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

CCC: UK climate advisers now ‘more optimistic’ net-zero goals can be met - Carbon Brief The UK government’s official climate advisers are now “more optimistic” that the country can hit its emissions targets than they were before the Labour government was elected in July 2024.

www.carbonbrief.org/ccc-uk-clima...

An optimistic report, but...

"Aviation now causes more emissions than the UK’s entire power grid."

Demand management is still part of the CCC's advice to government. In other words, we need policies that will result in people flying less, not more.

Not peer reviewed yet and small sample size but there’s a similarity with how I feel programming with Microsoft copilot assistance.

Petition: Ban fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship Advertisements encourage the use of products and sponsorship promotes a positive reputation & creates a social licence of trust & acceptability. In 2003 a ban on all tobacco advertising was introduced...

Parliament will debate banning fossil fuel advertising on the 7th of July
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/70...

UK air pollution killing more than 500 people a week, doctors say Royal College of Physicians also says poor air quality costs country more than £500m a week

New report from @rcphysicians.bsky.social couldn’t be clearer on the urgent need to clean up the UK’s air.

“Air pollution remains the most important environmental threat to health, with impacts throughout the life course” - Prof Chris Whitty

Woah! Such an important study published in Nature today! Quick thread with some of their key figures!
🧵

Phil Spencer: Why your 'Instagrammable' home upgrades could be a costly blunder TV property expert warns homeowners to ditch superficial makeovers for improvements that truly add value – and save cash

"focusing solely on aesthetics might be a costly mistake, causing you to overlook crucial eco-home upgrades that offer significant long-term value [....] the smartest money moves are increasingly hidden behind the walls – or on the roof."

www.homebuilding.co.uk/news/phil-sp...

Norfolk villagers face compulsory purchase orders for their homes to make way for large solar farms Norfolk villagers furious as a massive solar farm proposal threatens their homes and agricultural land

Hard to see how this would make sense in terms of climate, energy, society....

www.homebuilding.co.uk/news/norfolk...

Suburban home, flooded

Research by Aviva Insurance highlights that the government's planned house building targets are likely to create 100,000 more properties that are uninsurable due to flood risk.
5/10
www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/...

Which makes me wonder, how bad could a home with a great scoring EPC be?

And insulation is binary. If it’s present, they are supposed to tick the box, regardless of whether it is discontinuous, ill fitted, inappropriate, etc

We had an EPC done yesterday to confirm the heat pump installation, and the assessor told me that attic-facing rooms only count as room-in-roof if they have sloping ceilings. No sloping ceiling, no EPC recommendation for insulation, and therefore no financial support (in Scotland).

New car bonnets are trending higher and higher each year… bringing new safety concerns to our roads.

One study suggests that a 10 cm increase in bonnet height (from 80 cm to 90 cm) raises the risk of death by 27% for pedestrians, cyclists and others.

Read our analysis 👉 bit.ly/4mOJTnz

Has Bezos been as successful in that regard?