Mark Lynas was my 2nd Hay Festival Digital event of the day. He talked about his new updated version of the 6 degrees of warming book that he wrote 13 years ago. At that point we hadn't yet reached the 1 degree above pre-industrial levels which we are now at, so we are already at a starting point which is 1 degree higher than 13 years ago. That is not good news.
The book influenced one of the projects that I did back in 2010.
I worked with a film company to make 3 TV programmes. This included a look at the Great Storm of 1987.
Degrees of Change was made in association with Brook Lapping. It explored the 6 degrees of warming.
It was shown on Teachers TV, but you can still find it in the archive of Teachers TV
It included a specially written poem that I asked Mark Cowan to write called 'Degrees of Change'
I have that, and use it with Y9 students now.
Here's the credits slide:
One of my first consultancy credits.
Illustrated with extraordinary images and graphics, the climate expert lays out the scale and timeline of threat to the planet. At one degree – the world we are already living in – vast wildfires scorch California and Australia, while monster hurricanes devastate coastal cities. At two degrees the Arctic ice cap melts away, and coral reefs disappear from the tropics. At three, the world begins to run out of food, threatening millions with starvation. At four, large areas of the globe are too hot for human habitation, erasing entire nations and turning billions into climate refugees. At five, the planet is warmer than for 55 million years, while at six degrees a mass extinction of unparalleled proportions sweeps the planet, even raising the threat of the end of all life on Earth.
These escalating consequences can still be avoided, but time is running out. We must largely stop burning fossil fuels within a decade if we are to save the coral reefs and the Arctic. If we fail, then we risk crossing tipping points that could push global climate chaos out of humanity’s control.
Mark Lynas is a journalist, campaigner and author of several books on the environment, including High Tide (2004), Six Degrees (2007), The God Species (2011), Nuclear 2.0(2013) and Seeds of Science (2018). He has written for CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Times, the Guardian and is a visiting fellow with the Alliance for Science at Cornell University, New York. He lives in Herefordshire.
The book influenced one of the projects that I did back in 2010.
I worked with a film company to make 3 TV programmes. This included a look at the Great Storm of 1987.
It was shown on Teachers TV, but you can still find it in the archive of Teachers TV
It included a specially written poem that I asked Mark Cowan to write called 'Degrees of Change'
I have that, and use it with Y9 students now.
Here's the credits slide:
One of my first consultancy credits.
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