Author page: Katie Jones

Have no doubt – the Anthropocene is here

Human-created mass is officially greater than biological mass It’s time to stop drawing natural resources and start cleaning up A new study has calculated that human-created mass now outweighs all biological mass on earth. In other words – buildings and infrastructure weigh more than creatures, trees and shrubs. Adding a new dimension to commonly used measures such as CO2 output, biodiversity loss, temperature and…

We played The Climate Collage and it made learning climate science way less scary.

The Climate Collage is an online workshop developed by a French NGO with the aim of providing a fun and accessible way for people to understand cause and effect relationships in climate science. The workshop, which is based on the UN’s climate science reports, has already been taken by over 90 000 people across the world. What are coccolithophores and pteropods and…

Record breaking reusable rockets – exploring the sustainability of space missions

What’s Going On Here? This week SpaceX successfully launched its 100th mission, and the Falcon 9 rocket saw it’s sixth reuse, breaking the world record for the number of times a rocket has been recycled. But with space travel on the increase, and every rocket launch producing 150 times as much CO2 as a transatlantic flight, are we witnessing the rise of another deadly…

Greenwashing detectors at the ready: How to stay sceptical in the year of corporate climate pledges

What’s Going On Here? This week Amazon announced a 2-billion-dollar Climate Pledge to achieve zero carbon by 2040. The venture capital fund will power development into green operations across multiple industries, including transportation and logistics, energy generation, storage and utilisation, manufacturing and materials, circular economy, and food and agriculture. Pretty extensive eh? What Does This Mean? This year we’ll see an onslaught of environmental…

More Plastic than Plankton?! Study finds more ocean microplastics than we thought.

What’s Going On Here? Scientists at Plymouth Marine Laboratory used fine mesh nets to collect samples of coastal waters from the US and UK and found 2.5 times more microplastics than previous samples. What Does This Mean? Measuring less than 5 millimeters, microplastics gather in our oceans as they break away from bigger plastics such as packaging, bottles and old car tyres. The research…

Let it grow! Roadside verges become mini-meadows for wildflowers and bees

What’s Going On Here? The coronavirus lockdown has meant that councils haven’t mowed roadside verges and mini-meadows have been left to bloom all across the UK! What Does This Mean? One in five of wildflowers in the UK are now endangered and 97% of meadows have disappeared since the 1930s. Roadside verges are a stretch of hope for Britain’s increasingly depleting wildlife habitats. They form…