FEED at Makana Green Fun Run: Food, Entertainment, Education, Drinks is a slogan inviting businesses, organisations and environmental groups to set up stands displaying their sustainable projects and activities, and sell food and drink at the Makana Green Fun Run on Sunday 16 March.
FEED at Makana Green Fun Run: Food, Entertainment, Education, Drinks is a slogan inviting businesses, organisations and environmental groups to set up stands displaying their sustainable projects and activities, and sell food and drink at the Makana Green Fun Run on Sunday 16 March.
The event start and finish is now at Drostdy Arch and Lawns, on the corner of Somerset and High Streets.
The RU Environmental Committee invites participation, such as setting up a stall, sponsoring a scholar (or several), or even participating in the event.
This would be an excellent way to promote an organisation, while also promoting sustainability.
The expanded organising committee is making every effort to ensure that the event is advertised widely, and will be embraced by the municipality, schools, businesses, environmental organisations and the wider community.
Based on growing success, they expect over 1 000 participants this year.
This is a great event to join in to help promote a city that is more environmentally sustainable and healthy.
Maps, pamphlets and more information: Nikki on 046 603 7205 or environment@ru.ac.za or visit ru.ac.za/environment/funrun
Scifest
Another annual event is on soon, Scifest 12-18 March, on the theme “into the space”, which should be interesting.
It will celebrate South Africa’s role in the square kilometre array (SKA) project – and explore many other concepts of spaces, not just outer space.
You can find the programme and registration details at scifest.org.za/
State of the Climate
With much of Britain under water and heatwaves such as the one that caused a pause in the Australian Open tennis tournament, you may be wondering if any of this is caused by pollution-driven climate change.
Climate models generally predict this sort of trend, though it is difficult to pin any one event on human-caused climate change, since extreme climate events happen all the time.
As the air gets warmer, the hydrological cycle intensifies, because warmer air can hold more water vapour.
When the atmosphere releases that water vapour as precipitation, you get heavier rain.
Another factor at play is unusually strong Pacific trade winds have been mixing, heating surface waters deeper into the ocean than anyone predicted.
The effect of this is a slight slowdown of surface warming, but much more energy available to drive storms.
Reduced surface warming is no cause for complacency – increased greenhouse gases cause an imbalance in energy flowing into the planet from the sun that can only be reversed by surface warming.
Next time we have a major El Niño event – the way the oceans redistribute energy to the atmosphere – another major rise in surface temperatures is likely.
More in this recent Australian paper published in Nature Climate Change: nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2106.html
Temperature Watch
Finally, if you want to visualize climate change, the UK Climatic Research Unit has launched a tool to see how temperature varies around the globe.
Ideally, you should have Google Earth installed on your computer, though it also works with Google Maps.
You can click on a region of the map and see what the annual temperature variation is over that area, and pick up other details like where weatherstations are.
Find us online: grocotts.co.za/environews
Contacts for Makana Enviro-News:
Nikki Köhly: n.kohly@ru.ac.za, 046 603 7205 |
Jenny Gon: j-gon@intekom.co.za, 046 622 5822 |
Trisha Nathoo: nathootrisha83@gmail.com, 078 584 9496 |
Nick James: nickjames@intekom.co.za, 082 575 9781 |
Philip Machanick: p.machanick@ru.ac.za, 046 603 8635 |
Strato Copteros: strato@iafrica.com, 082 785 6403
