Weather, wisdom and the West
I believe that societies in the West, such as here in Scotland, need to both get their own houses in order and do things that can make a tangible difference to poorer nations.
Ian Marchant’s Blog
New Year’s resolutions
I realise it is already a bit late in January to talk about New Year Resolutions but last week I chaired the first 2020 group meeting of 2014 and talked about them in my introductory remarks. Apparently the custom has an old history with the ancient Babylonians repaying debts and medieval knights renewing their chivalry vows. It is estimated that about 40% of people make resolutions, or based on my experience, individuals make them every …
The seven Ps of effective travel
I gave a key note speech at a conference on Scotland’s clean air initiatives last week and it got me thinking of the hierarchy of travel options. I have used as my guiding principles the need to reduce both carbon emissions and air pollution, particularly in our cities. I have come up with a travel pecking order of 7 Ps: PEACE. It is always best if we can avoid actually having to travel in the …
The age of big data and collaboration
I was sent an interesting article by Ron Kasabian about big data. He talks about the stages in typical technology developments where, after a ‘peak of inflated expectations’, we usually enter something called the ‘trough of disillusionment’. He argues that, as far as big data is concerned, “there is fact substance behind the hype”. I would agree. The amount of data that is available is growing every day and we are finding increasingly creative uses …
C – : Could do better
The road to true sustainable development really depends on two things; what we build (the engineering challenge) and how we behave. It is this second one that many of us struggle with. Last week the Scottish Government published its report on the ten key behavioural areas that should be addressed. There is a wealth of data in the report. The behaviours cover four topics, energy, transport, food and waste. A few of the statistics I picked …
