People & Planet Green League

People & Planet’s Green League is the only comprehensive and independent league table of UK universities ranked by environmental and ethical performance. It is compiled annually by the UK’s largest student campaigning network, People & Planet.

Universities have been awarded degree-style classifications based on their environmental management and performance. You can click the name of a university to see a full break-down of its scores. The University of the West of Scotland made it in at number 74 in the table.

Full People & Planet Green League 2012 Tables

Link to University of the West of Scotland’s scorecard

 

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Great Science Videos

Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Open Culture’s whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. The science section contains videos from NASA’s tour of the Earth from outer space to an animation of how a flu invades your body.

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Government Publications from October 2011

These publications from the Westminster and Holyrood governments may be of interest to scientists:

Environmental and Waste Management

Zero Waste (Scotland) Regulations Draft Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment

Energy efficiency and microgeneration in the built environment, SKILLS research for Scotland

Conserve and Save: The Energy Efficiency Plan for Scotland: Annual Report 2010-11

Flood Risk Management in England [PDF file] 

Biology

Scottish Marine and Freshwater Science Volume 2 Number 12: Determination and Environmental Assessment of Hydrocarbons in Water, Fish and Sediment Following an Oil Spill at the Gannet Oil Field

Statistical Publication: Agriculture Series: First Estimate of the Cereal and Oilseed Rape Harvest 2011

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Government publications from September 2011

These publications from the Westminster and Holyrood governments may be of interest to scientists:

Scottish Health Survey 2010 – Volume 1: Main report

Health and Wellbeing in Schools Project – Final Report

Key Scottish Environment Statistics 2011

Scottish Greenhouse Gas Emissions 2009

Developing High Nature Value Farming and Forestry Indicators for the Scotland Rural Development Programme

Scottish Sea Fisheries Statistics 2010

Sea Trout Fishery Statistics – 2010 Season

Salmon Fishery Statistics – 2010 Season

Putting Learners at the Centre – Delivering our Ambitions for Post-16 Education

Scottish Government Consultations

Consultation regarding African Horse Sickness (Scotland) Order 2012

You can find lots more useful government publications on the UWS Government Publications blog.

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Environmental performance in OECD members

The OECD Better Life Index includes useful information about the environmental performance of OECD members.  It also gives links to the detailed OECD Environmental Performance Reviews (in the “more resources” section for each country).  Some of these performance reviews are a few years old, but they contain useful information about transport policies relating to air quality; water pollution and water pricing; biodiversity management and the relationship between the environment and public health.

OECD member countries include Australia, Greece, Japan, Mexico, Israel, and the UK.

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Government publications from June 2011

These publications from the Westminster and Holyrood governments may be of interest to scientists:

Review of the Climate Challenge Fund – Research Findings

“The Review of the Climate Challenge Fund has investigated in depth the impacts of 21 community projects across Scotland looking to reduce carbon emissions and explored how they have been successful. This short summary gives key findings drawn from the main report.”

Preparations for the roll-out of smart meters [PDF file]

Reports on progress made towards the installation of “smart” electricity and gas meters, which should be installed in all homes in Great Britain by 2019.

“Smart meters, together with real time in-home displays, can provide consumers with detailed information on their energy use and access to a wide range of off-peak tariffs. Smart meters also allow suppliers to collect meter readings electronically, provide more accurate bills and cut costs.”

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Riveting talks by remarkable people

TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) is a series of non-profit conferences that are devoted to “ideas worth spreading”. Delivered by many celebrated speakers, the talks are divided into 6 major headings – including Science, Technology and Global Issues – and are now available free on-line. Under Science you will find talks that include, “Discovering ancient climates in oceans and ice” and “A tool that finds 3x more breast tumours and why it’s not available to you“.

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Greenfile

UWS staff and students now have access to Greenfile, which indexes environment-related articles on topics such as global warming, green building design and recycling.

Greenfile can be accessed from the A-Z list of databases and the sciences resources page.  Although Greenfile does not include full text articles, it is possible to check using SFX whether access is available via another database.

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Green energy

The US Department of the Environment produces DOE Green Energy, a database of information sources about renewable energy and conservation of energy.  It indexes information about various forms of green energy, including hydroelectric power, wind power, and biofuels.

Green Energy is a US government project.  All the information in this database is from US government sources, e.g., technical reports and patents, but it can be a useful resource if you are looking for international information on environmentally friendly sources of energy.

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Climate Change: a summary of the science

The UK’s national academy of science, the Royal Society, has launched a new guide to the science of climate change. The guide has been updated partly as a result of complaints by 43 of the Royal Society’s members who were concerned about the tone of its previous guide. For many members of the Society the previous guide was seen as being too strident and did not fully acknowledge areas of uncertainty. The guide has gone some way to allaying the concerns of the The Global Warming Policy Foundation which is sceptical of the view that human activities are contributing to climate change

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