Don Beck Addresses the Transformational Leadership Symposium

Be the Change Carries Live Copenhagen Video

I just received news that the Be The Change web site is carrying the One Climate live internet video feed from the Copenhagen climate talks.

You can watch the feed 24/7 until the talks finish on December 18th on their home page.

Be The Change - Copenhagen

The Busiest Day

Visitor Update

We are just having our busiest day so far !   To the point that I write this update we have had 110 visitors to the site today.

That has also taken us through the 2000 barrier for the total number of visitors so far.

In November we narrowly missed out on achieveing 1000 visitors in the month.  With many more days like today we will definitley pass 1000 visits in December.

Thank you everyone for your support so far, and Word Press for making it possible. I look forward to seeing you here again soon…

jon

Christmas Spirit – Risky on the Rocks

This morning I was listening to Shane O’Connor again on Radio Derby – did I say it was a great show already?

The topic of discussion was people getting into debt at Christmas.  Talking about this was a lady from the local Citizens Advice centre.  The worrying aspect for me was that it seems that more and more people make decisions to buy presents for children rather than pay bills.  Some people even go so far as to miss a mortgage payment rather than not provide presents for children.

Hitting the Christmas Present Wall

What kind of a society have we created when people are pushed further and further into debt because they value children getting presents more than paying basic household bills?

“Climategate” Reaches the Mainstream Press

Why we must have open science and open data

A lot of people have for some time been assuming that Global Warming was now proved.  However, it turns out that some of the scientists at the centre of the science behind Climate Science have been operating in a less than scientific way.

First dubbed Climategate in a comment on WUWT, a number of leaked or stolen emails and documents have created quite a storm.  And it does not look like blowing over any time soon.  In fact, the story has, in the last few days, reached the mainstream press with some journalists calling for the resignation of key climate scientists.

Stories include:

• The Telegraph:  The Worst Scientific Scandal of our Age
• Guardian: Global Warming Rigged?
• BBC – Email Arguments

Now, I am a sceptic.  That means that I like to question things, not that I would deny them.  I don’t think there is much doubt that CO2 interacts with infra red radiation (heat) in the atmosphere – it is basic physics.  What is not well understood is the total processes of the worlds atmosphere and climate – it is just so massively complicated.  Therefore, I would, while going along with the consensus on global warming in most respects, still reserve a degree of scepticism.

The hockey stick graph - one of the first casualties from the "climate wars"

We now, and rather suddenly and dramatically, have a situation where we are discovering that there has been a web of collusion to portray a consensus of fact and opinion stronger than was actually the case.

Culture Clash – Why China Meets Africa’s Needs

It was a few weeks ago that I read on the BBC that the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, had praised the way that China deals with Africa.  Apparently, unlike the west, China invests in Africa and trades with it which helps it build up its infrastructure.  The west on the other hand, according to the Rwandan president, is more likely to offer aid and to tie more to conditions.

Presidents - Paul Kagame with George Bush

Kagame went as far to say that European and American involvement was polluting Africa.

Why would that be?

Climate Bum Wiggling

If you read my previous post on “The Right to Bee” the title of this article might just make sense to you.

Sometimes timing or perhaps even synchronicity can be rather fascinating.    Following on from my mention of climate issues in the Right To Bee there has been an awful lot of bum wiggling indeed going on in climate sceptic circles recently.  Following the hacking or leaking, no one seems quite sure which, of one of the worlds major climate research centres, the Climate Research Unit or CRU, based right here in the UK a large number of emails and documents have been released on the internet.

Things Hotting up in Climate Science

You can follow the fascinating unfolding story over at WUWT.

I wouldn’t be happy to say that any climate scientists did anything they should not have done but there is certainly a lot of speculation to that effect.

The argument even seems to have reached the BBC with correspondents Paul Hudson and Richard Black taking different approaches to the matter.

And what worries me a lot more than all of this is that the human race stills seems to be almost totally ignoring a number of possibly severe environmental issues.  The big problem seems to be that no one country wants to do anything significant until everyone else does too which results in almost total stalemate.  Unless we address the underlying international political issues we are going to go right to the wire on a lot of things.

PS – if you didn’t know what synchronicity was you could try looking up Carl Jung for a psychological or archetypal slant or reading The Celestine Prophecy if you were looking for a light hearted new age novel.

Network Britain

In my previous post I gave a little bit of background about what led up to this new post.  You could almost imagine that someone somewhere had planned much of my life to lead up to this but I wouldn’t like to presume too much.

To be honest, yesterday I was really excited about this but now I am feeling a little bit more nervous.

What I am going to tell you about is a project that I really want to champion but how will you all react?  I know that in theory this project could be very powerful indeed but is Britain ready for this yet and does it have the individuals required to drive it?  Or, more importantly, have I completely misread the situation or the timing?  We shall see.

Network Britain – How I Got Here

The next post has been brewing for a while now.  Rather a long while.  Probably for almost 30 years. Many things were added to the proverbial melting pot during this time.  More recently there have been several additions that have helped me to pull all of the earlier experiences together.

If you don’t want to hear an overview of how and why I came to be writing about Network Britain then please do skip directly to the next article – it will be along shortly if you picked this one up quickly after I posted it.

The Network

Susan Boyle – Amazing Grace

Susan Boyle’s new album, “I Dreamed a Dream“, has become the target of more pre release orders from Amazon than any other album in Amazon’s history.

Susan Boyle - I Dreamed a Dream

You can listen to extracts on the Amazon web site.

Who, except Simon Cowell of course, would have dreamt that Susan Boyle, an apparent joke as she walked out onto the stage, would produce the amazing sound that she did.   Or that just  few months later would be smashing sales records before her album has even been released.

You cannot always judge a book by it’s cover.