It seems despite the endless warnings on impending climate collapse, the call for immediate halt to fossil fuels. The UK Prime minister has decided to issue 100's of new Licenses to extract oil and gas from the North Sea.

This appears to be so we can increase our energy security. This of course is garbage, we can produce our energy needs using renewable means, we just need to get this capacity connected to the national grid. We just need to ban the sale of gas appliances, retrain people in the newer tech so we can minimise job losses and find more sustainable ways of doing things.

At the same time, we are trying to tell other countries to cut down on fossil fuels, we need to lead by example.

In the meantime it seems claims the heatwaves are false are being spread via mainstream social media. From this it looks like X / Twitter is at the centre of all this.

This is why I use fedi, intelligent people, having intelligent conversations and discussions, encouraging critical thinking and understanding of the science, hence recent posts on here about theory and hypothesis.

Tags

#UK,#Oil,#Gas,#Climate,#misinformation,#Policies,#WeNeedToActNow

This year it is running from 6–11 Feb 2023, please see website for more information.

• Website

Tags

#UK,#Children,#MentalHealth,#Week

The petition to remove #LGBT content from the uk curriculum now has 190,671 signatures, sigh. It only needed 100k to force a debate in parliament, so that will be scheduled by #Uk Gov.

The counter petition is rapidly gaining ground, being newer. It now has 33,030 signatures, but we need more!

Can followers in the UK help sign the counter petition.

#Uk,#Petition,#LGBT,#Education

Further to the previous post on this, the orbiter plane took off as planned, and the first stage of the rocket was fine. Due to a technical “anomaly “issue with stage 2, the rocket was lost and failed to reach low orbit and deliver the payload.

Investigations in to what went wrong have started.

Links

• BBC NewsUK space launch: Historic Cornwall rocket launch ends in failure
• Physics world article

Tags

#UK,#Space,#Launch,#Rocket,

Nuclear fusion plant to be built at West Burton A power station.

This sounds like a really exciting development and should hopefully help the UK take the lead in a clean and sustainable energy resource.

This is also an excellent reason, regardless of where you live to study STEM. While this plant is not due to start until 2040. This is only 18 years away, so if you are heading in to year 7, then by the time you have obtained a post graduate or other hi-tech qualification you should be employable within this industry.

Video : Fuelling Fusion power

Links

• Article
• UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA
  • Jobs and careers
• Science Forums
  • Topic on Science forums

Tags

#UK,#Energy,#NuclearFusion,#Physics,#UKAEA,#AtomicEnergy, #FuturePower

This was on BBC TV Breakfast this morning, start of a campaign to warn of dangers of trespassing on the railway,

The railway is full of hidden dangers. When you trespass on the railway there are serious and catastrophic consequences for you, your loved ones, rail staff, and communities as a whole.

The campaign You vs Train – Harrison's Story – Network Rail

• You vs Train

Tags

#Uk,#Railway,#NetworkRail,#Safety,#Campaign

The new framework for teaching computing and computer science can be found on the Teach Computing website.

As part of this, there are sections covering teaching animation. One example is for year 3 – Stop frame animation

At code club we have a piece of software called Tupi, which can be used for animation. I am creating a set of videos for peertube to cover the basic usage of this. As I am using Debian 11 to use the software and produce these resources they can be found in the Debian section of my diode.zone account on the federated Peertube network.

Please do not ask me about uploading to Youtube.

The next Code Club is on Saturday 15th October, so we may take a look at this IF there is sufficient interest.

Videos

• Install
  • Reset (if you encounter problems)
• New Project
  • Save Project
  • Open Project
• Getting Started
• Views
• Moving Frames
• Time Line

Tags

#CodeClub,#Animation,#UK,#Schools,#Curriculum. #TeachingComputing,#PeerTube,#Tupi,#TupiDraw

The UK Prime minister recently announced that the ban on Fracking will be lifted [1]. I was going to ask about this on Science forums, however I found an existing discussion on Science forums [2]. It should be possible to link this discussion to others to look at the wider topic.

There are clearly several issues surrounding this topic, and arguments for & against, it is important to get a clear picture and seek evidence based facts. I have included a link to Ask for Evidence [3] for completeness and to help people with further research.

I downloaded the paper from the discussion so will read offline.

Links

1. BBC – Fracking ban in England lifted in bid to boost UK gas supply 2 Man-made earthquake risk and Fracking
2. Ask for Evidence

Tags

#Energy,#Fracking,#UK

• Online Safety bill factsheet

Hopefully this bill, if it ever gets in t law, will really start to make tech companies more responsible.

We need to prevent more incidents such as reported here Daily mail – schoolboy dies attempting TikTok blackout challenge. However, saying this perhaps holding the content creators more to account may also provide some sort of deterrent such as this reported by USnews – Alex Jones Loses Lawsuit Over Sandy Hook 'Hoax' Conspiracy. So in the case of the blackout challenge, hold the original poster of this to account and sue them, this could prove rather costly esp if undertaken via US courts, and the award being sought is in the millions of dollars.

We already have laws that cover this, so slander, defamation and libel can all get you sued for damages.

We still allow freedom of expression / speech, but creators would be held responsible for the consequences, just as they are in the real world out side of cyberspace. Tech companies could help by providing information on those who started these trends, or be held responsible or at least partly. Education and awareness should still be top priority, but just hold people to account.

We also need safeguards against tech companies handing data to police, such as in this case reported in NYPost Facebook gave teen’s private messages about alleged abortion to Nebraska police. If tech companies can do this, they can also hand over data on sex offenders and other serious criminals to the police too Tech companies can't pick and choose what they report.

At the same time I also appreciate we need protection for journalists and some activists who use technology to communicate and report on sensitive issues and or oppressive regimes for example.

All we need now is for the next Uk government to get their finger out and get this in to law.

Tags

#Uk,#Law,#OnlineSafetyBill

The UK statutory guidance for safeguarding children in Education has been released by the UK Government.

I have included a 2nd link to my article asking are DBS checks worth the paper they are written on? as a reminder as to why safeguarding is important.

• Keeping children safe in education 2022
• Why safeguarding is important

Tags

#UK,#Safeguarding.#Guidance,#KCSIE,#KeepingChildrenSafeIn Education