June 26, 2005

New Scientist Special Report on Climate Change

New Scientist Special Report on Climate Change

Another useful link on global warming

Climate Change: Instant Expert | New Scientist

Climate Change: Instant Expert | New Scientist

I did a BBC Radio 5 Live interview on Global Warming last night. Interesting how the debate has moved on. Even if you take the most sceptical position, which is that maybe there is only a 5% risk that there is any link between human activity and global warming, that is still a very significant possibility.

Most of us insure our homes and other parts of our lives against much lower risks than 5%. However we don't have an insurance policy against global warming.

And most scientists think the risk is higher than 5% in any case.

That's why governments are right to be taking action now.

We cannot wait until the case is proven beyond all doubt.

One small step every family and business can take is to become carbon neutral in the longer term, by buying a tree in a new wood or forest to offset every 0.8 of a ton of carbon we use.

That's the equivalent of £20 on the cost of a transatlantic return flight or £160 on the annual costs of driving 12,000 miles.

An alternative to planting trees is to fund projects that reduce carbon emissions in places like India - for example a single 100 watt low-energy bulb will save over 10 years the equivalent in carbon of an entire mature tree being cut down (according to Future Forest). That is when you take into account the inneficiency of generating electricity and power losses on distribution.

June 24, 2005

ARK - Absolute Return for Kids

ARK - Absolute Return for Kids

Interesting sign of the times - new organisation backed by money from hedge funds and others. Every day I am hearing about major new philanthropic initiatives being started by people who have made a lot of money in business.

Part of the same trend that has seen over 500,000 people in Britain buy white wrist bands in just 6 weeks, in support of the "Make Poverty History" campaign.

June 01, 2005

Small Business Insurance - why small companies can be wiped out in a week. The truth about small business risks

Small Business Insurance - why small companies can be wiped out in a week. The truth about small business risks: "Small Business Insurance

The truth about insurance against small business risks - why your small business could disappear in a week - huge risks may not be covered by your insurance policy

Small businesses spend hundreds of millions a year on insurance yet policies may not fully cover some of their most serious risks. Risk management is a vital part of running a small business, yet neglected by most small business owners who say they haven't got the time.
The trouble is that when disaster strikes, you may need more than a small business insurance payout to keep going. And disaster comes around often.
Small business owners run on a tight margin and don't have spare resources to tackle major issues, so are very vulnerable to business disasters and other negative events. Small business insurance may cover obvious costs but not all the hidden consequencies.
Take backup of computer data for example: you assume that everything works find until a hard disk crashes. When you come to restore data you find either the system was not backed up recently enough, and you have lost vital e-mails and other data, or that the backup files are corrupt. This kind of event is far commoner than you may imagine. Every computer your business owns is a separate risk of sudden hardware failure or attack by a virus, and small businesses are especially vulnerable because they don't have the backup of a professional IT department, and are often dependent on a varied collection of computers, and staff who don't fully understand how to use them.
Does your small business insurance cover you for destruction of your business following staff errors in backing up or even for the loss of your own personal organiser and all your diary for the next 6 weeks? For lost ....."

Read on...

Small Business Insurance - why small companies can be wiped out in a week. The truth about small business risks

Global Change Ltd - website statistics

Global Change Ltd - website statistics

The www.globalchange.com traffic is heavier than ever: up to 88 million words a day requested.

8.5 million unique visitors to our pages
(5.5 million from July 2003 - March 05)

Site visitors peak at over 22,500 different people and 110,000 pages a day - At peak times an average visitor requests 4.5 pages of around 800 words each, over 7 minutes - a total of more than 2,600 hours onsite in 24 hours, not including offline reading time, during which our server can deliver an estimated 88 million words including more than 2,200 book chapters

13 million pages viewed in 12 months from 1 April 2004 to 30 March 2005
Around 500,000 unique visitors in a busy month. Up to 600,000 html pages viewed a week. Of around 320 million global search requests a day in March 2005 (source: WordTrack) , up to 22,500 a day landed up at our site - so we think on busy days around one in 14,500 of all 320 million search requests around the world produces a visit to our pages - or more like one in 30,000 at quieter times . Around 65% of our traffic is from the US (compared to 42.4% of all net traffic). In March 2005 there were around 110 million individuals in the US who used search engines (Wordtracker figures), of which we estimate around 325,000 different US citizens visited our pages. One person in every 360 American users of search engines visits us in a busy month, and we estimate around 3% of 175 million US online citizens have visited our site at least once since we launched in 1996 - the figure is far less for the rest of the world.