dendrite studios

Things really kicked into gear on Thursday night (4/10/2007) at the second session of the seminar series. The title of the session was ‘Overview of the Implications of Urbanisation and Other Ecological System Pressures’. A bold title, but the exceptional triumvirate of speakers, covered this topic brilliantly and left participants with much to digest.

First was up Dr. Guy Midgley, specialist scientist at the South African National Botanical Institute, and panellist of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Guy kicked off where Peter and Stef stopped on Tuesday by showing some graphs of continental and global temperature change over the last century. All the graphs show not only a marked temperature increase since about 1950 but also acceleration in the rate of change. Projected temperature increases (as per IPCC) from now until 2099 in South Africa is between 1° and 3,5° C. Very significantly for the Western Cape is a corresponding projected drop in rainfall of 10-20% by the end of the century. This could lead to a drop in river flow of up to 58% in Cape Town. Some of the effects of these changes on Africa are that between 75 million and 250 million people will experience greater water stress by 2020. Rain fed agricultural yield could be reduced by up to 50% and significant changes in the ecosystem and loss of biodiversity could occur with temperature increases of over 1,5° C. [Read more →]

Tuesday night (2/01/2007) saw the kick-off of our ‘How do we build well in a fundamentally changing climate’ seminar series. The title of the first session was ‘An overview of climate change and its implications’. We were fortunate to have two speakers who are both experts on this issue in the persons of Peter Willis and Stef Raubenheimer

First up was Peter, the Southern African Director of Cambridge Programme for Industry (our co-hosts). He regularly presents to senior executives and government officials on climate change and sustainable development.
Peter started his presentation by describing climate change as our ‘first ever global emergency’. “The question facing governments is whether they can respond quickly enough to prevent threats from becoming catastrophes. The world has precious little experience in responding to aquifer depletion, rising temperatures, expanding deserts, melting polar ice caps, and a shrinking oil supply. These new trends will fully challenge the capacity of our political institutions and leadership.” [Read more →]

At a dinner on Saturday I was sitting with a group of highly educated, young professionals and somewhere during the course of the evening the issue of climate change got mentioned. I was stunned to hear that several of the guests were rather oblivious to the issue and were very sceptical as to the scientific validity of climate change. One person jokingly referred to a comment Charlie Munger (long-time Warren Buffett associate) made at this year’s Berkshire Hathaway AGM that it would be nice if it were a degree or two warmer.

Despite my amazement, I consoled myself that these are very isolated cases and that owing to the plethora of media coverage on the topic, they were members of a small minority of unreformed sceptics. But then on Tuesday leading financial site Moneyweb  posted an article stating, “If Moneyweb community members are anything to go by, no one in South Africa cares about climate change.” [Read more →]

One of my favourite modern thinkers is the Stanford University economist Paul Romer. Renowned as the father of endogenous growth theory, Romer is a leading lobbyist for greater support for engineering and science studies. At a recent talk at the Leigh Bureau in New Zealand he said the following:   [Read more →]

A thinking space for forward-looking building professionals

Systemic environmental challenges and especially climate change have recently been pushed onto the local and global agenda as never before. Yet, despite all the attention, for most people outside the scientific community a great deal of uncertainty still remains as to what is actually happening, how it may impact daily life and what our response should be. Architects, builders and built environment professionals are key stakeholders in this debate, yet many are unsure as to how to respond to it effectively. [Read more →]

Dendrite Studios is a young company in the education industry which aims to help anyone learn anything they desire for the benefit of humanity.

We are involved with several projects, but our biggest project is creating a life-long learning centre in Cape Town. We aim for the centre to be up in running early 2008.

 We will continue to update you on our progress.

Dendrite Studios team