This Saturday, apart from being my birthday, is also an international day of action on climate change. There will be, amongst many other things, a demo in central London, which quite a few of my friends from a variety of different backgrounds are going to. There's more info on the demo and the campaign against climate change more generally on the website of the Campaign Against Climate Change.

The government here in the UK is now committed to some sort of climate change bill this parliament, thanks in no small part to the dedication of groups like Friends of the Earth, though as described, amongst other places, in George Monbiot's book Heat, most scientists appear to agree that far far more than what is currently on the table will be required in order to avoid starvation, suffering and migration on a scale never before seen in human history.

The government is also unfortunately, in my view, engaged in the diversionary tactic of passing the responsibility of action required back onto us. Of course it is vital that we all begin to understand our role in building a different kind of society, with an economy which is not reliant on high levels of carbon emission, and the government has an important role to play in this. However, though I hope to be proved wrong, it seems that initiatives like their television advertisements and "carbon footprint calculator" are droplets of change when compared with the carbon legacy ocean created by airport expansions, road building and support for expansions in fossil fuel extraction and new coal-powered electricity generation.

Incidentally, I just calculated my carbon footprint (to whatever accuracy can be determined in five minutes by a small flash animation with rather limited questions and answers). Apparently 9.84 tonnes of carbon are emitted each year in my name. Anyone know what 9.84 tonnes of carbon looks like? Sure sounds like a lot of pencils... Calculate yours here.

Occasionally, I receive emails from jobs.ac.uk about vacancies in which I might be interested. Usually I just skim through, since I'm not actively looking right now, to see what kinds of things I might want to do after my PhD, or else what I would really like to avoid. Today I saw an advert for a job about which I couldn't immediately decide what I thought: a Consequence Modeller for the Atomic Weapons Establishment.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (from their website) "provides the warheads for the United Kingdom nuclear deterrent" and "is one of the largest high technology research, design development and production facilities in the country". Well, no wonder they're interested in science graduates. This is no NGO!

Being pretty much a pacifist, I normally steer well clear of any military research and I certainly would not in a million years want to design nuclear warheads, but what exactly does "consequence modelling" entail in this field? I mean, firstly is anyone under any illusion that the consequences of the detonation of a nuclear weapon would be anything other than massive, indiscriminate, ugly, painful death, mutilation and an environmental impact the like of which would probably change the culture of a country like Britain overnight?

I suppose what they are really after is the ability to be able to somehow justify nuclear weapons as "tactical", things which can be used for precision attacks, the consequences of which could be fine tuned by the selection of warhead. In this way, perhaps they hope that weapons can be used more "safely", in order to minimise civilian casualty, or some such rubbish.

And, I do believe that it is rubbish. We've heard this kind of talk before of course, about precision weapons, highly sophisticated targetting systems which minimise what is heartlessly referred to as "collateral damage". Indeed, this is very similar to the claim being made by the United States about their missile "defence" system: as soon as an incoming missile is detected, they send up one of their own (from a base in Europe) to intercept it and take it out before it reaches its target. Of course, the simple and very obvious problem with this approach is that the attackers just need a slightly more sophisticated missile. At this point of course, the US can just spend a bit more on missile defence research... And here we have it, another arms race.

Thinking about these precision targetted weapons we hear so much about these days, of whose consequences their users are so certain, well doesn't this just encourage the people who are being targetted to hole up in the middle of a town, or in a school? I firmly believe that there is no way to hope to bring about more peace in the world by researching better weapons, only by disarmament, and by not spending people's taxes on jobs like this.

Anyway, if you disagree, and have an "understanding of nuclear weapons' effects", their "consequences for persons" as well as "good computer literacy, particularly Microsoft Office applications", (the three do actually appear adjacent to each other in the ad) then feel free to apply and prove me wrong.

This week marks the twelve month point from which, if I had started my PhD at the beginning of the academic year, I would have begun.

However, despite my slightly late starting, this week was therefore also the point at which I was required to make use of the knowledge I have been diligently absorbing for the best part of the last year and submit what's known as a thesis proposal. My proposal was a roughly 12,000 word document laying out what I've learnt, how this has led me to a particular topic and what my plan of action will be for investigating this topic over the remaining two to three years. When I begun writing the proposal, it felt like quite a daunting task, though the requirement has actually been an opportunity to take a step back, focus and make a few decisions. It's also required me to actually write up about a lot of the literature which I've been reading; something long overdue. The result was presented to the school and my industrial sponsor yesterday, and with the addition of a few suggestions, was accepted. In case anyone is interested, the document can in fact be found here.

So, I'm now officially a second year PhD student, with a topic. The relief of having this part completed is actually quite significant. Now, onwards!

Wow, today on Pluto (which is incidentally quite a long time) any life which may or may not exist will have to start getting used to no longer living on the 9th planet in the Solar System. Thanks to the discovery of "2003 UB313" (catchy title, that - see the picture below for an even snazzier look), it has now been relegated to a mere "dwarf planet" by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

So all that stuff I learnt is wrong. The BBC seems to think that textbooks will all be changed to miss off Pluto from the list of planets taught in schools.

I think this is interesting though. Has Pluto been a planet for the 76 years during which we have known of its existence? Or does the decision by these in-the-know astronomers mean that we were wrong about it all along? Who are we to judge? Who are they to judge?

Pluto is used in astrology too - will this reference be removed or its significance on our predicted moods be downgraded? Interestingly, the dictionary definition of planet talks of "a celestial body, in orbit around the Sun or another star, which has too small a mass to become a star itself, and shines by reflecting light from the star around which it revolves". I suppose that the IAU's definition was a little more stringent. It does raise an interesting question though: is this a scietific question, or a language one?

What is nice, is that the word planet actually comes from the Greek word planetes, which means "wanderer".