Cafe Scientifique Brampton, also known as Café Sci for short, is a place where, for the price of a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, anyone can come to explore the latest ideas in science and technology.

Meetings take place simultaneously live at Brampton Community Centre and via Zoom on the last Thursday of the month, except December.

The next Café Sci took place this yesterday (September 30) with Professor Sarah Bridle presenting via Zoom.

Sarah’s talk was entitled ‘Change your diet: the easiest way to help reduce your climate impact’.

Professor Bridle has been studying dark matter and dark energy for the last 20 years, but when her kids started school, she started to think about our own planet in the next 20 years and beyond.

She learned about climate change properly for the first time, how it threatens worldwide food production, and how food causes about a quarter of all global warming.

She wanted to know how much each of her food choices was contributing, and why.

She delved into the academic research literature and summarised the results in simple charts.

The charts made it easy for the non-specialist to see the impacts of different meal options and show that some easy food switches can reduce food greenhouse gas emissions by 90 per cent.

Sarah’s current research focuses on synthesising, exploring and effectively communicating environmental and nutrition impacts of different dietary options, with the aim of driving changes in food production methods and portfolios to be healthy for people and planet.

Sarah founded the ‘Take a Bite out of Climate Change’ project including leading a stand at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2019.

Sarah has unique expertise in managing large scale data, bringing a background including a degree in Natural Sciences, a PhD in astrophysics (University of Cambridge, 2000); and statistical cosmology research in France, Cambridge, London (Lecturer/Reader 2004-2012) and Manchester (Professor from 2013).

Café Scientifique currently exists in more than 60 towns and cities across the United Kingdom and world-wide.

It was the idea of Duncan Dallas, from Leeds, who was impressed by the Café Philosophique session he saw in France.

For more information about Café Sci in Brampton, visit www.bramptoncc.org.uk.