The Svalbard

What's new in January and February 2024

Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago close to Greenland in the heart of the Arctic Ocean, is a particularly popular destination for glaciologists, including French glaciologist Heïdi Sevestre. In this episode of her weekly column on France Culture, Heïdi Sevestre describes her expeditions to the heart of one of the archipelago's glaciers: both superb and terrifying, as direct witnesses to climate change, of which glaciers are among the first victims.

• Heidi Sevestre's weekly column on the France Culture website

The latest changes in brief

• ✨ A brand new home page
• 🤓 New blog posts
• 🧱 Technical improvements
• 🧮 Additions to the calculation model
• ✊ An overhaul of the actions proposed at the end of the test
• 🪲 And always: bugs fixed

✨ A new home page

We loved our little cityscape, but now it's time for something new: a clearer, simpler message, and as didactic as ever, here's our new homepage!

As an added bonus, we've also added a few new interactive features:

• always access the simulation (new or in progress) from the menu bar, thanks to the new button in the menu
• menu icons are now bold when you select them - we like the visual uniformity here 😀
• and, because at Nos Gestes Climat we like to have fun while we're learning ... a little easter egg has crept into our home page for the more playful among you

🤓 We'll keep you informed about the climate

Two blog posts have appeared in recent weeks, so don't hesitate to take a look:

• Alternatives to the private car
• Challenge your friends on their carbon footprint

Oh, and we've also updated the list of our ambassadors on the dedicated page.

🧱 We're solidifying technology

• Without going into too much technical detail, we used to use an API to load the template in numerous places on the site. We've replaced this with a more appropriate mechanism, capable of holding the load and preventing the site from crashing 💥 when traffic peaks (as we experienced in December during France Inter's Carbon Day).
• We've improved the way we manage model migrations
• And also improved our E2E tests

🧮 The model has been further completed and refined

The following additions have been made to the carbon calculation in recent weeks:

• lPG fuel (following numerous requests via our contact page)
• your garden accessories for the lucky house dwellers
• additions to drinks: chicory for hot drinks in particular
• more detailed calculations have been added for emission factors relating to swimming pools and heating with pellets

We've also improved one behaviour: inputs are limited: you can no longer enter extravagant values in the input fields

✊ We've reviewed all the proposed actions

First of all, the actions page is working again, and in particular the 'additional questions' feature, which was acting up

Secondly, we've completed the proposed actions following the test on all categories

• food :
  • new actions have been added
  • and within this category, we have mainly :
    • reviewed the display conditions for each feed action
    • renamed the actions correctly
    • fixed a bug that made the 'become vegetarian' action negative
    • added a few details about the vegan diet incentive, qualifying its benefits: excellent for carbon impact, it can be dangerous for your health without sufficient monitoring, and depending on your situation
• housing, additions include: thermostat, switching to wood, solar water heater, shared housing, heat pump, etc
• transport, additions include: car-sharing, making your car last longer, choosing a smaller car, etc
• miscellaneous: buy half as much clothing, reduce your consumption of hygiene products, buy second-hand rather than new, etc

🪲 We've fixed NOT SOME of the bugs that have a nasty habit of creeping in

• in the simulator:
  • if you change your answer to a previously answered question, subsequent questions will adapt correctly
  • the click zone for answering questions has been reduced, as it was creating errors
  • the calculation of the average number of passengers in a car has been fixed
• in the site in general:
  • pages, particularly the tutorial, no longer load twice: no more flickering!
  • we've fixed our Swiss partners' access to certain functions (for their site https://geneve.nosgestesclimat.ch/)