It's the Planet, Stupid!

After Fukushima: a way forward for nuclear power?

2011-03-15T17:23:00.005Z

The post-tsunami disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan raises critical questions: Can nuclear power ever be completely safe? Should the world - which had been in the process of gearing up to build many more nuclear plants - now abandon them totally? What's the alternative as we strive to reduce consumption of fossil fuels?

Double damage: This is a double disaster, firstly to Japan and its people (the horrifying drama is still unfolding as I write), and secondly to plans to increase nuclear electricity generation worldwide. Nuclear power is essentially carbon-free and without it, there would be a huge increase in coal-powered generation. Coal is the most polluting of fossil fuels: 1 ton of coal burned produces around 2.8 tons of CO2.

Lessons learned the hard way: What lessons can we learn from Fukushima and earlier nuclear disasters like Chernobyl?

never build reactors near earthquake-prone plate boundaries
never build them in coastal districts known to be vulnerable to tsunamis or rising sealevels
build them with robust containment which can withstand hydrogen explosions, wartime enemy action, aircraft crashes
don't use nuclear fuels which create dangerous and long-lived radioactive waste

And the solution? Nuclear power is going to be needed in a big way to help us kick some of the fossil fuel habit whilst supporting our energy needs. Which is the lesser evil? Global 'meltdown' due to even more rapid climate change, exacerbated if more coal is burned because nuclear power is abandoned? Or nuclear power?

But supposing there was a way to have our nuclear cake and to eat it. A way which is truly safe and within our grasp right now. There are two fundamental changes which the nuclear industry can adopt to make future nuclear power safe and acceptable. One is a change of fuel and the other a change of containment:

stop using uranium/MOX fuels and replace with thorium: no meltdowns, no bomb-making potential, no enrichment needed, radioactive waste short lived. Thorium reactors were abandoned early on by the nuclear industry during the Cold War because they could not be used for making nuclear weapons (which need enriched U-235 and plutonium)
the containment problem, illustrated horrifically by the Fukushima reactors, can be solved by building all future reactors deep underground. Each reactor should have a large water store above it for passive emergency cooling, employing gravity and not pumps (which failed at Fukushima). The undergound installation, at the end of its design life, can be decommissioned by sealing it complete with its complement of spent thorium fuel whose radioactivity declines in tens of years rather than thousands.

We all need energy, and much of what we use is electricity. Small but populous nations like Japan and the northern European countries cannot afford to take the risk, no matter how small, of future Fukushimas or Chernobyls. Adopting the two proposals may be more expensive but consider the enormous cost Japan will have to bear to clean up the mess and build replacement energy-generating capacity. And then there are decommissioning costs...

Suddenly, thorium-fuelled reactors underground look like a technology which, unlike fusion power, is ready and waiting in the wings. Its time has come. How can we make it happen?

................................................................................................

For more on thorium reactors, see Greener Than A Thousand Suns and Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors.

Copenhagen: a brief requiem

2009-12-21T17:43:00.001Z

Copenhagen...
Hopenhagen?
Nopenhagen!
Nohope-enhagen :-(

Business as usual.

(But it's still the planet, stupid).

To cheer yourself up, listen to The Now Show's interpretation of what went wrong. Happy Solstice!

Planning for the future

2009-10-20T19:01:00.006+01:00

Question: which one of the above machines needs planning permission before you can buy and use it?
The answer, of course, is the wind turbine. This particular turbine should generate enough electricity in an a year to save more than 7 tonnes of CO2.

The SUV doesn't need planning permission to buy; just a lot of money. Much more than the turbine. It will generate more CO2 each year than the turbine will save. It will also cost much more to buy and to run.

Revised question: which of the above machines should have planning permission before you can buy and use it?
It's a no-brainer and a good example of the cockeyed system we have to change in order to tackle the planet's climate woes and overconsumption. As you might guess, I am in the throes of trying to get planning permission for installing a 6kW turbine on my farm.

The science of climate change

2009-09-01T12:30:00.001+01:00

A four-minute guide for doubters

'Climate is an angry beast...' Quote by climate scientist Wallace Broecker
Image by Lisa Brewster

Everyone’s heard that the planet’s climate is changing but is it true that the planet is warming? What’s the evidence? If there’s an unusually cold winter, isn’t that evidence of global cooling? Many people are sceptical and a little confused. Is global warming just another scare story put about by green eco-nutters? It’s more comforting to believe that everything’s fine and we can carry on as usual. But an unpalatable truth is that the global economic system depends almost totally on cheap fossil fuels – coal, oil, natural gas – to power industry, transport, modern consumerist lifestyles and provide employment. Taking action to reduce the greenhouse gases (GHGs) - which science says cause climate change - will mean drastically cutting back on using these fuels. There’s trouble ahead. So it is reasonable to question how we know climate change really is happening. Mitigation and adaptation will dramatically change our lifestyles, though not necessarily for the worse. So what really is the evidence for climate change? This 4-minute guide summarises it.

Climate and the weather: There is now a mass of evidence that climate is changing fast. Confusion arises because most people don’t appreciate the difference between weather and climate. A cold winter in north Europe doesn’t mean that the climate is cooling: there’s a lot of natural variation year by year and always has been. Climate is about averaging the weather’s variations around the planet over a number of years and looking for a global trend. And there is a trend: temperatures are increasing. The planet is getting hotter and the rate looks set to accelerate.

The evidence comes from careful observations by scientists from many different disciplines over many years. Many lines of evidence can actually be seen happening:

Ice sheets and glaciers are melting everywhere and there are many dramatic before and after photos which illustrate this
The area covered by floating sea ice in the Arctic is reducing rapidly
Permafrost in the Arctic is melting, releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas (an example of a dangerous ‘positive’ feedback)
The lower atmosphere (troposphere) is becoming warmer
Sea levels and ocean temperatures are rising (see below)
Species of animals and plants are ‘migrating’ to higher latitudes because their home ranges are becoming too warm for them. Diseases are also expanding their range and affecting crops and trees as well as people
Coral reefs are being killed by the hotter waters. Corals are not only beautiful to look at, they are nursery grounds to myriads of marine species (and sometimes called ‘the rainforests of the sea’.) The planet needs its corals because they sequester carbon from carbon dioxide (CO2) to build their skeletons out of a hard, white mineral called calcium carbonate so, like trees, they are ‘carbon sinks’
The oceans are absorbing much of the CO2 but as they do so, they are becoming more acidic. This is affecting all kinds of marine life which build their shells out of calcium carbonate. The mineral dissolves in weak acid so acidification means that corals and shells won’t be able to grow, triggering all kinds of knock-on effects in the marine food chain.

Predicting the future: Global Climate Models Climate scientists have developed computer models to predict future climate. They know these are generally accurate because they can successfully be used to predict known past climate by checking their predictions against actual observations (see below). The models allow scientists to predict how the climate will change over the next few decades and are a cornerstone of periodic updates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on global climate change.

How can scientists investigate past climates accurately? One way is to examine drill cores taken from ice sheets like those covering Antarctica and Greenland. Past climates can be reconstructed effectively using the records of former atmosphere composition and precipitation preserved in the ice. What’s more, they can be cross-checked using actual historical records and other ‘proxy’ observations such as tree-rings, isotope analysis and radiometric dating. Importantly, the ice cores contain a record of CO2 levels which are higher now than at any time in the last 700,000 years. One well-known result of using all these different methods to assess past climates is the hockey stick graph in which numerous different lines of evidence broadly agree that temperatures have over recent decades started on a steep upward trend. It is not a uniform upward movement because of complex atmosphere-ocean oscillations, the best-known of which is El Niño.

One prediction made by the computer models is that the Arctic and Antarctic will warm faster than the rest of the world. Evidence is coming in that not only is this happening but, alarmingly, it’s happening even faster than predicted because of positive feedbacks. Other predictions show droughts and desert areas increasing (particularly in Australia) and more violent weather patterns with poor countries particularly vulnerable (especially much of Africa). Tropical forests - normally massive carbon 'sinks' (the trees absorb CO2 from the air and transform it into wood, so locking up the carbon) – are today being logged and burned to make way for farming and biofuel plantations, releasing vast quantities of CO2 into the air. As if that wasn’t enough, the models predict drying and major die-off of the Amazon rainforests and increase in wildfires in these former sanctuaries of biodiversity.

The main concern is that rising global temperatures will trigger ‘tipping points’ where GHG inputs reach a critical level, causing a major climate ‘flip’ which could be extremely hostile to much of life – including humans. We know from the distant past that major climate change events can and do occur. One of these, almost certainly caused by GHGs from stupendous volcanic eruptions, wiped out 90 per cent of life on the planet. This mass extinction event occurred around 250 million years ago and was probably worsened by ‘tipping points’ such as major methane releases from methane clathrates. (Today’s oceans host vast deposits of clathrates.) We know of 5 mass extinctions from the geological record and we are now causing the sixth.

How warming happens: the greenhouse effect If you enter a greenhouse on a sunny day, it’s hot because the sun’s heat is trapped by the glass. Carbon dioxide (and other gases like methane, nitrous oxide and ozone-killer CFCs) are called greenhouse gases because they, like the glass in a greenhouse, trap some of the sun’s heat. Without the greenhouse ‘blanket’, the planet would radiate most of this heat back into space. As more GHGs gush into the atmosphere from power station chimneys, farming and car tailpipes, it’s rather like adding double glazing to the greenhouse: more heat is trapped. Most of this heat is absorbed by the world’s oceans so they, like the air, are getting hotter.

The bathtub effect: Without the greenhouse effect, life on Earth wouldn’t exist. Some GHG are essential to keep the planet habitable, but humans are grossly overdoing it. Imagine a bath (which represents the atmosphere) with the taps full on and gushing water (representing GHGs pouring into the atmosphere). There’s no plug so water is also draining from the plughole (representing carbon ‘sinks’ like the oceans and forests which both naturally absorb CO2). In a stable system, the amount of water coming in is roughly balanced by the amount flowing out: the carbon cycle. But we’ve upset the system by pouring increasing amounts of ‘water’ into the ‘bathtub’ so the tub is filling up and will soon overflow. The ‘carbon sinks’ drain is overwhelmed so the planet heats up. This is well explained by the Bathtub simulator. Before people began to burn fossil-fuel in the 19th century, CO2 levels – even during warm periods - were below 300 parts per million (ppm). During ice ages, they fell to less than 200ppm. Since the industrial revolution, they have risen ever faster, particularly in the last decade and now stand at 387. Actual warming closely mirrors this rise.

Sea level rise: Warmer water expands so sea levels go up. But sea levels also rise because of all the melting glaciers and ice sheets around the world. In fact, the rapid melting of almost all the world’s glaciers is one of the most scary indicators that the climate is warming. Sea levels have been rising by about 2mm each year for the last century but this is predicted to greatly increase, causing large scale flooding of many low lying populated areas. The IPCC in their latest (2007) report predict about half a metre of further sea level rise though more recent research suggests double that amount.

This guide to the scientific evidence for climate change and the predictions science can make is deliberately very brief. It first appeared on OneClimate.net. Below is a list of sources of further information if you want to follow anything up.

The Royal Society has produced this overview of the current state of scientific understanding of climate change to help non-experts better understand some of the debates in this complex area of science.

New Scientist's guide to climate change, global warming and greenhouse gases with many other interesting links and news stories.

‘Understanding and Responding to Climate Change’ Downloadable PDF document from the US National Academies. Excellent guide with clear explanations and many images. A free printed version is also available.

RealClimate Climate science blog written by climate scientists with many useful short guides e.g. ‘Highlight’ (right column, scroll down)

Climate change for kids, explained by OneWorld’s Tiki the Penguin

OneWorld’s guide to climate change exposes the reality that global warming will impact poorer countries harder and sooner than the richer countries which are responsible.

Safe acceptable nuclear power? Here's a way...

2009-03-14T12:20:00.008Z

Use now; pay later ... a Faustian pact with fossil fuels: Burning fossil fuel the way we do now could almost have been designed to seriously endanger humankind and myriads of other forms of life on this planet. You want climate chaos? Okay, just burn up all that coal, oil and gas as fast as you can and you'll get a climate guaranteed to cause a mass extinction which will likely include humans. Mephistopheles, to mix metaphors, gets his pound of flesh. Suffering and mega-death are part of the fossil fuel package, clearly visible to those who can see beyond the PR smoke of the fossil fuel industry. So can we have our energy cake and eat it too? Yes, if we eschew fossil fuels and look for alternatives.

Renewable energy gap: I'm enthusiastic about renewable energy. I've built an eco-cottage (massive insulation) and a passive-solar conservatory for heating my stone-built farmhouse. I'm about to install an air-source heat pump and, in a few months, I hope to set about the installation of a grid-connected 6kW Proven wind turbine. I live a simple, low energy life. I travel very little, never fly and burn wood grown on this farm in my woodburning stove . I also plant trees. And my aim? To be carbon neutral.

Most people can't do many of these sorts of things if they live in towns or cities. They need - and expect to have - electric energy available at the flick of a switch. So do I! So... can renewables like wind and solar power deliver the energy we need? Unfortunately, the answer - for the time being - is no and all the green bluster about solar, wind and waves being able to do it is just naive. In time - by which I mean decades - renewables could and should power the planet when we have built infrastructure like supergrids, vast solar arrays in the Sahara desert and so on. But for now, renewables provide just a few percent of total electric energy used. When the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, they're useless. This winter, there have been weeks of cold grey weather without wind. The lights still work because of fossil fuel... and nuclear generation.

Choices: We all want the lights to work when we need them. Almost every modern gadget and convenience depends utterly on dependable electricity supply. So we have choices to make:

carry on burning fossil fuels like there was no tomorrow... which there won't be
eliminate fossil fuels as soon as possible whilst building up renewable supply systems
build nuclear power stations to replace coal-fired plants as quickly as possible, whilst pursuing renewable generation also as fast as possible (part of the much vaunted Green New Deal which may or may not come to pass)

Option 1 means disaster and ought to be unacceptable to anyone who cares about the future for their children and the rest of life on our despoiled planet.

Option 2 means many years of unreliable electricity supply with frequent power cuts. It would work if everyone was prepared to undergo hardship: cold houses, no lights, no TV, no computers for much of the time. But almost everyone would find this unacceptable too

So we're left with Option 3. Nuclear power stations have been working away, generating reliable baseload power for many years. There have been serious problems and even a disaster or two, but modern designs have good safety records. Unlike coal, they almost never kill people.

Protests: It goes without saying that any attempt to build new nuclear plants in countries like Britain will result in massive protests. The reasons people protest against nuclear plants are well known and often justified. At the very least, the massive reactor containment structures are eyesores and at the end of the reactor's life will have to remain there for many decades while radiation levels decay sufficiently for dismantling. Then there's proliferation and the unsolved radioactive waste problem. These are genuine causes for concern.

Protests can and do delay construction, sometimes for years. We haven't got years to cut carbon emissions. So is there a way to make nuclear power more acceptable to people who would otherwise protest? And is there a way to make it even safer than it is now? I think there is...

Out of sight, out of mind: If you visit Llanberis in North Wales, you'll probably not be aware that there's a major power station there. Where is it? You can't see all the usual structures. The reason is because it is completely underground. So why not take that notion further? Why not build nuclear power plants underground too? The size of excavation needed for a nuclear plant is comparable to the Dinorwig pumped storage power station in Llanberis, as my drawing shows.

Let's consider the advantages that underground construction would offer:

Advantages

because the containment is unbreachable (given proper choice of ground conditions, hydrogeology and rock types), reactor assemblies would be immune to military attack from the air and also from suicide bombers. Containment above ground could not withstand bunker-busting bombs or small nuclear devices, the latter possibly 'delivered' by suicide vehicle. In our dangerous world, these are possibilities
such unbreachable containment is also immune to accidents, whether external (e.g. crashing airliners) or internal such as major loss of coolant (Three Mile Island) or even Chernobyl-style meltdown disasters. Building robust containment structures above ground is hardly cheap and uses a heck of a lot of greenhouse gas-emitting (in manufacture) steel and cement!
virtually no decomissioning costs: you could more or less just walk away and slam the door. Monitoring would be needed, as for underground nuclear waste repositories, but because nothing irradiated is above ground, access would only need to be minimal. In addition, there would be no need ever to remove irradiated fuel assemblies unless the fuel is to be reprocessed. When the reactor reaches the end of its operating lifetime, the whole facility could be sealed, complete with its spent fuel.
there will be protests at each and every new surface nuclear build with endless public enquiries because of protests. Underground plants would demolish most of the objections. Public acceptance and planning consent should be straightforward since there wouldn't be much surface infrastructure to object to. Most of the usual public fears and objections would cease to be serious issues. It also means that off-the-shelf reactor designs (like the PWRs used throughout France and the most of the USA) could be built even though they might not be as potentially safe as so-called 'fourth generation' reactors, because of the additional safety conferred by underground plants. Waiting for unproven safer designs could lose us another decade.

Disadvantages

Cost: I have no idea how much underground siting would add to a budget. But if you take into account minimised decommissioning costs (not historically factored in to the cost of nuclear power as we are now finding out) and spent fuel disposal possibilities, I would guess that it would be completely viable.The economics are only artificially marginal because there's no carbon tax. Anyway, what price security and safety? And if a power utility wanted to re-use as much of the infrastructure as possible at the close of the first reactor's design life, it could just dig another chamber and build its new (improved) reactor next door. Power lines, turbines, transformers etc. all remain to be used again

So far as I know, no-one has ever tried costing it. As my drawing (above) shows, the actual reactor vessel and primary heat exchangers are really quite small structures because of the high power density which nuclear generation allows. So the chamber would be no larger than many others routinely built for different purposes. The reactor assembly could even be built in a modified abandoned mine (e.g. salt mine). Of course, any such underground site depends on there being a cooling source nearby (river, lake, sea) for condensing steam from the turbines. All the non-radioactive sections of the plant could be above ground to reduce costs.

Location: Finding suitable underground conditions, especially in flatter rainy areas with fast-moving groundwater circulation, could be a problem. A Llanberis-like site could, in theory, be ideal because the excavations could be made within the steep valley side so that any groundwater would drain out by gravity. And just outside are two deep lakes (see Cooling, below).

Cooling: Like any steam-driven turbines, cool water is needed both for raising steam and for condensing it. There's no reason for the turbines and cooling systems to be located underground since these aren't in contact with radioactive parts of the circuit. So much of the plant could, like conventional plants, be located by a river or the sea.

So... if we are to have nuclear fission generation on a larger scale to tide us over until fusion power and renewables come to our rescue, why not build all nuclear plants underground? I think this reasonable question deserves a reasonable answer.

Further reading: You may like to look at Nuclear power... safe underground and The Future of Nuclear Power, both in this blog series.

Four-minute guide to the science of climate change

2009-03-10T12:57:00.006Z

Ice sheets and glaciers are melting everywhere and there are many dramatic before and after photos which illustrate this
The area covered by floating sea ice in the Arctic is reducing rapidly
Permafrost in the Arctic is melting, releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas (an example of a dangerous ‘positive’ feedback)
The lower atmosphere (troposphere) is becoming warmer
Sea levels and ocean temperatures are rising (see below)
Species of animals and plants are ‘migrating’ to higher latitudes because their home ranges are becoming too warm for them. Diseases are also expanding their range and affecting crops and trees as well as people
Coral reefs are being killed by the hotter waters. Corals are not only beautiful to look at, they are nursery grounds to myriads of marine species (and sometimes called ‘the rainforests of the sea’.) The planet needs its corals because they sequester carbon from carbon dioxide (CO2) to build their skeletons out of a hard, white mineral called calcium carbonate so, like trees, they are ‘carbon sinks’
The oceans are absorbing much of the CO2 but as they do so, they are becoming more acidic. This is affecting all kinds of marine life which build their shells out of calcium carbonate. The mineral dissolves in weak acid so acidification means that corals and shells won’t be able to grow, triggering all kinds of knock-on effects in the marine food chain.

Predicting the future: Global Climate Models Climate scientists have developed computer models to predict future climate. They know these are generally accurate because they can successfully be used to predict known past climate by checking their predictions against actual observations (see below). The models allow scientists to predict how the climate will change over the next few decades and are a cornerstone of periodic updates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on global climate change.

How can scientists investigate past climates accurately? One way is to examine drill cores taken from ice sheets like those covering Antarctica and Greenland. Past climates can be reconstructed effectively using the records of former atmosphere composition and precipitation preserved in the ice. What’s more, they can be cross-checked using actual historical records and other ‘proxy’ observations such as tree-rings, isotope analysis and radiometric dating. Importantly, the ice cores contain a record of CO2 levels which are higher now than at any time in the last 700,000 years. One well-known result of using all these different methods to assess past climates is the hockey stick graph in which numerous different lines of evidence broadly agree that temperatures have over recent decades started on a steep upward trend. It is not a uniform upward movement because of complex atmosphere-ocean oscillations, the best-known of which is El Niño.

One prediction made by the computer models is that the Arctic and Antarctic will warm faster than the rest of the world. Evidence is coming in that not only is this happening but, alarmingly, it’s happening even faster than predicted because of positive feedbacks. Other predictions show droughts and desert areas increasing (particularly in Australia) and more violent weather patterns with poor countries particularly vulnerable (especially much of Africa). Tropical forests - normally massive carbon 'sinks' (the trees absorb CO2 from the air and transform it into wood, so locking up the carbon) – are today being logged and burned to make way for farming and biofuel plantations, releasing vast quantities of CO2 into the air. As if that wasn’t enough, the models predict drying and major die-off of the Amazon rainforests and increase in wildfires in these former sanctuaries of biodiversity.

The main concern is that rising global temperatures will trigger ‘tipping points’ where GHG inputs reach a critical level, causing a major climate ‘flip’ which could be extremely hostile to much of life – including humans. We know from the distant past that major climate change events can and do occur. One of these, almost certainly caused by GHGs from stupendous volcanic eruptions, wiped out 90 per cent of life on the planet. This mass extinction event occurred around 250 million years ago and was probably worsened by ‘tipping points’ such as major methane releases from methane clathrates. (Today’s oceans host vast deposits of clathrates.) We know of 5 mass extinctions from the geological record and we are now causing the sixth.

How warming happens: the greenhouse effect If you enter a greenhouse on a sunny day, it’s hot because the sun’s heat is trapped by the glass. Carbon dioxide (and other gases like methane, nitrous oxide and ozone-killer CFCs) are called greenhouse gases because they, like the glass in a greenhouse, trap some of the sun’s heat. Without the greenhouse ‘blanket’, the planet would radiate most of this heat back into space. As more GHGs gush into the atmosphere from power station chimneys, farming and car tailpipes, it’s rather like adding double glazing to the greenhouse: more heat is trapped. Most of this heat is absorbed by the world’s oceans so they, like the air, are getting hotter.

The bathtub effect: Without the greenhouse effect, life on Earth wouldn’t exist. Some GHGs are essential to keep the planet habitable, but humans are grossly overdoing it. Imagine a bath (which represents the atmosphere) with the taps full on and gushing water (representing GHGs pouring into the atmosphere). There’s no plug so water is also draining from the plughole (representing carbon ‘sinks’ like the oceans and forests which both naturally absorb CO2). In a stable system, the amount of water coming in is roughly balanced by the amount flowing out: the carbon cycle. But we’ve upset the system by pouring increasing amounts of ‘water’ into the ‘bathtub’ so the tub is filling up and will soon overflow. The ‘carbon sinks’ drain is overwhelmed so the planet heats up. This is well explained by the Bathtub simulator. Before people began to burn fossil-fuel in the 19th century, CO2 levels – even during warm periods - were below 300 parts per million (ppm). During ice ages, they fell to less than 200ppm. Since the industrial revolution, they have risen ever faster, particularly in the last decade and now stand at 387. Actual warming closely mirrors this rise.

Sea level rise: Warmer water expands so sea levels go up. But sea levels also rise because of all the melting glaciers and ice sheets around the world. In fact, the rapid melting of almost all the world’s glaciers is one of the most scary indicators that the climate is warming. Sea levels have been rising by about 2mm each year for the last century but this is predicted to greatly increase, causing large scale flooding of many low lying populated areas. The IPCC in their latest (2007) report predict about half a metre of further sea level rise though more recent research suggests double that amount.

This guide to the scientific evidence for climate change and the predictions science can make is deliberately very brief. Below is a list of sources of further information if you want to follow anything up.

The Royal Society has produced this overview of the current state of scientific understanding of climate change to help non-experts better understand some of the debates in this complex area of science.

New Scientist's guide to climate change, global warming and greenhouse gases with many other interesting links and news stories.

‘Understanding and Responding to Climate Change’ Downloadable PDF document from the US National Academies. Excellent guide with clear explanations and many images. A free printed version is also available.

RealClimate Climate science blog written by climate scientists with many useful short guides e.g. ‘Highlight’ (right column, scroll down)

Climate change for kids, explained by OneWorld’s Tiki the Penguin

OneWorld’s guide to climate change exposes the reality that global warming will impact poorer countries harder and sooner than the richer countries which are responsible.

Plus ça change...

2008-11-06T11:55:00.007Z

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Yes indeed. The more things change, the more they stay the same... at least so far as 'the economy' is concerned. I don't often listen to the news, preferring to read about it later. But yesterday, American election day, I listened. I listened to President-Elect Obama's speech and - first time for ages - felt there was real hope. Then today, I made the mistake of listening to the news again. It was back to the usual tedium of how to 'grow' the economy using the same old clichés. No mention of climate change, the environment, sutainability or even the Green New Deal. No, it was back to car production, getting the consumer back into the high street, interest rates and blah blah; back to trying to get back to business as usual.

Green opportunity or TNT? Dammit, when will these people ever get it? They are totally stuck in the cramped vertical thinking of what they like to call the 'real world economy'. They're not fools, they're not stupid; just stuck. They can't see any alternative to laissez faire capitalism which has spectacularly failed. Right now, we really have the chance to dump 'business as usual', aka 'Trashing the planet with No Thought of tomorrow' or TNT, an ulimately explosive notion. Yet here, now, we have a global recession and a new American president who takes climate change and renewables seriously. Here, now, we have a chance to restructure, to dump the loony concept of eternal growth and start to build a steady-state sustainable economy which accepted that people and their business depend utterly on the biosphere. It IS the planet, stupid! And the planet is very sick. It needs a big dose of Franklin D Roosevelt and John Maynard Keynes' medicine to make a change actually happen. So will people who are in a position to do something open their minds to the realities of impending biosphere collapse and the notion that there could be viable alternatives to rampant consumerist capitalism? President-Elect Barack Obama could be the catalyst but the pessimist in me says that inertia, denial, greed and fear of change will ensure the TNT approach will win out. I earnestly hope I'm wrong.

To hell with it!

2008-10-06T12:44:00.011+01:00

We're doomed! This is the half-joking message which I'm getting from friends and colleagues. The climate change scenario is so big and so scary that we might as well eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow, we die.

No future so why bother? Why bother indeed! There really is a deal of depressing news out there of indications that the climate models are - if anything - unrealistically modest. Six degrees does seem a likely figure for global temperature rises by 2100 given the increase in greenhouse gas emissions (chiefly CO2 and methane) which exceed worst-case IPCC forecasts.

So if we're all going to hell in a handcart, why bother about emissions? Cut the guilt and get flying to exotic tropical locations for cheap holidays while it's still possible. Or buy a patio heater. Or turn up the heating in winter. Let's enjoy ourselves while we still can and oxidise some more carbon.

And the answer? The answers for me are Amy, Thomas, Tom, Rosa, Alex and Isabella. Who are they? My grandchildren. They didn't ask to be launched into this troubled world. But they're here; they're alive... and I, for one, want to keep them that way. So I'm not turning up the heating, buying a patio heater or flying off for a holiday. If you're a parent or grandparent, I'm sure you'd want to do the best for your descendants. Adopting and maintaining a low-carbon lifestyle is the very best thing you or anyone can do (given current scientific assessment of the fix we're in) to at least give Amy & Co. a fighting chance of having a half-decent future. And I'd mean the '& Co.' to include not just my grandkids but yours and everyones. Oh, and the biosphere with its wonderful life-supporting ecosystems upon which we rapacious humans depend.

Out of sight but not out of mind: coal v. nuclear

2008-08-20T16:39:00.011+01:00

House on fire: If your house was alight, beginning to burn up all your treasured possessions and imperil the lives of your family inside, you wouldn't attempt to douse it in gasoline, would you? Of course not. You'd use water in an attempt to quell the flames. Yet the gasoline approach seems to be government orthodoxy at present so far as the climate is concerned.

World on fire: Imagine you were an energy minister and you had been warned repeatedly by thorough science that adding more carbon emissions to the atmosphere was like chucking fuel on the fire of global warming. You can see that authorising more emissions would be guaranteeing life-threatening problems for next generation; our children. So you wouldn't then go ahead and approve a whole new set of electricity-generating plants based on burning that most polluting of fuels, coal, would you? Well actually, yes you would. For that is what many governments are either doing or are about to do. NASA climate scientist James Hansen has done his utmost to carry his no-more-coal-plants message to many governments, only to be ignored. The climate campers in Britain have done their best to publicise the stupidity of approving new coal-fired power stations, only to be throttled by heavyweight police action clearly authorised directly by a government set on the blinkered short-term view despite all their rhetoric about the need to get out of fossil fuels. It seems to be a case of "Lord make me chaste but not yet". Depressing, isn't it?

Energy for the future - renewables: Everyone knows what these are by now and campaigning NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have rightly put a lot into getting them adopted into energy plans (whilst vehemently rejecting nuclear). The difficulty with renewables is that they are unreliable. Wind turbines notoriously generate electricity not when we need it but when the wind blows. This means that, overall, they are only generating anything like their rated output for around 25-30% of the time. What happens for the other 70-75%? The hope is that, eventually, all the different forms of renewables (wind, solar, wave, PV, tides) will be linked together via a continent-wide supergrid and employ new means of energy storage. This may work but it is still decades down the line. So we're exhorted to reduce out carbon footprints... and a few of us make valiant attempts to do this. But it's not enough; nowhere near enough. The demand for electricity is bound to increase rapidly as more people travel by the electrically-powered vehicles -trains, buses, cars - which will be replacing hydrocarbon power: petrol/gasoline, diesel and LNG.

Energy for the future - nuclear: Environmentalists Mark Lynas and George Monbiot have both crossed the rubicon and, albeit reluctantly, adopted James Lovelock's position, rejected by most Greens and set out clearly in The Revenge of Gaia: we have to embrace nuclear power if we are to survive.

"I have now reached the point at which I no longer care whether or not the answer is nuclear. Let it happen - as long as its total emissions are taken into account..." George Monbiot in The Guardian

"Increased use of nuclear (an outright competitor to coal as a deliverer of baseload power) is essential to combat climate change..." Mark Lynas in New Statesman.

Why nuclear? It's that continuity problem; baseload. All grids, to be stable, need to have a good percentage of reliable, continuous generation to which other generating capacity, like pumped storage, can be added at peak times. Coal and nuclear stations are rather well suited to long periods of steady generation, just what renewables can't deliver.

Nuclear, the lesser of two evils? I know about the dangers of nuclear power. I've had a tour around the UK's Sellafield reprocessing facilities and seen the troubled vitrification plant where the most virulent highly active radioactive waste is made into glass blocks for storage. It's not nice stuff. But it's better than coal as Lovelock has made very clear. Going nuclear, which seems to be about to happen anyway, is the lesser of the two energy-producing evils.

No time to waste but let's put safety first: Governments need to get on with nuclear build now, not in 5 or 10 years time. 'Fourth generation' inherently safe reactors are not yet beyond prototypes. Even 'off-the-shelf' nuclear plants take some years to build so to make an impact on Big Coal, they have to be built right away instead of coal plants using existing designs. But no-one wants another Chernobyl. Oddly, there is one sure way of making nuclear safe that never seems to get a mention: build the plants - or at least the reactor and primary coolant circuits - underground. The advantages of doing this are pretty obvious when you think about it:

immune to military attack from the air containment unbreachable (given proper choice of ground conditions, hydrogeology and rock types) and so immune to attack from, say, a suicide bomber. Even major accidents would be better contained than anything above ground
no need ever to remove irradiated fuel assemblies.
when the reactor reaches the end of its operating lifetime, the whole facility could be sealed, complete with its spent fuel. Monitoring would be needed but because nothing is above ground, access would only be minimal
planning consent more likely to be straightforward since there wouldn't be much surface infrastructure to object to. Most of the usual public fears and objections wouldn't be serious issues

You can judge for yourself here.

Great Expectations: Perspectives on Memories

2008-02-21T17:36:00.000Z

A Yorkshire childhood: When I was a boy of 10, I lived for a while with my granny in a house with no heating save one small intermittent coal fire and no inside toilet. Wearing the regulation school uniform shorts, I walked to school a mile or so away winter or summer. This was just 50 years ago. I survived what would now be regarded as an ordeal without any particular recollection of severe hardship. My granny would give me a porcelain hot water bottle on nights when the icy frost flowers formed inside the windows of my bedroom. I recall crunching through fresh snow in the outside back passageway en route for the toilet, known to me to this day as 'the bog'. (No prissy 'loos' in my house!) At school, it was quite normal for us boys to be out playing compulsory football or rugby, clad in thin cotton shirt and shorts, in rain, sleet and snow. Being bitterly cold was, I suppose, supposed to encourage you to run around if only to generate heat. I have an enduring hatred of organised sports to this day!

Monday's washing day: My granny had no washing machine. All washing was by hand in the kitchen sink, aided by a wooden-handled copper plunger. She then put the washing through the hand mangle which I helped crank. Then it went on the clothes line outside and she hoped it wouldn't rain. The damp laundry she would later festoon on a clothes horse around the small fire, usually lit in the late afternoon. In the evening, she and my grandfather would barricade themselves in the room, drawing draught-proof curtains across doors and windows and watch the TV. And what a TV! A massive wooden box with a tiny rounded black and white screen. There was only one channel: the BBC. And there were numerous 'technical faults', both with the transmission and on the set itelf which frequently went into uncontrollable rolling picture spins. But to me, it was luxury... until I was told to go to bed.

Life 100 years ago: But what about a century or more ago? My grandfather, who lived to be 101, as a boy travelled about in horse-drawn omnibuses and carts, on a bicycle but mostly on foot. There were, of course, no cars and the Wright brothers hadn't yet invented powered flight. Most houses had no running water or toilets. My granny's small 1930s semi-detached house, which I remember from the late 1950s, would have seemed luxurious to people at the turn of the 19th century. And their accommodation and means of transport would have seemed likewise to people living a century earlier... and so on back to the simple huts, yurts, tepees and caves of our more distant ancestors, not forgetting that there are still plenty of people around the world who still live in that simple fashion.

Jump to 2008: Oh my, how things have changed! Today, people expect to live in permanently warm houses as a sort of obvious right. And most expect a home with 2 or more toilets, shower rooms, bathrooms and constant hot water. Then there's the phone, a basic necessity now - if only for broadband access - but my granny didn't have one. Making a phone call from the phone box round the corner was a rare and expensive event. So we wrote letters then; a dead art today. Most rich world homes today have several TVs, often with giant screens and, via satellite (yes, I remember Sputnik 1, the first Earth satellite, back in 1957), hundreds of channels to choose from. Everyone now has some means of recording TV so you could spend your whole life watching something.

And my point is? This whole flimsy house of cards depends utterly on cheap fossil fuel (see my earlier post). These Great Expectations can't go on. Obviously if you're born to all this 'stuff' -- be it cars, supermarket food, warm homes, automatic washers, DVDs, iPods, Facebook and numerous etceteras -- you're not really able to appreciate the comfort and luxury all this affords because you've never known life without. Most would say these things were basic necessities; a right; essentials.

Communicating: A mobile phone is indispensible if you're a teen or young adult. I have one myself. Yet a short fifty years ago, a fixed phone in a house was a luxury and not people many had them. Life went on. Today, people are in touch with friends all the time. Step back 30 years. I was working in the high Peruvian Andes for weeks at a time. I could only send a brief telegram to my wife in Lima if I happened to pass through some small town. Most of the time, she didn't know if I was alive or dead and the odd telegram she did receive a day or so after sending was often hopelessly garbled. Now jump back to the time of World War 2. I once met a former soldier who had been unable to contact his wife for over 3 years and, I gather, that wasn't unusual. Suddenly, sending a telegram every week or so seemed like regular chat!

A scary dependency: So imagine the chaos if some of these 'essentials' that every younger person takes for granted today ceased to work or be available! There'd be riots in the streets; anarchy. Doomsayers like James Lovelock predict that civil consumerist societies will disintegrate when planetary heating really kicks in. How many people know basic skills like cooking or how to grow their own food? Is life possible without the Internet and mobile phones? Without cars and the fuel they need to move? Without holidays abroad? Without supermarkets and shopping?

Can poverty teach us something? It could in the sense that the poorest people have to learn to be survivors or they die. They have to be able to make do for food, clothing, shelter and medicine or they die. The poorest peoples have no Western-style safety net to keep them alive. But in the event of the collapse of civilisation, it will be those who know how to make do with next to nothing who will be amongst the survivors. They will have the key skills. Keyboard skills will count for nought.

What's wrong with this picture?

2008-02-20T11:53:00.004Z

Here's a clue. I took it on 11th February (last week).

Here's another clue: It's the middle of winter.

And another: This mountain - Yr Wyddfa or Snowdon - is the highest in England and Wales.

But where's its winter snow covering? Predictions made a year ago suggested no snow for Snowdon in 13 years. There has been a little snow from time to time this winter but not, as I write, for weeks. Need I say more?

If you click the picture, you get a large version.

Energising renewable energy

2008-01-09T20:00:00.000Z

Going slow: Why is renewable energy becoming energised so slowly in 'backward' countries like the Great Britain which is where I live? Why has it taken off in Germany? Both countries have similar climates: lots of grey skies and wind. In fact, Britain has more wind and a vast resource, as yet untouched, of wave and tide power which Germany with its limited coastline does not possess. And yet Germany is streets ahead on producing energy from renewables, principally photovoltaics. Renewable energy made up more than 14 percent of Germany's power consumption in 2007, up from almost 12 percent in 2006, with wind as the main contributor (source: The Guardian). Why Germany?

Becoming energised: It seems it's all down the German government's intelligent foresight. The government guarantees a market for solar power by operating a system of feed-in tariffs. There, as explained in a New Scientist article (Solar power: The future's bright, 8 December 2007), anyone who produces electricity from solar power can sell it to the national grid for between Euros 0.45 and Euros 0.57 per kilowatt-hour, which is almost three times what consumers pay for their electricity, roughly Euros 0.19 per kilowatt-hour.

And the result? Today there are over 300,000 photovoltaic (PV) systems in Germany, mostly on the rooftops of homes and small businesses, and Germany is the world's fastest-growing PV market. It has 55 per cent of the world's installed base of PV panels and can generate around 3 gigawatts of electricity from solar energy, equivalent to between three and five conventional power stations (ibid, New Scientist). All from a country which passes much of its time under grey cloud like Britain.

The windiest European country lags badly: Great Britain could have done this for wind energy -- PV too since the amounts of solar energy received by Britain and Germany are fairly similar. It could have done it for waves and tide power but instead, it relied of cheap oil and gas from the North Sea, coal and the massively-subsidised nuclear industry.

It needn't be like this: A smart British government would follow Germany's lead -- now actively being pursued by Italy and Spain for PV -- and California is, as usual, leading the way in the USA with major subsidies for new PV installations. Britain is well placed to energise its wind power generation together with developing emerging technologies for storing the energy produced by using compressed air energy storage (CAES), perhaps utilising the vast underground caverns left by salt-mining in central-west parts of England. At present, the British government offers a derisory grant and rumour has it that even this is to be axed. So there is little incentive for someone like me to invest in a wind turbine on my windy north-west Wales farm.

NIMBY and turbulence: Quite apart from the requirement for planning consent for stand-alone turbines, there is the problem of those people who object to 'spoilt views' (it seems the numerous power pylons are okay bringing energy from a far-off polluting coal power station which is not, of course, in their back yard!) and who complain of 'possible noise' (aircraft? helicopter? cars? lorries? All okay, it seems). That is quite sufficient for a local council to reject an application for a turbine.

Turbulence is another issue and can be a serious problem around buildings and in urban areas -- which makes the new 'bolt on your wall'-type turbines a bad buy. But what about farms? Fields are open; turbines are free-standing: it's not difficult to find space on any farm of my size (5 hectares) or bigger. Farms are already host to eyesores like huge barns, stacks of silage, slurry tanks and grain silos, all acceptable to the planners. The view is already compromised.

Decentralised power stations: So imagine if every farm had a turbine or two? There are several first class turbines (like the range offered by Proven, as featured in my picture) which are tailor-made for farm use. In fact, Proven are attempting to start a new way of producing wind energy called wind crofting. There are tens of thousands of farms in windy Britain. Every farm, linked into the grid, could be electric energy-independent as well as feeding surplus power into the national grid. The wind is almost always blowing somewhere. (As I write, it's blowing a severe gale here!)

Could be? Should be and would be if there was a scheme for feed-in tariffs like Germany's. I'd be one of the first to join! Come on, British government: get your act together and stop approving coal-fired power stations on the flimsiest of pretexts (Carbon Capture and Storage -- CCS -- might perhaps someday become a reality) and tap into this massive resource of power available now, pollution-free with no decommissioning costs...

If the practical side of renewable energy interests you, keep an (RSS feed) eye on my Mur Crusto eco-farm blog because my wife and I are agreed that, notwithstanding all the difficulties and lack of assistance available, we shall try and install a 6kW Proven turbine this year. As the project proceeds, I'll be posting...

Double good: building without cement

2007-10-27T17:44:00.000+01:00

Cement is a problem
Did you know that cement manufacture creates 5% of all industrial carbon dioxide emissions? That matches the pollution output of the world's aviation industry. What's more, both are set to increase, particularly in China. Construction inevitably means cement for mortar and concrete -- or does it? Certainly for the likes of high-rise city blocks, nuclear power stations and large dams, there's no alternative. But what about ordinary housing? How much concrete needs to be used in that?

Wood: a partial solution with a big bonus

Building houses out of wood is nothing new in timber-rich regions like Scandinavia and North America. Wood has many advantages over bricks, mortar, steel and concrete. For one thing, it's very easy to use so buildings can be completed in just weeks rather than months. When I 'built' my first house in western Canada back in 1971, it took 3 weeks to get the entire structure completed and watertight, ready for services to be installed. When I built my house in Spain in 1989, it took more like 6 months. Why? Because there was no wood used in my Spanish house at all, that being the local style of building. Prestressed concrete beams, which are used in large numbers, are incredibly heavy to manhandle into position or cast. So are blocks, bags of cement and making and carrying endless buckets of mortar. I worked on this house throughout the construction, so I know!

The hidden bonus of wood is that it is almost pure carbon. The growing tree grabs CO2 out of the air and converts it into sugars and, ultimately, to cellulose and lignin which is what we call wood. Everyone knows that trees sequester carbon and that they are one of several natural ecosystem services -- in this case, carbon sinks -- which counter climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels. This is the rationale behing the burgeoning offsetting business. Plant a few trees and you can pollute as much as you want. That's what people seem to assume when guilt over squandering energy overcomes them a little.

The big issue: seeing the wood for the trees
Even if it were true that you can assuage your travel/consumer/heating/airconditioning energy use by offsets, there is one problem which seems not to enter general thinking. Natural forests are carbon neutral. As fast as young growing trees grab carbon, dead and decaying trees (and forest fires) release it again: the carbon cycle. To make sequestering carbon in trees really work to reduce atmospheric CO2, the mature trees need to be harvested and stored in such a way that they don't decompose and release all their carbon again. Carbon storage is what happened on a massive scale over hundreds of millions of years, as coal formed from dead but not decayed trees. The carbon has become safely locked away from oxidation into the atmosphere... until humans came along (and you know the rest). Yet when you think about it, we are storing carbon all the time -- in the form of timber-framed housing construction and, to a lesser extent, as books in the world's libraries.

So that's my point: countries which traditionally use cement in the form of concrete and mortar to build houses should change their construction practice and build from timber instead. This change of direction has several advantages:

timber construction locks away carbon
it's quicker and easier
self-build is much easier and in some countries, you can buy housing kits to do this
it is essentially non-polluting unlike cement-based constructions which cause massive CO2 releases into the air, principally from cement quarrying and manufacture
if real environmental costs are taken into account, wood is far cheaper
greater demand for timber would stimulate more forestry development with yet more sequestration of carbon as a bonus. At the same time, cement manufacture would decline as demand slackened off, so reducing carbon pollution
timber can be re-used
timber-framed buildings are intrinsically warmer than stone, brick, block and concrete. In addition, it is simple to incorporate insulation in the timber frame
wood is a pleasant material to work with and beautiful to look at. Concrete is messy and heavy to move around

Yes I know concrete is essential for many purposes, including the foundations (footings) of timber-framed housing. My point is simply that we could use a lot less of it -- a lot less -- if we wanted to.

The Future of Nuclear Power

2007-10-09T15:22:00.000+01:00

Today is the final day for anyone to make their views known about future nuclear power in the UK. I've done this on the British Government's Future of Nuclear Power website. Just to put you in the picture, I have argued for some time that, if we are to have new nuclear power stations, they should be built underground.

Here are my responses to the Government's consultation questions:

1. Safety and security of nuclear power

Siting all future nuclear plants underground is something that should be taken very seriously. This does not even seem to have been considered. Yet it has three major advantages:

immune to military attack from the air

containment unbreachable (given proper choice of ground conditions, hydrogeology and rock types) and so immune to attack from, say, a suicide bomber. Even major LOCAs would be better contained than anything above ground

no need ever to remove irradiated fuel assemblies. When the reactor reaches the end of its operating lifetime, the whole facility could be sealed, complete with its spent fuel. Monitoring would be needed but because nothing is above ground, access would only be minimal. Decommissioning surface plants is turning out to be formidably expensive and all radioactive materials end up having to be sealed underground anyway in all viable scenarios

2. Transport of nuclear materials: No reprocessing is the right route, but by siting each nuclear plant underground, there would be no need for the spent fuel ever to leave the facility. It would be stored there in a facility built at the same time as the reactor containment cavern. When the reactor's life is over, both it and the spent fuel stored close by would be made safe, sealed and remotely monitored. No radioactive materials, highly active or otherwise, need ever be transported on the surface.

3. Waste and decommissioning: Locating new reactors underground would avoid many of the serious problems of waste and dceommissioning. At the end of the reactor's life, all its fuel remains in the store which would have been constructed during the initial cavern excavations and the whole underground site becomes a remotely-monitored facility with little further need for maintenance. Such an arrangement is inherently safer than a surface reactor which will need to be guarded and monitored through at least three human generations before it can be finally removed: not a good legacy for future generations.

4. Environmental impacts of nuclear power: If the nuclear facility was largely located underground, the surface footprint of a site would be markedly less than at present, quite apart from the safety aspect which I've already dealt with. There would be no need for a secondary containment structure since this would be provided by suitably geo-engineered natural rock in the excavated cavern. Surface buildings could all be part of the non-radioactive secondary circuits. So the heat exchangers containing the pipework for the primary circulating coolant would be underground but the high pressure steam circuit for the turbo-generators could be ducted to the surface which is where generators, transformers, cooling and other facilities would be located.

Regarding the space occupied by a nuclear facility versus that occupied by a windfarm, I have two comments:

most future windfarms should anyway be located offshore, so space and NIMBYism is largely irrelevant

any space occupied by a windfarm remains relatively pristine. If needed, turbines and supports can be completely removed within months, leaving the site uncontaminated and as it was before. The same cannot be said of surface nuclear build because of the massive largely concrete bioshielding infrastructure required and the problem of the 'hot' reactor core which cannot be removed for over 100 years, or requires prohibitively expensive and hazardous remote-controlled decommissioning and transport of large quantities of medium level radioactive waste to a repository as yet not in existence. These 'inconvenient truths' are a prime reason why nuclear build should in future be underground.

5. Reprocessing of spent fuel: I agree that reprocessing should not be carried out. Storage for spent fuel assemblies should be 'built in' in the underground location scenario I envisage. This eliminates the need for surface transport of highly active fuel rods.

Obviously these remarks apply to any new nuclear build anywhere on the planet, not just the UK! At the very least, I think the onus should be on governments and the energy industry to explain why siting nuclear plants underground is NOT a good idea (if it isn't!). But I expect it will be ignored... ho hum!

The Way the Wind Blows

2007-10-07T13:08:00.000+01:00

How could we store surplus wind power? There is a solution right under our feet.

No wind: As I was travelling on the train along the North Wales coast last Friday, I had a fine view out to the North Hoyle Offshore Wind Farm. It's a great sight all these turbines, each rated at 2 megawatts, like rows of white statues far out in Liverpool Bay. But there was a problem: it was a fine sunny day and no wind at all. The sea was like a millpond and the turbines were indeed like statues for they were motionless. Electrical output zero.

Achilles Heel: And that is wind power's big problem. It only works when the wind blows so if we relied upon wind power, on fine calm days, there'd be no power at all. This is unacceptable, of course, in our modern, energy-hungry world. But now, there's a solution and its name is CAES: compressed air energy storage. Put simply, when the wind blows during the night, wind turbines generate power which is not needed since most people are asleep. If you use that power to pump air at high pressure deep into the ground, that high pressure air can be stored and later released when power is needed, driving modified gas turbines and generators.

It works too! If you think this is unlikely to work, it already does, and much more is underway. The first CAES plant came on stream in 1978 in Huntorf, Germany and a second much larger one was commissioned in 1991 in Alabama, USA. It stores its compressed air in a mined-out salt dome 80 metres across and 300 metres tall, lying 450 metres below ground, and can use the air to supply a turbine generating 110 megawatts of electrical power continuously for some 26 hours.

Giant battery: So just like hydroelectric pumped storage, wind powered compressed air storage could act like a giant battery, evening out fluctuations in demand by topping up the grid when needed. There are plenty of geologically-suitable locations all over the world so maybe we should push politicians and utilities to get moving on CAES. To find out more, read this New Scientist article and this Treehugger piece.

The problem with infrastructure

2007-09-22T10:42:00.000+01:00

Okay, you've decided that your SUV is a bad thing. You want to reduce your carbon footprint and buy a small car instead. Great... or is it?

Problem is, what do you do with the unwanted SUV? You sell it, of course, and thereby in some cases (like buying a new car to replace it) actually make matters worse. Now there are two cars being used instead of one. The SUV that you used to own is now owned by someone else. It's just as climate-unfriendly as it was when you owned it and it will continue to pump out pollution for years to come. See what I mean?

Solutions? The ideal would be for you to forego the money from the SUV's sale and have it broken up with all its component parts recycled into something more useful. Get real, you might say, that's never going to happen. But it could happen if some special fund were to exist whereby you could get back the full second-hand value whilst the vehicle was permanently taken off-road (!) and recycled. This, done properly, could yield quite a deal of valuable materials as well.

Who would provide this fund and new infrastructure? Any ideas? I suppose some sort of consortium between governments and industry backed up by smart tax structures would do the job. And the principle could extend to other carbon-hungry infrastructure: giant motorhomes, Hummers, aircraft... anything that could be sold on and otherwise continue to pollute for years to come. How can we make it (or something like it) happen?

Future foods

2007-08-14T15:05:00.000+01:00

It's been a difficult year for food growers throughout Europe. You've probably seen some of the headlines about grape harvest failures, potato blight and veg rotting in the fields. Food prices will almost certainly be going up. Parts of the UK have also been seriously flooded though this pales into insignificance when compared to the weather horrors suffered by tens of millions of Indians, Bangladeshis and Chinese in recent weeks. So what does the planet have in store for us? What can we do about it?

Worst summer in years: This year has been the worst since we started growing vegetables 6 years ago for our Llangybi Organics co-op. The summer has been lousy for most of the growing period up to today (with gale and heavy rain warnings yet again from the Met Office). We have lost whole crops due to wind and rain. Potato blight (to name but one issue) struck early and quickly destroyed even the blight resistant varieties we grow. The result? We've had to work doubly hard to save enough veg for our customers by preventing slugs eating the lot, combatting moles and voles, nursing surviving veg to prevent pests and disease outbreaks (much more difficult if you're organic as we are) and re-sowing some veg while there's still time. Oh, and then there were the weeds, the worst weeds ever meaning long days of hoeing and mostly handweeding.

And the future? Summers like this are in line with climate model predictions. For us in northern Europe (and, particularly, north and west Britain and Ireland), we can expect more of this sort of thing. More rain and more wind as global temperatures climb for the simple reason that warmer air holds more water vapour. So we're going to have to get used to it. The Mediterranean may roast and shrivel but we'll be cool, wet and windy.

Food shortages: Britain is a rich country and the solution to food shortages would normally be to import more of it from somewhere else. But with a world population approaching 7 billion, there's going to be demand from everywhere which has been affected by floods, storms and droughts. Rich countries can, for a time, import what they need because they can afford to pay over the odds. Then what? The poor, as ever, will suffer and die... and we in the rich North might have to pay more for our food and have much less choice than before. Supermarkets won't be so super.

Local food; secure food: Maybe with increasing prices and more shortages, people used to loading their trolleys each week at Tesco will begin to wonder if maybe buying local isn't so bad an idea after all. As well as fresh food you get security: food security. We at Llangybi Organics don't propose to give up in the face of climatic adversity. We feel we, like many others, are setting an example which will be needed more and more everywhere as shortages begin to bite. We can't compete with supermarkets whose cheap food is based, ulitmately, on exploitation, but we can offer our customers staple vegetables and more, especially if they come and help us out by volunteering. We do, by the way, already have a couple of volunteers whose help is invaluable and who help us to feel part of a rather special community. It's a good feeling.

Thinking the unthinkable: Suppose international crises became so severe that major food importing ceased to be an option? It could be small local growers who should be there to fill the gaps. Sadly, most small growers and family farms have been destroyed by the supermarket system of grabbing the cheapest food from anywhere in the world without paying the true price (in labour costs and especially in transport 'costs' in which pollution doesn't register). But a hungry population without cheap supermarkets and cheap transport is going to need small growers again. We would be very unwise not to think in these terms so that if the going gets rough, there are still options open.

Climate changes, Digging for Victory and small farms:
Our aim on our small farm was to provide quality veg and fruit for people within walking or cycling distance. It hasn't worked out like that as most people in the village prefer 'choice' offered by supermarkets and they have cars to fulfill their requirements. In the future, it may not be like that. People may suddenly begin to appreciate their local veg farm. Will we be around for long enough for that to happen? The speed at which the world's climate seems to be changing may mean that we could be.

City folk and their food: But what of the people in the cities? How will they get their food? Will they be able or willing to repeat the wartime 'Dig For Victory' experience when everyone grew as much food as they could in their gardens or on their allotments? Most people these days are so disconnected from food producing that they wouldn't know where to begin. The expertise is still around in the few remaining small farms, horticultural businesses and that dedicated body of allotment-holders. That could help.

Dig! Dig! Dig! And your muscles will grow big
Keep on pushing the spade
Don’t mind the worms
Just ignore their squirms
And when your back aches laugh with glee
And keep on diggin’
Till we give our foes a Wiggin’
Dig! Dig! Dig! to Victory
from HomeSweetHomeFront

Disclaimer and final cliche: This post is not some long-winded way of promoting ourselves and advertising for customers. We have as many customers as we can manage. The only way to increase production, if we wanted to, would be to dig up some more of our land. Out of the question for a couple whose combined ages amount to 119 years. Even so, the potential to provide food for many more people is there on our farm and others around us if only vegetables were valued as central to our health. Instead, local farmers find it simpler to grow cattle and sheep. They're right: it is simpler. But the same land could grow veg for ten times the number of people than the animals will feed if needed. Now that's food for thought.

Making climate cool

2007-08-06T11:35:00.000+01:00

You're on a trip away. Would you re-use your hotel-provided towels if you were asked to do so for environmental reasons (less use of resources and subsequent pollution)? Or would you re-use them because you knew most of the other hotel guests did so?

All we like sheep... That's a no-brainer, you'd think. The answer would be the former, wouldn't it? Well actually no, it isn't. A recent survey in the US showed that people were strongly influenced by what they thought other people were doing. This sheep-like desire to follow the crowd overrode any other concerns. Stupid people, you might think, but we all do it, usually unconsciously. That's the whole basis of the giant fashion industry and advertising. We follow the fashions in clothes, hairstyles, cars, holidays or whatever it may be largely because others do too. You remember the old song? ...

Ev'rybody's doin' it
Doin' it, doin' it
Ev'rybody's doin' it
Doin' it, doin' it

Is there a useful lesson to be learned? I think so. We have to somehow make caring about the planet cool. That was the ultimate purpose of Live Earth on 7/7/07 and the reason the celebrities were engaged to perform. Celebs are seen by many to be the ultimate cool; the ultimate trend-setters. So Al Gore's laudable attempt to get them onto a new climate care bandwagon made perfect sense. We need these perceived trendsetters to make climate care cool and to do that, the celebs need to set good examples, something many of them conspicuously don't do. So, celebrities and everyone else, let's do it. Let's make climate cooooool!

Holidays and gas-guzzlers

2007-07-01T18:52:00.000+01:00

Camping and motorhomes: Whilst on a car plus small tent camping holiday in the Western Isles of Scotland in June, I was struck by the sheer numbers of SUVs and luxury motor homes on the narrow roads. I know that SUV fuel economy is poor but I wondered about the massive bus-sized motorhomes. It's difficult to find information about fuel consumption of these energy-guzzling behemoths. Presumably fuel economy is not one of the considerations people who buy or rent them take into account. I did discover that smaller models appear to manage around 20mpg (similar to SUVs) whilst the larger monsters seem in some cases to clock up an abysmal 10mpg or even less. For comparison, my car achieves an average fuel consumption of 63 mpg or 4.4 l/100km. If that sounds a little 'holier than thou', it's not meant to be. I'm still using fossil fuel for my holiday and, as in the words of the Frank Sinatra song, you can't have one without the other.

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you brother
You can't have one without the other

Or can you? Maybe the 'horse and carriage' bit hints at an alternative way to have a NoFF holiday!? There are certainly a few brave cyclists who carry all their kit in paniers and manage to survive their holidays. I'm full of admiration for them.

The 'real' world: Back to the 'real' world of motorhome holidays. I have in recent years noted a new trend. Apart from all the 'necessities' like satellite TV and central heating, some motorhomes have a small car attached to the back end, either towed directly or on a trailer (as in the above photo). That can't do anything good for fuel economy either.

Rough wild camping: Words fail me. I feel guilty car camping at all but now that I've reached the age of 60, I find backpacking in places that are generally wet and windy less than pleasurable. But I still do it: I had a week in May in the Scottish Highlands (what I have styled a NoFF week in an earlier post) which was hard work, given rather rough weather and mostly no tracks in my chosen wilderness (west of Bridge of Orchy which offers several high mountains like Stob Gabhar and Stob Coir'an Albannaich, not to mention the cloudmaker, Ben Starav). And yes, I got there by bus and train. I find a week of really 'roughing it' does wonders for making me appreciate all the relative comfort and luxury I have on my small farm in Wales. A hot shower seems like heaven after a week of washing in a billy-full of cold water between rain or sleet squalls. (Yes, it really was like that some days.)

More, more! More comfort and more "boys' toys" playthings (like jet skis) are the trend, it seems, even as the looming tragedy of climate change begins to engulf us: we still deny it's happening and seem to be increasing our energy consumption rather than reducing it. I don't blame anyone for this. Who doesn't like to be warm and comfortable and having fun? But I despair of anyone changing their ways until unpleasant circumstances force a change. We do seem to be trapped. What we enviro people hope for is a voluntary change in attitudes. Meanwhile, the climate-change-is-natural 'deniers' have a lot to answer for in the battle for hearts and minds.

"It's a long way to Tipperary" (in the words of the cheery First World War song) and we really do have "a long way to go".

Condoms combat climate change

2007-05-07T12:45:00.000+01:00

I make no apology for copying this important news release from the Optimum Population Trust in its entirety. It says - crisply and concisely - that population growth is the chief cause of climate change, more or less exactly what I had said in my Taboo topic: the population time bomb piece in March. Although the figures quoted refer to the UK, the principle is universal.

COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE WITH FEWER BABIES – OPT REPORT

A radical form of “offsetting” carbon dioxide emissions to prevent climate change is proposed today – having fewer children.

Each new UK citizen less means a lifetime carbon dioxide saving of nearly 750 tonnes, a climate impact equivalent to 620 return flights between London and New York*, the Optimum Population Trust says in a new report.

Based on a “social cost” of carbon dioxide of $85 a tonne**, the report estimates the climate cost of each new Briton over their lifetime at roughly £30,000. The lifetime emission costs of the extra 10 million people projected for the UK by 2074 would therefore be over £300 billion. ***
A 35-pence condom, which could avert that £30,000 cost from a single use, thus represents a “spectacular” potential return on investment – around nine million per cent.

The report adds: “The most effective personal climate change strategy is limiting the number of children one has. The most effective national and global climate change strategy is limiting the size of the population.

“Population limitation should therefore be seen as the most cost-effective carbon offsetting strategy available to individuals and nations – a strategy that applies with even more force to developed nations such as the UK because of their higher consumption levels.”

A Population-Based Climate Strategy, the OPT’s latest research briefing, is published today (Monday, May 7 2007). It says human population growth is widely acknowledged as one of the main causes of climate change yet politicians and environmentalists rarely discuss it for fear of causing offence. The result is that a “de facto taboo” exists, throughout civil society and government.

One consequence is that “couples making decisions about family size do so in the belief that it is a matter for them and their personal preferences alone: the public debate and awareness that might have encouraged them to think about the implications of their choices for their fellow citizens, the climate and the wider environment have been missing.”

Other points in the briefing include:

Providing low-carbon electricity for the 11 million extra UK households forecast for 2050 would mean building seven more Sizewell B nuclear power stations or 10-11,000 wind turbines.
Global population growth between now and 2050 is equivalent in carbon dioxide emissions terms to the arrival on the planet of nearly two more United States, over two Chinas, 10 Indias or 20 UKs.
Even if by 2050 the world had managed to achieve a 60 per cent cut in its 1990 emission levels, in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recommendations and the UK Government’s target, almost all of it would be cancelled out by population growth.

It concludes: “A population-based [climate] strategy…involves fewer of the taxes, regulations and other limits on personal freedom and mobility now being canvassed in response to climate change…To sum up, it would be easier, quicker, cheaper, freer and greener.”

Valerie Stevens, co-chair of the OPT, said: “We appreciate that asking people to have fewer children is not going to make us popular in some quarters. Equally, expressing concern about the environmental impacts of mass migration, which currently accounts for the bulk of population growth in the UK and will have a major effect on Britain’s carbon emissions, is a quick route to being labelled racist. But these are hugely important issues and the unfortunate fact is that both politicians and the environmental movement are in denial about them. It’s high time we started discussing them like adults and confronting the real challenges of climate change.”
She added: “Government fiscal measures that support child-bearing however many children a couple has, send a signal that increasing numbers are good for the welfare of everyone. In a world needing to diminish its consumption of key resources, especially energy, this is sadly no longer true.”

NOTES
*Based on 1.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per return flight (Department for Transport).
**Stern Review, October 2006.
***Fertility levels in the UK have been below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) for around 30 years. Inward migration is currently the main driver of UK population growth, accounting for over 80 per cent of projected increase to 2074. However, even without the effects of immigration, demographic momentum – the result of the large numbers of children produced in earlier age bands reaching child-bearing age – would have prevented any population decline up to the present. The total fertility rate (TFR) peaked in 1964 at 2.95 children per woman, but this was followed by a rapid fall in the number of births per woman in the 1970s. In 2005 the TFR in the UK was 1.78 children; it is expected to level off at 1.74 (Office of National Statistics).
The full briefing is available on the OPT’s Briefings and Submissions page.

Nuclear power: build plants underground

2007-04-22T12:45:00.001+01:00

More nuclear power, like it or not: It seems likely that many of the world's states will soon begin to build many nuclear power stations; some for the first time and others - like the US - after ending a long-frozen programme. The reasons cited centre on climate change as it is true that, once operational, nuclear reactors are largely carbon-neutral. Furthermore, they have high energy density (very high power output from a very small space) and operate continuously over lengthy periods. All they do is provide a framework in which a controlled fission reaction within its uranium fuel heats up a primary coolant (circulating water or inert gas, contained under pressure). The super-hot coolant then heats water via a heat exchanger to raise steam to drive turbines to generate electric power. Renewables have low energy densities and operate intermittently regardless of the source of energy. At present, there is no viable way to store energy produced on a large enough scale to keep power available at all times; something we have come to expect. These factors, among others, make it inevitable that many new reactors will be built.

Damage limitation: It is not my purpose here to argue for or against nuclear power or discuss other issues like uranium mining and reserves. It's more of a damage-limitation exercise. Given that reactors will be built whether we like it or not, how can we ensure that they are as safe as possible? Mention the word 'nuclear' to most people, and words like Chernobyl, Hiroshima, missiles, nuclear waste, Windscale and Three Mile Island trip into the mind. Nuclear power has not, over the years, had a good press. And with good reason given its sinister association with bomb-making and several serious accidents. Yet it could easily be made much safer.

Nuclear power hazards: These are well known so I'll just briefly review them. The hazards all stem from the radiation produced by the primary heat-generating fission reaction, spent fuel rods, irradiated reactor assemblies, reprocessing (if any) and the resulting radionuclides which are created in the fissioning of uranium-235 atoms. The reactor is typically sealed in a primary containment vessel with radiation shielding surrounding it. These assemblies, in turn, are usually contained in a secondary reinforced concrete building which is designed to contain radiation products in the event of an accident in which the primary containment breaks down. [There was no secondary containment at Chernobyl and the results of the partial meltdown that followed the doomed 'experiment' are now grim history.]

Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) in which the fuel rods, normally cooled by water or carbon dioxide gas, become so hot that they melt down (as at Chernobyl)
Containment damage or breach due to warfare (bombing, missile, suicide using hijacked civil aircraft and so on), accident (aircraft crash), earthquake or climate change events (sea level rise, for example, since many existing plants are located by the sea which is used as a coolant in the secondary circuits)
Hazards associated with transport of fuel assemblies to and from reactors (attacks, hijacking, accidents)
Storage of irradiated fuel (attacks, leaks, accidents) in cooling ponds or air-cooled stores
Reprocessing - the fuel route chosen by the UK and France in particular - which yields highly radioactive acid liquid wastes with potential for explosion in poorly-maintained facilities. Reprocessing notoriously is intended to yield other fissionable products such as plutonium metal, the source for atomic bomb-making and trigger for fusion (hydrogen) bombs. Plutonium, along with enriched uranium (also used for atomic bomb-making), has been repeatedly stolen from former USSR facilities and most of it not tracked down
Decommissioning costs high and defunct installations will require monitoring and access protection for a century or more

What happens to the long-lived radioactive wastes? The best option at present - far from perfect - is monitored deep burial as vitrified blocks which must be protected from corrosive circulating groundwaters. Unprocessed irradiated fuel rods will likewise need to be stored deep underground (e.g. Yucca Mountain). Radioactive elements such as plutonium-239 in spent fuel will remain hazardous to living things for hundreds of thousands of years.

Scary list, isn't it?

And now, the answer? Almost all of these nuclear hazards become significantly reduced when you factor in a new possibility to the construction equation. If they must be built, why not build these facilities underground? To give you some idea of the relative sizes of the excavations needed, take a look at this drawing I made many years ago for UK examples.

On the left, in my drawing, is a vertical section of the Sizewell B reactor and containment building (click for full size image). On the lower right is an equivalent section through the Dinorwig pumped storage hydropower station, located deep inside a mountain in Snowdonia, beneath defunct slate quarries. For good measure, I added (top right) an as-yet-unbuilt example of another reactor design, a high temperature gas reactor. The point of all is that these engineered structures are all at the same scale: see scale bar.

What's even more important is the size of the Sizewell reactor vessel in relation to everything else. It's small without its containment building. And it wouldn't need such a building underground because being located underground is far better containment than anything that could be built on the surface.

Safety underground: the advantages

immune to military attack from the air
containment unbreachable (given proper choice of ground conditions, hydrogeology and rock types) and so immune to attack from, say, a suicide bomber. Even major LOCAs would be better contained than anything above ground
no need ever to remove irradiated fuel assemblies. When the reactor reaches the end of its operating lifetime, the whole facility could be sealed, complete with its spent fuel. Monitoring would be needed but because nothing is above ground, access would only be minimal
planning consent more likely to be straightforward since there wouldn't be much surface infrastructure to object to. Most of the usual public fears and objections wouldn't be serious issues

Disadvantages: is there a flip side?

Cost: I have no idea how much underground siting would add to a budget. But if you take into account minimised decommissioning costs (not historically factored in to the cost of nuclear power as we are now finding out) and spent fuel disposal possibilities, I would guess that it would be completely viable. Anyway, what price security and safety?
Location: Finding suitable underground conditions, especially in flatter rainy areas with fast-moving groundwater circulation, could be a problem. The ideal would be mountain areas with relatively low rainfall.
Cooling: Like any steam-driven turbines, cool water is needed both for raising steam and for condensing it. There's no reason for the turbine and cooling systems to be located underground since these aren't in contact with radioactive parts of the circuit

A safe way forward: I've set out what seems to me an obvious way forward for nuclear power, if we are to have much more nuclear electricity as looks certain. (France, by the way, already generates 75% of its electricity this way - but above ground). If you, the reader, agree that making it mandatory to locate future nuclear plants underground is worthy of consideration, please help begin a real debate by contacting your government representative and, perhaps, your country's nuclear generating industry. The onus is on the industry to explain why underground containment is a bad idea, not a good one. If it is a good one, let them start digging!

Taboo topic: the population time bomb

2007-03-28T13:49:00.000+01:00

What is the Number One Global Problem? In the time it took you to read the previous seven words, the world's population increased by around 5. That's not 5 newborns cancelled out by 5 deaths. That's an overall increase of population which, as I write, is almost 6.6 billion; over three times more than when I was born 60 years ago. Every new person is a consumer of our planetary resources, just as we all are. Some will consume much more than others depending on where they are born and whether their parents are rich or poor. All will contribute in some degree to a grim trio of familiar troubles. The more people there are, the worse they will be:

climate change
destruction of biodiversity
pollution

Yet you seldom see much about the population increase. Climate change is the subject of the moment and, in many ways, rightly so. But why do we have to tackle climate change? Because there are so many people. And of course all three issues are tightly interlinked, whilst looming behind them like the spectre at the feast is population increase and the inevitable overconsumption of resources. So biodiversity is being destroyed, partly by climate change but also by the human need for more food (farmland from forest; overfishing etc.). Pollution is caused by people and the gaseous part of it causes climate change. And climate change itself is aggravated by so many people causing fossil fuels to be burned for energy and industrial feedstocks.

Why don't we get serious about population? I suppose the answer must in part be the fear of eugenics. Who gets to have children? Who doesn't? Should they be 'rationed'? Many declare that there is no problem and that the planet can comfortably hold more. Others insist that their religion demands that women produce as many children as possible by forbidding contraception. Some countries, unbelievably, are worried about underpopulation. All these issues - and many similar - are dangerous: people have very strong feelings about what should and should not be done.

There's nothing new here. The problem of population was elucidated far better over 30 years ago [population 4.1 billion]:

The present [1976] population of Latin America [given as an example] is around 300 million [almost 550 million today], and already many of them are under-nourished. But if the population continued to increase at the present rate, it would take less than 500 years to reach the point where the people, packed in a standing position, formed a solid human carpet over the whole area of the continent. This is so, even if we assumed them to be very skinny -- a not-unrealistic assumption. In 1000 years from now, they would be standing on each other's shoulders more than a million deep.
It will not have escaped you that this is a hypothetical calculation! It will not really happen like that for some very good practical reasons. The names of these reasons are famine, plague, and war; or, if we are lucky, birth control. It is no use appealing to advances in agricultural science -- 'green revolutions' and the like [e.g. genetic engineering which has now leaped to the forefront of 'solutions']. Increases in food production may temporarily relieve the problem, but it is mathematically certain that they cannot be a long-term solution; indeed... they may well make the problem worse, by speeding up the rate of population expansion. It is a simple logical truth that, short of mass emigration into space... uncontrolled birth-rates are bound to lead to horribly increased death-rates. It is hard to believe that this simple truth is not understood by those leaders who forbid their followers to use contraceptive methods. They express a preference for 'natural methods' of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.
from The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, 1976 p.119.

Full up: The world is full. There's nowhere else to emigrate to for the first time in human history. Humans now occupy the reasonably-habitable parts of every landmass including normally-uninhabitable Antarctica. Not many decades ago, countries like Australia were encouraging immigration and not many decades before that, the USA was accepting the "tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free" from overcrowded Europe. Not any more. Today, Europe is closing its borders and the US is building a fence to keep migrants out, even though much of their respective agricultural economies depend on low-paid labourforces with no right of residence.

I speak as a former immigrant. In fact, my wife and I have emigrated twice; once to Canada (1970) and, years later, to Spain (1987). In both cases, we were privileged, being educated and not without resources. Even so, the processes were not easy.

The Big Problem: As I see it, the biggest problem we have to solve as soon as possible is not climate change but population growth. If the world's population of humans was small and stable (say a few tens of millions, just to make the point), there wouldn't be a problem with climate change, biodiversity or pollution. There would be an abundance of everything: food, fuel and all the array of natural resources people depend on for their comfort and wellbeing. Those few millions could consume what they liked and they wouldn't begin to cause the problems I mentioned, simply because there wouldn't be enough of them to affect the atmosphere and oceans which control the stability of the world's climate. A small stable population of people would be benign. And they probably wouldn't be constantly warring on one pretext or another, the pretexts we're all familiar with being, generally, land and resources.

But our numbers are not small and not stable. There are nearly 6.6 billion of us, ratcheting up and up in numbers and expectations, and consuming more and more. Because we have failed dismally to even attempt to control our numbers, the result is that we have to tackle not just population growth, but climate change, pollution and biodiversity all at once.

Solutions: The de facto 'natural' solutions are already operating in uncontrolled fashion, mostly affecting the poor:

diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and, potentially, bird flu already kill millions
war and genocides kill millions more (nearly 170 million lives lost to war and major atrocities in the last century)
starvation
disasters like hurricanes and droughts

Other more intentional methods of controlling numbers of people have achieved various levels of notoriety:

one-child-per-couple law in China
mass sterilisations
infanticide, apparently widespread in countries where, for various reasons, male children are preferred to female
abortion

The only widely-acceptable method of control has, of course, been contraception. Unfortunately, some religious groups ban it and because of this influence, the Bush administration of the USA has stopped funding programmes which delivered contraception to those who could most have benefitted from it.

The stark choices: If we do nothing and continue as we are, the planetary mega-ecosystem within which we all live will solve the problem for us -- and it won't be nice for us. Some believe there may not be an 'us' at all within just a few decades, as the planet extinguishes that life which it cannot support.

If we do something, it won't be nice either but has the potential for being rather gentler to a greater number of us than the random and dreadful effects of war, disease and starvation. In short, climate change is a deadly symptom - one of several - of an even more serious malaise. I'm not saying we shouldn't be taking radical steps to tackle the climate problem. We should, but we desperately need to come to terms with the underlying fundamental issue: overpopulation. We need, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, urgent jaw jaw. Otherwise there will be war war ... and more more...

While the cat's away... Having a NoFF week!

2007-03-15T11:12:00.000Z

While the cat's away, this mouse ain't having much fun: My wife Val, who's not in the least cat-like, is away for a few days, assisting at my son Mark Lynas's book launch. So it seemed entirely appropriate to conduct a 'climate' experiment on myself.

A winter week without fossil fuel: Yes, it's theoretically possible (see my earlier post Have a NoFF Day: NoFF = No Fossil Fuels) and I wanted to find out just how unpleasant it was. I was going to live in a post-carbon world for just 6 days. I turned the oil-fired central heating off at the main switch before Val even walked out of the door to catch her train on Monday, so keen was I. I also vowed that I would not indulge in heat from the wood-burning stove which is nominally carbon-neutral (though I have reservations about this since the trees I have planted around my farm won't sequester what I am burning now for many years to come). We would normally have the stove lit in the evenings at this chilly time of year.

Cold but not that cold: The very first night was quite a test. The skies cleared and the temperature plummeted to 0 degrees Celsius overnight. But I didn't die. I survived quite well by dint of wearing the same night-time clothes in bed (I normally sleep naked) that I wear on my mountain sojourns in Scotland: a base layer on my upper body and Polartec 100 'long johns' on the lower part. The old stone farmhouse has solid uninsulatable walls (something we're hoping to remedy by passive solar means) which buffer the maximum and miniumum outside temperatures so that, without heat input, the inside temperature reflects the average of day and night. This can mean that it's colder in the house during the day - and this has happened several times. Day temperatures did, once, shoot up to 14 Celsius leaving the kitchen at a chilly 10. So the average temperature in the house is probably around 10-11 Celsius.

Watching the telly: Not surprisingly, the body gets coldest when it's not active physically. During the part of the day when I'm outside on the farm, working physically (which includes excavating the foundations for the passive solar conservatory), I'm often hot and the sun shines from time to time. At night, when I relax late in the evening to watch a rented DVD (murder mysteries are my thing this week), I wrap up as warm as I can with as little skin exposed as possible. And with all my layers - the more the better - including a thick fleece and a 'body mitten' blanket thing, I find that I am reasonably comfortable.

Indulgences: No, not the papal sort; the physical sort:

I boil water - exactly the right amount, measured, for my tea and coffee
I take an 'instant' hot water electric shower each evening
I cook my simple meals on an electric hob
I have lights (low energy, of course) on where I need them
I use my laptop for several hours (I am an editor for OneClimate.net) and watch TV (LCD screen) for 2 h each day
I don't drive anywhere because there's plenty of food stored and growing on the farm: vegetables, I mean, not sheep. There's some apples still keeping from last year too

So you can see that my energy demands are extremely low by today's standards. Furthermore, we have reasonably green electricity (RSPB Energy).

T'was ever thus, not long ago: You only have to step back a generation or two to realise that people have always lived like this. Central heating, now completely taken for granted, is an innovation in my lifetime. As a schoolboy aged 10 in chilly Redcar-by-the-sea, I remember ice encrusting the inside of my bedroom window and the stone hotwater bottle my granny gave me to warm the bed. I also remember the misery of the outside toilet. In winter, you would crunch through the snow to get there. Just one small room was heated - a coal fire, and that only for the evening. This is not a complaint; merely an observation. In past times, everyone lived with the cold and dressed accordingly. The notion of heating an entire building was unknown. Not any more. That toughness and reslience has been lost and even cranks like me find it unpleasant to live with almost no energy inputs.

The cat returns: Val returns on Saturday night. The fire is laid ready for her. In fairness, I should add that she, too, has learned to dress appropriately and is to be seen wearing her red hat and thick fleece jacket, body mitten wrapped round her legs, as she does the farm accounts. She, like me, accepts what the IPCC and others are telling us about climate change and about our need to change. She, like me, is doing what she can.

Results: At school, we learned to present our results after conducting experiments (remember? Aim, Method, Results, Conclusions). I'm still continuing my experiment but the results are already clear: it's not fun living without energy. It can be done and may have to be done by many. So I conclude that we need to do our best to reduce energy consumption and to increase renewable energy capacity. We at Mur Crusto farm are well on the way to providing our home with solar heat and, when that's complete, intend to invest some of our savings in a reasonable size (say 5-10 kW) wind turbine. It will be grid-connected and so will earn us money just as effectively as money locked away in investments. And unlike investments which can all come crashing down overnight, our turbine will quietly generate energy and revenue for at least 20 years. Which is the safer option in this unsafe, unstable world which we humans have created? To see what I mean by 'unsafe and unstable', see my son's book: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, launched tonight!

Swindled: undermining the fragile consensus

2007-03-10T11:44:00.000Z

Damaging setback? Channel 4's documentary 'The Great Global Warming Swindle’ has inflicted damage on what looked like the beginnings of a widespread consensus on climate change and upon our taking responsibility for it. This is sad because building such a consensus has taken years and many waverers will have been convinced by this programme's false polemics which appear to give a green light to our understandable desires to continue our energy-extravagant lifestyles.

A propaganda gift: George Marshall (COIN) writes: "this programme was a propaganda gift to the various vested interests who seek to undermine the fragile political and social will to take action on this global action. And it was sometimes very convincing, as strongly worded opinions often are when they are not subject to any verification or external challenge." In The Great Channel 4 Swindle, he looks in detail at what was claimed and who was saying it. Some of the names should be well known by now. They are the professional deniers who are skilled at misrepresenting climate science but, as Marshall says, you can "make up your own minds from their track records" which he presents.

Hornswoggled! RealClimate - 'climate science from climate scientists' - offers a detailed critique of the Channel 4 programme titled Swindled! In a post written by two climate modellers, one from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and the other from the British Antarctic Survey, they (tongue in cheek perhaps) say "We were hoping for important revelations and final proof that we have all been hornswoggled by the climate Illuminati, but it just repeated the usual specious claims we hear all the time. We feel swindled." As one of the many comments on this thorough analysis notes, "yet another tin of red herrings to rebut".

Red herrings and outrage: And if RealClimate isn't enough proof for you, try Campaign against Climate Change (you may need to scroll down the page to see the article). Here, the red herrings get their comeuppance with numerous links to the detailed science behind the issues. As someone asks, what is Channel 4's agenda? Finally, this useful site gives an example of letters of complaint to C4 and Ofcom if you were 'outraged that Channel 4 aired the programme with no caveats'.

I will if you will...

2007-02-22T14:47:00.000Z

First, a sing-song: Did you ever sing this on the bus? (To the tune of 'She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes'):

Singing....I will if you will....so will I
Singing....I will if you will....so will I
Singing, I will if you will, I will if you will
I will if you will, so will I.

That was the chorus. There were several quite rude verses which we, as schoolboys, sang with gusto on field trips. (Let me see, how did it go? 'Oh she's got a lovely bottom set of teeth.' I'll leave you to work that one out.) Oh, and there's a Scots version which goes 'Oh ye cannae shove yer grannie aff the bus'. Thought you should know that before getting down to the heavy stuff!

What can we do? No, I haven't taken leave of my senses: just trying to inject a little humour into a serious subject: climate change and what we can all do about it. I expect, like me, you're rather tired of reading endless stuff about how serious it all is and how we have to start doing something now. But no-one answers the massively begged question: What exactly do we do? One of our organic veg customers made exactly this point to Val (my wife) a couple of weeks back: We can all see there's trouble ahead but what are we supposed to do? Changing light bulbs and recycling obviously isn't enough. It's up to the politicians, isn't it?

I will if you will: Politicians usually follow where the public leads so we all should have have our say and do our fair share. All of us. That's the point of the song: I will if you will... Most of us are ready to make sacrifices if only we knew that everyone else was doing so too. At present, we see friends flying off on absurdly cheap polluting holidays, driving around in gas-guzzlers, keeping their houses nice and warm with coal and oil, buying food from far and wide so why - the reasonable argument goes - should I be the first to downsize my lifestyle? I will if you will... but you probably won't so why should I?

Practical action: Here's some ideas. Please add more in Comments if you wish.

Get involved in a climate change network such as OneClimate.net. This sort of environmental social networking site stops you feeling alone and gives you an opportunity to see what others are doing and how they are doing it. It also helps you to start or join a local network or group based on where you live or at your workplace, though it can be as global as you wish. The possibilities for forming such groups of like-minded people are legion. (No doubt we'll have climate change dating agencies soon. Now there's a good idea!)
Get in touch with your local political representative. Tell them what you think should be happening and what you're prepared to do. WriteToThem.com is a good start for those in the UK if you don't know who your MP is or how to get in touch. Carbon rationing is an idea whose time has come but the politicians need to know there is grassroots support. Try the Carbon Rationing Action Groups for details of how this works and see how inherently fair it is. I will if you will...
Get together with your neighbours and form a group. You could start off by viewing Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' which should set things in motion. It's now available on DVD.
Calculate your carbon footprint. Start by reading It's carbon judgment day by Mark Lynas.
Get in touch with your local newspaper to tell them about you and your group are doing or plan to do. That could be anything from installing unexciting but essential building insulation (the single most worthwhile thing to do for which there are grants available) to making serious carbon-reduction commitments or pledges. How? Join Cred and make pledges to save carbon.
If you have kids, remember they're the inheritors of this awful mess we and our forebears have unintentionally made of our planet's atmosphere, ocean and land. It doesn't have to be like this. Think 'out of the box' about your lifestyle. If you come up with any smart ideas, tell everyone in any way that suits you. Al Gore has a small army of people trained to present his 'slide show'. Could you do something like that? There's nothing to beat getting the word across by actual local contacts if you have that kind of charisma! (I don't so I blog instead.)

And me? What am I doing? If all the suggestions about sound a little prescriptive, please note that I really do practice what I preach. I'm typing this with a warm blanket wrapped around my legs, a wooly hat on my head and I'm wearing a thick fleece. It's not too cold today (about 12 degrees C both inside and outside) and I'm confortably warm with no heating. Val, who is a convert to being the change you want to see in the world (thank you Gandhi) like me, wears similar outfits. We travel very little, never fly (obviously or I wouldn't be writing this blog) and I've just asked her if she would calculate our carbon footprint. We do have a very efficient wood-burner for the evenings and use Green electricity and I'm in the process of building a passive solar structure onto the south-facing house front... more on this.

Everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it! Well that's what we'd all like. So let's all sing from the same hymnsheet, eh? Someone has to start the ball rolling so let it be you. Remember the refrain: I will if you will, so will I!

Happy Birthday! I hope...

2007-02-15T10:03:00.000Z

Last night, my new granddaughter was born. I wish her many happy returns and a wonderful and secure life on our still-beautiful planet. I so earnestly hope that all goes well for her (and my other four grandchildren)... and yet I worry. What a world she's been born into! Over thirty years ago, I remember my grandfather worrying openly to my wife and me about the future for our own children and questioning the wisdom of bringing more of them into a problem-filled world. And yet, back then hardly anybody had heard of climate change and world population stood at just over half what it is now.

Fortunately, my new granddaughter has two of the most wonderful caring parents a child could wish for and she lives in a country which is less likely than many to be badly affected by climate change. So she's a lot better off than most of the kids who were born on her birthnight elsewhere on our planet.

But if she were about ten years old now, she might make this video.

Something in the air: climate change is hot

2007-01-26T15:46:00.000Z

Top of the Pops: It's part of my job as a freelance climate change editor for OneClimate.net to follow breaking news stories and the latest blog opinion from around the world. So I scan through hundreds of newsfeeds every week and I'm getting a concerted message, loud and clear: climate change issues are top of the agenda just about everywhere, but particularly in North America and, increasingly, China.

The Pigs are flying: Even George W managed to use the phrase 'global climate change' (once) in his lacklustre State of the Union address. ExxonMobil has suddenly become - or has appeared to become - greener, finally pushed by the Union of Concerned Scientists' report into the oil company's covert funding of climate sceptics. Yes, the climate pigs are in the air. The deniers haven't gone away but they're becoming marginalised. It looks like the year things are going to really start to happen. Politicians are picking up the scent and realising not only that many people but also many corporations want them to do something; to legislate. Sir Nicholas Stern has proposed a world carbon tax. Carbon rationing is being talked about as if it might actually happen. On 21 January, Sir David Attenborough presented Climate Change - Britain Under Threat at peak time on BBC television. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is now available free if you haven't seen it. A couple of days ago, BBC2 screened Should I Really Give Up Flying?

"What people (must) do is to change their behaviour and their attitudes. If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something." Sir David Attenborough, BBC.

Is The End Nigh? But will all this frenzy of activity and potential action be enough and in time? Who knows, but we will shortly have a much better idea as the IPCC finalizes its Fourth Assessment Report "Climate Change 2007", due for release on 2 February. Pre-publication syntheses of this report do not make cheerful reading. Just about everything previously predicted is going to be worse than expected and happen sooner. So, as is it is becoming customary to say, when someone has just written such doom-laden words, we've got to change and we have to do it now. I am doing so. How about you?

Spring or winter?

2007-01-05T18:26:00.000Z

What time of the year is it? It's 5th January, 2007. Today was mild and sunny and look what I found in full flower in one of the hedgerows: it's cow parsley (a member of the carrot family).

Where am I? Latitude 52.53 North (New York city is 40°47' N) where the days are, right now, almost as short as they get since we're only 2 weeks past the winter solstice.

What's the weather like? It's Wales so we expect gales and rain. And we've had gales and rain most of the time for a couple of months. Normally we'd expect a few frosts by this time of year but so far there have been none here (70 metres above sealevel on a peninsula surrounded by the sea though my farm is 5 kilometres inland).

What's up? My Oxford book of wild flowers tells me that the season for this cow parsley to flower is April-June. So what's going on? This 'winter' is the mildest for I don't know how many years. The Met Office says that '2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998'. And that's after the warmest autumn on record. I leave you to draw your own conclusions about what's up with the weather and the climate which hosts it.

The downside of mild winters: I grow vegetables for a living. The picture below is a view of my polytunnel crops this afternoon.

It all looks quite neat and productive, don't you think? But look at the inset of the lettuce; the bottom leaves of the plant are all but consumed by downy mildew which is a serious problem in mild damp weather. If it's properly cold, the fungal spores become inactive but this hasn't happened at all this winter and the result has been serious damage to hundreds of lettuces. I've had to throw away many of them because of the mildew.

So it may be agreeable for many of us not connected to food production to experience mild winters but it certainly doesn't suit the plants, many of which think it's spring. As if to emphasise this point, I saw a really weird sight this afternoon: small potato plants growing in the ground where I'd left some tubers. Potato plants are particularly susceptible to frosts and would normally be wiped out in October or November. Not this year. A taste of things to come perhaps? Severe gales, endless heavy rain and mildness. Come to think of it, that's just what the climate models predict for a warming world, isn't it?

Finally, my Link of the Week from the Union of Concerned Scientists: ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science

Have a NoFF day

2006-12-20T12:51:00.000Z

What's a NoFF day? We can all have 'off days', or even naff days. But what about NoFF days? 'NoFF' stands for 'No Fossil Fuels'. The idea is simply for anyone to find out just how dependent we all are on fossil fuels. Not using any is something which sounds easy but you might surprise yourself at how difficult it is. The concept of NoFF days is brilliant for concentrating the mind on our gross dependency on carbon-based fuels.

Hypocrisy and honesty: I have actually had a number of NoFF days, partly as a means of practising what I preach. On my NoFF days, I used no fossil fuel of any kind, either directly or indirectly. On each day, I was eating some hot food, travelling for several hours and spending the nights in heated accommodation. How did I do this? It wouldn't be most people's idea of fun for I was backpacking alone in the Scottish mountains. I cooked my food on a simple methylated spirit stove (I use just 1 litre over a period of 7 days away from civilisation), travelled on foot and camped in a tiny one-man tent with a good sleeping bag to keep warm in. (That's the 'heated accommodation' bit.)

OK, that is cheating, in a sense. Not many of us would want to do that for fun, let alone with the serious intention of trying a day without fossil fuels or living the low-carbon life. But at least you can see that I have honestly had a number of NoFF days so I know whereof I speak - as the cliché goes.

Checklist for a real NoFF day: So let's get real and think. Such a day would need to be as close as you can get to a normal working day. So if you walk to work, that's your NoFF transport taken care of. If it's not too cold or too hot, you don't need any heating at home or at work so that's ok too. If you're one of those who has had the foresight to put their money where their mouth is and use genuinely renewable energy for heating, lighting, cooking and sundries like computers, then you don't need a NoFF day as you're already there!

Transport: no car? no bus? no plane? No sweat: walk or cycle. If you're so far from work or shops that NoFF is not an option, then consider moving house sometime soon so that it is. Or what about teleworking?
Heating: no oil, coal or gas heating but you can use electric if it's from a guaranteed renewable source, or wood (wood-burner like mine on the right) which is also renewable and so carbon neutral.
Cooking: as above, not easy without a range that burns wood. Or biogas if you happen to have it. Or you could use a spirit camping stove like the one I take backpacking. Alcohol fuels can be derived from plant matter and so, like wood, are carbon neutral. An electric stove is fine subject to the power being from a utility company which guarantees its renewability.
At work: use no machinery or equipment which isn't hand-powered or getting its power from renewables (very unlikely).
Eating: only locally-grown food or, better, your own-grown food which has zero food miles. If you don't know where your food is from, fossil fuel will have been used to get it to you for sure. If it's packaged and/or processed, fossil fuel will have been used in its manufacture.

It's not easy being green: You'll have read through my list, thought about it a bit, and probably decided that the whole idea is impossible. And to a large extent, you'd be right. You can look upon it as a sort of 'thought experiment'; an exercise in assessing dependence. Or you can give it a go anyway and see how much you can manage. Devise a way to give yourself some points; more points for less FF. What did you score? What was the maximum you could score using your assessment? (If you come up with a good way to do this, add a Comment to this post.)

Points mean prizes! And the eventual prize: a habitable planet for our children to inherit. So... have a NoFF day!

Harnessing the power of belief

2006-10-24T12:20:00.000+01:00

Some scary facts

human population is expected to reach 9-10 billion by the end of the century

the planet is in the middle of its sixth mass extinction

climate change is the most imminent and serious threat ever faced by humanity

What can we do? Can we mobilise for a War on Climate Change? Most of us opt for outright denial that there's a problem and continue 'business as usual'. Those of us who are aware ('extremists' like myself and still a tiny proportion of humanity) can do very little apart from tinkering round the edges. Politicians can do very little either for fear of unpopularity. Industry in many cases would readily support some action (of course, others like Exxon will not) but are justifiably concerned at being put at a competitive disadvantage in the dog-eat-dog world of modern commerce.

So how do we mobilise the numbers of people we need to get moving on climate change mitigation? In times of world war, whole populations have been successfully mobilised to fight and have had to put up with major adversities (apart from the killing) like rationing: at the very least, there's going to have to be rationing of fossil fuels. But tackling climate change needs international mobilisation, and acceptance - in the rich world at any rate - that living standards will inevitably decline. Is it possible to get started on this before climate-induced disasters impact so severely on economies and lifestyles that there becomes no other option?... but by then, it will be too late because of positive climate feedbacks such as massive methane releases (from gas hydrates in the oceans and vast tracts of melting permafrost in Siberia and Canada which is already underway).

A faith solution: E O Wilson, the great American biologist, already has a partial answer. He's just published a book about it: The Creation: A Meeting of Science and Religion. In it he makes the case for an alliance between secular humanists and people of faith in order to avert mass extinctions.

This approach is not only brilliant; it might also be the best chance we've got. But why stop at American Christians, Wilson's main target audience? Why not all faiths everywhere?

Mobilising religious people: the problem Those old enough to remember songs of the 1960s will probably remember this by mathematician and lyricist Tom Lehrer:

All the Catholics
Hate the Protestants
And the Protestants
Hate the Catholics
All the Muslims hate all the Hindus
And everybody hates the Jews.
National Brotherhood Week, Tom Lehrer

(It was a great tune, too!) But this song serves to make the serious point that so much zeal and potential creativity is diverted into hatred and wars. Much of the news today is about just that.

Have faith and imagine...! If only humankind could harness that often-deadly energy, that zeal, passion and conviction that all faiths share to some degree and channel it into taking action to save our planet! For a start, there'd be much more cash available because there would be less need for armaments, a despicable evil industry which netted more than $1 trillion last year.

I imagine that all the world's great religions include a duty of care of the environment and the planet for the good of all. I know that Buddhists do and American Christians have begun to mobilise on this issue, noticeably over the last few months. Paganism is based on care for Mother Earth as is, for example, the 'old' religion of the Andean peoples who revered pachamama, Mother Earth and inti, the sun god.

How could it come about? It's not going to be easy. I'm sure plenty of people , religious or secular, will have ideas. How about convening an All Faiths Forum where faith leaders agree to bury the hatchet and find common ground? Who convenes it? Over to you, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews: you could work together. Could some of you get started please? Your planet needs you!

If you're religious and you think these ideas are worthwhile, please copy, print and forward this piece to your friends and religious leaders. There's no copyright. My blog is your blog!

A day at the seaside... without fossil fuel

2006-10-15T19:34:00.000+01:00

Have you noticed how, when you drive somewhere reasonably local in your car, it seems an impossible distance to imagine doing on foot or by bike. Yet when you do try it without the car, you're quite surprised at how short a distance it actually is. I have the good fortune to live within a few miles of the nearest sea but oddly, my wife Val and I had never actually tried cycling there instead of using the car... for exactly the reasons I just mentioned: it seemed like a long way to go.

Well we tried it yesterday and - surprise! - it wasn't. Getting there was incredibly easy because it was mostly downhill. Being there was fun as the day was warm and sunny and there were cliffs to explore, beaches for paddling, seabirds and landbirds to see and flowers to enjoy. And, oddly, it was easy cycling home. We had both expected it to be hard.

We have another advantage here in rural north Wales: there's a network of little-used very minor roads. So you can, with care, choose a route which is both scenic and almost devoid of cars. Because it's cars which, for me, make cycling so generally unappealing. On our chosen route, we were passed by one car and only had to cross two main roads.

Happily, many people nowadays can turn to cycling as a means of getting around because there are more and more cycle routes which avoid roads as much as possible. Also, there is something rather special about happy days out in which the only CO2 you add to the atmosphere is from your respiration. Very satisfying!

Who are the 'criminals' really?

2006-10-02T10:13:00.000+01:00

The blog (in blue) below is from MarkLynas.org, posted today. I agree with almost everything he says except his comment on the 'real criminals'. Please read on and see what I mean:

'Plane Stupid' protest puts short-haul flights under the spotlight
News from last week suggests that at long last a direct action campaign against climate change is really beginning to kick off. On Sunday 24 September twenty-six 'Plane Stupid' protesters established a temporary climate camp - not in a field next to a power station this time, but on the taxi-way of East Midlands Airport. The airport - called a "climate change factory" by the demonstrators - was chosen because it specialises in mega-polluting short-haul flights, which could easily be replaced by train travel.
Whilst there they listened to a Baptist minister preach from a makeshift pulpit that, at a time when 160,000 people are dying from climate change impacts every year, "flying is a sin". The Rev. Malcolm Caroll's former parish was in nearby Nottingham. The activists managed to stick it out for 4 hours before being removed by police, and all 26 were arrested and charged with aggravated trespass. Needless to say, the real criminals - those operating the airport and the airline companies - continue with business as usual, protected by the full force of the law.
A few days later, the Met Office issues a press release: September was the warmest on record in the United Kingdom "by some margin". Is anyone listening?

I disagree that the 'real criminals' are the plane operators. Of course they are part of the problem. But surely the people to point the finger of blame at are those who actually fill the planes on their cheap package tour holidays. They don't have to do it. They can choose not to. But they don't, either because they don't know what they're doing is crazy or because they don't care. It is the task of we enlightened people who eschew flying for frivolous purposes to - somehow - get through to the 'frequent flyers' and encourage them to take their holidays locally.

The climate 'extremist' changes tack

2006-08-01T19:37:00.000+01:00

If you've visited this blog before, you'll be confused because I've changed its name! It used to be 'the climate extremist' but I decided that wasn't very helpful. The reason I called it that at first was because flying will soon be the biggest contributor to global warming of all so I refuse to travel by air. As a result of this stance, a friend accused me of being 'an extremist'.

My aim was to encourage like-minded responsible citizens to help make this no-fly stance not 'ex-treme', but mainstream. People who fly for frivolous reasons (like tourism) are killing the future, not just for my kids, but for everyones.

But it's not just air travel that's the problem. It's the way we live on the planet, using far more of its resources than it can possibly sustain whilst the global population ticks away, inching upwards at about 3 per second, and now standing at around 6.6 billion. Refusing to fly for non-essential reasons is just one small thing any of us in the rich world can choose to do which will make an impact once there is a critical mass of likeminded people. There are a host of other things too, some of which I'll doubtless blog about in the future!

Slow is smart

2006-05-22T16:27:00.000+01:00

A burning issue: As road vehicle fuel costs climb, visits to fuel stations are a quick way to burn money. I've been aware for some time of the relationship between speed and fuel consumption and now, this is dramatically confirmed by carefully-conducted tests of various models of cars. It doesn't matter whether it's petrol or diesel, gas-guzzling SUV or hybrid, fuel consumption soars as your driving speed goes up.

Steer us to diesels: That was the title of a piece I wrote for the Telegraph Magazine many years ago. It made the still-valid point that, mile for mile and size for size, diesel cars are up to 30% more efficient than petrol. Even the so-called 'economical' hybrids still can't touch the best small diesels. I have just about the most economical car on the road - Ford's best kept secret - a diesel Fusion. (See what Green Consumer guide says about its fuel consumption.) Its CO2 emissions are just 116grams per kilometre and I find that it averages around 65mpg/3.6 litres per 100 kilometres. It's surprisingly roomy and more economical than the best hybrid. Why doesn't everyone buy something similar? I got mine second hand a year ago.

Slow down for the planet! So with an economical car AND by driving gently - that's no violent acceleration and braking; keeping to speed limits and cruising at much less than the 70mph speed limit where it applies - you can start making a big difference to your emissions (and bank balance) right away. Oh, and better for the planet too!

War on the atmosphere: military aircraft emissions

2006-05-02T12:11:00.000+01:00

Insult to injury: George Monbiot's recent piece on aircraft emissions prompts this post; something I've been considering for some time. It is, in turn, prompted by the daily screech and roar of military aircraft over this 'peaceful' country haven in north Wales. Quite apart from any other considerations, this daily air and noise pollution is a continual affront to our attempts to live here as sustainably as possible. With one economical car (65mpg average and 116 grams/kilometre CO2 output), a wood-burner, low-energy lights, insulation and central heating used sparingly, our lifestyle is as low carbon as you can reasonably get in the carbon-fuel-dependent UK. Probably these aircraft burn up what we use in a year in just a couple of hours... but I don't know. Who does?... Or is it secret?

Aircraft emissions and the atmosphere: Okay, here's the issue: we know aircraft emissions are really bad for the environment, especially those at high altitude. Just how much fuel do the airforces of the world squander on training flights (or war games for big boys and their very expensive toys as I'm uncharitably inclined to regard them after the tenth jet in twenty minutes)? What proportion of total aircraft emissions do they represent? I have no idea but I'll bet it's more than you might think. No doubt it's a closely-guarded military secret. And what's it all for? That gross euphemism 'defence' (Orwell warned of this) is bandied about by politicians everywhere. But what's the point of it all (and upgrading nuclear 'deterrents' come to that)? In what way are these scary warplanes and their undoubtedly skilled pilots increasing our security in Britain? Consider little Costa Rica appropriately about the size of Wales: This little country doesn't have an airforce or any military force. The country is still there... and it has land borders with its neighbours making invasion easy, unlike seabound Britain.

Is war more important than climate? The biggest problem facing the planet now is climate change. Most of us, including politicians, would agree with that. So who is about to attack the UK which requires a large active fuel-burning airforce to repel? Terrorists? But everyone knows that terrorists' weapons are suicide bombers and cars packed with explosives. They don't use aircraft - except as flying bombs, one infamous day, in 2001. So why must we put up with this squandering of limited resources on things like military aircraft and the resultant pollution which endangers everyone, not to mention useless nuclear weaponry? Or is there another agenda we ordinary folk don't hear about, like invading Iran - as if the disaster of the US/UK invasion of Iraq wasn't lesson enough? Or maye it's just successive UK governments' desire to have access to the 'top tables' with their American friends, perpetuating the absurd post-colonial notion of 'punching above our weight' and the so-called 'special relationship' which must be nurtured at all costs? That's a lot of questions but how can I get some answers? I have asked my MP to enquire and he is doing so.

Lives are at stake here.

Signing the pledge

2006-04-11T12:15:00.000+01:00

Anti-airport expansion pledge: The no-fly movement is here... sort of. You can make an 'airport pledge' online. This anti-airport expansion pledge is being backed by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, People and Planet, Rising Tide and Transport 2000, together with local protest group HACAN ClearSkies.

I've signed up. You can see my pledge (and another 3770) here. This was the comment I added (as you can):

"It's the planet, stupid! This mantra (or something like it) should be on display at all airports, all travel booking websites and travel agents... rather like the health warnings on cigarette packets. Frivolous fliers should have pariah status but first, they have to understand what they're doing. Most people don't get it... yet. Education through campaigns like this is one of our best hopes for getting the message across."

More please: But we need more than this, nationally and internationally. We need to have a responsible citizens group drawn from anywhere in which individuals can 'sign up' and make their pledge not to fly except in emergencies. There is a website of this sort, called the Flight Pledge Union which tells you almost nothing about itself. I envisage something much more interactive than this and it's clearly critically important that a list of real people - like the 'airport pledge' site (above) displays. And besides, I'm not too keen on 'anti' anything; it's too negative. If anyone has ideas, links or knows of organisations which are potentially relevant, please leave a comment.

By the way, 6 out of 10 to the Flight Pledge Union for trying but I think they have much work to do.

Trapped: it's the planet, stupid

2006-04-04T13:07:00.000+01:00

Poor sick planet Earth
All is not well with our planet as we are regularly reminded by a string of reports, such as last year's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the almost-daily string of revelations about how the climate is changing faster than we thought.

The fault is ours. Even George Bush has acknowledged that. But though politicians make speeches paying lip service to the environment, business continues as usual. Coal is mined; forests are burned; people still fly off on holidays; the planet warms... Business as usual.

Are we trapped or can we free ourselves from this relentless cycle of energy resource overuse? It looks like were locked in to an economic system, depending as it does on exploitation, even though we know it’s a system that’s bound to come tumbling down (maybe taking most of us with it). Are we trapped into pillaging the planet’s life support systems even though we know it can’t go on? Even now, many countries behave as if they were not all connected to and dependent on the biosphere, a lesson still not understood − particularly by nationalists. The universal excuses for doing nothing are always 'keeping business competitive', jobs and ‘the economy’. But it's the planet, stupid! I always feel like screaming when I hear these deadly mantras. Without a healthy planet, there won't be an economy.

Three Ds: the dilemmas of democracy and denial
So what’s being done? Not much. One stumbling block is, ironically, democracy because it ensures that nothing unpopular can be done. Worse is outright denial that there’s a problem at all. No flyer today can be totally unaware of the damage they subscribe to by their addiction to cheap flights. Their main defence, I suppose, is that since everyone else is doing it, what difference can my self-denial make?

Is there a way forward? My main purpose for creating this blog is to explore what we as individuals can do to make a difference. I hope readers like you will post your own ideas. Let's make a start...

Let's create a voluntary no-flying movement: NFM
One idea whose time has come is for more far-seeing citizens to create a voluntary no-flying movement (NFM). I would be among the first to join. One religious movement, the Christian Methodists, encouraged people to sign a pledge to avoid alcohol for ever in an effort to cut alcoholism rates. Our NFM could involve a pledge too but we should positively encourage sustainable travel and holiday alternatives.

If we can't collectively do something, we’re back to the dilemma we all face: the planet’s cry for help isn’t getting through. It seems we really are trapped.