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The colours and scents of the Dutch tulips transform both tourists and cynical locals alike

With standing room only, the bus sped down the freeway on a bright warm morning. Once we turned on to the Bollenstreek, long ribbons of intense blue, mauve and white stretched to the near horizon. Fields of yellow daffodils blared spring's final triumph over the particularly long winter. Every head on the bus turned and gazed. And then suddenly, quite spontaneously, everyone sighed together, "Aaahhhhhhhh." A breath song of collective awe.

We were headed to Keukenhof Gardens, famous for its variety of bulb flowers, especially tulips. I was feeling triumphant because I had two Dutch people in tow. My husband had finally run out of excuses and decided to appease his American wife. Along with us was a friend who, despite having lived near the gardens for the past 35 years, had never visited them.

It seemed that every time I mentioned this beautifully landscaped garden to the Dutch, they would smile uncomfortably as if to say, "Oh, that place full of tourist buses where you have to pay to see tulips. No thanks." No matter how hard I tried to convince them of the wonder and unique beauty of viewing seven million bulbs in bloom, the Dutch just looked at me like someone to be pitied.

Even our friend had justified her visit to the park to her children by saying there was "an American lady who wanted to go". But not 10 minutes after our arrival, she and my husband were overcome with the fragrance of hyacinths, the morning light flickering through cherry blossoms, the sound of water flowing over carefully placed stones, and the old oaks whose gnarled trunks resembled elephant feet.

People of all nations and faiths were visibly touched by the richness around them. Languages softly floated and whirled around us blending with the scent of blossoms. Cameras clicked. A French couple snapped photos of their two toddlers sitting in a tulip field. Young women dressed in hijabs stood for their photos next to potted black tulips aptly named Queen of the Night. Japanese women, afraid of tanning, hid under umbrellas held by gloved hands. A fleet of elderly in wheelchairs posed by the fountain, its sound rushing, swishing, gurgling beyond us.

"If only the world could just plant tulips," I thought. Even as thousands of visitors poured in throughout the day, a stillness remained. The natural beauty of scent, colour, sound and sunlight seemed to quiet the restless minds and chatter of people. In some ways, it felt like paradise, as we all mingled past flowers that we knew, like ourselves, were fleeting in time, transitory in nature.

• Every week Guardian Weekly publishes a Letter from one of its readers from around the world. We welcome submissions – they should focus on giving a clear sense of a place and its people. Please send them to weekly.letter.from@guardian.co.uk

• Netherlands
• Europe
• Wild flowers
• Gardens

Catherine Ann Lombard
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The climate sceptic's interpretation of my study as final endorsement of his position means we can move on

It isn't often, as a climate scientist, that you find your research being enthusiastically endorsed by climate sceptic Matt Ridley in the Times. We published a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday giving a new best estimate of 1.3C for the warming expected at the time in the future when carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaches double the level it did before the industrial revolution (known as Transient Climate Response, or TCR).

Ridley is excited about this, because he feels it means that until his teenage children reach retirement age, they won't have to worry about global warming. And he is worried that government policies are misguided because they place their faith in climate models, like one of the Met Office models that puts the warming instead at 2.5C, almost twice our estimate.

But no one places their faith in any single climate model, and no one has done so for 20 years. Climate scienitsts are all well aware the Met's model (HadGEM2) is at the top end of the current range. The Met Office's advice to government is based on the range of results from current climate models, not just their own.

The relevant comparison is not with the 2.5C response of one model, but with the average of climate models used by the UN's climate science panel in its upcoming major report, which is 1.8C. Now 1.3C is 30% less than 1.8C, but this is hardly a game changer: at face value, our new findings mean that the changes we had previously expected between now and 2050 might take until 2065 to materialise instead. Then again, they might not: 1.8C is within our range of uncertainty; and natural variability will affect what happens in the 2050s anyway.

Despite this, our study seems to be being enthusiastically cited by Ridley and climate sceptics the world over as final endorsement of their position. If this means their position is that the most likely response is 30% lower than the average of our current models, then perhaps the debate on global temperature is indeed over: 30% is well within the range of uncertainty anyway. But that doesn't mean all debate about climate is over.

Is Ridley right that there is no actual evidence of harm as long as droughts, floods and storms are within historic variability? Try explaining to a casino bouncer that it doesn't matter you are using loaded dice because a triple-six is within historic variability – but that is a different story.

Where Ridley may well be right is that if you are confident that citizens of 2065 will be rich enough and smart enough to cope with whatever we bequeath to them; or if you really don't care about unborn generations anyway (what have unborn generations ever done for me?); or if, like Bjorn Lomborg, you discount future damages to give very little weight to anything that happens after 2065; or if you firmly believe that the "second coming" will occur before 2065 anyway – then there probably isn't much point in trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. These are perfectly coherent ethical positions: they don't happen to be positions that I subscribe to, but if that is what Ridley thinks, so be it.

It is almost inevitable that a debate as acrimonious as this could only end with a firm declaration of victory on all sides. This appears to be what we are seeing. If this means we can move on from a sterile debate about the global response to much more interesting questions about regional impacts, the rights of different generations, and, most interesting of all, what to do about it, that's great. Ridley, welcome to the real climate debate.

• Climate change
• Climate change scepticism
• Climate change

Myles Allen
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When drivers say cyclists don't belong on the roads because they 'don't pay tax', it is a dangerous, dehumanising attitude

It's safe to assume that most people in the event of hitting a cyclist while driving, who realised what they had done, would stop, call the police, and stay on the scene. Not so for one young woman, who appears to have hit a cyclist, carried on driving, and then most bizarrely taken to Twitter to boast of the incident.

@emmaway20 Emma Way
Definitely knocked a cyclist off his bike earlier – I have right of way he doesn't even pay road tax! #bloodycyclists

Norwich Police responded quickly, asking Emma to get in touch with them as soon as possible, and report it, rather than broadcast it to the world.

@emmaway20 we have had tweets ref an RTC with a bike. We suggest you report it at a police station ASAP if not done already & then dm us

— Norwich Police (@NorwichPoliceUK) May 19, 2013

Way has since deleted her Twitter account, after cyclists on Twitter roundly turned on her, especially once a cyclist came forward who had been hit by a car that didn't stop shortly before Way's missive. Toby Hockley, who'd been riding the Boudicca Sportive with the Iceni Velo club, came forward after seeing the fallout on Twitter. Both parties are now in contact with the police, Norfolk constabulary have confirmed.

What her statement says about hierarchy on our roads is just as interesting as watching social media close the net around someone claiming to have injured a cyclist. For starters there's the tiresome fact that, as every cyclist knows, road tax doesn't exist – you pay vehicle excise duty for your car, and road maintenance is funded from centralised taxes. Yet, the canard of "road tax" as an annual toll for using roads is rolled out time and again by motorists annoyed at the mere presence of bikes on the road. The fact that cyclists seemingly "don't pay" to use roads, then overtake motorists in traffic jams rankles, is burned deep in the minds of our more irrational drivers.

This internalised hierarchy on the roads is also evident as a pedestrian – it's not uncommon to be crossing a road when the lights have turned amber and have cars race off narrowly avoiding you, or for cars to ignore the fact you've stepped onto a zebra crossing for the sake of shaving a few seconds off their journey. But cyclists seem to bear the brunt of this – few cyclists don't experience regular outbursts of road rage, or dangerous driving from motorists who've clearly clocked them but are simply unhappy they're allowed on the road at all.

I've been told to "pay road tax" more times than I can remember, though sadly explaining the intricacies of road taxation – deftly explained by the excellent site I Pay Road Tax – takes longer than the few seconds you get on the road. And when this entitlement dehumanises cyclists to the extent someone is happy to excuse hitting a cyclist by explaining they don't believe they should be on the road at all, it becomes more than an annoyance – it's an active danger.

• Cycling
• Fitness
• Road safety
• Crime

Dawn Foster
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Gerry Judah, born in Kolkata, returned to India after more than 50 years to see how people are tackling the effects of global warming

Even with 100 years of media attention, not everything written about the Chelsea flower show has been so blooming obvious

Now in its hundredth year, the Chelsea Flower Show clings on, almost ivy-like, to its past. Just as it is wedded to convention, so too is the language used by the press to describe the annual 'horticultural extravaganza'. Like the rest of Fleet Street, the Guardian and Observer have fallen into this trap - just carry out a simple archive search and you will unearth trusty descriptions of the event being a 'blaze' or 'riot' of colour, or an 'oasis of beauty'. The winner of the gold medal has to be the Observer for its 1935 headline describing the show as a Pageant of Loveliness.

This year's event, with its glistening rock pools and velvet smooth lawns, will feature garden gnomes, which had been banned by organisers for being crude and inelegant. Ask any of the 165,000 visitors that are expected to attend this year, and they will tell you about the Royal Horticultural Society's very high standards and rules that exhibitors must abide by.

In the 1950s one excited designer is said to have created a formal garden around a swimming pool, adding a pair of dazzling blonde models in swimsuits as a finishing touch. Mortified by what they had seen, the organisers initially struggled to find a suitable reason to ban the work. Eventual they invoked the rule which forbids 'livestock' of any kind.

A fondness for rules may have gained the Royal Horticultural Society a grouchy reputation but their Great Spring Show, to give it its original name, did change with the times. When the show returned after the First World War, much emphasis was given to the utilitarian use of land to grow cheap food, seen as more important in post-war Britain than decorative gardening and the fashion for 'lordy orchid houses kept up by wealthy men.'

By the 1930s, the reputation of the flower show had grown to the point that practically every parson and his wife from the country queued with city folk to squeeze into the annual show. Despite the discomfort, many were educated on how to cultivate roses and rhododendrons, or were dazzled by the spectacle of an exotic Japanese garden. The nation's obsession with all things horticultural extended to the Royal Family, who were spared the crush by being shown round before the public.

In the 1950s the flower show seemed to turn its back on massed ranks of azaleas and begonias, as green-leaved indoor plants offered a visual relief from the 'blaze of colour' traditionally associated with Chelsea. The Guardian's visit in 1957 also noted that the 'implement section' - garden tools, as we now call them - had long queues, with visitors clutching cheque books so they could purchase the latest gardening hardware.

It was this drift towards commercialisation that riled the famed naturalist David Bellamy, who reportedly refused to attend the event in 1999.

If Bellamy's barbed comments about the show weren't damaging enough, a scathing attack on the event by Monty Don, writing in the Observer in 2001, must have made the organisers feel like someone was aiming a sharp pitch fork at them. Maybe Don was only saying what many had always thought about the Chelsea Flower Show - that it was 'driven by money and snobbery' - but his comments could not have made comfortable reading for the organisers.

• Chelsea flower show
• Gardens
• London

Jason Rodrigues
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What do emptier waters look like? This web aquarium shows declining fish populations over the past 100 years - and it uses more than 200 datasets to do it. We recommend that you closely analyse the data showing that the population of big fish has been decimated while small fish are now overly abundant. Or else you can leave it on your screen as a digital pet and a grim modern Tamagotchi.

Mona Chalabi

Vaccine will prevent a disease that causes severe birth defects and miscarriages in livestock

A new vaccine is being made available to prevent a disease which causes severe birth defects and miscarriages in livestock, it was announced today.

Schmallenberg virus, which emerged in the Netherlands and Germany in 2011 and has been seen in cattle and sheep in the UK since early 2012, has been identified on more than 1,700 farms across the country.

Adult animals infected during pregnancies in the autumn by virus-carrying midges, thought to have blown across the Channel, have given birth to deformed or stillborn lambs and calves.

UK farmers are the first in the European Union to have access to a vaccine against Schmallenberg, which will be available for vaccinating livestock this summer before most animals become pregnant again.

The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) has licensed veterinary pharmaceutical company MSD Animal Health to provide the "Bovolis SBV" vaccine.

VMD chief executive, Pete Borriello, said: "This is the culmination of intensive activity on the part of MSD Animal Health and the VMD to make a safe and effective vaccine available to tackle Schmallenberg.

"Without in any way compromising the scientific rigour of our assessment process, we accelerated our assessment so that a vaccine will be available this summer."

This means it will be possible to vaccinate sheep and cattle before most of them become pregnant. This is important as it is during pregnancy when exposure to the virus can cause damage to the foetus."

The government's deputy chief veterinary officer, Alick Simmons, said: "The vaccine will give extra assurance against this disease on top of the natural immunity we expect sheep and cattle to develop after initial exposure."

• Farming
• Agriculture
• Animals

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While biofuels have facilitated slow but positive change for farmers in Brazil, other countries have been less successful

Biofuels have long been hailed as one of the potential answers to climate change. Their environmental credentials are controversial, but a handful of countries are now looking at them from another angle entirely: they want to use biofuels to try to reduce poverty among rural smallholder farmers.

Such efforts are in full force in Brazil, a country that is home to both a sizeable biofuels industry and about 4.1m small-scale family farms. But while some of the country's biofuels policies have fallen short, others have proved a boon to the rural poor. Smallholder farmers have seen their incomes rise thanks to the introduction of more progressive standards and new rules on contract negotiations.

"The numbers show that the farmers in Brazil … have been earning far more than they were before – not only in absolute quantities, but also as a percentage of the whole value of the [biofuels production] chain," says Mairon Bastos Lima, a PhD researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the author of a recent briefing paper (pdf) that looked at the social impacts of biofuels polices in Brazil, India, and Indonesia. Bastos Lima describes the Brazilian biofuels policies as "the best example" he has seen.

In most cases, he says, smallholder farmers who cultivate biofuels are included only in the lowest level of the production chain. That means that most of the wealth from production accrues to the refiners, or to the company that is managing the process, not to the farmers themselves. But in Brazil this has started to change, albeit slowly.

This success, Bastos Lima says, is largely due to the fact that Petrobras, Brazil's state-run energy giant, created its own biofuels division in 2008. The new state company took over from the private firms that had been running the government's biofuels production contracts with smallholder farmers in north-eastern Brazil.

When Petrobras came on the scene, the company introduced a number of changes. It required that farmers devote no more than 20% of their arable land to growing the precursors to biofuels; the rest of their farms had to be reserved for edible crops. This "mixed food and feed-stock" policy helps to guarantee that the farmers maintain a steady food supply, regardless of what happens in the biofuels market.

Petrobras also introduced a policy of including social movements in all of its contract negotiations with smallholder farmers. Under the current policy, any contractual agreement with farmers is not valid until a rural social movement has signed off on it.

"This balances the bargaining power," says Bastos Lima, "because suddenly you cannot put pressure on one individual household" to accept the terms of an agreement. The impact of the change is already being felt.

"Social movements had to fight really hard with Petrobras to actually stand their ground and say, 'no, we want to climb up at least one step in the value chain … and have more of an income'," says Bastos Lima.

The number of households involved in Brazil's smallholder biofuels production programme quadrupled between 2008 and 2010; more than 100,000 families are now involved. In 2010, the Brazilian government bought roughly $635m (£413m) worth of biofuels feedstock from its smallholder farmers, a fivefold increase from two years earlier.

But while Brazil has had some success with its efforts to include smallholder farmers in the biofuels production chain, things have not always gone so well in other places, warns Bastos Lima.

"The case of India has been particularly disastrous," he says, noting that the Indian government placed a huge bet on a plant called jatropha, which was widely hailed as the next big breakthrough in biofuels back in 2007 and 2008. Inspired by promising scientific studies, the government called for the cultivation of jatropha on more than 11m hectares (27m acres) of land. But then reality set in: the crop's yields were disappointing, and many Indian farmers were left with reduced incomes, coupled with a smaller supply of food to give their own families.

Such experiences demonstrate why more work needs to be done to understand the social consequences of biofuels production, says Chris Charles, a project manager in the Geneva office of the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

"There's a real lack of research – quantitative and qualitative research – assessing … the extent of the negative or positive impacts on smallholder farmers," says Charles. "Campaigning groups publish very emotional pieces showing small farmers in Asia, for example, being displaced from their land by large monoculture biofuel operations. [But] it's hard to know how academic or rigorous that analysis is."

• Environmental sustainability
• Biofuels
• Farming
• Brazil
• Americas

Paige McClanahan
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The company, which grows 25% of Scottish farmed salmon, will join Aquaculture Stewardship council's strict new scheme

One of the world's largest fish farm companies, Marine Harvest, has voluntarily agreed to much tougher limits on its pesticides use and seal killing by joining a strict new environment scheme.

Marine Harvest will join the Aquaculture Stewardship council, a new accreditation scheme championed by WWF, after coming under repeated attack for heavy use of toxic chemicals, seal-killing and major outbreaks of sea lice and salmon diseases.

The Norwegian-owned company, which grows 25% of all Scotland's farmed salmon, has promised to put all its UK fish farms through ASC accreditation by the end of this decade in what supporters of the scheme believes could transform the environmental sustainability of salmon farming.

It will force the firm to put a strict cap on escapes of farmed salmon – a problem with critics believe threatens the survival of wild salmon stocks – and cut chemical treatments. Under the scheme, the killing of seals as a precautionary measure to protect salmon will be drastically reduced but not entirely stopped. It would also require the company to only use fishfeed derived from Marine Stewardship Council-accredited wild fish stocks or other, non-wild sources of protein.

The move follows increasing criticism by environment and conservation campaigners about the Freedom Foods scheme operated by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which only applies the minimum legal standards on environmental protection and has been widely criticised for failing to penalise fish farms that breach standards.

Under the ASC scheme, said Lang Banks, director WWF Scotland, the company's farms would lose it accreditation if it fails to meet standards.

Guy Linley-Adams, of the Salmon & Trout Association, which has been highly critical of the fish farming industry, said: "This isn't the end of the story. Marine Harvest still have fish-farms in the wrong places, as do all fish-farmers. They are too near to wild salmonid rivers threatening wild fish conservation and those farms need to be relocated."

• Fishing
• Food
• Wildlife
• Conservation
• Animals
• Marine life
• Scotland

Severin Carrell
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Here is a brand new mold and the first mold I tried and abused.  That pour I did in my makeshift brick oven took over an hour to finally melt the silver. I have done about 15 more pours with mold #1 and it is just about finished.   All that pressure from the torch really eats away the graphite.  I have added a "pressure shield" to the mix and with a 5 minute melt time in the mini micro, I'm getting much less mold degradation.  I think I can get at least 30 ingots out of a mold now.  Did 14 in total today.  I was reluctant to pursue this venture using propane when I discovered the big solar lens couldn't do the job until I figured out that one 20 lb load of gas is way more than enough to do 100 ingots  The Ben'n'Bud Feed Fundraiser will officially start in about 2 weeks.   88,101,65,0,C,.25  

Melissa Block talks to Jon Hamilton about the science of tornadoes.

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Tornado strength is currently measured on what is called the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which gives the tornado a rating from 0 to 5 based on estimated wind speeds and the severity of the damage.

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Coombs Dale, Derbyshire: The land is scarred and nicked, like the face of a veteran fighter, but the blackthorn is smothered in blossom

The high limestone country north of Longstone Edge has its own strange energy, a consequence perhaps of the quarrying there, both ancient and modern. The land is scarred and nicked, like the face of a veteran fighter, a blue-collar countryside.

It's also rich with tales of horror, now recruited for the purposes of tourism. The notorious highwayman Black Harry, hanged at nearby Wardlow Mires, has lent his name to a network of bridleways for horse riders to explore.

Running across this landscape is the drawn bow of Coombs Dale, with its own legacy of mine workings but now a refuge for nature in the green mosaic of white-walled pasture with, in Ted Hughes' phrase, its "reluctant nibbled grass".

One moment I'm on the main road through Stoney Middleton Dale, rattling with quarry traffic, the next in an almost secret world, at the bottom of a steep-sided valley, and bathed in spring sunshine.

Coombs Dale is known for its rarities: dark green fritillaries that congregate near Sallet Hole Mine, the woolly-headed thistle, maiden pink and leadwort. The southern slopes are covered in cowslips.

Alongside the path are hazel and willows thick with catkins. But the real pleasure is the blossom smothering the blackthorn. Last month I cycled up this lane under grey skies and barely noticed them. Now I'm shrouded in their scent.

It's not just the raw appeal of the dale threaded with creamy white flowers. Blackthorn has an almost sculptural appeal, the thick thorns spreading horizontally, which adds a spiky depth to the overall effect.

Most wood is useful, but blackthorn has an intimate, tactile quality to its utility: wands, walking sticks, shillelaghs and, in the hands of Black Rod, parliamentary doorknockers.

By the time I emerge into the upper dale, the sky has darkened and a brief hailstorm stings my face while the lambs curl up for warmth.

• Wild flowers
• Spring
• Derbyshire
• Rural affairs
• Peak District
• United Kingdom
• England
• Mining
• Plants

Ed Douglas
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As a result of the rush to make quick money, open-air refineries have been set up in al-Raqqa province

Mona Mahmood

Illegal logging and unchecked economic development are taking a devastating toll on forests

In 1968, during the six-month siege of Khe Sanh — one of the most bitterly fought battles of the Vietnam War — a special U.S. Air Force outfit flew defoliation missions. Called the Ranch Handers, their motto was: "Only you can prevent a forest."

They may not have succeeded in their goal, but rapid development in Vietnam and the surrounding nations of the greater Mekong region is on the way to accomplishing what American defoliation missions could not: The widespread destruction of Indochina's forests and the biodiversity they harbor.

Stand on Khe Sanh today, and it's remarkably tranquil. Nearly all the metal from the old Marine base has been scavenged and sold to scrap merchants. The battlefield is now part of a vast green coffee plantation; all that remains of the airstrip that was the lifeline for U.S. Marines and Army soldiers is a length of reddish dirt.

The fate of the forests around Khe Sanh exemplifies what is happening today in Vietnam and the greater Mekong region, which also includes Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Although some large blocks of forest remain intact, the pace of deforestation is dizzying, threatening the region's remarkable biodiversity, which includes more than 1,700 species discovered in the last 15 years alone. Many of the forests in Vietnam have been cut down for the furniture export market and the trees replaced by coffee bushes; in less than 10 years, Vietnam has gone from zero to number two in global coffee production. So much forest has been cleared to feed the growing number of sawmills that loggers have moved across the borders into neighboring Laos and Cambodia, where they are illegally razing forests there.

In addition to widespread, illegal logging, other factors driving this precipitous forest loss include the spread of agriculture in a region with soaring population growth and the construction of dams and other large-scale infrastructure projects.

The scope of the forest loss was highlighted earlier this month by the conservation group WWF, which noted that from 1973, near the end of the Vietnam War, to 2009, the greater Mekong region lost nearly one-third of its remaining forest cover. Vietnam and Thailand suffered the most forest destruction, each losing 43 percent of their forest cover, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by WWF.

WWF concluded that areas of core, undisturbed forest — defined as at least 3.2 square kilometers of pristine woodlands — plunged over the past four decades in Indochina from more than 70 percent to 20 percent. I witnessed this destruction first-hand as I traveled around Vietnam for several months, researching a book on its biodiversity. While hiking near the mountain village of Sa Pa, near the Chinese border, I saw mile-long red clay scars on the sides of the green, tree-covered mountains – the highest in Vietnam. The land was being clear-cut for a controversial new dam, displacing many of the local Dao tribespeople in the process.

In another part of the country, a few hours from Hanoi in the Red River delta, a wildlife biologist and I could see the remnants of famous limestone-rich hills that had been pulverized to feed a nearby cement factory. The factory was located close to the Van Long nature reserve, home to one of the last bands of wild, leaf-eating monkeys known as "Delacour's langurs."

Scientists and conservationists working in Vietnam and surrounding nations say the region now stands at a crossroads. It can allow present rates of deforestation to continue, in which case, WWF says, by 2030 "only 14 percent of the greater Mekong's remaining forests will consist of contiguous habitat capable of sustaining viable populations of many wildlife species." Or Vietnam and its neighbors can take advantage of the natural bounty that remains — forests still cover roughly 50 percent of the region's land area — and choose a more sustainable path that will support reasonable economic development and preserve biodiversity.

The remaining forests in Vietnam are home to what was virtually a "lost world" containing wildlife unknown to the outside — so much biodiversity that for the past 15 years an average of two new species per week have been discovered by scientists. Some of these creatures are spectacular, including the Javan rhino, barking deer, fishing cat, ferret-badger, finless porpoise, Irrawaddy dolphin, giant Mekong catfish, and a creature called the saola, which looks like a goat but is genetically closer to an ox.

One University of Hanoi biologist, Vo Quy, eminence grise of Indochina conservation, is convinced that many other creatures are still waiting to be found. "Local people are always finding things that we scientists don't know about," he said to me.

But things are changing swiftly in Vietnam, which — at 127,240 square miles — is only a little smaller than Germany. In Vo Quy's words, when it comes to protecting the region's wildlife, "the peace is more dangerous than war."

With the country opening up to the outside world under an economic restructuring in the mid-1990s, Vietnam's economy has been growing by an average of 7 percent a year for the past decade. Like many countries in the region, Vietnam has a young and rapidly growing population, which has expanded by nearly one-third since 1979, reaching nearly 90 million today. (In the region around Cuc Phuong National Park, Vietnam's first national park and home to many conservation efforts, the average family has 6.7 children.)

As wildlife biologist Alan Rabinowitz, chief executive officer of the conservation organization, Panthera, described the country's rapid development: "Vietnam is a miniature China on amphetamines."

The inner workings of this rapid growth are not pretty, especially if one looks into the furniture export trade, one of the country's top five export earners and a major cause of the deforestation. (The United States is by far Vietnam's biggest furniture market, almost three times larger than the next largest, Japan. Imports from Asia now make up 70 percent of the American furniture market, a 4,000-percent increase in less than ten years.)

Vietnam has even weaker unions and lower wages than China, along with fewer labor laws, heavier subsidies to state-sponsored industries, and bigger tax breaks to favored companies. Consequently, furniture manufacturers in China are already moving their operations from industrial cities near Hong Kong to Vietnam.

While the mills are in Vietnam, about 80 percent of the wood itself comes from neighboring Laos and Cambodia. Much of the timber is cut in protected reserves in those countries — where laws are weak and enforcement is minimal — and illegally smuggled across the border to Vietnam in spite of export restrictions, according to an undercover investigation by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

In a 2008 exposé, the EIA documented the timber industry's severe deforestation of the greater Mekong region.

The organization's field investigators made secret films during undercover visits to furniture factories and found that "criminal networks have now shifted their attention to looting the vanishing forests of Laos."

But because the furniture export trade is worth more $2.4 billion annually to Vietnam alone, authorities turn a blind eye, according to the EIA. Corruption, large and small, has accompanied boom times.

One wildlife biologist, Tilo Nadler, director of the Endangered Primate Rescue Center in Cuc Phuong, witnessed long lines of trucks loaded with tropical hardwood at the Cambodian border, on their way to factories near Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City. Nadler said that even in his area, far from the border, local attitudes toward protection were so bad that a mob had attacked a ranger station three years ago after the rangers had arrested some illegal loggers. Rangers earn little money and have low status, he said.

The impacts of this wholesale devastation are substantial in one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. As the WWF report rightly notes, there have been enormous declines in the range and numbers of several of the region's iconic species, including the tiger, Asian elephant, Irrawaddy dolphin, and saola. Where once there were thousands of saola, now there are hundreds. The population of Asian elephants has dropped from hundreds to dozens. Rangers used to sight tigers roaming Cuc Phuong — which has been cut in two by a highway — but no more. And in 2011, the Javan rhinoceros was confirmed as extinct in Vietnam.

According to Nadler, biologist Vo Quy, WWF, and other experts, time still remains to reverse the runaway deforestation and habitat loss of recent decades and begin better preserving the greater Mekong region's forests and biodiversity. "I'm an optimist, but only if we have real government support to protect our special places," Nadler said. He cited the need to make difficult decisions, which may mean that biologists have to give up resisting a dam such as the one at Sa Pa, in order to save threatened wild lands elsewhere.

WWF said governments in the region need to do a far better job of safeguarding the parks and reserves that already exist since "many protected areas exist in name only." The group also stressed that unless regional government begin to rein in illegal logging and uncontrolled development, "natural forest habitats, along with their resident wildlife, face virtual elimination outside of protected areas."

Although the Vietnamese government has heralded its reforestation efforts, the fact is that they largely consist of monoculture tree plantations that harbor limited biodiversity, scientists say.

A key factor is local community involvement. The Van Long park, for example, was created as a result of local initiatives. Villagers living next to Van Long take a sense of pride in the reserve and have an economic stake in an ecotourism resort being built there.

In Southeast Asia, any long-term, sustainable, conservation projects require popular support; without that, formal edicts or restrictions on timber cutting from the central government mean nothing.

As a popular saying goes in Vietnam: "The decrees of the emperor end at the village gate."

• Deforestation
• Trees and forests

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Flooding, often during monsoons and sometimes accompanied by typhoons, displaced the most people last year

Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where armchair experts gave up fighting over whether climate change is occurring?

This spring, I began receiving calls and emails from colleagues about a strange little book that was mailed to environmental science professors around the country. This was a big mailing, in total, a reported 100,000 copies were sent out. What was it about this little book that got us talking? Many things. First, a coordinated mailing of a book is unusual. But what is more unusual is a book that purports to be the "real story" about climate change, with graphs, figures, and tables. It came with a foreward by Senator Harrison Schmitt who is well known for misrepresenting the science. There was also an accompanying letter by Fred Singer. Many of us already know of Fred Singer; he was focused on in an excellent book by Dr Naomi Oreskes who catalogued his history of undermining the science and concerns related to second-hand smoke, ozone depletion, and acid rain. The letter from Fred Singer was on letterhead from the Heartland Institute which is a radical organisation that had compared belief in global warming to murder.

While author of the book, Mr Goreham, is described as a "researcher on environmental issues", a literature search for scientific publications revealed nothing.

But all this, by itself, doesn't mean much. I mean we are all entitled to our opinions on any subject, even if we don't know much about it, aren't we? Sure… but your opinions should be based in fact. With this in mind, let's examine some of the claims made in the book.

The best way to evaluate a claim is to go to its source. It appears that the author had ample references to support his claims. The only problem… the reference list isn't included in the book, nor is an index. Now why would an author reference papers but not list them in the book? I had to dig around to find the missing references so I could fact-check the text.

In his discussion of past climate variations, Mr Goreham used graphics from a contrarian website (CO2Science); I have previously debunked this site. He had other sources as well. In the book, Goreman references a graph which he claims he obtained from the 1995 IPCC report on climate change. The problem is the figure isn't there. He must have lifted the figure from a different report. Perhaps that was just a typo, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. On the same page, however, he cites a graph as originating from a 1998 paper by Mike Mann. That, too, is incorrect, the figure wasn't in the Mann paper. I wrote to Steve, asking him to clarify where these images had originated. He responded that I was right, he had made mistakes. He promised to correct these errors in future editions of his book.

I then reviewed the other papers he cited, did they really show a medieval period that was global and warmer than today? One of the authors that Mr. Goreham cited regarding the presence of a medieval warm period (MWP) was Dr Delia Oppo. I wrote to Oppo who works at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She responded:

I do not think that data from one location should be used to assess whether globally, the MWP was warmer or colder than today. As you say, there is considerable evidence to the contrary (mostly from tree rings). Further, as you also noted, even if it WAS as warm during the MWP as it is today it does not follow logically that the recent warming is natural.

Goreham went on to make statements linking changes in the Pacific Ocean to temperature trends however comparing his own graphs on pages 67 and 68 shows that they do not match very well. Surely he should have caught this inconvenient inconsistency during the editing process?

What about his claim that scientists ignore the sun? That too is pure fantasy.

His statements that temperatures have been flat or declining in the past few years? Also not true. But if Mr Goreham won't take my word for it, maybe he will take the word of the Koch-brothers funded study which agrees with me.

What about his claim that humans are responsible for only a very small fraction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Wrong again. Humans are responsible for approximately 40% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today. In fact, Goreham makes an elementary-school error by confusing gross emissions with net emissions. This is a mistake that anyone with a bank account can see. It is like the difference between the paycheck deposited in your bank account and the amount of money that remains after paying all of your bills. He also gets confused about how long elevated carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere. The high levels of carbon dioxide which results from human emissions will persist for decades and centuries, far longer than the 5-6 year molecule-specific residence time he claims.

What about his comments that the ocean will just absorb the carbon we emit? Wrong again. But then again, Goreham never claimed to be good a chemistry.

What about his claims that "all major climate models assume positive feedback"? Wrong again.

But it gets even worse. On one page (83), Gorehman admits that water vapor is an important greenhouse gas. But then just a few pages later (88) he states that the effect of water vapor may act to reduce warming. Not only does Goreham disagree with real scientists, he disagrees with himself. Now, in his defence, Goreham may be confusing water vapor with clouds. But real scientists know they are not the same thing. In fact, Goreham cites two studies by Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer that don't even deal with water vapor feedback. I'm going to go out on a limb here but I challenge Mr Goreham to get the very scientists he cites (Lindzen or Spencer) to agree with him that increased water vapor may not cause warming.

Just a few more errors, stick with me. On page 91 Goreham claims the IPCC "discounts" the sun. This is absurd and the quote he supplies is obviously misunderstood. What about his claims that the Antarctic is "growing". Real science disagrees here and here. His statement that the Greenland Ice Sheet is "healthy"? Not according to these real scientists or these.

At this point, I just had to skip to the end of the book and hope it was the end of the errors. Not so. At the close of the book (page 238), Goreham discusses ocean temperature measurements down to depths of 2,000 meters to determine how much heat is entering ocean waters. But then, he shows a "surprising result" that there has been no change in ocean heat content. What is "surprising" is that the data he shows isn't for ocean depths of 2,000 meters at all. In fact, he only shows data for a small fraction of the ocean waters. Had he shown the correct data, he would have come to the correct conclusion – oceans are warming.

So let's put all these errors, misinterpretations, and misguided comments aside. We know Mr Goreham isn't a climate scientist, in fact, isn't a publishing scientist at all. He admitted that in an email to me. What we should reflect upon is the absurdity of this mailing. Who really thinks that this glossy-covered book will sway real climate experts? Not a chance. It is much more likely that this was a major waste of time and effort. Why would such effort be spent? Why would the author now be promoted as a speaker who charges up to $5,000 per event as someone who can "deliver the real story" when he fails miserably in print?

Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where armchair experts gave up fighting over whether climate change is occurring and instead spend their time working on solutions? Solutions that we could implement today that would not only clean up the environment but would also create jobs, improve international security, and diversify energy supplies? Until we move on to that discussion, we scientists have the thankless job of fact-checking persons like Mr Goreham. It's a boring job but someone has to do it.

Dr. John Abraham
University of St. Thomas
Climate Science Rapid Response Team
Climate Science Legal Defense Fund

• Climate change
• Climate change

John Abraham
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More than 32 million people fled their homes last year because of disasters such as floods, storms and earthquakes

Rates for one-off payments will be increased to support the market as renewable heat incentive delays continue

Payments to help householders switch from heating their homes with oil to greener systems such as biomass boilers and solar thermal will double in most cases, the government is to announce on Monday.

The grants were intended as a stopgap measure until the start this summer of the government's bigger renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme – ongoing payments akin to the feed-in tariff for solar panels but for generating low-carbon heat. But in March, the RHI was postponed until 2014, in a delay that industry said it was "bitterly disappointed" with.

From today, rates for the one-off payments, the Renewable Heat Premium Payment (RHPP) scheme, will be increased to support the market through the limbo imposed by the delay.

Energy and climate change minister Greg Barker said: "I want to kickstart this exciting new market for consumer renewable heat technologies. This time limited, big increase in the value of vouchers for hardworking people who want to do something positive to install money saving green heating in their homes, should be a real boost for this growing green sector."

Payments for ground source heat pumps, which extract warmth from underground, nearly double from £1,250 to £2,300, and air source heat pumps – which take heat from air outside a home – rise from £850 to £1,300. Biomass boilers that provide a theoretically carbon-neutral supply of hot water and heating go from £950 to £2,000, and solar panels that heat water double to £600. The total value of the fund for the payments is £12m.

More than 10,000 people have used the vouchers since they were first introduced in 2011.

Gaynor Hartnell, chief executive of trade body the Renewable Energy Association, said: "It's welcome that these grants are being continued and the levels increased. They need to stay in place until the proper heat payment scheme for householders commences. This has been delayed on a number of occasions and we hope this will be the last time this stop-gap measure is needed."

However, under new rules announced today, householders wanting to take advantage of the payments will first have to pay around £100-150 for an assessment under the government's new flagship energy efficiency scheme. The green deal, launched in January, allows householders to take out a loan with companies who undertake work such as upgrading old boilers and lagging lofts.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change said that the increased payments were partly to offset the cost of the green deal assessments, which it said would "help householders think about how renewable heat could fit with energy efficiency improvements for their home".

Renewable heating technologies largely only make financial sense for homes that are off the gas grid. Most householders using a gas-fired boiler would be unlikely to recoup the initial outlay of a solar thermal system for more than 30 years, under the proposals for the domestic RHI.

• Energy
• Energy bills
• Consumer affairs
• Household bills
• Energy efficiency
• Ethical and green living

Adam Vaughan
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Behind-the-scenes footage of the illegal live-export trade in dogs - from rounded-up strays to stolen pets - destined for human consumption