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Schmallenberg vaccine available to UK farmers this summer
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."
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Categories: Environment
Biofuels a boon for Brazil's rural poor, but obstacles remain elsewhere | Paige McClanahan
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 Vrije Universiteit 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."
• This article was corrected on 21 May 2013. The Institute for Environmental Studies is at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, not the University of Amsterdam
Paige McClanahanguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Categories: Environment
Marine Harvest agrees to limit pesticides and seal killings
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."
Severin Carrellguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Categories: Environment
it's all about the mold
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
Categories: Sustainable SW Blogs
Forecasters Had Chance To Warn Moore, Okla., Before Tornado
Melissa Block talks to Jon Hamilton about the science of tornadoes.
Categories: Environment
Measuring The Power Of Deadly Tornadoes
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.
Categories: Environment
Country diary: Coombs Dale, Derbyshire
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.
Ed Douglasguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Categories: Environment
Syria's makeshift oil refineries: 'It is like hell' – video
As a result of the rush to make quick money, open-air refineries have been set up in al-Raqqa province
Mona Mahmood
Categories: Environment
Sweeping across south-east Asia
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."
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Categories: Environment
Worst natural disasters of 2012 by numbers displaced – in pictures
Flooding, often during monsoons and sometimes accompanied by typhoons, displaced the most people last year
Categories: Environment
Heartland Institute wastes real scientists' time – yet again | John Abraham
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
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Categories: Environment
Climate disasters displace millions of people worldwide
More than 32 million people fled their homes last year because of disasters such as floods, storms and earthquakes
Categories: Environment
Green heating payments to double for householders
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.
Adam Vaughanguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Categories: Environment
Dog-meat mafia fuels Thailand's canine trade - video
Behind-the-scenes footage of the illegal live-export trade in dogs - from rounded-up strays to stolen pets - destined for human consumption
Categories: Environment
Protection held back by 'skills gap'
Government taskforce calls for plant health to be put on a par with animal health and for the creation of a plant officer
Efforts to protect Britain's trees from diseases and pests such as ash dieback and caterpillars that strip oaks of leaves are being hampered by a "skills gap", a government-appointed taskforce has warned.
The taskforce, set up in the wake of a fungus that kills ash trees being found across England last year, also called for plant health to be put on a par with animal health, and for the creation of a chief plant health officer akin to the government's chief vet.
"There has been an erosion in the UK and elsewhere of certain crucial field- and research-based expertise necessary to ensure tree health and plant biosecurity," said the taskforce's final report, published on Monday.
Prof Chris Gilligan, the Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity Expert Taskforce's chair and head of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Cambridge, told the Guardian: "We've been complacent for a long time [on the amount of plant experts the UK has], the complacency extends to tree health and also to plant and crop disease more generally."
He said the number of people working in this field was in "the tens", and that not enough scientists were being trained. "There are very few people being trained in these relatively important areas, and that is true in the UK and in the EU. Very, very few people are being trained in epidemiology [the study of how disease spreads] in this field." The report called for the government to address the skills gap.
Prof James Brown, president of the British Society of Plant Pathology, has previously said that job losses in plant science were "severe" and that "Britain is not producing graduates with the expertise needed to identify and control plant diseases in our farms and woodlands." Roger Coppock, head of analysts at the Forestry Commission told MPs last year that "the number of plant pathologists is very small".
Gilligan said there was "a need for significantly more investment" into researching tree pests and disease, but that would be offset against the savings of responding to such problems once they had hit. The government is to pay landowners to remove young ash trees to stop the spread of Chalara fraxinea, the fungus that causes ash tree "die back".
Proposals are on the table for research councils and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to spend £7.5m extra on tree health and plant biosecurity.
The taskforce's report also recommends the creation of a single national Plant Health Risk Register, which would put more emphasis on prioritising which pests and diseases to tackle.
The environment secretary, Owen Paterson, said work to implement the register and "procedures to predict, monitor, and control pests and diseases" would start immediately, but he would respond to the report's other recommendations later this summer. He was speaking at the Chelsea Flower Show, where the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) garden features leafless willows to illustrate the threat faced by the UK's trees.
Sue Holden, chief executive at the Woodland Trust, welcomed the report and Paterson's promise on the register, but said more funding was needed if plant health was to reach parity with animal health. "… Last year animal health received 15 times more funding than plant health, so we believe there is still a great deal of work to be done to level the playing field. We hope the government's upcoming spending review will also recognise the scale of the problem and provide Defra with adequate funding and resources not only to put the rest of these important measures in place but to sustain them in the long term," she said.
The report comes just a week after the first cases of ash dieback in the wider environment – outside of nurseries and plantations – was found in Wales. The infected trees in Carmarthenshire are the first confirmed cases in the wild in the west of the UK; the majority of cases in the wider environment are in East Anglia and Kent.
Gilligan said the spread of the fungus to Wales "concerns me like it would everyone else, but it doesn't surprise me".
Paterson also said the UK was moving to ban imports of sweet chestnut trees from countries where sweet chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) – which has proved fatal for vast swaths of sweet chestnut forests in the eastern US – had taken hold.
Simon Pryor, director of the natural environment at the National Trust, said the review was "much needed", adding: "We are very pleased to see that government is acting straight away to ban the import of sweet chestnut plants from infected areas; this is just the sort of proactive bold action that is needed."
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Categories: Environment
Chelsea flower show: a guide to edible flowers
Visitors to this year's show can pop down to a nearby restaurant and try a flower-based lunch menu. Is it just a novelty – or something worth taking seriously?
As Chelsea flower show gets under way it's not just the gardeners who are putting flowers on the table. Chefs are too. Down the road from the Royal Horticultural extravaganza, Tom Aikens restaurant has a lunch menu bursting with edible blooms. Loch Duart Salmon with viola, violet flowers or poached chicken with marigolds are followed by rose-poached strawberries and washed down with elderflower syrup.
This isn't just a PR stunt, says Aikens who has been cooking with flowers for several years: "Flowers complement dishes in the same way that herbs and spices do," he says. "In savoury dishes, flowers from herbs like rosemary and thyme, which have a short season, add a unique and distinct flavour while, in desserts, roses, lavender and hibiscus all add a subtle, sweet and slightly scented flavour – which works well."
One of the most high-profile chefs to use flowers is René Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen. His dishes include beetroot with thyme flowers, nasturtium flowers with snails, and broad beans with cucumber and mustard flowers. And anyone who read his book, Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine, may find themselves scouring the landscape for delicacies such as sea buckthorn.
Indeed, eating flowers dates back thousands of years. The ancient Greeks put violet petals in their wine, the Romans were partial to cooking with rose – as were the Ottomans, who used their flowers to flavour Turkish delight. Dandelions are thought to be one of the "bitter herbs" mentioned in the Old Testament and, fast forwarding through the centuries, the Victorians added violets, primroses and borage to their salads.
Medieval monks used a flower that Dev Biswal, head chef at the Ambrette in Margate, is currently reviving: the almost forgotten Alexander (also known as horse parsley). Found growing on the sites of former monasteries and along coastal cliff paths, the Alexander flower is greeny yellow with black fruits and has a flavour that falls between celery and parsley (it also makes a decent tipple). "I was drawn to this plant the moment I first encountered it," says Biswal who uses it to spice up his southern Indian-style beef stew. "It has qualities I have always admired – defiant and resilient as well as being crunchy and delicious."
Many cultures use flowers in traditional cooking – squash blossoms in Italian food; saffron flowers in Indian food – and not just for decoration. Spicy flowers such as chive blossoms can be rolled into pasta dough and pickled flower buds (such as nasturtium) used as an alternative to capers, while angelica adds a liquorice flavour to ice-creams and sorbets.
And, of course, a salad shot through with orange nasturtium flowers or stuffed squash flowers has visual impact as well as packing a tasty punch. Check out Great British Chefs for dishes such as duck breast with lavender, beetroot and sweet potatoes or courgette flowers with goat's cheese and violet jelly. If you're keen to experiment, Thomson and Morgan sells a variety of edible flowers online, as does Firstleaf.co.uk. or if you want to forage in the wild look out for these.
As a child, I remember annoying my father by munching my way through his nasturtium flowers, which were intended to add a splash of colour to the front garden rather than a distinct peppery flavour to a salad. But the novelty value of eating flowers was irresistible. My own tiny garden is covered in astroturf. I am not going to impress anyone with my green fingers but, if nothing else, serving dinner guests alexander flowers should give them something to talk about.
Lizzie Enfieldguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Categories: Environment
Pakistan turns off air-conditioners and tells civil servants to ditch socks
New dress code issued to government employees as country endures blackouts of up 20 hours a day amid 40C temperatures
Pakistan has told its civil servants not to wear socks as the country turns off air-conditioners amid soaring temperatures to deal with chronic power cuts.
The government has turned off all air-conditioning in its offices as the country endures blackouts of up to 20 hours a day in some places.
"There shall be no more use of air-conditioners in public offices till such time that substantial improvement in the energy situation takes place," a cabinet directive said. As part of a new dress code, moccasins or sandals must be worn without socks.
The power shortages have sparked violent protests and crippled key industries, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs in a country already beset by high unemployment, a failing economy, widespread poverty and a Taliban insurgency.
The "load-shedding" means many families cannot pump water, let alone run air-conditioners, with disastrous knock-on effects on health and domestic life.
Frustration over the power cuts contributed to the former ruling party's poor showing in the 11 May general election.
Two ministers in charge of water and power explained what could be done to end power cuts in parts of the country enduring temperatures of 40C and above – absolutely nothing, it seems, except raise prices. Ministers Musadiq Malik and Sohail Wajahat Siddiqui "expressed their inability to overcome the crisis", the Daily Times quoted them as telling a news conference in Lahore on Monday.
"They have termed financial constraints as a major, and incompetence as a minor, hurdle in resolving the issue," the newspaper said. "Presenting the realistic picture, the ministers announced that they were going to increase the price of electricity and gas for all sectors."
They gave no details but said the problem would get worse before it got better. About two-thirds of Pakistan's energy is generated by oil and gas, and there are widespread gas shortages, with cars run on compressed natural gas queuing up for hours overnight to fill their tanks.
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Categories: Environment
Syngenta photography award 2013
Jan Brykczynski has been announced as winner of this year's Syngenta photography award
Categories: Environment
Rare crane egg given 24-hour guard
The first common crane egg laid in western Britain for more than 400 years has been given a round-the-clock guard
The first common crane egg laid in western Britain for more than 400 years has been given a round-the-clock guard, conservationists said.
The nesting pair that produced the egg are part of the Great Crane Project, which has been rearing cranes in captivity since 2010 and reintroducing them to the Somerset Levels and Moors where they would have been found centuries ago.
The egg laid at a nest at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust's (WWT) Slimbridge Wetland Centre is the first known to be laid by the project's cranes, which were hand-reared at the centre and the oldest of which only reached maturity this year.
Once widespread in Britain, the species was driven to extinction as a breeding bird by hunting and habitat loss by 1600, although a small population has been established in the Norfolk Broads since 1979.
The public can watch the nesting pair from hides, and a long lens video link has been set up to give visitors to the wetland centre and online a close-up view.
The video cameras will also assist the guards protecting the egg against egg collectors. Egg collecting has been illegal in the UK for almost 60 years but a few people are still known to raid nests.
WWT's Nigel Jarrett said: "Cranes are an iconic part of British wildlife and one that was all but lost for centuries.
"There is a long way to go before cranes become widespread again, but it is absolutely momentous to see this egg laid at Slimbridge."
He added: "The parents of this egg were hand-reared here at Slimbridge and have thrived through their first three years on the wetlands of the Somerset Moors thanks to the help and support of the local community, particularly the farmers."
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Categories: Environment
Calif. Law To Require Ships To Cut Pollution
California is about to become the first state to require shore power at its ports. A new law mandates at least half of a shipping line's fleet to shut down their diesel engines and plug into shore-side electric power when they unload their cargo. It's part of a larger effort to cut pollution at the state's busiest ports, but costs have been a sticking point.
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Categories: Environment
