Energy use - Some resolutions for the new year

This is the last time I shall write on this log in 2007. I started writing at the end of October and this makes the sixtieth post. The eve of the New Year is a time when resolutions to change for the better are traditionally made I shall offer you four New Year’s resolutions to [...]

Passing the hat round for the Co-Op

Unfortunately in their search for the Holy Grail politicians have in turn adopted various environmentally produced energy technologies. The first to be adopted and then discarded were photovoltaic cells.

It is hard to explain photovoltaics in layman’s terms and can be quite hard to understand so if you don’t want to read the technical stuff, [...]

The future of natural gas

Most people in Britain use natural gas to heat their homes and their water space heating, although I think that most people should be using solar panels instead of carbon dioxide producing fossil fuel. However, for the time being at least the vast majority of people do use fossil fuel for these tasks and the [...]

Hard decisions

I remember Tony Blair frequently telling the nation that from time to time leaders have to make hard decisions and that he was the person responsible for making them. That was his job. He had to make hard decisions. 
Gordon Brown also thinks it is necessary to convince the nation that he is no softie and [...]

A wonderful quiet December day

 I am writing this on the shortest day of the year, and will upload it later, in case the festivities overcome my task of commenting on something almost every day. 
I have written so much about the weather, and always, I see, in the gloomiest terms. Well today has been a wonderful quiet December day. The [...]

Changing construction rules for a new climate - Building for the future weather

We are now close to the end of December. The weather has been cold, but very cold. I think that there have only been a few days when you have had to scrape frost off the windscreen of your car. In this cold weather most of us have forgotten about the floods that affect so [...]

Imprisoned without trial but recalled to life

Mr Jamil El-Banna is supposed to live in London. He came from Jordan and the Home Office granted him refugee status in 2000. In 2002 he planned to set up a peanut oil processing plant in the Gambia. In November 2002 he was first arrested in the United Kingdom under anti terrorist legislation when he [...]

Microgeneration and Northern Rock? Darling, it’s between a northern rock and a hard place

Gordon Brown has finally admitted it. He has not ruled out nationalising the Northern Rock. When you walk down a path putting one foot in front of another you should know where the path leads. When he and his chum Alistair Darling decided to rescue the bank, rather than the money of depositors of the [...]

Let’s restrain detention without trial

If you are in the United Kingdom and are suspected of being involved in terrorism you can be arrested and detained by the police for up to twenty eight days without be charged with any criminal offence. The Government plans to increase this 28 day period to 42 days, citing the great threat and complexity [...]

Dirty coal

Iowa is right in the middle of the mid west, of America, and is the home state of about three million Americans. You might not have heard of one of the most renowned Iowans but he was born in 1941 and has probably done more than any American to raise awareness about global warming. I write [...]