Sophistry in action

If you are interested in what the leaders of the nations said about climate change at the failed Copenhagen conference you can see all the speeches at http://www.lowcarboneconomy.com/Low_Carbon_World/Data/Home

What should be cut?

There has been a great deal of political argument in the United Kingdom about budget cuts. The voters know that the Government is spending much more than it can afford. Voters suspect that the Government has been spending much more than we can afford for years now, relying on economic growth (which is not always [...]

The leading investor in renewables is – China

According to some recent analysis by Pew Charitable Trusts in dollar terms China is by far the leading investor in renewable energy, spending more than double than the United States and more than three times than the United Kingdom. China is also making more wind turbines and more photovoltaic cells than any other country so [...]

Spring is late this year

Spring is late this year in London. The trees are in bud but this time last year many of them were in leaf. The hard cold winter, well suited to the hard cold economic environment, has delayed the plants from showing themselves.

The flawed consultation about the third runway at Heathrow

When I have to travel abroad for business I have to fly and when I fly I use Heathrow. I always used British Airways as my airline of choice but being messed around by the strike and finding their standards in some respects deteriorating, I now am open to all reasonable offers. Heathrow is a [...]

Don’t worry about extreme weather, says the Treasury, as well as the Advertising Standards Authority

After the Advertising Standards Agency has ruled in their wisdom that the Government exaggerated the threat of climate change, the Government are at it again, or at least the House of Commons Audit Environmental Committee is. If you apply the ratio decidendi (as the lawyers used to say – which simply means the rationale for [...]

The 2010 Budget and its environmental aspect

Today in the United Kingdom the Chancellor of the Exchequer – effectively the finance minister of the country – laid out his budget statement. Mr Darling headlined his budget as one to secure the recovery. What recovery? Well, the bankers have seen their bonuses recover greatly but for most ordinary people the recession is a [...]

The UK meets is Kyoto target and it is completely irrelevant and meaningless

The United Kingdom signed up to the Kyoto Protocol and promised to reduce its emissions by 12.4% based on its 1990 emissions. Today it reports it has reduced emissions by 22% on the 1990 figure, but does this mean that there have been real reductions in emissions by the United Kingdom.

Air pollution – do we really care?

Air pollution has been with us since humanity discovered fire. It has always caused illness and death. A thousand or more years ago people sat in a poor ventilated buildings with a central fire. They would breathe the fumes of the fire and their health would be damaged. Chimneys were invented to prevent that danger. [...]

Trading in influence

Maybe thing were better years ago, when others sought to serve the public through politics; maybe politicians have always been corrupt, but there are degrees of corruption. After the scandal of Members of Parliament’s expenses, which infected the majority of them, and after we learned about members of the House of Lords, behaving so badly [...]