Climate change models - right or wrong?

The trouble with modeling climate change is that there are so many models. It is important, of course, to do your best to see how the climate will change but that is so hard, so complex, that different models show different results. It is hard enough to predict next week’s weather accurately so we cannot [...]

Gordon Ramsay, nouveau environmentalist

On Friday morning I heard Gordon Ramsay talk on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 about banning out of season fruit and vegetable imports. He also suggested fining chefs who use out of season produce. Mr Ramsay, who is a highly successful chef and businessman, thinks that it is terribly important to have a [...]

Are cyclones in Burma our fault?

Over a hundred thousand souls have lost their lives in Burma as a result of a cyclone. Many more are likely to perish in the aftermath when diease arrives in the wake of the devastation of the infrastructure.
A tropical cyclone is an event of extreme weather. They can happen frequently but a cyclone with [...]

Why we do need solar systems

One of the arguments that people deploy against solar system is the cost. Because they claim “you don’t need a solar system” the cost of a solar system should be treated as the cost as an additional appliance, a bit like the Energy Savings’ Trust curious concept that solar systems are lifestyle choices.
Some people think [...]

Flooding and the need to decentralise energy supply

In all the uncertainties about climate change one thing is very clear. In the United Kingdom we are experiencing more extreme weather and we are feeling the effects of extreme weather more extremely than ever. I think that what is happening is that climate change is having an effect on our environment in ways that [...]

Mr Brown’s own yardstick and climate change

Mr Gordon Brown’s recent speech was about climate change and as you would expect he tried to put a very positive emphasis on the government’s climate change policy. It is worth looking at the speech in detail so that we can fully measure the government’s climate change policy against a proper yardstick. I shall give [...]

Uranium and being kind to Kazakhstan

Regular readers of these writing will recall that I have been critical of Business Secretary John Hutton’s call for a nuclear energy renaissance; I am sure that the nuclear industry cannot guarantee safe disposal of waste and I have also been sure that the carbon emission costs of nuclear are nowhere near as low as [...]

Eco bullying

Everyone talks a good environmental game, but very few actually know the rules, so the standard of play is very poor indeed. In the United Kingdom we have a series of disconnected environmental “signals” and schemes and consultations.
 
We have to be dragged almost screaming by the European Union into any cogent environmental laws and [...]

Green milk and greener homes

I have already written about the effect of industrial farming on the environment. There are non-industrial ways of farming, when the farmers do not farm intensively – for example when they farm “organically” to Soil Association standards, but these ways still affect our environment.

Trying to capture carbon

Carbon capture or sequestration is an existing technology that works in a limited way. In the North Sea Norwegian oil has some of its carbon dioxide content sequestrated before the oil reaches the refineries, but I cannot imagine how it will be possible to remove carbon from fuel, because the carbon that is released by [...]