Sadly, the news doesn’t come without other considerations, since the government refuses any public funding to new nuclear plants except in cases of dangerous emergency.

Feeding the dolphins

There are some pretty banal programmes on television at times, such is the role it plays, but Animal Park – Wild on the West Coast really caught my eye today. It served up the job of a nature programme from California, but it was a real eye opener to some of the ludicrous crap that gets spewed out, and of course funded, in the name of environmentalism. One segment showed how they looked after a sealion with some neurological disease, to the extent of giving the animal an MRI scan, ascertaining it wasn’t going to survive, and then putting it down. If anyone could explain the point of all that to me, I’d be impressed.

Yet the clip which really boiled my noodle was the one which showed how they were exercising bottlenosed dolphins in captivity, in order to measure their heart rates, and ultimately determine how many calories they needed whilst at rest and whilst active. They were then going to use this information to work out how many fish the animals required, and then pass this important information on to the fisheries in the region, essentially intimating that fisheries would be restricted or closed based on the feeding requirements of the dolphins. It really is amazing at times how random ‘research’ can become. It would seem that as long as those cute little dolphins get enough to eat, no one particularly gives a rat’s arse about whether the ecosystem at large is suffering as a result of fishing policies. Plus, you can bet a pretty penny that with all the statistical horse shit they would have to utilise to make any sense out of those pretty useless collections of figures, there will be little correlation between what they would have to tell the fisheries and reality!

Where your next tankload is coming from?

Just where is the EU going with its agricultural policy? With the European Commission endorsing a plan to up the previous goal of a 5.75% market share for biofuels in the overall transport fuel supply by 2012, to 10% by 2020, one has to wonder which part of the EU’s goals is being pushed hardest. From the EU website:

The EU is supporting biofuels with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, boosting the decarbonisation of transport fuels, diversifying fuel supply sources, offering new income opportunities in rural areas and developing long-term replacements for fossil fuel.

Certainly all of these goals would be furthered by such a move by the EU, but which has prompted this raising of targets despite the estimate that most member states will not even achieve the original goal. As a long-term replacement for fossil fuels, the biofuels movement would appear to be unsustainable. Whilst it does offer a new ‘energy farmer’ role to those particularly in the developing world, the biofuels movement will likely set back the move towards sustainable agriculture, and has the potential through furthering intensive farming and monoculture techniques of causing greater environmental damage than the potential harms of global warming.¹ Technically the move may ultimately reduce greenhouse gas emissions, at least insofar as it prevents the further introduction of carbon deposits in fossil fuels from being added to the atmospheric carbon cycle, yet at the moment many biofuels in the market are so inefficient as to be net pollutants.²

All of which leaves the diversification of fuel supply sources. For the greatest efficiency, there is little doubt that biofuels should be burned in power stations rather than mobile internal combustion engines, yet that would appear to be only a secondary aim of this directive. Perhaps the recent EU spats with Russia offer a greater clue to the hasty attempts to diversify fuel supply sources, and leading the charge in this regard is Sweden. Their aim, to make Sweden an oil free society, and to break their dependence upon it by 2020, may seem outlandish. But it is not motivated by the fear that oil is running out.

In the earth’s interior there are very extensive coal-based energy resources, from methane hydrates deep in the oceans and in northerly permafrost areas to unexploited deposits of oil sands and shale oils. The superficial deposits of coal, oil and gas that man makes use of today are the tip of the planet’s enormous energy pyramid. Thus, oil will never run out, neither in a theoretical nor a practical sense.

Sweden’s aims are very similar to those of the EU:

1. To reduce Sweden’s climate impact.
2. To secure Sweden’s supply of energy in the long term.
3. To become a leading nation in the development of new technology for sustainable use of energy and more efficient use of energy.
4. To strengthen our international economic competitiveness.
5. To use and develop the energy resources from forests and fields, “Sweden’s green gold”.³

It would appear then that the true aim of this EU directive has less to with cleaning up the economy through greater reliance on renewable energies, than an attempt to reduce the EU’s heavy reliance on the volatile world oil market. Burning (inefficient) biofuels in combustion engines is not an answer to carbon emissions, long or short term. Will logic intervene and see support for the use of biofuels as petroleum replacements decline? Or will the EU continue to intervene in the hopes that the big buzzwords climate change will allow them to push through seemingly popular policies, ultimately in the name of power politics?

1. If these are indeed caused by carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
2. And quite what is meant by ‘the decarbonisation of transport fuels’ is best left to the PR people.
3. Making Sweden an OIL-FREE Society, Commission on Oil Independence, 21 June 2006, p. 11. Highlights added.

Unfortunately, it is very easy in this ‘information age’ for facts to become distorted and blown out of proportion, particularly by the mainstream media. On a daily basis, news programmes bring us the latest breakthroughs from the cutting edge of science. In Britain this is concomitant with a constant tugging on our heart strings to force the NHS to accept the latest miracle cure for cancer, Alzheimer’s or any other myriad diseases. Of course, the problem is that breakthroughs at the cutting edge of science have a tendency to go wrong, the results of surveys tend to be disproved by later surveys, and false conclusions tentatively fed to the public with phrases like ‘scientists believe’ and ‘recent surveys have shown’ in fact get swallowed as gospel fact.

Such is the problem with the current furore over global warming. Whilst there are some essential facts which can be agreed upon by all parties, the basic link between carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and the warming climate has been virtually set in stone in people’s minds. Yet the evidence is neither conclusive, nor necessarily indicative of human involvement in the current warming climate. Which is what Channel 4′s The Great Global Warming Swindle set out to illustrate. Whilst it is undeniable that the climate is always changing, it is also undeniable that the climate has changed without our interference. The programme points out that within our written history, the climate has been both much cooler and warmer than it currently is. Documentaries of the sixties and early seventies talked more about the threats of global cooling than global warming, with the potential for another mini-Ice Age should trends continue.

Yet looking further back in history, there have been periods when the climate has been warmer than it is now. The programme pointed out that evidence for this remains with us in the number of wine-related place names in the United Kingdom, the Vine Streets of its towns. This leads us to ask, why are we so sure that climate change is being caused by our activities? The assumption seems to be that the planet’s carbon cycle acts like some giant thermostat to the global climate—turning up the atmospheric carbon content through deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels will cause the climate to warm. Of course, there is no chicken and egg situation in the fossil fuels stakes, which means that when our imaginary thermostat is on full, then life must have found a happy equilibrium in which to sequester itself in pockets which man is today uncovering.

That carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas is undeniable. That it is the main cause of the global climate, however, is a pretty big jump in logic. The show pointed out that whilst CO2 levels have risen pretty constantly through the past two centuries of human industrial activity, temperatures have fluctuated much more erratically. In particular, the post-war boom years of industrial activity saw a drop in temperatures which seems to go against the accepted trend. Of course, as a proportion of Earth’s atmosphere, CO2 accounts for a miniscule proportion, usually measured in parts per million, which is generally considered to have risen around 40% as a result of man’s actions. Yet these levels have fluctuated even without man’s interference, according to the data we have available, and on an annual basis man’s contribution to the atmospheric CO2 content is far outweighed by natural processes, largely as a product of respiration (coming particularly from the oceans) or from volcanic eruptions. According to the figures available, the correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide levels is indeed linked, but the pattern shows that carbon dioxide levels actually follow changes in temperature by a lag of around 800 years.¹ Furthermore, carbon dioxide is one of the weaker ‘greenhouse gases’, both methane and water vapour for example have a more potent effect. And how much faith can we take in ice cores for giving accurate atmospheric CO2 levels and temperatures in the first place?

The Great Global Warming Swindle does offer some alternatives to the greenhouse gas theory. Essentially all of the suggestions boil down to fluctuations in the sun’s activity, giving the programme the unfortunate appearance of a reassuring panacea. Fluctuating solar activity not only changes the amount of energy being received by the Earth, but can also affect the reception of cosmic rays via so-called solar winds. The programme played upon the suggestion that these cosmic rays are in part responsible for cloud formation, which blocks out solar radiation and cools the atmosphere; more solar winds result in fewer cosmic rays reaching Earth, fewer clouds forming, and therefore a warmer climate. All interesting theories, but these suggestions only detracted from the programme’s important message, that the global warming theories that are today largely accepted as facts need questioning. Combined with a focus on the politics of scientific financing (although arguably an important issue to raise), the programme unfortunately smacked of ‘conspiracy theory’ far more than it probably should. Here’s to hoping that it got at least a few people thinking.

1. This was suggested to be the length of time it takes the world’s oceans to react to changes in temperature, for the same reasons which make maritime climates much less extreme than continental ones.

A forest. Not Dennis'

A programme on the beeb yesterday dealing with Britain’s economy, entitled What’s Britain Worth? and hosted by Peter Snow and his son, featured a short interview with one of the nation’s wealthiest men, Felix Dennis. Aside from the rather astute observation he made about the wealthiest members of society (“They’re all shits!”), Dennis talked about the creation of his legacy, the self-named “Forest of Dennis”.

Dennis’ plan is to create a 25-30,000 acre broadleaf forest in the British Midlands. Buying up land, often under aliases, he estimates the project to cost in the region of £200-300 million of his private estate, plus an equal amount in donations over a period of years through a charitable foundation. Said to be the largest forest plantation in 500 years, as Dennis stated his reason for going ahead with this project beyond the simple ego-trip, is that in his happy financial position he is able to put capital behind an initiative like this which neither private finance nor government is prepared to do, and yet his gift to the community is something many can appreciate and all will benefit from¹.

As one of those “shits” of the upper echelons then, it might well be regarded that Dennis’ project is the result of an ego-trip from a man with no offspring or family to leave his millions to. Some cynics might even suggest it is an attempt to atone for his previous excesses of drugs, alcohol and women. And both might be true. But in the end this wayward form of philanthropy can do little harm and might do a fair bit of good. As for the forest’s name, as Dennis himself says, the forest will be known by what the people who walk there call it. Or perhaps it will stick, like an early 21st century Saltaire?

1. If we take as gospel some basic assumptions about carbon trapping in reforestation, and the effects of CO2 on the climate. Whether the planting of forests can be seen as sustainable (it is only the outsourcing of agriculture which allows such reforestation initiatives) is yet to be seen