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The growing pains of Otter Farm
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a bit of garden will plant it with potatoes, onions and carrots. Faced with a world of possibilities, a special madness takes over and we fill our precious patch with the cheapest, most widely available food we can think of. I did exactly the same the first year I grew anything. Never again. All those summer hours spent watering and weeding for a few sackfuls of maincrop veg was a good way of finding out what other interesting things I'd rather be doing. I wanted to grow some of what I ate, but this wasn't it.
The following year, in 2004, on our way back from our wedding party, we came to Otter Farm for the first time. I had my own business advising local authorities and government agencies about managing the landscape, but I had the urge to keep animals and to grow some veg and plant some trees at the same time, but that was as detailed as my mind had it. I certainly wasn't thinking of a business – just growing some of what my wife and I wanted to eat.
Continue reading...Bjørn Lomborg: the dissenting climate change voice who changed his tune
Few statisticians can have inspired more passion than Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish academic who became famous as the author of the controversial (some would say contrarian) Skeptical Environmentalist, which set him up as perhaps the world's best-known critic of the dominant scientific view of global warming and the ensuing climate change.
Continue reading...China's mega-jams show the true cost of coal | Jonathan Watts
It is not easy to wake a coal truck driver at 2am, but I had to do it at least twenty times last night to get home from the massive traffic jam on the border between Hebei and Inner Mongolia.
Several miles ahead, the roads had been cleared but the drivers had spent so long motionless that most of them had long since switched off their engines, turned off their headlamps and curled up in their cabs to sleep. We were stuck behind their snores.
Continue reading...Cycling without brakes? You're breaking the law | Matthew Sparkes
The odd emergency stop is an inescapable fact of life for the cyclist, which is why it seems odd to me that there are thousands of riders in the UK merrily cruising along without brakes. And they are breaking the law.
There are BMXs, often fitted with a freewheel and stopped with a trainer to the tyre, the braver subsection of fixed-gear riders and those whose bike is badly maintained to the point where there are no working brakes to speak of.
Continue reading...Greenland ice sheet faces 'tipping point in 10 years'
The entire ice mass of Greenland will disappear from the world map if temperatures rise by as little as 2C, with severe consequences for the rest of the world, a panel of scientists told Congress today.
Greenland shed its largest chunk of ice in nearly half a century last week, and faces an even grimmer future, according to Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University
Continue reading...Cyclists v drivers? They're often the same people
Much has been written about a war between cyclists and drivers, as if the two groups were such polar opposites that they could never cross in a Venn diagram. But according to new research, people who cycle the most are likely to own at least two cars.
Regular cyclists – those who cycle at least once a week – are also disproportionately likely to read broadsheet newspapers, be well educated, have a household income of at least £50,000 per year and shop at Waitrose, claims the latest Mintel report, Bicycles in the UK 2010. In addition, they are twice as likely to be men as women.
Continue reading...How the humblebee became the bumblebee
Whatever happened to the humblebee, the old name for the bumblebee, asked Angus Doulton of Oxfordshire in a letter to the Guardian last week.
When Darwin, or indeed any of his contemporaries, wrote of the animated bundles of fluff, he would have called them humblebees. But they weren't humble in the sense of lowly beings doing the drudge work of nectar and pollen collecting; rather they would have been celebrated for the powerful evolutionary interaction with the flowers they had visited for millions of years. Darwin would have called them humblebees because, as they fly, they hum. Simple.
Continue reading...Deepwater Horizon alarms were switched off 'to help workers sleep'
Vital warning systems on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were switched off at the time of the explosion in order to spare workers being woken by false alarms, a federal investigation has heard.
The revelation that alarm systems on the rig at the centre of the disaster were disabled – and that key safety mechanisms had also consciously been switched off – came in testimony by a chief technician working for Transocean, the drilling company that owned the rig.
Continue reading...Ten British species now have an identity we care about | George Monbiot
• Queen's executioner beetle wins species naming competition
• See the full list of winners
It's the most successful exercise in crowd-sourcing I've ever seen. We asked our readers to solve a problem, and they've done far more than that: they have created something beautiful.
The problem is this: it is hard to persuade people to care about something they can't pronounce. English species are disappearing at the rate of two a year. But many are vanishing unnoticed and unmourned by almost everyone, partly because we have no cultural connection to them. Scientific names, which are given in Latin or ancient Greek, are essential to proper classification, but to most people they are cold, incomprehensible and offputting.
Continue reading...Most UK teabags not fully biodegradeable, research reveals
UK consumers get through millions of teabags every day to make their favourite drink yet the vast majority are not fully biodegradable, a consumer organisation warns today.
A report published today by Which? Gardening reveals that teabags produced by top tea manufacturers such as Tetley, PG Tips, Twinnings, Clipper and Typhoo are only between 70-80% biodegradable. As a result, gardeners are finding the net part of teabags - caused by the inclusion of heat-resistant polypropylene - left on their compost heaps.
Continue reading...What's the carbon footprint of … a banana?
• More carbon footprints: nuclear war, a cappuccino, more
• Understand more about carbon footprints
Bananas are a great food for anyone who cares about their carbon footprint. For just 80g of CO2e you get a whole lot of nutrition: 140 calories as well as stacks of vitamin C, vitamin B6, potassium and dietary fibre. All in all, a fantastic component of a low-carbon diet.
Continue reading...Oil spills: Legacy of the Torrey Canyon
Flop flop flop. The sound of a bird's wings batting futilely against the gloopy blanket of black oil echoes across the quarry. Then there is silence. A pigeon has crashed into this dark pool, 100 metres from the turquoise sea on the west coast of Guernsey. It sinks within seconds, resurfaces for a final flap, then joins the other small carcasses lying face down in the swirls of black slime. Since 1967, this deadly, oil-filled crater on the Chouet headland has acquired a new name: Torrey Canyon quarry.
On the morning of Saturday 18 March 1967, the Torrey Canyon ran aground on Pollard's Rock between Land's End and the Isles of Scilly. Over the following days, every drop of the 119,328 tonnes of crude oil borne by this 300m-long supertanker seeped into the Atlantic. Thousands of tonnes despoiled the beaches of Cornwall – and thousands more were propelled by winds and currents across the channel towards France.
Continue reading...Greta Scacchi revels in her happiest role yet: environmental campaigner
Greta Scacchi is urging fellow stars to step up and campaign for causes they believe in, regardless of any criticism they may receive. The actress, who last year promoted End of the Line, an influential documentary about over-fishing, by posing nude with a cod, says that she is delighted to have found a useful public role.
"It suits me in my older age. I am able to use muscles now that I was not able to use before, and it is very heartening to find I am not just asked what I wash my face with these days," she said.
Continue reading...Jaguars obsessed with Calvin Klein scent
It's advertised as the "pure essence of masculinity", a fragrance with a musky, sensual aroma that, by implication, women are bound to find irresistible. But what's not mentioned in the marketing is that Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men has also proved a hit with jaguars in the Guatemalan jungle.
Scientists are using the cologne to lure the elusive big cats to hidden cameras in the Maya biosphere reserve, a protected tropical rainforest spanning 8,100 sq miles, to help them record, monitor and protect the animals.
Continue reading...UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet
A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.
As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.
Continue reading...The ethics of veggie cats and dogs
• Sustainable fishing move could help your cat reduce its eco pawprint
• Britain's problem with pets: they're bad for the planet
This week is National Vegetarian Week, the annual celebration of all things vegetarian. Taking the veggie option has never been easier for people, but what about vegetarian pets?
Jonathan Safran Foer's recent polemic Eating Animals makes much of the contrast between our love for our pets and our complacency at the horrors of the factory farm and the abattoir. That contradiction is no more keenly felt than by the vegetarian dog or cat owner, supporting the meat industry they abhor every time they stock up on pet food.
Continue reading...Deepwater Horizon survivor describes horrors of blast and escape from rig
• Deepwater Horizon oil spill reaches the coast
These things Stephen Davis cannot banish from his memory from that night of chaos aboard the Deepwater Horizon: the sensation of being flung into a wall by a powerful explosion, the desperate, muddy scramble on a deck lit only by the reflections from a huge pillar of flame; the look in men's eyes before they jumped 18 metres (60ft) into the water.
"You could taste the fumes, that godawful taste in your mouth," he said. "It was hard to breathe. The oxygen was being sucked out of the living quarters.
Continue reading...Why are female cyclists so vulnerable to lorries? | Anna Leach
As I cycle home I'm conscious of an ominous rumble behind me. A quick glance over my left shoulder confirms my worst fears: a looming heavy goods vehicle is blocking out the sun.
I don't fancy taking it on with only my helmet and luminous vest as protection, so I veer to closer to the kerb so it can overtake. We meet again at traffic lights, and again I shrink towards the edge of the road.
Continue reading...Bill Gates' cloud-whitening trials 'a dangerous experiment'
Campaigners have criticised plans for a sea trial of cloud-whitening technology, funded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
A US-based research body, Silver Lining, which has received $300,000 from Mr Gates, is developing machines to convert seawater into microscopic particles to be sprayed into clouds. Scientists believe this will increase the whiteness, or albedo, of clouds and increase their ability to reflect more sunlight back into space, reducing global warming.
Continue reading...Dyson and Kimberly Clark in hand to hand combat over paper towels | Leo Hickman
• Should I ... use paper towels or a hand-dryer?
• American taste for soft toilet roll 'worse than driving Hummers'
"Hand-to-hand" combat has erupted between two of the companies responsible for drying the digits of the nation.
Dyson, the makers of the Airblade dryer, has accused Kimberly Clark of landing a low blow, by saying the air jets its machine uses increases the bacteria on hands. Dyson says the US paper towel corporation has used "biased and misleading" research to support the claim, and to state that paper towels are just as environmentally friendly as the air dryer.
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