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Deepwater Horizon and the Gulf oil spill - the key questions answered
Why was there an explosion and fire on Deepwater Horizon oil rig?
According to BP's September 2010 report, the accident started with a "well integrity failure". This was followed by a loss of control of the pressure of the fluid in the well. The "blowout preventer", a device which should automatically seal the well in the event of such a loss of control, failed to engage. Hydrocarbons shot up the well at an uncontrollable rate and ignited, causing a series of explosions on the rig.
Continue reading...How nuclear apologists mislead the world over radiation | Helen Caldicott
Soon after the Fukushima accident last month, I stated publicly that a nuclear event of this size and catastrophic potential could present a medical problem of very large dimensions. Events have proven this observation to be true despite the nuclear industry's campaign about the "minimal" health effects of so-called low-level radiation. That billions of its dollars are at stake if the Fukushima event causes the "nuclear renaissance" to slow down appears to be evident from the industry's attacks on its critics, even in the face of an unresolved and escalating disaster at the reactor complex at Fukushima.
Proponents of nuclear power – including George Monbiot, who has had a mysterious road-to-Damascus conversion to its supposedly benign effects – accuse me and others who call attention to the potential serious medical consequences of the accident of "cherry-picking" data and overstating the health effects of radiation from the radioactive fuel in the destroyed reactors and their cooling pools. Yet by reassuring the public that things aren't too bad, Monbiot and others at best misinform, and at worst misrepresent or distort, the scientific evidence of the harmful effects of radiation exposure – and they play a predictable shoot-the-messenger game in the process.
Continue reading...Tesla sues Top Gear over 'faked' electric car race
Electric sports car maker Tesla Motors is sueing the BBC's Top Gear TV programme for allegedly faking a scene showing the company's Roadster car running out of electricity and slowing to a halt in a race.
Continue reading...Mark Kennedy: Confessions of an undercover cop
There are two distinct images of Mark Kennedy that have emerged in the press. The first is a long-haired, unshaven, multi-earringed rebel – that is Kennedy the undercover cop in his role as eco-activist "Mark Stone". The second is a man with short hair, swept to the side, clean-shaven, so spruce you can almost smell the soap – the "real" Mark Kennedy, returned from life undercover.
Today, it takes me a while to recognise him. He could be a composite – the hair is longer and unkempt, the face unshaven, tattoos are on display under his rolled-up sleeve. He seems to be morphing back into the eco-activist before my eyes.
Continue reading...What is the Kyoto protocol and has it made any difference?
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The Kyoto protocol was the first agreement between nations to mandate country-by-country reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. Kyoto emerged from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was signed by nearly all nations at the 1992 mega-meeting popularly known as the Earth Summit. The framework pledges to stabilize greenhouse-gas concentrations "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". To put teeth into that pledge, a new treaty was needed, one with binding targets for greenhouse-gas reductions. That treaty was finalized in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, after years of negotiations, and it went into force in 2005. Nearly all nations have now ratified the treaty, with the notable exception of the United States. Developing countries, including China and India, weren't mandated to reduce emissions, given that they'd contributed a relatively small share of the current century-plus build-up of CO2.
Under Kyoto, industrialised nations pledged to cut their yearly emissions of carbon, as measured in six greenhouse gases, by varying amounts, averaging 5.2%, by 2012 as compared to 1990. That equates to a 29% cut in the values that would have otherwise occurred. However, the protocol didn't become international law until more than halfway through the 1990–2012 period. By that point, global emissions had risen substantially. Some countries and regions, including the European Union, were on track by 2011 to meet or exceed their Kyoto goals, but other large nations were falling woefully short. And the two biggest emitters of all – the United States and China – churned out more than enough extra greenhouse gas to erase all the reductions made by other countries during the Kyoto period. Worldwide, emissions soared by nearly 40% from 1990 to 2009, according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
Continue reading...What are the main man-made greenhouse gases?
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The strength of the Earth's greenhouse effect is determined by the concentration in the atmosphere of a handful of greenhouse gases. The one that causes the most warming overall is water vapour – though human activity affects its level in the atmosphere indirectly rather than directly.
The greenhouse gases that humans do emit directly in significant quantities are:
Continue reading...How do volcanoes affect the climate?
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When volcanoes erupt, they emit a mixture of gases and particles into the air. Some of them, such as ash and sulphur dioxide, have a cooling effect, because they (or the substances they cause) reflect sunlight away from the earth. Others, such as CO2, cause warming by adding to the the greenhouse effect.
The cooling influence is particularly marked in the case of large eruptions able to blast sun-blocking particles all the way up to the stratosphere – such as Mount Pinatubo in 1991, which caused a significant dip in global temperatures in the following year or two. It's difficult to know for sure that the cooling observed after a particular eruption is definitely the result of that eruption, but examining the average global temperature change after multiple eruptions proves a strong link.
Continue reading...Cargo bike makers carry high hopes | Gareth Lennon
Sales of cargo bikes are on the up, and not just in their traditional strongholds of Denmark and the Netherlands. While it is premature to hazard that they might be the next big thing in cycling, there seems at least to be a clear pattern worldwide of increasing numbers of people using them to make jobs traditionally accomplished with a car a little less, well, job-like.
Load moving by bike isn't a new thing, of course. The iconic though ponderous Christiania three-wheeler and its imitators have been getting kids to school and selling steadily since they were first built in the early 1980s; more than half a century before that, their forerunner the Dutch freight trike could reliably get five-a-side team plus subs to training, albeit only if you set off about a day ahead of time. More typically, though, the load tended to be pails of milk or sacks of flour.
Continue reading...Q&A: England forests sell-off
How much money will be raised?
The sale of 150-year leases is expected to raise between £150m and £250m over 10 years. On top of that the government will sell 15% of its English forest estate in the next four years for about £100m. The money is expected to go straight to the Treasury and not back into forestry.
Continue reading...The TV interview that tied James Delingpole's tongue | James Randerson
• Climate sceptics: are they gaining any credence?
• Climate sceptic James Delingpole's cheap shot at Newsweek backfires
I'm looking forward to watching Horizon: Science Under Attack this evening. First, it is about a question that impinges on much public debate about science – how can scientists be open to dialogue and scrutiny from the public without being derailed by politically motivated attack and mischievous wrecking?
But I must confess, I am also intrigued to see one of the most forthright and at times vicious commentators on global warming, James Delingpole, torn apart (by his own admission) in an interview.
Continue reading...What are climate change feedback loops?
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In climate change, a feedback loop is the equivalent of a vicious or virtuous circle – something that accelerates or decelerates a warming trend. A positive feedback accelerates a temperature rise, whereas a negative feedback decelerates it.
Scientists are aware of a number of positive feedbacks loops in the climate system. One example is melting ice. Because ice is light-coloured and reflective, a large proportion of the sunlight that hits it is bounced back to space, which limits the amount of warming it causes. But as the world gets hotter, ice melts, revealing the darker-coloured land or water below. The result is that more of the sun's energy is absorbed, leading to more warming, which in turn leads to more ice melting – and so on.
Continue reading...For sale: all of our forests. Not some of them, nor most of them – the whole lot | John Vidal
We now know, thanks to the junior environment minister Jim Paice's frank evidence to a recent House of Lords select committee, that the government is considering the sale of not just "some", or even "substantial", amounts of woodland as the public was originally led to believe, but of all state-owned English trees across the commission's 635,000-acre Forestry Commission estate. This includes many royal forests, state-owned ancient woodlands, sites of special scientific interest, heathland, campsites, farms and sporting estates.
Here is Paice is in front of the House of Lords select committee:
Continue reading...In pictures: BBC showcases decade of wildlife discovery
• Decade of Discovery will be shown on BBC2 at 8pm on Tuesday 14 December Continue reading...
Glastonbury Thorn chopped down as town rages over attack on famous tree
It may have looked like a scrubby bush high on the bare slope of a hill in Somerset, but it was one of the most famous trees in England, and once one of the most famous in all Christendom. And it has been felled by vandals.
The attack left the crown trailing to the ground beside the almost severed trunk of the Glastonbury Thorn, said to have flowered on Wearyall Hill every Christmas day for 2,000 years, since Joseph of Arimathea thrust the staff he brought from the Holy Land into the soil and it miraculously broke into blossom.
Continue reading...WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord
- WikiLeaks cables: Cancún climate talks doomed to fail, says EU president
- Cancún climate change summit: Week one in pictures
Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.
The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.
Continue reading...Why is a former Greenpeace activist siding with Indonesia's logging industry?
I don't often find myself praising Tesco, but – deep breath – here goes. This summer it did something brave and good. It de-listed a supplier: not on its usual commercial grounds but for ethical reasons. This was not an easy decision. The company in question is a huge concern, whose political and economic connections make Tesco look like a corner shop. Its produce is cheap. But Tesco made the right call. It seems to me that Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) could make a fair claim to being one of the most destructive companies on the planet.
APP is part of the Sinar Mas conglomerate, a Chinese-Indonesian company owned by a fantastically rich dynasty called the Widjajas. Founded in 1962, it grew during the regime of Indonesia's dictator General Suharto into one of Asia's most powerful companies, with interests in palm oil, coal, property and banking. It has been the focus of criticism from human rights and environmental groups for years. But now it is a company with an urgent mission.
Continue reading...Video | RSPB Feed the Birds day
What's the carbon footprint of ... email?
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Our recent piece on the carbon footprint of the internet generated plenty of coverage, so next up in our map of the world's carbon emissions is … email.
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