What do Pollinators need?

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Miles King

Last week, after a long time coming, The Government announced at a Bee Summit, that it would prepare a national pollinator strategy, to be published this November.

This is thanks mainly to the efforts of Friends of the Earth, who have been running their bee campaign for the last couple of years.

It’s great to see FoE campaigning on UK wildlife issues after such a long absence. FoE led the charge to protect SSSIs and get them managed properly in the 90s and their energy and imagination is desperately needed in UK conservation again.

Of course the National Farmers Union gave equivocal support to the strategy, claiming that farmers had in fact already reversed historic declines in pollinator populations and that solitary bees were thriving as never before.

Strangely, this rosy picture was not borne out by the “State of Nature” report which indicated that 2/3 of grassland invertebrates were still declining, including those bees. Clearly all those wildlife recorders have been looking on the wrong farms.

Lord De Mauley, the Minister for Bees has already made some bold statements picked up by Lou Gray in the Telegraph.

“Councils will be banned from cutting verges in early summer” and “could be told to create wildlife patches  in park full of “weeds” for bees.”That wil go down well with cash-strapped local authorities. Well actually it should as it will save them loads of money.

What changes could be easily and cheaply achieved quickly to help the plight of the plummeting pollinator populations?

Here’s my list:

Road Verges

Yes Councils stop cutting them in May, that’s pretty obvious.

But also many verges are very grassy now through decades of mismanagement. Start putting flowers back into them, from local sources, and not just Ox-eye daisy –  the “Billy bookcase of an ikeaised countryside” as Andy Byfield so eloquently put it. Yellow rattle is always a good one to add when restoring grassy grasslands and it’s good bee fodder too.

So – road verges – cut and rake in August, then again in October. But not all at the same time. Introduce flowers from local sources, over time (green hay).

Public Land.

There’s lots of public land, from municipal parks, municipal golf courses, cemeteries, car parks, little bits of greenery around council buildings, through to large estates such as the Forestry Commission and Defence Estates, as they were, now DIO.

This land already has the potential to provide much more pollinator-friendly habitat without introducing a single plug or seed. Just relax the mowing regimes – these pieces of grassland have escaped modern agriculture and are often full of wildflowers, just waiting for the mower to stop. Don’t abandon mowing altogether though as that also leads to grassy swards. It’s the same approach as for road verges – cut in August, rake, cut in September/October, rake.

Where it is just grass now, introduce wildflowers, from local sources. Use yellow-rattle.

It’s vitally important that this is all done with the support of local communities, not imposed on them. Bees seem to be part of the national zeitgeist now, so that should be easy – “it’s for the bees.”

Note that the above two save huge amounts of money currently spent mindlessly mowing grass.

Private Land

Gardens

Gardens are an obvious place to encourage people to be friendly to bees – and much has already been written about it. Nevertheless gardeners still kill bees with insecticides and kill flowers by treating their lawns with herbicide.

Our lawn currently is covered in white clover which we’ve left to flower for the bees. It also has a nice range of large yellow composities – cat’s-ear, mouse-ear hawkweed, rough hawkbit, smooth hawk’s-beard. And there’s a fantastic crop of ragwort just about to flower where the chickens are – great for bees. Yes I will cut off the flowers before it sets seed.

Farmland

This is where it gets interesting. I think it’s scandalous that we pay farmers £200 per hectare per annum just for owning farmland. In fact one of the few rules that farmers have to comply with to get their money, is to cut down anything that isnt a crop but that might be about to flower and provide nectar for pollinators. This madness continues under the new CAP.

Farmers should only get a CAP subsidy if they provide environmental public goods. These should include:

a) protect and manage sympathetically, wildflower-rich habitats on their land

b) create substantial areas of wildflower-rich habitat that are not subject to insecticides such as neonicotinoids. These areas should be permanent and not rotated around the farm.

After all, it’s in farmers interests to do this, as they are providing the homes for pollinators to pollinate their crops.

Other things that would help pollinators on farmland include reduction in the use of pesticides and the phasing out of pesticides that are known to contribute significantly to the loss of wildlife, including pollinators.

Artificial fertiliser use and land drainage also contribute to the absence of wildlife in general and pollinators in particular from large swathes of British farmland – arable and grassland alike. A tax on artificial fertiliser would be a very effective way of driving more sustainable farming. Using nitrogen fixing legumes is the time honoured way of building nitrogen sustainably in the soil – legumes that also provide food for pollinators.

Planning

Firstly no new developments (housing, infrastructure etc) should be built on existing high value habitat, whether for pollinators, wildflowers or nightingales. Take Lodge Hill as an example. Government should provide crystal clear advice to landowners and developers alike – we will not allow development on nationally important wildlife sites.

Where new residential developments are created, they should have a minimum of 30% of the area of a development as wildflower-rich areas. Communities should be empowered to manage these areas (with community beekeepers). This area could include green roofs. No more boring green grass infrastructure.

Now you may say – what about developments of two houses, or five houses – shouldnt they be excluded? I am increasingly seeing small developments filling in the spaces within villages and towns down here in Dorset. Those spaces were often fields – quite nice fields, full of flowers. Now they are houses.  Those fields helped create the sense of place, they were part of the history of these places, as well as providing important greenspace and habitat. So no, I don’t they should be excluded – it is more sustainable to build larger developments, where green and grey infrastructure can be provided and planned for from the outset. Poundbury may be a mishmash pastiche of architectural confusion, but at least the development i’s at a sustainable scale. There still isn’t enough greenspace in it though, and the grass is cut too often.

How many of these will actually get into the National Pollinators Strategy? That remains to be seen.

What else do you think should go into the Strategy?

Posted in agriculture, bees, biodiversity, ecosystem services, environmental policy, farming, Forestry Commission, grazing, greenspace, housing, meadows, public land, regulatory reform, road verges | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

A profound Sense of Anxiety updated

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Miles King

As someone who suffers from anxiety from time to time, I know what the warning signs are. And the last week of political activity has definitely left me with a sense of almost dread about what is happening to our country.

The latest cuts and the big infrastructure projects felt like the first barrage being laid down for the longest election campaign in history. Defra once again get the biggest cut of all departments, another 10% hacked off in 2015-16. HS2 is going to cost oh just another £10Bn – the numbers are becoming meaningless. The biggest road building exercise since when?

In some ways this has become the political norm now. More cuts, more pretence that new money is being found for new infrastructure projects to revive the economy (smoke and mirrors). But underlying this circus is something far more insidious and radical. The coalition is doing nothing less than actively reshaping our society while we stand and watch. And not without some dark humour too.

Arch enviro-sceptic Owen Paterson has been put in charge of the Environment. His top priority – clear the way for a huge adventure in extracting gas from under our feet. In this he has been spurred on by his “personal think tank” climate denialist brother in law Matt Ridley. Ridley is a scientist, but he is also a newly elected Lord (presumably he will be given a ministerial job at DECC soon – replacing the sensible Greg Barker?), former chair of Northern Rock (remember them?) and nephew of another destructive former Environment Secretary Nick Ridley, he who disbanded the Nature Conservancy Council. Huge subsidies (or your and my taxes if you like) will be paid to extract this fossil fuel out of the ground.

O-Patz’s next priority is chief cheerleader for the GM-lobby or big Agri as it’s also known. O-Patz wants us all to reap the benefits of GM-food, enticing us with quasi-religious visions of blind children being healed.

Meanwhile Jeremy Hunt is busy dismantling the NHS and Michael Gove has almost completed the job of divorcing schools from local authorities, and therefore local accountability. IDS is half way through dismantling the welfare state.

A small crumb of good news last week is that Natural England and the Environment Agency are not going to be merged – for now at any rate. But given that both bodies, will have suffered about 50% cuts in their budgets since 2010, it seems like a pyrrhic victory.

English Heritage are going to be hived off as a charity, thus competing with all the other charities for dwindling resources. Ripe for a take-over by the National Trust perhaps? They were offered it 30 years ago and turned it down.

What more can the coalition do before the election?

Let’s have a think shall we?

  • abolishing Defra and DCMS altogether,
  • returning DECC to the Department for Energy.
  • Government policy that climate change is natural and not driven by human activity – abolition of the Climate Act.
  • A huge new round of open-cast coal-mining.
  • A massive new road-building exercise, included the outer M25, the M27 from Hastings to Bournemouth (via the South Downs and New Forest) and the M303 with a flyover over Stonehenge.
  • Big subsidies to energy-hungry industries like Steel, Chemicals and Oil.
  • Use of home-grown GMO food will be mandatory in prisons, hospitals and schools.
  • Farmers will only receive agricultural subsidies if they produce food intensively – there will be a premium for GMO production.
  • The feeding of livestock outside of barns will be banned under the “underutilisation of land” Act.
  • All publicly owned land will be sold off for housing development, unless local communities can afford to buy it.
  • Affordable housing rules will be abolished as the market will determine what affordability is.
  • Planning restrictions will be reversed – planning permission will only be needed when land is not used for housing, industrial uses, waste disposal or recreational activity approved by the Government ie hunting/shooting/golf.
  • A ban on charities undertaking “political” activity
  • All biodiversity can be offset whenever needed.
  • Bees and other pollinators will be “hived off” (sorry) to a private corporation “Bees R Us”. Farmers will have to pay for pollinators to be delivered when needed.
  • Any wild animal or plant found to be carrying a disease will automatically be killed under the new “wild animal and plant health and welfare” Act. Severe penalties for any landowner found harbouring diseased wildlife.
  • New disease-resistant GM-wildlife (especially trees) will be introduced to replace the diseased ones.
  • Under the Underutilisation of land Act “underutilised” land will be subject to a punitive tax or has to be sold to produce food, for more housing, or for hunting/shooting etc.
  • Schools prisons and hospitals will be sold off to “sponsors” who will be able to make a profit from running them. These will also be able to charge for their use.
  • All benefits will be abolished.
  • Capital punishment will be reintroduced.
  • The UK will leave the EU and join a new trading block with US and the BRICs.

Anything else you can think of?

Posted in agriculture, anti-environmental rhetoric, biodiversity, biodiversity offsetting, Charities campaigning, climate change, environmental policy, farming, GMOs, grazing, greenspace, housing, Owen Paterson, public land, regulatory reform, transport | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Victory at Lodge Hill raises questions about brownfield first and sale of public land

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Miles King

It’s always good to write about a victory for the environment, especially these days.

I was frankly amazed to read on Martin Harpers blog that the Planning Inspector had concluded that Medway Council’s core strategy was unsound because they had not taken into account the national environmental importance of Lodge Hill, before allocating it for the development of 5000 houses.

You may remember that Natural England had notified the site as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in March this year, on account of the nationally important Nightingale population, but also because of a large area of unimproved neutral grassland (MG5 for NVC nerds.)

This had led to questions being asked at Cabinet about what the hell was going on and why the MoD were being stopped from selling off part of their surplus land, for development. It may also have indirectly led to the Government deciding to place a “Duty to promote economic growth” onto agencies such as Natural England.

Medway, who have sought to use every conceivable tactic to support their case, have produced the most extraordinary press release, in which they fulminate against absolutely everybody – blaming Natural England, RSPB, Planning Inspectorate, and probably the French and the Germans too. But in truth the fault lies with them and with Land Securities, who were trying to develop the site. Had the Council required the Developer to carry out a proper Environmental Impact Assessment before considering whether the site was appropriate for development, and then actually read what the EIA stated, the Council would have concluded that as it was nationally important it should not be developed. Equally – why did Defence Estates or as they are now the DIO not recognise the environmental value of the site and come up with some alternative use that protected the conservation interest?

My interest is obviously in the grassland and I have been providing a tiny bit of advice to RSPB on its value. It is a large area of MG5 (nationally in the top 10% in terms of size) and and supports a good population of Dyer’s Greenweed, which is a great indicator of broader quality. Medway were supporting the Developers’ consultants’ arguments, that because it was in poor condition, it should therefore be discounted. This is like saying because Windsor Castle was badly damaged in a fire, it had lost its value and therefore should be demolished.

They were also claiming that the grassland’s value would be retained if it was translocated, and an even more ludicrous claim that newly created grasslands were just as valuable as long established ones, so it really didn’t matter if the grassland was lost. Medway confirmed my own suspicions that they have not really grasped an understanding of the environment when their Council Leader referred to the grassland as a “rare grass”.

Interestingly (at least for me) no-one seems to have picked up on the fact that  that the only Priority species at Lodge Hill is the True Fox Sedge Carex vulpina. Where does that leave the biodiversity Duty?

Lodge Hill was also going to be a testbed for the use of Biodiversity Offsetting. Naturally there was rather a lot of concern about applying BO to a newly designated SSSI, not that that seemed to have been an issue for the Environment Bank who were appointed to prepare the Offsetting plan. I guess they will have to find another site for their experiments.

In an interesting coincidence,  on the day the Planning Inspectorate wrote to Medway Council rejecting their Lodge Hill proposal, new came to light of a letter that Planning Minister Nick Boles had written in which he said developers should be allowed to build on fields if they are boring. He spoke of “environmentally uninteresting greenspaces” and that not all new housing could be built on previously developed land.

Are we seeing the Housing Minister having an epiphany about what sustainable development actually looks like? I hope so.

Will the MoD now take a much closer look at their sites before they decide to sell them off for housing? What does this say about how we value public land? There’s no question in my mind that the notion of publicly land is seen by some in the right of the political spectrum as a bad idea full stop. We all have to work to counter this neoliberal ideology and celebrate all the values of publicly owned land, not just financial.

Anyway well done RSPB for fighting this one all the way and well done Natural England for being brave enough to notify this SSSI in the most controversial of circumstances.

 

 

 

 

Posted in biodiversity, biodiversity offsetting, deregulation, environmental policy, housing, meadows, public land, regulatory reform | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

GMOs again: the myth of herbicide tolerant crops

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Miles King

A more serious GMO story after yesterday’s frippery.

One of the many myths about GMOs, and one which Owen Paterson used in his GMO lobbying speech earlier this week, is that GMOs will be friendlier to the environment because they will lead to a reduction in pesticide use. The Daily Mail of all media today ran a story claiming that the Agri-business industry lobbied specifically for this policy shift – if true, it would seem very successfully.

Herbicide Tolerant or HT-crops have already been developed and are widely used in the US. You can see the appeal to farmers – spray herbicides anytime without having to worry about killing the crop plants – spray less often because it’s easier to spray at just the right time to kill the weeds. And there is some evidence that herbicide use has decreased within HT crops, so far.

The only problem with the use of HT crops combined with herbicide use is that it drives resistance in crop weeds if spraying is not done properly. And I’m not talking about former cornfield weeds like Cornflower or Corncockle – these are the successful modern weeds like Blackgrass.

Even in the best of all possible worlds, nature can interfere with our best-laid plans. Here for example is an interesting story coming out of Industry junket CEREALS 13. Last year’s appalling weather restricted farmers ability to spray against weeds of cereals fields – spraying in the rain means the herbicide gets washed off before it can do its job – fluctuating diurnal temperates affect herbicide efficacy. Spraying when it’s cold can mean the weeds haven’t come up properly so again less effective.

Using herbicide or any pesticide is basically a game of evolutionary Russian roulette – spray at the wrong time or under the wrong conditions and you drive evolution of resistant strains. And the laws of probability mean it’s inevitable that eventually spraying at the wrong time or under the wrong conditions (or just not well enough) will happen. We all make mistakes and farmers, after all, are only human.

So when an industry expert states “”This (herbicide) resistance potential means we are going to have to get much better control in stale seed-beds, and really focus on maximising the control we get from non-chemical methods” then you know the weeds are winning.

Back to HT crops. If HT crops are used will farmers reduce their herbicide use? Initially yes. But once resistance in weeds appears and spreads, they will have to increase their herbicide use to keep pace with these resistant weeds. Its an evolutionary arms race – very similar to what’s happening to antibiotic effectiveness and resistance in pathogens.

And if you don’t want to take my word for it – here’s an article in Nature about GM driving new superweed evolution.Palmer Amaranth is a weed of Cotton crops in the Southern US. For years after GM herbicide tolerant cotton was introduced, Palmer amaranth ceased to be a problem, until a resistant strain appeared in one place in Georgia 2004. By 2011 it was found in 76 counties across Georgia.

Secretary of State for Agriculture I mean Environment Owen Paterson can act as the Industry cheerleader and I’m sure he’ll do a very good job of it. Let’s just not kid ourselves that this is about anything other than business.

Posted in agriculture, farming, GMOs, herbicide resistant weeds, herbicide tolerant crops, Owen Paterson, rubbish weather | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

GMOs can bring Owen Paterson and George Monbiot together

Posted on June 21, 2013 by Miles King

Has our esteemed Secretary of State for the Environment Owen Paterson been reading George Monbiot’s new book Feral, where he rewilds himself in order to attain an enlightened state that reveals a vision of a rewilded future?

For me this conjures an image of O-Patz wrestling a mullet to the ground and ripping its gills out with his bare teeth while wrestling mentally with the need to feed the world and save nature all at the same time. There are dark recesses of my mind where it is best for me not to venture too often.  Regular readers will understand this and skip over the (ir) relevant bits.

The reason for these random musings is that yesterday, in a heartfelt speech to a carefully selected audience of pro-GM agribusiness executives and the biotech-agriculture-industrial complex, Paterson laid bare his heart on the need for the UK and Europe to adopt, with extreme enthusiasm, GMO technology. Paterson was on a mission to persuade the GM-denialists that this is the future and if it isn’t adopted we will slip into a new dark age of hunger and misery.

Not only will they feed the world, but GMOs are actually much better for the environment than conventional crops, according to O-Patz, and of course this is the official Defra and Government position.

I was slightly staggered to read that he had proclaimed

“Even more excitingly, if we use cultivated land more efficiently, we could free up space for biodiversity, nature and wilderness. Something I know a number of commentators have been calling for. Research undertaken by a team at Rockefeller University has found that over the course of the next 50 years new technology, combined with improved agricultural practices across the world, could release an area 2.5 times the size of France from cultivation.”

Now setting aside his unusual use of the “Size of France”  unit instead of the usual “Size of Wales” unit (has he something against Wales or is this a friendly overture to our continental neighbours – I digress) his argument is an extraordinary one – and I can only assume he has read Monbiot’s book and has been caught in the re-wilding zeal and is desperate to find a way to make space for re-wilding even in the most intensively managed landscapes.

Imagine the scene 50 years hence. East Anglia has moved wholesale into GM crop production, especially useful as salt-tolerance has enabled soya bean production (on which we now all depend for nutrition, alongside industrially produced grasshoppers) to continue regardless of the regular incursions from the sea. Production output has soared and as a result all farming enterprises across the region have agreed amongst themselves to pay 20% of their profits into a fund to purchase and manage the new fen wilderness area, which covers 200,000ha of Cambridgeshire and is managed by the Royal Society for the Promotion of Wilderness and Trust.

Here lions and elephants are the keystone mammals and have settled in very nicely since they were introduced 20 years previously. Hippos play an important role in maintaining the wetland ecosystems that have re-naturalised from former intensive agricultural land. Badgers are on the edge of extinction, having been eaten by the lions.

I look forward to seeing the joint press conference between George and O-Patz where they announce their shared vision. I’m sure they’ll get along just fine.

Or alternatively it could all look like this:

plastic fields

Posted in climate change, farming, George Monbiot, GMOs, Owen Paterson, rewilding | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Honeybees are livestock just like cows

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Miles King

Honeybees have had a terrible time. Many hives have lost their bees over the past 12 months because of the very cold wet summer of 2012 and the long cold spring of 2013.  Honey prices will no doubt shoot up this year.

What happens to honeybee colonies when they suffer like this?

As honeybees are livestock,  if there’s a shortage one way to make up the numbers is to import them. This is exactly what one farm in Shropshire has done, importing £10,000 of honeybees from Italy. Having lost 2/3 of its bees to bad weather (and I expect Varroa did for some of them) they bought some on the open market.

The British Beekeepers Association reported last week that one third of all honeybee colonies were lost last winter. The didn’t blame the losses on neonicotinoids.

While I love honey and I understand that honeybees play some role in pollinating crops and wild plants, I do wonder sometimes what the fuss is about. There are practically no native honeybees in the UK. They died out in the 19th Century. Almost all (99%) of our honeybees are grown from imported stock.

Draw a comparison with Bovine TB. Here, another livestock animal, the cow, is also prey to a nasty disease, bovine TB. When beef and dairy farmers lose cows to bTB, they restock, just like Beekeepers.

Cows need grass and bees need flowers; actually bees are perfectly happy feeding from oilseed rape – probably the commonest “flower” in the British countryside. They don’t need wildflower meadows any more than cows do.

It may be that cows feeding on wildflower-rich pastures or from wildflower-rich hay are healthier (there is some evidence but not much). It may be that honeybees are healthier when they feed on a wider range of nectar and pollen sources than just OSR.

But my suggestion is that it is the livestock (including honeybees) that benefit from the provision of food by nature, not vice versa. To say that honeybees are worth so many millions of pounds to society, misses the point that we are using them to extract environmental goods from nature. They are competing with wild pollinators for limited nectar and pollen. These  bumblebees, moths and other insects are the real providers of pollination services to society and nature.

Posted in bees, biodiversity, ecosystem services, environmental policy, farming, grazing, meadows, rubbish weather | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Back to the future farming

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Miles King

Relatively new Farming Minister and Lib Dem David Heath is making an impression in the farming world, with a couple of policy shifts which I think it’s worth drawing to your attention.

Heath likes making use of the pages of Farmers Weekly and is becoming a regular in that august organ. Strange that he was a parliamentary consultant to WWF in the 90s, before joining Parliament in 97 after a career as an optician.

Heath, MP for part of the Somerset Levels ( in a marginal seat, his majority is just 1819), has announced that river dredging is “Top of the Agenda” and that Defra is to relax the rules allowing farmers to dredge ditches and river channels to reduce field flooding. This is partly about the EA having had their budget cut so severely there is no one left to drive the digger, so farmers are doing it for themselves.  I suppose it doesn’t really matter whether this dredging free for all means the UK is in breach of the Water Framework Directive, since the Government is currently working out whether/how to opt of out of it in the future.

Heath has also indicated he is sympathetic to a return to stubble burning  – remember those days when huge clouds of smoke wafted slowly across the late summer countryside? Getting nostalgic for that unforgettable acrid smell that clings for days afterwards? But this time it’s to benefit the environment, according to a bunch of agronomists who want to use it to control blackgrass that has developed resistance to herbicides. Their argument is that burning the blackgrass will be more environmentally friendly because it will lead to reduced herbicide use. Hmm – where have heard this argument before – oh yes, GMOs.

Heath’s boss Own Paterson is expected to announce he is going gung ho for GMOs later this week and will try and shift the current GMO-sceptical position of the EU. The Prime Minister has already stolen O-Patz’s thunder, so it seems certain that a new pro GMO stance will be adopted, and will be thrown into the melting pot of negotiated positions on all things European.  Clearly the new “pro-science culture” the Government is adopting is being selectively adopted by Paterson, who recently confirmed suspicions he is a climate denier, on Radio 4 Any Questions, when he aligned himself with James Delingpole’s position.

So prepare yourself for a farming back to the future where farmers have free reign to dredge just like back in the good old days of Internal Drainage Boards (bye bye Ratty), stubble burning returns to the summer countryside, and GMO crops become the norm. And please don’t mention climate change. Or Biodiversity.

Posted in anti-environmental rhetoric, biodiversity, climate change, David Heath, deregulation, Dredging, farming, GMOs, Owen Paterson, Stubble burning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rubbish British Weather and Arctic Sea Ice

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Miles King

Just in case you thought the UK was being singled out for rubbish weather, it’s now official. Our Spring was the coldest for 50 years, with large areas of England and Wales experiencing mean temperatures over 2C below the 1981-2010 average.

Figures from NASA indicate globally temperatures were +0.56C above a 1950-1980 average, while the northern hemisphere as a whole was +0.71C above that  baseline.

Even the Met Office is convening a workshop this week to try to get to the bottom of the rubbish weather of the last few years.

Every summer since the last dry one in 2006 has been wetter than average, with particularly appalling ones in 2007 and 2012. We had the coldest December for a hundred years in 2010, followed by the wettest year for a 100 years in 2012.

Fingers are starting to point at the influence of declining summer/autumn Arctic sea ice on the polar jetstream, which brings us our rain. Here’s an explainer.

Arctic sea ice has been declining more slowly than last year just in the last few weeks, as this useful graphic shows.

time series

This site uses a different method to measure sea ice, but the overall picture is similar, though the slowing decline appears to have started earlier in the year.

Arctic sea ice reached its lowest recorded level by a long chalk in 2012. How low it will go this year is anyone’s guess, but it’s difficult to see how it can recover, as practically all the old thick sea ice has now melted, as this NSIDC graphic clearly shows.

Just don’t ask me for a weather forecast!

 

 

Posted in arctic sea ice, climate change, rubbish weather | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The rise of anti-environmental rhetoric

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Miles King

I don’t normally cut and paste articles from other websites but in this case I think it is worth doing so. Here is what I can only describe as an anti-environmental rant from chair of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee David TC Davies on the Conservative Home website. I recommend all of you to keep up with articles posted on ConHome, as an excellent insight into the political Right in the UK.

Although Mr Davies is not a member of the Government, as chair of a Parliamentary Select Committee he is an influential MP. He is also deputy leader of the Conservative Party in Wales.

This is an example of a growing phenomenon – anti-environmental rhetoric.

 

David T C Davies is Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee and is MP for Monmouth

DAVIES DAVIDThis week a bizarre coalition of hard nosed businessmen making vast profits out of the “renewable” industry, a rag bag of socialists, and a Labour Party desperate for votes were narrowly defeated in an attempt to pass a “decarbonisation” target which would have wreaked havoc on our economy.

It is time for the Government to stop pandering to green ideology, and recognise it for codswallop it really is.  There are gaping holes in the theory that man made CO2 is the cause of the less than one degree increase in average global temperatures over the last 300 years. These have been well set out by Lord Lawson.

Here are some of the non-scientific reasons why we should not trust anything said by environmental movement.  If CO2 emissions are such a big threat to the future of the planet, then those concerned about it should welcome a technology which delivers electricity in large quantities and at the times of the day it is needed without emitting carbon. The Greens therefore ought to be leading the campaign for nuclear power stations to be built, and condemning as NIMBYs all who are opposed. Instead, they dust off their old CND badges and blindly oppose this CO2 free source of energy.

Shale has the potential to deliver cheap and secure energy as well as tens of thousands of well- paid jobs. Shale gas companies don’t want subsidies – they just want permits to get on and start building an industry that could fill the government’s coffers with tax receipts. Economically, it is a no-brainer. We don’t expect the Greens to care about the economy, but as a result of fracking carbon emissions in US have plunged to below 1994 levels. The eco warriors should be dancing for joy and demanding shale wells across the UK. Instead, they are churning out scaremongering propaganda in an effort to prevent us from enjoying this cheap low carbon bonanza.

A Severn Barrage could apparently supply 5 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs without emitting carbon. I think the construction costs make it uneconomic, but one would expect the Greens, who allegedly want to reduce CO2 emissions to be favourable. Once again, they oppose it because it would pose inconvenience to birds.

Left to the Greens, we would have to generate all of our electricity from wind farms and solar panels at ruinously expensive costs. The various taxes and subsidies which we have enacted to support expensive renewable schemes have already added at least 10% to our bills – with further rises on the way. But despite demanding policies which make electricity ever more expensive, Friends of the Earth recently had the effrontery to launch a campaign complaining about high energy costs! Ministers, please take note – you will never please these people.

Their actions show them for the hypocrites they are. Greens will complain about the building of  new housing estates or roads, whilst at the same time criticising coalition policies to reduce the immigration which is making so much building necessary. They will march to protest about government “cuts” and demand more borrowing, then march again to protest about the power of the banks from which they wish us to borrow ever greater sums of cash. They will protest about unemployment, and then protest again about big infrastructure or energy projects which could create real lasting well paid jobs.

Let us face the facts: today’s greens are yesterday’s high tax, high subsidy, big government, anti-capitalist, left-wing, ban the bomb socialists cloaking themselves in the mantle of environmentalism as a convenient means to demand the imposition of their discredited economic views on a sceptical population. An economic meltdown is a far greater threat to us than an environmental one – so let’s frack for gas, build nuclear and use the profits to develop our motorway network and sell Britain as a paradise for investors looking for a country with plentiful access to cheap and reliable energy.

June 08, 2013 in David Davies MP |

Davies launched a very similar anti-environmental attack in his contribution to the Queen’s Speech debate, during which Caroline Lucas called him a “fruitcake.”

He responded “”It was the fruitcakes who warned against the euro 10 years ago. We were accused of being fruitcakes then, but the fruitcakes were right. Fruitcake is a cheap and reliable source of energy. I am for the fruitcakes. I am proud to be a fruitcake. Long may fruitcakes continue.”

At least he has a sense of humour.

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Signs of the Times: skirmishes in the public realm

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Miles King

This morning I picked up a couple of political stories from yesterday – and it made me think about what is happening to Britain at the moment.

Firstly the The Public Administration Select  Committee published a report severely criticising The Charities Act and also the Charities Commission saying the “public benefit” test for charities was “critically flawed” and singled out Charities “campaigning and political activity” for criticism, though they did not recommend that this activity should be banned.

Remember this is only a few days after the Charities Commission was roundly lambasted by the Public Accounts Committee for failing to spot that The Cup Trust had been set up as a Massive Tax Avoidance Scheme. This is the Trust that received £176 Million pounds in charitable income but only spent £55000 on charitable activities, had a single Trustee which was a company operating out of British Dependency and uber tax- haven the British Virgin Islands. Who could have spotted anything untoward going on?

Naturally The Telegraph jumped on the story complaining bitterly that charities were now either taking government funding and lobbying against government policy (how dare they) in a new “left-leaning lobby” and that Private Schools obviously past the public benefit test because they provide education to children, which must inter alia be a public benefit.

I have worked for many charities over the years. It became clear to me fairly early on, that significant change to improve nature’s chances, would only come about through changes in Government policy, regulation and legislation. And there is no doubt that the Wildlife and Countryside Act, the Habitats Directive, Climate Change Act and so on have made a positive impact for nature. None of these would ever have happened without charities working tirelessly with politicians and civil servants trying to persuade, cajole and plead their case.

Does political work by charities lead to public benefit? You decide.

On the same day new Business crusader Michael Fallon announced an effective moratorium on any new regulations (presumably this includes revisions to existing ones) that have any effect on small businesses (up to 50 employees).  Business Lobby group the BCC cautiously welcomed this stance, saying it would be “keeping an eye” on Fallon to see if he delivers. Regulation was in the words of the Mail “form-filling” and “Red Tape” both undoubtedly pejorative. let’s not forget though that it was Regulation that stopped children being sent up chimneys to clean them (and die early horrible deaths). And it was political lobbying that created legislation that gave women the vote.

Both stories attest to the ongoing battle  against the public realm and public good, in favour of an unregulated, market driven society, that Margaret Thatcher could only have dreamt of.

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