The worst British wildfires in 30 years follow a record-breaking warm and dry 2011 April

Top Record Temperatures

Last month was the warmest April in the UK since records began in 1910. Provisional figures recently released by the Met Office indicate that many parts of the UK saw temperatures 3 to 5 degrees centigrade higher than it is normal for April. 2007 had already seen the warmest April since records began, so this sets a new and higher milestone only four years after the previous top record. In England, where official figures date back to 1659, April 2011 became the warmest April in 350 years.

The same month saw unusually low amounts of rainfall, with the average national rainfall at 36.7mm –approximately half of the normal amount of rainfall for the month. This has prompted various water suppliers companies throughout the country, such as Wales Water, to issue precautionary warnings asking customers to use water sparingly. During Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons on 4 May, the PM was informed that farmers in the South of England were ‘genuinely concerned’ about shortages of water and possible drought.

The heat wave has been caused by the persistence of a series of high pressure systems over the east of the British Isles. These weather systems have brought warm, dry air from the continent as well as from North African and the Saharan regions. The high pressure has kept away cooler winds that normally come at this time of the year from the Atlantic, bringing moisture and bands of rain over the UK. Whilst it is impossible to attribute any particular weather event directly and unequivocally to Global Warming, an increase in extreme weather patterns and weather events are regarded as a possible sign of Climate Change.

Wildfire Havoc

The unusually warm and dry weather has seen some of the worst wildfires seen in the UK in the last 30 years. Blazes have burned continuously for several days in areas of Wales, the Scottish Highlands, Berkshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire. David Cameron has praised the efforts of fire crews up and down the country battling the blazes and has promised funds towards the countrywide fire fighting operation. In Ireland fire crews have had to deal with more than 1,000 gorse and forest fires over the last 5 days.

Whilst the police are investigating a number of individuals on suspicion of possible arson, many of the blazes are likely to have been initiated unpremeditatedly by the increasing use of Chinese lanterns at wedding ceremonies, country pick nicks and other celebratory events. Fire fighters have asked the public to be aware that Chinese lanterns must be used carefully as their embers can continue glowing for extended periods even after the flame has gone out. Abandoned pieces glass lying on the ground are also known to be the causes of fires when exposed to long spells of warm, dry and sunny weather, as dry leaves are highly flammable.

Whilst dozens of fire fighter crews continue to battle the flames through beatings and dropping water from helicopters, only rainfall is likely to completely quench the advancing blazes. However, showers are of limited help. Only sustained rain will have a lasting effect, as the longevity of the fires means that hot spots buried one meter deep in the undergrowth threaten to reignite the fires that have been put out. Whilst temperatures are expected to hit 26°C over the weekend, it is hoped that forecast thunderstorms offer the fire crews much needed help over the next few days.

Posted under Environmental News

Chicxulub Crater, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico - Artist's Impression

The plans to study the Chicxulub Crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico sound like something out of a Jules Verne story. Going deeper than anyone has been before, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (the IODP) is planning an expedition to study the bottom of the crater that could very well date from the asteroid strike that killed off the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. Steeped in scientific importance and, perhaps, containing traces of life; while the crater plunges depths deeper than any human has descended to, there could very well be life forms of some sort or other down there.

Writing for the BBC, Richard Black has covered this story, saying;

“[The] plan to study the Chicxulub crater by boring 1.5km into the sea bed is among the highlights of ocean drilling projects proposed for the next decade.”

Data from this expedition could very well help predict where and when seismic events will happen – a stock of information that, when properly implemented, could save lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people the world over, with particular attention to the Pacific Ring of Fire from which the latest disasters that afflicted Japan and neighbouring islands originated.

This exploration into the popularly monikered ‘Dino Crater’ is lined up to be included in the IODP’s next major plan, due to take place between 2013-2023. Other projects included in this overarching plan involve detailed study into climate and ocean change, life on the ocean floor and an understanding of the seismic and volcanic behaviour of the Earth’s tectonic plates. The draft of the plan is due to be published within the next month after careful consideration by a research team in Germany.

The centre of the crater is located near the Mexican town of Chicxulub (which can be roughly translated from the Yucatec Maya language to the phrase ‘flea demon’), from where the crater gets its name. It was discovered by a geophysicist named Glen Penfield – in liaison with Alan Hildebrand – in the 1970s and has been a subject of debate ever since. An isotope analysis of the crater and carbon dating of the more easily accessible reaches have shown that the crater dates back to the end of the Cretaceous Period – nearly sixty-five million years ago – and a mass-extinction event that caused the deaths of the creatures we call dinosaurs on an extravagant scale, nearly sending life on Earth back to the level of single-celled organisms.

CHICXULUB CRATER’S IMPACT ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Investigation of the Chicxulub Crater and the data complied could even prove useful in examining the impact of the environment on climate change. Catherine Mevel, of the Paris-based management agency under the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) umbrella, says that the plan has two potential areas of interest for us in the Northern Hemisphere;

“One is the Arctic – we need to understand the tectonic evolution of the Arctic basin because it has a strong influence on global climate change[…]”

She goes on to say that there are particular gas hydrates trapped in the crater which could be released into our atmosphere if the climate heats up too much. These gas hydrates could prove problematic in the future as our atmosphere is a very delicate balance of oxygen, nitrogen and various other elemental gases that combine to provide the very air we breathe. Clearly, it is in our best interests to investigate these potential emissions and the ‘Dino Crater’ in general as quickly as possible in order to circumnavigate any truly catastrophic hitches that may crop up in the future.

Posted under Environmental News

More than ever before the Copenhagen climate Change Summit drew interest and scrutiny on the political side of climate change and global warming problems. Now, all eyes are fixed firmly on the negotiators, and the lack of development at the summit has angered many who would brand those negotiators as the culprits, and has been reported in newspapers, on blogs, news websites and social networks.

There was nothing of the sort in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol was a matter of great press interest, but nothing of the level of scrutiny reached other forms of expression. But the move towards the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit has coincided with the rise in blogging, and now a whole host of angry activists – neither politicians nor journalists – are getting in on the act.

Putting pressure on both the politicians involved and the journalists expected to deliver interpretation of those actions to the world, blogs and social networks have allowed for an explosion of public opinion on the summit. One such example comes from Radiohead front-man Thom Yorke, who attended the summit and kept the Radiohead website in a state of frequent flux with his thoughts on the talks.

In a final flurry of anger, he wrote as follows:

“i guess this time of year is a time for serious reflection and i have been doing a lot of that since coming back from copenhagen.
you know what has stunned me coming back is the anger you can taste in the air about this, everybody i meet wants to talk about it.. everyone is angry and despairing and i have tried to remain positive when i talk to them about it.. it has perhaps awakened something in the back of the mind of sane people throughout the world who perhaps naively assumed that something positive would come of these talks.”

And anger has been the reaction for so many that it will now be hoped that the unsatisfactory deal done at Copenhagen will not be met by an equally disappointed lack of protest and backlash from those who oppose its weaknesses.Still in the immediate aftermath, it is difficult to tell. Let’s hope, though, that at a grass-roots level, something can be done.

Posted under Articles, Climate

Who’s responsibility is it to question and answer the ever-changing problems of the world? Traditionally it has fallen to the artists of civilisation to raise these never ending questions and invite us, the spectators, to participate and think. However, one thing has remained the same: there is no clear or set solution: no straight line.

And as science, technology and industry have reached their own contemporary boundaries, pushing these limits together and individually, they too have asked the same questions with their very own specific languages. So what is it that the arts have to offer to, what seems like, a question only a synthesis of the latter three can answer?

Never before have we seen such a direct and clear acknowledgment that planet Earth is under threat. Headline after headline reinforces these troubled times in waves. Climate change too has become quite a colloquialism, and one that, unfortunately, has become part of the mis-understood idiom of the 21st century. Rain forests are in decline, the O-zone layer is deteriorating and ice-caps are shrinking back into the sea. The only things that seem to be on the increase are pollution levels and the general sense of overwhelming bewilderment that all this information can weigh upon one mind alone.

Is there any hope or solution? A collection of exhibitions, talks and seminars held at the Royal Academy of Arts are inviting the public to respond to these very issues. Earth: Art of a changing world is one example of how art today attempts to grasp the discursive questions relating to climate change and the environment. Through the eyes of contemporary artists, looking to address topical, environmental issues, present time old questions in today’s more than relevant situation. The Royal Academy of Art explains:

“‘Earth: Art of a changing world’ brings together the work of over thirty leading contemporary artists in order to show how art can help us to explore and debate the issues surrounding climate change. Many works in the exhibition highlight both the beauty and fragility of the natural world, leading us to think about our own impact on the environment

As the title of the exhibition suggests, our planet is already experiencing change and the exhibition also invites us to consider the cultural as well as environmental consequences of rising temperatures.”

The success of this exhibition and exhibitions just like it being held around the country depend on its participating spectators. That being said, the very concept of this kiln of art exhibition begins to works its way into the imagination before even setting foot into a gallery. If art, artists and their spectators are to help ‘save’ the world, it seems highly significant that what must be done in order to achieve its result, is to hold a public exhibit: one where anyone is invited to simply turn up, look, and begin to question. Whatever those questions may be.

It’s true to say that everyone has a different interpretation, a unique way of understanding the possible meaning of a single piece of art, but whatever the maxim ‘seeing is believing’ may mean to you, the Royal Academy of Arts, regional galleries and artists up and down the country, are hoping to open your eyes, whichever way they can.

Posted under Articles, Climate, Events

Today is the day that world leaders join the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, and where talk will focus on emissions cuts, carbon trading schemes, the green ambitions for the US and China, it could easily be forgotten that the key to long term development lies in green resources.

Understandably, the conference and the lead up to it focused on the respective positions of the US, India, China and the European nations on immediate emissions cuts and CO2 emissions limits. Across the media the summit has been relayed as a ‘make or break’ fortnight in climate change policy and global warming politics; it must deal first with snap decisions, with catalysts and triggers – with the immediate problem – before it can discuss future development and sustainability.

In doing so, though, it risks losing sight of the climate change problem at its most problematic level: that of future generations. Certainly at current the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit is looking to safeguard future generations by curbing the behaviour of current times, but it must also look to the development of a climate change policy that reflects a continued effort at keeping CO2 emissions.

Green resources are the key to that effort.

Green Resources Develop Continued Low Carbon Economies

In developing a long term goal for low carbon emissions and climate change policy, though, it is imperative that world leaders and environment ministers settle on some framework for green resources – renewable energy, potentially nuclear, and also carbon capture and storage (CCS) – so that any emissions limits put in place at Copenhagen can be sustained and developed.

Whilst green resources are implicit in any emissions cuts at the conference, it must also be remember that – much like the arguments about binding or non-binding emissions targets – green resources can only develop globally with a binding framework. If there’s no binding framework on development and implementation of green resources, then their inclusion and their development is only tacit.

And if their development is only tacit, then their development is slower. And if their development is slower, then the growth of green resources that will help major nation’s transition to low carbon economies is stunted.

Green Resources Must Grow as Part of a Binding Framework

Alongside pledges for emissions cuts at Copenhagen, then, should come a commitment to developing green resources across nations, as a means for achieving low carbon transition and CO2 emissions reductions.

Creating a framework for sustainability and further development too, it ensures that where Copenhagen addresses the needs of the short-term, it also safeguards longer term goals for climate change policy and global warming politics, in years to come.

Let us see then, whether the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference can set such long-term goals, as it struggles to set the short-term ones.

Posted under Articles, Climate

After much anticipation and discussion, the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit is now less than one week away. World leaders and ministers – including US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minster Gordon Brown and Energy Minister Ed Miliband, and Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh – have spoken of the ‘do or die’ nature of the talks.

But many environmentalists and greens are now beginning to speak out on what they see as a fundamental failure on the part of politicians to understand the nature of the problems that they face.

James Hansen, speaking to the Guardian Newspaper, has suggested that a deal at Copenhagen would be a disaster: he argues that the policies that leaders are touting, borne out of a lack of understanding, will create further and graver problems, and will be legislatively guaranteed.

Others have further argued that the system of carbon trading that was so prevalent in the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 should be scrapped in its entirety at Copenhagen: carbon trading, they claim, is a system that has little effect on genuine carbon emissions reductions worldwide. It creates a system, so the argument goes, that rewards nations and organisations for a reduction that has little practical effect, and still more worryingly allows for an override of environmental commitments with financial power.

Interestingly, then, many environmental greens are arguing that the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference is designed for failure: politicians are calling for more ambitious deals, a great collective responsibility, and binding targets, but critics claim that the foundation for these principles is badly researched and will lead to disaster in any case.

It is a statement of futility that will not encourage politicians and those who are watching the talks with hope and anticipation.With the deal at Copenhagen expected to bind nations to its terms for at least a decade, any wrong steps could prove costly: it is the politicians themselves that are claiming that the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference represents the last great opportunity for an emissions reduction deal, and any fundamental mistakes could be dangerous indeed.

Nonetheless, people across the world will look to the 7th of December with great expectation.

Posted under Environmental News

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has not enjoyed a development without controversy: like nuclear power it has had its critics as well as its supporters, with advocates favouring the immediacy with which it can be implemented and its theoretically clean electricity generation, and sceptics fearing that the theory would not hold to the practice, and carbon dumping could cause as many problems as the current dumping of toxic waste.

The British government, though, are continually in favour, and last week Ed Miliband, Energy Secretary and head of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), once again signalled his commmitment to the technology, promising to build electricity plants that are equipped with CCS technology.

Electricity Plants Will Support Strong Renewable Energy and Nuclear Energy Programmes

Confirming that the New Labour government will not ratify plans to build any new coal-fired electricity plants unless they are fitted with CCS technology, Miliband further commented in his speech that renewable energy was still firmly on the government’s agenda; he announced a strategy that would incorporate the three pillars of renewable power, CCS, and nuclear power.

Whilst both nuclear energy and CCS are contentious issues – not to mention the fact that Kingsnorth, the subject of recent protest, is one of the planned build sites for a new electricity plant – it can be said that Miliband’s proposals are ambitious, thoughtful and sensible.

Understanding that renewable energy is by far the purest option in the future, the DECC has drafted a plan that also accepts that the problem of climate change is alive now, and must be dealt with now.  As such, the use of nuclear energy and CCS as a support base for the increased development of renewable energy, is a very sound proposal indeed.

To that end, the stand out statement from Miliband was as follows: “Even on our ambitious targets for renewables, there will be a need, on the estimates we are publishing today, for additional new non-renewable power. We need to use all available low carbon sources”.

No More Polluting Electricity Plants – An Ambitious Statement in the Lead up to Copenhagen

With the count down to the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit well under way, the DECC are certainly setting an example to other nations in positive climate change policy. It further signals the intentions of Britain to lead the way in future energy policy. If the DECC can stick to their proposal, and fit all new coal-fired electricity plants with CCS technology, then it will be a laudible step indeed.

Posted under Electricity Generation

The power of the US in the second half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, has led to its attribution as the world’s first ‘hyperpower’; not content with the term superpower, commentators and political thinkers have argued that the US, occupying a position of unrivalled global supremacy, is so dominant in political, cultural and economic matters that it requires the new term.

Indeed, US cultural and political hegemony is strong. One need only look to Hollywood as an example of cultural hegemony, and the Middle East as an example of political hegemony.

Of course the benefits of hegemony and hyperdom bring with them certain obligations; at least, that is to say, that other nations feel that their own loyalty to the line require something in return. That return comes quite often in terms of leadership: if a hegemonic power can tell others what to do, then it must also be prepared to take the bull by the horns when others will not.

Such is the criticism of the US in the lead up to the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, where political leaders have been calling on the US time and again to make solid financial as well as environmental commitments in order to set examples to other nations.

So far, of course, they have done nothing of the kind. With under just a month until the summit, many politicians are criticising the Obama administration publicly. Of these criticism, one seems particularly pertinent; Danish environment Connie Hedegaard will be one of the symbolic figureheads of the conference, as the environmental representative of the host nation. She stated as follows:

“I remind the US that it is not the only country in the world that has to have discussions with its domestic parliament…The expectation out there worldwide among populations and the young [is for] the US to deliver on one of the key challenges of our century. The Americans will have to come up [with an offer] one way or another“.

Hegemony, then, requires a certain sense of responsibility, and it requires an understanding of the hegemonic nation’s social commitment to leadership if  it wishes to enjoy the benefits of hegemonic status. At current, the US is now fulfilling that commitment, and the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit could fail as a result.

Posted under Environmental News

The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference is fast approaching. The anticipation surrounding the event has generated a vast media landscape over the preceding months, so that the summit is now at the centre of political tensions. That anticipation, though, has slowly given way to a sense of resignation and even disappointment, over the apparent lack of cohesion and vision in the discussions of world leaders in their attempts to draw together common goals and aims before the opening of the conference proper.

In a new bout of criticism, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has condemned world leaders and their inability to see past their own national interests, thus hampering the opportunity for a global deal.

Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made the following comments:

“I gave all the world’s leaders a very grim view of what the science tells us and that is what should be motivating us all, but I’m afraid I don’t see too much evidence of that at the current stage. Science has been moved aside and the space has been filled up with political myopia with every country now trying to protect its own narrow short-term interests. They are afraid to have negotiations go any further because they would have to compromise on those interests“.

This picture of the world leaders as narrow minded and self-serving is not one that will bring hope to those who see the Copenhagen Climate change Summit as a pertinent and still worse necessary opportunity for leader to come to a planet-saving climate change deal.

Indeed,with concrete figures for financial aid still missing, the gulf between developed and developing nations that has so threatened the global essence of the deal is set to persist; whilst developed nations argue that financial aid for poorer countries is a necessary component any potential agreements, none – except so far, Britain – are ready to commit to exact values, least of all the US.

If that problem persists, it will be indicative of the position of world leader in relation to global cooperation. That there are smaller issues, pertaining to individual countries, or between only a few nations or blocs, is further cause for concern.

Posted under Environmental News

So much talk about the problem of climate change and its effect is now so seeped into mainstream media, that more and more people are instead trying to tell stories of people who deal with it daily.

One such story, reported by the Guardian, tells the story of the lives of nomads in the Arctic Tundra. They wrote that,

It is one of the world’s last great wildernesses, a 435-mile long peninsula of lakes and squelching tundra stretching deep into the Arctic Ocean. For 1,000 years the indigenous Nenets people have migrated along the Yamal peninsula. In summer they wander northwards, taking their reindeer with them, across a landscape of boggy ponds, rhododendron-like shrubs and wind-blasted birch trees. In winter they return southwards.

But this remote region of north-west Siberia is now under heavy threat from global warming. Traditionally the Nenets travel across the frozen Ob River in November and set up camp in the southern forests around Nadym. These days, though, this annual winter pilgrimage is delayed. Last year the Nenets, together with many thousands of reindeer, had to wait until late December when the ice was finally thick enough to cross.

Here in one of the most remote parts of the planet there are clear signs the environment is under strain. Last year the Nenets arrived at a regular summer camping spot and discovered that half of their lake had disappeared. It had drained away after a landslide. While landslides can occur naturally, scientists say there is unmistakable evidence that Yamal’s ancient permafrost is melting. The Nenets report other curious changes – fewer mosquitoes and a puzzling increase in gadflies“.

An old pilgrimage threatened, they are nonetheless able to adapt. But the truth that the world is changing at its foundations – with groups who work with the land, still, and harbour a relationship with it – is telling indeed of the future problems that climate change might cause.

It is safe to say though that the Nenets won’t live in quite the same way now as once they did, and their lives set an example of how genuinely climate change can transform the lives of those who inhabit the world.

Posted under Articles, Environmental News