Economic growth is assumed to be a Good Thing, by most economists but it is responsible for most of the environmental problems that affect us, because the growth is uncontrolled and rewards greed. Economic growth is presented as a benefit to society but it is actually a cancer infecting the environment which will ultimately destroy society if we are not careful. It is necessary to find a sensible alternative to economic growth and one of the ideas out there has originated in the United States by Professor Brian Czech. He calls it the Steady State Economy and founded CASSE in order to promulgate its concepts.

You can access CASSE at http://www.steadystate.org/

CASSE is offering itself up as a candidate for $15,000 of marketing services from Free Range Studios, who made “the Story of Stuff”. If it wins it can increase awareness about the alternatives to unrestrained economic growth.

I have just voted for CASSE, and perhaps you might want to do the same. Everyone has three votes and voting is quite simple.
1. Go to this URL: http://youtopia.freerangeproject.com/
2. Click on Vote Now.
3. Click on “sign up” in the upper right corner.
4. Click on “Signup” at the lower left.
5. Enter your information, check the “Accept terms of service” box, and click the Sign Up button.
6. Click on Sustainable Living in the list of categories on the right.
7. Find “Grow better, not bigger!” in the list that appears.
8. Click on “vote”.
9. Click on 3 to answer “How many votes?”

One of the fears of climate scientists was that as the planet got hotter so weather patterns would change radically and that one of the changes would be that some parts of the world would have droughts and others would experience heavier than normal rainfall. This fear has proved well grounded. Unfortunately many people only believe what they can see and experience; Hurricane Katrina made many Americans aware of the weather changes and the effects of climate change on weather. Droughts in the Horn of Africa were more severe, longer lasting and killed more people than Katrina but they were far away from the developed world and perhaps out of sight is out of mind.

In Britain we have been experiencing unusual weather patterns that are probably the result of climate change. In the past few days a great deal of rain has fallen on the Western side of Britain. Some places have experienced around 70mm of rain in twenty four hours and the Met Office has warned that higher ground may have over 250mm of rain in the next day or so. These are unusually large amounts of rain and have caused flooding. They have caused flooding because the amounts of rainfall are far higher than the engineering tolerances built into flood defences and water discharge systems.

The west coast is affected because in the United Kingdom the winds tend to blow from the west, over the vast Atlantic Ocean, where they become charged with moisture which condenses as rain when it meets the British Isles. Flooding has been experienced in Dumfries, Galloway, Cockermouth, Anglesey and parts of South Wales. Seathwaite near Cockermouth recorded 314mm if rainfall in twenty four hours which is the most rainfall ever recorded in England. Previously, in 1955 in Dorset, 280mm of rainfall was recorded in 24 hours. That was itself 40mm higher than previous records.

Of course flooding is not the only danger from unusually heavy rains. Landslips have close part of the West Coast railway line and some power pylons are down causing the disruption of power supplies. There is always a possibility that the storm and sewage systems will be comprised during heavy flooding, providing a risk to health.

So the Arctic Ice may be melting, parts of Africa and Australia may be without normal amounts of water for extended periods but for the inhabitants of Britain floods may bring climate change and the need for climate protection into greater focus. It should focus us into spending more on extreme weather defences but, as prevention is cheaper than cure, also compel us to use far more clean renewable energy and burn far less.

There are a number of ways of fitting Genersys panels to your roof but the best and most aesthetically pleasing to have a roof integrated installation, which we call “an in roof system”. Fitting the panels “in roof” prevents unnecessary heat loss, especially in winter when the wind may blow around panels that are installed parallel to the roof, take heat away from them. In roof installations look neater and are usually worth the extra money.

If you are interested in seeing how the panels are connected to the roof to become roof integrated you can click on the links below and watch the Genersys video showing how this is done.

• How to install a solar panel (in-roof) Part 1 / 2
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqtNvxNaacM

• How to install a solar panel (in-roof) Part 2 / 2
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5DqTnMKIuo

The United Kingdom Government has published its programme of legislation for this the last Parliament before A General Election. Many doubt whether any of the proposals will be enacted in law before Parliament is dissolved. Many of the proposals are simply window dressing but among the more useful pieces of legislation, if passed, will be some aspects of the proposed Energy Bill.

Energy prices are going to rise, inevitably as a result of the additional energy taxes that the Government is imposing to finance insulation and other energy saving measures. Energy prices will almost certainly rise as a result of market forces; as economies around the world recover and re-grow (as indeed they are) more energy will be used and prices will rise. In these circumstances energy needs to be better regulated than it is by the present free market.

The energy proposals are a mixture of good but long overdue provisions and misguided hope.

The good is that the energy companies will have to supply “social tariffs” for poorer customers. Ofgem will be given the power to protect such customers and must include in their work a duty to help emission cuts. Ofgem has been established as a consumer “watchdog” and its duty is to get the cheapest prices for the consumer. This has brought it into conflict with climate protection, as the best way to protect the climate is not to keep energy prices low, but to ration energy and encourage, by rationing and pricing, the installation of renewable energy as a precursor to mandating renewable energy. Quite how Ofgem will use those powers, if the bill becomes laws, remains to be seen.

The misguided hope relates to that old chestnut, carbon capture and storage or CCS. Asking for demonstration CCS projects and incentivising them by means of a competition was the previous policy. I remember Malcolm Wicks when he was Energy Minister calling for CCS projects; then the government ran an ill fated CCS competition. Now it seems that the Government will throw our taxes at the power generating companies who will use them to endeavour to find a viable CCS technology. It all sounds very impressive until you think it through. There is no proven method of CCS. It strikes me that if there is any possibility of CCS it should be explored by academics and practical engineers working directly for a Government agency rather than the energy companies. If a methodology of CSS is discovered the patents should belong to the people, and can be exploited for the common good.

However, that is just one part of the misguided hope that the Energy Bill engenders. The truth is that CCS is really a pipe dream at this stage, and CCS needs huge investment in research before it becomes viable. The level of research is greater than trying out a few demonstration projects.

CCS runs the risk of being the snake oil sold as a cure all to climate change despite the fact that there are plenty of existing viable technologies out there that ought to be installed because they could bring immediate and real reductions in emissions.

I have been trying to understand the basis of measuring the United Kingdom’s carbon dioxide emissions. The country’s much publicised and apparently legally binding emission reduction targets depend upon these being accurately measured. If they are not accurately and consistently measured then they are not real targets at all, just froth and bluster. What, then, is the truth?

There are some inconsistencies in the measuring process that I cannot explain. The first is that there seems no rule about measuring emissions from aircraft and shipping. Should these be measured and attributed to the destinations of ships and planes or by some other method? Measuring by destination would in some cases be unfair; for example large amounts of goods are shipped from China to the United Kingdom but many ships return to China empty. It is at least arguable (and probably right) that the emissions created by the ships that return empty are also attributable to the United Kingdom, but the counting of emissions ignores them.

The second inconsistency has at the moment a small potential for showing lower emission figures than reality, but will in time provide really false information about the United Kingdom’s actual emissions. This relates to biomass.

Biomass produces in terms of emissions just as many emissions per kilowatt hour as a fossil fuel. However the theory goes that biomass is sustainable in emission terms because new growth sequestrates the carbon dioxide emitted by burning biomass.

I have in these posts already shown (I hope) this to be a fallacy in that there is a proportion of biomass emissions that are not sequestrated and it is far better to leave the biomass where it is and plant more trees.

However we are apparently on course to build some biomass power stations, such as the one planned at Port Talbot and the one planned near Scunthorpe.  These will be fuelled by wood chip mainly from Canada and Russia. Will their emissions count as the United Kingdom’s emissions or do we claim the davings from replanting that will supposedly take place in the countries from which we import the biomass?

If we claim the emission savings from foreign replanting then we must claim the emissions created when goods abroad are made for the United Kingdom. We cannot have it both ways, at least not if we are to have emission reduction targets that mean anything.

Mechanical Engineers are probably the most important engineers; civil engineers construct great and important building works, electrical engineers create things that work with electricity and in electronics but mechanical engineers concern themselves with the design and manufacturing of things, drawing upon the laws of physics and mechanics. They number in their ranks Archimedes, Ma Jun, Al-Jazari and George Stephenson, who founded the Institute of Mechanical Engineering.

The thing that always struck me about mechanical engineering is that it is one of those disciplines that has to work in practice. There is no point is designing a flushing toilet that does not flush or a power station that does not produce power. Mechanical engineering is founded upon laws that are demonstrably provable and upon principles of mathematics.

The Institute of Mechanical Engineering has been looking at the United Kingdom Government’s plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050. They have, after a careful study, concluded that the Government will fail in its proposals because there is not enough capacity to do so successfully by 2050. The Institute has not concluded that the reduction cannot be done, but rather that upon existing plans and proposals that it will not be made until 2100, some fifty years past the target date that the Government has imposed upon itself.

Rather curiously the Government has dismissed the institutions findings out of hand; the Department of Energy and Climate Change has accused the institution of having a “can’t do, won’t do attitude”, which was reflected by Mr Miliband recently when he appeared on television.

What the DECC has done is to extend the argument of the institution beyond its natural limits and argue against that extension. The institution did not argue that the target could not be met, but argued that with present policies and capacities it will not be met. Responding that the institution has a “can’t do won’t do attitude” is the dialectical trick usually used by one who secretly believes that his argument is wrong. DECC is also, by advancing their argument, appealing to emotion rather than reason.

Whether we have enough capacity to build the requisite nuclear power stations and wind turbines, and whether we have the policies to secure the installation of widespread microgeneration from renewable energy is a matter of fact, not a matter of emotion. We all want to reduce the emissions significantly and probably most people who have studied climate science believe that the government’s targets are too soft and too distant.

We have the existing means and facilities to reduce the emissions – it is nothing to do with an attitude and if anybody is exhibiting a “can’t do won’t do attitude” it has to be DECC, who have no policies to provide for heat generation by small scale clean renewables, no policies to build nuclear power stations other than in reliance of private companies and no significant expenditure on renewable energy.

The institution has carefully analysed our existing and planned capacity for wind farms and nuclear power; its analysis is that our own policies are wanting and the government would do well to listen to what the mechanical engineers have found and analyse their findings, rather than using arguments that are specious. Climate protection policies can only be implemented if the climate change lobby wins the argument. Using tricks to try and win an argument is transparent; the public see through them and in doing so DECC does a great disservice to those, including the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, who, like me and many others, have been calling for a war on climate change.

It is a bit like torturing yourself, listening to a politician talk about climate change. I inflicted some self torture when I watched and listened to Ed Miliband, the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change on Sunday morning.

Mr Miliband dismissed some research by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (I shall write about that research tomorrow) which showed that the United Kingdom will not meet its climate change promises, which are “legally binding”. He was quite certain that the Institute of Mechanical Engineers had got their figures wrong in calculating how short we in the United Kingdom would be of renewable and low carbon measures. It is an easy slur to make about a reputable body of professionals that has no greater or lesser interest in climate protection than the rest of us and no political affiliation. The Institute is far better qualified to advise than many of the consultants that Mr Miliband’s department employs, who cannot even get their facts right about solar thermal.

He also claimed that the United Kingdom lead the world with the most aggressive legally binding climate protection promises. All these promises of future reduction of greenhouse gas emissions were, if you believe Mr Miliband, something rather special.

It is all very odd. Does Mr Miliband really think that the world is impressive by legally binding targets which have no means of fulfilment? Does Mr Miliband think that it is climate change leadership for the United Kingdom to spend, so it is claimed, a piffling £1.9 billion a year on renewable energy, some of it of no climate protection value like biomass?

Is this the right amount of money for a Government to spend on what they claim is the most dangerous long term problem facing humanity? If so, it is hardly surprising that less than half the inhabitants of the United Kingdom accept that climate change is man made.

Clearly, Mr Miliband is a clever gentleman. He must know, in his heart and in his mind that the United Kingdom is like most nations merely re arranging the lifeboats on the Titanic when it comes to dealing with climate change.

Perhaps, if he has any lingering doubts he can discuss the question of climate protection with his partner, and environmental lawyer at a leading City firm of solicitors. She should know.

I rather get the impression that Mr Miliband has not quite made up his mind whether climate protection comes before or after temporary economic prosperity. We cannot have both, can we?

Politicians need to be courageous when dealing with climate protection. It seems unlikely that the UN climate conference at Copenhagen will be successful. It also seems that President Obama will not be attending it, presumably in order not to be associated with its failure. This is quite wrong.

Politicians must be courageous and tell the public the truth, rather than pretend that what they are proposing will protect the future generations. There is no place for cowardice when it comes to protecting the climate. There is no place for pandering to the demands of the wealthy multi nations or large nation corporations, or for pretence that all will be well.

If it is not worth being courageous and truthful about the sacrifices and changes we must all adopt to protect our long term climate, then it is not worth being brave and courageous about anything. We might as well give up now and tell our children that they will have to solve a problem that we saw coming and refused to do anything about.

The UK Government just has published (on 9^th November) a series of draft policy statements and will “consult” on them.  One of those statements is supposed include ideas which if enacted will speed up planning processes for nuclear energy; another will similarly deal with large scale renewable energy such as wind farms. I have not yet had the time to work my mind through the statements, the “overarching” energy policy in conjunction with which these statements are meant to be read.
Perhaps, we shall see the beginnings of a sensible energy policy for the twenty first century, but somehow I doubt it. A quick glance and search through the renewables statement does not flag any mention of solar, whether PV or thermal, and concentrates on wind and biomass.

I hope that when I read these documents and report to you on them I shall not do so with the same heavy heart and sense of helplessness for the future that I feel every time I read a government document on energy and energy policy. I also fear the “consultation” will be no more than window dressing. We shall see.

You can find the starting point for the consultation and the draft statements at

https://www.energynpsconsultation.decc.gov.uk/energy/

The shores of the Dead Sea are the lowest part of dry land on this planet. The sea itself has no life, apart from some forms of bacteria that can live in its salinity. Salt constitutes about a third of its water content and as a result the Dead Sea is buoyant. When I was young, fifty years ago, I saw pictures of people reading newspapers while effortlessly being kept afloat in the Dead Sea by its high salt content. I resolved to see if it really worked when i visited the Dead Sea, so when I finally did I borrowed an Italian newspaper from a friendly Italian and had my photo taken in the classic pose.

Unfortunately the Dead Sea of 1959 was larger than it is today and it is appreciably shrinking year by year. The problem is caused by lack of water.

The River Jordan has religious meaning for three great faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It feeds through the Sea of Galilee dropping through a rift valley until it reaches its end in the Dead Sea, some four hundred metres below sea level. At the Dead Sea the river brings fresh water into an environment that has the largest concentration of salt in the world. The process here is that the water continuously evaporates during the day and for centuries the rate of evaporation was about the same as the rate of fresh water coming in.

The River Jordan forms a national boundary between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Before it forms the boundary it flows through Israel and Israel has reduced its flow rate quite considerably by diverting water for irrigation and by building dams.  This reduced flow has caused the River Jordan to become much narrower than it was and has caused the Dead Sea to become a shrinking sea.

Rights concerning water flowing through rivers are known as Riparian rights. Different countries have different laws about these; in the United Kingdom the law requires owners of land adjacent to rivers not to stop up, obstruct pollute or divert the river. In the United States the law seems to be that whoever gets the water first can make what use they want of it, and so it has been with Israel.

There are two environmental consequences of the diversion of much of the waters from the River Jordan by Israel. The first is that the River Jordan is now a narrow stream. I have taken a picture of it close to the site that is believed to be the original baptismal site, and you can see how narrow the river has become. The second environmental consequence is that the Dead Sea is shrinking and I have photographed an exhibit at a museum by the Dead Sea in Jordan which illustrates how the shape of the Dead Sea has changed.

Jordan is talking about the possibility of filling the Dead Sea with water pumped from the Red sea. Technically that is possible, but I suspect that it would be a mistake because the environmental consequences of this may be not as expected.

The Dead Sea is a wonderful resource both for Jordan and for Israel. It is a unique environment that we ought to preserve, rather than destroy, and I do hope that measures will be taken to restore both the Dead Sea and the River Jordan to what they were, not so long ago, before it is too late and they are lost forever.

This is a glorious time of the year in many parts of the temperate zones; the leaves turn brown and golden before they fall off the deciduous trees, which are leafless in winter. Leaves form a valuable resource; they can be mulched and used to fertilise land as leaf mould, which is a high quality form of compost or they can be compacted and turned into a fuel, rather like a log that you can burn for warmth or they can be simply dumped into landfill sites.

In the United Kingdom landfill costs around £40 a tonne in tax, together with the associated costs of carrying the leaves to the landfill site and the costs of managing the site itself. Of the alternatives leaves in landfill (provided that the landfill is wholly used for leaves) is probably second in environmentally friendly to leaves being used for compost; both of these methods of disposal are better, environmentally speaking, than turning the leaves into fuel, because the carbon dioxide inherent in the carbon of dead leaves escapes far more slowly when the leaves are consigned to compost or landfill, than it does when the leaves are burnt. The trees from which the leaves have fallen are great stores of carbon; when they shed their leaves the leaves will return some of the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as the leaves decay.

Leaf mould is really a no brainer for most people. If you have a place to store your leaves you can return the leaves to the soil after two years, or use their compost as top dressing, and potting compost. You can avoid buying peat, which without doubt is better left in the ground where it is found.

Leaves that fall into the streets are not usually composted; the local councils whose job it is to clear and dispose of these leaves are reluctant to recycle them because they will mix with litter, cigarette ends, and other items and this will “contaminate” the leaves. Perhaps they are being too precious, too health and safety conscious. I cannot see what harm will be done by recycling leaves that mix with the litter that I see on the streets every day.