Green In The Media 1st - 7th August

Monday 1st August



One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio 
Time: 11:32 to 11:50 (Also 1630, Fri 1930, Sat 0030, Sun 1930)
One Planet looks at how we use our planet.


Tuesday 2nd August



Home Planet
On: BBC Radio 4 
Time: 15:00 to 15:30 
Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about the world and our impact upon it.


Wednesday 3rd August



Building the Impossible
On: Quest 
Time: 21:00 to 22:00 (Also Sun 1900)
Sea City. Episode 1.
A construction revolution is underway in Kuwait as international engineers lead an army of workers on a mission to create an eco city in the heart of the desert. Can it succeed?


Sunday 7th August



Countryfile
On: BBC 1 
Time: 19:30 to 20:30 
John Craven investigates the UK's reliance on imports and asks if we should be producing more of the food we eat.





Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from 
http://www.getdigiguide.tv/?p=1&r=20818
Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

69%

- people opposed to a badger cull in England, which the government is going ahead with anyway #

39.2kg

- carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of lamb for every 1kg of food produced #

⅓

- proportion of Chesapeake Bay which is a 'dead zone' #

89.5 million barrels per day

- predicted global oil consumption for 2011 #

850 - 900 billion barrels

- oil that remains in "conventional" reserves #

6.4 billion

- plastic bags used in the UK last year #

SEPA: Putting The Mental In Environmental

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) have today announced that they're moving some of their staff out of city and town centres and into a building in the Eurocentral industrial estate.


If you don't know Eurocentral, it was built purely because it was next to the M8 Glasgow to Edinburgh motorway. Or, more strictly, the A8 since that stretch isn't actually a motorway. Apparently this means people could drive from all over the country and get to it easily.


As for those relying on public transport, erm...

Ok, that's not strictly fair. There's a peak-hours-only bus service to Coatbridge and Bellshill. And Holytown train station is only 1.5 miles away, claims the Eurocentral website, neglecting to mention that that measurement is as-the-crow-flies and it's actually 2.5 miles if you want to walk or cycle.


I'm struggling to understand SEPA's thinking on this. Staff will be moving from Edinburgh, Perth, Stirling and East Kilbride to a near-inaccessible industrial estate off a motorway. Not so much environmental, more just mental.

Derailment Shows We Need To Use Haymarket More

A ScotRail train on Platform 0 at Haymarket

A train derailment in Princes Street Gardens last night shows the need to reduce the pressure on the pinch-point between Waverley and Haymarket stations in Edinburgh.


For those of you who don't know your Edinburgh geography, there is only a mile between the two stations, traversed in 4 minutes at normal line speed. The problem is, Waverley's 20 platforms are pushed into just four running lines through Princes Street Gardens.


In recent months, the two northernmost lines have been electrified to close a historical anomaly that saw electric trains only able to use the two southern lines. This has helped with some of the congestion. Platform 0 has also been retained at Haymarket despite Network Rail wanting to get rid of it. It has proven invaluable during this current "crisis" as trains terminate at Haymarket instead of going onward to Waverley.


I believe that more trains should terminate at Haymarket. There are big plans to turn it into a large "interchange hub" where passengers can catch buses, taxis and trams to other destinations in the city. I see no reaosn why we couldn't have every second train from Fife or Bathgate terminating/starting at Haymarket. In fact, with the plans to increase train frequency between Edinburgh and Glasgow to every ten minutes, why not have every third of those trains terminating/starting at Haymarket?


To my mind, Edinburgh's smaller station is criminally underused and should be utilised to a greater capacity in order to lessen the congestion into, and in, Waverley.

Va Va Voom...Scree, Beep, Honk, Rrruuuummm, Tring, Wacka Wacka

Photo by zeevveez

It looks like the government are going to avoid forcing car manufacturers to make electric cars noisy.


According to The Independent, a study has shown that they're no less noisy than today's cars anyway. Rather than the noise coming from the engine, modern cars are so quiet that it is mostly tyre sounds that you hear when standing on the pavement, and that won't change with electric cars.


I'm kinda torn on this. On the one hand, it's rather cool to glide silently along without the noise of internal combustion coming from somewhere inches from your knees. On the other, I was once almost run over by a Prius outside Aberdeen Station, which came up silently behind me just as I stepped off the kerb.


And how ironic would that have been?


On the third hand, I do quite fancy owning a car that makes the same noise as a Star Wars podracer as it moves through the streets of Edinburgh.

Green In The Media 25th - 31st July

Monday 25th July



One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio 
Time: 11:32 to 11:50 (Also 1630, Fri 1930, Sat 0030, Sun 1930)
One Planet looks at how we use our planet.


Tuesday 26th July



Home Planet
On: BBC Radio 4
Time: 15:00 to 15:30 
Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about the world and our impact upon it.





Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from 
http://www.getdigiguide.tv/?p=1&r=20818
Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

4,200 gallons

- early estimate by BP of amount of oil spilled from an Alaskan pipeline last weekend #

£10 million

- value of ivory destroyed by the Kenyan government #

25,000

- cattle slaughtered in the UK last year after contracting TB #

3,424.6 kilotonnes CO²

- emissions from the UK rail network in 2009-10 #

$50 million

- donation to the Sierra Club's anti-coal campaign by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg #

Enquiring After Enquiries

I'm sure we all have stories about the frustrations of phoning call centres in the Indian Subcontinent. My own story involves National Rail Enquiries and a call handler called "George" (yeah, right!) who insisted that there was no such place as Birmingham.


At one time, before the portable ticket machines were capable of doing everything bar tieing our shoelaces, we had to carry those 1000+ page timetables that trainspotters have with us at all times. If a passenger asked for a train time, then it was a laborious job to work it out particularly if there were changes involved. If you had no sense of Britain's geography then you were floundering!


I noticed that one of my colleagues seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of train departure times out of Preston. When I asked him, he admitted to just making times up - the passenger and he would never cross paths again, so why bother telling the truth? I'm sure he wasn't the only one!


When we got issued with mobile phones, we discovered that it was a lot easier to phone National Rail Enquiries for the train times than it was to go squint-eyed flicking through 1000+ pages of fine print timetables. I'm pretty sure a high percentage of their call volume came from railway staff who were already on trains, trying to answer passenger queries. And then they moved the call centre to India. I stopped using them, my colleagues stopped using them, and the public used to tell me tales of woe about trying to use them.


With the rise of smartphones, there's no urgent need to call them anymore. Apps or their website do as good a job, without the frustration of trying to make a computer understand you. Or you can ask a question on twitter to the specific company you're travelling with. Or indeed, the Guard on the train can now inform you within seconds that your journey will involve five changes and a replacement bus service.


Which begs the question, what is the National Rail Enquiries call centre for? I can't be the only one asking. The new National Rail Trends Yearbook for 2010/11 is now out, and shows that phone calls to NRE are down a whopping great 29%. In fact, this chart shows the overall decline in the last 12 years:


Incidentally, the yearbook also shows that for 2010/11, there was a 7.6% increase in passengers, a 7.1% increase in revenue, and a 6.0% increase in fare prices. I'll write more on this tomorrow.

China Announces Emissions Trading Scheme

Photo by Bert Kaufmann

Australia has been tearing itself apart lately as they argue over the impending carbon tax and emissions trading. Highly unpopular with the conservatives and big business, it would see the polluters pay with the idea that they'd rather reduce their emissions than pay the tax. One of the arguments is that this is highly unfair and will make Australian companies uncompetitive.


Well, it looks like that rug has just been pulled from under them. China has announced plans for a carbon-trading scheme in their latest 5 year economic plan. With 10% of Australia's coal headed to China, that means the Aussies would have to reduce their emissions if they wanted to continue to trade with China anyway.


I'm not wholly convinced by emissions trading. If you're rich enough, then you can pay your way out of doing anything about your pollution. But if the emissions limits are low enough, then hopefully some good will come of it.


And, let's be frank, it's nice to see China responding to it's growing pollution problem.

Fulfilling Potential

Photo by InspireKelly

It takes a special kind of person to look at some green fields, rolling meadows and luscious trees, and think "You know what, this place needs to be concreted over".


As you can imagine, I'm not that kind of person. Some are, though, including Edinburgh Council, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government. They've all fallen in behind a developer's proposal to "release the potential" of the green belt site surrounding Edinburgh Airport and turn it into an "International Business Gateway".


The developer reckons that the site's proximity to the airport and two motorways makes it the ideal place to be destroyed and built over.


I reckon that the site's proximity to the airport and two motorways makes it ideal to be soaking up all that carbon dioxide. As a greenfield site, as a haven to wildlife and a buffer at the edge of the city, and as a pleasant sight to the weary traveller entering or exiting Edinburgh, I think it's already "fulfilling it's potential", don't you?

Green In The Media 18th - 24th July

Monday 18th July



One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio 
Time: 11:32 to 11:50 (Also 1630, Fri 1930, Sat 0030, Sun 1930)
One Planet looks at how we use our planet.



Could it Happen Here?
On: BBC Radio Scotland 
Time: 22:05 to 22:30 
America's Oil Disaster.
Euan McIlwraith heads into the future to imagine how Scotland's environment would cope if an American-style oil disaster happened here.


Tuesday 19th July



Home Planet
On: BBC Radio 4
Time: 15:00 to 15:30
Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about our world and our impact upon it.



After the Apocalypse
On: more4 
Time: 22:00 to 23:25 (Also 0030)
During the Soviet era, the people of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan were used as human guinea pigs in the testing of nuclear weapons. Today the residents believe they are living with the consequences: according to local medical records, one in 20 children is born with defects. After the Apocalypse focuses on those whose lives have been shaped by this past, including a maternity doctor who enthusiastically pilots a 'genetic passport' scheme to stop women with bad genes from getting pregnant, and a local resident fighting for her right to have a child. There is no scientific consensus on the extent to which radiation in this area may have affected human genetics, but this does not detract from the harrowing scenarios this community faces and its struggle to cope with the country's history. 





Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from 
http://www.getdigiguide.tv/?p=1&r=20818
Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

21.7 tonnes

- weight of items confiscated from passengers before boarding at Edinburgh Airport #

243,244 square miles

- size of a new shark sanctuary in the Bahamas #

30 GW

- Italy's new target for solar power output, after already reaching their 2020 target of 8GW #

196 days

- supply of fish to the UK from UK waters. The rest of the year, we have to import fish #

429

- auctions for wind power projects about to be conducted in Brazil #

Al Gore's New Project: Climate Reality

For some reason, at the weekend I had an overwhelming urge to watch An Inconvenient Truth for the first time in a number of years. It still packs a punch, but I was left wanting an update.


Well, maybe my subconscious was registering this event. Al Gore's new baby is called The Climate Reality Project, and aims to cut through all the denial nonsense with a new show broadcast every hour throughout the day, corresponding with 8pm in every timezone.


You can sign up for updates in anticipation of the event on their website. Here's what Gore has to say, followed by the promotional video:

"24 Hours of Reality will focus the world's attention on the full truth, scope, scale and impact of the climate crisis. To remove the doubt. Reveal the deniers. And catalyze urgency around an issue that affects every one of us"

Keep Scotland Tidy - Send Your Nuclear Waste To England

By Chris McKenna via Wikimedia Commons

Cast your mind back to January 2008. The SNP had been in power for less than a year, and a bizarre political spat erupted. The Scottish Government decided that, instead of sending our nuclear waste to England, we would instead keep it in this country.


Quite what they were planning to do with it was never revealed, but evidently they've since had a change of heart as they are not standing in the way of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority taking all the leftover waste from Dounreay to Sellafield in England. By train.


Are trains more secure and safe than transporting the material by road? Given the industry I work in, I'd say yes, with a huge "but" hanging over the answer. One accident with a nuclear train (not uncommon) has the potential to be more catastrophic than one accident with one lorry, despite the best attempts by British Rail to reassure us as you can see in the video below.


I have no answer to the problem of nuclear waste. Which is not surprising, given that the experts have no answer either. Taking it to one repository at Sellafield seems as good a solution as any, by whatever means. I just don't like it.

Green In The Media 11th - 17th July

Monday 11th July

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 11:32 to 11:50 (Also 1630, Fri 1930, Sat 0030, Sun 1930)
One Planet looks at how we use our planet.

Tuesday 12th July

Home Planet
On: BBC Radio 4
Time: 15:00 to 15:30
Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about our world and our impact upon it.


Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from
http://www.getdigiguide.tv/?p=1&r=20818
Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

42,000 gallons

- oil spill from a pipeline on the Yellowstone River #

28

- number of onshore oil wells in Britain #

$211 billion

- global investment last year in renewable energy #

193

- Rhinos killed in South Africa this year so far #

45%

- children in Fukushima Prefecture who show signs of thyroid radiation exposure #

Solar Plant Produces Energy At Night

Photo by Torresol Energy

The variability in supply from renewable energy is one of our great engineering challenges, and is also something that the fossil-fuel and nuclear crowd use to berate anyone who suggests that we could power our world with 100% clean energy.

As we become more interconnected, that variability falls away. Taking Scotland as an example, it's usually windy somewhere around this country and so the turbines in one area can compensate for those in another area. The North Sea Interconnector will see us sending excess energy to Norway to be "stored" as hydro-power, for release back to us when we need a boost. Europe as a whole is moving slowly towards a system of taking wind and hydro from the northern countries, and solar from the south and Africa, all supplemented by wave and tidal from our vast shoreline.

But going back to the small scale, perhaps our future power supplies won't be all that vulnerable to variability after all. Battery technology, for storing our wind output, is increasing all the time. And this week, for the first time, Spain managed to produce energy from a solar tower for 24 hours.

Yep, even when it was dark they managed to get power out of a solar plant. How? The mirrors heat molten salt, which in turn generates steam to drive the turbine. There was enough heat in the molten salt to continue production of energy right through the night.

The designers reckon that they will get a yearly average of 20 hours of energy production a day from the plant, producing about 110 GWh a year. With Spain dependent on imports for 77% of it's energy, a few more plants like this could see them saving a hell of a lot of money, and perhaps earning some too by exporting to the rest of the EU.

The more the technology advances, the more attractive renewables look.

Burying The Roadmap

A curiosity...

Last week, the Scottish Government issued a "roadmap" on how they would achieve their renewable energy targets by 2020. I blogged about it last Friday, provided a link to the pdf file on the Government website, and downloaded it myself.

Yesterday, commenter and fellow blogger Braveheart brought to my attention that the pdf was no longer available from the link I posted. Sure enough, it was gone. Looking at the recent publications list, it didn't appear for July. Or June. What was going on?

I went back to the government press release, where they provided a link to the report. Sure enough, there it is - filed under the original publication which it updates, and under the date for that original publication, July 2009.

This raises a number of questions. Why would the government remove the publication from it's 2011 listing and bury it under another report name in 2009? Why make it as hard as possible for people to find the roadmap? Is it normal practice to file new reports under the names of the old reports that they replace, with the old report's publication date?

Or is this all just a mistake? After all, the home page of the government's website currently has news of the roadmap front and centre, along with a link.

Like I said, curious.

Bombardier Paying Price For Lack Of Rail Investment

Photo by cooldudeandy01

The news that Bombardier are having to decimate their Derby workforce after the government awarded a train-building contract to German-based Siemens is, of course, shocking.

This row has been brewing for some time. With no new rail franchise awards for quite some time, and the ones that exist at the moment all having newish rolling stock already, orders had dried up in Britain. Couple this with the government's policy of pricing people off the rails rather than investing in more carriages, and the UK's last train manufacturer was fighting a losing battle.

Plus, anyone who has travelled any distance on a Voyager knows that Bombardier's product was, well, a bit shit.

Coming hot on the heels of Iain Duncan Smith calling for 'British jobs for British workers', this has been a spectacular own goal for the UK government. They're getting a deserved kicking for it.

But let me explode one myth being bandied about today: that you'll never see this kind of thing happening in other European countries. Last year, Eurostar - owned partly by French state railway SNCF - awarded a new train contract to German-based Siemens instead of the French firm Alstom which had built all it's previous trains. An almighty row erupted in France, much like the one today around Bombardier.

It's almost like Siemens are wooing companies with a decent product...

Europe Needs To Lead, Mr Stevenson

Photo by anka @ happyhangaround

I usually take part in 'Cyberactions' - quick emails that organisations like Friends of the Earth ask you to send to various bodies and representatives in order to pressure them on a decision.

Tomorrow, the European Parliament will finally get around to voting on a 30% emissions reduction target. They've already got a 20% by 2020 target which they're on course to beat, so you would think upping that to 30% wouldn't produce too many problems.

You'd be wrong. Poland looks set to veto the target, and the conservative block of MEPs are likely to vote against it as well.

Which is where the Cyberaction comes in. Stop Climate Chaos asked that we email our MEPs and the Tory leader urging them not to vote against the 30% target. (You can take part here). I've emailed MEPs before and been ignored, all bar the Tory Struan Stevenson. Impressed at the time, I admitted some new-found respect for him.

Well, not any more.

His email in reply is obviously a standard one which he is sending to all who take part in the Cyberaction. Here's what he says:

Conservative MEPs have always been sceptical of the EU unilaterally increasing its target to 30% without a worldwide agreement. Struan is in favour of increasing the EU target to 30%, or even higher, in the context of a global agreement where our competitor countries take similar action. Increasing our own targets while the rest of the world does nothing will have virtually no measurable affect on global emissions because it will force large EU emitters to relocate to other countries outside the EU where they will continue to emit at a much lower cost. There is a serious risk of carbon leakage which, in our view, poses an even greater danger to the environment.

At the same time as effectively exporting our carbon emissions to less stringent parts of the world we would be exporting our jobs too - European companies will be unable to compete if the reduction targets are set too high. Many high energy consuming companies are already being forced to relocate to countries outside of the EU, to areas which have little or no environmental legislation, putting many Europeans out of work, and an increased target will exacerbate this trend. We are also concerned that the higher carbon emission costs resulting from an increased target will feed through into energy price increases for domestic consumers, who are already facing steep rises.

So basically, the EU is too small to make a difference. It's the same argument every country uses, every city uses: "We're too wee, and nobody else is doing it". Of course nobody else is doing it, we're all waiting for someone to take that first step! The EU has the opportunity to show the way here, to lead instead of just reacting to circumstance.

As for the jobs argument, Mr Stevenson takes no account of the jobs that will be created by new, renewable industries, of the investments made and the chance to stand astride the world with our expertise. All he's concerned with are low-quality jobs in polluting industries. These types of jobs can't all be outsourced to the Indian Subcontinent - some of them will have to stay here, and will have to raise their game and become less polluting as a result.

Let's get the entire continent together and lead the way on tackling the climate crisis.

Green In The Media 4th - 10th July

Monday 4th July

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 11:32 to 11:50 (Also 1630, Fri 1930, Sat 0030, Sun 1930)
One Planet looks at how we use our planet.

The Material World
On: BBC Radio 4
Time: 21:00 to 21:30
Quentin Cooper on sudden climate change, happy faces, a beacon from the early universe and how mobile phones affect behaviour.

Tuesday 5th July

Home Planet
On: BBC Radio 4
Time: 15:00 to 15:30
Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about our world and our impact upon it.

Thursday 7th July

Live Energy and Climate Change Questions
On: BBC Parliament
Time: 10:30 to 11:30 (Also 0100, 0330)
Live coverage of questions in the House of Commons to Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne and his ministerial team.


Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from
http://www.getdigiguide.tv/?p=1&r=20818
Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

The Week In Green Numbers

27%

- increase in electricity produced by renewables in the UK in the first quarter #

7%

- increase in electricity produced by coal in the UK in the first quarter #

295 ft

- drop in deep groundwater levels in China #

109 million

- passengers who used Lothian Buses last year, up 1.9% #

12,000

- residents evacuated from Los Alamos after fire threatened a nuclear lab #

The SNP Sleight Of Hand

Photo by jinterwas

The Scottish Government yesterday published a "routemap" for our future renewable energy production. If you recall from the election campaign this year, the SNP promised that they would produce the equivalent of 100% of Scotland's electricity from renewable sources.

I have absolutely no problem with them increasing our renewable capacity. I have no problem with them producing 100% of our needs from renewables. What I do have a problem with is this "equivalent" thing.

You see, they're not actually getting rid of fossil fuels. By a sleight of hand, they're going to keep producing energy from coal, oil and gas, in addition to the renewable production. Then they're going to sell the surplus renewable power to our European neighbours.

This is like your dad giving you the keys to his car, then accompanying you everywhere you go.

In fact, according to the Scottish Greens, under this plan Scotland's carbon emissions will actually increase instead of fall.

I could understand if they were scared to dive right in to a renewable-powered country. After all, the electricity companies are forever scaremongering about the "base load". But this isn't a government which is scared to take that big step. This is a government which has seen pound signs in front of it's eyes and thinks it has got it's hands on the perfect get-rich-quick scheme.

It can claim green-ness while making money, and anyone who doesn't look too closely will be fooled.

100% renewables, good. 100% renewable equivalent, bad.