The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard of high temperatures in that part of the earth’s surface.
The article pictured below is the source of this information:
Thanks to Anthony Watts for locating this.
I counted the words ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ 20 times in a press release from the UK Government.
But first, more QUANGOs (Quasi – Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation) are to be set up.
A “green tsar” paid up to £140,000 a year is to be appointed by the Government after it failed to meet its targets for helping the environment.
The Chief Sustainability Officer will help Whitehall departments do better after a watchdog said they had once again failed to meet their own targets for cutting waste, water use and carbon.
The Sustainable Development Commission said carbon emissions from government vehicles rose last year by 1.5 per cent.
But there’s more:
The power to raise and collect taxes on household rubbish is to be handed over to unelected waste quangos.
Ministers yesterday set out a scheme for rubbish-collection boards to take over the running of dustcarts, wheelie bins and municipal tips from town halls.
They will be given the right to set pay-as-you-throw rubbish charges, the controversial taxes Labour is introducing as a “financial incentive” to recycle more refuse and throw out less.
They will become the first unelected state bodies in modern times to get direct powers to raise their own taxes.
The Joint Waste Authorities will also take over from councils the armies of bin police who have the power to hand out on-the-spot fines to families who put their rubbish out at the wrong time or leave their wheelie bin lids open.
Below is the PR I referred to. Did I count the number of times ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ are used correctly?
New centre of expertise for cutting carbon emissions across Whitehall
Government response to Sustainable Development Commission’s Sustainable Development in Government annual report 2006/07
A new Centre of Expertise is to be set up to help Whitehall departments achieve their targets for reducing carbon emissions and waste across the government estate.
Details of the Centre of Expertise for Sustainable Procurement (CESP) were unveiled as the Government published its response to the Sustainable Development Commission’s latest report on how the Government is meeting its own sustainable objectives for tackling climate change.
Today’s annual Sustainable Development in Government (SDiG) report by the independent watchdog and adviser on sustainability shows a small improvement in the Government’s overall performance against its key ‘eco’ commitments – including a four per cent fall in carbon emissions across the estate by the end of 2006/7. However, the Commission called on departments to urgently build on initiatives already taken to ensure targets can be met and to demonstrate that the Government is leading by example on sustainability.
The CESP will be set up within the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) alongside the Government’s Chief Sustainability Officer – a new post to be appointed to take forward a culture of change across all departments in sustainable operations and procurement.
Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, who took personal charge of work in this area last March, has made sustainability of the government estate one of his four priorities for the civil service. Sir Gus said:
“The Civil Service must be fully committed to sustainable working, reflecting the increasing priority placed on environmental responsibility by the public we serve. We must find new and innovative ways of raising the bar for sustainable working, planning and procurement.
“There is still a long way to go but the establishment of the Centre of Expertise for Sustainable Procurement marks the culmination of significant progress over the last twelve months. This central co-ordination and guidance will help all government departments work to deliver sustainable working practices for the future.”
Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said:
“In the year that has elapsed since the period covered by this report, departments have been working to cut emissions, waste and water use and to increase recycling levels.
“The measures we’re announcing today will help us to do better in the year ahead.”
Nigel Smith, Chief Executive of OGC, also spoke about the way forward to ensure sustainable practice and procurement. He said:
“Government is taking the issue of sustainability very seriously, but we recognise that we need to do a lot more in order to meet the targets we have set ourselves. We can only do this if we build on the best practice that exists across Government, and if we have good and robust information, so that we know what’s happening, what impact our actions are having and where the gaps are. I’m therefore delighted that the new Centre for Expertise is to be established in OGC, and that all Departments are committed to supporting its work.
“OGC has a strong track record in achieving quantifiable results across Government, based on robust data, clear standard-setting, and close and collaborative working with Departments to achieve delivery. We believe we are now well-placed to lead real change.”
The Government accepts in principle all the recommendations made by the SDC, and among the steps that will now be taken are the following:
From April 2008 all departmental heads will have a specific objective to meet Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate (SOGE) targets, against which their performance will be assessed
A major Green Government IT programme will be launched in the summer
From 2010 all central Government departments will be included in a pioneering emissions trading scheme, the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), which will compel them to improve their energy efficiency. This mandatory emissions trading scheme will cover around 5000 public and private organisations, including government departments, retailers, banks and local authorities, which combined account for 10 per cent of the UK economy’s emissions
Action to achieve the work space efficiency standard of 12 square metres per FTE will be published in April 2008
From this summer all new vehicles used by ministers and permanent secretaries (except a small number exempt for operational reasons) will have carbon emissions below 130g/km
The use of bottled water for meetings and other official business is to be phased out across the whole government estate by the summer
In its response to the report, the Government accepts the need for more better and more accurate data against which the progress of departments can be measured. A major validation exercise to upgrade the quality of data provided to the SDC and the baselines used to assess performance has been undertaken in the past two months.
Notes to Editors
The 2007 Sustainable Development in Government (SDiG) report, published today, assesses the performance of central Government operations for 2006/07 against the targets of the Framework for Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate (SOGE). It can be found at www.sd-commission.org.uk
The Government’s formal response to the 2007 SDiG report can be found at www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/reports/sustainable_development.aspx
Cabinet Office Press Office
22 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2WH
Tel: 020 7276 1191 / 020 7276 1146
Fax: 020 7276 0618
www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk
18 March 2008
Talking of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, below is a graph illustrating how the UK is doing on the basis of both Environmental Accounts and Kyoto reporting requirements, taken from a new report by the National Audit Office:
As is pointed out on Prometheus:
“One point worth making is that the difference between UK Environmental Accounts and Kyoto accounting stems from international aviation and shipping (not included by Kyoto) and the treatment of tourists and nonresidents in the UK. These sort of issues obviously play a large role in the ability of countries to meet Kyoto targets. One wonders what the effect on the ability of countries to meet Kyoto targets would be if carbon emissions were accounted for on an UK Environmental Accounting Basis.
It would seem that the passage of ambitious targets and timetables for UK emissions reductions has been made less likely by this report, and yet at the same time it can’t be good news for those wanting that third runway at Heathrow.”
Here’s to sustainable sustainability. I’ll be returning to the UK Climate Change Bill at a later date.
If an animal is maintained in long – term care accomodation, the animal must be given access to a pool.
Careful monitoring is required when first given access to a pool to ensure that the bird is not becoming waterlogged and drowned.
Pools should provide an easy exit from the water, e.g. long sheets of rubber malling draped into the pool and a ramp.
These young orphaned gulls on the photograph were succesfully released. However, one was found 1 year later dead on an air port in southern Sweden ( collision with a plane) 300 – 400 km away from us.
Cheers,
Ann Novek
Sweden
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair once told us that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction that could be deployed within 45 minutes. We went to war as a result, yet no WMDs were ever found. The WMD statement was a blatant LIE.
Now, according to today’s headline in UK newspaper The Guardian, ‘Blair to lead campaign on climate change’, ‘Act urgently or global warming will be irreversible, former PM warns.’
Blair said: “Essentially what everyone has agreed is that climate change is a serious problem, it is man-made, we require a global deal, that there should be a substantial cut in emissions at the heart of it, and this global deal should involve everyone, including in particular America on the one hand and China on the other, so it is the developed and developing world.”
He said the world had less than two years to secure a deal, or accept that global warming is irreversible.
“The fact of the matter is that if we do not take substantial action over the next two years, then by 2020 we will thinking seriously about adaptation rather than prevention.”
Words spoken by a man with a degree in law rather than a science.
Where is the scientific basis for ‘2 years’ and the ‘magic’ year ‘2020?’ Very little of what Blair says makes any sense from a policy or scientific point of view. Adaptation to inevitable climate change should be the key part of any climate policy regardless of whether or not any meaningful CO2 emisssion reductions are necessary or can be achieved, given climate history and the IPCC claim that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for 50 to 200 years. The situation is much worse according to Matthews and Caldeira, 2008.
Prins and Rayner are banging their heads against a brick wall and must surely believe Tony Blair is wearing the wrong trousers. Even so, the assumption that we need only prepare for warming and can ignore the possibility of substantial cooling in the future is dangerously flawed.
Norwegian fisheries paper, Fiskeribladet, stated on March 13th, with the headline “ Scaling down whale purchase,” that Norway’s largest whale meat processing factory, Ellingsens, will scale down its purchase of whale meat.
The owner, Ulf Ellingsen stated, “Maybe we will buy whale meat, maybe not, but anyway it will be much less than previous years.”
Ellingsens factory runs mainly selling salmon. According to the paper, they are concerned that the whale hunt will finally die out, with fewer actors in every field.
“Whaling is in a downward spiral,” said the owner.
BBC stated on March 13th “Iceland whaling go-ahead likely.”
The Icelandic Minke Whalers Head said to BBC that the whaling industry is asking for a quota of about 100 minkes and some Fin whales.
Excerpt from BBC:
Stefan Asmundsson, a senior official in Iceland’s fisheries ministry and its commissioner to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), confirmed that the hunt was likely to go ahead.
“We are not expecting any big quotas, but we are likely to see in the relatively near future some quotas for minke whales.”
The Fisheries Minister is likely to make the final announcement within a month.
Cheers,
Ann Novek
Sweden
French physicist Dr. Serge Galam, director of research at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) and member of a laboratory of Ecole Polytechnique, has published a new paper entitled: ‘Global Warming: the Sacrificial Temptation’
Abstract:
The claimed unanimity of the scientific community about the human culpability for global warming is questioned. Up today there exists no scientific proof of human culpability. It is not the number of authors of a paper, which validates its scientific content. The use of probability to assert the degree of certainty with respect the global warming problem is shown to be misleading. The debate about global warming has taken on emotional tones driven by passion and irrationality while it should be a scientific debate. The degree of hostility used to mull any dissonance voice demonstrates that the current debate has acquired a quasi-religious nature. Scientists are behaving as priests in their will “to save the planet”. We are facing a dangerous social phenomenon, which must be addressed from the social point of view. The current unanimity of citizens, scientists, journalists, intellectuals and politicians is intrinsically worrying. The calls to sacrifice our way of life to calm down the upset nature is an emotional ancestral reminiscence of archaic fears, which should be analyzed as such.
Conclusion:
To sum up above analysis of the social and human aspects of global warming, most caution should be taken to prevent opportunistic politicians, more and more numerous, to subscribe to the proposed temptation of a sacrifice frame in order to reinforce their power by canalizing these archaic fears that are reemerging. Let us keep in mind that in a paroxysm crisis of fear, opinions can be activated very quickly among millions of mobilized citizens, ready to act in the same direction, against the same enemy: it then enough to designate it. Such kind of phenomena should be studied within the new emerging field of sociophysics, in particular the dynamics of minority opinion spreading and the rumor propagation [6, 7, 8].
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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