A perfect political storm

Severe storms continue to roll in from the Atlantic and Britain is in the midst of a winter that has been nothing like a normal winter. Most likely it’s a sign of times to come.

Scientists - without being able to be exact about timing - have long warned us the changes currently happening to our climate would result in more extreme weather.

In the midst of this crisis David Cameron, prime minister, and his cabinet colleagues have been largely content to trade accusations and shift blame, like water off a duck’s back.

Successive governments have done little to plan for a changing climate and the prime minister's bizarre finger pointing underlies how bankrupt his government has become when faced with a challenge of global significance.

His pre-election promise to deliver one of the greenest governments ever has been consistently and systematically dismantled.

Environment secretary Owen Paterson's skepticism on climate change – a ludicrous trait for one in such a position – led him to slash 40% from his departmental spend on developing the UK's adaptation to global warming.

The cost of this winter’s flooding episode alone will dwarf the millions saved by spending cuts. Fixing things and preparing for future storms will run into billions - and that's before we count the cost to our farmers and food production.

Back in 2008, following flooding in his constituency, David Cameron stated that with climate change most people “accept that floods are likely to be more frequent”.

Despite government spending on flood defences under the coalition being cut by 27% another minister, Teresa May, described it no less than six times during a Radio 4 news interview as an "inherited" problem. Maybe she meant from Biblical times.

So, is history repeating itself? All that time ago it was God warning the world - and only Noah listened. Today it is the scientists. Our elected politicians clearly have a lot more listening, and soul searching, to do.

Why does it always rain on me?

The Prince of Wales launched an unprecedented attack on climate change sceptics this week, describing them as the "headless chicken brigade" and accusing powerful groups of deniers of engaging in “intimidation”.

Charles, who has long campaigned to raise awareness of global warming and has hit out at sceptics in the past, unleashed his latest salvo during an awards ceremony at Buckingham Palace for green entrepreneurs.

"It is baffling that in our modern world we have such blind trust in science and technology that we all accept what science tells us about everything - until, that is, it comes to climate science," the Prince said.

"All of a sudden, and with a barrage of sheer intimidation, we are told by powerful groups of deniers that the scientists are wrong and we must abandon all our faith in so much overwhelming scientific evidence.

"So, thank goodness for our young entrepreneurs here this evening, who have the far-sightedness and confidence in what they know is happening to ignore the headless chicken brigade and do something practical to help,” he stated.

Charles, who made his comments at the inaugural Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize, has previously urged world leaders must "face down a storm of opposition from all sides" in order to tackle climate change.

Last year he described those who questioned the need to act as "the incorporated society of syndicated sceptics and the international association of corporate lobbyists”.

Prince Charles was criticised at the time by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate-sceptic ‘think-tank’ set up by former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson, which accused him of engaging in "apocalyptic rhetoric".

His latest comments came as it was announced that the deluge affecting much of Britain and Europe in recent weeks is officially the worst winter downpour over southern and central England in almost 250 years.

Rainfall for January - recorded at the Radcliffe Meteorological Station at Oxford University, the world's longest-running weather station - was greater than for any winter month since daily measurements began there in 1767.

The latest Met Office data also confirmed that the region stretching from Devon to Kent and up into the Midlands suffered its wettest January since its records began in 1910.

Ian Ashpole, of the Radcliffe Meteorological Observer, said the Radcliffe measurements went back more than twice as far as the Met Office records and provided a longer term indication of how things are changing.

A total of 146.9 mm of rain fell in January, beating the previous record of 138.7 mm in 1852. The new record is three times the average recorded for the month over the last two and a half centuries. 

It was also the wettest winter month – December, January or February – ever recorded, beating December 1914 when 143.3 mm fell.

In addition, the 45 day period from 18 December saw more rain at Radcliffe than for any such period in the observatory record. The total of 231.28 mm demolished the previous high of 209.4 mm, which fell from 1 December 1914.

For the UK, flooding has been identified as the most dangerous impact of climate change - and it is hitting harder and faster than expected. 

Scientists are now examining whether the current winder deluge is a result of the melting of the Arctic ice cap which has caused the jet stream to track further south, meaning more storms are channeled across the UK.

Prince Charles’ views are backed by mainstream science and it is reassuring to know that our future king is well versed in climate science - though it may be wrong to characterise the deniers in such a way.

Far from being ‘headless chickens’ they are part of an orchestrated and well-funded campaign with very clear objectives - to create a false debate and sow doubt in order to delay for as long as possible the kind of action required to limit CO2 emissions.

What they do is calculated and dangerous for the future of this planet and its people. Thank you, Prince Charles, for speaking up on behalf of normal people everywhere.

‘Why Does It Always Rain on Me?’ is the title of the hit song by Scottish band Travis, released in 1999 as the third single from their second studio album, ‘The Man Who’. It became the group's international breakthrough single and was their first Top 10 hit on the UK Singles Chart.

Warming trend continues

Lord Stern, who completed a review of the economics of climate change for the British government in 2006, says he should have been fiercer in his report.

Speaking at the start of the World Economic Forum in Davros, Switzerland, this week he said governments are “fooling themselves” if they think global temperature rises will only have modest economic impacts.

Stern says things have moved on in the eight years since his review. "I would have been much fiercer,” he admits. "Emissions have gone up faster than I thought and some of the effects of global warming are coming through more quickly, such as melting of the glaciers and the polar ice caps.”

He estimates global temperatures will be 4-5 C higher in the next century on present trends and that governments are being unrealistic if they think this will only have a modest impact on economies.

"The last time we had a change in global temperatures of this order of magnitude it was in the other direction. It was called the Ice Age,” Stern added.

According to new figures released by NASA the year just past tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year since 1880, continuing the long-term trend of rising global temperatures.

With the exception of 1998, the 10 warmest years in the 134 year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the warmest years on record.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which analyses global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated report this week on temperatures around the globe in 2013. 

The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience temperatures warmer than those measured several decades ago.

The average temperature in 2013 was 14.6 Celsius, which is 0.6 C warmer than the mid-20th century baseline. The average global temperature has risen about 0.8 C since 1880, according to the new analysis. Exact rankings for individual years are sensitive to data inputs and analysis methods.

"Long-term trends in surface temperatures are unusual and 2013 adds to the evidence for ongoing climate change," said GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt at a NASA press conference on Tuesday.

"While one year or one season can be affected by random weather events, this analysis shows the necessity for continued, long-term monitoring.”

Scientists emphasise that weather patterns will always cause fluctuations in average temperatures from year to year but say the continued increases in greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere are driving a long-term rise in global temperatures. 

Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but with the current level of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat and plays a major role in controlling changes to Earth's climate. It occurs naturally and is also emitted by the burning of fossil fuels for energy. 

Driven by increasing man-made emissions, the level of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere at present is higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years.

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, the first year in the GISS temperature record. By 1960, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, measured at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, was about 315 parts per million. This measurement peaked last year at more than 400 parts per million.

While the world experienced relatively warm temperatures in 2013, the continental United States experienced the 42nd warmest year on record, according to GISS analysis. For some other countries, such as Australia, 2013 was the hottest year on record.

The temperature analysis produced at GISS is compiled from weather data from more than 1,000 meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea-surface temperature and Antarctic research station measurements, taking into account station history and urban heat island effects. 

Software is used to calculate the difference between surface temperature in a given month and the average temperature for the same place from 1951 to 1980. This three-decade period functions as a baseline for the analysis. It has been 38 years since the recording of a year of cooler than average temperatures.

The GISS temperature record is one of several global temperature analyses, along with those produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre in the UK and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in the US. These three primary records use slightly different methods but overall their trends show close agreement.

Polar ice melt

Three major glaciers in West Antarctica (Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith) are melting into the Amundsen Sea faster than previously thought.

ESA’s Cryosat polar orbiting spacecraft possesses the capability to observe features in more detail than previous missions and has revealed that the region is now losing more than 150 cubic km of ice into the sea every year.

Cryosat was launched in 2010 with a radar specifically designed to measure the shape of ice surfaces - and its latest results indicate the loss appears to be accelerating

The data, presented at the recent American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, show that the loss of ice equates to a 15 percent increase in West Antarctica's contribution to global sea level rise.

Prior to Cryosat, scientists concluded that ice losses from West Antarctica had pushed up global sea levels by some 0.28 mm a year between 2005 and 2010. The new Cryosat data starts from the end of that period.

Scientists say that ice at the Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith glacier ‘grounding lines’ - the places where the ice blocks split from the land and begin to float out over the ocean - is now thinning by between four and eight metres per year.


Three years of CryoSat measurements show that
the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing over
150 cubic kilometres of ice each year.

Launched in 2010, CryoSat carries a radar altimeter that can ‘see’ through clouds and in the dark, providing continuous measurements over areas like Antarctica that are prone to bad weather and long periods of darkness.

The radar can measure the surface height variation of ice in high resolution, allowing scientists to calculate its volume accurately.

Prof Andrew Shepherd of Leeds University, who led the West Antarctica study, said that part of the increase of ice loss could be due to faster thinning and part may also be down to CryoSat’s capacity to observe previously unseen terrain.

The mission has also provided three consecutive years of accurate Arctic sea ice thickness measurements, which show that ice covering Earth’s north polar region continues to thin.

Prof Shepherd added: "CryoSat continues to provide clear evidence of diminishing Arctic sea ice.

"From the satellite’s measurements we can see that some parts of the ice pack ice have thinned more rapidly than others, but there has been a decrease in the volume of winter and summer ice over the past three years.

"The volume of the sea ice at the end of last winter was less than 15 000 cubic km, which is lower than any other year going into summer and indicates less winter growth than usual."

Upping the tempo

New figures released by two climate research bodies confirm that ‘greenhouse gases’ continue to build in Earth’s atmosphere and that average global temperatures made September 2013 the fourth warmest on record.

According to the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) annual greenhouse gas bulletin, published this month, the levels of gases in the atmosphere that are driving climate change increased to a record high in 2012.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) grew more rapidly in the year than its average rise over the past decade - and concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide also broke previous records.

The WMO has produced an annual greenhouse gas bulletin for the past nine years and says the warming effect on our climate as a result of carbon dioxide and other gases has increased by almost a third since 1990.

Carbon dioxide is the most important of the gases WMO tracks but only about half of the CO2 that is emitted by human activities remains in the atmosphere, with the rest being absorbed by the plants, trees, the land and the oceans.

Since the start of the industrial era in 1750,global average levels of atmospheric CO2 have increased by 141 percent.

"The observations highlight yet again how heat-trapping gases from human activities have upset the natural balance of our atmosphere and are a major contribution to climate change," said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

"It is a worry - the more we delay action the bigger the risk we cannot stay under the 2C limit that countries have agreed," he added.

While the daily measurement of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded the symbolic 400ppm mark in May this year, the global annual average CO2 concentration will cross this point in 2015 or 2016, says the WMO.

Levels of methane also reached record highs in 2012 maintaining an upward trend since 2007 which has followed a period when they appeared to be levelling off.

Recent research indicates that the rate of increase in emissions might be slowing down - but even so the gases can continue to concentrate in the atmosphere and exert a climate influence for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Scientists suggest that the new data indicates that, after a slowdown in the rate of temperature increases over the past 14 years, global warming is returning with a vengeance.

"For the past decade or so the oceans have been sucking up this extra heat, meaning that surface temperatures have only increased slowly," said Prof Piers Forster of Leeds University.

"Don't expect this state of affairs to continue though - the extra heat will eventually come out and bite us, so there will be strong warming over the coming decades."

Should we be surprised? Not really. In September the UN's climate science panel, the IPCC, said that atmospheric CO2 concentrations were at levels ‘unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years’.

The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea levels were up to 40 metres higher than today.

But, as the WMO points out, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is only half of the picture as much of the CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans.

Annual worldwide emissions from power plants, cars and other human activities are currently several billion tonnes too high to keep global temperature rises below 2C and show no sign of stopping.

Other figures released recently by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center under its ‘State of the Climate: Global Analysis for September 2013' show the combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for September 2013 tied with 2003 as the fourth highest for September on record - at 0.64C above the 20th century average of 15.0C.

The global land surface temperature was 0.89C above the 20th century average of 12.0C, marking the sixth warmest September on record.

For the ocean, the September global sea surface temperature was 0.54C above the 20th Century average of 16.2C, tying with 2006 as the fourth highest for September on record.

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January to September was 0.6C above the 20th century average of 14.1C, tying with 2003 as the sixth warmest such period on record.

The Age of Miracles

Karen Walker-Thompson's novel ‘The Age of Miracles’ is not an obvious literary award winner though it is a compulsive read and contains a number of interesting themes and challenging ideas - all introduced as the result of the phenomenon of Earth’s rotation slowing.

My previous blog ‘How fragile we are’ looked at the novel’s apocalyptic catastrophe theme - the dire consequences to all life on Earth as a result of the planet’s rotation gradually slowing and therefore extending both day and night.

But there are more subtle implications also to be considered when looking at the effects exaggerated daylight and dark hours might have on the normal working of our own bodies.

Midway through the book at the beginning of chapter 17, Thompson-Walker writes: "Two thousand years of art and superstition would suggest that it is darkness that haunts us most... but dozens of experiments conducted in the aftermath of the slowing revealed that it was not darkness that tampered most with our moods - it was light."

The implication, though not the cause, of night turning into day is not a million miles from the theme adopted by The Lighthouse Keeper for two of this autumn’s blog essays - ‘Fear of the dark’ and ‘Blinded by the night’.

It is now well-established by the medical profession that working through the night and the influence of light after dark can affect our circadian rhythms and long-term health and well-being in significant ways.

In his 2012 paper ‘Light Pollution, Nuisance and Planning Laws in the UK’ Martin Morgan-Taylor, principal lecturer in law at Leicester’s De Montfort University, states that artificial lighting is known to cause "some fairly obvious negative effects on human health and well-being" - in as much as floodlighting or illuminated advertising hoardings may disturb sleep by shining in bedroom windows.

"Indeed, it may be thought that sleeplessness may cause only temporary or negligible problems, but medical research is increasingly linking artificial light at night with some serious health effects, such as cancer and depression," he says.

"Other research indicates that artificial light at night may general disrupt human circadian rhythms."

In addressing the question of why this might by the case, Prof Morgan-Taylor pins the likely cause on what is known is that ‘white’ or ‘blue rich’ lighting, which mimics natural daylight and is being increasingly used at night.

"This type of light particularly suppresses the production of a circadian rhythm hormone called Melotin, so disturbing circadian rhythms," he states. Melotin is believed to be a powerful anti-oxidant that helps to ward off some human cancers.

"In other words, an avoidable exposure to ‘white/blue rich’ light at night may increase a person’s susceptibility to some cancers - and we are increasing our use of this form of lighting at night," he adds.

In ‘The Age of Miracles’ the world at large is thrust into ever-lengthening days and nights as Earth slows gradually from its standard 24 hour rotation.

At first the consequences are manageable, more of an inconvenience, but as the daylight hours stretch into periods of 30 and then 40 hours, and likewise the night, the effects on daily life become ever more pronounced and difficult. 

The terminator dividing day from night across Earth as seen
from the International Space Station.

The novel takes the concept of our bodies adapting to unnatural light patterns to a whole new level - but in considering current light pollution levels across the developed world (in England it increased by 24 percent between 1993 and 2000) the extrapolation is valuable.

The first chapter of Genesis in the Bible states that God ‘divided the light from the darkness’, which in Biblical terms can be viewed as both symbolic as well as being a statement about the natural environment. In essence we need them both because light allows us to see and darkness gives us an opportunity to sleep.

By lighting our neighbourhoods, towns and cities to excess and flooding our yards with unnecessary light we are wasting energy and undoubttedly contributing to climate change. In a more subtle way we may also be tampering with the laws of nature - and perhaps even creation itself. 

How fragile we are

The Lighthouse Keeper isn’t an avid reader of modern-day fiction but, determined to unearth a holiday read for a change, succumbed to the much talked about first novel by Karen Thompson-Walker ‘The Age of Miracles’, first published in 2012.

Written from the viewpoint of a woman looking back at her childhood, the ordinary moments of life and adolescence become more profound in the light of an unfolding disaster affecting all life on Earth.

The apocalyptic story is conjured from the idea of a ‘slowing Earth’, the germ of which, according to Thompson-Walker, stems from the powerful Indonesian earthquake and tsunami of 2004 which physically affected the rotation of Earth and shortened our days by a fraction of a second.

‘The Age of Miracles’ pursues the concept to its maximum - the rotation of Earth continuing to slow and slow, thus inflicting enormous and ultimately unmanageable changes on our normal daily existence.

Whilst making broad 'scientific' assumptions in parts, it is convincingly unsettling and points ultimately to how fragile society at large really is.

As it happened, I finished reading the novel in the wake of the giant typhoon that devastated the Philippines in November 2013, killing thousands of people and wrecking the lives of many more.

The suggestion that the increasing frequency and potency of such storms, droughts, intensive heat waves and floods around the world are linked to mankind’s increasing consumption of fossil fuels and the resultant global warming is ignored at our peril.

If, as a global population, we continue to release more and more energy into our system we shouldn’t really be surprised that it will have consequences.

Heat a pan of cold water on the stove and what happens? The more energy in the form of heat that transfers into the water the hotter and more agitated it becomes - a previously relatively stable environment is soon transformed.

Thompson-Walker describes ‘The Age of Miracles’ as a novel about a catastrophe that no one was expecting. "We sometimes over-estimate what we know about the world but I think we all live with more uncertainty than we like to think," she says.

Such a point is brought resolutely home when we view pictures on our TV screens of a natural disaster like in the Philippines caused by one of the largest and most aggressive typhoons ever recorded.

Yet distance and the remote nature of such events in relation to our own daily lives logically means we are seldom moved to any kind of action - either direct or indirect, on behalf of those affected or our future selves.

If, as a global population, we continue to rack up the temperature of our planet then we shouldn’t be surprised when stronger and more devastating natural events are unleashed at more frequent intervals.

We are, perhaps incontrovertibly, becoming just like the anecdotal frog that is placed in a pan of gradually warming water and gets so accustomed to the rising temperature that by the time it is too hot it can no longer jump out.

The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to ultimately significant changes that occur gradually.

Today, in respect of climate change, we just about still have a choice. But the point of no return is creeping alarmingly close and there are warning signs all about - not least in the just ended UN Climate talks in Warsaw.

The blog title is taken from the lyric of ‘Fragile', a song composed by English musician, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, activist, actor and philanthropist Sting and first released on his 1987 album ‘Nothing Like the Sun’. Sting (Gordon Sumner, CBE) was also the principal songwriter, lead singer and bassist for the rock band ‘The Police’.

Fear of the dark

Even lighthouse keepers - at one time true custodians of light - are an endangered species these days, their solitary and lonesome existence largely replaced by automated and computer-controlled systems.

But just as technology has seemingly usurped most aspects of human endeavour and experience - including the once dark night-time skies in the heavens above - the UK’s cross channel neighbour has, as it were, ‘seen the light’. Vive la France!

At the end of August, as its populous was returning to work after ‘les grandes vacances’, the whole country grew darker through the night as one of the world’s most comprehensive lighting ordinances came into effect.

Now, in the early hours of every morning between 1 am and 7 am, shop lights are being turned off and lights inside office buildings must be extinguished within an hour of workers leaving the premises.

Lighting on France’s building facades cannot be turned on before sunset and, over the next two years, new regulations restricting lighting on advertising hoardings will also take effect.

These rules are designed to eventually cut carbon dioxide emissions by 250,000 tons per year, saving the equivalent of the annual energy consumption of 750,000 households and slashing the country’s overall energy bill by 200 million Euros a year.

But, according to France’s Environment Ministry, no less a motivation is to ‘reduce the footprint of artificial lighting on the nocturnal environment’.

This is a powerful acknowledgement that excessive use of lighting is not only consuming too much energy but is endangering our health and the health of the ecosystems on which we rely.

Researchers are now focusing on the impacts of so-called ecological light pollution and warn that disrupting the natural patterns of light and dark - and thus the structures and functions of ecosystems - is having a profound impact far beyond what we realise.

It’s a global problem and is worsening by the month as countries like China, India and Brazil become increasingly affluent and urbanised.

Views of Earth at night show vast areas of North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia glowing with light. Only the world’s remotest regions - Siberia, the Tibetan plateau, the Sahara Desert, the Amazon, and the Australian outback remain cloaked in darkness.

Some countries, including the UK, have enacted limited regulations to reduce light pollution but in reality most nations and cities still do little to manage our excessive, almost compulsive, use of light.

The photographs below show the UK and London at night as seen by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS). It serves as a poignant illustration of the point in question - namely that as both individuals and nations we are using far too much artificial light with little or no consideration for either cost, the environment or our own health.

As the autumn nights draw in, this is the first in a series of short Lighthouse Keeper essays looking at the impact of artificial light at night in our modern world. The title draws from Gordon Giltrap’s classic 1978 album ‘Fear of the Dark’ which was re-released in 2013 and is newly remastered from the original tapes, including eight extra tracks drawn from a series of singles released between 1978 and 1980. ‘Fear of the Dark’ , a Lighthouse Keeper 'top ten' album, saw Giltrap backed by a band of outstanding musicians: John G Perry (Bass), Rod Edwards (keyboards) and Simon Phillips (drums) and featured many outstanding tracks. 

For more articles in this series search under 'artificial light' on the adjacent tag cloud.

Back to the blues

There is sometimes a fine line when it comes to discerning the difference between the colours of green and blue - as British Prime Minister David Cameron has been finding out.

His bold claim on coming to power to be leading the "greenest government ever" seems to be turning into something of a wistful ruse at best.

The summer’s unresolved fracas over fracking for shale gas didn’t really help matters but the latest salver came from a more unlikely source - a Conservative party donor.

Alexander Temarko, a significant British energy investor, claims investors in renewable technologies are being scared off by "seriously mis-leading" messages from the Government.

The Russian businessman, who has made donations in excess of £50,000 to the Conservative party, believes the Government is now paying little more than "lip service" to renewable energy.

Temarko says that failing to provide the clear targets investors need before committing to long term green electricity generation projects is squandering the opportunity to create thousands of jobs and generate billions of pounds in revenues.

The charge is levelled equally at the Prime Minister, his Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and, to a lesser extent, at Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

In fairness, Davey campaigned to include a requirement in the Energy Bill - currently progressing through Parliament - that would have required the UK's electricity supply to become almost entirely ‘green' by 2030.

But Osborne replaced the target with less onerous wording that grants the Government the power from 2016 to require Britain's electricity supply to become almost entirely green only at some point in the future and should it choose to do so.

All this comes at a time when the country’s profit-hungry big six energy companies are about to announce another inflation-busting price hike to gas and electricity prices.

An exception to the rule is Ecotricity which announced mid-September that it was ending its ‘Big Six price match’ under which the small energy provider had matched each Big Six standard tariff in their home regions.

This delivered green energy for the price of brown and meant that, for most people in Britain, it costs no more to be with Ecotricity.

The company’s new pricing promise is that it will charge less than each of the Big Six standard tariffs - delivering green energy for less than the price of brown.

In the meantime, the Prime Minister and his Government’s ‘green' credentials have shifted chamaeleon-like back through the political colour spectrum to the traditional Conservative party blue.

And Temarko is right in one sense - the lack of a sound, long term energy policy is doing no one in the UK any favours.

This piece was originally scheduled for publication on 21 September 2013 but the Lighthouse Keeper was unable to access his blog due to Chinese internet restrictions whilst on assignment in Beijing and so it has been published retrospectively. The title is inspired by the album of the same name from the late Gary Moore (1952 – 2011), a musician from Belfast, Northern Ireland, best recognised as a blues rock guitarist and singer. In a career dating back to the 1960s, Moore played with artists including Phil Lynott and Brian Downey and was a member of the Irish rock band Thin Lizzy.

RSPB's fracking objection

The media hiatus in the fracking for shale gas frenzy - which graced the front pages for several weeks during the summer - has left room for some more reasoned debate and comment.

The RSPB, for instance, has waded into the issue by lodging objections to proposals to drill for shale gas and oil in Lancashire and West Sussex, citing that regulations are inadequate to ensure water, landscapes and wildlife are protected.

These are the first formal objections to fracking from the RSPB. The drilling proposal at Singleton, Lancashire, is less than a mile from an internationally important area for pink-footed geese and whooper swans.

The society is also protesting against drilling at Balcombe, West Sussex - the focus of large summer protests - on the grounds that no environmental impact assessment has been carried out.

In both written objections the charity also says that increasing oil and gas use will reduce the UK's chances of meeting climate change targets.

Harry Huyton, head of climate and energy policy at the RSPB, said: "Balcombe hit the headlines as the battleground in the debate over fracking. The public there are rightly concerned about the impact this will have on their countryside.

"We have looked closely at the rules in place to police drilling for shale gas, and they are simply not robust enough to ensure that our water, our landscapes and our wildlife are safe."

Huyton also said that Cuadrilla's proposed operations in Lancashire could damage populations of geese and swans. "This area is protected by European law because it is so valuable for wildlife and the company has done nothing to investigate what damage their activities could do to it," he claimed.

The RSPB says that Government figures show the potential for 5,000 sites and a total of up to 100,000 wells in the north of England.

"The idea that these will have a benign impact on the countryside is very difficult to believe," said Huyton.

"This is all in too much of a hurry – the regulations simply aren't in place," he added. "If Cuadrilla did their assessments and found there wasn't a serious concern, we'd accept that. But no assessments have been done."

The group's other main objection is that a push for shale gas will divert funds and attention from the UK's previously stated goal of having an electricity system almost completely powered by ‘clean' energy by 2030.

This piece was originally scheduled for publication on 20 September 2013 but the Lighthouse Keeper was unable to access his blog due to Chinese internet restrictions whilst on assignment in Beijing and so has been published retrospectively

Running on empty

It probably slipped past without so much as a blip on the Richter scale of life. Our busy, consumer-led lives likely won’t have notched up that a couple of weeks ago (20 August 2013) was the date humanity exhausted nature’s annual budget for our planet.

As a result we are now operating in overdraft mode and, for the rest of the year, we will maintain our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, the Global Footprint Network measures humanity’s demand for and supply of natural resources and ecological services. The data is somewhat sobering.

Global Footprint Network estimates that it now takes only approximately eight months for the world’s population as a whole to demand more renewable resources and carbon dioxide sequestration than Earth can provide for an entire year.

Earth Overshoot Day, a concept originally developed by Global Footprint Network partner and UK think tank the New Economics Foundation, is the annual marker of when we begin living beyond our means in a given year.

While only a rough estimate of time and resource trends, it is as close as we can get to measuring the gap between our demand for ecological resources and services, and how much the planet can provide.

Just over a decade ago Earth Overshoot Day fell on 21 October. Given current trends in consumption, one thing is clear - it is relentlessly creeping forward and arriving earlier each year.

Throughout most of history, humanity has used nature’s resources to build homes, towns, cities and roads, to provide food and create products, and to absorb our carbon dioxide at a rate that was well within Earth’s budget. But, in the mid-1970s, we crossed a critical threshold when human consumption began outstripping what the planet could reproduce.

The fact that we are now using, or ‘spending’, our natural capital much faster than it can be replenished is similar to having expenditures that continuously exceed income, a financial deficit.

In planetary terms, the costs of our ecological overspending are becoming more evident by the day. Climate change - a result of greenhouse gases being emitted faster than they can be absorbed by forests and oceans - is one of the most obvious and arguably pressing result.

But there are others - shrinking forests, species loss, fisheries collapse, higher commodity prices, civil unrest and water shortages, to name a few. The environmental and economic crises we are beginning to experience more frequently are symptoms of looming catastrophe.

While the global financial recession that began in October 2008 slowed humanity’s demand for resources somewhat, our overall consumption continues to rise.

To stand any chance of avoiding much more than economic hardship for the planet’s seven billion and growing population, resource limits must be at the core of future decision-making.

Today, more than 80 percent of the world’s population live in nations that use more than their own ecosystems can renew. These ‘ecological debtor’ countries either deplete their own ecological resources or get them from elsewhere.

Ecological debtors are using more than they have within their own borders. Japan’s residents consume the ecological resources of 7.1 Japans. It would take four Italys to support Italy, and 3.5 UK’s - all just at current rates of consumption.

Not every country demands more than their ecosystems can provide, but even the reserves of such ‘ecological creditors’ like Brazil, Indonesia, and Sweden are shrinking over time.

Just as in the financial crisis of 2008, we can no longer sustain a widening gap between what nature is able to provide and how much our infrastructure, economies and lifestyles require.

As Earth Overshoot Day continues its inexorable and quickening march closer to the start of each year we have no real idea of the consequences our living in this way will ultimately have. One thing is for sure, though. We all have some tough choices - both individually and as nations - coming up.

 

Cameron talks up fracking

This week the Prime Minister David Cameron suggested in a national newspaper article that local communities will become richer and we will all see reduced energy bills if the UK embraces a shale gas revolution.

There was no discussion of other issues (such as reducing our dependence on energy) and only a cursory dismissal of some of the very real concerns that fracking for shale gas might cause – irreparable damage to our countryside, pollution in the ground and atmosphere, and severe water shortages.

But different stories are beginning to emerge from the lands of eastern Europe and even America (more of which later) where the mining of shale gas has been seriously on the agenda for a while longer.

Take Poland for instance. The Prague Post – the Czech Republic’s English-language newspaper - reported back in June that the Polish government had announced plans to improve regulation and postpone tax collection on shale gas production in the hopes of encouraging investors to continue their explorations for the fuel.

A somewhat strange move if things were going so well – but then something had to be done following the unexpected withdrawal of three North American companies from explorations in the country.

Doubts over the estimated scale of Poland's shale gas reserves began surfacing more than a year ago after ExxonMobil announced plans to cease exploration in the country, citing disappointing test drilling results.

The withdrawal last month of two more multi-nationals - Talisman Energy of Canada and US oil giant Marathon - has now cast more uncertainty over the commercial viability of shale gas in Poland.

Marathon stated this summer that it had decided to end its Polish operations after ‘unsuccessful attempts to find commercial levels of hydrocarbons’.

Talisman, meanwhile, announced the sale of its Polish operations to the Irish-based San Leon Energy group, which is presumably going to tackle things in a different way - or perhaps with the ‘luck of the Irish’ where the talisman failed.

Exploration company executives had complained that complicated environmental regulations in Poland, along with a lack of legislation on shale gas, has also caused difficulties. Some foreign firms also found the legal framework for shale gas investment in the country to be less straightforward than expected.

Shale gas mania was triggered in Poland when a report by the United States Energy Information Agency estimated the country to have untapped reserves of some 5.3 trillion cubic meters - enough to meet domestic demand for 300 years.

Polish leaders – quick to jump on the fast moving shale gas gravy train (and which government wouldn’t?) soon made shale gas exploration a priority, voicing ambitions that the country could surpass its own domestic requirements and even become a gas exporter.

The country's policy-makers had high hopes that shale gas would provide Poland with a boost to its slowing economy and help reduce its high unemployment rate of around 14 percent.

The strategy was also touted as an energy diversification tool that would lower dependence on Russia's Gazprom, which currently supplies around two-thirds of Poland's gas at some of the highest prices in Europe.

While the initial excitement and unrealistic optimism over a possible shale gas bonanza is fading, some companies remain hopeful. Lower shale gas projections arrived at by the government more recently might still be enough to meet Polish domestic demand for some 70 years and Chevron continues its explorations in Poland, currently drilling a fourth well with two more planned later this year.

The government is now working on a raft of new regulations that it hopes will prevent further departures of these firms, whose expertise and prior experience in North America is thought to be vital.

New regulations will also give North American companies the same rights as EU companies in in the belief their expertise will allow Poland to replicate the recent US ‘energy revolution’ brought about by (racking (hydraulic fracturing ).

The word ‘desperation’ comes to mind and some experts believe that attracting US companies may not be the answer because their techniques may not be as transferrable as they hoped.

So far, Poland has granted more than 111 permits to at least 30 investors, many of them from the United States and Canada, to explore what its government has touted as Europe's richest shale gas deposits.

Thirty-nine wells were planned for 2013, but according to Environment Ministry data only two had been drilled by May this year. Some 300 wells are thought to be needed to determine whether Poland could realistically be self-sufficient.

Back in the UK, in a week when the big six energy companies touted likely increases in the price of energy for the autumn, David Cameron chimed in with a lightweight piece suggesting the UK public should accept fracking and claiming the controversial method of extracting gas will attract ‘real public support’ once the benefits are explained.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the Prime Minister said the process would not damage the countryside and would cause only ‘very minor change to the landscape’.

His whimsical PR pros, penned in a let’s ‘dispel the myths’ style, added no depth to the case for fracking and only served to highlight once again the UK government’s inexcusable lack of a long term energy policy and failure to manage properly some of the big issues that really matter.

In demanding that shale gas drilling take place across the country, Cameron is playing a high-stakes political game based more on wishful thinking rather than hard economic analysis.




The Lighthouse Keeper is written by Clive Simpson - for more information, commission enquiries or to re-publish any of his articles click here for contact information

Fracking hell!

So far the market town of Spalding in South Lincolnshire seems to have escaped the rush for shale gas. But the town already has one gas fired power station dominating the flat Fenland landscape, with another one to be built alongside it on the way. And if our local MPs have anything to do with it fracking for shale gas won't be far behind...

For some UK Government ministers and MPs - including Spalding's John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) and Peterborough’s Stewart Jackson - the enthusiasm for mining shale gas is in part fuelled by a passionate hatred of wind power based largely on the latter’s aesthetic impact on local landscapes.

Blinkered by what they see as a golden economic opportunity, it is perhaps not surprising that such MPs, along with the coalition Government in general, assume the extraction of shale gas offers a palatable and commercially attractive energy source.

Fracking - short for hydraulic fracturing - involves drilling deep underground and releasing a high-pressure mix of water, sand and hundreds of chemicals to crack rocks and release gas stored inside.

Preparing the groundwork for last week’s Government tax-break announcement for fracking prospectors, Jackson used his weekly column in the Peterborough Telegraph (5 July) to promote the shale gas case.

He wrote: "Shale gas exploration gives us another once in a lifetime opportunity with clean, cheap, plentiful and safe shale gas - rather than the lights on the blink and half a million glass panels around Newborough [near Peterborough] and windfarms to boot!

"Government has wised up to the economically damaging Liberal Democrat-inspired green policies costing the UK tens of billions of pounds," he declared.

Hayes, a former energy minister, has clearly stated his opposition to development of many forms of renewable energy and has lent his support to numerous anti-windfarm campaigns across his South Holland constituency, often on the grounds that they would ‘spoil’ the local view and amenity.

The wind power industry has had to deal with a broad range of challenges, particularly visual impact. So far this doesn’t seem to be on the shale gas radar.

But type ‘shale gas rig’ into an internet search engine and select ‘images' to see a taster of what might actually be in store for any rural community where drilling might take place.

We're likely to see the industrialisation of tracts of the British countryside, gas flaring in the home counties and a steady stream of trucks carrying contaminated water down rural lanes.
 

 
Another problem with fracking for gas is that the drilling process releases a host of undesirable by-products into the atmosphere, including large quantities of methane.

Strategic opposition to the development of shale gas in the UK rests on the fact that such large-scale exploitation is not compatible with meeting our targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Analysis by Carbon Tracker estimates that if we are to contain greenhouse gas emissions at a level that preserves a reasonable chance of remaining below the 2C of global average temperature increase (considered a critical danger threshold), then four-fifths of known fossil fuel reserves need to remain locked in the ground.

The official Committee on Climate Change has warned that in the context of the UK’s legally binding climate-change targets, a new ‘dash for gas’ should be Plan Z, not Plan A.

All this makes for a risky backdrop to shale gas development in this country, which the Government seems determined to ignore in its public pronouncements.

The industry will require major investment to get going and investors will need to be patient in getting a return, as going through the planning process and exploratory drilling will take years of expensive development before commercially useful quantities of gas are produced.

And no one really knows how much of gas can be got out, or how much that will cost both financially and to the environment at large.

Production rates for the UK are expected to be lower than in the US because of lower pressure in UK basins, while costs might be higher because of demanding local environmental standards and the proximity of populated areas.

Add to that the expectation that it will not in reality reduce energy prices, then the case for shale gas looks a lot more risky than proponents and our Government suggest.

But where there are potentially large amounts of money to be made there are also vested interests at stake.

So far the Prime Minister David Cameron has managed to dodge the claim that he bowed to pressure from lobbyists such as the Tory election strategist Lynton Crosby over the Government decision to give tax breaks for fracking.

Last week The Independent newspaper detailed the work that Mr Crosby's lobbying firm, Crosby Textor, does on behalf of companies promoting the controversial method of extracting shale gas.

The shale gas narrative and tax break presented by George Osborne last week is also, in part, based on the fear of being ‘left behind'.

Osborne’s Environment Minister colleague Owen Paterson (who dismayed climate scientists by expressing doubts as to the human impact on the climate system) used the same phrase in his promotion of GM crops.

Both Osborne and Paterson say that a technological revolution based on government getting out of the way of progress is what we need. They couldn't be more wrong.

Where we are being left behind is in the development of new environmental technologies, including renewables and carbon capture. If we are to keep up in these areas, perhaps with some gas in the mix, it requires clear policy.

You can get away with small government on some issues, but not on energy. The UK needs a clear framework and strategy that sets out how we will secure our energy needs while meeting environmental goals. Right now we don't have that.

The dash for shale - with all its inherent risks and uncertainties - ignores the massive growth potential of the renewable sector and the vital long-term goal of reducing carbon emissions.

Look at Germany, for instance. Some 26 per cent of its energy now comes from renewable sources. And its renewables industry is growing because it gets tax breaks. Germany's economy is larger, more successful and infinitely more resilient than the UK's. So who is right?

The current UK Government - initially hailed by Cameron as ‘the greenest ever’ - is a liturgy of broken promises and short-term opportunism. When it comes to energy policy and the long-term future of our country it seems that little George has no idea. And neither has little Britain.


The Lighthouse Keeper is written by Clive Simpson - for more information, commission enquiries or to re-publish any of his articles click here for contact information

Unfrozen planet

Whilst much of the world is in the grip of a financial, economic and industrial crisis, the remorseless growth of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming continues unchecked.

New figures on global carbon dioxide emissions for 2010 from the US Department of Energy make sobering, not to say chilling, reading.

The headline figure is that world carbon dioxide jumped by its largest ever amount in a single year, from 31.6 to 33.5 billion tons. However, close scrutiny of the data from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory reveals other patterns that are just as disturbing.

The key one is the explosive and seemingly unstoppable growth in emissions from China, which leapt by 9.3 per cent over the year to 8.15 billion tons of carbon dioxide. The Chinese are now producing 24.3 per cent of global carbon emissions and have firmly overtaken the US the role of the world's biggest polluter.

Polar scientists also warned this month that Earth's frozen ‘cryosphere’ - from the Arctic Sea in the north to the massive Antarctic ice shelves in the south - is showing unequivocal signs of climate change as global warming accelerates the melting of the planet's coldest regions.

A rapid loss of ice is clear from the records kept by military submarines, from land measurements taken over many decades and by satellite observations from space. It can be seen on the ice sheets of Greenland, the glaciers of mountain ranges from the Andes to the Himalayas, and the vast ice shelves that stretch out into the sea from the Antarctic continent.

The effect of the melting cryosphere will be felt by rapidly rising sea levels that threaten to flood coastal cities and low-lying nations, changes to the circulation of ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream, and possible alterations to the weather patterns that influence more southerly regions of the northern hemisphere.

One of the greatest threats is the melting of the permafrost regions of the northern hemisphere which could release vast quantities of methane gas from frozen deposits stored underground for many thousands of years. Scientists are already seeing an increase in methane concentrations in the atmosphere that could be the result of melting permafrost.

"The melting of the cryosphere is such a clear, visibly graphic signal of climate change. Almost every aspect is changing and, if you take the global average, it is all in one direction," said Prof David Vaughan, a geologist at the British Antarctic Survey based in Cambridge, England.

One of the clearest signals of climate change is the rapid loss of floating sea ice in the Arctic, which has been monitored by satellites since the late 1970s and by nuclear submarines since the beginning of the cold war, according to Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University.

Sea ice is retreating faster and further than at any time on record and this year it probably reached an all-time record minimum in terms of volume and a close second in terms of surface area. On current projections, if the current rate of loss continues, there could be virtually no September sea ice as early as 2015, Prof Wadhams said.

The illustration below, based on NASA satellite data, shows how minimum sea ice extent for 2011, reached on 9 September, declined to a level far smaller than the 30-year average (in yellow) and opened up Northwest Passage shipping lanes (in red).

Misty mellowness

There seems to be no doubt that the seasons are advancing and arriving earlier each year. And it is becoming a rather peculiar thing.

September is traditionally renowned as the genteel easing from summer into the golden days of autumn, a calm, collected and wonderfully settled time of year when the harvest is finally gathered.

So, here we are in the very first week of the month experiencing fearsome gales and storms associated more with the unpredictability of October. Perhaps there has been some kind of shift in the matrix?

We know from the changing habits of migrating birds and tree records that in recent years spring has been arriving at our shores considerably earlier than in the past - some three or four weeks compared with even 20 years ago.

If spring is around the corner as we’ve barely closed our curtains on the winter calendar surely the other seasons are marching forward apace too.

Even before the UK’s most recent late summer public holiday at the end of August a farmer friend was delighted to tell me during a chat in the local pub that he had already completed the annual harvest - some three to four weeks earlier than normal.

And the very next day, as if to prove a point, a low morning mist hung in the dewy autumnal early morning air. It certainly seemed that the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ as portrayed so eloquently by John Keats back in 1820 was well and truly upon us.

The powers that be already preform minor adjustments to our calendar and time-keeping to hold our days and time in check - every four years we have a leap year. Infact, it’s actually more like a ‘leap day’, inserted at the end of February.

So, to combat our rolling seasonal disorder why not introduce a leap month? It could be just the solution governments have been looking for. A cheeky way to ignore the vagaries of encroaching climate change - a kind of turning back the clock.

But would it really be a good alternative to buckling down and getting to grips with excessive power and energy consumption, which might at least slow down the man-made acceleration to climate change in the first place?

Questions, questions. I guess in the end it comes down to a personal level - how which are we all prepared as individuals to change our lifestyles, if at all?

In today’s quick fix society having a ‘leap month’ every now and then might just prove more politically attractive. A solution without solving the actual problem. And instead of ‘climate change’ we could rebrand it ‘season change’.

The only thing then to decide is which month should we skip to bring things back into alignment? We might all have our favourites - which one would you pick?