Posts

Showing posts from December, 2011

Bag it, Bin it or Don't

Image
I took my 6 year old daughter Christmas shopping the other week. We went to Lush , the hand made cosmetics company, looking for a gift for her mother. She was in heaven: the bright colours, the smells, the glitter and the pretty shapes of the soaps and bath bombs. There was no difficulty in choosing a gift for mother (especially one she might share), the only problem was deciding to stop!

Tigers: A Massive Thank You - But Can You Do a Little More?

Image
A message from Tiger Time: Dear TigerTime Supporter Thanks to you, our petition calling on China to ban the tiger trade has rocketed past 26,000 signatures in just a few days – and it’s still climbing!  So often this year we’ve seen ‘people power’ achieving real change in so many walks of life.  We are absolutely committed to ending the tiger trade and to saving the tiger in the wild.  It’s your support that will make this possible and we greatly appreciate it. Today in a leading British Newspaper (The Daily Express) this article (pictured) about Tiger Farms was published.  To read it in more detail  click here . Our message is spreading and thanks to you we are making inroads. Thanks so much for your support – it means the world to us.   A lot of people have asked what more they can do to help in this vital battle.

Wind farms blight the Landscape

Image
Are wind farms a blot on the landscape? What are those white things over there? Oh, they're sheep.

New Nuclear for Somerset

Earlier this week EdF Energy announced the preferred bidder for the £100 million contract for site preparation works at one of the first sites for a new nuclear power station: Hinkley Point C in Somerset. The work is subject to satisfying planning conditions but includes site preparation, excavation and installation of construction site infrastructure to allow main construction to begin. They also announced an agreement with AREVA in relation to the early design work for the main reactor systems, which will allow AREVA to begin the work in January. The following day they welcomed decisions by the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to issue an Interim Design Acceptance Confirmation, and the Environment Agency to issue an Interim Statement of Design Acceptability, for the EPR Pressurised Water Reactor. This is the same basic reactor design that has proven problematic at Flamanville in France.The new reactor at Flamanville is estimated to be about 4 years late and almost double the o...

Sea Levels are Rising

Image
I had a discussion on rising sea levels this afternoon and I was given a link to a article by an accredited scientist based on actual observations ( http://tinyurl.com/yztgfap ).  This sounds promising I thought, he appears well placed to comment on this topic, lots of experience and involvement with the sea level commision of an international resaerch union, the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA). Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. But all is not as it seems.  Despite the INQUA credentials quoted, INQUA do not agree with Mörner's findings, in fact they tend to agree that sea levels are rising, from their web pa...

Rest and be Thankful, but not about Climate Change

Image
At seven o'clock this morning around 100 tonnes of debris fell on to the A83 near the Rest and be Thankful in Argyll.  The alternative route is between 30 and 50 miles longer depending on how much you need to double back at either end.  Similar landslips have happened on the A83 before but only recently, in 2007 , 2009 and now in 2011 , all preceded by periods of prolonged heavy rain.