EcoWarriorMe

Do you remember the weather last December? Some of it wasn't pretty, such as Storm Deirdre.  In case you have forgotten, the Met Office's report states the following impact: Freezing rain caused treacherous conditions and multiple traffic accidents, particularly on the M74 and across southern Scotland, and the A66 across the North Pennines was closed. There were further traffic incidents across parts of England and Wales, reports of fallen trees and several hundred homes without power across parts of Wales and Scotland. Planes had to abort landings at Manchester Airport due to strong crosswinds. And here are some contemporary reports: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/15/storm-deirdre-batters-britain-snow-freezing-rain https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-46574942 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/16/storm-deirdre-set-to-ease-after-snow-and-gales-wreak-havoc In short, not a great few days to be out and about. Was this a one off or more typical...

Whether royalist or republican, we must applaud Prince Charles for using his power and influence to highlight the great problem of deforestation and its link to climate change as well as loss of biodiversity. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/01/no-plan-b-for-climate-change-without-forests-prince-charles-tells-paris-summit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34973166 But we should we be taking advice from him? If we all took our lead from Charles, we would be sure to hit a four degree temperature rise by the early 2030s[1]. Alternatively if we mirrored land use in his personal estate, the Duchy of Cornwall, we would lose 90% of our forests, since the Duchy is only 3% forested compared to 31% of the world's land surface. And if we were each granted an estate similar to Charles, all of the usable land surface would be gone after the first 120,000[2] people and the rest would have nowhere to go! No matter how extravagant the lifestyle, a global popula...

That's a fact? According to environment secretary Owen Patterson, the time is right for GM crops and it is the duty of the British Government to convince the public that this is the case. He then said that GM crops are probably  safer than conventional crops and seven million children have gone blind or died over the past decade because attempts to grow a strain of GM rice ( Golden Rice ) commercially have been thwarted (implying, perhaps, by anti-GM campaigners and that there are no other solutions to malnutrition). The minister went on to back a scientific approach: "We need evidence-based regulation and decision-making in the EU. Consumers need accurate information in order to make informed choices. The market should then decide if a GM product is viable,"  A rigorous and transparent scientific evidence-based approach is to be welcomed,  although this goes a bit further than Mr Patterson's statement. Assuming that the evidence based regulation allows only GM...

We humans like round numbers.  We don't celebrate the 23rd annual summer fete or the 49th anniversary of an organisation but the 25th or 50th respectively. This is why the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has hit the headlines this week. The daily measurement at Mauna Loa on Hawaii has passed 400 ppm (parts per million) for the first time. Not so much a cause for celebration; more a cause for commiseration  The actual measurement was 400.03 but was subsequently revised down to 399.89 (but what is fourteen hundredths of a part per million between friends). Breaching this threshold was not particularly unexpected but it is symbolic in human terms; it is a memorable number. But what are the implications of exceeding a CO2 concentration of 400 ppm? Some climate change skeptics will be quick to highlight the scientific evidence that shows the atmospheric CO2 has been at this level and higher on the past. They are absolutely correct. Somewhere in the ...

A book and a wind-up torch. During Earth Hour, I learned the following: The origin of apples; A little about the last few months of Leon Trotsky’s life before being exiled; That I can still read a book in the dark with a torch (like I did as a child, under the blanket after bed time); And, thanks to @glasgow_kat, that petrochemical candles have much higher emissions than an electric light. Earth Hour is a fantastic way to highlight the problem of climate change in solidarity with people across the globe but it is not enough on its own. Switching the lights off on landmarks from Sidney Opera House to the Eiffel Tower to the Empire State Building for one hour is purely symbolic. Even switching them off permanently would be insignificant. The kind of reduction in fossil fuel use that we need to achieve would be more like everyone everywhere turning off the lights, heating, air conditioning, refrigeration, computers, televisions - everything for an hour. Not just once a year...

It is official. Britain has had the wettest summer since 1912 according to the Meteorological Office . This follows one of the wettest springs on record. Is this evidence of climate change or simply natural variation in the weather? To try answering this question, data from a weather station near Glasgow has been analysed . The first part of this article presented annual rainfall records and concluded that there has been only a slight increase in annual rainfall over the past decade compared with a baseline of 1961 to 1990 but that there had been a marked increase in variability. Also of interest is whether rainfall patterns have changed throughout the year, from month to month and between the seasons which is the subject of this post. In order to provide some context, June 2012 was the wettest recorded June in 54 years with 130mm of rainfall which is almost double(196%) the average rainfall for the month and July is the fourth wettest with 75% more than average. Apart from this year...

Summer 2012 may be remembered for the Olympic Games. Or it may be remembered for the rain. From doom laden predictions of the worst drought for a generation in the southern half of Britain with disastrous consequences for farmers in the spring to torrential rain, floods and, yes, disastrous consequences for farmers in the summer. The burning question is whether this is just the natural variability of weather or whether underlying climate change has a hand in driving these weather systems. To investigate this question, I have studied some local weather records. My statistical skills are about High School level: mean and standard deviation of a normal distribution. Data for Glasgow Airport from 1959 to 2012 was obtained from the  Meteorological Office website but the 2012 data was discarded as it is only provisional and represents an incomplete year. The data included monthly rainfall, sunshine and maximum and minimum temperatures and the focus of this study was the rainfall data. ...

Have you had your summer holiday yet? Did you stay local or did you fly away somewhere exotic? How do you fancy this three thousand mile trip: First stop off in France to soak up the culture then on to Mont Blanc and the Swiss alps for a few weeks rest and recuperation in the beautiful mountain scenery. It can be cool in the mountains, even in the summer so head south into Italy, perhaps Tuscany or further south again to Sicily. If that isn’t warm enough, take a short hop over the Mediterranean Sea to Libya then across the Sahara to Lake Chad. It’s not an itinerary that you’ll find in many travel brochures but it is quite popular in certain circles.  Mungo, a bird from near Loch Katrine made that very trip and met up with Chance who travelled by a different route from Loch Katrine, via Belgium and Austria, and Chris from the Norfolk Broads.  They are all Cuckoo’s that have been tagged by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in order to track their annual migrations to A...

Another  landslide closes the A83 Rest and Be Thankful with the road expected to remain closed until at least Friday.  This time debris has not landed on the road but the remote monitoring system triggered an emergency closure. This landslip occurred after nearby Tyndrum recorded 54mm (2") of rain in 24 hours. Also announced today is a project to remove a bottleneck on the A82, which is the main route from Glasgow to the west highlands and the diversionary route when the A83 is closed. Related post: Rest and be Thankful, but not about Climate Change

How the mighty have fallen - Mature tree in Pollok Park destroyed in December storms It has been fairly windy in Scotland over the past year. Back in May , unseasonable storms battered the country causing one fatality, power outages, travel disruption, damage to crops  and felling many trees.  We do not normally have such high winds during the spring and summer when the trees are in full leaf so they were more susceptible to damage and many mature trees were lost. The next big storm was in September when the tail end of Hurricane Katia brought heavy rain, flooding and more trees down. It was not nearly as severe as Huricane Irene that struck the north east US a couple of weeks earlier but it still caused at least one fatality and significant disruption. A relatively calm and mild but wet autumn followed as local government prepared for heavy snow like that which caught them out last year. Then came hurricane force winds on the 8th of December . They had been f...

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...

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.

"@EcoWarriorMe Is it time to give up on tigers and pandas? http://t.co/QgrWaAx0 > I hope not." According to an article in this morning's Independent, " A majority of professional conservationists believe it is time to consider shifting efforts away from some of the world's most famous species, such as the panda, to concentrate on others which have a greater chance of success. "  Should we be more selective in our efforts? What animals should we choose? By what measure will we evaluate which lives and which dies out?

It is that time of year where spiders start migrating indoors, getting themselves stuck in the bath, climbing the wall or running across the bedroom ceiling. Do they creep you out or do you like them? They are one of nature's helpers fulfilling a valuable role in managing the population of common pests in the garden during the summer so lets not be too hard on them when the seek sanctuary. Legend has it that a spider was the unlikely inspiration for Robert the Bruce seven centuries ago while hiding in a cave in exile.

Over the past couple of I weeks I've been asking new followers what they perceive as the biggest challenges we face. There has been a spread of topics reflecting the diverse range of interests in the environment including: Human stupidity/politics/corruption Pollution Water shortages Food shortages Floods & unpredictable weather Global Warming Population Methane Poor urban environments Thanks to all of you who contributed, posts are below in acknowledgement.  If you would like to add your thoughts on the biggest challenges faced by humanity and planet earth, the please either tweet me @EcoWarriorMe or comment below. In my opinion, there have been a couple of omissions so far: energy and poverty.  Are they too obvious, or not really that important? T rinityTrove_HR Global warming, landfill toxins, water shortages, and Congress. designal exable The biggest challenge is human stupidity. Man regularly makes horrible mistakes, from ...

Why is it so hard to get people motivated on climate change? When it came to the hole in the ozone layer, people stopped buying deodorant with CFCs, manufacturers changed to less harmful propellants, international agreements were signed and now the chemicals most detrimental to atmospheric ozone have been effectively consigned to the history books.  By stopping CFCs entering the atmosphere, further increases in the size of the ozone hole are prevented, the atmospheric CFCs are relatively short lived and the results can be measured. When out became apparent that the trade in ivory posed a very real threat to the survival of elephants and rhinoceros, campaigns to end the trade led to formation of CITES and a significant international effort to prevent poaching. It is still not a perfect system but out has made a significant difference and there is a much greater awareness of the consequence of buying produce derived from endangered species. By reducing demand through education a...