The State of the Union

Last night I stayed up to listen to George W Bushes State of the Union address. While it did not contain anything that was surprising, there were three aspects that I found frustrating. The first was the Bush stance on Climate Change. While there appears to be a recognition of the reality of climate change, under bush, there will not be any real or substantive action until countries like China and India start tackling climate change as well.

Well China is, while china is doing this in part as the PR for the Olympics, there is also a recognition that a changing climate is already causing problems. Desertification, Drought, Floods and its having an economic impact too. That is why China is building the largest solar power station in the world in the Gobi Desert.

The difference really is that the US has a Gross Domestic Product of fifteen trillion Dollars, while Chinas economy is still only two and a quarter of a trillion dollars. If China can do it I am sure that the US could, and in my opinion should, be doing much more.

The other aspect of the proper gander of this speech was when Bush talked about overseas aid. Because of religious interference, the US refuses to fund or support any project that promotes the use of condoms as a way of tackling HIV/AIDS. Even though the world health organisation and a myriad of other specialists know that the use of condoms is the only was that the spread of HIV/AIDS can be halted. This stance, by Bush, is based upon an ideology that's akin to the belief that the earth is flat. Don't get me started on natural selection!

Over the years of listening to the world service, reading books, and talking to people involved in development, the one aspect of development that has the greatest benefit is family planning. Empowering and educating women actually has the greatest positive effect on the health, economics and productivity of the developing world. Therefore, the US dictating that aid will only be given to peoples and projects that comply with the morality (the word that Bush used in the speech) of the religious right (wing), is not only wrong but adds to the problems that the developing world has. Further, it adds (Rightly or Wrongly) to the impression that America is pushing an anti Moslem agenda.

Lastly was the way that the US has dealt with current financial crisis. The US economy has some serious structural problems. Over recent years it has been on a spending spree, this has been funded by borrowing. Here in the UK we have done the same, so we are not guilt free here. While borrowing can really help people archive more sooner, borrowing has to be repaid. The problem is that this borrowing has come from overseas, predominantly China and South East Asia. That means that now Americans are busy working to boost the economic standing of China, Korea, Japan etc.

This was why in the 1970s in the UK we had to sort out the structural problems of our economy as during the Second World War we had borrowed so much from the US. It was only last year that we finally repaid that money. The US now has a similar problem, with government borrowings of three trillion dollars, that's twenty percent of the US economy, America has to work harder just to pay off the debt.

Further as US business has transported industries and jobs overseas, cutting the taxes of the richer citizens will do little to help this problem. Had Bush given the money to the poorest people in the US then you would have seen that money spent and injected into the US economy and not spent on servicing overseas debt.

I never expected much from Bush and I was not disappointed, given all the problems in the world it would have been great if the speech had not been full of idealogical rhetoric and had more substantive action.

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

Now I guess that I may need to explain to my overseas readers that the RSPB, the British version of the Audubon Club, started via its children's group, the young ornithologists club a project to look at what birds were visiting peoples gardens. Now that part should be as clear as mud!

However, us adults stamped our feet and started crying and said we want to play too... So quite soon after it started thirty years ago, we adults (adult only by longevity and not temperament) were able to sit for an hour and count the birds that visit our garden. They even make it easy by saying you can use the park as your back garden.

Therefore for an hour today I became a child. I went to the park for a change, as while my yard is getting better for birds, I also know that there are periods when birds just don't come in. And as one of the rules is that the bird must land, it was possible that I could end up seeing loads but recording nothing. Us Brits know how to make life complicated!

However, the serious part of this is not the very useful data that this project has generated in the past twenty nine years, but the fact that it has excited children young and old to look and learn about the environment, conservation and natural history.

Well I suppose that you want to hear what I saw, no I hear you cry, well I am going to tell you anyway!

Blackbird (6), Jackdaw (19), Magpie (3), Robin, Wood Pigeon, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Long tailed Tit (14), Great tit, Blue Tit (9), Starling (7), Pied Wagtail (3), Collard Dove (2) and Tree Sparrow (8)

Then following my stint I went for a walk and I ended the day with a long sighting of one of the Red Kites.

If the list of ingredients looks like a chemistry lesson then...

This Last week for me has been very busy. The demands on my time are coming quite thick and fast. Some of these I will detail in latter postings. However there are two instances that I want to tell you folk about. Firstly, as I previously said I bought a new computer and have been busy setting this up. As I have needed to add hardware and software, I do this an item at a time test it before adding the next bit. This is far more time consuming than just putting it all together and hopping for the best. It has and does pay off in the long run.

However, this meant that I had lots of spare time to sit and watch the birds as they come and visit my yard. This occurred at the same time as the snows came, so I was able to see that my efforts were really worthwhile.

Then as I was awaiting the computer load some software, I went off to make some tea. On returning I suddenly realised that a Sparrow hawk was perched on the power line that runs parallel to my property. I rushed downstairs for the camera but it had gone by the time I got back, but it had been only twenty feet from my window, a real treat.

However, it doesn't end there, while out and about I missed seeing the bird again.
I had returned and noticed that two of the fat balls had been pulled off and were laying broken open on the ground. I presumed by the jackdaws, this wasn't deterring the birds as they were still feeding on them where they lay on the floor. Then a day or so latter I bumped into one of my neighbours who told me that they had seen a bird of prey, that had swooped in and (they think) took a small bird. This could be the explanation of how the fat balls were felled. As they were securely tied I had been surprised to see them on the ground. I would have loved to have seen this, but I cant be everywhere.

This has made me look carefully at where I am positioning the food so that I am not providing a bird table for the hawks.

It just shows that doing just a little can help a lot.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is food. Following the programmes on the food we are having foisted upon us, I have been even more careful about what I am buying. While I am pretty clued up, even I was appalled and revolted by what I was discovering. When I did my shopping last week I took more time to look to see if I could avoid all the foods where the practices of the food industry are unethical and unhealthy. That day I found that by avoiding the products that I would not want to eat, my bill at the checkout was seventy five percent lower.

This got me thinking, was it possible that by buying and eating ethically was cheaper?

As I had a receipt from a previous big shopping trip, this is an unexpected advantage of using reusable bags, and I looked to see if I could buy similar goods without compromising ethics and not breaking the bank either. For example, pasta that contain what is called the hidden egg. These are the broken eggs that come from battery farms. They cant be sold but go into ninety percent of the foods that contain egg. While I support free range by buying free range eggs, it looks as though I have for years been unwittingly supporting unethical farming via these products.

Additionally I wanted to avoid eating anything that was “mucked about”. I do try and eat healthy foods, so the products that are supposed to be more healthy will appear in my shopping basket. But as was shown in these programmes, most of these are still full of salt and sugar. Not only that the fats in them are far from healthy, and in the UK at least, the labelling regulations enable them to hide all the crap, more from what they don't say. While I have known for a long time that we need to read between the lines on labels, it became clear that no matter how aware you are, you can still be fooled. Therefore I am now adopting the simple rule; if the list of ingredients looks like a chemistry lesson then I am not going to buy it. On that principal I will stop buying the instant soups that you make in a mug. Looking at the ingredients in one of them, made me realise just what garbage is in them. Further, as I enjoy making soups, why not go back to what I used to do and make a big pan full when the veg is cheap and freeze some for latter.

Well I following my chemistry free approach, and I saved myself thirty five percent on my grocery bill. It has meant that I have to spend a little more time in the kitchen, but it is still fast food and I doubt that I have spent more than an extra hour in the kitchen this week. And part of that extra time has been spent cooking something special anyway.

What I did that was a bit special was as the result of actively seeking out a decent butchers. The one in the village is not that brilliant, and while the one that I had been using in Consett is reasonable, there is a lack of choice and variety. I don't understand how or why anyone would want to limit what they are prepared to eat, but locally it seems that folks will stick with eating the same limited foods day in day out. Therefore, I went looking for a better butcher, and I think I have found what I wanted.

I have two ways of telling a good butcher, the first is one that makes his (that's not being sexist its just that most butchers are men) own sausages. And if they have offal or the less popular cuts of meat available. It was the discovery that they had an ox tail available that prompted me cooking a large pan, three litres, of oxtail soup.

I also got some of the sausages, Lamb and mint, and they were a wonderful flavour. What's amazing is that a real butcher is cheaper than the supermarket anyway, and the quality is normally superior to the supermarkets anyway.

So it looks as though even with my time pressures this week, cooking and eating a healthy ethical diet is cheaper than the supermarkets would have us believe.

Is America Bankrupt?

While the stock markets have recovered following the falls earlier this week, what has happened is reminiscent of what occurred prior to the stock market crash on Wall Street in 1929. Then, in the years leading up to the crash, the stock market fell and railed several times before it finally plummeted. Then what happened that made that crash so disastrous was that so many people had borrowed money to play the market. So when finally the crunch came, people realised that they had no chance of ever repaying that borrowed money.

Many of the same problems that happened then are there today in the American economy. While there is a great deal of personal debt, two million American families are going to lose their homes due to the sub prime scandal, the real problem is the debt that the US government carries. While the US Treasuries borrowings are now bellow three trillion dollars, it is the government debt that is dragging the US into recession.

While unlike an individual or a business, a country will always be able to borrow more, just like an individual all that borrowing has to be repaid eventually.

It was while listening to the radio, and reading about the background of what's happening that I realised why the federal government in the US doesn't want to face up to the realities of climate change. America is all but bankrupt.

This is not as ridiculous as you may think, for many years the US economy has been fuelled by consumer spending. When Bush came to the presidency one of the first things he did was to cut taxes and gave every American tax payer three hundred dollars (I am sure my American reader will tell me if I have got the amount wrong), as with so many right wing politicians, Bush assumes that its only private spending that drives the economy. While in part this can be true, it is where people spend their money and on what that benefits or hinders an economy. For the most part what Americans (and the British) have been spending their money on is cheap imported luxuries. Further much of this consumer spending has been using borrowed money. The package of tax cuts that have been rushed through will give every American tax payer about twelve hundred dollars, but if everyone just uses it to pay off bills and credit, it will do nothing to stimulate the economy.

This is no different to the UK, we have one trillion pounds (two trillion Dollars) of personal debt here. However, the difference here is our government has not been borrowing anywhere as much as the US has. Moreover, the US has been and still is reliant upon borrowing from the Far East, especially China.

Rather like a Mister Micawber figure, Bush is trying to project an image of confidence that everything is fine while knowing that, metaphorically speaking, debtors prison is just around the corner.

This is the fundamental flaw in the US economy. The UK has similar problems, as like the US we have been living the high life on borrowed money. While there are areas of US business that are very successful, the majority of the business in the US is failing to compete. Further, far to many of the major players on the Dow Jones have exported production and jobs to the Far East, especially China. That means that the US economy and the UK, have relied upon consumer spending to keep the money flowing.

The difficulty with that rational is that eventually the bills need to be paid. Further this growth based economics can only work if everyone fools themselves that tomorrow will always be better. The Value of homes will always rise, that you will always get the next pay cheque or that the next new bit of technology will be just so fulfilling.

The unfettered free market global economy that Bush has been following relies upon everyone consuming more and more, the down side of this is the global businesses that this economic model creates have no loyalty to the country that created the company. When the going gets tough then the businesses will just up and leave to wherever the profit is. This is why Bush will not do anything to tackle Climate Change. Even though under the economic model that the US is following pressing for energy conservation would provide most households with as much as this current tax rebate will, but will do so year in and year out, giving every American more dollars in their pocket.

But as Bush is beholden to big business, anything that reduces income to the energy businesses is an anathema to an oil man. Further the ideology of the neo-cons that taxes must be lowered, fails to answer the difficulty of meeting the costs of government. The war in Iraqi is costing one million dollars a day, and to pay for this tax cut the US government will have to borrow money from the money markets.

Eventually that money will have to be repaid, yet federal taxes, before this tax cut, only raised enough money to cover the merger Medi-Care. That means the US has to borrow more and more money to pay for everything else that the US government has to do.

While I don't want to see anyone suffer, America has to start pulling in its belt and getting real about what it can afford to do. Further, they need to start to realise that investing in real Low Carbon technology will actually boost the economy and not harm it. Had the money that Bush has just given away been used to pump prime green industries, it would help the US become a leader in the new technologies needed around the globe and would move the economy forward. This is what Roosevelt did with the New Deal in the 1930s

America cant continue like this, as eventually America will end up going bust.

Damaging Lewis Wind Farm Stopped

While I am in favour of Wind Farms and renewable energy production, this proposed farm was simply a bad idea. While the visual impact upon a beautiful landscape would have been great, that is not the reasons why I objected to this one.




The geology of Lewis, one of the islands in the Hebrides, means that the Ecology of the peat-land is a fragile environment. As well as being important to a number of species, peat is an endangered habitat already. Further, these west coast islands are important migration routes for many millions of birds, and as has occurred with other poorly located turbines, birds would have been killed by the blades.

However, in relation to Climate Change, erecting any structure on peat bogs releases large volumes of CO2 from the land, that all adds to the carbon cost of building the wind farm in the first place.




There is no point in taking action on reducing CO2 emissions if we are damaging other parts of the environment in the process. Had the geology or the ecosystem been different then I would not have objected myself, but as is often the case profit blinds people to the real cost.

The Media Story

Photo of Ruined Church courtesy of Morris R. MacIver

Carbon Offsetting

I genuinely don't have any problem with anyone making money. As long as each and every trade is a fair and equitable one. Further, while I don't see Carbon Offsetting as a solution to climate change, it is allowing NGO projects to help the poor in developing countries to buy energy saving appliances and reduce carbon emissions in that way. Also I do see planting trees as something we should all be doing.

However, as it takes fifty years for a tree to fully absorb the carbon produced now from burning fossil fuels, it creates the illusion that we can continue generating pollution and by offsetting we are being virtuous. The predicament we have is that we are burning ancient carbon from the Cretaceous period that was locked away millions of years ago and expecting to solve it by planting trees that will lock away the carbon for a few hundred years at best.

At the moment, the average temperature on earth is 14 degrees Celsius, that's a rise of one degree on the pre industrialised average In the Cretaceous period the average temperature was 25 degrees Celsius That is greater increase then the scientists are saying would have already made the human extinct.

While planting trees should be happening and I don't mind organisations making money from this, I do have a problem with some of the organisations that are seeking to collect money from offsetting.

Yesterday, I noticed an advert that I had to explore as the strap line was Gore was wrong. The web site detailed the fact that since the 15th century we have reduced tree cover by ten billion acres. Further, that just by planting trees we solve the problem. While this may be great PR (Bulls**t) for the offsetting industry, it is based upon bad science. As I have already said the carbon that is causing the problem is the ancient carbon from millions of years ago. Additionally, trees can only capture the carbon for a few hundred years and eventually even if those trees are then replaced CO2 emissions will then start increasing as we have filled all the spare land with woodlands and forests.

I bookmarked the site as I was thinking of writing about it as junk science and junk science, particularly the myths perpetuated by the oil companies, is largely responsible for much of the inaction on tackling climate change. Then I thought I would investigate further. Using the contact details they provide on the site, I discovered that its run by a “FOR PROFIT” company called American Capital Resource's and Information and not the not for profit group that are claimed on the website.

Therefore anyone wanting to offset their carbon from air travel say, needs to be sure of the people they are giving their money to. Additionally, to truly offset the CO2 from a flight you will need to plant much more than the one or two trees that most offsetting sites will tell you. As a fully laden flight from Heathrow to Orlando in Florida, each passenger will need to plant one hundred and fifty trees to absorb the CO2 from that flight alone. That is the true cost of carbon offsetting.

The Website in Question

The People behind the website

The Do Nothing Approach to Climate Change

On Saturday after a busy day, I realised that I needed to get some vegetables. Therefore I went to my local greengrocer. As it was late in the day, I had time for a chat. Sparked by something he said, I suggested a greener option to a minor difficulty. That of him buying a solar panel to recharge the battery for the scales he uses at the markets. Much to my surprise he rejected the idea as it would take over a year to recover the capital cost. Even though it will save him electricity costs, and add the benefit of not having to shut up shop when the battery runs down.

I said that even if it will take a while to recover the cost, with rising energy costs, in the long run he would save. I also went on to suggest that it would help to reducing the effects of Climate Change. His response was surprising and shocking, even though he is aware of the need to take action, and that we are destroying the planet for his children, he saw no point.

He said that unless countries like America, China and India did something on climate change he saw no point in doing anything. He even acknowledged that his children would suffer in the future, and that their future is bleak.

The point of telling you this, is simply that this is the attitude that I face every day. While I no longer seem to face the opposition to the idea of a changing climate, almost everyone I do encounter will not, not can not, but will not take any action that requires effort, thought or costs. Ultimately I agree with his conclusion that we are... (Here you have to play guess the expletive)

The real shame lays in the hands of everyone who refuses to take actions towards making reductions in Climate changing pollution. Even among those people who like to think of themselves as being green, people will not limit their personal freedom to pollute. If they can see it saving them money, they will, or if it adds kudos amongst peers, but real action is non existent.

Well I will continue to limit my impact upon the planet as unless you are part of the solution then you are part of the problem. All this should not have been a revelation for me, as everyone has been doing something similar in relation to consumer credit. In the UK there is one trillion pounds of personal debt. We have all been spending as though tomorrow doesn't matter, well looking at the state of the stock market, tomorrow has arrived. I said it would, long before it occurred.

I have long said that it will be the economic impacts of a changing climate that would be the first time that people really started to take notice, well that time has arrived. Increasing energy costs, increasing food costs, the collapse of (Over inflated) house prices, are all part of the overall picture of our devastating impact upon the earth.

We now need a new economic engine driving our economy, not the push for growth at all costs, but a sensible and equitable use of the earth's resource's. Only via that route will we all discover that we can share in the wealth of this planet and put an end to the conflict that harms us all.

Unexpected Badger Encounters

Yesterday I spoke briefly about seeing a Badger that's heavily pregnant. Normally it would be nearly impossible to see or even get near a sow that is pregnant. However, the weather played its part, as because of the heavy rain one of the tunnels in one of the smaller setts, one that I have been guessing is predominantly used as a nursery sett, became flooded. Previously I had noticed that some saturated bedding had been dragged out. Therefore I started watching to see if the wet weather was adversely impacting upon these mammals.

I could see that there were rivulets that were running into one of the tunnels, this was one that had obviously been abandoned many years before. What I was seeing now explains why they abandoned this entrance. Yet because you cant see how extensive the network of tunnels are, this abandoned entrance must be connected with the current bedding chamber.

It is the extensive nature of a Badger sett that can make it difficult and frustrating to observe Badgers. It does help keep the Badgers safe, while there are no natural predators in the UK now, in the past they would have been on the menu for Wolfs and Lynx, this complexity of the sett remains. It does however enable a wildlife watcher the opportunity for that unexpected encounter.

So while I was checking out what was happening, after seeing the saturated bedding, I was near one of the other entrances to this sett. Unexpectedly I heard the sound of a Badger in the tunnel. I was in the wrong place, to exposed and the wind was blowing my scent towards the sett. Laying down in the mud, I am sure that my mother or my ex would have been horrified by my childish behaviour, and waited to see if the Badger would emerge. Badgers always sniff the air before and as they emerge, thus I was expecting her to race back in. My scent was obviously in the air and she could smell me. While I don't think that she could see me, her head kept on turning towards me. While she was hesitate, she finally emerged and it was clear that she was wet. Wetter than the outside of the tunnel, further because her thick fur was plastered to her body, I could see clearly that she is heavily pregnant. Normally she would be steadfastly deep in her nursery chamber as she will be giving birth in the next week or so.

One of the reasons why I had been watching this particular set is because I knew that the female inhabiting this one was likely to have been pregnant and that I would have a chance to see cubs latter in the year. However, while I was able to track her part of the way, she gave me the slip. I have ideas of where she went, but no certainty of where she moved to. Therefore, I may not see the cubs when they first emerge.

Well that's all part of the magic of watching wildlife, you just don't know what you will see. Now where did I put the washing powder?

Death and Rebirth

As I have said previously, I needed to get a new computer. I found a pre used machine that was at least two chip generations new than my old steam driven one. Further, as it was at a price I could just about afford and was the speck I needed, I am now the Happy/Miserable (Delete as Required) owner of a new old computer.

While a couple of friends had suggested getting a Mac, as all my software is PC, that would have entailed a lot more expense. Further, as the other equipment I have Like the scanner are only compatible with PCs, I had to go that route. The New computer arrived on Friday, after checking it was working, I went to switch on the old one, and nothing happened. Checked all the leads and connections, but while it was powering up nothing was loading.

Well after a weekend of checking and getting the PC doctor out, my old computer was pronounced dead.

So it looks as though I got the new one just in time. However, as the death was caused by the hard drive expiring, it means that I have lost a lot of important data. While I do regularly back up my files, and had done a full one only two weeks ago, I have lost some files. What for me is the greatest loss is all the contacts and email addresses that I had on my old machine, while I have some in paper form, its all ways a shame when you loose contact with people because of problems like this. Add to that I had a whole host of websites and pages that I have been using as research...

Well it looks as if I am going to busy all over again.

Anyway, I have not only been playing nurse to a dying clapped out pile of junk, that's me not the computer, I have also been out checking on the Badgers. While it is more difficult to see them at this time of year, they are sensible and stay out of the cold. I did see one of the Sows and she is very heavily pregnant, so in the spring I may see cubs again.

Starting the Day with a Song, well Almost

Yesterday I was up at four in the morning, as I wanted to venture out and play with my new toys. While it is the spring and summer when the birds form an orchestra to greet the dawn, there are still birds that start the day with a song.

I wanted to choose a day where the weather was not so wet that I risked ruining the recorder, so I delayed my sojourn while one shower passed over. Therefore, instead of getting out when it was real dark it was just about the point when the first predawn light was begging to lighten the shadows. I did struggle seeing the settings on the recorder but I got it working and pointed the microphone towards the flock of blackbirds that were preparing to greet the dawn. As with trying to take photographs, it seemed that the moment I pointed the microphone their way, they disappeared or at least went silent. Not easily deterred I ventured into the wood, as I went deeper in I saw the ghostly white shape of an barn owl cross my path just fifty feet ahead of me.

I stopped and tried to record the call, but as it was away in the distance, I knew that I was unlikely to record the sounds, but as this was an experiment it was all worth trying. My destination was a particular spot in the wood where I know that the wildlife is least disturbed and where the birds do roost. Hence they have been most vocal in the past. While I was not expecting any amazing symphony I was surprised to have very bird song.

There was an isolated outburst of singing, but nothing like the dawn chorus I was hoping to find. While it was disappointing in some ways, it was a wonderfully peaceful morning.

When I got home I was able to listen back to what I had recorded and while I could hear other sounds from the environment, almost none of the birds had recorded. I did wonder if it was a problem with my equipment or something I had done. Going back carefully back through what I had done I realise I had set up the recorder incorrectly. So while I didn’t achieve what I planed to do, I learned a lot from the experience.

Well I hope for better luck next time.

Having Lots of Weather Here

There was a time when I assumed that the reason why the British and more so the English talk about the weather so much was that we are so culturally repressed. While I do feel that this is a small part of the reason, the real reason is that the weather has always been so important to our survival.

While Britain was the crucible of the industrial revolution, agriculture and as an island nation, fishing were so important to the lives and livelihoods of the people of these islands. For several thousand years weather conditions drove the activities that provided the ability for us to feed ourselves. Even as recently as forty years ago the majority of the population were engaged in occupations that were dependent upon the weather, and our ability to grow, collect or sell food.

Even now anyone who lives in a rural area is impacted and concerned by the weather. Tourism is boosted by hot weather, this can benefit a local economy with increased spending by visitors, or if there is a lack of facilities it can despoil an area with litter or pollution from engine emissions, or from noise and disturbance from inconsiderate visitors.

In the UK just a little snow just throws everyone, and it has a greater impact upon us than it does for people in other parts of the world who regularly have to live with snow in the winter. Often its just about ensuring that you are prepared for what will happen.

One of the aspects of the recent threat of flooding here that struck me was all of the houses where the media were visiting to illustrate the story were new build housing. While it would be glib to say that it’s only because of building homes on flood plains that are causing this problem, it is a major factor.

In the past people knew not to build in certain areas simply because they would suffer from flooding. However, partly because of the way people have become detached from the land and natural environment, this old knowledge has been lost. Further because people have much greater geographical and economic mobility, most people don’t have the local knowledge of the landscape that enable a population to know where it’s safe to live.

Then there is the problem that for years we have relied upon technology to provide solutions to all our problems. The difficulty with that is as King Chanute showed, no matter how much power you have, you cannot control nature.

Now as well as the normal weather patterns we should expect, we have the added factor of the unexpected weather events caused by a changing climate. The greatest obstacle to understanding about how we need to plan for this reality has been the media calling the problem Global Warming. That one phrase has made people assume that it will improve the weather. The reality people now have to cope with in the form of flooding.

However, there are lots of things that we can all do to help prevent this occurring, not just the people who are at risk of flooding either. One simple solution is to fit a rain barrel or two so that rainwater is collected. Most people will have some use for this water anyway and it may help keep your garden alive during a drought. As the average size is around seventy-five to one hundred litres in capacity, during heavy rains that is a significant volume of water that you are preventing from adding to the problem. While flooding involves millions of litres, if everyone were to contain that water, that would amount to one hundred and seventy-five billion litres saved.

The water saved by people in the upland areas would not then add to the swell of water further down the watershed.

The other simple action is to ensure that your patio, or cars hard standing is permeable. While having off street parking adds to the value of a property, every square foot of impermeable concrete reduces the grounds ability to absorb rainfall. Further, it proportionally increases the amount of water that soils have to absorb else ware and it adds to the erosion of that soil exacerbating the problem further.

While having a permeable patio is more costly, the cost of doing that is far cheaper than the cost of having your home flooded. And while there will be the cynical out there that will say that insurance will cover the cost of flooding, anyone talking to people impacted by flooding and those cynics will be silenced.

I hope that we British continue to talk about the weather so that we can learn to live with the reality of climate change. Incidentally, were in not for the fact that we are living through a period when the climate is changing, this rain would have most likely have fallen as snow, and that reduces the flood risk.

While I realise that none of this helps the people facing flooding at the moment, but in the future if we all took these simple actions then we would be helping our neighbours and ourselves.

My thoughts tonight though are with all those people who are worried and waiting.

Harry Potters Cloak of Invisibility

Poisoning windows (see comment on previous posting, woops a Freudian slip, it by my psychopathic thoughts on computer software showing) is not the only wildlife watching I have been doing. Previously I spoke about the fact that in the UK we now have Eagle Owls breeding here. When I did, I was informed that here on Tyneside there was one that had settled in. However, no matter how hard I pleaded I could not discover exactly where.

Eventually via my contacts, I discovered where the bird was. So this morning I went off in search for this fine bird. I scoured the streets, back lanes and asked strangers if they had seen the bird. While I did get some strange looks from some, I did find others who had seen the Owl. But no matter how hard I scoured the area not a sign did I find. Sometimes that is the way with wildlife watching, even if you are in the right location unless you have contacted the animals’ agent, they just don’t turn up.

While I never saw the owl I thought at least I would have another day to try. Sitting down with a cup of tea, I watch the local news, and on there is a story about the very bird that I had been looking for. It turned out that the Eagle Owl was an escaped bird and not a wild one, and this weekend just gone. The animal handler that supplied the owls for the first Harry Potter film had recaptured the Owl, no wonder I couldn’t find it someone had thrown a cloak of invisibility over the owl.

So while I had missed out on seeing and photographing this bird, I was heartened to discover that a local woman had been feeding the owl and that it had been well looked after.

One of the things I discovered when I got back home was the adaptor that I had bought over the Internet for a battery charger. I had to buy it from the US and the postmark was from Acadia in Maine the location of one of the National Parks over the pond. Somewhere I would love to visit…

The reason why this charger was so important is that I need it to recharge the batteries for a digital audio recorder. While I had a mains adaptor and could use it in the house, or I could use alkaline batteries, I have long refused to use disposable batteries. So I needed to have the ability to charge the unique batteries for the recorder.

I have often thought that what most people don’t always realise is just how vocal wildlife can be. While we all know that birds sing, but badgers are quite noisy too, sometimes it’s just huffing and puffing, but also there are snickering and calls that most people are just not aware of. Therefore I some months ago sought out some advice. In my past I specialised in taking pictures for theatre groups and performers, it explains why I am poor now! So making contact I tried to discover what I would need and if I could afford to do this.

Not only was I assured that I could do this without having to sell my grandmother, good job as I don’t have any left to sell, but my initial idea was expanded upon. Everyone I was talking to was saying I should do a podcast. I think that what they are saying is that I have a good face for radio. Anyway, this is what I am planning and getting the digital recorder is all part of this. Further, I am looking to build a web site, so that I can help direct people to the information they need to live a greener life. But also I would like to expand on some of the conservation and wildlife issues, as while many people that are interested in wildlife they can actually do a lot in their own garden or back yard.

However this is all apparitional at the moment as I have discovered something that I had already suspected, that my computer is to old and not powerful enough to run the software I need to run to do this. So I am now looking to buy a second hand computer before I can progress much further. As I always envisaged this not happening until spring or early summer, that delay is not beyond the scope of my plans.

All I can say is I hope that when I do start doing my pods, I don’t have to many days like today when I find the wildlife hidden by that cloak of invisibility.

Café Archaeopteryx

While I have been busy reading some, at times, quite dense material on conservation and the environment, even while I have been doing this I have had the delight of seeing the birds that are feeding in my back yard. My desk, in my office (its actually the back bedroom but office sounds better) I poisoned at the window so that I could at least watch the jackdaws. Also the first thing I did when I moved in here was to place feeders in the yard. While it has taken a while, I now have some regular diners at café archaeopteryx.

Just yesterday I had Blue Tit, Great Tit, Redwing, Fieldfare, Starling, Blackbird, Jackdaw, Tree Sparrow, Dunnock and Pied wagtail. It is such a delight to be able to move my eyes from the paper or screen that I am reading and see the justification for the effort.

I don’t have a garden at all here, it is just a concrete yard, but in pots are a few herbs and I have my feeders for the birds and that is enough to encourage the wildlife to visit. Equally I can look up to the sky at the horizon and see other birds flying over, the Red Kite at the moment is a nearly daily sighting, but I have also seen Herons, Ducks and one morning a flock of about one thousand starlings going off somewhere to feed.

It is these simple pleasures that show me just how good life can be.

The Nuclear Option An Open Letter to Sir David King

While I do have praise for the former Chief Scientific Officer Sir David King for actually getting the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, to understand the real danger we all face from climate change, he is still part of the problem with regard to finding solutions. The British government has decided that the way to resolve climate change is to rely upon Nuclear Power. It was in fact Sir David King that persuaded the UK this was the route to take, and while it has just been announced (re-announced) this week, it was decided behind closed doors years ago.

The problem with Nuclear energy is simply that we have nowhere to safely store the waste. In the UK we have been generating electricity for over fifty years, yet we still have not found any way of dealing with the first kilo of highly radioactive waste that was produced. We now have over fifty tonnes of this material. This is where the equation for the carbon footprint for nuclear energy is obfuscated. While it looks as though Nuclear Fusion does eliminate greenhouse gases, even taking account of the carbon inputs into the manufacturing and building of the station(s). Concrete and cement have the fifth largest carbon footprint of any manufactured material.

It is when the energy inputs are added for the ways that we will likely to have to deal with the waste that it starts to look less of a reasonable option. Because much of the waste will have to be vitrified, locked away in glass, energy will be needed to manufacture the glass. Further, whatever form of depository is used, most likely something underground, vast amounts of concrete will be needed to build and maintain the depositories. When I say vast the nuclear industry has said that each tonne of waste will be encased in fifty tonnes of concrete. That means it will take 250,000,000 tonnes of concrete just to deal with the waste we have already produced.

Incidentally that will lead to over three trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. That is just to deal with the waste we already have.

Then there is the difficulty of where to locate these new power stations. Historically nuclear power stations have been located on coastal sites. This is because fusion electricity generation needs vast volumes of water. Predominantly this is to ensure safety so that water is available to cool the uranium or plutonium. As well water is needed nuclear power is actually a very simple technology as water is superheated to steam to drive turbines. At Sizewell B each turbine needs two tonnes of stream per second to generate electricity. That requires vast volumes of water; hence locating plants at the coast seems the logical choice. However, global warming is raising the sea level. While we have only seen a rise of 30cm (One Foot) in the previous century, even the most conservative estimates say that we need to be planning for a further meter rise. That places all of the new build nuclear plants at risk of flooding.

As our experience last year shows, flooding from seaward ingress is not the only risk. Flooding could occur from heavy rains and flash flooding. If this water were to enter a nuclear power station then it would contaminate the water supply with low-level radiation. While walls and barriers could be built to prevent this happening, it will add billions to the costs and further increase the carbon footprint of building the stations. Thus making any reduction in the climate gases these stations hope to create marginal at best. It may well be that the carbon footprint from building the stations is higher than the reductions in CO2 using them produce.

Then there is the question of safety, while Nuclear does raise causes for concerns; the safety record in the UK is actually very good. My only real concern on this is if economic pressures lead to short cuts being taken or maintenance being delayed. Then there is the problem from terrorism. While I have no doubt that every effort will be made to prevent an attack, unfortunately it only takes one person to succeed to cause serious damage and disruption.

Therefore to have Sir David King say that we the environmentalists are putting the climate at risk by opposing or even voicing doubts about the Nuclear Option is simply wrong. The difficulty is that people like Sir David King and much of the government still fail to realise that its not just about finding an alternative way of doing more of the same. In the UK thirty percent of the electricity generated is wasted. By educating and forcing people and businesses to conserve energy we could overnight meet and exceed our Kyoto targets as well as being half way to meeting any targets that emerge from the Bali road map.

What Sir David King, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, George W Bush, et all don’t understand is the only way we can survive the effects of our polluting the planet is to change attitudes on and about the way we all uses resources.

Sustainable energy production is possible using existing technologies; any concerted effort in developing this further could provide our whole planet with clean renewable energy for the next century or more. The barrier that we need to break through is the idea that we have to buy and burn any fuel at all. Solar is using the Suns energy, as wind is created by solar energy on the atmosphere… you get the picture. All we lack is the change in the mindset that says oil, gas or coal or an alternative is what we need to power the planet and the economies of the world.

Additionally none of us greens want to go back to a time when we lacked the advances that have provided us all with better health, sanitation and education. What we recognise is that much of the junk that we are sold as essential are a complete waste of the earths resources. Equally many of these items require us to buy more and more energy. While I am sure that a new television for example, will be able to do all sorts of clever things, but it does not provide any increase in the quality of the programmes. Further, new televisions frequently use more electricity, as do all the other junk we are told we need.

Also we “Greens” recognise that all of these gadgets and so called must have devices do very little to increasing the quality of life, in fact as we replace last months must have, we add to the waste we leave behind. Then there is the fact that we are all having to work harder to buy more and more of what we are being told we need, well us “Greens” have the intelligence to say no and reject an ever increasing spiral of consumerism.

What we do want to see is a rejection of polluting industries and an embracing of ethical and respectful ways of living that doesn’t require us to steal the resources from the deprived and following generations.

The Article that prompted this reply

The News story on Britain going Nuclear

Photo courtesy of Imperial College London

More on Co-evolution and Interdependence

Just a couple of days ago I was talking about some of the ways that completely different species have a dependence upon the other. While many are obvious such as food and prey, most prey species need the predator to control their numbers; otherwise they outstrip their food supply. That scenario, as witnessed in many species when the predators are reduced or removed, has the effect of reducing the prey species more than would ever be lost via predation. That is because while some will die from starvation, the greater effect is reduced breeding rates and increased infant mortality. Thus the importance of a full range of species within any habitat is now well understood.

However, currant research is still illuminating some very interesting and subtle examples of interdependence. I still can’t get the image out of my head of scientists sniffing ants. See the previous post on this subject.

However, research is highlighting many surprising examples of the symbiosis of different species and the importance of large animals. As I have mentioned before, in Yellowstone National Park, they discovered that having a healthy and sizable population of Wolfs changed the behaviour of the Elk. By adjusting the way the Elk feed, by keeping them out in the open and away from the Forest and trees, willow and aspen regenerated. This in turn provided food and shelter for beavers, who by creating their pools and this in turn helped the dippers, amphibians and reptiles. The web of benefits extends out to include about one hundred species where a direct link can be shown to the reintroduction to the wolf more than a decade previously.

Research just published in Science Magazine, that journal for the AAAS, carried out by Florida University, has made some remarkable discoveries about the importance of the need for the large herbivores in protecting the acacia trees in the African Savannah.

While this may appear counter intuitive, the acacia trees need the large herbivores like Giraffes, Elephants and Antelope to nibble the trees to remain healthy. As what happens is when the trees are grazed the tree reacts by producing a sweet sap. This may in part be to help heal the wounds, but the important part is this sap attracts ants, specifically, the biting ant Crematogaster who act as body guards for the trees. When the herbivores come back to the Acacias, the ants fight off the grazers; this prevents the tree from being damaged beyond loosing some growth.

The researchers from Stamford University and Florida University isolated the trees, mimicking the loss of (extinctions) the herbivores by fencing the trees off. The effect was not what anyone expected to see as instead of the trees thriving the in fact suffered and became less vibrant and grew more stunted than the ones that were grazed. Part of the effect was that the tree by getting nibbled stimulated extra growth. But the process was more complex than that. Once grazing did not injure the trees they stopped producing the sap that attracted the ants. The loss of the ants allowed other insects to invade and bore into the trees weakening the trees. Therefore the trees needed to large mammals to browse them, to gain the protective alliance of the ants.

It shows that even in the natural world we all need friends.




Photo © Westend61/Alamy

Chickens and Welfare Standards in Farming

Here in Britain on one of the TV channels there has been a season of programmes looking at the production of cheap chickens. For my overseas readers, it has been possible to buy two “standard” chickens for five pounds. Even buying them individually they are still only three pounds each.

Now having once been a vegetarian simply because when I adopted that diet in the late 1970s it was simply that I could not trust the quality and the ethics of the meat being proffered to me. Over the years farming practices did improve amongst a few enlightened people, and it became possible to buy meat from ethical sources. I even kept my own chickens for meat and eggs so I know from experience how well chickens can be kept.

That experience also highlighted for me just how detached people have become from their food supply. Even when offered a fresh, humanely killed plucked and dressed bird they would rather eat a cheap chicken from the supermarket, as they didn’t like the idea of knowing where their meat came from.

It is this fact that allows the supermarkets to control the way that farming and welfare standards are administered. The supermarkets and the food industry in general are forcing farmers to reduce the costs of production by constantly sourcing some of its product from cheep low standard overseas producers. Effectively forcing farmers to produce low welfare standard meat at the costs of third world farming within a developed world economy.

Here in the UK every attempt to raise welfare standards by farmers, NGOs and even the government are being undermined by the supermarkets. The only ethics that these businesses have (Supermarkets and the Food industry) is that of making a profit, no matter what the cost.

Listening to the discussions and debates on the news it struck me that all the excuses that were being proffered by the industry could so easily have been interchanged for a debate on slavery. Apart from the ethics of low welfare standard production, it is these intensive methods of food production that have lead to the food scares. In the UK there was a problem with salmonella in eggs, now happily eliminated, but it would never have occurred had the welfare standards been higher.

All the supermarkets could eliminate this problem if they were to pay farmers more than three pence per bird, and only selling chickens from the higher welfare standard methods of production. While I would love to see only free-range production I am realistic and realise that far to many people don’t care about the food they eat. That is reflected in the rubbish that most people eat instead of real food.

Equally the food industry needs to respect when the government imposes higher welfare standards. Here in the UK a pig production company, DRS, has gone into administration leaving around ninety farmers unpaid. While the reason for this company going bust is related to Foot and Mouth, an important aspect is that the supermarkets refused to pay more for the higher welfare standards of UK pig farmers and switched to buying imported pork where welfare standards are lower.

All this means that we the consumer are being conned into thinking that food must be cheep. Yet while we can add to the carbon footprint by importing foods, we will eventually loose our means of producing food. That makes us in the UK vulnerable to any sudden hike in energy costs, or even any terrorist action that disrupts food imports.

In the UK there is a major problem with obesity, if the government actually started to impose higher standards on food and food production then this would improve health and go a long way towards the UK reducing its green house gas emissions.

This is all a pipe dream I know, as the trouble is that profits are more important than ethics.

Co-evolution and interdependence

While reading an article in the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, on the co-evolution of Ants and Large Blue Butterflies, I had this mental image come into my mind. As the article was about the pheromones that both critters produce, I had this picture in my mind of the scientists going around sniffing Ants and Caterpillars. I wish I could draw as I would have drawn a cartoon of it.

However this posting is not about my warped state of mind, but the importance of understanding the co-dependence of species within a habitat. Further, as I have just been talking to someone via email about this in relation to the conservation potential within the habitats of my local area, I thought it apposite.

While most people will know of the food chain, we probably all did that at school. But the way that its taught is misleading as its better to think of the interactions more like a web rather than a chain.

Locally we have Green Woodpeckers in the wood, they are even breeding, as a very rare bird that’s great news. The only reason that they are here and able to breed is because we also have Wood Ants. During the breeding Season the woodpeckers rely on the ants lave for food. Thus if there were no ants there would be no Woodpeckers, further, the ants need to have trees like Larch and Pine so they can utilise the needles to build its formicary. That obviously is an example of an interdependence chain. Yet when you start adding species like the fungi that need pine or larch and the mammals that feed on the fungi and each of these chains start to spread out to form a multi-layered web not of feeding but of interdependence.

When the objective is just observation, one of the best ways of making an initial assessment of the health of an ecosystem is by looking at or for the top predators in that habitat. Often this will be the birds of pray, as in the UK we do not have any of the top mammal predators here. But as I have previously written about, in Yellowstone National Park in the US, the health of the whole of the reserve is dependent upon the wolf packs. However, it is not as simple as just introducing native predators to a habitat, to ensure the health and biodiversity in any environ, you have to start at the bottom.

This is why in the UK we have to manage lands carefully to conserve what we already have and to provide the conditions needed to enable any expansion of species. Taking my local wood as an example it has a fairly rich mosaic of habitats, in spite of it being a plantation wood; there are enough broad leaf trees in the mix to have kept much of the wildlife there. However, while there are plenty of species their, there are gaps where via previous neglect and poor management, important species have disappeared. Even in my short time here I have witnessed the loss of the Red Squirrel from Chopwell Wood.

Having scoured the wood for the last three months, I can find no sign at all of them.

Yet with careful thought, planning and execution our local woods could become the real haven for wildlife it needs to be. We are lucky as in and around the wood we have about ten percent of the species that our government has recognised as needing special protection, with careful habitat creation and management we could expand that to nearly twenty percent. As the list contains over one thousand species, that would make our local woodland an impressive haven for wildlife.

There are parts of the wood that are very boggy, this aspect of the mixtures of habitats means that we already have plants like the Marsh Orchid growing in profusion. Yet by careful interventions we could provide sites for many other rare orchids. This could then attract some of the endangered bees and other invertebrates too.

The key is understanding the interdependence of the whole of the ecology and not carrying out work in isolation. Especially if it involves sniffing ants!


The Picture is of the Common Spotted Orchid Dactylorhiza fushsii (Try saying that after a few pints)

This amused me, remember to engage Brain

We will all have our favourite television presenters and those that we loath, people whose shear presence has us reaching for the off button. Well Jeremy Clarkson is one of the ones I loathe. I know that I am in a minority as recently in one of the tabloid papers they were saying that he should be Prime Minster.

It is not that he presents a motoring programme, although that is partly why I find him distasteful. But it’s the fact that via his programme and in his various newspaper columns, he tacitly urges people to break the law. Speeding is a crime and is the number one factor behind most of the deaths and injuries on the roads.

Add to that his blokes attitude and opinions and for me he comes across as an arrogant unreconstructed male chauvinist, and that explains why I dislike him. Mind you he thinks worst of me.

Well, following the loss of discs containing the bank details, along with lots of other details of use to fraudsters and paedophiles) of half the population of the UK, he dismissed the fears and furore as hype, and printed his full bank account details in one of the papers he writes for. The result is he has lost money from his account. Not stolen but to a charity as a direct debit taken out in his name.

Sometimes you really should engage your brain before releasing the clutch to your mouth.

Link to the Article

The Myth of Cheap Food

Before Christmas on the BBCs Farming Today, I heard a discussion about the fall in prices that hill farmers were getting for their lambs. The reasons for this are a complex collection of problems, but while I risk over simplifying the factors, they are; the increased cost of feed, the oversupply from imports, and the restrictions caused by the outbreak of Foot and Mouth.

With the restrictions on movements that the outbreak of Foot and Mouth caused, farmers were not able to move the lambs off of the hills, even when the sheep had eaten all the grass. Some farmers were able to provide supplementary feeding, but this was not always possible either due to cost or lack of feed. For these hard-pressed farmers the cost of feed was and is important as lambs are only selling at market for five pounds (Eight Dollars US) in extreme cases. The average price has been lower from twenty-eight pounds (Fifty Dollars US) per lamb to fifteen pounds (twenty-eight Dollars US) per lamb. That obviously reduces the income of farmers who are making very little to start with. Incidentally we also had two hundred and fifty thousand lambs slaughtered in what the government called a welfare cull. An oxymoron if ever I heard one.

So with falling prices at the market we the consumers are getting cheaper meat? Using misinformation the major supermarkets increased prices for lamb. This brings me to what I heard on the radio. One of the farming groups looked at the price of the cuts of meat from the lamb and by reconstructing a lamb from the cuts of meat they worked out that the average price of the meat was about five pound fifty per kilo, ten times the price the supermarkets were paying for the carcass. That also represents an increase of nearly twenty percent on the price that consumers are paying.

So I carried out the same exercise and again after Christmas to ensure that it was not just a hike in price for the holiday season. I found the same prices myself.

Environmentally, this is a disaster. If farmers can no longer stay in business we lose the custodians of our landscape. The countryside only looks the way it does because of the way those farmers manage the land. Further, particularly on the hills, it is only because of grazing that the habitats for much of the wildlife exists.

In the past and I am only talking ten to fifteen years ago, subsides meant that farmers could only afford to farm the hills by overstocking the hills, this lead to large-scale erosion and environmental degradation. Fortunately the way support was paid was changed and this dramatically improved the situation and reversed the problem. What the supermarkets are doing will destroy ten years of hard work.

Additionally the way that the supermarkets protect their margins by dictating to farmers the price they will pay for meat, means that farmers can only make farming pay by increasing the number of animals on any farm and reducing the welfare standards for the livestock. Most farmers do care about their animals, but farmers are often forced to cut corners to make farming pay. The supermarkets know this but hide behind systems that are supposed to ensure welfare standards.

If we look at chicken as an example, where the birds are regularly feed antibiotics to grow faster and fatter, this practice has caused antibiotic resistance and has major implications on human health. Further, having large concentrations of any animal in a small area creates pollution. Farming always used to be exemplars of recycling, as nothing was waste it all had a use on the farm.

Had farming and particularly factory farming had to pay for the pollution it created, then food prices would double at least. Yet we still have to pay for this, indirectly by higher water bills and higher taxes. Also as the supermarkets will utilise anything that can be considered food, take the example of mechanically recovered meat, while they make billions in profit, they are poisoning our children and us.

While that trolley may be full of cheap food from the supermarket there is a hidden cost.





My gratitude to Fran Purdy for the kind permission to use her magnificent picture of the Ewe and Lamb taken on the Yorkshire hills, her website can be found at www.pbase.com/jenga

A Harmonious Winter Walk

It has been nearly three months now since I just went for a wander in the woods without there being some purpose or destination so I thought I would explore and see what was out there.

Even walking across the muddy field, and the pools of water before entering the woods, Chaffinch and Brambling raise from the sea of dried grasses that blanket the field. They are obviously finding good feeding on the grass seed that remains. While the recent snow has melted, there are still patches of the snow where trees and bushes have cast shadows preventing the warmth of the low winter sun from melting these isolated areas of snow. The day is clear and bright, nor any movement of air to stir the crisp brown leaves that carpet the forest.

Even though a few isolated patches of snow cling desperately to existence, the day is warm and peaceful. I am not the only person out enjoying this gentle day; horse riders are out walking at a leisurely pace. The Low winter sun, striking at the acute angle this latitude creates, is highlighting the under storey of the woodland casting pools of light to contrast with the normally dark and dense wood of the plantation.

On the path off to my left a pair of Rooks rise to the tops of the bare Larch. They are obviously feeding off of fallen nuts, the odd beetle or other carrion they are finding here. Going deeper into wood the pools of golden light in contrast to the newly unfurled fronds of bracken that provides the only greenery in what would otherwise be a brown landscape.

On one of the more isolated paths and one that I haven’t visited since late autumn, a conifer lays fallen, the dramatic changes that winter weather can bring is all part of the cycle of life, this fallen tree will now become home to a myriad of insect lave going on to feed the birds and mammals in coming seasons. Also with the recent rains and snow, the streams are swollen. Not as deep or fast as they could be, but enough water is passing through to flush the streams, brooks and burns clean of leaves and needles that could otherwise create pollution from their decay.

With the lack of leaf cover, the normally obscured dark depths of the wood are revealed. A wood ants nest or formicary, while all around are patches of mosses seemingly the only life in the wood. Yet there are also places where fungi is still growing, the fruiting bodies using the abnormally warm weather to release there millions of spores. Parallel to the path I am walking sunlight is illuminating the wood to my right, painting pictures of light and dark, revealing and hiding some of the secrets of the forest. In the summer the density of the leaf cover combined with the undergrowth hides much of a woods secrets.

As can happen as I walked quietly out of one of the dense areas of cover, I was surprised by a pair of Collard Doves that I must have disturbed, their sudden ascent into the air startled me too. Often we can be so close to birds in the woods but not realise they are there at all. While not many birds sing in the winter, it is by no means the orchestra of sound you get in spring, you do have the Robin who seems to sing all year round, as well an occasional Great Tit. Frequently though it is only when there is some disturbance that the birds start calling. Not always human disturbance, but another bird can trigger the calling. Or as I observed today a cat was trying to stalk a flock of Long Tailed Tits as they were feeding together, but with safety in numbers they flew overhead as the called to each other. It is worth noting that these flocks of Long tailed tits that can be seen at this time of year will all be related and will be the offspring that hatched last year from the two or three broods that the year brought.

When I last walked this part of the wood, the Holly witch is abundant here was covered with berries. Now most of them have been striped, not by humans I must add, but by birds. By looking carefully I can see two berries here and three berries there, but the fieldfares and the redwings, both of them I can hear, have and are feasting on the larder nature has provided. This is why it can be so rewarding to venture into the less visited areas of my local wood, as the birds are not constantly being disturbed by people, thus enabling me to see and hear the birds as they forage and feed.

While at this time of year there the wildlife is less active and abundant, they are still active. It is worth commenting on that while normally in winter I will see less people about, this is the one time, the two weeks after Christmas that the woods are more frequently visited, as people get rid of that Christmas pudding.





The image is of a Fieldfare

Confusing Caucuses

Probably like any Brit, I find the caucus process of choosing a presidential candidate baffling. Personally I think it was the complexity of the process that got Bush nominated eight years ago, everyone thought they were voting against him but were so confused by the system that whoops he got to be the candidate. Either that or the Republican Party did it as a joke. Lets see if we can get bush in, as at least he will generate employment for satirists.

However, at the very least this year will see an end to the Bush presidency, so no matter who ultimately gains the nominations democracy will win.

Back when Bush was being nominated, I was criticised for saying anything about American politics. Had I been someone of real influence then I could understand that prospective, however as the rest of the world is effected by whom ever becomes the next president of the US, I am entitled to my opinion. This time round though I don’t have any preference. Hillary Clinton, from what I have seen and heard looks to be the most environmentally aware, but is America ready to elect a woman? Then there is Barack Obama, the first black American who stands a realistic chance of being elected. When we think back to the 1960s and see just how black people were treated then and compare that to the progress that has been made in forty years shows hope for us all, particularly if we think about the environment.

I have been and still will be critical of the Bush Government here, as while the individual states and cities are trying to tackle the challenges of Climate change, the federal government had done their level best to block any action on tackling climate change.

Not only to ensure balance, but its worth noting something I heard the Republican candidate, Mike Huckabee say; he was critical of the way that big business has a hold on the political system and the current incumbent of the White House. Something that no government should ever allow to happen as the government, any government, then becomes beholden to donors. Just look at the difficulties here with the suspicions that peerages were being sold here in the UK. While no charges were brought following the long police investigation, it looked and smelled bad. In America the vested interests of the oil and car companies has blocked the federal government from even considering climate change as a problem.

Yet if America looked at the problems from a different perspective they could see the real advantage of going green. With oil now at over $100 per barrel the federal government could force car manufactures to make more efficient cars. The manufactures already can do it, it’s just that over the last twenty years they have gone for more powerful engines, rather than more economy. The average could be forty miles per gallon in eighteen months. That would save the average American five hundred dollars per year. That’s an Economic policy! Or to put it another way, America would no longer need any oil from the Gulf States. How many billions of American tax payers dollars would that have saved? That’s without thinking of the lives lost, both American and Iraqi.

Also think of the costs of medical conditions like asthma, less petroleum burnt the lower the pollution that causes this asthma. Further, conditions like that damage the economy by lost workdays and loss of productivity to use an economist’s language.

Further, by tackling climate change by genuinely saving energy, America could make its own businesses and industries more competitive, thus improving the bottom line for everyone. If the US invested in developing sustainable energy generation, the whole nation could benefit as the US could become technology leaders, selling the know how and plant around the world. That’s a Policy for energy security!

Also if the US started instigating a programme of fitting solar panels, photo voltaic and solar thermal to all homes, they could deal with problems like unemployment and poverty by training unemployed people to carry out the work. That’s an Employment Policy!

The advantages of being more environmentally aware are quite simple, if Americans can understand their electoral system then going green must be a No Brainier.

The First Snow of the Year

Today I need to apologise to the whole country, yesterday (by the time I post this) we had the first substantial snow this winter. The reason I need to apologise is when talking to a friend over in Maine who had just had a foot of snow, I told her to send some over here. Well it looks as though she did just that.

It was a strange coincidence but last night after getting the woman I spoke of yesterday to read and approve the posting; I went to the Pub for a couple of pints of Irish. As I was walking to the pub it started snowing a bit, but it was more like hailstones. Anyway as one has to, I stepped outside to act as a leper, and while I puffed away, I was told that, with authority, it was to cold for snow. Well the white stuff must be dandruff, memo to self, must get some shampoo! I didn’t want to get into an argument over the point, but I think that when everyone is saying its going to snow, then snow it will.

I did want to get out and take some pictures, but I had a meeting in the morning and I had to do some food shopping in the afternoon, maybe tomorrow.

While it does look picturesque, it does have an impact upon the wildlife. Some will suffer like the robins I reported on recently. And the snow cover will make it more difficult for birds to find food, that’s why I have been feeding the birds since I moved in here. But the snow can also help; small mammals like voles and mice can become insulated from the cold by a blanket of snow. Additionally many tree and shrub seeds need a period of cold the trigger germination in the spring.

Lastly, a reasonable period of cold will help kill off the insects like midges that have brought diseases like Blue Tongue to the UK this year.

One of the difficulties with snow is the way that people drive. I realise that most people don’t experience snow that frequently, that fact should make people more cautious, but they seem to drive with wild abandon. While on the bus I saw several drivers who were on the verge of loosing control of their vehicles. Even as the bus travelled up the hills to Consett, I saw more than ten incidents were a car was driving to fast for the conditions and where the car lost traction and was sliding. Later when I went to the greengrocer in the village, I heard that effectively the village was blocked by accidents at both ends of the village. The main road through the village was just a sheet of ice, yet people were determined to drive on it and were slipping and sliding all over the place. As I walked back home, I advised the driver of each vehicle of the problems and most realised that it was wiser to safely park up and walk rather than trying to slide up the hill home.

I realise that most people need (or think they need) their cars for work. But today the common sense thing to have done was use public transport, but in my experience sense is not common.

Saving Energy, Saving Money, Changing Lives

I was going to write on the subject of debt in this coming year, but I was struggling to write anything that didn’t come across as hectoring. Then something happened today that has emphasised the economics of going green. Going back about eight months ago, I was talking to a woman from my village about how much cheaper life can be by going green. As is usual I was given all the normal excuses about how expensive it is to be environmentally sound.

As I have lots of books on wildlife and I often find myself acting as a book borrowing service, a few days latter she called round with her son as he wanted to borrow a book for a school project. I offered her a cup of tea and as I brought them through her son commented on how quickly the kettle had boiled. This reopened the debate about saving energy.

I gave her a few tips like not filling the kettle but only boiling enough water for your immediate needs, washing clothes on the coolest wash cycle and washing only a full load. Then the debate came on to energy saving light bulbs, she said, that she didn’t like the colour of the light from them (I make no apology to my American reader for using the correct spelling of colour here), and why was I not practicing what I preached. I pointed out that the light in the room was an energy saving light bulb, as are all my lights.

I corrected her assumption that I was against using power or gadgets, just against the waste of energy. Anyway before she left I gave her four new bulbs and told her she could replace them once she had saved on her electricity bills the equivalent cost of buying them.

Then events took a bizarre twist, as her partner decided he didn’t approve of my friendship with her, and in some strange logic I was accused of being homosexual and being to familiar with his girlfriend. I was not sure if he was trying to say the she was a he or that he didn’t understand what the sexual preferences of gay men were. All I knew was that I was unlikely to get my books back.

Well today while out shopping in the village I bumped into her and her son. We exchanged pleasantries and she asked were I had moved to, she wanted to return the books. I told her, I also said that her partner would not approve. She said that was no longer a problem. We parted and just minutes after getting home she was knocking on my door. She was returning the books and the energy saving light bulbs.

While we savoured some fresh coffee, she told me that she had ditched the bloke. Further, she had followed some of my ideas, particularly as her son kept on prompting her too, and had started to seriously reduce her Electricity bills. In fact she now finds herself free of energy debt for the first time in over five years.

This lead her to start thinking about what else in her life was costing her money, and her now ex was another thing she ditched. As he was unemployed, she works, he was sitting around most of the day watching TV or playing computer games, and frequently drinking. For her just discovering that there was another way of thinking was an Eye Opener for her. She even suggested to her ex that he get an allotment, but his reaction was to accuse her of having an afire with that “Long Haired Freak” (Guess what I think I now know who my Cyber stalker was).

I never intended to disrupt any household, nor did I ever voice my distaste for her partner, but I am not unhappy to see her free of him. That said, during our conversation she reminded me that during one of our early encounters, in one of the public houses in the village, he had made the rather crass and stupid claim that he was unemployed because of all these (in his words) “Stupid Poles who cant speak English are coming over here and taking our jobs”. Well I retorted; “so your saying that someone who cant speak the language and is more stupid than you, is better at your Job!”

She realised at that point just how dumb her ex was and that she wanted more from life than supporting a deadbeat. Further, she started to understand that she was better than this. It has been something that I have seen locally, that there are many men who for one reason or another have just given up on trying to do anything positive for themselves. I suspect that it’s a national problem too. However, for her seeing me who at least tries to live a principled life and is prepared to stand up for what I believe in, empowered her to leave her ex.

Its rather a embarrassing experience for me but I am glad to discover that by her trying to embrace a greener life experience that I have at least inspired one person to make changes that have helped her and more importantly her son, who has, in her words, blossomed since kicking him into touch.

Now I doubt that going green will provide everyone with such a positive experienced, but you never know.