Environment

Back in the days when climate change was far off in the future, small countries like Wales could be used as a measure of the damage humans were doing to the planet.  In the 1980s we were regularly treated to headlines along the lines of “An area of forest the …

American author and occasional politician Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. once famously observed that: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” Nowhere is the truth of this observation more clearly seen than in Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary’s recent dismissal of …

The European Union is considering lowering its energy saving targets after 2021 according to Robert-Jan Bartunek at Reuters: “The text drafted by the Maltese presidency of the European Council proposes new annual energy savings targets of 1.4 percent through 2030, down from 1.5 percent proposed by the European Commission. “A …

Polar weather events earlier this year have contributed to the lowest Arctic winter ice maximum since records began.  At the same time, Antarctica has the lowest summer sea ice ever recorded.  According to Maria-José Viñas from NASA’s Earth Science News Team: “This winter, a combination of warmer-than-average temperatures, winds unfavorable to …

We won’t be getting our shiny new electric cars anytime soon, according to Cuneyt Kazokoglu in the Financial Times: “The popular claim that a surge in electric cars will hasten the arrival of peak oil demand is undermined by the data. “The majority of the world’s cars will remain powered …

Germany is the poster child for renewable electricity.  Its rapid deployment of vast arrays of Chinese wind turbines has propelled it to the top of the European green energy league table.  But the German claim to be leading the way on clean energy hides a dark secret… German carbon dioxide …

For several decades, the focus of climate campaigning has been on securing international deals such as the recent Paris Agreement.  To achieve this, campaigners within each country expend a lot of energy trying to push reluctant national governments into honouring and extending agreed international action plans. But are national governments …

It is hard to know what, if anything, Donald Trump really thinks about climate change.  In many public speeches he has claimed that climate change is a hoax.  On the other hand, this did not stop him applying to build a sea wall to protect his golf course on the …

Using biomass as a replacement for coal in electricity generation was a seductive idea a decade or so ago.  Pellets made from scrap timber, sawdust and shavings could be used to fuel our power stations.  And since these came from trees that could be replaced, they were to all intents …