Windfarms could provide windfall for local communities

Hi again

Happy to forward news that the government looks into incentives, such as discounted electricity bills or new playgrounds, for areas that install turbines, just in via the LEG – Lochaber Environmental Group:

Windfarms could provide windfall for local communities

[Press Association/The Guardian, 20 Sept 2012]

Communities that have windfarms in their area could get money off their electricity bills or grants for facilities such as playgrounds, the government has suggested. The Department of Energy and Climate Change has launched a consultation into how communities could benefit from having windfarms sited near them, for example by receiving discounts on other bills or investment in local infrastructure. It will also look at how local businesses could become involved in the supply chain and how developers can best consult local people. Energy secretary Edward Davey said that too often host communities have seen the "windfarm but not the windfall" and he wants to ensure people benefited from them.

Currently the industry pays a minimum of £1,000 per megawatt of turbines installed to local communities, but in some cases companies provide larger benefits packages. The government is also reviewing the cost of onshore wind to ensure subsidies from April 2014 have been set at the right level. Subsidies are due to be cut by 10% from next year, although there were moves by the Treasury to have them reduced by 25%.
Significant opposition to onshore windfarms has been voiced by a number of Tory MPs, who wanted to see subsidies for the technology slashed, but the latest figures show the majority of people are in favour of the turbines. The latest data from Decc's quarterly survey into public attitudes revealed that 66% of people were in favour of onshore wind, although the figure was lower than for other renewable technologies. Onshore wind had the highest level of opposition of the renewable energy sources, although only 12% opposed the technology, with just 4% strongly opposed to it.
Davey said: "Onshore wind has an important role to play in a diverse energy mix that is secure, low carbon and affordable. We know that two-thirds of people support the growth of onshore wind. But far too often, host communities have seen the windfarms but not the windfall. We are sensitive to the controversy around onshore wind and we want to ensure that people benefit from having windfarms sited near to them.
But the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) warned the government against promoting a system in which communities were "paid off" to secure planning permission for windfarms. Tom Leveridge, senior energy campaigner for CPRE, said: "We must make sure that this does not promote simplistic notions of 'sharing benefits' that amount to little more then paying off communities to secure planning permission. This would fundamentally undermine a core principle of the planning system – that planning permission should not be bought or sold – and put the countryside at greater risk from poorly sited wind developments."

For the original article, see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/20/wind-farms-community-benefits-government

New Biofuelwatch Report – Sustainable Biomass: A Modern Myth

Hi again
A week ago, Biofuelwatch released a new report, ‘Sustainable Biomass: A Modern Myth’. 

Several years before I arrived in Argyll, I had the opportunity to see the destructive effects of large landowners scrabbling for land to produce the new commodity of "biofuel" in Colombia. It keeps happening, to the great distress of crofters, very small landowners in Las Pavas, Sur de Bolivar.
Here's a video documenting the peaceful resistance of villagers/smallholding farmers against the illegal destruction of their land and of their property by Aportes San Isidro S.A., one of the world's big palm oil producers:

Agresión contra familias campesinas desplazadas en Colombia

(In Spanish – the farmers' resilience, resistance and faith-based humour is admirable –
they've been fighting this "dirty game" for six years!)

What initially looked like a great idea has contributed to world hunger, mass displacement of people in the third world, and certainly hasn't helped to push us toward reducing our energy consumption, quite the contrary.

The Biofuelwatch report "explores the certification companies certifying biomass as sustainable, the UK government’s proposed sustainability criteria for biomass, and developer’s ‘promises’ to source sustainable biomass."

Download Sustainable biomass: A modern myth –  A review of standards, criteria and schemes certifying industrial biomass as ‘sustainable’, with particular emphasis on UK biomass electricity developments, Biofuelwatch report [Note: File size 4.75 MB]

Download the Report without pictures (831 kb) here.

Download the Executive Summary (4 pages)


And here's a link to a few good, critical articles in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/biofuels

Make "green energy" truly sustainable

UK RENEWABLES POLICY alert (for UK residents only)

Having received an alert from www.biofuelwatch.org.uk earlier today, I have sent the following letter to Alan Reid, MP.

Please feel free to visit the Biofuelwatch Website, where you will find the letter that you can adapt to suit your own situation.


'Green energy' subsidies should not be used to stimulate burning of biofuels and biomass

Dear Sir/Madam,

Re: 'Green energy' subsidies should not be used to stimulate burning biofuels and biomass

This is not the first time that I am writing to you as the Secretary of Sustainable Oban, but today I am writing from a personal angle as well because some of my family live in one of the countries most seriously affected by EU legislation.

Please therefore allow me to express my deep concern that existing UK policy on Renewable Electricity is flawed and that the proposals due to be introduced in 2011 for Renewable Heat are likely to exacerbate the problem. Currently the Renewable Obligation gives high levels of financial support to electricity generators to burn liquid biofuels, including palm oil and soybean oil, and biomass, including imported wood from destructive logging and plantations.

A major increase in renewable energy is essential, but it must be renewable energy which truly mitigates climate change and protects, rather than harms the environment. Burning large volumes of biofuels and industrial biomass will have the opposite effect. It will also lead to more land being used to grow crops and trees for fuel instead of food and will put more pressures on indigenous peoples, small farmers and other communities in other countries who, in Colombia, Indonesia and Malaysia in particular (one of my sources is pbi – Peace Brigades International, a human rights organisation with "unarmed bodyguards" in Colombia and Indonesia), are already losing their lives, land and livelihoods to oil palm and other plantations.

These problems arise because of financial support arrangements implemented by the UK Government. Such arrangements are permitted under EU legislation, but are not required of member states.

Electricity from burning liquid biofuels and solid biomass is now eligible for twice the subsidy (paid as Renewable Obligation Certificates or ROCs) as generating electricity from onshore wind. Biofuel power stations burning 'virgin vegetable oil' are only financially viable because of this subsidy. A series of sizeable biofuel electricity power stations has been proposed as a result of these market subsidies, two of the developers make it clear that they intend to burn palm oil while the others have failed to legally commit themselves to not doing so. Palm oil is the cheapest vegetable oil on the market, and according to UNEP is the main cause of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia. Deforestation in both countries is linked to the destruction of peatlands and the emissions of vast quantities of carbon. Carbon emissions from peat fires in Indonesia, linked to plantation expansion, have on several occasions been higher than the UK's entire annual CO2 emissions. Palm oi
l expansion is also linked to the displacement of large numbers of communities, unlawfull killings, land conflicts and the destruction of indigenous peoples' and other communities' livelihoods.

A typical 25 MW biofuel power station would require some 10,000 hectares of oil palm plantations to supply its fuel, adding to pressure on tropical rainforests. If UK-grown vegetable oil were used instead, agricultural land would be taken out of food production, adding to food imports. The 50 MW power station planned for Bristol will burn about 100 million litres (90,000 tonnes) of palm oil a year – the same volume as is currently going into the entire UK transport biodiesel market.

In 2005, total EU-27 imports of palm oil were 4.5 million tonnes, equivalent to 9.7 kg per person (FAO). The Bristol power station's annual consumption of 90,000 tonnes is equivalent to over 200 kg of palm oil per head of population in Bristol each year, far more than they consume in food and healthcare products.

The Renewable Obligations Order also gives high levels of support for electricity generation from burning wood. This is encouraging large-scale imports of biomass, particularly woodchips and wood pellets, for example from South America, South-east Asia, West Africa or the southern US (where displacement of wood now used for pulp and paper will mean more pressure on forests and on communities in the global South). No adequate assessment has been carried out on the impact which this new demand has and will have on forests, communities and, in the case of tree plantations, on grasslands and other ecosystems, nor on the likely impacts on the climate. There are already reports from West Papua of concessions being granted for the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforest to establish tree plantations for wood chips and wood pellets as a result of the growing global market in biomass. Even if the climate impacts of increased logging, forest degradation and la
nd-clearance for tree plantations were ignored, cutting down and burning trees results in immediate up-front emissions of CO2 which it will take new planting several decades at least to reabsorb.

At a 2008 industry conference, it was noted that the heating oil market represented a 3 billion-litre opportunity for the biofuel industry. If the proposed Renewable Heat Incentive incentivises this market to any great extent, it will add significantly to the UK consumption of liquid biofuels.

Whereas the EU's renewable energy target is binding on the UK, it is entirely the UK government's choice whether to support sustainable and climate-friendly truly renewable energy or to favour biofuels and massive biomass imports, yet: under EU law, for example, governments cannot discriminate against biofuels from plantations where people have been evicted or even killed. This means that the all-important indirect impacts will remain largely or completely ignored.

I therefore urge you to call on the government to immediately suspend all subsidies for biofuel and biomass electricity under the Renewable Obligation Order and to reform the Order as a matter of urgency so that all subsidies go towards truly sustainable renewable energy, including wind and solar, not biofuels and biomass (which inevitably means large-scale biomass imports). In addition there must be no new bioenergy subsidies under the Renewable Heat Initiative.

Thank you for your commitment to a truly sustainable Britain.

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Powell-Joss, Secretary
Sustainable Oban
[full address given in original letter]

Britain's Secret Seas – instructive series on BBC iPlayer

First broadcast BBC Two, 8:00PM Sun, 8 May 2011 – available until 8:59PM Sun, 5 Jun 2011
With
- explorer Paul Rose, former base commander of British Antarctic Survey, has scuba dived "all around the world";
- marine biologist Tooni Maahto;
- journalist and underwater archaeologist Frank Pope.


1. Giants of the West

"In the first programme of the series, the team uncovers the world of the giants that reside in and on our western seas.
A few metres off the Cornish shore, the team study Britain's largest fish, the basking shark. Despite the fact that they grow up to ten metres long, little is known about them, which makes effective conservation very difficult. In an exceptional encounter, the team is surrounded by up to 12 sharks as they feed on microscopic plankton.
Their shark expedition then takes them north to the Isle of Man. Working alongside local scientists, they take shark DNA samples using a kitchen scourer in order to assess the genetic health and long-term fitness of these great leviathans. The team also runs into a giant swarm of jellyfish.
In the waters of South Wales, Tooni encounters an invading army of giant spiny spider crabs. These creatures boast a leg span of over a metre across, and Tooni reveals that they come into the shallow waters every year to find a mate.
On Lundy Island off the Devon coast, Frank assesses whether the island's protected underwater No Take Zone could be used as a template to establish a nationwide network of marine nature reserves right around our island.
Frank also reveals how Great Britain still relies on the sea to import goods. He boards one of the biggest transatlantic container ships in the world, The Atlantic Companion, as the vast ship brings its cargo into Liverpool Docks.
In treacherous waters off the Isles of Scilly, Paul dives the largest shipwreck in British waters to assess the legacy of the worst ecological disaster to affect our shores so far; the ill-fated Torrey Canyon oil tanker."

2. The Wild North

"In the second programme in the series, explorer Paul Rose, marine biologist Tooni Mahto and maritime journalist Frank Pope explore the wild seas around Scotland.
The team travel to Bass Rock, one of the largest gannet colonies in the world. They are there to try and find out why when most British seabird populations are in decline, the northern gannet is bucking the trend. Tooni helps scientists who are using GPS trackers to discover the extraordinary distances gannets can fly in the search for food. Paul goes beneath the waves to witness the amazing diving ability of Britain's largest seabird.
Tooni joins a scientist in St Andrews Bay in search of the bottlenose dolphin to find out why dolphins have unique signature whistles - could they be names as we know them? She also takes Paul on a spectacular night dive at St Abbs in search of the amazing sea creatures that fluoresce beyond our visual spectrum. And intriguingly, this discovery has been used to help study cancerous cells.
Expedition leader, Paul Rose, meets the hidden heroes of the Royal Navy. They are on a special clearance mission around Garvie Island at Cape Wrath. The Navy divers go underwater clearing live 1,000lb unexploded bombs dropped by aircraft during training exercises. These are modern and extremely powerful weapons that must be detonated with explosives - underwater.
We have over 25,000 wrecks around the British Isles. These wrecks are a rich archaeological record of our maritime heritage, but sadly they are being damaged by trawlers, souvenir hunters and the forces of nature. Frank and Paul Rose go to the Sound of Mull, to see first-hand what can be done to preserve the history locked away in these relics."

Deepwater Horizon Blowout – one year on: what impacts?

One year later, gulf oil disaster still puzzles scientists

It may be decades before the scope of the disaster is known, they say

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/04/20/gulf.oil.environment.recap/index.html?hpt=C1 

(CNN) — One year after the chocolaty crude started spewing out of the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the largest accidental oil spill in history, scientists say they’re still trying to piece together what’s happening to the environment.
Some potential clues about the impact of the spill have made themselves known: dead baby dolphins and sea turtles; oiled brown pelicans; fish with strange sores; sticky marsh grasses; tar balls on beaches.
[The authors don't mention oysters whose shells crumble like a sticky, gooey mess, as shown on BBC TV.]
But the big picture hasn’t come into focus yet.
Did the oil spill shatter the Gulf’s food chain? Will fish have trouble reproducing because of exposure to hydrocarbons? What did those dispersants, which were supposed to break up the oil, do to the ecosystem on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico? Or did the Earth already heal itself?
Scientists can’t say for sure, and it may be years or decades before some of these nagging questions about the Gulf oil disaster’s impact will be answered with any sort of authority or clarity, they said in interviews.
The lab geeks know this is frustrating both for journalists and the public, but they beg for our patience as they try to put this enormous puzzle together.
“Scientists have two things that probably aggravate the lay public. One of them is ‘I wish I had more data’ and the other is ‘I wish I had more funding,’” said Christopher Reddy, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who has been studying the impact of the spill. “But, in this case, prudence trumps urgency — or, in your case, the curiosity of your readers.”
He added: “We have thousands of samples still in the queue to be analyzed or haven’t come out. It may take many years to determine whether some (particular) species was affected. You just have to be prudent at this point. The one year anniversary is a day for mourning and reflection; it’s not a day for science.”
In this relative data vacuum, politicians, pundits and science-types have spun stories about the impact of the oil spill on the natural environment.
There’s the bacteria-ate-the-oil-so-everything’s-fine storyline, as offered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That federal agency in November issued a much-disputed report saying the vast majority of the oil in the Gulf had evaporated, dispersed or was eaten by microorganisms.
At the other end of the spectrum, it’s the eco-pocalypse angle, as supported by scientists who, especially in the early days of the spill, said oil could coat Louisiana marshes and kill off most everything in the path.
“There may be tidbits of truth amongst all these topics,” Reddy said.
“The unfortunate thing is that we can’t put the Gulf in an MRI. So despite heroic efforts to collect samples, we can’t look to see if there has been an area that’s been damaged directly.”
While the oil’s effect on specific species remains unclear, scientists can say with some certainty that the Gulf oil disaster was not the all-out catastrophe it seemed it would be in the early days of the spill, said Roger Helm, a marine ecologist and chief of the environmental contaminants division at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Beyond that, he said, much is uncertain.
“This isn’t something where people should say, ‘Oh well, we dodged a bullet.’ I think that’s an incorrect conclusion,” he said. “It’s unlikely at this time that we will have a catastrophic effect. The probability is low. But there’s no question that a lot of oil was released, a lot of animals died and this system, at least over the short term, is not going to be the same.”
Helm is on a team of federal scientists working to conduct a formal Natural Resource Damage Assessment, which is a mandated accounting of what impact the disaster had on the Gulf environment. The assessment will be used to charge responsible companies, including BP, for the damages. If the government and responsible companies don’t agree on the scope the damages and the cost of repair, the process can end up in litigation.
Much of the information that will be used for that assessment will be available in three to five years, Helm said. Speculating about the situation before that would be irresponsible and beyond the bounds of what science allows, he said.
The fact that scientists are saying “we don’t know ” is not the same as saying everything is fine, said Samantha Joye, a University of Georgia oceanographer who has been studying the impact of the spill on the deep waters of the Gulf.
“With the dead dolphins and the dead sea turtles and the dead baby sharks — I think the impacts on the system are much more serious than anyone’s willing to admit or talk about,” she said, “and I find that really disturbing.
“The people who live there, they see this every day. They know what’s going on. And (elsewhere) it’s just dropped off everyone’s radar.”
In December, Joye traveled to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in a submarine. She found an oily substance coating the seafloor, she said. It appeared to have fallen on the bottom of the ocean from above.
“This stuff came down like a blizzard, and the fact that it came down so fast means that sessile (immobile) organisms had no escape. They basically were buried by it or suffocated by it,” she said.
She found dead worms, crabs, brittle stars, sea urchins, corals and sea fans, she said. All of that is bad in and of itself, she said, but it also raises big questions about what the damage on the ocean floor means for the rest of the Gulf ecosystem. Changes a mile beneath the surface can take decades or longer to work themselves out of the environment, she said.
There are several reasons scientists are hesitant to make big claims about the health of the Gulf after the oil disaster.
One is that history teaches us to expect the unexpected.
Three years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the population of herring collapsed. No one saw that coming, and that fish species, 22 years later, is still reported to be struggling.
It’s a “cliché of ecology” that everything’s connected, but it’s true, said Andrew Whitehead, an assistant professor of biology at Louisiana State University. The Gulf ecosystem is a maddening web of causes and effects, and it’s impossible to know what long-term impacts the spill will have, he said.
Whitehead has been studying gulf killifish to see if those fish that were exposed to petrochemicals will function differently long after those chemicals are gone. Specifically, he wants to know if the oil has made fish DNA function in a different and possibly harmful way.
“Initial mortalities that make the news aren’t necessarily the most predictive of the long-term effects (of oil) on populations,” he said. “It’s those sub-lethal effects on growth, on reproduction that are the most insidious for really impacting populations in the long term.”
Another reason for uncertainty is that the Gulf spill was unprecedented.
More than 200 million gallons of oil were released into the water, making it the largest accidental oil spill in history; furthermore, the spill occurred 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, making the situation hard to monitor and study.
Some deep-water scientists have taken to calling the ocean floor “inner space” because we know less about it than some parts of outer space and the moon.
The federal government also authorized the use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil at these extreme depths. The impact of that decision is unknown and will play out over years, said Elizabeth Kujawinski, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has been studying the impact of dispersants on the environment.
“I don’t think we have a good handle on ecological impact yet,” she said.
Migrating animals are also cause for confusion.
In some cases, it’s just impossible to check up on a particular kind of fish or bird because those creatures only come to the Gulf once a year or once every few years and then move away — possibly after being affected by the oil.
“The turtles that were impacted in this event won’t really come back to nest for somewhere between 20 and 30 years” even under normal conditions, said Helms, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “There were a lot of whale sharks that were in the area; we’re not really sure what happened with the whale sharks and their movement” after the spill.
Finally, these effects also are difficult to pin on oil.
Since January, 199 dead sea turtles and at least 86 dead baby dolphins have washed up on Gulf shores. It’s unclear to what degree these deaths were connected to the spill, according to NOAA reports, but the dolphin deaths in particular have been determined abnormal enough to be called an “unusual mortality event” by the government.
Scientists say they’re working furiously to figure things out.
“There’s some great science going on — it’s just not ready at the one-year anniversary,” said Reddy, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “Because the one-year anniversary is just an arbitrary day.”

The-CNN-Wire/Atlanta/+1-404-827-WIRE(9473)
™ & © 2011 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

 

Mr Salmond, there is no such thing as "sustainable" farmed salmon!

Dear All

I was distracted by a brief trip to the Continent from commenting on what may well become one of the biggest eco-disasters to strike these beautiful waters – quite apart from the fact that the Scottish government looks set to get into bed with a regime whose human rights record has left a lot to be desired for decades. Read for yourselves what someone much better qualified than I has written:

Andrew Flitcroft, in: The Observer, 20^th February 2011 – quoted in the Guardian:

You're so wrong about salmon, Mr Salmond

The new trade deal with China has terrifying implications for our wild fish stocks

Visiting trade delegations do not often register on my radar. However, the high-level Chinese visit to Scotland in January was different. Apart from the inevitable "gift" to the hosts, consigning two hapless giant pandas to a life of incarceration in Edinburgh Zoo, a new trade deal on Scottish farmed salmon between the two countries was signed, allowing access for the first time to the vast Chinese market.
First minister Alex Salmond crowed that the Scottish fish-farming industry may need to double salmon production to satisfy Chinese demand. The announcement a few days later that China was halting the import of Norwegian farmed salmon (China's retaliation, according to the Norwegian press, for the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo) lays Scottish government open to the charge that it is in effect supporting repression.
But cynical politics aside, the implications of increasing significantly, let alone doubling, farmed salmon production in Scotland are terrifying. Surely it is recklessly irresponsible to contemplate any increase without first rectifying the dire existing problems, particularly the spread of deadly sea lice, caused to juvenile wild salmon and sea trout in the west Highlands and Islands by current production levels. There is little doubt that the situation is set to deteriorate.
But first, for readers who are not familiar with the war between the salmon farming industry on the one hand and those trying to protect wild salmon and sea trout runs on the other, here is a brief summary of the problem. Marine cages of hundreds of thousands of farmed salmon are breeding grounds for millions of sea lice; these parasites feed on the mucus, tissue and blood of their farmed salmon hosts. The companies employ a range of measures using highly toxic chemicals to combat the lice, in order to reduce the damage and stress caused to their captive hosts.
However, juvenile wild fish, which migrate from the rivers to the sea each spring, are simply not designed to cope with more than the odd louse. As these fragile young fish, known as smolts, run the gauntlet past the fish-farm cages conveniently placed on their migration routes down the sea lochs towards the open sea, they are ambushed by the unnaturally high concentrations of lice. The attachment of more than 10 lice is almost invariably fatal. The fish are literally eaten alive although death is usually hastened by secondary infections, which gain access through open wounds made by the grazing lice.
This is the environmental calamity that the salmon farming industry and Scottish government is so determined to deny. Make no mistake – there is no such thing as "sustainable" farmed salmon, no matter what the evocative packaging on the supermarket shelves tries to convey. Indeed, all such packaging should be approached with scepticism. M&S's Lochmuir salmon comes from an entirely fictitious location.
Now evidence is growing that salmon farms in Scotland are fast losing the battle against sea lice, mirroring the situation in Norway, where the head of the Directorate for Nature Management (the equivalent of Scottish Natural Heritage) has just called for a 50% cut in salmon production because, for the second year running, the average number of lice on each caged fish in several regions of Norway has exceeded the official limit of one mature female louse or five lice in total with increasing resistance to chemical treatment. He said that such a cut might not be enough to save Norway's fragile wild salmon stocks as: "The problem is very big and it is not under control."
It is perhaps no wonder the salmon farming industry in Scotland is so sensitive on the sea lice issue. Witness their gagging of Scottish government last year to prevent publication of Marine Scotland's farm inspection reports. Analysis of these reports, obtained by Salmon and Trout Association's Guy Linley-Adams under FOI, confirms instances where sea lice have been completely out of control, necessitating early slaughter on several farms.
Compared to five years ago, Scotland's salmon farms are using far greater quantities of pesticides to kill sea lice on farmed fish as the chemicals become less and less effective and the lice develop immunity. Some are adopting desperate measures and two managers of a Shetland farm have just been charged with animal cruelty following the death of more than 6,000 farmed salmon last August.
Given these problems, it is galling that Scottish government continues to trot out the same tired mantra that salmon farming is "sustainable" and there is no proven damage to wild fish populations, aided and abetted by the nauseating spin peddled by the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organisation, the front for the Norwegian companies that dominate the industry in Scotland. Most galling of all is the prospect of an even bigger industry.
There is one ray of hope. Solicitor Guy Linley-Adams, acting for the owners of the Ullapool river, has just submitted a formal 80-page complaint to the EU, detailing the failure of the authorities to designate an appropriate number of west coast Scottish rivers as Special Areas for Conservation for salmon under the EU Habitats Directive.
The complaint also details the failure of the Scottish government to rein in the salmon-farming industry to provide proper protection for wild Atlantic salmon and sea trout in the west Highlands and Islands. The gloves are starting to come off.

Andrew Flitcroft is the editor of Trout & Salmon

RENEW TV tip of the week: Explaining climate change

This message has just come in from the lovely RENEW people up in Lochaber:

"There was a great programme on BBC4 a couple of evenings ago about climate change sceptics – really well done, balanced, well argued etc.
[Please see below for] a link for the programme on BBC iplayer (an hour long). Also for those who haven’t the time to watch the whole thing a link to a video that was shown during the programme explaining climate change and actions taken in terms of probability – really clever and good to watch.

The whole programme on iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=Storyville

The short video on youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ

Happy viewing

Justine

Robert & Justine Dunn

RENEW Household Project Officers

Lochaber Environmental Group

An Drochaid

Claggan

Fort William

PH33 6PH

Tel:  01967 402453 (9am - 9pm, 7days)