Song for Jasmine

While out walking

Tony — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:25:17 +0000

Mont Blanc and Alps from the Pays de Gex

Spring almost came to the Pays de Gex recently, and our morning walks were more pleasant for a while. It’s cold again now, but for a few days it was even warm enough to stop and take a few photos, here’s a selection for you.

deer jawbone

The most unusual thing we’ve found recently has to be this lower jawbone, presumably of a deer. It was lying right in the middle of the snow-covered path, with no clue of how it got there. It must be rather old, I guess, it looks like it’s been around for a while.

There are a lot of deer around here, so I guess it’s not surprising to come across a bone or two from time to time, but this is the first for us. Some people are luck enough to find the occasional antler instead of a jaw, but I guess we have to start somewhere.

bark with damage by borer-beetles

Then there’s this beautifully-carved fallen branch, with all these intricate markings in the wood where the bark has been stripped away. I would have guessed that this was beetle-damage from that alone, but thanks to Seabrook at The Marvellous in Nature, I know rather more about them.

The deeper grooves are where the adults tunnel along the bark, the female laying eggs as she goes.

more beetle-damage on the same branch

The smaller grooves are where the young eat their way along the tree, somehow apparently managing to avoid their siblings as they do so. This particular branch seems to have been very popular, it’s covered in tunnels.

Strangely enough, it’s not just Seabrooke writing about bark-beetles, her mom has just posted about them at Willow House Chronicles. Seems like an interesting family…

Pyrrhocoris Apterus" title="fire bug Pyrrhocoris Apterus" width="250" height="496" class="size-medium wp-image-2286" />

fire bug Pyrrhocoris Apterus

Closer to home, there’s a large tree near where we live which harbours a good collection of fire bugs, Pyrrhocoris Apterus. They were there just before winter in the same place, sunning themselves in the last rays of autumn. I guess they must have over-wintered under the bark, there’s certainly room for all of them in the crevices of this old tree.

fire bug 'face'

Not only are they colourful, they have very distinctive markings on their backs. It looks uncannily like a face, reminding me in particular of an African mask. You can see that clearly in the close-up.

plastic net from a fat-ball

Finally, one thing that often turns up on our morning walks as the snow melts is these plastic bags, the sort used to hold fat-balls for feeding the birds. It’s great that so many people put them out, but I’m a little concerned that small birds or animals could get entangled in them.

If you put out fat-balls in these bags, please consider threading a piece of string through the mesh and tying it off somewhere, to prevent the empty bag from blowing away. Then you can easily dispose of the bags without them ending up in the environment!

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March diary

Tony — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:53:28 +0000

For the eco-minded individual, March is a good month. There are events of all shapes and sizes that you can take part in. Here are a few of them.

The biggest event this month will undoubtedly be Earth Hour. It takes place at 8:30 pm local-time on Saturday 27th, wherever you are in the world. Participating is simple, sign up on the website (so they can know how many people take part) and then, when the time comes, just turn off your lights for an hour. The idea is not to save electricity, one hour of lighting won’t make that much difference to anything. No, the idea is to show your support for solid action in favour of tackling climate change. There’s more information on the Earth Hour FAQ, if you’re interested.

Last year, hundreds of millions of people worldwide took part. Towns, cities, and major landmarks across the globe darkened to show their support for action to tackle climate-change. The fact that world leaders let us down in Copenhagen in December only makes it all the more important that we send the message loud and clear once more. So go on, sign up, switch off, and do something different in the dark for an hour!

If you’re in Canada, there’s another event that might interest you. March 11th has been declared Bottled Water Free Day.

This has been organised by the Canadian Federation of Students, the Sierra Youth Coalition and the Polaris Institute. Their aim is simple, they want to encourage people to pledge to stop drinking bottled water.

Why? Because bottled water represents a great deal of plastic and fuel used to transport water that is no better than tap water – and often is tap water – so that people can pay 1000 times as much as it would cost them to take it from the tap. The bottles leach chemicals into the water, which is not good, and then they often end up in landfill instead of being recycled, which is also not good.

If you’d like to know more, take a look at the video, or click on the logo above to go to the Bottled Water Free Day site.

preparing pesticide - courtesy of MGDRF.org

Week without pesticides

On this side of the pond, there’s the next edition of Semaine sans pesticides (Week without pesticides) coming up, March 20-30. Pesticides are used so heavily these days that people in developed countries are contaminated from birth, which can’t be good. Take a look at the protective gear this guy is wearing in order to spray that stuff on your food!

There are ever-growing numbers of organic farmers out there, so healthier food is becoming more and more available, which is a good thing. For that matter, you can grow your own vegetables organically with little effort, so it’s quite possible to get off the pesticides. It would be great if more farmers took the organic route!

Semaine sans pesticides is a growing event, with participation from all over the world, though most of the events are in France. Why not check out their map and see if there’s something of interest near you. You can turn up and show your support, or simply find out more about the pesticides on your plate.

On a smaller scale, if you’re in Ferney-Voltaire on Monday 29th, drop in to the Cafe du Soleil (14 Grand Rue) at 8pm. The association Eco-pratique will be meeting to discuss reducing electricity consumption, swapping personal experience and ideas. If you’re in the area, drop in and join the fun!

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Reading your meter

Tony — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:13:55 +0000

Tom Harrison, of the Five Percent blog, recently invited me to write a guest-post for his new employers, over at the Energy Circle. I decided to describe what I’ve learnt about my electricity consumption by reading my electricity meter once a week since the beginning of 2009. It turns out you can figure out quite a bit from that alone, follow the link if you want to find out what!

It’s rather appropriate I wrote about my weekly meter-readings. I started doing that after reading some of Tom’s own posts about electricity use. Tom makes frequent reference to using real-time meters to figure out where the money is going. I couldn’t find any smart meters for the French market at that time, so I went with my low-tech approach.

So, thank you Tom, for the inspiration in the first place, and also for the invite to write the post. I hope that despite changing jobs, you’ll still have time to keep your own blog going, it’s one of my favourites!

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Little feet in the snow

Tony — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:47:07 +0000

footprints in the snow

footprints around bird food

chaffinch looking in

chaffinch checking me out

OK, where’s the food

The snow is melting fast outside now, there’s only a few piles of mush left on the terrace. The last snowfall here was almost a week ago, and that was a scant few flakes, just enough to cover the ground thinly.

It may have been a light snowfall, but it was enough to show me that little feet had been walking around just outside before I got up that morning.

It’s not just one or two footprints either, there seems to have been quite a gathering around the food. I hope nobody got trampled in the crush!

We have bird-food on our garden wall, but in the coldest weather the robins were getting very territorial about it, spending more time fighting than eating. That’s why we put more food near our patio doors, far away from the wall. This kept the robins far enough apart that they actually found time to eat instead of fight.

The food near our patio doors is quite popular, despite being close to the house. It’s interesting to see how different birds approach it. Sparrows just come right up and start munching. They spend a lot of time in our eaves, so they’re well accustomed to us and our comings and goings, and show no fear. Other birds are more cautious, such as this chaffinch.

This is the only chaffinch I’ve seen visiting our garden so far, though we see many on our morning walks. This one did what many other birds have done, he landed a little further out and took a good look before coming closer.

He’s clearly spotted me, and that sideways look is him measuring me up, deciding if I’m going to make trouble for him or not. Eventually, it seems he decides I’m not a threat, and he turns his attention to more important things, the food!

Blue-tits and great-tits show a similar caution. They land nearby, take a good look round, then hop up to the food, take something (typically a peanut) and fly off to deal with it somewhere else. They seem to get more comfortable with time, the first visits were rather cautious, and sometimes they would fly off without feeding. Now they are more at ease, and will even continue to feed if we go out on the terrace.

Robins will sit by the food for a long time, as if they’re staking a claim to it. Even in the coldest of the recent weather they would sit there, guarding the food. They don’t often chase off sparrows or tits, but if another robin appears within a few feet, it’s instant action. Those birds have attitude!

Now that the local birds have become accustomed to us, we see a steady stream of them. Yesterday and today we saw a willow tit, one that I’ve never seen before. It seems word is getting around that there’s a new place to eat for the birds, and we’re glad of it. Fortunately, lots of people feed the birds around here, so winter is not as difficult for them as it could otherwise be. I’m glad of that.

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FLOW – For the Love of Water

Tony — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:16:19 +0000

In the latest James Bond film, A Quantum of Solace, our hero thwarts the plans of a major international criminal organisation. They were planning to take control of the government in Bolivia by taking control of the nation’s water supply. That sounded a bit far-fetched to me when I saw it. I didn’t know then that it had already happened! The World Bank forced water-privatisation on Bolivia back in 1997, as part of their preconditions for receiving aid. The companies that took the contracts explicitly excluded many poor city-districts from the water supply, and increased prices dramatically for those that did get water. You can see for yourself some of the bills people were getting. Maybe this James Bond film isn’t so far from the truth after all?

I learned about this by watching a film called FLOW, For Love Of Water, by Irena Salina. You can see this film for yourself via YouTube, it’s available in 8 parts, and they are linked at the end of this article. I can highly recommend it, it’s an eye-opener. Here are some highlights for you.

Water is a $400 billion dollar global industry; the third largest behind electricity and oil. It seems odd to make an industry out of something which is as fundamental to human life as air and food, and which falls from the sky. You’d think there would be enough for everyone, and indeed there ought to be. According to the UN Human Development Report 2006 (chapter 4, page 133):

But absolute scarcity is the exception, not the rule. Most countries have enough water to meet household, industrial, agricultural and environmental needs. The problem is management. Until fairly recently, water has been seen as an infinitely available resource to be diverted, drained or polluted in generating wealth. Scarcity is a policy-induced outcome flowing from this deeply flawed approach, the predictable consequence of inexhaustible demand chasing an underpriced resource.

One in every 10 Bolivian children dies before they are 5 years old, mostly from lack of clean drinking water. Privatisation of water-resources has been a disaster for them. But what about you? Who owns the water you drink? Who owns the water that falls on your land? Probably not you. Some of the earliest empires in the world relied on control of water for their power. Even today, however, it seems that “hydraulic empire” are still very much in existance.

In South Africa, river water can carry cholera and other diseases. Privatisation has led to the installment of pre-pay water meters, at prices that can amount to one fifth of a persons’ income, replacing what used to be free communal pumps. Many families cannot afford to pay for water that used to be freely available. They have no choice but to resort to using untreated water, with all the health risks that involves. Hardly a service to the people.

Jean-Luc Touly, a former accountant with Vivendi/Veolia, asks the question: How can Vivendi shareholders wait 10-15 years for profit from poor people? Obviously they won’t, they’ll be looking for a faster return on their investment. Jean-Luc is now very outspoken against such monopolies controlling our water, and is actively engaged in making another film, “Water Makes Money” on that subject. They are looking for public donations to help cover the costs, follow the link if you’d like to make a donation.

South Africa and Bolivia may seem a long way away to some of us, but there are other stories in the film that may be closer to your home. One story features Michigan residents, who have fought a long-running battle to stop Nestle from pumping their rivers and streams dry. Nestle were originally pumping water at 400 gallons (1500 litres) per minute to bottle and sell. They were not required to pay anything for it, either, so you can imagine how keen they were to get as much as they could. It’s a license to pump money.

The UN estimates it would take $30 billion per year to provide safe clean drinking water to the entire planet. That’s less than $5 per person per year. Consumers in the US spend $100 billion annually on bottled water, which is about a dollar a day for every American. That’s about 70 times as much as they should need to spend.

Clearly water is a lucrative business if it can be provided so cheaply, yet sold so profitably.

Of course, it helps the industry that most of us can’t tell if the water that comes out of a bottle is any good or not. This point is brought home by a hidden-camera scene in a restaurant, where customers happily approve of the bottle of ‘Chateau Robinet’ they are offerred. That’s literally tap-water, to you and me. If we can’t tell the difference, how do we know we’re getting a good product?

Nations go to war to protect access to resources, and water is certainly valuable enough to fight for. Conflict in Africa has been linked to climate-change, and shortage of water is just one of the factors that will make these conflicts worse over time.

Water is a precious thing. Access to clean, safe water should be considered a basic human right, not something to be bought and sold. That’s just wrong.

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Avatar: What do you see?

Tony — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:16:13 +0000

Neytiri, a Na’vi from Pandora

baby pigeons in flower pot

grebes on lac leman

fungus on tree

hummingbird hawk moth

seagulls on lac leman

blue flowers

sparrows drinking

view over coral reef

sunflower in full bloom

frog

Roesel’s bush cricket (Metrioptera roeselii)

trichodes nuttalli on thistle

orange butterfly

hawk circling

James Camerons’ new science-fantasy film, ‘Avatar’, starring Sigourney Weaver, is doing the rounds at the box office in Geneva. I saw it recently, and I have to say, it’s an amazing film. See it in 3D if you can, it’s worth it.

Without giving away too much of the story, I can tell you that it’s set in the future where humans travel to a planet called ‘Pandora’ to mine a valuable mineral from under the feet of the indigenous natives. The natives don’t want to give up their lands, of course. The humans attack them with the usual military hardware, and the natives fight back with bows and arrows. Nothing particularly new there, the plot has a familiar ring to it.

Nonetheless, Avatar stands out from the crowd. James Cameron is not known for thinking small, and the visual effects are quite stunning. The landscapes are exquisite, and the plants and animals are beautiful. Bio-luminescent plants glow underfoot where people walk at night. The whole thing is put together superbly, with a great deal of attention to detail.

The natives (“Na’vi”) are tall and elegant, and more than a little elfin in appearance. They live in harmony with their world, respectful of the living things they share it with. Taking no more than they need to survive, they deplore the humans’ lack of balance with nature. When the tribal-chief’s daughter rescues one of the humans from a sticky situation (I told you the plot was familiar), she chastises him, telling him “you do not see”. Like so many of us, he considers himself to be separate from the web of life around him, not a part of it, so he is blind to the real beauty of it all.

It seems that message has struck a chord with many of us, and some people get depressed after seeing Avatar. They envy the Na’vi their lifestyle, and are not happy to think that they can never live that way, nor live in such a beautiful place as Pandora.

I guess I can understand that, but I don’t agree with it. The Pandora that James Cameron has created is indeed very beautiful, and the Na’vi have a great way of life. Sure, they occasionally have to dodge things with teeth the size of their heads, but apart from that, they seem to have it made. But while Pandora might be a nice place to visit, I don’t think I would want to live there. Planet Earth is my home, and I’m happy here.

It’s true that most of us cannot claim to live in harmony with nature. Probably only a few of us would want to go as far as the Na’vi, but we can probably do better than we do today. All we need to do is to go out there and start looking around, the natural world is just waiting to be found.

You don’t have to go on safari either, nor to a tropical island. You can go to your nearest beach, lake, river or woodland, and take a good look around you. You can go down to the bottom of your garden, or to the nearest park. Nature is at home in all sorts of places.

I’ve seen blue-tits working hard to bring food to their young in the nest they built in the shutters of my apartment window. I’ve even been lucky enough to see one of those chicks make its’ first flight, leaving the nest. I’ve seen baby birds clambering to hitch a ride on their mothers’ back, rather than expend the effort to swim alongside her. I’ve seen a pigeon raise a family in an empty flower-pot on my balcony. I’ve seen all sorts of pretty insects – caterpillars, butterflies, crickets, bees and beetles – in the plants I’ve grown on my terrace. Nothing unique or exotic, but all beautiful just the same.

It’s not just birds or insects either. I’ve had squirrels come up to me in Hyde Park, looking to see what I had in my hand. I’ve seen a hedgehog on my terrace, and frogs in my Mums’ garden. There are deer and foxes in the Jura that we sometimes see on our walks, or even from the comfort of our home. After a fresh fall of snow the sheer number of animal tracks has to be seen to be believed, there’s so many of them. We saw a weasel not long ago, and I’ve seen chamois and marmots in the Alps.

I’m no expert at finding these animals, I just go out and look. I don’t see them every day, but that makes it all the more precious when I do.

If you live in the concrete jungle and don’t have any countryside within reach, try visiting your nearest park. If there’s grass, trees, and flowers then there will be birds, bees, and other insects. Take some bird-seed and you might be able to tempt the birds to come close to you. Give them time to get used to you and they may even perch on your hand. Come evening, you may be lucky enough to see bats flying around too. If there’s a pond then there may be frogs or dragonflies hidden among the reeds.

If you don’t have time to go somewhere, you can put a birdfeeder in your garden, on your balcony, or just mounted on the wall outside your window. Birds will find it, and you can enjoy them from the comfort of your own home. You can really see their characters emerging when you see how they behave around a feeder, it’s fun to watch.

If you’re not sure where to start looking, there are plenty of good sources of information. Your local library or tourist office can tell you about nature-groups, natural attractions, or forthcoming nature-related events in your area. If you know someone more experienced, ask them to show you where to look. There are several good TV programmes too, such as Springwatch in the UK. Or you could search the web for nature-bloggers in your neck of the woods, and ask them a few questions. They’ll be sure to help you if they can.

I’ve not seen anything as big or colourful as the creatures that the Na’vi encounter on Pandora, but fair’s fair, I’ve not met anything that tried to eat me, either. If you take the time to go looking for it, nature is never far away. Go take a look, you’ll see.

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Bird feeders

Tony — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 17:54:23 +0000

robin

bird feeder covered with snow

The recent spell of freezing weather is coming to an end, but not before it dropped a foot of snow on our terrace. Birds have a hard time in such cold weather, in fact it amazes me that they manage to survive at all. There’s a very interesting post over at Willow House Chronicles about how birds survive cold temperatures if you’d like to know more about how they manage it.
We’ve been putting out food for the birds again this winter, normally just clearing the snow and placing it on the wall. That seems to suit birds like the robin, above, and our resident sparrows, but it can easily be covered by snow or washed away by rain, so this year we’ve also added some proper bird-feeders.

So many of the feeders in garden centres seem impractical and decorative, but after some shopping around I finally found this very practical feeder shown on the right. It’s not particularly cheap, but it does keep the seed clean and dry against all weathers, which has got to be a good thing. I don’t have anywhere obvious to hang such a feeder, so I took the low-tech solution. I found a suitable branch on our morning walks, tied it to the railings of the fence, and hung the feeder from that.

peanut butter and seed in suet-feeders

We also got two suet-feeders, and then spent some time looking for suet in the shops we frequent. Our favourite bio-store, Satoriz, didn’t have any, but they did have peanut butter, so I used that instead. I’m sure I could have found suet if I had looked around enough, but since the peanut butter is organic and any suet I find would not be, I prefer to use the peanut butter. I buy organic food for myself because I don’t want to eat pesticides, and I don’t see why wild birds should do so either.
I mixed some bird seed in with the peanut butter, quite a lot in fact, put it in the suet feeders, and hung them from another stick I’d picked up on our morning walks.

For a bit more variety, I tied some millet to the fence too, and I continue to put food loose on the wall for those that prefer it there. I also have a thistle-seed sack-feeder for finches, but no seed to put in it yet. Soon, I hope!

Now the restaurant is open, all we need are customers. First to find us was our robin, of course. You can see him here checking out the feeder during the day of heaviest snowfall. Like so many birds, he shows a great deal of curiosity at anything that changes in his environment. Having decided that it’s safe, he continues to be our most regular visitor.

robin and bird feeder

great-tit on suet feeder

magpie looking at millet

A couple of days later and a few more birds had found us. The great-tits seem to like the peanut butter, while blue-tits like the tall feeder. We have even been visited by a magpie, who comes a few times daily, takes 3 or 4 peanuts in one go, and flies off to enjoy them somewhere else. I expect that as time goes by we will get more visitors, and hopefully more species too – I know there are woodpeckers nearby.
The magpie is our largest visitor so far, and unless the chickens down the road escape from their coup we’re not likely to get anything much bigger than them. Some people do get larger birds visiting them, such as our friend Shannon Ryan. Take a look at what she gets visiting her bird feeders. They must take quite a bit of feeding!

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Copenhagen – now what?

Tony — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:09:50 +0000

The Copenhagen meeting finished some time ago now, and didn’t succeed in delivering anything useful. I’ve resisted the temptation to write about it earlier, rather I wanted to see what others said first, before making up my own mind about it. There’s been an awful lot of analysis published in the blogosphere since the meeting ended, I’m sure I’ve not encountered every view, but here are my own conclusions.

One thing is obvious, we did not get the fair, ambitious, and legally binding document we were all hoping for. Not even close. All we got was the ‘Copenhagen accord’, a piece of paper with no legal weight written by a few of the participants. That accord has no numbers in it that we can use to actually set policies. It does not state when emissions should peak, what reduction in emissions is required, in what timescale, or anything like that. There is no way to turn it into a plan of action, to decide how to tackle climate change based on what it says. It is worthless in itself, and is quite possibly worse than having no agreement at all.

By stepping outside the UN framework to produce that accord, those few countries that created it have seriously weakened the UNFCC process.
President Obama announced the accord to the press before most of the national representatives had even seen it, which shows a distinct lack of respect for protocol. How can the UNFCC be taken seriously now that a handful of leaders have ignored it and made up their own agreement?

On the other hand, it is not at all clear that anything else was on the table. I have not seen anything mentioned anywhere that the formal process of the UNFCC had created a document that was ready to be signed at the end of the meeting. If you know otherwise, please let me know via the comments. And, worthless as it is in practise, it is nonetheless significant that America and China have both signed even so weak a document as they did.

In the aftermath, the inevitable finger-pointing has taken place, with most people blaming someone half the world away for the failure. It’s difficult for an observer like myself to know what really happened, who is at fault, and why the process broke down. There was clearly a lot of good intention from many places, I doubt so many world leaders have ever been assembled in one place before. They wouldn’t all go there to look bad, I’m sure many of them wanted to come away with something real. Many countries went to Copenhagen having made pledges which, while inadequate, were much stronger than anything they have comitted to in the past. So what happened?

President Obama was clearly a key player, and he went there empty-handed. He didn’t offer anything new, much to the disappointment of many. The offer of ‘mobilising a fund of $100 billion annually for mitigation’ by 2020 is not worth much. Americans spend that much each year on bottled water, so it’s not exactly digging deep into their pockets. Besides, the International Energy Agency estimates that, for each year we delay action, the cost of tackling climate change will increase by $500 billion. So having $100 billion per year by 2020 really isn’t impressive.

It seems likely that, had America made a bigger comittment to cutting its own emissions, the conference could have gained a lot of momentum. With one of the highest levels of emissions per person in the entire world, America, like many western countires, has a clear debt to pay for the wealth it has accumulated. People were looking to President Obama to take the leading role he claimed he would when he was sworn into office. He failed to do that. To be fair, when you see the political pressure and tactics wielded by the fossil-fuel industries in America, it’s hardly surprising that President Obama couldn’t offer more. He simply doesn’t have that much power.

George Monbiot of the Guardian points out that Obama demanded concessions, despite offered nothing in return. On the other hand, Mark Lynas blames China for systematically blocking all attempts to name concrete targets. In Mark’s own words:

it was China’s representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. “Why can’t we even mention our own targets?” demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil’s representative too pointed out the illogicality of China’s position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord’s lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak “as soon as possible”. The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.

You can read more on Mark’s views of Copenhagen at the New York Times dotEarth blog, it’s worth reading.

I think that both George and Mark make good arguments, as do many other writers, but I have to say I give a lot of weight to Mark’s analysis. Mark was in the room for the negotiations, he saw it all first-hand. I’ve read Mark’s book, Six Degrees, and was impressed at how well he took such a large body of research and summarised it in terms we can all understand. He’s also one of the few environmentalists who has come to understand the importance of nuclear power in addressing climate change. That’s why I trust him as an observer and a critical thinker, and take his opinion seriously.

So, given that the UN framework didn’t yield a result, and that those who wanted to do something were prevented from doing so by those that don’t, what does that mean for the future? Here, the blogosphere seems to be more in agreement, people-power still matters, and there are a lot of people who aren’t giving up.

People from all walks of life have been calling for action on climate change. George Monbiot, in that same article above, is quite blunt about blaming people for complacency.

For the past few years good, liberal, compassionate people – the kind who read the Guardian – have shaken their heads and tutted and wondered why someone doesn’t do something. Yet the number taking action has been pathetic.

I guess he’s right. I know I came late to the party, and wish I had acted sooner.

At the other end of the scale, a group of international investors managing $13 trillion in assets also called for strong action (full report (PDF)). You can bet that they wouldn’t be asking for strong legislation to attack global warming unless they thought that it was needed for the global economy to survive.

Young people are getting in on the act too. Take a look at the video below, produced by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. Their message to world leaders is load and clear:

Those of you who say it can’t be done should get out of the way of people already doing it. Our future will not be written for us, but by us. You’re not done yet. And neither are we.

It’s great to know so many people from such different levels of society want action, but it won’t be enough to simply tell governments to act. It’s important that people both understand what is needed and agree on how to act, so a clear, unified, and sensible message is sent to political leaders. One of the biggest problems here is that a lot of people think that renewable energy sources can solve our energy needs, and many environmental groups remain opposed to nuclear power.

Advocates of ‘renewable energy’ regularly fail to consider the cost or effort required to satisfy demand. Replacing conventional electricity production with renewable sources is simply not sensible when you look at the amount of raw material (e.g. concrete and steel) that is needed, or at the amount of land that would be needed for the installation. Never mind the fact that solar or wind power are useless in a cold spell of weather like we are having at the moment, so we would still need something reliable to provide power when we need it most. See David Mackay’s free ebook, Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air, for some clear discussion about the theoretical limits of renewable energy and decide for yourself if you think it’s really a viable option.

I’ve written before about green-groups misguided opposition to nuclear power. Few of them seem to understand the realities of modern nuclear power, which is cheaper, cleaner, safer, and more reliable than it was during the cold-war days of the nuclear arms race. By perpetuating this myth, they are supporting the fossil-fuel industry. How? as Steve Kirsch said recently:

If you want to get emissions reductions, you must make the alternatives for base-load electric power generation cheaper than coal. It’s that simple. If you don’t do that, you lose.

Needless to say, weather-dependant renewable energy cannot provide that base-load, and the only real competition to fossil-fuel is nuclear power. If I were a fossil-fuel CEO, I would certainly want to spread fear of nuclear power, and would happily let the green-groups do my dirty work for me!

If you want a good idea of what it takes to replace fossil-fuel with either renewable or nuclear power, take a look at bravenewclimate.com. They consider the practicalities of cost and build-rate for a range of options, and conclude that anything other than massive deployment of nuclear power simply won’t cut emissions in time.

Until green-groups embrace the need for nuclear power instead of renewable energy, we are not sending a coherent or useful message to world leaders, one that they can use to enact legislation that will genuinely cut emissions. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu surely understands this, so President Obama must know it too. Small wonder that he couldn’t offer much at Copenhagen when the environmental movement don’t want the changes that will work, and the coal and oil industries are spending a fortune to mislead and misinform the American public.

That’s not to say that this problem is specific to America, it’s a drama that is repeated the world over. The sooner we realise that, the sooner we can start making the changes that matter. Maybe then we can persuade others to do the same too.

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Free Petrol? Free Pizza!

Tony — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:22:09 +0000

At the end of 2008, I explained how changing my driving habits had effectively given me free petrol for the month of December. Time to review the figures for 2009!

In 2008, my car travelled 10400 km, using 621 litres of petrol. That works out at 47.3 mpg if you’re British, 39.3 mpg if you’re American, and 6.0 litres per 100 km if you’re French. In 2009, the same car travelled 9440 km on 552 litres. I’ll let you do the math, but by my calculation that’s about 2% better on the mileage. More importantly, the total fuel consumption went down by 11%, which is quite a chunk. The difference is worth about $100 (70 euros), enough for another good meal out with Dweezeljazz.

Free pizza for driving less, I can handle that!

According to the 538 blog, the average American family of 4 uses about 2000 US gallons of petrol per year. That’s over 7500 litres. Imagine how many free pizzas they could get if they saved 10% of that?

I’ve also been following my electricity consumption for the past year, and have found that we average about 30 kWh per day. According to Wikipedia’s list of electricity consumption per country, we’re a fair bit lower than the average for France, which would be 40 kWh/day for the two of us. Not bad at all.

I only monitor our electricity use by reading the meter once per week, but that’s enough to start getting useful information on where it all goes. For example, our water-heater broke down in summer, allowing me to estimate how much goes into heating water for us. Some people go much further. Tom Harrison uses a TED 5000, a gadget that can show electricity use by the second as it happens. That’s how he found out that his gas oven uses 300W of electricity. How many people would even guess that a gas oven uses electricity, never mind as much as that?

If you’re interested in checking your own use of resources such as petrol and electricity, there are a number of ways of going about it. You can get an idea of your petrol use by looking at the service-records for your car, the total number of miles on the clock is typically recorded there. If you know how often you fill up your petrol tank (credit-card receipts, perhaps?) you can get a fair estimate of your mileage that way. For electricity or gas, you can look at your bills over the last year to get a starting point (make sure they’re actual readings, not estimates).

Once you know how much you’ve been using in the past, you have a good incentive to reduce it in the future. You can compare your petrol consumption with others by recording your results at fuelly.com. My Astra is there.

If you’re serious about wanting to reduce your consumption, why not sign up with the 10:10 campaign (there’s a separate link for people in the UK). The 10:10 campaign wants people, businesses, and other organisations to reduce their carbon footprint by 10% in 2010. That’s a modest but significant goal which is easy to achieve, and is intended to focus on actually doing the things that are needed, rather than just talking about them. Over 50,000 people have signed up so far, including Pete Postlethwaite, star of the Age of Stupid film.

It has to be said, the 10:10 website is not very well laid out. It took me ages to find the 10:10 blog, for example. They’re looking for a web developer if you’re interested in helping them improve it. You can actually get a better idea of what it’s about from the Wikipedia 10:10 page, which also lists some of the people and organisations that have comitted themselves to action. They include the British cabinet, the Science Museum, Microsoft UK, the Guardian, and a whole bunch of celebrities. I’ll be checking there again in a few days to see if they’ve added my name to the list.

The Guardian are throwing a lot of their weight behind the 10:10 campaign. It’s worth reading their articles by Andrew Simms, Chris Goodall and Ian Katz, among others. I’m convinced 10:10 is worth doing, so I signed up. After all, you can look at it differently, and just think of it as free pizza.

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Snow in the Jura

Tony — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:20:34 +0000

footpath covered in snow

Just a few days ago, I commented over at The Marvellous in Nature that we didn’t have enough snow yet for snow-shoeing. Well that has all changed! We now have several centimetres, or quite a few inches, depending on which you prefer.

The photo above was from our morning walk last Friday. The stream below on the right was taken then too. Plenty of snow there, as you can see. Later in the day we had more snow, the picture on the left being taken from the warmth and comfort of our living room.

snow falling on field

mountain stream

lacewing

Even before the snow came, it’s been very cold here, so obviously there are far less insects about now, but there are still a few surprises here and there. Some days ago I looked up from my laptop to see this lacewing on the outside of the window. As far as I know, they should all be hibernating now. Maybe he had heard about the bug-hotel I made last month and was going to check out the accomodation?

He’s not the only lacewing we’ve seen lately, one has decided to move in with us for the winter. He now spends his time in the spare room, which we keep unheated for my cacti.

bug hotel with snow

We’ve named him Edgar, the fly who came in from the cold. Edgar has spent the last 2 or 3 days on the window-sill, which is not a particularly safe place for him to be, so I’ve moved him into a small box of shredded paper. I have no idea if he manages to find food, or if he needs any now, he doesn’t move far at all it seems. If anyone has suggestions on how to look after him and help him survive the winter, please let me know!

Then of course there’s our feathered friends. We have many birds sheltering in the eaves, and they are quite happy to avail themselves of the food we put out for them. We’ve been investigated by magpies a few times too, but they seem too shy to stay when they see us through the window. Hopefully they’ll learn to trust us and stay a little longer, they’re so beautiful.

The birds don’t seem to bother with the water much, which I think is pretty ungrateful of them considering the effort it takes to replace it every time it freezes. Still, I guess they know what they need. As long as they keep coming for the food, we will keep putting it out for them!

Wherever you are, whichever creatures you have sharing your Christmas, indoors or out, I wish you, and them, a merry Christmas.

water and food for birds

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