A new documentary series kicked off on the UK Discovery Channel yesterday. ‘Ways to Save the Planet‘ explores what happens when, in the channel’s own words, “what if?” meets “why not?”, as “some of the world’s leading scientists” put the most ambitious geo-engineering ideas to the test in order to tackle global climate change. The programme features a series of large-scale experiments that are the brainchildren of a team of “uncompromising visionaries”.

Wrapping Greenland
Dr  Jason Box, a glaciologist from Ohio State University, wants to prevent glaciers from melting by covering them with reflective geo-textile blankets.

Raining Forests
Scientist Mark Hodges believes he has devised a way to reforest large areas of Earth from the air, by using an aircraft to drop tens of thousands of canisters, each holding a tree seedling.

Brighter Earth
John Latham, an atmospheric physicist based at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, and Stephen Salter, an Edinburgh University engineer, believe that by changing the size of water droplets in a cloud they can increase the cloud’s ability to reflect the sun and stop global warming. Their vision is to build a flotilla of ships that will roam the world’s oceans and seed clouds with minute particulates.

Infinite Winds
Fred Ferguson, a Canadian engineer specializing in airships, has designed a revolutionary wind turbine that will use the constant winds that exist at 1,000 feet above sea level to produce energy.

Hungry Oceans
Oceans cover 70 percent of our planet and are one of the most important carbon sinks we have, but the phytoplankton that convert CO2 into living matter are declining – and many scientists believe that Climate Change is the culprit. Dr  Brian von Herzen of The Climate Foundation joins forces with marine biologists at the University of Hawaii and Oregon State University to deploy three wave powered pumps in the North Pacific in an attempt to restore this critical natural mixing effect.

Space Sunshield
Astronomer and professor Roger Angel thinks he can diffract the power of the sun by placing trillions of lenses in space and creating a 100,000-square-mile sunshade, using electromagnetic propulsion to get the lenses into space.

Orbital Power Plant
Former NASA physicist John Mankins has a plan to send thousands of satellites into space, which will gather energy from the sun and then beam the solar energy down to Earth as microwave energy, to be collected by antennae on the ground for conversion into electricity.

Fixing Carbon
Canadian professor David Keith, the 2006 Canadian Geographic “Environmental Scientist of the Year,” is building a prototype of a machine to scrub Co2 from the air. It will suck ambient air in at one end, spray it with sodium hydroxide solution, then expel clean air out of the other end.

Am I the only one whose heart sinks after reading about these half-baked pseudo solutions straight off the pages of Astounding Science Fiction? In the first place, we are already right in the middle of an enormous planetary-scale experiment as our stupidity and greed continues to throw our world’s systems into disarray. Secondly, while there’s a lot of “what if?” here, the only “why not?” questions seem to revolve around whether the transition from the back of a fag packet to the ‘real’ world is a successful one within the restricted parameters of the experiment.

And finally…. as the Discovery Channel itself says: “You’ve heard the dire warnings and seen the detailed slide shows, and you’ve even bought that energy efficient light bulb. You wonder, though, how can small, individual measures like switching to compact flourescent [sic] lightbulbs and using canvas shopping bags in lieu of plastic be enough to save the planet?”

And that’s the problem. We have an impending global catastrophe that was brought about by the combined impact of billions of individual decisions and actions. Where is the incentive for us, as individuals, to modify our behaviour if we are continually presented with large-scale, centralised, hi-tech solutions. The boffins in the basement may have helped to create this mess, but if they’re all beavering away on our behalf to fix it, we don’t have to do anything, right?

Maybe there is a way we can help. Why not play Discovery Channel’s online game ‘Extreme Earth‘?

You have been given the ultimate position of Global Caretaker of Planet Earth. From your control panel you have the power to control the fine balance of the Earth’s physical makeup. Using your knowledge of the causes and effects of global warming, you must make decisions to fix the problems as they occur. The Earth’s future is in the balance – can you meet the challenge?

Yes, that should do the trick.

This is the first of an occasional series in which Change Alley looks at the state of environmental debate at the grassroots. No deep analysis here, local opinion will be allowed to speak for itself for the most part, although it may prove hard to resist the odd comment or two in passing.

The Western Daily Press is a Bristol-based regional newspaper covering Avon, Wiltshire, Devon, Dorset and parts of Gloucestershire and South Wales. The Press celebrates its 150th anniversary in June, but has kept firmly up to date with a successful online edition that provides a number of interactive features to allow readers to ‘have their say’. Here is a recent thread from their Forum pages, contributors’ details have been omitted to avert embarrassment, but you can read the whole thing here.

Manmade or natural?

• There is a threat to some wetlands and their inhabitants due to dry winters. Do you believe that climate change is manmade or is it a natural cycle of the earth?
• History tells us that climate change has always taken place. The Romans grew vines in the Severn Valley. The climate change con has been put about by governments in order to (a) A good excuse to tax us more and (b) to try to get us to save oil and gas which are of course finite resources. If you look at the scientists who have supported the theory they have all been paid by government grants to say whay the government wants to hear. Independent scientists have very grave doubts about lots of the so called facts that have been produced.
• To believe we can destroy what has taken all of eternity to create, just by what is essentially ‘keeping warm’, is fanciful I think. . That doesn’t mean I don’t believe we should be protecting, conserving and always trying to find ways to improve our environment. . We certainly should; and increasingly so. . But in any case, in the overall scheme of things the Earth is pretty insignificant. . . . Mind you I do know someone who believes that if you haven’t got a PASSPORT and don’t fly, you should get petrol FREE OF TAX; and if you haven’t got a car either you should get FREE BEER! . . AND HAVE TO SAY I AGREE WITH HIM!
• I find some of the comments made by so called experts quite annoying.These people travel round the globe warning us of climate change and how do they travel,by plane.When they get to their destination how do they get to the venue,by car.So to me it’s just a load of eco freaks on the take.They get paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for speaking out of their backsides.We’ve been down this road millions of years ago.What about the ice age,i suppose that was the dinosaurs fault for letting off too much methane
• The indignity of ‘The Speaker’ of the House of Commons personifies the corrupt thinking of all these people. . . The jailed Conservative politician Jonathon Aitken, was jailed for lying under oath about hotel expenses for his daughter I believe. . . They are all disgusting hypocrites. . . And WE are paying their wages. . . Is it surprising we try and avoid paying Income Tax.

And there we have it. Five degrees of separation to take us from drying wetlands to political corruption and tax avoidance. A valuable insight into the thought processes of the Man On The Yeovil Omnibus. It makes one so proud that the British public can penetrate the blanket of lies and propaganda on climate change and see it for what it really is.

On 7th January, BBC News carried an item about a large hydro-electric scheme in Scotland. Monday saw the completion of a major phase of the project, with breakthrough at the end of a 5-mile tunnel at Glendoe, near Fort Augustus, Loch Ness. The cameras were there to capture the moment as the 220 meter long boring machine, nicknamed ‘Eliza Jane’ by local schoolchildren, emerged blinking into the daylight after 18 months.

My initial reaction was one of great surprise, a real “Wow! Where was that hiding?” moment, and I know I’m not the only one. Glendoe is the largest ongoing civil engineering project in Scotland, which when completed will have an installed capacity of about 100MW, producing around 180 million units of green electricity in a year of average rainfall. Its flexibility will help to meet major fluctuations in power demand, with the ability to start generating electricity at full capacity in 30 seconds. When operating at maximum capacity, Glendoe will be able to generate enough electricity to power Glasgow, almost 250,000 homes.

OK, pretty small beer in comparison with, say, China’s Three Gorges project, but this is Scotland’s second largest conventional hydro-electric station and the first large-scale station to be built since 1957. The fact that it’s remained largely unpublicised says a lot about the media and about how Scotland is seen by the rest of the United Kingdom.

It’s fair to say that the film crews only turned up because it was a telegenic event. Once the breakthrough was captured on video, there was very little about the wider project, just a quick interview with a suit and a hard hat, then up, up and away. Another factor in deciding newsworthiness was that the project has been remarkably free of controversy. In England, a proposal involving a 75 square kilometer reservoir formed by a dam 1 kilometer long and 35 meters high would have been bogged down in protest and bureaucracy for years. Scotland, being a relatively unpopulated country, has fewer constraints, and Glendoe has been welcomed by local environmental groups. This from the Scottish and Southern Energy website:

SSE is committed to minimising negative effects on the local environment. The land which will form Glendoe’s reservoir is ‘degraded’ peat bog, meaning it is a peat area which has already been changed by man and has limited biodiversity – because of this Scottish Natural Heritage approved the use of the site for the reservoir.

With all the main components of the hydro scheme being underground, the dam and reservoir are the main structures that will be visible (yet they cannot be seen from any home or public road). In addition, the area around the reservoir is used only for sporting purposes and is not particularly popular with hillwalkers.

If Heathrow Airport only had hillwalkers and “sporting purposes” to consider, we’d have had ten runways by now.

It’s clear that Glendoe’s remoteness within Scotland has enabled the project to proceed quickly and smoothly. Scotland’s isolation within the UK has made the whole thing a very well-kept secret, which is a shame because this is a real success story.

Glasgow Herald “The spark coming from our water”

Scottish and Southern Energy project information

Glendoe Hydro Scheme

The wires are buzzing today with reports that the world’s first 30-storey vertical farm is to be built in Las Vegas. This story appears on blog sites left, right and centre, but they all seem to have their origin in an article at enn.com, which in turn references a story at nextenergynews.com. You can spot the provenance from the spelling mistake in the original title, which has been propagated all over the place. What the original report and its offspring have in common is a complete lack of substantiating evidence or references. All this reporter can do is proceed on the assumption that the story might be true.

The Vertical Farm concept is an attempt to address the twin problems of growing food demand and dwindling agricultural land area. By creating multi-storey enclosed growing spaces, we can achieve high levels of production efficiency and locate farms where they’re needed, in the heart of urban areas. There’s plenty of information at the Vertical Farm Project.

What’s interesting about the Las Vegas project is that it seems to be designed more as a tourist attraction than a serious farm. At a cost of $200 million, it needs a serious return to make it a worthwhile investment. Producing food for 72,000 people, a very small proportion of visitors to Las Vegas each year, will apparently generate $25 million a year, but tourism will raise $15 million. A reflection, I suppose, of the new-found appeal of ‘green’ issues in America.

One has to wonder how sensible it is to establish a major farming project in an artificial city in the middle of a desert where water supplies are already under pressure. If the Vertical Farm principles work as they should, the results could be interesting. We’ll have to wait and see how seriously the backers take the agricultural and environmental aspects, and to judge that we need information about the project. Who’s putting up the money? Where’s it going to be built? All that good stuff. Watch the skies.

Last month The Coffee House drew your attention to the
Worst EU Lobbying and Greenwash Awards 2007.
The winners were announced at a festive awards ceremony in the Witloof Cellar in Brussels on 4 December 2007.

Winner of the Worst EU Lobbying Award 2007

BMW, Daimler and Porsche – nominated together in the worst EU lobbying category – gained more than 30% of the votes. Their joint lobbying offensive, designed to water-down and delay the mandatory CO2 emission reduction targets proposed by the Commission after voluntary targets were not met, was deemed to be the worst and most deceptive by voters across Europe.

Winner of the Worst EU Greenwash Award 2007

The special greenwash prize for the most audacious attempts to gain unjustifiable green credentials was awarded to the German Atomic Forum, which received more than a third of votes cast. It was nominated for its campaign aimed at improving the image of nuclear energy. Under the slogan “Germany’s unloved climate protectionists” it featured images of nuclear power plants placed in unpolluted and unspoilt natural environments.

More than 6600 people across Europe took part in the online poll, which frankly was more than I would have expected. For a breakdown of the votes cast, click this link and also this one. Don’t forget to vote next year.

The use of “bland and ineffectual promotional language” puts organic food at risk of becoming “just another commercial brand”, concludes a study by the Open University’s Centre for Research in Education and Educational technology (CREET). Their report ‘The Discourse of Organic Food Promotion: language, intentions and effects‘ says that retailers and campaigners are failing to focus on the core selling points of organic food. They tend to use “poetic, vague and emotive” language in their marketing, with an “emphasis on story-telling rather than facts”. According to Guy Cook, Professor of Language and Education at the OU:

“Buyers are not as easily manipulated as marketeers seem to believe. They reacted negatively to extravagant descriptions of ‘succulent sausages’ and animals that are ‘free to root and roam’.
“People see organic farming and its benefits for the environment and economy as promoting a sense of community. Supermarkets by their very definition are not interested in the idea of small community and so cannot sell that ideal.
“Our studies [of organic food promotion] show marketing and PR departments and their received wisdom can often be patronising and out of date…. this is a key moment for the organic movement. Does it want to remain distinctive and politically committed, or go down the road of becoming just another commercial brand?”

Now I’m no academic, so I’m probably missing the point. However, I would have thought that the massive growth in demand for organic produce was the sign of a successful organic movement. Moreover, it seems to me that placing organics at the core of shopping habits is the way to go, rather than differentiating. If organic food becomes an automatic choice, rather than one that the consumer has to mull over for every buying decision, then that must be regarded as a success.

The environmental propaganda machine continues to rumble forward on ‘The Archers’, BBC Radio 4′s venerable soap opera and green information channel. Tuesday’s episode featured an earnest discussion of anaerobic digesters on farms, turning animal muck into methane and generating electricity for sale back to the grid. According to jet-setting career agriculturist Debbie Aldridge, calling home from Eastern Europe where she runs her father’s offshore organic farming operation apparently single-handedly, the Germans are streets ahead of the UK with this technology. She wants a piece of the action at Home Farm.

It’s taken a while for art to imitate life. Last year the BBC reported how an agricultural college was using methane from the muck produced by its dairy herd to power its working farm all year round (‘College harnesses cow pat power‘ ), saying “the technology is used at more than 1,000 farms in Germany but only at a handful in the UK”.

Why are we so far behind here? The natural conservatism (small ‘c’) of UK farmers? Problems financing the project? General uncertainties in the farming industry? The idea seems to tick all the right boxes: cheap electricity, lower emissions, reduced water pollution. For me, the only fly in the ointment is the need for artifical fertilisers to replace the muck that used to be spread on the fields.

The reason they’re ahead in Germany is, you guessed it, money. In 2004, Renewable Energy World reported:

In Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, the incentive system for anaerobic digestion consists of both a subsidy for the green electricity generated, and of either investment subsidies or fiscal incentives. Of all the countries reviewed, Germany has the best investment climate for anaerobic digestion at this level, the main reason being its high feed-in tariff for the electricity generated – 10.1 Eurocents/kWh. Moreover, this rate is guaranteed for a period of 20 years.

Sounds tempting. I bet Brian Aldridge would jump at that deal, if it were available in the UK.

Dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum…

At Scientific American it’s all about climate change, “humanity’s first planetwide experiment”. In ‘Clash: What Will Climate Change Cost Us?‘, they talk to three leading economic policy thinkers on the topic of how cutting emissions of greenhouse gases would affect the global economy.
Sir Nicholas Stern, Bjorn Lomborg and Gary Yohe

On a lighter note, the article ‘10 Solutions for Climate Change’ tells us that there are, after all, personal lifestyle changes that you can make to help reduce your carbon impact.

Forego Fossil Fuels: stop using oil, coal, natural gas and avoid products made from them.
Infrastructure Upgrade: buildings worldwide contribute around one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, so insulate and build better.
Move Closer to Work: transportation is the second leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
Consume Less: the easiest way to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions is simply to buy less stuff.
Be Efficient: citizens of many developed countries are profligate wasters of energy, so do more with less.
Go Vegetarian: use less land, produce less greenhouse gases
Stop Cutting Down Trees: every year, 33 million acres of forests are cut down. Timber harvesting in the tropics alone contributes 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere, 20% of human-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Unplug: U.S. citizens spend more money on electricity to power devices when off than when on.
One Child: there will be at least nine billion humans by 2050. It takes 54 acres to sustain an average human being.
Future Fuels: every alternative seems to have its downside, but stick with it, something will turn up.

Sounds easy. I’ll pencil it in for early next week.

More evidence, if any were needed, that climate change has irrevocably invaded the consciousness of Middle England. The BBC Radio 4 soap opera ‘The Archers’ featured a touching scene in which a young member of the Archer clan, disturbed by a school lesson on the impact of climate change, quizzed her parents on what they were doing to fix the problem.

For the uninitiated, ‘The Archers’, “an everyday story of country folk”, was first broadcast in 1951 and is the world’s longest running radio soap with over 15,000 episodes under its belt. Set in the mythical English village of Ambridge, somewhere between the Midlands and the West Country, populated by characters who are mostly named Archer but without the slightest whiff of inbreeding, the program was originally conceived as a government propaganda and information tool in the dark days of post-war shortages. It has evolved into a more conventional soap, but still finds time to offer thinly-veiled advice on rural issues.

Last Friday’s episode had the concerned Archerette bemoaning her grandparents’ imminent climate-busting flight to New Zealand, and demanding to know what her parents were doing to reduce emissions on their farm. Cue a stream of worthy initiatives: hedge planting, better pasture management, reduced fertiliser inputs. All good stuff, it’s just a shame that only a minority of the show’s listeners live in the country, and even fewer have anything to with agriculture.

Episode synopsis and podcast

I’d like to recommend an excellent CNN article about food and the environment. Here are some highlights:

• According to the UK’s Soil Association, 50 percent of the increase in global CO2 emissions between 1850 and 1990 has been tied to changes in land use –mainly because of farming practices.
• The Food Climate Research Network estimates that 31% of EU greenhouse emissions come from the food chain.
• More than half of that, 18% of total emissions, comes from meat production. The “average burger man…emits the equivalent of 1.5 tons more CO2 every year than the standard vegan,” reports The Guardian.
• According to Farmers Weekly, the amount of food that is air-freighted around the world has increased by 140 percent since 1990.
• The UK, for example, now imports more food than it exports, with 95% of its fruit and 50% of its vegetables coming from overseas.
• The global transportation sector contributes 14% of greenhouse gas emissions.
• A recent report from the International Maritime Organization says that, contrary to previous data, the shipping industry globally emits twice as much greenhouse gases — 1.2 billion tons — as the aviation industry, which emits between 600 and 650 million tons annually.
• By the end of this century, climate change-induced floods and droughts could cost India 30% of its total food production; and China 37% of its wheat, rice and corn crops.
• The amount of arable land per person is shrinking, says the FAO, from 0.38 hectares in 1970 to 0.23 in 2000, to 0.15 in 2050.
• The IPCC says that by 2080 3.2 billion people will suffer water shortages.
• If the EU were to replace just 10 percent of its fuel needs with biofuel, it would require 72 percent of its arable land.
• Poor African farmers are now opting to sell crops like cassava for use as alternative energy instead of food because they get paid more for it.
• China, one of the world’s leading corn exporters, withheld stocks last year for the purpose of biofuels.

All of which makes Matt’s recent question “How to feed Britain?” even more immediate and pressing.