Pete Smith @ May 15, 2008 # 9 Comments
Photo: U.S. Fish and Wild Life Service The polar bear, whose summertime Arctic hunting grounds have been greatly reduced by global warming , will be placed under the protection of the Endangered Species Act. The Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit in 2005 to force a listing of [...]
Pete Smith @ April 17, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Last Thursday, April 10th, The London Paper, a give-away tabloid from the News International stable, ran an article under the headline “Block put on paving over front gardens”. The main thrust of the story involved supposed plans at DEFRA to force householders to appply for planning permission before they can pave over their gardens. The [...]
Pete Smith @ January 28, 2008 # No Comment Yet
27th January 2008 marked the 300th anniversary of the birth of Robert Marsham, the founding father of phenology, the study of the timing of natural events in relation to climate. Marsham is best known for the phenology notes he started making in 1736 on his family estate near Norwich, and continued writing for over 60 [...]
Pete Smith @ November 30, 2007 # 2 Comments
Last week the government launched its consultation into plans for a third runway and sixth terminal at London Heathrow. Greenpeace has been in touch with The Coffee House, asking us to support their ‘Stop Heathrow Expansion’ campaign. As in most issues nowadays, the prime arguments against the expansion are climate change and economics. To quote [...]
Pete Smith @ November 30, 2007 # No Comment Yet
A North Wales house builder has spent £140,000 on creating a special habitat for great crested newts on the site of a 26-home development. When environmental specialists arrived to move the newts to their new home, they could find only two. The same builder has already spent £300,000 at another development where a much larger [...]
Pete Smith @ November 18, 2007 # 4 Comments
It’s official, we’re in trouble again. Or still. You’d be forgiven for thinking the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is more of the same old same old. It is. The Synthesis Report of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report is effectively a summary of three papers published earlier this year, and [...]
Pete Smith @ October 31, 2007 # 7 Comments
Picture from Seat.com But not as dull as SEAT, who say on the one hand “The spirit of competition comes with a price: responsibility. SEAT has always been acutely aware of this in regard to sustainability and protection of the environment” and on the other hand urge idiots to drive all over the landscape in [...]
Pete Smith @ October 28, 2007 # 4 Comments
Presenters Billy Bragg and Mark Viduka show their emotional involvement in the issues Well I’ve ploughed through the first part of CNN’s much-vaunted eco-documentary ‘Planet In Peril’, and I wasn’t that impressed. A series of episodes filmed around the world, loosely linked by a cobbled-together ‘theme’ of interlinked ecosystems under threat from human exploitation, it [...]
Pete Smith @ June 24, 2007 # 2 Comments
The Worldwide Fund For Nature (WWF) has published a report on the global adoption of desalination as a means of compensating for shortages of fresh water. In ‘Making Water – Desalination: option or distraction for a thirsty world?’, WWF lays out the down side of desalination. As well as being a highly energy-intensive process, it [...]
Pete Smith @ June 16, 2007 # 20 Comments
Recently, The Coffee House has given coverage to Cool Earth, the fundraising initiative to protect the Amazon rainforest (“Cool Earth-revisited“) . While acknowledging the value of the biodiversity within the rainforest, the prime driver for this project is its function as a carbon sink. For between £70 and £100, depending on location, you can ‘buy’ [...]
