31st May - Today's News: Storm Brings Flooding, Waterspouts to Sydney

Rather a cold, damp bank holiday Monday for many in Britain (including in Evesham - my coldest day of the month) and no better in parts of Australia where they had dark days indeed as Sydney weathers the storm, but clear skies on the way. A nice waterspout too.

Tropical storm Songda hits Japan region reeling from earthquake and tsunami

Residents return to flood-ravaged Miss. communities covered in putrid mud, lined with debris meanwhile it's not over yet as snowmelt, rain worsen flooding in northern plains

Wild bird breeding hit by Scotland's storm last week.

Boy, 7, seriously injured 'after bouncy castle blew away in 40mph gust'

Global warming may increase the capacity of trees to store carbon - until we chop them down and burn them!

Climate played big role in Vikings' disappearance from Greenland - though the fact they'd chopped down all the trees didn't exactly help.

World must face 'inconvenient truth' of emissions rise, says UN chief


And I find myself not exactly in agreement with George Monbiot this week as he suggests support wind farms? It would be less controversial to argue for blackouts. He misses the point that a) mine (and others) primary argument is that we should drastically cut energy consumption (by inventing the 'off' switch, and developing new more energy efficent technologies) and b) wind farms produce no electricity at all during times of extreme hot or cold weather and thus however much electricity they produce when we don't need it, we always need back up power stations for when we do. And I might add that it's a straw man argument that "These champions of the countryside want to save it from only one threat" - just because we do not openly campaign against one form of environmental damage does not mean we should not argue against another. Tut tut!

Comments

  1. "These champions of the countryside want to save it from only one threat"

    To be fair, that quote is *specifically* referring to CPRW, and not anti-wind farm campaigners in general.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ah, but like the JMT,and many other groups that oppose power stations in remote upland areas, the CPRW campaigns on many issues - not just windfarms.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Their website is a bit sparse - though that possibly just shows lack of IT prowess/willing:

    http://www.google.co.uk/m/?q=%22open+cast%22+coal+site%3Awww.cprw.org.uk

    ReplyDelete
  4. Aye, could be better. But I don't think the CPRW was set up 80 years ago just to fight wind farms! And even the limitations of its current website (only 2 press releases?) shows it's currently involved in other issues. Such as protection of the coastline.

    In any case, maybe the clue is in the name? Rural Wales. The Open cast mine to which George alludes (Ffos-y-fan) is on the outskirts of Methyr Tydfil - already a blighted industrial, urban, landscape. Whether they did raise any object to it at the time, I don't know.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Actually, this seems to be a bit of a personal crusade of George's - he'd previously criticised the CPRE for the same reason

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_to_Protect_Rural_England#Criticism

    ReplyDelete

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