Growth
243 days ago
Love this time of year as things spring to life, spurred on by the recent upturn in the weather.
As I sit here, listening to the branches complain in the wind, I’ve been mulling over the report about more greenhouse gases produced by farm animals than transport, and the consequent call for a reversal of the organic trend, back toward intensive housing and animal production.
Poor animals. Just when things might be improving again for them (as units of production) some want shut them away again. Let’s ignore the delegate balance of ecosystems, maximize all food production and bigger the planet some more.
How about a serious look at our population growth, for a change.
~ iPhone
Swallow of 2008
255 days ago
A lonesome Swallow spotted in Aldbrough-St-John, County Durham yesterday – non here yet. Last year it was April 14th.
It’s amazing how they find there way back to the nesting sites of their birth, bet they’re pleased they don’t have to rely upon scent to find there way around, to the extent that Bees do to find food.
Seems that recent studies have turned up another bad effect of air pollution on the scent projecting capabilities of flowers, leaving the Bee with a harder job to find food.
A contributor to Colony Collapse Disorder? We know not what we do.
Earth Hour
283 days ago
Between 8 and 9pm tonight, hopefully millions of people around the world will take part in Earth Hour 2008 – a WWF initiative asking people to turn their lights off for one hour – following the success last March in Sydney.
Their inspirational collective effort reduced the city’s energy consumption by a whopping 10.2% during that hour – equivalent to taking 48,000 cars off the road.
I just hope my neighbour pays attention for once after the lunar eclipse debacle – it’s OK there’s no chance of him reading this 
However, there is the issue of those damn solar powered garden lights everywhere nowadays – could be rising to the top of my pet hates, along with driving in the wrong lane on motorways, headlights on during the day and caravans!! Don’t get me started…. you can tell it’s foul weather out there, more time on the computer today.
Disturbingly creepy
468 days ago
I noticed when moving to work in Nottinghamshire some 3 years ago, how much the countryside and it’s villages had changed since my childhood.
This is obviously nothing astounding, but I felt saddened by the way new houses had been shoe-horned into plots where they really shouldn’t have – ruining the curtilage of the original, and glaringly out-of-place developments had sprung up on their peripheries.
Now with the CPRE’s campaign highlighting the probable effects of the Government’s fast-track planning proposals, I’ve been delving around the disturbance maps produced and the Planning Disaster coalition’s site and it is plainly not a view back through ‘rose-tinted’ spectacles.
The pressure on this land of ours steadily grows, as we observe that Compulsory Set-Aside is scrapped because of the shortage of cereals grown.
More regulars
478 days ago
The Redstart seems to becoming more common in theses parts, and it’s not just me finding more, my farming friends tend to agree.
I’ve seen them in my garden in the mornings, but usually around the beck in the more densely vegetated areas. In the evenings, against the dark shadows of the woods, the fiery tail flashes in the low sun as they flutter up to hover before diving again after insects. It gets it’s name from the old English for tail – steort.
The other guys I’m seeing more of are the Whitethroats, they’re inhabitants of the back lane, but have been coming into the garden for the fruit.
Pretty sure the House Martins have really gone now – after a couple of false starts – they seemed to disappear for a day or two then come swarming back. Anyway, they haven’t been here for the weekend, so I guess that’s it.
Kingfishers
649 days ago
Saw the Kingfishers again yesterday, well to be more accurate they started to ‘chee’ me loudly when I got close to their stretch of the river.
As I haven’t seen them for a while, I’m guessing they do move further downstream or out towards the coast in winter, although it hasn’t been that hard this year. With the changing climate, they may well be a species that benefits from a warmer winter, especially on the Scottish rivers.
I see that Britain is still behind on it’s Kyoto targets, with the increase in coal electricity generation and in the Northern Hemisphere, January has been the warmest since records began more than 125 years ago. But are the two directly linked? – the great debate rages on. With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report last month finding global climate change to be “very likely” or at least 90% certain that human emissions of greenhouse gases rather than natural variations are warming the planet’s surface, this latest bit of data does not point the finger directly at us humans, but at a moderate El Niño feeding the global trend.
There is still the occassional (and now regarded as controversial) theory about, that suggests our recent climate change has been caused by natural influences and not us, by comparing data from Mars missions. Could there be something in this? There are undeniable natural trends to our planets weather, but you get the feeling pumping out do many greenhouse gasses aint going to help the situation one bit.
International Polar Year
686 days ago
After a week of being deprived of a landline i.e. internet access, this week sees over twenty nations around the world celebrating the launch of the fourth International Polar Year 2007-2008. The first IPY was 1882-3, but these launches are just the tip of the iceberg, scientists from over 60 nations will be taking part in hundreds of projects that will actually span 2 years to include Artic and Antartic regions.
A friend I mentioned in a previous post (my main posting re this was unfortunately lost in a database error) was a member of the team, led by researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany, which found a number of likely new species and gained an insight into the dynamics of the polar ecology. The areas of study became accessible only five years ago, following the collapse of the Larsen B ice-shelf.
Besides discovering more about our past and our survival under artic conditions, this IPY is important for looking at the changes in snow cover and sea ice and it’s consequences for terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Linking through to the global impact on sea levels, the affects on our coastal cities and low-lying areas, and the influence upon millions of people whose daily use of water for personal consumption or for agriculture depends on these sources. However, more immediately, those inhabitants of northern regions that face rapid environmental change at a rate that could be described as being ‘unnatural’.
As far as my local stomping ground is concerned, this last week saw the return of flocks of Lapwing on the 21 and a Curlew appeared on the 22 February. There were more around over the weekend, good hear their stident calls again.
Rain, rain, rain...
726 days ago
I guess further downstream things are pretty bad with all the floods in Yorkshire, but even up here in the Dales we’re flooding. Must say I’m getting a bit fed-up with wet walks, wind and incessant rain. I took a couple of snaps of my usual stomping grounds, sorry not very sharp as it was blowing so hard and very overcast, but I’ve taken to braving the winds and walking the ‘tops’ to avoid much of the water, although even on the highest points you’re still sloshing around.
At times like this I yearn for drier climes and if this is going to be the chaotic nature of our climate for the foreseeable future, then it’s got to be a consideration. Many people I talk to nowadays seem to be talking of leaving the UK – well England at least – but that’s certainly not wholly down to our weather patterns!
Another problem with these wet sojourns is the lack of things to look at – I mean the fauna around here is keeping it’s head well down. There were a few Fieldfares at one stage, they were late, but put in an brief appearance and disappeared. Random Herons stand hopefully in the flooded meadows and Starlings struggling home now take the contour-hugging route straight to their roosts. The only birds I’ve seen apparently enjoying it are the Rooks wheeling around and diving recklessly at the ground, but there again, they’re always having fun.
Yahoo! chat groups
738 days ago
Interesting what you learn over a chat group.
From North Dakota – the first Christmas in memory (over 50 for sure) that there hasn’t been at least some snow.
Some years you could not see the other buildings in the same yard for the snow banks between the buildings. This year we have had only a light smattering — just enough to know that it is snowing but no acumulation at all. Had dust storms for the last couple days with high winds and tumble weeds plugging some of the roads here and there. Almost seventy degrees above normal for this time of year with no sign of any moisture relief in sight.
Blossom in T’s garden, Lake District, just before Christmas:
Of Rivers and Man
752 days ago
I don’t think I’ve seen so much water around as at the moment. Walking across the fields is like walking in a permanent puddle, the stock that remain outside are poaching the ground badly and driving over to the Lake DIstrict yesterday, I soon discovered that the road drains can’t cope either.
This doesn’t deter Rufus from swimming the rivers though, although I’m sure I saw a look of surprise on his face when the boiling flood water wipped him off downstream on his first crossing. This canine swimming usually takes place on a stretch of river where (for some reason and at great expense) the farmer has seen fit to straighten the course of the river, cutting through the meanders of ages that have left their mark in the valley. As a consequence the water is now eroding the river bank at a faster rate on his neighbour’s land, as well as making inroads into restoring it’s previous meandering path. Altogether a rather pointless exercise.
In huge contrast, I received this photo of an Ericson Skycrane fire-fighting helicopter over the Victoria river from a Yahoo Group buddy in Australia.
We spend millions on coastal erosion, which would also appear to be ultimatelty pointless, but to what ends do we go to peserve what we’ve built or reclaim from the sea, especially in the face of an increasing rate of climate change with attendant sea level rises? As with many of these issues, I think we are looking at things about face, we should be concentrating on moving with the changes and allowing plant and animal migrations, whilst at least trying to miinimise our impact upon any change and degradation of our environment.
Today, I see the announcement of the probable extinction of the goddess of the Yangtze . If this proves to be correct, the small, nearly blind dolphin known as the baiji will be “the first large aquatic mammal to have gone extinct since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s”. It apparently couldn’t withstand the pressure of man’s use of it’s environment – I hear David Attenborough’s words at the end of BBC’s Planet Earth series and it’s morally high time to “cherish” what we have left.
On a lighter note, I love the New York Times’s review of Windows Vista by David Pogue, there are a few around, but it’s short, to the point and I like the Pogues.
Yorkshire Dales Local Access Forum
762 days ago
Just got back from an ‘interview’ session for this access forum, which was quite stimulating stuff.
Under the Countryside Rights of Way Act 2000 (CROW) the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority is required to establish a Local Access Forum, to advise the Authority from the perspective of ‘stakeholders’. Indeed that was one of the questions put to us, for debate, as it’s always all too easy to get carried away and suddenly you’re in an imaginary world of wielding power and putting your little bit of the globe to rights (according to your viewpoint of course). I was back in the meeting room with all the factions that had an interest in my boss’s land, trying to seek a way through to what was invariably almost common ground at the end of the day, despite the apparent disparate starting points. So, a good question to remind me to be more factional!
At things like this, I hear the word ‘sustainable’ used a lot – and I know it’s the buzz word – but I do question the long term sustainabilty of areas such as the Dales, having lived amongst and seen what is happened to some areas of the Lake District. One can immediately distill the problem down Hardinian Taboo lines and point to the self-defeating success of the Lakes, the Tragedy of the Commons. However, another word that came up a lot was ‘education’ and I can never get away from the thought that we (generally) are getting further and further removed from our environment and our understanding of the way it (still) functions despite us. We are learning more and more about our environment, but it seems that that information is disseminated through an interested and concerned minority, although I think the Stern Report is good in that it has attempted to publicly bring into focus the economic implications, not an easy task.
We have perhaps lost ‘wilderness’ for good in England certainly the Lakes has already gone past this point, but at what point do we say the Dales is still the Dales, acceptable in character and ‘sustainable’ – picture postcard looks with block pathways on the hills? What I’m interested in is us realising our ‘footprint’ and having the awareness to self-regulate how much human traffic an area, such as this, can stand – everybody included…
…and while we’re on the subject, I think this moon base is a great step (pun intended).
Stern start
795 days ago
Although the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change was commissioned by Gordon Brown, Nicholas Stern is a highly respected researcher and of course, a former chief economist at the World Bank.
The report attempts to cover very complex economic ground – estimating costs over decades and factoring in social and economic changes predicted to take place – therefore it should be commended for attempting such calculations which are a strong tool for persuasion. However, as a consequence many are seeing it as more a political rather than a scientific document.
Taking heed of existing studies on mitigation costs, along with new results from previous calculations on the impact on global GDP, Stern has been accused of “cherry picking” alarming results on the link between natural disasters and climate change. But, just as thousands of delegates from more than 180 countries will fly to Nairobi, Kenya, for the floundering Kyoto Protocol talks on climate change, arguments about the validity of climate science may be finally dying down.
Perhaps people are now beginning to focus on how much the world should be allocating to deal with and prepare for a changing climate, however derived.
Overnight frost
813 days ago
The first overnight ground-frost of the year around here and it’s bringing the leaves off the trees in grand fashion, apparently it was down to -5˚C.
Unfortunately, the strong winds earlier last week have brought an old Ash tree down – it’s been home to Little Owls for many years – all we need is a strong wiind again to shift all the leaves.
Going to extremes
819 days ago
A study carried out for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – ‘Going to Extremes’ – based on computer modelling, has concluded that most of the world will experience significant changes in extreme weather events… more food for thought.