Archive for the ‘International’ Category
The nonsense that is badger culling in England
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Source: BadgerHero, wikipedia
The long-fought for badger cull in England is about to start. The plan is to kill – systematically – 100,000 badgers; one third to the UK population. That, to reduce the infection of cattle by 15-20 per cent – not even to eradicate it.
Now the case against the cull has reached a new high with a number of eminent scientists at last speaking out. Lord John Krebs: “The scientific case is as clear as it can be: this cull is not the answer to TB in cattle. The government is cherry-picking bits of data to support its case.”; Lord Robert May, a former government chief scientist and president of the Royal Society, said: “I have no sympathy with the decision. They are transmuting evidence-based policy into policy-based evidence”; and the current government chief scientist, Professor Sir John Beddington, said: “I continue to engage with Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] on the evidence base concerning the development of bovine TB policy. I am content that the evidence base, including uncertainties and evidence gaps, has been communicated effectively to ministers.”
Not surprisingly, David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, is quoted as saying: “I believe this is the right policy for healthy badgers as well as healthy cattle.” Even though, according to Professor Rosie Woodroffe of the Zoological Society of London “…all the evidence shows that culling badgers increases the proportion of badgers that have TB”. Dead badgers are always healthy.
So what is going on? Farmers and landowners have always had a penchant for destroying the countryside and anything else in it that offers a hint of competition to their activities. Foxes and birds of prey are persecuted incessantly on this basis. There is nothing like a land-owner’s whim – backed by the National Farmers’ Union – to base policy. Why do they never look at their own husbandry practices? Mad Cow disease, for example, was the farmers’ own doing. Though, we, the taxpayer, and the cattle, ended up paying for it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/13/badger-cull-mindless
Rising food prices
Source: David Monniaux, Wikipedia
I woke up this morning to the not unexpected news that food prices are rising. Particularly wheat. In the UK we are talking about yields being 15 per cent down. The dry spring and wet summer are the key factors for the UK. Drought in the prairies in the US and Russia have just compounded the situation.
Speculators are, clearly, going to do well out of this. It strikes me that a monkey could have speculated on this when the seeds were originally sown. I’m told that it will be hard for poultry and pig farmers as half of the grain crop goes to feeding these secondary sources of protein. I do feel that it is about time that the price of chicken and pork reflected the real world a little better. Maybe more of us can cut down or even eradicate meat from our diets. It is not going to get any better.
However, rising food prices do hit the poor disproportionately. The Guardian quotes Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London’s City University speaking on the Today progamme on the BBC. “Lang said the poorest 10% of households in the UK had seen a drop in food affordability of 20% in the last eight years and that this was also a “disaster for public health” as the price of healthier produce such as fruit had risen by 34% in the last five years. Lang, who coined the phrase “food miles”, said: “Most analysts think the long drop in food prices, of affordability, is over. We are now in a new world, a world of new fundamentals, not just bad weather this year but a long-term squeeze.””
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/10/food-prices-rise-wettest-summer
Arctic sea ice
Source: NASA
My most recent blog entries have been a shade indulgent. I write about my holiday; actually, a rare occasion when I do not add an awful lot of CO2 into the environment. That said, the tandem’s manufacture probably added considerably to my carbon footprint. The holiday was made by the beauty of the natural environment fed by a powerful river (the Rhine).
It has been a long time since I have been a serious environmentalist. I cut my campaigning teeth with Friends of the Earth in the early 1980s; and I bought the Guardian newspaper specifically to read the environment stories. Today I am reminded – as a somewhat older man – that the issues have not only not gone away, but rather they have worsened. Our knowledge about what is happening has increased, but the denial across the developed world is not retreating.
What has actually reminded me? The Guardian newspaper has published a short article quoting Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. This year has been catastrophic in terms of arctic ice melt. It is now down to a mere 3.5m sq km down from the previous lowest recorded in 2007 of 4.17m sq km. He predicts this will have retreated fully by 2015/16. “As the sea ice retreats in summer the ocean warms up (to 7C in 2011) and this warms the seabed too. The continental shelves of the Arctic are composed of offshore permafrost, frozen sediment left over from the last ice age. As the water warms the permafrost melts and releases huge quantities of trapped methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas so this will give a big boost to global warming.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/17/arctic-collapse-sea-ice?INTCMP=SRCH
Mars Rover successfully lands
source: nasa.gov
What a contrast between the noise of the Olympics and the awesome team achievement of getting the Mars Rover safely onto the Martian surface, first with a parachute and then with rockets. And then get some pictures of the planet before breakfast. The seven minutes of terror proved anything but. Though images from NASA’s control room showed the tension.
Breathtaking.
Let’s do the math: Mars Rover £1.5billion; Olympics: £9billion. That’s about six Rovers for an Olympics. Legacy…let’s see, but I suspect the science will endure in a way the Olympics will not. Plus, if we talk about inspiring a generation, surely Mars/planetary exploration top
s running fast?
And here is the image taken from a satellite of the craft decending to the surface being slowed by the largest parachute ever used in a space programme.
Why politics matters
Golden Dawn logo
It has been quite a couple of weeks. Francois Hollande is elected President of France on a less Austerity ticket. The Greeks don’t elect anyone to run the country but open the door to some of Europe’s most agressive fascists. And the fickle English electorate finally shows that it realises that the Conservatives rule in their own interests. It may be too late on that one, however, if healh service ‘reforms’ and educational ‘reforms’ go unchecked.
This all challenges the ‘fix’ agreed by the previous generation of European leaders regarding the Euro and sovereign debt. Yesterday morning we learned that Spanish government bailed out the country’s fouth largest bank, Bankia. Today they are shoring up the rest of the banking sector against the backdrop of no growth, high unemployment and investor withdrawal of funds.
It is clear, however, that electors are unlikely to be swayed by policies that continue to support those who have brought on the misery by their own greed, self-belief and inability to manage their own financial instrument creations. (This morning we find JP Morgen Chase have reported an embarrassing $2bn loss generated by a trader in derivatives that were designed to hedge against risks elsewhere in the bank.)
I’m hopeful about the French. The Greeks, however, have resorted to a fascist response. I suspect a contagion is not likely across Europe, the Greeks will need to manage them robustly. They are not democrats.
Flag courtesy of Stlemur
The special relationship
So David Cameron is now in The USA shoring up the special relationship. The speeches yesterday on the Whitehouse lawn were 
somewhat over-the-top with respect to how fabulous the Camerons and the Obamas are. The description of beacons of liberty, freedom, justice, etc. from both sides seemed to have a certain other worldliness quality. Where does constant regime change, interference in other countries’ affairs, Guantanamo Bay, assassination squads, privatisation, bank bailouts….fit into all of this.
Nice clothes.
Medvedev Tells NATO something
It is like the cold war starting again. The Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, goes live to tell the Russian people that NATO’s 
missile shield with ‘facilities’ located rather close to Russian borders and installations is a threat. Enter talks or suffer the cosequences, he says chillingly to camera. Associated Press’s report can be found here: Medvedev
What exactly is going on here? It is not widely being reported with the print and TV/radio media preoccupied with the Leveson Inquiry into press intrusion. Did the story itself go under the radar, or has the media forgotten that superpowers flex their muscles when provoked? If so, what is the provocation? Is NATO planning to move against Syria, or more likely Iran? Or is Medvedev staking his place in history as his tenure fades?
Be informed 