The UK has become only the seventh nation in the world to have more than two gigawatts (GW) of operational wind power capacity.

The milestone was passed on Friday when the Braes O’Doune wind farm, near Stirling, began producing electricity.

Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling described it as a “major landmark” for the UK wind industry.

The government has set a target for 10% of electricity to be generated from renewable sources by 2010.

The 36-turbine Braes O’Doune wind farm, built and operated by Airtricity, has a generating capacity of 72 megawatts (MW), enough to supply electricity to 45,000 homes in the area, according to the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA).

Maria McCaffery, BWEA’s chief executive, said passing the 2GW mark, equivalent to two coal-fired power stations, was a “tremendous step forward”.

For more information: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6344215.stm

The final design for a “doomsday” vault that will house seeds from all known varieties of food crops has been unveiled by the Norwegian government.

The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole.

The vault aims to safeguard the world’s agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change.

Construction begins in March, and the seed bank is scheduled to open in 2008.

The Norwegian government is paying the $5m (£2.5m) construction costs of the vault, which will have enough space to house three million seed samples.

For more information: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6335899.stm

Nigel sent in this article which appeared on Yahoo! news today - what do people think of this article? Is it really fair?

Supermarkets are scrambling to capture the millions of “green” pounds spent by increasingly environmentally aware shoppers.

Farmers’ markets across the country are buzzing with conscientious customers buying locally grown knobbly carrots and leeks pulled straight from the soil.

With the threat of climate change racing up the global political agenda, people are going green when they shop. And their sights are set on food miles.

“The concept of food miles has absolutely rightly entered into people’s consciousness in Britain,” says Bill Vorley, head of the sustainable markets group at the British International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) think-tank.

The idea of reducing food miles seems straightforward — simply buy produce which has travelled the shortest possible distance from farm to plate. Continue Reading »

As reported in the Guardian, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a group funded by Exxon Mobil is offering scientists and economists up to $10,000 to produce articles which discredit or emphasise the shortcomings of the report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment. Continue Reading »

It seems like climate change fever is hotting up (no pun intended). In the last week, there has been a deluge of information and opinion about what’s going to happen and what the expected rise in temperatures are etc etc. There are still the doubters out there - I watched a broadcast from ‘Live with Larry King’ and there was a guy who thought that temperature rises would be a good thing and that global systems (such as the Atlantic drift) were driven by wind and not by temperature.

The UK government today announced that Al Gore’s ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ would be distributed to all english schools as global warming will be taught as part of the national curriculum. This is due to the clarity of the message and the scientific basis of the arguments put forward. Hopefully, seeing this film can influence a generation.

In other news today, BBC lunchtime news had a major section on global warming and interviewed one of their reporters (known as ‘Ethical Man’) who went on a vegan diet during January to examine the implications of diet on global warming. There will be full report on Newsnight later tonight. An interesting comment slipped out from the presenter, who, after stating he had been on a vegan diet, said “… the rest of us are not quite ready yet to go that far…” - the key word was ‘yet’ - in other words, some people are actually accepting that this is something many more people may have to do in the future! Bring it on I say!