June 2018

  • Schadenfreude begins at home

    Regular readers know that I'm no fan of Mrs M (actually, of either Mrs Ms, but it's the German one who appalls me the most).  I follow the train wreck of her policy mishaps with particular interest not only because...

  • Biomass blues

    Were you someone who immediately thought that there was a problem with using biomass to fuel large power stations (such as Drax)?  Did you say, 'Hang on a bit!  Why are we trucking wood products to US ports, shipping them...

  • Remembering Eunice Foote

    An email last week from David Terry, editor of the valuable BEACONS Guides to Climate Change in which he discusses the sadly little known Eunice Foote, who was the first to discover greenhouse gases. The book that Paul Vare and I wrote recently:...

  • Four modern German proverbs

    Depending on your source, German proverbs can feel similar to English ones – or quite different.  See, for example, this – and this.  My favourite in these collections is this: A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs...

  • The first UN-ESD award for the ASE

    No; UN-ESD is not some new desperate acronym invented by UNESCO.  Rather, it's an award to the UK's Association for Science Education for managing to ignore ESD for so long. Whilst some may think that the ASE's long and sustained...

  • Stay at home for decency

    Einstein was a racist we're now told.  So, as well as being less than progressive in his attitudes to family, it seems that Mr E has been caught expressing less than equitable views about people of ethnicities other than his...

  • DEFRA goes postmodern

    Today is the closing date for expressions of interest in a £10m DEFRA scheme to "enable children in England, particularly those from disadvantaged areas, to be close to nature in and out of school in order to support their health...

  • Where now for the environment movement?

    Tom Crompton asks this question in a new essay from the Common Cause Foundation.  You can read it here.  It sets out five key opportunities for creating a step-change in the environmental movement: ways in which it could work more effectively...

  • The wrong sort of wind

    It's Monday afternoon and a more than gentle north-easterly breeze is rustling the leaves on the trees.  Ideal wind energy generating conditions, you might think.  But no.  The proportion of the UK's electricity coming from wind at this minute is...

  • Will Merkel be Trumped?

    Could it be that the USA will do better than Germany when it comes to meeting obligations arising from the Paris Agreement, despite the US's repudiation of the deal and all that Germanic enthusiasm between the Elbe and Rhine? I...