Murdoch – 21years is a long time apparently.
July 12, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
I have been watching this ‘hacking’ debacle since the highly astute and reputable ‘Yates of the Yard’ first strutted his stuff. At the time, it seemed odd, particularly the arresting of Labour ministers, and the sudden announcement that there was nothing more to act on when people who seemed to know what they were talking about were protesting that there was loads more.
Then we had the horrifying prospect of Murdoch’s empire owning all of BSkyB along with the rest: I seem to remember that when he bought British Satellite Broadcasting in 1990, he agreed to hold onto a minority of BSkyB shares because otherwise the govt thought he’d own too much – so what’s changed in 21 years? Does it now not matter that he could own virtually all of our cable/satellite TV as well as our biggest newspapers.
And now we have the tories (following Labour) gagging to give the man his way until it blew up in their faces. He plays a long game – he did invest hugely in the development of Sky TV.
This is a strange scandal, and I think that manypeople are glorying in the finding of new ‘horrifying’ examples of journalistic misbehaviour.
The important thing is that we need investigative journalism that works within a free and varied press environment.
I get very cyinical about our government these days.
And after 9 billion?
January 30, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
It is often said that we have to gear up for feeding 9 billion people in 2050, or before, and that genetically modified (GM) crops must be deployed more widely in order to provide sufficient food. Well, that would be nice for the companies that own the genes of the GM products that are sold into the market, and on the surface, it makes sense to make agriculture more efficient. It might also feed people who would otherwise go hungry, which would reduce suffering. All of these benefits have associated problems which cast doubt on the GM proposition for feeding a growing human population, but there is one problem that I believe trumps them all: What happens when we get to 9 billion?
Trying to solve the problem of feeding 9 billion people by increasing food production instead of working out how to stop the population growing is like shovelling more coal into the run-away train’s boiler instead of trying to slow it down. After all, there were 3 billion humans in 1960, which doubled to 6 billion in 1999, taking only 30 years. Today, 12 years later, we are approaching 7 billion. The rate of increase is slowing, but more people produce more babies. If 6.87 billion humans on the planet today produce enough babies to result in a net population increase of 230,000 per day, 9 billion logically results in an increase of over 300,000 per day, meaning that the population will go on increasing to 10, 11 and 12 billion until there’s no more room to put anyone.
Of course, that won’t happen as there has to come a point at which even the most efficient food production can’t feed the population, so what happens then? Are people going to be left to starve? Imagine the carnage that will result from conflict and wars over resources! Or maybe at that point (9 billion), humanity will magically start to try to control population growth. Well, if managing the human population has to be done at some point, why not start now when the problem will be 2 billion easier to deal with, and give the planet a chance?
We have to face the fact that humans are, and always have been, too good at reproducing: we like sex and more of us tend to survive to reproductive age than ever before. We also live longer which means that there is pressure at both ends for the population to increase. How much more humane to think the problem through then decide together how to deal with it so that increasing conflict, suffering and disease can be avoided? Some of my cleverest friends think that nature will control the situation through disease: do we have be satisfied with such a solution?
This fatalistic and cynical scenario implies that there is nothing to be done, and that we may as well carry on as usual while we await the inevitable. The risks of this are hideous: pressure on food and mineral resources will result in wars, and there is always the danger that rogue politicians will use war to reduce the population of the opposition in order to secure more for their own; some governments will try to reduce population by coercion and fascism; billions will live in increasingly harsh conditions suffering starvation, disease and lack of water.
The answer? Sadly the answer is almost certainly impossible as it would require all the major governments of the World to take a long-term view and persuade their people to start acting responsibly and reduce their rate of reproduction whilst also reducing damage to their environment. It would require a recognition by religious people that it is better to look after the human beings on the planet now than to keep producing more and more in the name of ‘the sanctity of life’. If human life really is sacred then we should ensure that every person on the Earth can live according to the United Nations principles of human rights: with dignity and reasonable comfort.
The implications of this idea are that economic growth ceases to be the main drive, and that the World’s resources are shared more evenly. It ain’t gonna happen as short term interests, political expediency and belief that you are right and others are wrong will continue until the whole system breaks down. The odd thing is that, in the event of a global disaster wiping out nine tenths of the human population or more, the remainder would approach the task of rebuilding their lives with optimism and energy….. what goes around comes around.
Eat, Drink and Be Merry, for The Normalcy Bias protects us.
January 16, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
The Telegraph reported on Jan 13th 2011 that Jeffrey Kiehl, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research has concluded that because of Man’s activities, “…atmospheric levels of CO2 could rise from 390 ppm to 1,000 ppm by the end of this century. The last time the world had such high levels of carbon dioxide temperatures were on average 29F(16C) above pre-industrial levels. Evidence has been found of crocodiles and palm trees at the Poles and only small mammals were able to survive.”
All the evidence points to global warming happening faster than hoped for or predicted, but humans choose to ignore the warnings and welcome any scepticism or denial that humans are the cause of any significant climate change. Either that, or they are focused on crusades for religious and/or political power, or in many cases on day to day survival.
Why are we so intent on doing nothing to address the risk? We insure our homes, our cars, and pay large amounts of money to secure our childrens’ educations, all for a good future. We rant and rave and riot in the streets about tuition fees or petrol prices. But when it comes to our environment upon which we all depend totally, the default position is to do nothing. It’s ‘Eat, drink and be merry…”, in most cases omitting the second part of the saying “.. for tomorrow we die.”
So is the reason that attitudes are broadly divided between the mainstream of society (in all it’s many forms) on one side, and the little huddle of environmentalists and scientists on the other because of a shear inability to act? An inability to conceive?
Wikipedia says “The normalcy bias refers to an extreme mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and also its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of the government to include the populace in its disaster preparations.”
A typical symptom of this is last evening: Lindsey and I had a delightful time at a party put on by our local Transition group which I attend. It was a part open to the entire village, indeed the entire region, and advertised (modestly and rather over-discretely) locally and on the Transition web site. You were to bring a locally produced contribution of food and/or drink, and get there in a low-carbon manner if possible. About 20 people turned up, most of whom were the organisers, with a singer from Swindon, an activist from Oxford and a couple who rear pigs in a nearby village. We had a delightful evening of excellent food (the roast pork was divine, home made pate, cider etc etc) and entertainment by myself and also Talis Kimberly, a singer-songwriter. Every single person was on message – there were no sceptics, no dissenters, and almost no new people. The community had stayed away in their thousands.
But I can say that we did eat, we did drink and we were very merry.
http://www.doug-kennedy.com/2011/12/the-mysteries-in-the-forest-floor/
http://www.doug-kennedy.com/2011/08/a-walk-in-the-countryside-natures-resurgance/
Dell Computer, Marketing and Responsibility
November 24, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
I bought my wife a new computer a couple of weeks ago and selected a Dell Inspiron desk computer as she’d had one before and it was a good price on the internet, and most importantly they did one with a pink front! Well, it took a week to arrive: they have a delivery system that makes it impossible to have any choice when it will arrive (so what’s the good if you won’t be there?). This made me think it would have been easier to buy somewhere locally, and quicker.
Anyway, it arrived and I started to set it up. It turned out that the good price is because the insides are pretty stripped down – lots of memory and disk space, but no sound nor wifi and very basic video. OK. I bought a wifi dongle (£29) and managed to load everything up. Then it turned out that Lindsey’s perfectly good Dell 1100 laser printer couldn’t be used as Dell don’t do a driver for it with Windows 7. Thousands of people must have these printers and they still work perfectly well, but it seems that Dell wants to sell NEW computers, or that’s what I assume.
I’ve tried to lodge a complaint, but it isn’t easy. So here it is. This sort of corporate behaviour is bad because it persuades people to buy a new printer, and to chuck the old one, which is a waste, and adds to consuming unnecessary resources.
What underlies this is the basic falacy of economic growth as the only route to human prosperity. It is not: it is the route that we are now set on following.
Can we change this and start to live within our means?
Warmest Global Temperatures on Record – Russia, Pakistan not a coincidence.
August 15, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
Weather can be changeable – hot, cold, usual, unusual.
Climate is measured over years, not days or weeks.
Weird weather is happening in many parts of the World – Russia and Pakistan are both tragic, for somewhat different reasons, but experts believe that we will see more such events over the coming years.
This is because the warming atmosphere and oceans increase the overall energy, which changes the big weather patterns and increases the energy stored in weather systems.
If you learn that climate change is NOT, in fact, happening, check out your source: there are people, mostly backed by vested interests, (such as Exxon), who spread disinformation and successfully cloud the picture and confuse people. See below for some reality.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (USA) says June, April to June, and Year-to-Date Global Temperatures are Warmest on Record
July 15, 2010
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100715_globalstats.html
June 2010 came in as the warmest on record. Last month’s combined global land and ocean surface temperature made it the warmest June on record and the warmest on record averaged for any April-June and January-June periods, according to NOAA. Worldwide average land surface temperature was the warmest on record for June and the April-June period, and the second warmest on record for the year-to-date (January-June) period, behind 2007.
NOAA: June, April to June, and Year-to-Date Global Temperatures are Warmest on Record
July 15, 2010
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100715_globalstats.html
June 2010 came in as the warmest on record. Last month’s combined global land and ocean surface temperature made it the warmest June on record and the warmest on record averaged for any April-June and January-June periods, according to NOAA. Worldwide average land surface temperature was the warmest on record for June and the April-June period, and the second warmest on record for the year-to-date (January-June) period, behind 2007.
What connects a Pacific grey whale and you last visit to the shops?
July 18, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
What connects a Pacific grey whale and you last visit to the shops?
On your last visit to the shops, it is almost certain that you came home with some plastic that you hadn’t taken out with you: if you are really careless, then it would include the plastic carrier bags from the shops you visted, but it’s hard to avoid the odd polystyrene punnet in shrink wrap. Then there are the cardboard boxes with plastic wrappers on the food inside, and sometimes also on the outside!
Then there are those little bottles of water in shrink-wrapped multipacks, and packs of fruit drinks with tough wrappers that will be around long, long after the drink has been consumed and excreted into the sewage system.
Shrink-wrap can’t normally be recycled by local authorities, nor can polystyrene, nor many other packaging materials, so they end up in land fill or being burned in the incinerators that no-one likes in their back yard (so why do those same poeple continue to produce so much waste?), along with much of the recyclable plastic.
Some of it just gets chucked anywhere: just look at the verges of a major road that hasn’t been cleared by the local authority for a while. I have been picking up this sort of litter as I walk or run through parks and the countryside for decades, but what gets missed just blows somewhere. Today’s haul was a dirty nappy in Ashridge Forest, left just off the dirt footpath in a pretty piece of woodland. There was plastic in that too.
What has this to do with grey whales? Have a look at these web pages:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/11/plastiki-rothschild-plastic-bottle-catamaran (millions of tonnes of plastic swilling around in the Pacific Ocean while sea life disappears)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/20/beached-grey-whale-in-sea_n_544130.html (A beached grey whale contains large amounts of domestic plastic.)
None of these materials existed 50 years ago, when plastics were still relatively expensive and the technology was at an early stage, so the entire phenomenon has built up during one generation. Our society is more obsessed with cleanliness and smelling nice than it ever was, but we seem to pay less and less attention to the filth and pollution that we leave in our wakes as we drive on through our lives.
It cannot make sense that every time we buy a sandwich, a drink and a coffee, which are consumed in 10 minutes, we throw away:
Sandwich: shrink wrap or plastic sleeve, carboard pocket, the bits we didn’t want to eat.
Drink: A clear plastic bottle with label and coloured plastic cap.
Coffee: Polystyrene or carboard cup, plastic top, plastic or wooden stirer, paper sugar packet.
What can you do about it? Quite a lot actually, but only if you are willing to think a bit more about your actions, and to not just take the most convenient course every time, which usually means buying everything in one trip to the supermarket: local shops and outdoor markets usually put less packaging on food items. And you can always select items that have less packaging, or tell the butcher that you don’t really need two plastic bags and plastic film around those chops.
If you are feeling really bold, you could protest to the retailer.
If you disagree with all of this and are one of those people who think that their convenience is paramount, and that chops need 3 layers of plastic, then you won’t have read this far anyway. But if you did read this far, I’d be interested to hear how you can justify it.
http://www.doug-kennedy.com/2011/12/the-mysteries-in-the-forest-floor/
http://www.doug-kennedy.com/2011/08/a-walk-in-the-countryside-natures-resurgance/
A Rose, no poisons, just the odd thorn
July 14, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
Here is a nice pink rose that grows in our garden. This is the one of the second bloom of flowers we have had this summer: the first was of very large, multiple blossoms with a delicious scent.
The bush is perfect! No black spot or other diseases, no aphids to speak off (I do pick them off about once a week if I see a cluster). It has produced numerous shoots this year and stands about 120 cms tall, in spite of having been pruned quite hard in the winter.
So what am I doing? Boasting? Well, not really – there is a point to this. Our garden has had NO chemical fertilisers or pesticides put on it for the past 3 years. The entire garden is remarkably pest free. Now, that is in part due to the very cold winter, which killed off many nasties and seems to have left us with wonderful floral displays. But it is also due to the fact that this bush has had a dressing of our own well-rotted compost, and every day, gets a pot of cold darjeeling tealeaves and water poured over it.
I learned this lesson a long time ago from my uncle Tom in Jersey, who carried seaweed up from the beach to turn his patch of sand into a beautiful garden that produced the best peas and potatoes you have ever tasted each year. And, being a good Scot, he was much to careful to buy nasty poisons, and knew that the seaweed was far too good a fertiliser and soil sustainant to pollute with rubbish.
The agricultural and horticultural industries would like you to think otherwise, and festoon our garden centre shelves with vast quantities of potions and poisons and magic ingredients to ensure the fecundity and health of our gardens. But in fact, what they do is destroy the balance, which results in pests becoming far more prevailant than they would be without them.
Gardens are not like single-crop intensive agriculture: they depend upon diversity and a healthy ecosystem being sustained. Pest problems can mostly be dealt with by a bit of hard work, or sustained attention and husbandry: ie. good gardening. Chemicals are short cuts that often create as many problems as they solve.
The International Day for Biological Diversity – Did you miss it?
July 12, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
The United Nations proclaimed last Sunday, May 22nd 2010 The International Day for Biological Diversity (IDB).
I didn’t know in advance, but I did hear it on the news over the weekend. What about you: did you notice? On that day, a friend sent me a document written by The Wildlife Trusts in 2006 containing guidance for parish councils on how to fulfill the requirements of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities (NERC) Act 2006 regarding biodiversity: our parish council chair had never heard of the NERC Act and knew of nothing contained within their plan.
Genetically Modified (GM) Foods Are An Unnecessary Evil
June 15, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
Yesterday I walked for about a mile through grassy fields, about half of them overgrown with grasses, nettles and other vagrant species. This was not in the middle of nowhere, but in prime Buckinghamshire farmland: some of the most fertile and longest farmed in England. These fields were completely vacant – no livestock, and certainly no crops.
Were these fields to be left alone, apart from mowing, for long enough, they could become meadows, rich in wildflowers, with nesting places for skylarks and other birds, and a refuge for hares. That is unlikely – it’s not the culture around here, but if we are so much in need of food that we want to plant GM crops, why are the in this state?
Much of the actively farmed land in this area has livestock on it – beef cattle mostly, some sheep and a little dairy. Cattle are notoriously inefficient in terms of food per acre, eating and drinking many times the weight of meat produced during their lives, let alone the methane they blow out of their rears.
Then there is all the land throughout the South East that is used for rearing horses, which are a hobby. There is an industry around them which provides work and pleasure for many of course, and they are lovely animals. But again, this is land that is supposedly so scarce that we need to plant GM crops.
Again the same question is begged – if we can afford to put so much land to livestock, can there really be a food crisis so severe that industrially produced GM crops are needed?
It may well be that the prices paid to farmers for crops make them less attractive, or even unaffordable to grow, but that raises questions about the ‘free and efficient market’ that is supposed to apply. The market for food is a bit of a free-for-all, certainly, meaning that it is the interests of the rich and powerful that are best served, rather than the good of the land. The fact that farmers are sometimes paid less than the food costs to grow creates great inefficiencies and waste, and also that the problem is not short supply.
It is a fact that the UK has a growing population. They need to be fed, and some very knowledgable people say that this will become a problem. But why are GM crops necessary? We seem to have plenty of land available for growing crops that could feed any number of people, but we just don’t use it. Of course, as long as supermarkets can import food cheaper than our farmers can produce it the problem is even less urgent. If we foresee a problem down the road, which is quite likely,we should plan for that both in terms of quantity of food grown and population size.
GM crops use lots of aggro-chemicals, including pesticides. Pesticides are intended to kill things – the bees, butterflies and other vital insects that unintentionally ingest them included. Even without GM crops this is a problem: One of our local villages had an open gardens day on Sunday and in 4 large gardens I didn’t see ONE honey bee (quite a few bumble bees) and few butterflies. The advent of GM crops in the UK is only likely to make this situation worse, owing to the quantities of chemicals needed for them.
Then there are the ‘unintended consequences’ of planting GM crops. By their nature, we don’t know what these will be, but these are alien plant types that require a lot of technology to make them successful, and their wide distribution could be catastrophic. You can forget about organic farms nearby as their crops are likely to become infected.
Then there is the fact that GM seed takes a lot of research and development – they cost millions and millions of pounds. So the companies that produce them own the genetic material, and will want to sell it as widely as possible once they are allowed to. They are very powerful and will offer big incentives to get farmers roped in. As the market grows, the company becomes more powerful, and eventually, the trap shuts, and the farmers and consumers are in it – you can’t re-use the seed, nor cross it with other varieties yourself. You have to buy the seed, AND the ghastly pesticides from The Company PLC (probably American or Chinese owned).
We have enough land to grow food for ourselves and more: it is a matter of how we choose to use it…. and whether we allow the global human population to continue to explode (http://www.optimumpopulation.org/).
One Sunday’s News: What Is Important?
May 2, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
From one Sunday newspaper today, May 2nd 2009:
Item 1: 33.8% of honey bees in the USA disappeared or died since last year. The picture is much the same in the UK, though figures aren’t all in yet and is a bad year in a continuing trend. The main, but not only cause, is ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’ where whole colonies just die or disappear: what triggers it isn’t known, but taking into account chemical residues in wax, hives and honey, pesticides are a likely contributor. And if you think that farmers all stick to the usage guidelines for these poisons, you are probably deluding yourself.
If flowers aren’t pollinated, then most fruit (which includes vegetables such as beans) can’t grow. The immediate effect on our food would be very sad, the long-term implications are frightening.
Millions of gallons of crude oil are being spewed out into the sea in the Gulf of Mexico from where they were stashed away by nature millions of years ago. There is no easy fix and vast areas of coast and sea bed in the Gulf and beyond are imminent danger of destruction. The cost in fish, birds and other sea creatures will be huge, even if they can stop the flow. If it goes on for weeks, as it may well, the size of the disaster will be enormous and terribly tragic.
This sort of news appears somewhere every day of course, and the scientists warn us that we are on a cliff edge. So what is actually important to each of us today?
Unless there is a World-wide revolution and What Is Important becomes OUR ENVIRONMENT, it is hard to be optimistic.