Onshore wind farms will provide about 5% of Britain’s electricity by 2010, according to the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA). In a new report, it says turbines are being installed faster than predicted. If this is correct, onshore wind farms will take the government halfway to its target of generating 10% of electricity from renewable sources by 2010. The report comes a day before the government unveils a major review of its climate change policies. Entitled Onshore Wind: Powering Ahead, the report claims to be the most comprehensive assessment of the UK’s onshore wind sector ever undertaken. It forms part of the BWEA’s response to another ongoing government review on energy which is due to conclude in the middle of the year. Half full Our research proves that onshore wind will bring major benefits to the economy and the environment Chris Tomlinson The BWEA says that projects already constructed and those already approved will give a capacity of 3,000 megawatts (MW) by 2010. Taking into account potential barriers such as planning consent and grid capability, it identifies a further 3,000MW capacity which it says is ‘forecast to be consented and built’ by […]
There are no streetlights between cities, I notice, as I blindly follow the car ahead of me to the centre of the 20-mile by 6-mile island, to Tranebjerg and Flinch’s Hotel – my home base for the next two days. The island feels deserted, and it is in a way…February is Denmark’s coldest month, and many of Samso’s 4,300 residents are burrowed snugly in their warm homes – a stark contrast to when an influx of several tens of thousands visit the island during the tourist season. Many come in July for the popular music festival, the beautiful beaches, and sailing. But of late, Samso has been invaded by a different kind of tourist…an eco-tourist. That was my mission…why I travelled over 4,000 miles: to discover Samso’s Eco-Revolution. In 1997, Denmark held a national competition. The selected winner would be home to a one-of-a-kind experiment: The winner would be expected to convert all its energy supply to 100% renewable energy within 10 years. The small island of Samso was given the nod. Because it is an island that has no conventional energy resources of its own, Samso was an ideal choice for such a controlled experiment. […]
This issue of SR I am giving over to two pieces on Global Warming, both drawn from the most mainstream of traditional media. I am doing this because after eight years of covering this subject I sense a change in the zeitgeist, as it becomes clearer and clearer not only that Global Warming is real, whatever the few remaining, mostly right wing, naysayers may say; and that the time line has collapsed and these changes are coming far sooner than most people realize. — Stephan
Last week, Britain’s Prince Charles called climate change ‘the No. 1 risk in the world, ahead of terrorism and demographic change.’ But the prince, a long-time environmentalist, has some unlikely competition for the year’s most strident statement on global warming. In a Feb. 6 address to the United Nations Security Council, conservative Republican Sen. Richard Lugar called for action on global warming, citing recent advances in scientific knowledge on the subject: ‘The problem [of climate change] is real and caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gasses, including carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.’ He went on to add that climate change could ‘bring drought, famine, disease, mass migration and rising sea levels threatening coasts and economies worldwide, all of which could lead to political conflict and instability.’ Lugar is not the only one reassessing global warming. Last week, insurers, bruised by a devastating 2005 Atlantic storm season that saw an all-time high of 14 hurricanes, announced plans to establish a climate-change task force under the auspices of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Record insurance-industry losses of $30 billion from 2004’s hurricanes in the United States were dwarfed by the more than $60 billion in insurance losses […]
No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you’ve heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us. It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry-a Category 5 storm with wind bursts that reached 180 m.p.h.-exploded through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked that way last year as curtains of fire and dust turned the skies of Indonesia orange, thanks to drought-fueled blazes sweeping the island nation. It certainly looks that way as sections of ice the size of small states calve from the disintegrating Arctic and Antarctic. And it certainly looks that way as the sodden wreckage of New Orleans continues to molder, while the waters of the Atlantic gather themselves for a new hurricane season just two months away. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast-when the emergency becomes commonplace-something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming. The image of Earth as organism-famously […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
