Rob Edwards

Plan to punish public bodies that fail to curb climate pollution

from Sunday Herald, 30 November 2008

Government departments which breach their targets to cut climate pollution would be penalised under a radical new scheme being proposed by leading environment and development groups.

Departments which authorise airport expansions, road-building or new coal-fired power stations could be fined for the carbon they create. Local authorities could also have to pay for their polluting projects.

The suggestion comes as Scottish ministers are warned by their environmental advisers that they will fail to meet their target of cutting climate pollution 80% by 2050 if they persist with their current plans to boost aviation and build roads.

French nuclear power falters

from The House Magazine, 24 November 2008

If you thought all was rosy with nuclear power in France, think again. Faith in the country’s nuclear competence has been badly shaken by a spate of accidents and by long delays in the construction of a flagship reactor.

In perhaps the most serious accident, nearly a hundred workers were contaminated with radioactive cobalt after an old pipe leaked. It happened on 23 July 2008 at a major nuclear complex at Tricastin, near Avignon in the south of France.

At the same site just over two weeks earlier 75 kilograms of uranium leaked from another broken pipe, contaminating two local rivers. A ban was imposed on fishing and waters sports by the French safety authorities.

British Energy becomes French

from The House Magazine, 24 November 2008

The deal was worth a massive £12.5 billion, and it will change the face of the British nuclear power industry. Depending on your point of view, it will either ensure Britain a bright nuclear future, or prolong its nuclear nightmare.

In September, British Energy, the company that operates most of the UK’s nuclear power stations, agreed a takeover by Electricité de France (EDF). If all goes as planned, Britain’s nuclear electricity business will become the property of the state-owned French company, and the world’s biggest nuclear generator.

US advances Trident work to help UK

from Sunday Herald, 23 November 2008

The US government has accelerated its programme to replace Trident nuclear missiles to help the UK, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.

The British government has been wrestling to overcome the problems of replacing Trident caused by the British programme being five years ahead of the US. Because many of the key components are shared, this has been causing design headaches.

The UK’s plan is to introduce a new submarine to carry Trident missiles in 2024, while the US hadn’t been planning to replace its Ohio class submarines until 2029. But evidence to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee last week suggests that has now changed.

The head of submarines at the MoD, Rear Admiral Andrew Mathews, told the committee that the “enduring strength” of the Trident replacement programme was its relationship with the US. But he accepted that the different timeframes had created difficulties.

Opposition to plan to lease forests to foreign companies

from Sunday Herald, 23 November 2008

Plans by the Scottish government to raise hundreds of millions of pounds by giving control of vast areas of Scotland’s forests to foreign multinationals are facing furious opposition from trade unions and Labour politicians.

The Scottish National Party has been accused of proposing to “sell off our family silver” to forestry companies, as well as threatening hundreds of jobs. Public access to forests and the protection of wildlife within them are also in jeopardy, allege critics.

But the environment minister, Michael Russell, promised there would be no compulsory redundancies and plenty of guarantees to protect access and wildlife. The government needed to raise money to cut the pollution that is causing climate change, he said.

Hen harriers in terminal decline

from Sunday Herald, 23 November 2008

One of Scotland’s premier birds of prey is facing terminal decline because government measures meant to protect it from persecution are failing.

The hen harrier, which used to be a familiar feature of the moorlands, is disappearing so fast that experts fear for its future. And they castigate the government’s wildlife agency, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), for its “pathetic” response.

SNH defends itself by promising renewed action to crack down on wildlife crime and to encourage better behaviour by landowners, while the Scottish environment minister, Michael Russell, says he is “horrified” by the decline.

Revealed: how the MoD ignored genetic damage in nuclear test veterans

from Sunday Herald, 09 November 2008

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been accused of “a cover-up of a cock-up” in the wake of new evidence that it failed to investigate genetic damage amongst the veterans of Britain’s nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s.

Confidential correspondence from 1984 reveals that the Medical Research Council (MRC) discovered DNA defects in a test veteran characteristic of radiation damage. But the council was never asked to look for similar problems in other veterans.

The revelation is seen as the “smoking gun” that could finally bring justice for the test veterans, who have been campaigning for compensation for illnesses they blame on radiation for decades. They recently launched legal action against the MoD, which has in turn promised an inquiry.

Probe into ‘scandal’ of Cairngorm railway funding

from Sunday Herald, 09 November 2008

The £50 million fiasco over the Cairngorm mountain railway is to be investigated by the Scottish government’s public spending watchdog, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

The huge amounts of taxpayer’s money lavished on the funicular railway near Aviemore by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) are going to be probed by Audit Scotland.

The launch of a major investigation has been hailed as a victory by environmental campaigners. They have been long been demanding an inquiry into what they see as a public funding “scandal”.

The Cairngorm funicular, which runs nearly all the way to the summit of Britain’s fifth highest mountain, has been plagued with controversy since it was first proposed in the early 1990s. Lack of visitors meant that it has been struggling to make money.

New car engine that saves fuel

from MIT Technology Review, 03 November 2008

A research project in the UK has developed a gasoline engine that it claims can reduce fuel consumption by 15 percent without losing power.

The key to the new design is the way in which fuel and air are separately introduced into the engine cylinders. By experimenting with different regimes for directly injecting fuel while varying the opening and shutting the air inlet valves, the researchers say they have achieved the major breakthrough in performance--and developed a "concept-car engine" that is gaining interest from big auto makers.

The aim of the project, a collaboration between two leading car engine development companies, Lotus Engineering and Continental Powertrain, and two universities, Loughborough and University College London, is to reduce losses caused by the engine throttle.

Read the rest of the article here.

The unattractive animals we ignore at our peril

from Sunday Herald, 02 November 2008

They can survive in outer space, go ten years without water, and resist lethal doses of radiation. But hardly anyone has heard of them, and no-one is campaigning to save them.

Tardigrades, which look like microscopic, eight-legged bears, are amongst the planet’s most amazing animals. There are more than a thousand different species of them in every environment on earth, including high mountains, deep oceans, the tropics and the poles.

But unlike whales, elephants, pandas or polar bears, tardigrades have not caught the public imagination. Neither, it has to be said, have mushrooms, microbes, earthworms or woodlice. And that, say the UK government’s wildlife advisers, is a problem.

Ministers under pressure to shift £20m from roads to bikes

from Sunday Herald, 02 November 2008

Scottish ministers are coming under mounting pressure to slice £20 million off the budget for new roads and to spend it on boosting biking instead.

Cycling campaigners have won the support of opposition parties in a bid to persuade the Scottish government to double public spending on cycling projects next year. As a result, MSPs are expecting ministers to alter their budget proposals.

Spokes, the cycling campaign group, has submitted a formal proposal to increase the annual level of spending on bikes from one to two per cent of the transport budget. This could easily be done, it argued, by making a small cut in the massive road-building budget.

MInisters are planning to spend £1,064 million on trunk roads and motorways in 2009-10, an increase of £134 million on 2008-09. Spokes is suggesting shifting just £20 million of this into cycling.