Monthly Archives: January 2015

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

A Bright Winter’s Walk in Richmond Park

Red Deer Stag
A fine 16-Point Red Deer Stag

In Scotland, the male of the Red Deer is called simply a Stag, all other male deer (presumably Roe in that country) being known as Bucks. Down here, with Sika and other species about, it may be wise to name the species explicitly. There are signs up warning of the impending cull, so now may be the best time of year to see fine large stags resting quietly, the rut over.

Richmond's splendid anthills
Richmond’s splendid anthills

I was welcomed to the park by a flock of Jackdaws chattering in the trees. Down in the valley, last year’s grass stalks are whitening, the fine big anthills well outlined in the low winter sunlight.

A Stonechat was perched on a slender stalk, level with the tops of the grass; there cannot be much in the way of insect food to catch just now.

Egyptian Geese under the Willows
Egyptian Geese under the Willows

On the Pen Ponds, there were remarkably few waterfowl of any kind, but the lower pond had half-a-dozen Pochard. the males handsomely rufous-headed, a pair of Wigeon, the male with a conspicuous white wing-bar, and tucked in a corner under the willows a pair of Egyptian Geese, taking to the water and protesting with short dry honks when molested by a dog.

Male Stonechat
Male Stonechat

Walking back up the hill, a Kestrel hovered briefly, rested in a tree giving a good view of his spotted breast and back. Two herds of Red Deer, one at the base of the hill, one at the top, both with all ages and both sexes together, grazed silently. In the muddiest places, footprints of men, dogs and deer clustered together.

Environment, Wetlands

Blanket-weed Sprouting in January

Blanket-weed (Spirogyra) covering pond in January
Blanket-weed (Spirogyra) covering pond in January

We’re all getting used to the local effects of global warming − garden crocuses and primulas coming up earlier and earlier (they’re flowering already in my garden).

This past fortnight I’ve realized that my efforts to earth up the rhubarb to protect it from frost weren’t working, as frost or no it was cheerfully and energetically pushing up new leaves on long thin red petioles, the leaf-stalks that greengrocers see as  rhubarb.

But I’ve never seen a pond growing over with blanket-weed in January before. Generally it’s an effect seen late in summer, the tangled green mat forming in a rather nutrient-rich (eutrophicated) lowland pond. Each green thread is a flexible cylinder consisting of a single row of plant cells inside their thick cellulose cell walls, with amazingly elegant green spiral chloroplasts inside, hence the apposite and beautiful name of the genus, Spirogyra, drawn and carefully labelled in millions of high school biology exercise books. The strands grow like crazy in warm ponds and ditches, benefiting from the excess of nutrients from runoff in agricultural areas or indeed from towns. The blanket can blot out light from the deeper parts of a pond, killing other organisms living there. But warm enough for blanket-weed in January? That’s something new.

Conservation, Environment, Politics

Ah, the Irony: Prime Minister Bitten By Own Green Committee

Ah, the irony. Do you remember when Cameron used to talk about leading the “greenest government ever”? (It was Friday, 14 May 2010, to be exact.)

Yes, that was just as he came to power.  Since then he’s done next to nothing for nature, and plenty against  (silencing Natural England from protesting about anything, giving planning authorities a presumption in favour of “sustainable” development – i.e. intentional unfairness of process, to name but two; but I digress).

But on coming into office, he did keep one small promise. He set up  a Natural Capital Committee to look into the value of nature to the economy. In the dismal jargon of political bureaucracy, the committee had to investigate what the natural environment would be worth as if it were an investment of money — capital — by adding up what it contributes each year to the economic benefit of the country, considered as a financial return — interest.

So, for example, if we had an acre of woodland and it allows a class of schoolchildren to do a bug-hunt for which the school pays the wood’s manager £100, the woodland has earned £100 per acre. At 5% interest, that would value the acre of wood at (at least) £2000. If ten school classes can visit each year, the value jumps up to £20,000. If we can now find other ways to value the wood — perhaps it helps to clean the air in the city; perhaps it provides a place for a beehive full of hard-working pollinators; perhaps it allows city-dwellers a relaxing walk — then we can add those “services” (I told you the jargon was dismal) to the interest earned, and tot up the “natural capital” value.

Whether it makes the slightest bit of sense to try to put a price on Nature (no, of course not – see George Monbiot’s The Pricing of Everything) is not questioned by either Cameron or the Committee. Anyone who thinks about it for a minute can see that treating nature in this way is absurd. How can we add up the value of all that is, all around us? We depend absolutely and totally on the “environment”, in other words the world, the universe. We have “only one Earth”, “one small planet”. Its value is infinite. But I digress.

Anyway, the young, fresh-faced Cameron of five years ago set up the said Committee, presumably with the general intention of kicking the green issue into the, ahem, long grass, and instantly forgot all about it.

Now, five years later, the Natural Capital Committee (Cameron: Eh? What’s that?)  has reported. It says that the “natural environment” is in deep decline (yeah, what a surprise) and the “natural goods and services” it can provide: clean breathable air; clean drinkable water; food; recreation (i.e. fun) are all in steady long-term decline too.

The good Committee, noting that food, water, air and fun are pretty much all the essentials of life, wrote a truthful report saying that investing in nature for say 25 years would give returns as good as any Cameronian mega-infrastructure project like high-speed railway lines (and be a lot more popular, but they tactfully didn’t mention that).

They pointed out truthfully that

  • cutting air pollution would save the NHS tons of money on respiratory diseases;
  • restoring peat bogs and making new wetlands would save the environment agency bulldozer-loads of loot by preventing floods;
  • improving fishing waters and green spaces would save the country zillions of days off work by improving physical and mental health.

Labour (in the form of Maria Eagle, who hopes to become Environment Secretary) jumped on the bandwagon to remind Cameron of his broken promises and the continued decline of nature in Britain. She conveniently forgot to mention that it had declined all through Labour’s time in government too, and promised that Labour would “make public access to green spaces a priority” and that she would “take real steps” (is there any other kind of step?) to “give communities power” (what’s a community? a local authority perhaps?) “to protect and improve the natural environment”.

Anyway, here we have the amusing sight of Cameron being confronted with some truths about nature, and his own broken promises, as a result of an investigation that he ordered. And of Labour talking up the value of nature, which they ignored while in office, and have pretty much forgotten in their election campaigning too.

Ah, the irony.

Environment, Politics, Quotation

Joan Walley MP on Fracking

How nice to come across a politician who actually understands about human impact on the environment:

Ultimately fracking cannot be compatible with our long-term commitments to cut climate-changing emissions unless full-scale carbon capture and storage technology is rolled out rapidly, which currently looks unlikely.

Joan Walley, MP, chair of Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee.

Sure enough, a specially-tamed pro-fracking scientist, Quentin Fisher, accused the Committee of  “putting the ‘ill-informed views of anti-fracking groups’ ahead of evidence-based scientific studies.” Quite what evidence he thinks he has for believing that carbon emissions don’t contribute to climate change is unclear. Of course gas is not as bad as coal, but since coal is on the way out in the UK anyway, the comparison is spurious: the choice is gas, nuclear, or renewables.

Conservation, Environment, Politics

2009 Prediction Correct: 2015 Catastrophic Drought in Brazil

“Brazil’s most populous region facing worst drought in 80 years” screams the BBC News headline. The three states with the largest populations, Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais are all desperately short of water.

Bad luck? A natural disaster? Act of God?

None of the above. It was simple bad planning, and failure to heed loud, clear, accurate warnings.  Back in November last year, the area was correctly said to be “sleepwalking into water crisis“. What got done about it? Nothing. The journalist, Wyre Davies, asked rhetorically “So how does a country that produces an estimated 12% of the world’s fresh water end up with a chronic shortage of this most essential resource – in its biggest and most economically important city?” He was too polite to say “By a lot of politicians shoving their heads in the sand.” This isn’t just Brazil. Brazil’s politicians are no different from your politicians or my British politicians. ALL OF THEM have their heads in the sand. Climate change isn’t some vague, aesthetic, dilettante bit of academic test-tube arm-waving with a wussy computer model that probably proves something-or other. It’s happening now, and it’s frankly disastrous.

But surely, you’ll observe, Brazil could hardly have done much between November and January, however hard the politicians had tried. You’re right. But they were told FIVE YEARS AGO.

Back in 2009 the Brazilian climatologist Antonio Nobre announced that deforestation in the Amazon would within five years cause severe drought in South-eastern Brazil. He predicted that the lack of forest-created cloud (water is sucked up by the trees and evaporates in huge amounts forming clouds every day) would change the region’s climate.

It did.

Nobre warned that if deforestation continued, there would be disastrous water shortages.

It did, and there are.

The meteorologist Jose Marengo called the huge clouds of water vapour that stream from the Amazon rainforest “flying rivers.” They are drying up.

We – you, me, your neighbours – are by our daily choices – flying, buying petrol for cars, buying teak garden furniture, buying cosmetics made with palm oil grown where rainforest used to be, eating meat and buying petfood from cows grown on grass where rainforest used to be – causing disaster in one region after another. The Amazon. The Sahel. Sumatra. Borneo. Sounds faraway? The climate where you live is warming up. The wildlife where you live is vanishing. Not so faraway now, maybe?

 

Environment, Nature Reserves, Politics

Showing Rupa Huq (Labour) Around a Nature Reserve

Showing Rupa Huq (Labour) around Gunnersbury Triangle Local Nature Reserve
The new warden, Netty Ribeaux, and me showing Rupa Huq (Labour) around Gunnersbury Triangle Local Nature Reserve

Having lobbied the sitting Member of Parliament for the local constituency, Angie Bray, a few weeks ago, I thought I’d invite the Labour candidate, Rupa Huq, and see what she thought about nature.

She came along to Gunnersbury Triangle, together with two of her supporters to take some pictures and video clips of the occasion. I did my best to fit what I wanted to say into short bursts – I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to do soundbites before, but perhaps it will come in handy when anyone asks what I think about nature and politics, or for that matter to put into a few words what my book is about. (It’s about how crazy the English are about nature, and why.)

We talked about why nature matters and the benefits it brings (votes, of course; human wellbeing in an age of e-gadgets; education; mental health; knowledge of climate change; the value of the wild gene pool… ), and I suggested some topics that it would be nice to have as party policy.

Tiny Frogs (and a slug) hiding under a mat
Tiny Frogs (and a slug) hiding under a mat

We walked around the reserve, saying a little about its history, its current uses (school visits, corporate bonding days, volunteering, talks, picnics, family visits, bug-hunting and pond-dipping, days out for the mentally handicapped). We saw the variety of habitats, enjoyed hearing the Robins singing even on a chilly day in January, and looked under a mat at the tiny frogs sheltering there. Rupa certainly left with a deeper understanding of what nature can do for people and why it matters; and of the possibilities that the Gunnersbury Triangle reserve, at least, has to offer for her constituents.

Environment, Politics, Quotation

Stanley Johnson on Naomi Klein on Climate Change

In her new book she [Naomi Klein] turns her guns on capitalism’s role in climate change. She argues that “we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because these things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism… We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe – and would benefit the vast majority – are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.”

On this central point, Klein is undoubtedly right.

Stanley Johnson, This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, review: ‘undoubtedly right’, The Telegraph, 7 October 2014.

Klein advocates

  • local activism
  • disinvestment in earth-destroying corporations
  • respect for the rights of indigenous peoples
Environment, Politics, Quotation

Jenny Turner on Naomi Klein on Climate Change

But it’s difficult to spot climate change as it happens, because it moves so spasmodically and is by its nature “place-based”. What do I know about the mines of Nauru or gas flares on the Niger Delta? What can I do about flooding in the Maldives or New Orleans? “Sacrifice zones” is what Klein chillingly calls the places most depredated: “Poor places. Out-of-the-way places. Places where residents lack political power, usually having to do with some combination of race, language and class.” But even in the rich world, most people don’t notice the dwindling of nature in their parks and gardens; or if they do, they are so sickened, they have to stop noticing right away. Which is why Klein sees the living wage as a climate issue. The main reason so many people are so careless is because they are worn out.

Jenny Turner: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate by Naomi Klein – review. The Guardian, 19 September 2014

Turner also mentions Is Earth Fucked? —in which Geophysicist Brad Werner says yes, definitely, unless (Klein adds) citizens seriously oppose capitalism (and yes, that’s really the title of his paper)

Environment, Love of Nature, Wetlands

A Fabulous Winter’s Day at Wraysbury

After a chilly grey start, the clouds dispersed and it turned into a brilliant winter’s day, the sky crisp blue, the air clear. I grabbed the telescope and went down to Wraysbury to see if the winter ducks had finally arrived.

Snapped tree (Poplar) over path
Snapped tree (Poplar) over path

The first thing I saw was a sign of the violence of the recent storms; a Poplar, always a fast-growing and short-lived tree, had snapped off and fallen over the path. But a way had already been cut beneath it.

Soapy Pollution in River Colne
Soapy Pollution in River Colne

The next sight was a sad one: for the first time I can remember, the River Colne was obviously polluted, with lumps of foam drifting rapidly by, or caught on branches in the normally clean water. The river supports Kingfishers, wagtails and assorted waterfowl, so I hope the cause is a brief one-off event.

On the lake were four or five Goldeneye, the males waving their heads up and down to signal to the females – or to warn off rival males – the bold white patches on the sides of their heads visible without binoculars.

A little further on was a small party of Goosander, a male and two redhead females, their long serrated hooked bills and distinctive long bodies instantly recognisable, a sign of winter in this part of the world as they come down from their chillier breeding grounds.

Then, just as I was moving on, the bold whiteness of a male Smew caught my eye. With him was a redhead female, both ducks far smaller and shorter than the rather big Goosanders. A few grebes and tufted ducks vied unsuccessfully for my attention.

Ramalina lichen on Poplar
Ramalina lichen on Poplar

Some of the poplars, half-fallen, offered normally out-of-reach branches for close inspection. Along with the usual Common Orange Lichen and the grey leafy lichens (Parmelia sulcata and such) were a few bristly tufts of Ramalina, easily told for being rather stiff, slightly forked, and the same grey-green on both sides. You’ll probably have seen the genus on rocks just above the high-tide mark by the sea, or on big old stone-age megaliths. It’s a lichen that demands clean air, so it’s rather a nice surprise to see it so close to Heathrow Airport. Perhaps the prevailing Westerly winds keep most of the atmospheric pollution away. There is no doubt, though, that London’s air quality is far better than it was a generation ago: hardly anyone burns sulphurous coal any longer, and while there are hotspots of nitrogen oxides (Heathrow for one, Oxford Street for another) and diesel particulates, these aren’t as harmful to lichens as sulphur dioxide was.

DSCN2908 Red Kite over Wraysbury
Red Kite

Around the corner into the area of wet grassland and scrub, I was delighted to be surprised by two Red Kites circling silently overhead against the brilliant blue, their long wings and forked tails a welcome sight that would have been familiar to Shakespeare but was missing until their recent reintroduction to lowland Britain. There was plenty of professional angst about whether the new Chiltern population should be encouraged to interbreed with the remnant Welsh population: but in the event, the birds easily dispersed the couple of hundred miles involved, and soon the gene pools mixed all by themselves.

DSCN2910 Ponies and Hay
Ponies and Hay

Up on the smooth green hill that was the old rubbish mountain and is now home to a dozen ponies and horses, the distant chack-chack of Fieldfares drifted to my ears. At least fifty of them were standing, watchful but constantly feeding, on the bare grass, flying up and chattering at the least warning. A solitary Mistle Thrush stood big and grey with its boldly spotted breast among them; a flock of a hundred Starlings moved flightily between trees and grass. A Wood Pigeon panicked and all the Fieldfares flew into the trees, still chacking. I splashed through the ankle-deep mud and puddles on the somewhat flooded path to the road.

 

 

 

Environment, Love of Nature, Natural History

Unquestionably Globally Warmer

“We have a clear signal that our climate is changing, and when you look at the evidence it’s because of human activities. The evidence is so strong I don’t know why we are arguing any more”.

So said Don Wuebbles of the University of Illinois. He pointed out that the world has just had the hottest year for 1,700 years, very probably for 5,000 years.

NOAA 1880-2014 global average temperature anomaly
NOAA 1880-2014 global average temperature anomaly: recent decades, and especially the most recent twenty years, have been the warmest since records began. Global warming is under way

Thirteen of the fifteen warmest years ever recorded in Britain have been since 2000: the others were just before then. 2014 had the hottest summer for 350 years (when local records began). There is no doubt that we are experiencing climate change in these islands.

Around the world, the pattern is as clear as crystal: rapid, global warming, especially strong in the furthest northern climes, as in Alaska. There, the warming is drastic. Permafrost, which stores enormous reserves of carbon locked away in frozen peat, is melting: and the fossilized plant material, exposed to the air for the first time in millennia, is starting to oxidize. There is nothing to stop all the rest of it melting away.

Actually, the story up in the far north is more frightening than that. The warmer it becomes, the more three different positive feedback cycles collaborate to speed up global warming even more.

  • First, as mentioned, the permafrost is melting. That releases carbon to the air, as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which accelerates the warming and melting.
  • Second, as the ice vanishes, the albedo (reflectivity) of the once-frozen north goes down dramatically, from icy white (reflecting most of the sunlight that hits it) to muddy brown or black (hardly reflecting anything). The ground absorbs more sunlight, so it becomes warmer, accelerating the melting and oxidation of carbon; and it directly contributes to having a warmer planet.
  • Thirdly, as the lakes and pools lose their ice cover, enormous amounts of methane hydrates, chilly masses of carbon-rich material in the icy mud, collapse and release streams of bubbles of methane gas, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. If it were to be burnt, carbon dioxide would be released; unburnt, it accelerates global warming still more rapidly.

Back in Britain, everyone noticed that the weather in late 2014 was exceptionally warm. October and November in my childhood were leafless windy months with what seemed to be incessant grey skies and driving rain that churned football pitches into cold greasy mud. This time around, it was possible to work outside in shirtsleeves to the end of November. The change? Out of all recognition. It was a wholly new climate.

But the weather is not the climate. Britain is now in winter’s grip. Scotland shivers down to -15 Celsius. Here, under clear blue skies, the Birch trees glitter in the nearly horizontal sunlight. A greater spotted woodpecker, calling “Chik!” loudly, flies into the canopy of a Birch, clings to the elegant white trunk, the few remaining triangular leaves shining a rich yellow. The woodpecker bounds off, its wings whirring in short bursts.

The cold weather, like the increasingly violent storms that brought down two trees in the reserve last week, is part of the warming pattern too. The atmosphere has more energy than before: warmer air masses meet cold ones with a higher difference in temperature, releasing more powerful storms than we ever used to see. Winters can be colder, wetter, and windier as a result: more trees fall; more valleys flood. It may not feel warmer, but this is a direct consequence of climate change. Feel like denying it? Look at the evidence. It’s all around you.