Guest blog from GROCE (Get Rid of Cow Emissions)

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*Yes, today it's my turn to take a back seat . Dreams and Daemons hosts its second guest blogger, whose name you may have encountered in the press, from proceedings at the Horseferry Rd Magistrates Courts. Or perhaps you have seen her on TV being dragged by her hair or feet into waiting Black Marias by the Metropolitan Police. It is Chardonnay Crabtree, the Chairperson of GROCE ("Get Rid of Cow Emissions"). Whilst I don't agree with all her positions, and certainly not her understanding of the sciences, I feel she has a timely message to offer which should be heard. Over to you, Chardonnay.

GROCE Campaign logo: " Get Rid Of Cow Emissions"

Hello people. Please spare a minute or two to read my message, and try to suspend any judgements you have formed about me and my organization. Most of what you have read is probably lies, put out by the beef and dairy industry, as well as my step-Dad.

GROCE was formed last year by me and my best friend Stasi (that's pronounced Stacey, BTW) straight after we did our GCSE's in Enviromental Science.

After learning all about Global Warning we felt we just had to do something to help the planet.

The problem is one of wide spread ignorance. Everyone has heard about CO2 (carbon deoxide ), it being a polluting greenhouse gas (GG) , which heats up not just greenhouses but everything else on the planet.

If you know the facts as well as Stasi and me it would really do your head in . Did you know there's another GG which is a much greater thret than CO2. Its called Methane, and it is a major cause of those carbon footprints.

You probably don't know this if you haven't been to school for a long time, but Methane is in flammable gas. If you live near a landfill sight you can see it burning at night, heating the planet. It leaks out through old pipes that have been left sticking out of the ground. Methane burns a lot more easily than CO2, which is why we should be a lot more worried about it, and not just the greenhouse owners.

Where you may ask does this Methane come from ? There are two main sauces: one, which I have all ready mentioned, is rotting uneaten food in rubbish tips (probably stuff like quiches, spinach, broccoli, hole-meal bread etc if you ask me).

The main problem however is COWS. Cows produce a lot of Methane . Sooner or later that methane will catch fire somewhere and warm the planet, which we don't want, certainly not at this time of year.

My carefully chosen campaign logo above is intended to bring home forcibly the thret that cows represent to our continued survival on this planet.

No, I am not suggesting that you will ever see flames shooting from a cow's backside, but belief me, sooner or later that Methane will burn up, probably up in the Ozone Layer where you can't see it.

When it does you get Global Warming which is a major cause of storms, hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, volcanoes, skin cancer, forest fires, and bad TV reception. When it melts the ice at the poles, the Inwits will not have anything to build their igloos with, and polar bears will have to go and live in zoos.

So much for the science. I hope this has not gone over your head. I realise that old people who read this blog cannot be expected to be fully eau fé with all the modern stuff.

So what can we do to save the planet from the scourge of cow bums you may ask ? Quite a lot, you may be surprised to hear. Me and Stasi have drawn up an action plan for GROCE.

It is our aim in the coming months to campaign for the abolition of all cattle-raising and breeding in the UK ( except for Scotland, because my real Dad who's from Ayrshire, and still doing stir at the Scrubs, and looking forward to his release in November, says Aberdeen Angus cattle do not produce Methane).

GROCE intends to see beef and derry products abolished and replaced with substitutes, like farmed cod and scampi, chicken and turkey, imported lamkebabs etc. Who needs milk when there are lots of other drinks with a more exciting taste and colour ?

Once we get rid of cows, we won't need to worry about foot-in-mouth disease either, which sounds very unhygienic. No wonder the silly moos fall ill when you think what they tread in.

Our first target will be the nerve centre of Britain's beef industry, namely the Smithgate meat market in London, assuming it's still there and hasn't been turned into trendy cafés and boutiques. Thousands of beef carcassonnes are sold there as well, so it's not just our own beef we have to worry about, but imported French beef as well.

We intend to set up camp nearby in somewhere that is quite and specious, like Hyde Park maybe. Don't spread this around, we are also thinking of the back garden of Buckingham Palace for its publicity value. We are just waiting to hear back from Brian May, having wrote him and asked if he can suggest a route over the Palace rooftops.

We hope through our days of action to impede the flow of lorries to the market and generally make a nuisance of ourselves. The aim is to make both market porters and the public aware of the damage being done to the planet by all those cows and their emissions.

Let me say straight away that we are normally peaceful law-abiding citizens who simply have the interests of everyone at heart. Sometimes, though people don't bleeding realize (if you'll pardon my French) what is in their best interests and it's then the job of those of us who are better informed to take a lead. I learned that in the new Good Citizenship lessons at the Cherie Blair City Academy, earning a near-pass which is in my Record of Achievement..

Something else we learned about was the necessity for freedom of expression, which is why I refuse to be judgmental about Stasi's friends in the Direct Action group. What they do is of no concern to me, provided it's not done in the name of GROCE.

I personally abwhore all violence, whether it's against people or property, although I would make an exception for my stepfather who's a low-life scumbag, and not someone you would want to share a park bench with.

So if Stasi's strange friends exploit the situation to further their anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation agenda that's not something over which I shall lose a moment's sleep. Maybe that break-in at the Pirbright lab, and spreading those foot-in-mouth germs around the countryside was maybe a bit OTT, but I think they have their hearts in the right place.

You may be wondering what you can do to help, now you are aware of the justice of my cause.

First, obviously, you have to stop eating beef , or meat from any other rheumatoid species, such as lamb, sheep etc. If a single stomach is good enough for us humans, it should be good enough for farmayard animals too. Pigs are OK, despite smelling 10 times worse than cows, and twice as bad as my step-Dad.

Remember, that means no beefburgers, steak-and-kidney pie, rump steak, or burfborg onion if you're posh.

You also have to cut out milk, yoghurt, cheese, butter and other dairy products. Remember, there's always crisps if you're feeling peckish.

Refuse to buy anything made of leather, unless you're certain it's not from a calf, a cow or a bull.

But whatever you do, don't make Stasi's mistake: she invited all the media to a ceremonial burning of her motorcycle gear, being President of the Ilford Hells Angels. So what happens ? A smart arse journalist picks up a smoking fragment of lining and reads the label: "100% pigskin leather". They made her look a right prat. That's the trouble with the media - they try to confuse you with the facts.

A final word: we are desperately short of funds, after participating in the Heathrow demo'. (it's unthinkable there should be an extra runway while there's the slightest chance of cattle being flown in or out the country, and there were passengers wearing or carrying leather too who deserved to have their flights delayed).

Please make your cheques (uncrossed) payable to Chardonnay Crabtree. Send them to me c/o POBox 23, Unit 3, The Old Industrial Estate, Dagenham, Essex.

Remember: £25 buys 5 balaclava helmets, £50 buys wire- cutters and pepper spray, £75 buys a pack of non-traceable SIM cards, £100 buys a sack of marbles and a dozen smoke bombs. £1000 buys a dodgy lawyer on the Legal Aid Panel.

Thanks for hearing me out. I actually quite like old fogies really. You're like me really. Non-judgmental, except on the subject of those bloody cows and their digestive systems.

Science in the Independent, aka being wise after the event

Science and non-Science


Here below is an extract from that apocalyptic front page of today's Independent.

As soon as I saw the headline, I knew roughly what it would say (which poses the question as to why one would elect to read, or buy, something that is largely predictable).

A 21st century catastrophe

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Published: 24 July 2007

"... But the catastrophic "extreme rainfall events" of the summer of 2007, on 24 June and 20 July, are entirely consistent with repeated predictions of what climate change will bring.

It is nearly 10 years since the scientists of the UK Climate Impacts Programme first gave their detailed forecast of what global warming had in store for Britain in the 21st century - and high up on the list was rainfall, increasing both in frequency and intensity.

This was thought most likely to happen in winter, with summers predicted to be hotter and dryer (ed. my italics) .

But yesterday Peter Stott of the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, an author of a new scientific paper linking increases in rainfall to climate change, commented: "It is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying."

(End of quotation)

Sorry, Peter Stott. Sorry Independent, but that's not science. Predicting that global warming will give hotter drier summers is no big deal. Nor is predicting that winters will be wetter: less rain in summer implies more in winter, unless unless one is predicting a Saharan climate with a year round reduction in total rainfall.

But to wait until we have had one of the most unexpected events of all - namely to be deluged by torrential, almost monsoon rain, in July- and then tell us that fits the theory too, or that the theory can be modified - retrospectively needlessto say - to accomodate new facts, is NOT science. Not only is it not science, but it is intellectual chicanery of the first order to attempt to claim credit for something that one's theory failed to predict.

For the Independent to use its front page headlines day in, day out, to proselytise the gospel of man-made global warming is one thing. Even non- scientists can appreciate that whatever the merits or otherwise of the theory, the Independent cannot be taken seriously as a serious newspaper, assuming that its role is to report NEWS, confining opinion to its leader and Comments pages.

If the Independent wishes to break with time-honoured tradition in order to embrace and proselytise a theory, then that is its decision . No one is forced to read the Independent.

But if I were Peter Stott of the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, I would be seriously concerned about my scientific credentials right now. If I were funding his research, I would be seriously concerned at what I see as a serious lapse in scientific standards, assuming Stott has been quoted accurately and comprehensively.

It's just as well I have my own blog for pouring scorn on things that stick in the craw, since there is no facility under McCarthy's article to submit one's comment.

Something similar happened about 18 months ago where the Independent and its "wise-after-the event" quoting of scientists are concerned.

You may recall Sir James Lovelock (who, let me say, has made some highly significant contributions to science, notably NASA's early Mars exploration programme, for which his FRS and knighthood were fully deserved). But he then developed his quasi-religious Gaia theory, suggesting the multiplicity of life-forms on our planet behaved as a single giant organism that regulates its own environment, thereby enhancing the survival of the whole.

But Sir James then published his "Revenge of Gaia" (an absurd title I thought) claiming we had provoked Gaia too far with all our burning of fossil fuel etc, and that those self-regulating mechanisms had been fatally impaired: life on Earth was now doomed and it may well be too late to prevent a self-perpetuating cycle of destruction.

As soon as I read this in the Independent, I shot off a letter, pointing out that it was hardly scientific to predict that something was self-regulating, self-protective, one day, able to roll with the punches, so to speak, if this or that factor changed in the environment, but could then be totally overwhelmed by an increase in C02 concentration in the atmosphere from 0.033 to 0.045%.

A theory that can explain or accomodate anything and everything is not a scientific theory; the Gaia hypothesis may have a limited utility in stimulating research into mutually beneficial relationships between organisms , but Gaia is not the paradigm that some have cracked it up to be.

The Independent did/would not publish my letter. I protested, but to no avail. The Independent is not only selective in which scientists it quotes, but protects those same sources from the kind of criticism that is an accepted part of the scientific process - the kind that gives us the distinction between astronomy and astrology, or between science/technology and Scientology.

Oops, sorry, I nearly forgot. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Now where did I put those crystals - I must remember to put them under the pillow tonight.

My dream for making the desert bloom

Planet Earth and environment

Sahara desert - before the great 21st century greening project

After the greening project

The Sahara desert is an untapped resource in two chief respects:

1. It receives a vast amount of solar energy from the sun, much of which at present simply heats the desert and the air above it. It would be better to convert this energy to electricity and food.

2. If the Sahara and other deserts (Australia etc) could be made to bloom, it would remove sizeable amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through creation of new carbon sinks.

So what, you may wonder, is running through those pipes (shown blue) that has produced the miraculous greening of the desert ?

Water, from desalination plants ? No, water is heavy, needing too much energy to pump long distances.

In fact the pipes contain hydrogen gas, produced by solar-powered electrolysis plants sited along the shoreline of the Atlantic and Mediterranean oceans.

The hydrogen is piped inland, where it is burned (at nightime) to produce electricity and pure water. Electricity is produced during the day from solar arrays.

The water that collects overnight is then used to create a patchwork of small desert oases, being suitable for both crop irrigation and for drinking.

Feasible ? The science is I believe OK, but there are some formidable technological problems still to be overcome. I'll be discussing these in future posts. In the meantime, I'll be scouring the internet for possible solutions, and maybe register with some specialist online discussion groups, such as those hosted by Digg etc.

Economics ? The threat of global warming and climate change means that old schemes, previously dropped for requiring too big an initial capital outlay, can now be dusted off and looked at afresh. That is dependent, needless to say, on being able to produce convincing evidence that such schemes can slow or counter the effects of man-made climate change through excessive burning of fossil fuels.

Create your own Costa (Lotza)

This post is one I sent to the pilot MyTelegraph this morning, which is now bedding down nicely.

I will provide a second brief progress report tomorow. It'll probably be the last, since it's reckoned a few more days of testing are all that's needed to expose the remaining bugs.

So, what's this I hear about you folks in Blighty having had the warmest April since records began, way back in 16 something or other?

Who can seriously doubt that global warming is a reality, whatever its causes ?

They now say you can look forward to a long hot summer. Time maybe to start planning that Mediterranean garden ? How about an olive tree as a centre piece ?

Better start saving now. The picture above is from a brochure that came through our door in January. It's from the local garden centre. We live in Antibes, roughly half way between Nice and Cannes.

The distinguishing feature of the Mediterranean climate is not so much its summer heat, as its winter mildness and WETNESS.

Compare that with the Alpine or Continental climates that begin a mere 20 or so miles inland(less in some places), where hard winter frosts will scythe down anything tender in the garden.

But we have had what might be called a winter drought, which had the local gardeners in despair - until, that is, about 48 hours ago.

It has rained solidly most of the night, and continues to do so as I write. We have discovered the downside of having a Velux (hinged skylight) installed in the roof.

It's great for light and ventilation, but acts like a drumskin during a storm, making sleep well-nigh impossible. Oh well, you win some, you lose some......