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Scientists back David Cameron on weather link to global warming
Posted by Financial Times: Clive Cookson on January 11th, 2014
Financial Times: Climate scientists have backed David Cameron’s statement that he “very much suspects” the recent extreme weather events Britain has suffered are linked to climate change.
The prime minister’s words in the House of Commons this week annoyed some Conservative MPs who are sceptical about man-made climate change. But leading climate scientists told a press briefing in London on Friday that abnormal weather, such as the succession of storms that made December one of the UK’s wettest and windiest on...
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Nuclear power: Hell and high water
Posted by Financial Times: Clive Cookson on March 14th, 2011
Financial Times: It is certainly alarming and sure to have grave implications for the nuclear industry and energy sector as a whole – but far from being another Chernobyl, where a runaway nuclear reaction blew the top off a rudimentary containment system. The three operational reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power station shut down automatically as planned when their motion sensors felt tremors from the magnitude 8.9 quake on Friday. But multiple cooling systems, required to remove heat from the core, failed....
Era of low-cost food is over, study warns
Posted by Financial Times: Clive Cookson on January 25th, 2011
Financial Times: The era of cheap food is at an end, with the real prices of key crops set to rise 50-100 per cent during the next 40 years, according to a UK government report. If supplies are to increase sufficiently to prevent widespread starvation as the global population heads towards 9bn, an “agricultural revolution” is needed, says the report produced by the Foresight think-tank. The term “sustainable intensification” is used to describe the method of enlisting all technologies, including genetic modification,...