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The UK government is playing both sides of the climate conflict
Posted by Guardian: Andrew Simms on March 3rd, 2014
Guardian: Most conflicts have their profiteers – the black market traders exploiting shortages and arms dealers who play both sides for personal gain. If the latter don't actually create conflict by flooding a region with weapons, they'll readily perpetuate existing conflicts.
History's most famous profiteer is probably the fictional, archetypal American capitalist Milo Minderbender, from Joseph Heller's acidic satire on world war two, Catch-22. He strikes deals with the Germans and, in search of financial...
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So shale gas could meet demand for 40 years. What then?
Posted by Guardian: Andrew Simms on June 28th, 2013
Guardian: For a moment, let's take the shale gas evangelists at their word. Britain has stumbled on a pile of carbon cash in its cellar, the energy equivalent of finding a stack of ugly but valuable china in the attic. With North Sea oil and gas in decline and global markets volatile and pricey, suddenly there seems a sure way to deliver the government's promise of building 40 new gas power stations. By odd coincidence, newly estimated gas resources in the Bowland shale could meet our demand for gas for 40...
We can learn resilience from the natural world
Posted by Guardian: Andrew Simms on September 3rd, 2012
Guardian: Fire climates – places with little rainfall, lots of wind and long spells when it is hot and dry – are perfect for some species. Woodland giants like the sequoias of the west coast of North America release seed when their cones are heated to temperatures that only fire can reach. A lodgepole pine may hold its cones for half a century until the right conflagration comes along.
Big trees like firs, spruces and sequoias that live for 1,000 years or more can be extraordinarily resilient to heat and...