The Engineering EcoWarrior

Low Emission Zones: Cleaner Air, But What Comes Next?

2026-09-26T19:27:35.718-04:00

Low Emission Zones (LEZ) or Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ) are town planning tools to tackle air pollution from vehicles[1]. The primary types of pollution of concern are Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), and fine particulate matter which are designated as PM10 or PM2.5 for particles smaller than 10 microns (0.01 mm) or 2.5 microns (0.0025 mm) respectively. But why do we need to tackle air pollution?

The tragic death of nine-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah in London in 2013 made the reality of vehicular air pollution more relatable and helped bring about changes in our perception of its impact. At her 2020 inquest, the coroner concluded that she died from asthma contributed to by excessive air pollution, with traffic emissions identified as the principal source of her exposure: the first time traffic pollution was specifically cited on a death certificate[3]. Hers is unlikely to be the only such death; she is only the first to be formally recognised as such. Studies have estimated the number of deaths linked to air pollution in the UK at around 30,000 for 2025[4]. This follows earlier reports by Public Health England of 28,000 to 36,000 deaths per year due to air pollution (all sources)[2].

Expanding on the effects of pollution, Nitrogen Dioxide is a product of combustion and can irritate airways, worsen asthma and reduce our defences against lung infections; it is also associated with reduced lung development in children. Particulate matter can also be a product of combustion but also comes from road, tyre and brake wear. Estimates vary for different sizes of particulates but around 20-30% are tailpipe emissions; the proportion from combustion will reduce with the shift to electric vehicles. The smaller particulate matter (PM2.5) is small enough to pass through the lungs and can increase the risk of asthma attacks, lung cancer and heart disease. The larger particular matter (PM10) can cause irritation of the eyes, nose and throat[2].

There is no “safe level” of air pollution although there are legal limits to some pollutants. The UK legal limit for NO2 is for an annual mean concentration of 40 µg/m³ (micrograms per cubic metre), alongside an hourly limit where concentrations above 200 µg/m³ cannot occur more than 18 times in a single year. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends limiting the annual mean concentration to 10 µg/m³. For PM10, the average concentration is limited to 40 µg/m³, with a daily limit of 50 µg/m³ not to be exceeded more than 35 times in a year, and for PM2.5 the limit is 20 µg/m³, with Scotland setting a more stringent 10 µg/m³ objective.[5]

(U)LEZ schemes have been implemented in many cities around the world to tackle air pollution, each with their own local nuances. Different approaches to their implementation have been adopted: one is to charge the most polluting vehicles a fee to enter the zone and another is an outright ban of these vehicles with punitive charges. London has adopted the former while Glasgow the latter.

The development and implementation of the London and Glasgow (U)LEZ schemes are outlined below followed by a discussion of the relative merits of each approach from an environmental, economic and social perspective. This can be a divisive topic and your views are welcome in the comment section, whether on the concept of a LEZ as a solution to air pollution, the method of implementation and enforcement, or any other issues.

The London ULEZ

Before the ULEZ, London’s initial road charging scheme was introduced in 2003 as a response to traffic congestion in a 21 km² area in central London. A daily charge was levied to enter the central zone with the intent of encouraging a switch from driving to public transport, walking and cycling. During the first year traffic within the zone fell by about 16%, congestion by around 30%, and average car speeds increased by more than 20%. It generated substantial revenue ring-fenced for investment in London's transport system, with early spending concentrated on the bus network, road safety, walking, cycling and safer routes to schools. In its first full year, after running costs, it generated around £90m net revenue. The scheme went on to generate more than £2bn in net income between 2003 and 2020.

It became increasingly apparent that London's transport problems were about more than simply congestion and that air pollution posed a major public health risk. In response, the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) was introduced in central London in April 2019 (the congestion charging zone), expanding to inner London in 2021 and Greater London in 2023. It now covers around 1,500 km² and nine million people.

Unlike the blanket Congestion Charge, it was based on vehicle emissions standards, targeting older, more polluting petrol and diesel cars and vans. (A separate Low Emission Zone (LEZ), was introduced earlier, in 2008, targeting heavier commercial vehicles). Drivers pay a daily charge, currently £12.50, to enter the ULEZ if their car does not meet the following criteria:

Petrol: Euro 4 standard (typically vehicles registered from 2006 onwards)
Diesel: Euro 6 standard (typically vehicles registered from 2015 onwards)

The congestion charge remains in place in central London during peak times in addition to the ULEZ charge.

The Glasgow LEZ

Glasgow’s Low Emission Zone (LEZ) was implemented as an air-quality measure for the city centre, rather than a city-wide scheme and, as such, covers a much smaller geographical area compared with London. The current zone covers only about one square mile of Glasgow city centre, bounded by the M8 to North and West, the River Clyde to the South and the High Street/Saltmarket to the East.

The LEZ, which forbids non-compliant vehicles from entering, came into effect on 31 May 2022, with enforcement beginning on 1 June 2023 after a statutory one-year grace period. Similar to the London ULEZ, cars may enter the LEZ if they comply with the following requirements:

Petrol: Euro 4 standard (typically registered from 2006 onwards)
Diesel: Euro 6 standard (typically registered from 2015 onwards)

Drivers of non-compliant vehicles are issued with a Penalty Charge Notice. For the first infringement the penalty charge is £60(reduced by 50% for payment within 14 days) with the penalty doubling for each subsequent infringement to a maximum of £480 for cars and light goods vehicles.

The complete ban implemented in Glasgow reflects a fundamentally different approach from London. In London drivers can pollute for a fee while Glasgow's LEZ is focused purely on its purpose to improve air quality in the city centre.

Separately, Glasgow first introduced a LEZ in 2018 targeting the bus fleet, the biggest source of particulate pollution in the city centre.

The table below compares the London and Glasgow schemes.

	London ULEZ	Glasgow LEZ
Introduced	2019	2022
Full current extent	Greater London(from 2023)	Glasgow city centre
Basic mechanism	Daily charge	Exclusion + penalty
Petrol threshold	Euro 4	Euro 4
Diesel threshold	Euro 6	Euro 6
Main objective	Air quality + transport policy	Air quality
Revenue	Significant	Relatively small

Comparison between London & Glasgow (U)LEZ

Impact on Air Pollution Levels

Before going into the figures, it is important to recognise that changes in air pollution levels cannot be fully attributed to the introduction of the (U)LEZ schemes. There are various factors at play which compound the picture. Vehicle standards, such as those used to set the limits for entry to the low emission zones, are already changing the make-up of the vehicle fleet. As older cars are scrapped, the proportion of cleaner, less polluting cars increases without the additional incentives of the (U)LEZ. There are also some shifts in the way people travel. Perhaps more so in London than Glasgow, where there is a slight shift to public transport and active travel options. In addition, post COVID-19, more people in both cities are working from home for a portion of the week, hence reducing city centre travel. The data analysis for London attempts to correct for this through modelling by comparing changes in areas remote from the ULEZ in order to isolate the ULEZ effect. The Glasgow data looks at measured data without any correction, comparing changes year on year.

The results presented below should therefore be treated as evidence of the combined effect of the LEZ, changes in the make-up of the vehicle fleet, and changes to travel patterns rather than attributing all the reduction of emissions solely to the enforcement regime.

London

The London-wide Ultra Low Emission Zone One Year Report presents an assessment of the impact of the ULEZ through its implementation stages, ultimately to cover all Greater London[6]. In the first year of operation, roadside NO2 concentrations in outer London were on average up to 4.8 per cent lower than would have been expected without the London-wide ULEZ expansion.

Transport for London (TfL) estimates that, cumulatively across all phases of ULEZ from 2019-24, NOx emissions were 24% lower, while PM₂.₅ exhaust emissions were 29% lower in 2024 than they would otherwise have without the ULEZ. For the most recent figures, all monitoring points in Greater London recorded NO2 levels below the 40 µg/m³ compared with a third exceeding this limit only five years ago. Only 1% of monitored neighbourhoods met the stricter WHO recommended level of 10 µg/m³, so there remains work to be done.

Figure 1: Trend of Annual Mean NO2 levels in Central, Inner and Outer London. Solid lines represent roadside trends, dashed lines represent the urban background trends.

Glasgow

The early evidence in Glasgow is encouraging. The city council’s 2025 air-quality assessment, covering the first full calendar year of enforcement, found a 20% reduction in average NO₂ concentrations from 2022 (pre-LEZ) within the LEZ[7]. No exceedances of the 40 µg/m³ target limit were recorded across all 27 monitoring stations within the LEZ. Reductions varied from negligible to 40% at different locations in the city centre depending on the baseline conditions. The average reduction in NO2 for parts of the city outside the LEZ was 15%, which may be partly as a result of the LEZ accelerating reduction in the number of non-compliant vehicles in the city as a whole.

There is no discernable reduction in particulate matter pollution as a result of the LEZ introduction, although target levels have consistently been achieved throughout the city centre. Particulate pollution has reduced significantly over the last few decades, mostly as a result of improving vehicle standards and transition to electric vehicles (EVs), especially in the bus fleet. The majority of the remaining vehicular particulate pollution comes from non-combustion sources such as road, tyre and brake wear. This comes from all vehicles, including EVs, and reducing emissions from these sources is technically difficult. Most EVs are heavier than equivalent petrol or diesel cars and can therefore produce more particulates from tyre and road wear. On the other hand regenerative braking employed by most EVs reduces brake wear emissions.

Figure 2: Trend of Annual Mean NO2 levels measured on Hope Street by Central Station in Glasgow. Years are calendar. LEZ enforcement commenced part way through 2023.

It is difficult to compare the efficacy of the two schemes directly due to different methods of reporting, historical context (such as prior initiatives), and severity of the air pollution problem. Through a combination of measures over several years both cities have been effective at bringing annual mean NO2 levels below minimum legal standards. Neither city has achieved the more desirable WHO guideline levels although Glasgow’s monitored locations are generally closer to it, perhaps due to its relatively smaller geographic area with fewer overlapping hot spots.

Revenue

London

The London ULEZ has raised almost £1.2bn (gross) since launch in 2019, which has been reinvested in transport after running costs. The table below shows the step change in revenue as the scheme expanded first to Inner London then to the whole of London in 2023. It is also worth noting the slight drop in revenue in the years following introduction to the whole of London. This reflects the change in the vehicle fleet from around 85% compliant vehicles in 2023 to 97% in 2026. This trend is expected to continue with a negligible surplus expected as early as 2027.

Around £500m of surplus revenue (after costs of establishing and operating the system) has been invested in transport schemes, primarily the Superloop express orbital bus routes connecting outer town centres, a clean air scrappage scheme and active travel paths. These are mostly positive investments to improve long term sustainable travel within the city.

Glasgow

Unlike London, Glasgow's LEZ has generated relatively little net revenue. In its first year, 2023/24, more than £980,000 was raised in fines, and around £757,000 in 2024/25. The operating costs were £614,000 in 2024/25, resulting in a net revenue of £141,000. For 2025/26, income dropped again to £513,873 which has been reported as being less than the operating costs.

This highlights an important difference between Glasgow and London schemes. Glasgow's LEZ was not designed as a revenue-raising scheme, while in London, it is a key objective. When there is net revenue available after costs, it will be used for projects which contribute towards meeting air quality objectives or contribute towards emissions reduction targets. This raises the question of whether a modest revenue stream could have been used to support measures that further reduce emissions, such as public transport or the Avenues Project.

Society, equity and inclusion

Interventions such as (U)LEZ do not affect all proportionally. Considering the London ULEZ, the daily charge is unaffordable to many; these same people are also least able to afford a newer, compliant car to avoid the charge. A demographic particularly badly hit is night workers, who will pay two daily charges for a single shift which straddles two days. This includes key workers in the health and care sectors, cleaning staff and the night time entertainment sector, many of whom also earn lower wages. Public transport options are often limited or non-existent leaving little option but driving or using taxis.

Turning to Glasgow, affordability of a daily charge is a moot point, and the LEZ effectively forced people living within the zone to dispose of their cars if they did not meet the emissions standards. For those living and working within the LEZ this may not be too serious an inconvenience given the size of the area but it would be significant for people working further afield. As the LEZ prevents those from outside entering with non-compliant vehicles and, as with London, those working unsociable hours are worse affected.

Both schemes had a scrappage scheme to support owners of non-compliant cars to scrap them and replace them with newer, compliant cars. In Glasgow, the scheme is strictly means tested and is only available for households receiving certain benefits, while the London scheme was open to all, but is now closed. Both schemes give/gave £2000 in return for scrapping a non-compliant vehicle. This does not go far towards a replacement car.

The greatest relative financial burden is therefore carried by lower earners, who are more likely to be adversely affected by air pollution. London's charging model creates a distinction between people who can afford to change their vehicle or pay the charge and those for whom neither option is readily available. In Glasgow the distinction is between people who can afford to change their vehicle and those who need to find alternative methods to go into the city centre, whether for work, education, access to services or for leisure. This raises an important equity question: should access to cleaner urban air depend partly on an individual's ability to pay?

Next Steps

It is difficult to conclude on how effective the two emission charging schemes are at reducing air pollution and whether one is significantly better than the other. Through a combination of tools over several years both Glasgow and London have been effective at bringing annual mean NO2 levels below minimum legal standards. There is still, however, some way to go before reaching the more desirable WHO recommended levels. Evidence shows that there are fewer older, more polluting vehicles on the road, which means further reductions in pollution concentrations will be marginal at best for the current schemes, as is reflected in diminishing revenue from daily charges or penalties.

This begs the question: what next for (U)LEZ? Should the schemes be wound down, having achieved their primary purpose? Should they continue with a stricter target to bring NO2 levels down to less than 10 micrograms per cubic metre while also improving levels of particulate pollution? In the Glasgow case, should the geographic extents be increased to cover the whole city or further to the Glasgow City Region, including surrounding towns such as Paisley and East Kilbride?

The easy part has been done; the next stage will be more difficult: as exhaust emissions decline, the challenge changes and the remaining pollution becomes harder to tackle. Future air-quality policy will need to address not only the combustion engine but also the pollution generated by the movement of vehicles themselves.

Limited options remain for local planners to tackle conditions in the most polluted areas. They include:

Allow progressively improved emission standards to do their work and monitor the results. At a local level, this is effectively the “do nothing” base case. Over time this will see an increase in the proportion of petrol cars complying with Euro 6 standards followed by a growing number of vehicles compliant with Euro 7 standards. See below for more on vehicle emission standards.
Implement stricter emission standards in the (U)LEZ area to accelerate the drop off of the most polluting vehicles from the fleet. The criteria would align with emission standards and should be planned for long term implementation, starting with Euro 6 standards for petrol vehicles, which would see a further 25% reduction in NO2 emissions per km, then progressing to Euro 7 standards. This would need to be a longer term plan.
Adopt a non-emissions based congestion charge such as in central London, perhaps limited to peak times, to discourage non-essential journeys.
Limit certain streets to EVs only. This will reduce combustion related emissions but have a lower impact on particulates.
Encourage more people out of their cars through attractive alternatives such as affordable efficient public transport and active travel incentives. This will require a combination of hard infrastructure investment to reduce journey times for public transport and provide safe routes for cycling and walking, and financial support to ensure public transport service levels remain high at off-peak times. London has maintained relatively steady levels of public transport use over the past decade, while Glasgow has seen a decline, which illustrates the challenge of using this as a tool to reduce air pollution.
Change infrastructure to remove traffic from pollution hotspots. This may include measures to re-route through traffic away from hotspots, introduce one-way systems, bus gates, lane reductions or pedestrianised areas. This would represent a longer term strategy which requires careful modelling and analysis to ensure it doesn’t simply move the problem around.

All of these options apart from the first require a degree of investment and political commitment at the local level. At a national level, introduction of stricter vehicle emission standards such as the planned Euro 7 standards will contribute to pollution reduction measures. This next level of vehicle standards has yet to be fully implemented by manufacturers. For new types of cars and light commercial vehicles, Euro 7 requirements apply from November 2026, followed by all new vehicles of these categories from November 2027. Expanding on the scope of previous emission standards, Euro 7 also covers non-tailpipe emissions such as from tyre and brake wear. It sets limits for PM10 from braking of 7mg/km for ICE/hybrid cars and 3mg/km for EVs and also establishes limits on tyre abrasion rates This will reduce particulate pollution. Realistically it will be 5-10 years before the majority of vehicles in use comply with this standard. Introducing the standard as the basis for emission charging or enforcement may be politically challenging before there is significant adoption.

To return to the beginning: why do we need to tackle air pollution? From the Royal College of Physicians’ report: “A toxic burden on the most vulnerable people: Air pollution is harmful to everyone, but the most deprived communities – who typically contribute least to emissions – disproportionately experience its effects and suffer the worst health outcomes”.[4]

Progress has been made. Now we plan for the next chapter and the ultimate objective of safe clean air for all.

Notes :

[1] Low and Ultra Low Emission Zones are terms used by different schemes, often meaning the exact same emission levels. For the schemes in this article, Glasgow uses the term "LEZ" while London uses "ULEZ". The abbreviation (U)LEZ has been used throughout unless in reference to a specific scheme.

[2] Health Matters: Air Pollution, Public Health England, November 2018.

[3] Science Vs, How Toxic is the Air You Breathe, Transcript:Science Vs Air Pollution Transcript ; Podcast: Science Vs Podcast Episode: How Toxic is the Air You Breathe

[4] Royal College of Physicians article, June 2025 "Air pollution linked to 30,000 UK deaths in 2025 and costs the economy and NHS billions", coinciding with the release of their report "A breath of fresh air: responding to the health challenges of modern air pollution".

[5] The Air Quality Standards Regulations, 2010, Schedule 2.

[6] London-wide Ultra Low Emission Zone One Year Report, Mayor of London, March 2025.

[7] Air Quality Annual Progress Report, Glasgow City Council, August 2026.

Biofuel Status 2026

2026-08-25T21:00:00.000-04:00

Fifteen Years On: Are Biofuels Delivering on the IEA’s 2011 Vision?

In April 2011, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published an ambitious roadmap claiming that biofuels could supply 27% of global transport fuel by 2050, up from around 2% at the time (EcoWarriorMe: Biofuels (2011)). The roadmap argued that sustainable biofuels would become essential for reducing emissions from aviation, shipping and heavy transport while improving energy security.

Now, fifteen years later, we are almost half way towards the forecast horizon and the transport and energy landscape looks very different. Electric vehicles have advanced far faster than many analysts expected, while biofuels have evolved into a more specialised — but still strategically important — decarbonisation tool.

The 2011 Roadmap

The original roadmap envisioned:

Biofuels rising from 2% to 27% of global transport fuel by 2050.
A major shift from food-crop biofuels to “advanced biofuels” made from waste, residues and lignocellulosic feedstocks.
Strong growth in aviation and marine biofuels.
Large-scale international trade in biomass and biofuel products.
Sustainability certification becoming essential.
Biofuels providing roughly one-fifth of transport-sector emissions reductions.

The report also warned that success depended on major technological breakthroughs, long-term policy support and avoiding harmful land-use change.

The Reality (2011–2026)

Biofuel Production Expanded More Slowly Than Expected

Global biofuel production did grow substantially. Ethanol and biodiesel have become mainstream in countries such as Brazil, the United States and parts of Europe. Renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are now rapidly expanding markets.

However, growth has been slower than the roadmap implied. The IEA currently states that biofuels are “not on track” for net-zero scenarios. Biofuel demand reached record levels in the early 2020s, but still represents only a modest share of total transport energy.

The original roadmap assumed a relatively linear rise in liquid-fuel demand. Instead, transport electrification accelerated dramatically after 2020, especially in passenger cars.

Electric Vehicles Changed the Equation

This is the single biggest development the 2011 roadmap underestimated.

In 2011, EVs were still niche products. Since then:

Battery costs have fallen sharply.
Major governments have announced internal combustion phase-out plans.
EV adoption has surged in China, Europe and North America.

As a result, biofuels are no longer expected to dominate decarbonisation for passenger cars. Instead, they are increasingly targeted at sectors where batteries are difficult to deploy:

aviation,
shipping,
heavy trucking,
construction, and
industrial fuel applications.

This means the original “27% of transport fuel” target now looks less important than the question of which sectors biofuels serve.

Aviation Has Become Biofuels’ Strongest Growth Market

The 2011 roadmap correctly identified aviation as a critical long-term market.

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has become one of the fastest-growing areas of clean-energy investment. Airlines and governments increasingly see SAF as the only scalable near-term solution for reducing aviation emissions. Major SAF plants are now under construction in various locales, including large ethanol-to-jet projects.

This is arguably the area where the IEA’s original thesis is closest to reality: liquid biofuels remain extremely valuable where electrification is impractical.

Sustainability Standards Became Central

In 2011, sustainability certification was still emerging. Today it is fundamental.

Modern biofuel policies increasingly include:

lifecycle carbon accounting,
land-use restrictions,
waste-feedstock incentives,
deforestation safeguards.

The debate around “food versus fuel” became one of the defining controversies of the 2010s, forcing regulators and producers to tighten sustainability criteria.

Advanced Biofuels Did Progress — Slowly

The roadmap emphasised that waste-based and cellulosic fuels would eventually dominate. Progress has occurred, but commercialization proved slower and more difficult than expected.

Some technologies succeeded:

renewable diesel from waste oils,
biomethane,
ethanol-to-jet fuel,
hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA).

Others, particularly cellulosic ethanol at massive scale, struggled with economics and deployment.

Overall, advanced biofuels are growing, but not at the pace envisioned in 2011.

Where the Roadmap Was Too Optimistic

The Scale Target Now Looks Ambitious

Reaching 27% of total transport fuel by 2050 now appears unlikely under many current energy-transition scenarios with current penetration estimated at around 5-6%.

Why?

Electrification is reducing liquid fuel demand.
Sustainable biomass supply is limited.
Land-use concerns remain politically sensitive.
Advanced biofuels remain expensive compared with fossil fuels and, increasingly, electricity.

Many analysts now expect biofuels to play a more focused role rather than becoming a dominant transport fuel.

Land and Food Concerns Proved More Serious Than Expected

The roadmap assumed sustainable feedstock systems could scale with limited conflict over land use, despite contemperaneous concerns.

In reality:

palm oil expansion drove major controversy,
deforestation concerns intensified,
crop-based ethanol faced criticism over agricultural subsidies and food prices.

Public skepticism toward first-generation biofuels also became a major political barrier.

Where the Roadmap Was Too Pessimistic

Innovation in Certain Biofuel Pathways Accelerated

Some technologies advanced faster than expected:

renewable diesel,
SAF refining pathways,
waste-oil processing,
integrated biorefineries.

Policy frameworks such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and low-carbon fuel standards have also strengthened investment incentives beyond what many expected in 2011.

Biofuels Became More Strategically Valuable

The roadmap largely framed biofuels as a broad transport solution. Today they are increasingly viewed as a strategic decarbonisation tool for sectors with few alternatives. This narrower but more essential role may ultimately prove more durable.

Was the Original Vision Right?

Like many such long term foecasts, the answer is: partly.

The IEA was broadly correct that:

biofuels would remain important,
aviation and heavy transport would depend on them,
sustainability would become central,
advanced fuels would gradually replace conventional biofuels.

But the roadmap underestimated:

the speed of battery-electric transport,
political resistance to crop-based fuels,
the economic difficulty of scaling advanced biofuel technologies
developments in other advanced fuel technologies.

In 2026, the most credible outlook is no longer “biofuels everywhere,” but rather:

electrification for light vehicles,
biofuels mixed with other alternative fuels for aviation, shipping and heavy industry.

Under current trajectories, the original 27% figure looks optimistic for total transport energy. Yet for hard-to-electrify sectors, biofuels may still become an important part of the mix, if not indispensable.

In that sense, the IEA’s core insight survived — even if the pathway changed, and some of the main concerns around competing with food production have been mitigate.

EWM, August 2026

What Next?

If you haven't read my original post on the IEA's forecast, it will give more context to this article and can be found here:Biofuels could provide 27% of transport fuel. Other related posts cover Energy from Waste or Fuel Efficiency

The Carmont Train Crash

2026-08-11T22:27:31.141-04:00

What it means for Infrastructure Climate Resilience

Six years ago, on the morning of 12 August 2020, a ScotRail passenger train derailed near Carmont, south of Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire. The derailment was caused by the train striking debris washed onto the track following an intense rain storm. The accident claimed three lives, injured six others and became the deadliest railway accident in Britain for almost two decades. Yet the tragedy was more than an isolated engineering failure. The investigation conducted by the independent Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) concluded that it exposed wider weaknesses in the way Britain's railway understood and managed the risks posed by increasingly severe weather[1]. As climate change alters rainfall patterns and increases the potential for more frequent episodes of intense rainfall, Carmont has become a defining case study in the importance of building climate resilience into ageing infrastructure.

Before considering the technical lessons, it is important to remember the human cost. Train driver Brett McCullough, conductor Donald Dinnie, and passenger Christopher Stuchbury lost their lives in the derailment. Six other passengers were injured, some seriously. The numbers killed and injured would likely have been much higher if not for Covid lockdown restrictions limiting people's travel. The tragic loss of life remains central to the accident investigation and serves as a solemn reminder that infrastructure resilience is ultimately about protecting lives, not simply safeguarding assets.

What actually happened on the day?

The circumstances leading to the crash illustrate how rapidly extreme weather can overwhelm established systems. Overnight on 11-12 August, Storm Francis brought exceptionally heavy rain across eastern Scotland. The rail network experienced widespread disruption on the morning of the 12th as a result, with many lines south of Perth closed due to flooding and landslips, and, separately, a section of canal bursting its banks closing the main Edinburgh-Glasgow route.

The 06:38 ScotRail service from Aberdeen to Glasgow initially travelled south without incident, and was expected to terminate at Dundee due to the flooding further south. However, it was stopped by a signaller due to a landslip further down the route. This forced the train to reverse direction and return north, planning to terminate at Stonehaven due to subsequent flooding further north. After a delay to allow the train to safely switch tracks, the train then passed through the Carmont area a second time. By this time the rain had cleared and the sun was shining. At approximately 9:37 a.m., travelling at around 73 mph, the train struck gravel and other material that had been washed from a drainage system onto the track. The leading power car derailed before colliding with a bridge parapet and embankment, while the coaches jack-knifed behind it with devastating consequences.

Aftermath of the Carmont Train Crash. Image from RAIB report [1].

What were the root causes?

The RAIB investigation identified several contributing factors but the immediate cause of the derailment was failure of a drainage improvement scheme carried out several years earlier to collect runoff from neighbouring farmland and divert it safely across the railway. It had not been constructed in line with the design. Modifications during construction formed an earth bund which concentrated runoff towards a gully above the railway. Under ordinary rainfall this presented little difficulty, but during the exceptional downpour, with over 50mm of rainfall in the preceding three hours, the concentrated flow eroded the trench, washing gravel and surrounding material down onto the railway line. This forced the train from the track as it approached at speed. The intensity of rainfall had an estimated return period[2] of between 100 and 140 years depending on methodology, with the more recent methodology predicting a shorter return period due to climate change.

The investigation also identified important organisational factors which contributed to the accident. Related to the failed drainage system, Network Rail had not adequately managed changes made during construction, nor ensured that the completed asset continued to perform as intended. Operationally, route controllers lacked sufficient information, procedures and training to make fully informed decisions during a fast-moving weather event involving multiple incidents across the network. Existing weather forecasts identified areas at risk but could not pinpoint the highly localised rainfall that arises in summer convective storms and ultimately caused the failure. Consequently, the train continued at normal line speed through an area where the infrastructure had already been compromised.

Graph of rainfall over the three hours preceding the incident. This graph comes from the RAIB report [1] and presents analysis of rainfall radar undertaken by the Met Office following the incident.

What lessons can we take from this tragedy?

The RAIB concluded their investigation with twenty recommendations aimed at strengthening railway safety. They can be grouped into infrastructure, operational and management improvements. For infrastructure, recommendations include:

Improved management of construction work.
Stronger design standards for railway drainage systems.
Better management of drainage assets.
Improved understanding and management of earthwork and slope risks.
Improved risk assessment linking weather forecasts with infrastructure vulnerabilities.

Operational and management recommendations included

Enhanced operational procedures for responding to extreme rainfall.
Better use of modern weather forecasting and rainfall monitoring technology.
Enhanced training and capability for Network Rail route control staff.

In addition to the RAIB investigation, Network Rail set up Earthworks Management and Weather Advisory task forces led by Lord Robert Mair and Dame Julia Slingo respectively. Focusing on the physical infrastructure side, Mair made many recommendations including the importance of: integrating earthworks, drainage, and vegetation management; using intelligent infrastructure data to improve earthworks asset management; and better monitoring technologies to detect failures and predict possible failures[3].

How did Network Rail respond?

In response, Network Rail has embarked on an extensive programme of work intended to address these recommendations and improve resilience across the network. The events at Carmont highlight that these changes cannot rely upon historical experience alone. Britain's railway comprises thousands of miles of embankments, cuttings, bridges and drainage systems, many dating back more than 150 years, with limited maintenance budgets for many years. Infrastructure that performed adequately under twentieth-century conditions may face significantly greater stress as extreme weather events become more frequent. Climate adaptation therefore requires continuous reassessment of risks rather than assuming that past performance guarantees future safety.

Particular emphasis has been placed on understanding the condition of embankments, cuttings and drainage systems that may be vulnerable during prolonged or intense rainfall. To this end, Network Rail has embarked on one of the most comprehensive programmes of weather resilience improvements undertaken on Britain's railway. A central focus has been the systematic assessment of earthworks (embankments and cuttings) that support over 20,000 miles of railway. The company has expanded the use of detailed geotechnical surveys, airborne LiDAR mapping, and remote condition monitoring to identify assets at greatest risk of failure during prolonged or intense rainfall. Assets are then prioritised according to the consequences of failure, enabling maintenance and investment to be directed towards the highest-risk locations. Drainage management has also been significantly strengthened. Thousands of culverts, drains and catchpits have been inspected, mapped and, where necessary, repaired or enlarged.

This represents a shift in approach from the more traditional cycle of inspection, assessment, and repair or renewal to a more mature, data-driven approach to risk identification and management. This is a transition from verifying that an asset meets design standards to assessing what will happen if the design parameters are exceeded: will it fail, how will it fail, what would be the consequences and are they acceptable?

Operational procedures have also evolved alongside engineering improvements. Network Rail has invested in enhanced weather forecasting capability, combining Met Office forecasts with higher-resolution rainfall modelling and real-time monitoring to provide controllers with a more detailed understanding of local conditions. Dedicated Weather Management Teams now assess the developing risk during severe weather events taking account not only of the weather conditions but giving greater consideration to combinations of forecast rainfall, known earthwork vulnerabilities and drainage conditions. These operational changes mitigate risk while the physical infrastructure remains vulnerable.

Conclusion

The immediate cause of the derailment was not simply heavy rain but the interaction between extreme weather and infrastructure and operational vulnerabilities. Although weather forecasts had warned of widespread rainfall, the nature of summer convective storms makes it difficult to forecast the location and map them onto the rail network, and climate projections indicate higher probability of such storms. This is then combined with in-built limitations and vulnerabilities of the infrastructure.

The Carmont investigation became about far more than one incident and one defective drain. It highlighted the growing challenge of managing infrastructure built largely during the Victorian era under climatic conditions that are changing from the basis that many original designs anticipated.

The investigation emphasised that climate resilience is not achieved through a single engineering project but through a continual process of understanding, monitoring and adapting infrastructure to changing environmental conditions. The response has therefore extended beyond repairing one failed drainage system to embedding climate adaptation into railway asset management, operational planning and investment decisions. As heavy rainfall events are predicted to become more intense, the lessons from Carmont have relevance well beyond the railway. Roads, bridges, power networks and water infrastructure face similar challenges. Identifying vulnerable assets, designing for future climatic conditions rather than historical averages, and using better data to inform operational decisions are practical steps that can improve resilience and ultimately save lives. Carmont remains a tragic reminder of the consequences of underestimating climate risk, but it also provides a constructive example of how organisations can learn, adapt and build safer infrastructure for the future.

The legacy of Carmont is therefore both tragic and constructive. Nothing can undo the loss suffered by the families of Brett McCullough, Donald Dinnie and Christopher Stuchbury. However, their deaths have prompted a fundamental reassessment of how Britain's railway manages the intersection between ageing infrastructure and a changing climate. Carmont illustrates that resilience is not achieved through a single engineering solution but through the combination of better asset management, improved operational judgement, modern weather intelligence and a willingness to learn from failure.

Notes

[1] The full report is publicly available: Rail Accident Investigation Branch (2022). Report 02/2022: Derailment of a passenger train at Carmont, Aberdeenshire, 12 August 2020. GOV.UK. RAIB Carmont Report

[2] The return period is a method for defining the probability that a certain intensity of storm will occur. A 100 year return period signifies that it will occur once in a hundred years, or there is a 1% probability of the storm occurring in any given year. The relationships between intensity, duration and return periods are defined in the Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH). At the time the carmont drainage system was designed, the 1999 version of the FEH applied. The current 2013 version differs from the earlier version, in part because climate change has made heavier rainfall more likely to occur, so a storm of a particular duration and intensity now has a shorter return period than in the 1999 version.
Met Office analysis of the rainfall radar data shows 51.5 mm of rain fell between 05:50 hrs and 09:00 hrs at the Carmont accident site. Based on this amount of rain falling over a 1 km2 area, the return period for this event is 144 years using the 1999 FEH methodology and 100 years using the 2013 FEH methodology.

[3] A Review of Earthworks Management, Prepared by a Task Force led by Professor Lord Robert Mair, CBE FREng FICE FRS: Earthworks Review Final Report

Quietly does it...

2026-07-27T21:46:21.789-04:00

Just quietly slipping into your feed again after a short break.

No fanfare. No big announcements. No grand plans. Just this, after an extended hiatus, followed by a planned "grand" return that fizzled out before beginning.

It's just like another corporation quietly dropping their net zero ambitions, expecting nobody to notice.

Why now?

If you haven't been living under a rock the last few months (and I'd be slightly envious if you have) you will be well aware of the climate related news. We have seen tumbling temperature records already this summer. Highest May and June temperatures in the UK, record temperatures across much of Europe and parts of North America. Events for the US semiquincentennial celebrations were cancelled in DC due to extreme heat and New York City had established cooling centres for vulnerable people. The UK has had three heatwaves already by mid-July.

Wildfires are widespread with multiple fatalities in Spain and hundreds of thousands evacuated around Bordeaux in France. Closer to home, 10 sq km of forest and moorland in the Cairngorm Mountains - an area normally cooler and wetter. In Canada massive wildfires have poured smoke across a wide area, causing unhealthy air quality in New York where you could smell the smoke - hundreds of miles from the source. I've been told it is even worse in Chicago. The wildfires season has plenty to run before cooler wetter weather reduces the risk.

Drought is starting to affect parts of the UK, with hosepipe bans in parts of England (an increasingly common feature of English summer) and parts of Wales declaring drought conditions. Wales is on track for the driest July in two hundred years.

To compound this, we are seeing the start of an El Niño. Predictions are that it will be a big one: a super El Niño. Some even say a Godzilla El Niño. It does sound like sensationalist hyperbole but indication are that it may be as severe as the last big one in 2015-16 and possibly as bad as the 1877-78 event which resulted in famine in many areas and over 50 million deaths (against a much smaller global population than today). There are not many data points for the 1877 event compared with modern observations and models so direct comparison is not possible.

Taken together it looks like some Biblical End of Days. Fire, famine and flood. But I am a Rational Human. This is no divine intervention; it is the consequence of our actions. Not directly but the multiple temperature records, forest fires and stronger El Niños are all more likely due increasing energy in our climate system due to the greenhouse effect.

But we are dealing with climate change, aren't we?

Well. After a few positive years, the tide appears to be turning against positive climate action. Trump, the trailblazing trendsetter may have been one of the first powerful leaders to begin the push back against woke lefty climate change legislation and Net Zero goals but others leaders, wannabes and has-beens have joined the clamour. Now we have political figures at supposedly opposite ends of the spectrum pushing back against Net Zero, for example Nigel Farage of the Reform UK party and Tony Blair of the Labour Party. Even the EU is proposing to slow cuts to businesses' greenhouse gas emissions.

A combination of a stagnating economy and a corporate desire to curry favour with political decision makers has led to many companies quietly delaying, diluting or completely dropping commitments on Net Zero, climate change and other ESG goals. The same applies to Diversity, Equity/Equality and Inclusion policies. This hasn't all happened at once, but quietly piece by piece.

While the evidence for a pressing need to decarbonise grows, the political and commercial imperative to act slows. Is this some kind of perverse reverse feedback loop?

So, what's next?

Stopping release of global warming gasses tomorrow won't stop this summer's extremes. It is likely to take decades after reducing emissions for forced warming effects to stabilise and reverse. The current evidence in front of us should not only be a warning sign that we need to urgently act on decarbonisation. The sooner we reach Net Zero and, ultimately, net negative emissions the better but we need to be prepared to deal with the consequences in the meantime.

We need to build resilience into our systems, our societies and the infrastructure on which we rely. And we need to do this in parallel with decarbonisation in a sustainable way. In developed nations, aging infrastructure and years of under investment in maintenance of infrastructure gives both a challenge and an opportunity. While pieces of infrastructure may be nearing the end of their useful life, they can be replaced with something more appropriate for the twenty first century.

What does this mean for the EcoWarriorMe?

All this has driven me to re-examine older articles and look for solutions to both decarbonisation and developing resilience. There will be slight change of focus, leaning into both my engineering background and another decade of life experience, seeking and evaluating solutions to some of these challenges. The blog has been renamed "The Engineering EcoWarrior" to reflect this new direction.

Some old posts will be either updated or augmented with a follow up post written to evaluate developments over the years. In addition, there will be some completely new and interesting content, beginning next week with an article on climate resilience of railway infrastructure in the UK. This will be followed by a review of biofuel predictions: how does reality compare with the predictions...

Ona a personal note, my situation has changed and I'm temporarily living in the United States of America. This is certainly giving me a different perspective on life and many of the issues around climate change and sustainability, and I hope to share some of these insights.

And Finally...

In an effort to make the archive more discoverable and accessible, new pages introduce the main themes of the blog and provide a pathway to key posts. They are anchored in the About page: About Me

This page contains links to pages on Energy and Climate Change, Transportation, Sustainability, and Nature Stories. There is also a Subject Index with a word cloud drawn up of all post tags/labels. (Warning: it's big and messy and work in progress.)

EWM, July 2026

Getting Back in the Saddle

2022-12-16T12:00:00.020-05:00

After last week's post, I would like to say how easy it was for me to get back in the saddle but it wasn’t. It was hard. I don't want to be misleading. Like breaking most habits it required effort, a bloody minded determination to gain traction. That and a plan.

This wasn't my first attempt at cycle commuting. In last week’s post, I mentioned the time I did cycle to work but was put off repeating it by a combination of my physical condition, the riding conditions and doom-laden predictions from my colleagues. On a few other occasions I have tried with slightly better success, but still not enough to fully make the transition to cycling as my main mode of transport.

Previous plans involved breaking myself in gently, cycling once a week for a few weeks then steadily increasing the frequency as I got fitter and more used to the traffic. Three weeks in a row was my record, cycling to work on two days in the last week. It wasn't frequently enough to build fitness or, more importantly, gain confidence and become comfortable with cycling in busy traffic. I found the traffic particularly stressful, sometimes not giving much space when overtaking or sitting behind me waiting for an opportunity to overtake with me not knowing if or when they would make a move.

One of the mistakes that I now realise I made was to take the same familiar route my bus followed. That is where the plan came in. After some careful planning and a bit of experimenting, I came up with a route on which only a cumulative one mile from a total commute of almost five miles was on busy main roads. The remainder of the route was a mixture of quiet back streets, lanes (including one with a flight of steps), parks and dedicated cycle lanes separated from traffic (a whole 500m). The overall distance was longer than more direct routes and the steps are far from ideal but on the whole it felt safer and was less stressful.

I mentioned a determination to make the change in the introduction. This was a big factor in getting started. Rather than breaking myself in gently, I bit the bullet and cycled every day for a week. Then, despite the aches and pains and groaning muscles and regardless of the weather, the same the following week. It was August so it wasn’t too cold, even if it could be wet. I found it tough but I wanted to succeed. Some days I really enjoyed it and I wondered if I was allowed this much fun going to work. Other days, when it was wet and my shoes made horrible squelching sounds it was less appealing. At these times I thought instead about how much fossil fuels I wasn't using (and how little of a difference it would make with so many others driving). I wondered whether it was really worth it or just a crazy futile gesture. I also tried to think about how much fitter and healthier I would become and how I would sleep better(I did) although I didn't feel fitter and the aches and pains were unnatural. But persevere I did and after a few weeks it became second nature.

I would like to say that the rest is history but it wasn't that easy. It lasted through August, September and into October. The seasons change and with them the cycling experience. I found myself cycling in darkness morning and evening, alleviated in the morning when the clocks changed, and the first touch of frost. Some of the routes through parks were not really suitable, in my mind, forcing me to use fast busy roads. I then stopped cycling altogether over the winter.

As the Spring returned, bringing with it daylight, better weather and available off-road routes, it should have been back to cycling commutes. But it wasn't. It was difficult to take that first step again. I did get back to cycling one or two days a week over the summer but nothing consistent and habit forming. The sought after fitness didn't come. Perhaps if e-bikes were as readily available then as they are now I would have went down that route and I’d have a different tale to tell.

This set the pattern for the next few years - commuting by bike half a dozen times over the school holiday (July and August). Time moves on and with its passage I've learned some things about myself, about cycling, and about bikes. In the final post in this series, I talk about the things that finally motivated me to make a change, the importance of getting the right equipment and emerging from adversity with a positive attitude. It is a journey from what appeared to me to be an extreme challenge, through recreational cycling and back to utility cycling. A journey that would not have reached its current destination of not for the great reset and a new normal.

Until next time.

The River Clyde from National Cycle Route N75 at Glasgow Green, part of my off-road commute.

How I fell off my bike

2022-12-09T12:00:00.001-05:00

Not literally, but how I got out of the habit of cycling. This is the first of a series of three posts on my personal journey away from regular cycling then back into it over many years. This post talks of how I used my bike to get around and some of the barriers to me getting back into it. In the next post I will talk about how I got back into it, in a manner, and the final post brings us up to date. This is only my perspective but I'm sure it is not unique and you may have similar experiences.

It happens to so many of us, that we regularly cycle as children and adolescents then “grow” out of it as adults. Until I left school I cycled everywhere: to school, to the shops, to my Saturday job, to the swimming baths and any other activities that were farther than a five minute walk. During the holidays I would make 30 mile (50km) round trips to visit my grandparents or 70 mile (110km) round trips to the beach and, a couple of times, longer trips over several days, such as the trip over the Forth Road Bridge in the photo. Time and distance were no barrier.

Then I learned to drive. I could get places quicker. An hour's cycle instead would take 20 minutes. Except that never really happened because I didn't have a car; I kept cycling for nearly a year after passing my driving test.

My downfall wasn't the convenience of the motor car but moving away from home to study and staying close to college. For too many years I lived within five minutes walk of my college, the pub and the supermarket and ten minutes walk from the town centre and the railway station if I wanted to go further afield. Everything was close enough that cycling didn't bring any benefits.

Fast forward a few more years and I got a real job in the big city, but still living 10 minutes walk from the railway station. There was a good frequent train service in the morning and evening. This was a win for public transport so it never even crossed my mind to cycle, even though it was only 8 miles. I had cycled into the city once but the traffic was scarily fast and busy and certainly not very inviting, especially coming into it after a lengthy break. There was no cycling infrastructure, even now there is no decent infrastructure in that route. There is a dedicated cycle route now but it adds around 50% on to the distance and is quite disjointed. Perhaps more on that in another post.

More recently (but still in the 90s), I moved to the big city, around five miles from work. There were fewer amenities close at hand but we did have a bus service. The bus could be unreliable especially in the evenings (not as bad as now) so I considered cycling and went as far as giving it a go. Not very successfully.

The traffic was frightening, unaccustomed as I was to sharing the road so intimately with cars, buses and trucks. I arrived at work drenched in sweat - the years without cycling had taken their toll on my fitness. It wasn't the most comfortable way to start the day in the office. Add to this my colleagues' dire predictions of near certain death were hardly the encouragement I needed. Everyone seemed to know someone that had been knocked off their bike with horrific injuries or worse.

Eventually, after too many winter's evenings waiting for bus after bus that didn't turn up, I acquired a second (or more) hand car for the commute.

To summarise, I initially stopped cycling due to a lack of need, walking was more convenient or public transport was mostly quick and reliable. I didn't get back into it due to a fear of heavy traffic, lack of fitness, discomfort and doom-mongering of my peers, and I finally conformed to expectations and started driving. As life moved on the nursery run was added into the commute so alternatives seemed even more unmanageable.

Some of this may be familiar to you, perhaps you started driving earlier instead of walking, cycling or using public transport. Perhaps there were fewer alternatives to driving in your circumstances. Or have you been able to maintain active travel as part of your routine?

In the next post, I'll describe how I managed to overcome some of these obstacles and get back in the saddle. It was a start, definitely an improvement but it wasn't quite job done.

The Blue Marble

2022-12-07T02:12:00.003-05:00

Please join me in celebrating fifty years of this iconic image.

Taken from the Apollo 17 mission on December 7th 1972, this famous image changed the way we view the world. All of humanity is captured in the field of view (except for the crew of Schmitt, Evans and Cernan). It shows ourselves as others would see us, from the outside looking inwards.

It is the only world we will ever know, our home. We must look after it. Respect it.

There is no doubt that this image acted as a catalyst to the environmental movement. It lays bare how fragile and vulnerable we are in the vast emptiness. . We have filled all the hospitable corners of the planet and it is clear that there is nowhere else to go.

The image was captured while travelling between Earth orbit and the moon, where Scmitt and Cernan walked a few days later. They were the last humans to stand on an extraterrestrial body.

In the time since it was taken, there have been huge advances in satellite and imaging technology giving us the tools to observe, interpret and analyse our planet and inform decisions on how we manage it. We can monitor desertification, deforestation, floods, glacier melt and urban sprawl, to name but a fraction of our capabilities. This makes it easier to identify positive outcomes from interventions and to hold those enabling destruction to be held accountable. There is a much greater awareness of the pressures on our environment and ecosystems, at an individual level and in political and commercial circles. There is hope that we are beginning to make progress in some small ways.

In the time since it was taken, the world’s population has more than doubled. Atmospheric CO2 has increased by over 25%, with almost ⅔ of the CO2 increase since pre-industrial times having occurred (pre-industrial=280ppm, 1972=330ppm, 2022=420ppm). In the same time, around 1/6th of the Amazon forest has been lost (https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/deforestation_calculations.html) and ⅔ of wildlife populations have gone (Living Planet Report).

So while reflecting on the fragile Blue Marble and the progress that has been made, think also about how much more is to be done. Think how you can help. Simple things like chatting about the issues with friends, family and colleagues can help us all move along to making better choices or we can give feedback to businesses we use.

We do not have another fifty years.

Original image caption:

View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the east coast of Africa is the Republic of Madagascar. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast.

Astronaut photograph AS17-148-22727, courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center.

December Weather Patterns

2019-11-02T13:51:00.001-04:00

Do you remember the weather last December? Some of it wasn't pretty, such as Storm Deirdre. In case you have forgotten, the Met Office's report states the following impact:

Freezing rain caused treacherous conditions and multiple traffic accidents, particularly on the M74 and across southern Scotland, and the A66 across the North Pennines was closed. There were further traffic incidents across parts of England and Wales, reports of fallen trees and several hundred homes without power across parts of Wales and Scotland. Planes had to abort landings at Manchester Airport due to strong crosswinds.

And here are some contemporary reports:

In short, not a great few days to be out and about. Was this a one off or more typical of December weather? To answer this, Wunderground records have been examined for the week containing the 12th of each December for the 10 years from 2009-2018 and a range of data has been extracted. All the data is from Glasgow Airport weather station. The data extracted includes the maximum (usually day-time) temperature, the minimum (usually night-time) temperature for the period, which are not necessarily on the same day; the maximum mean and gust wind speeds; and the number of days where the temperature did not rise above zero degrees Celsius. Unfortunately precipitation data is no longer recorded at this station. The table and graphs below summarises this data.

Year	Max Temp (⁰C)	Min Temp (⁰C)	Max Mean Wind (km/h)	Max Wind Gust (km/h)	Days<=zero
2018	8	- 3	35	46	0
2017	6	- 8	41	56	1
2016	13	0	30	30	0
2015	13	- 3	57	91	0
2014	11	- 3	52	78	0
2013	14	3	59	85	0
2012	9	- 8	41	56	2
2011	7	- 5	70	100	0
2010	9	-10	31	46	3
2009	11	- 1	43	59	0

As expected, there is quite a wide variation from year to year, with some years being relatively mild with temperatures generally above freezing while others had days when the temperature never exceeded zero degrees Celsius. One suspects the milder temperatures were accompanied by wetter weather but unfortunately the data has not been found. Three of the ten years had periods of extreme cold with temperatures below freezing all day on one or more days, and four years had severe gales (9 on the Beaufort Scale).

Further records of historical weather events from the Met Office include several December events.

2015 - Storm Desmond caused severe flooding in Cumbria and elsewhere, with major disruption to transport and power networks;
2013 - severe storms at the beginning of December leading to widespread damage, 100,000 homes without power and two fatalities, followed by a sequence of storms over the middle of the month and into January;
2011 - a period of turbulent weather with a particularly virulent storm on the 8th leaving 150,000 homes without power and an estimated £100m cost to Scotland's economy;
2010 - a full month of bitterly cold weather from the end of November to the end of December with thousands of schools closed due to snow and disruption to road, rail, power and water networks.
2009 - heavy snow and prolonged cold spell from mid December to mid January.

That is six of the past ten Decembers with documented severe weather events causing significant disruption. The inference from this is that their may be as high as a 50% chance of disruption to polling in at least some regions of the UK due to adverse weather on the days leading up to the election or the election day itself.

Only a fool would gamble on the weather but this information paints a picture of what could be expected on the 12th of December 2019, date of the 2019 General Election. The short hours of daylight have already been cited as a potentially causing lower voter turnout but this analysis of December weather patterns suggests this may also have a significant effect. According to the Electoral Commission, quoted in this extract from the Guardian's Politics live feed on 1/11/19, there can be no extension to voting to deal with such scenarios.

This is the first December General Election since 1923 with good reason. Let's see what then next six weeks bring, but, in the meantime, please consider a postal vote in advance (allowing for slower post times during the approach to Christmas).

Is There a Place for Genetics in Agriculture?

2019-10-29T15:38:00.002-04:00

Many people oppose genetically modified crops. There is fear that splicing genes from one species in to another will, for example, turn ordinarily benign rice in to a ravaging carnivorous organism akin to Wyndham's triffids. While that may be an exaggeration, there are good reasons to, if not fear, at least be wary of creations made by artificially changing or combining genes.

Concerns mainly fall in to one of the following categories:

unforeseen or unintended impacts on stable ecosystems;
control of seeds by powerful agri-corporations limiting farmers' ability to grow the crops; or
adverse health effects from unnatural Franken-foods.

Let us consider the first category, which has the biggest potential impact on the environment. Crops have been genetically modified for a number of reasons, all with the aim of increasing yield. Increased yield is not a bad thing but at what cost. One method is to improve resistance of plants to pesticides, meaning that more pesticides can be used reducing the portion of crop lost to pests. This means more pesticides in the environment (which is a whole other topic) and the consequential decline in biodiversity. Other goals, such as improve drought resistance, may have less negative impacts.

I'm not a Luddite. I see benefits to technology. The same scientific and engineering advances in fields such as sanitation, hygiene and medicine that have led to exponential human population growth in a few generations now needs to ensure we can be sustained without wiping out the rest of life on planet earth. Cross breeding plants (non-GM) has already made great leaps in terms of improving yield of staple crops such as rice and wheat, improving resistance to drought and disease by creating hybrid plants by crossing domesticated and wild varieties. By understanding the function of certain genetic markers this can be more targeted. This way genetics can be used to improve productivity but without creating wholly unnatural organisms.

Adding the study of genetics to the tool box can provide new direction for the continued evolution of food crops which has been going on since humans became farmers while leaving ultimate control in the hands of the farmers. This should not be feared.

More caution is still required when the process involves splicing DNA from unrelated species.

To Follow - is Organic or Conventional farming better for the environment?

Can't see the Wood from the Trees (because the forest is burning)

2015-12-01T14:58:00.001-05:00

Whether royalist or republican, we must applaud Prince Charles for using his power and influence to highlight the great problem of deforestation and its link to climate change as well as loss of biodiversity.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/01/no-plan-b-for-climate-change-without-forests-prince-charles-tells-paris-summit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34973166

But we should we be taking advice from him? If we all took our lead from Charles, we would be sure to hit a four degree temperature rise by the early 2030s[1].

Alternatively if we mirrored land use in his personal estate, the Duchy of Cornwall, we would lose 90% of our forests, since the Duchy is only 3% forested compared to 31% of the world's land surface.

And if we were each granted an estate similar to Charles, all of the usable land surface would be gone after the first 120,000[2] people and the rest would have nowhere to go! No matter how extravagant the lifestyle, a global population this size couldn't do much damage.

So thanks for the advice Charles but as long as we have a small number of people at the top with lavish lifestyles there will be others below trying to climb the social ladder and the environment will always be the victim.

Notes:
1] I have no scientific basis whatsoever for this but the amount of flying he has done over his lifetime, heating multiple poorly insulated ancestral homes, driving range rovers, etc multiplied by 7bn people...
2] Based on the size of his personal estate compared to usable land surface on Earth (by usable I mean not desert or mountain),

And a link to the Duchy's woodlands:

http://duchyofcornwall.org/water-and-woodlands.html

Plastic Bag Charge

2015-10-05T01:57:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow, England catches up with the rest of the UK in imposing a levy on single use carrier bags. Figures for Scotland, which introduced the charge last year, indicate an 80% reduction in their use due to the levy and large drops have also been seen in Wales and Northern Ireland which introduced charges in 2011 and 2013 respectively.

The charge being introduced in England is not universal - it is limited to larger shops and smaller convenience stores can, conveniently, still hand out single use bags free of charge. And it only covers plastic bags, not other single use bags. Bur still, its a start. The Scottish charge applies to all retailers and includes not only plastic bags but also bags made from paper and other materials. While paper is biodegradable and renewable (in that more trees can grow) it is still not a perfect solution.

Also, the money charged goes directly to the retailer unlike the Scottish charging scheme in which the money is given to charities. It is not, therefore, a "stealth" tax and nor do the retailers profit from it, which is much more palatable to consumers.

Plastic bags are, of course, only part of the problem. Profligate use of "disposable" plastics in all forms needs to be tackled, whether through closed loop recycling or using alternative packaging. This article on plastic in fish highlights need for improving our systems for dealing with plastics - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34408414

For the latest on #plasticbags on Twitter, click here

Related Blog Posts:

http://ecowarriorme.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/plastic-bags-its-not-all-about-carbon.html

http://ecowarriorme.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/age-of-plastic.html

http://ecowarriorme.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/bag-it-bin-it-or-dont.html

http://ecowarriorme.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/banish-plastic-bags.html

The Clyde Fastlink - A Follow Up

2015-10-02T16:04:00.001-04:00

In the three years and three weeks since EcoWarriorMe's first post on Glasgow's Fastlink priority bus route there has been a whirlwind of inactivity, culminating in a buses running along the dedicated lane along the Broomielaw for a few weeks this summer as the new Southern General hospital opened its doors. Then stopped while some modifications were made. Then back again. And now, according to BBC Scotland:

Bus firms ditch 'too slow' £40m fast lanes in Glasgow

Image copyrightGoogle

Image captionMcGill's is one of two operators to withdraw from using the Fastlink lanes

Two major bus firms have stopped using the newly-built £40m Fastlink lanes in Glasgow because they are too slow.

On the positive side, bus shelters have been added to the route in the last few weeks so you can stand out of the rain waiting for the bus that will never come (surely such facilities should be an integral part of a quality bus route and not an add on after the fact).

Those familiar with the route would be right to point out that the Broomielaw is only a small part of the scheme. The route from Finnieston through Govan can only be described as bizarre - with buses and cars swapping lanes and even the side of the road on which they drive. All of this takes up limited road space and adds to car congestion, especially when the buses are sharing the space. If the extra congestion encouraged people out of their cars and into more sustainable transport modes that would be a benefit but the bus routes are not sufficiently joined up and are not quicker.

There must have been more effective ways to invest this £40m to improve transport across the city, to deliver real improvements for the people who live and work here. Perhaps the council could re-invest some of the bus lane fines in public transport, as the cameras do not appear to have done much to reduce journey times by bus.

Here's hoping.

(More info on the scheme and its history on the original EWM Post here.)

Connecting with Nature

2013-11-04T02:06:00.001-05:00

With fresh reports on how disconnected we are becoming from nature, we took the opportunity this fine weekend to reconnect, see what's out there and get muddy.

The changing seasons, summer into autumn in this case, show Glasgow's parks at their best. Here is Pollok.

A riot of autumn colour.

Calm and soothing down by the river.

And in the bright sunlit woods

By the old stable block.

In the walled garden.

Leaves on fire.

Mushrooms thriving, doing there thing.

Trees.

Ornamental Gardens.

Leaves of all shapes and colours.

Berries, abundant harvest for the birds and animals.

The Time is Right for GM Crops

2013-06-23T07:09:00.001-04:00

That's a fact?

According to environment secretary Owen Patterson, the time is right for GM crops and it is the duty of the British Government to convince the public that this is the case. He then said that GM crops are probably safer than conventional crops and seven million children have gone blind or died over the past decade because attempts to grow a strain of GM rice (Golden Rice) commercially have been thwarted (implying, perhaps, by anti-GM campaigners and that there are no other solutions to malnutrition).

The minister went on to back a scientific approach:

"We need evidence-based regulation and decision-making in the EU. Consumers need accurate information in order to make informed choices. The market should then decide if a GM product is viable,"

A rigorous and transparent scientific evidence-based approach is to be welcomed, although this goes a bit further than Mr Patterson's statement. Assuming that the evidence based regulation allows only GM crops with a very low risk to health and the environment to be developed commercially, leaving it to the consumer to decide on viability may be an acceptable approach. If, however, the regulated risk level is not low enough, this may lead to unacceptable damage which the politicians will blame on the "consumers demand" for these GM crops. While many consumers would make the right choice, inevitably many more would choose cost or marketing hype over other considerations such as nutritional values, health risks or environmental degradation.

The first hurdle in convincing the public that GM crops are acceptable, if indeed they are, is to collate the necessary evidence of their safety, scrutinise it, assess benefits and risks and present the conclusions in a fashion that can be understood by the lay person but with sufficient supporting documentation that independent experts and others with some scientific understanding can drill down to the details.

Unfortunately the Government and its environment secretary do not have a good track record of accepting the findings of scientists and applying them to policy.

Climate Change

The environment secretary revealed his ignorance of the science of climate change in a recent radio discussion. This is what he said:

"The climate's always been changing, er, Peter [Hain] mentioned the Arctic and I think in the Holocene the Arctic melted completely and you can see there were beaches there - when Greenland was occupied, you know, people growing crops. We then had a little ice age, we had a middle age warming. The climate's been going up and down, but the real question which I think everyone's trying to address is, is this influenced by man-made activity in recent years and James [Delingpole] is actually correct. The climate has not changed - the temperature has not changed in the last 17 years …"

It would appear that the environment secretary is ignoring the scientific evidence despite a study that found that of 13,950 peer reviewed scientific articles on global warming published between 1991 and 2012, only 24 rejected global warming and a further study found that less than 1% of almost 12,000 scientific papers published between 1991 and 2011 disagreed that human activities are the main cause.

The Skeptical Science website discusses this statement more fully here.

Badger Cull

Then there is the decision to ignore any scientific evidence supporting alternative approaches to reducing bovine tuberculosis other than a badger cull. They even cherry pick parts of the government's own research - playing down the risks it identified that a cull could increase the spread of TB and even if it is done effectively (ca. 90% kill rate every year for 5 years), the best that can be achieved is a modest reduction.

Neonicotinoids

Despite a growing body of scientific research linking use of neonicitinoid pesticides to declines in bee populations and other non-target species, the British government lobbied hard to prevent a Europe-wide ban. The justification for continued use was primarily that its ban may effect crop yields and that further assessment of the damage caused should be made before deciding on a ban. The

opposite of the precautionary principle whereby you don't use a new product until it has been proven safe.

Fortunately, Britain was in the minority and there will be a two year ban, which gives a window for further research. Pesticides are not the only threat to bee populations: changing weather patterns, the verola mite, alternative crops and land use changes affecting habitat all play a part and, if we want to avoid losing these key pollinators, all threats need to be identified, quantified and controlled and not blindly ignored until it is too late as appears to be proposed by the environment secretary.

Big Business and the Corporate Agenda

This government has consistently shown blinkered support for big business, whether the giant agribusiness or fossil fuel companies, without due consideration of the consequences or the effect on individuals or the environment. Regardless of whether there is a genuinely a place for using genetic engineering in crop research and development, support by a government that can not be trusted when it comes to interpreting the scientific consensus will be viewed with the same suspicion as the large self-interested corporate GM developers such as Monsanto.

If the debate is to move forward then someone without a commercial interest needs to act as an independent arbiter:at this time, when government can not be trusted, then who?

400

2013-05-14T17:41:00.000-04:00

We humans like round numbers. We don't celebrate the 23rd annual summer fete or the 49th anniversary of an organisation but the 25th or 50th respectively. This is why the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has hit the headlines this week. The daily measurement at Mauna Loa on Hawaii has passed 400 ppm (parts per million) for the first time. Not so much a cause for celebration; more a cause for commiseration The actual measurement was 400.03 but was subsequently revised down to 399.89 (but what is fourteen hundredths of a part per million between friends). Breaching this threshold was not particularly unexpected but it is symbolic in human terms; it is a memorable number.

But what are the implications of exceeding a CO2 concentration of 400 ppm?

Some climate change skeptics will be quick to highlight the scientific evidence that shows the atmospheric CO2 has been at this level and higher on the past. They are absolutely correct. Somewhere in the region of three to five million years ago similar levels were present and the world was, on average, three or four degrees Celsius warmer with some areas up to ten degrees warmer. Life survived and flourished and it is likely to have influenced the evolutionary path that led to Homo Sapiens but humanity in its current form has never experienced the like, and as far as we can tell, the changes in CO2 levels were never as rapid as over the last 150 years.

We will not wake to a radically different world tomorrow. Climate change does not work like that. If we maintain CO2 levels at 400 ppm, without any further increase, it will take decades or even centuries for a new "normal" climate to become established. Some areas will dry out, others will become wetter, some will cool and others warm, all of which will change natural vegetation and agricultural practices which will feed back into local and global weather systems. The biggest threat for the human population will be the increased frequency of crop failures. In order to cope with the still growing human population combined with climatic changes will require more wilderness to be tamed for agriculture. Perhaps the tundra will be drained for fields once the permafrost melts.

Longer term effects will be the thawing of glaciers and ice caps which will raise sea levels and affect ocean currents and hence the climate. Some estimates indicate that when the world last saw 400 ppm CO2 sea levels were 40 metres higher than now. While a rise in sea level of that magnitude may not happen for a century or more, it would be catastrophic for the world as we know it. It wouldn't just be island states such as the Maldives that would disappear but large parts of low lying countries, such as Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Our ever more crowded cities will be badly affected too. The first few floors of the newly topped out One World Trade Center in New York will be submerged as will many parts of the Eternal City, which has been inhabited for two and a half millenia. Some of the world's most densely populated cities, such as Tokyo, Cairo and London, will be much depleted.

This will lead to hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people being displaced by rising sea levels again putting pressure on the wilderness. The new homes and infrastructure that will be required on a scale never before experienced will demand vast quantities of energy and natural resources. It won't be the end of the human race but it may suspend our humanity as wars, famine and pestilence of biblical proportions are likely as greater numbers compete for limited resources.

Such a dark future is by no means certain. We still have a little time to act, but not long. The more we procrastinate the harder it will be to head off the worst extremes coming our way. If we continue with "business as usual" we are on target for 450ppm by the middle of the century, accompanied by six degrees Celsius temperature rises. That doesn't bear thinking about.

Related Links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2013/may/10/climate-warming-gas-carbon-dioxide-levels-interactive

Testing Times

2013-03-30T08:30:00.000-04:00

What is the point of exams?

Is it to test the candidate's knowledge of the subject or is it to test the candidate's skill in passing exams? In theory at least, it should be the former but when there is a lot riding on the result there is a tendency towards the latter with students placing more emphasis on training to pass the exam rather than gaining a deep understanding of the subject. The student may gain some knowledge of the subject, but only those parts that will gain most marks in the exam as part of a strategy to maximise the result for minimum effort.

This doesn't only apply to academic exams. Similar strategies can also be adopted for all sorts of tests. For example, if a car maker wants their car to get a good fuel efficiency rating they can work on scoring better in the test, rather than improving the car's performance. They can use non-standard high performance lubricants, disconnect the alternator, over inflate the tyres, remove door mirrors and even tape up joints in body panels to improve the test results. Car manufacturers have got so good at performing well in tests that the average gap between quoted fuel efficiency and actual real world fuel efficiency has grown from 7% in 2001 to 23% in 2011 according to figures from Germany. In fact the real world fuel consumption has been shown to be as much as 50% higher than the official test figures for some vehicles.("Mind the Gap:Why official car fuel economy figures don't match reality")

While no rules or regulations are broken by manipulating the test results, there is certainly an intent to deceive or mislead the consumers and governments (some of which set taxation levels depending on the results of the tests). This approach to testing taken by car makers could account for as much as half of the fuel efficiency improvements between 2002 and 2010 according to a study undertaken for the European Commission. This makes it difficult for car buyers to make an informed judgement about which models are more efficient. There is, apparently, further scope to improve test results without improving the performance of the production car.

Once you've bought a shiny new supposedly fuel efficient car it is fairly easy to compare your real world fuel consumption with that advertised. To calculate your fuel consumption:

1) Fill the tank completely and note down the odometer (mileage) reading;

2) Fill the tank again after a few hundred miles, note the odometer reading and the amount of fuel used to fill the tank;

3) Calculate fuel consumption in milers per gallon (mpg):

[(2nd Odometer reading) - (1st Odometer reading)]/(fuel used in litres/4.55) = mpg

Once you have calculated your fuel consumption and found it to be significantly greater than advertised, what recourse do you have? Under trading standards regulations, you would expect recourse if the product differed from that advertised and advertising standards, manufacturer's must be able to justify their advertised claims. Unfortunately the consumer loses out in both cases as the manufacturer has testing data to justify their claims and they do not advertise the real world performance or the performance that you should expect, only the performance under a set of loosely defined test criteria.

The Future of Fuel Savings

The European Union is considering future emissions from new cars including setting a target to 95 g CO2/km on average for new cars by 2020. According to some reports motorists will save £350 per year on fuel thanks to the new emission levels, which will pay for the additional cost of the new car in three years. Presumably this is based on average mileage and real world fuel efficiency improving at the same rate as the quoted tested efficiency. If real efficiency savings are half of the test values then the pay back time would double and, for those who drive less, there may never be enough savings of fuel to cover the additional capital cost of the car. This is not the incentive we need to reduce fuel consumption.

Media Perception

The New York Times recently reported on a road test of a Tesla electric car, in which it highlighted major shortcomings in its energy use performance, specifically its range. This is clearly of much greater significance than the fuel efficiency of a petrol or diesel car as they can be quickly and easily be topped up with more fuel at one of many filling stations unlike the electric car which takes time to top up the battery at much less common charging points. Nevertheless, the emphasis on fuel consumption seems disproportionate with the media generally accepting manufacturer's performance claims, perhaps accepting that real world fuel consumption may be a bit higher than test conditions but certainly not emphasising the growing disparity between quoted performance and actual performance. One may surmise that they do not want to challenge the car makers too much in case the supply of shiny new toys to test drive is curtailed...

Conclusion

In conclusion, we need:

1. A more accurate test that better simulates real driving conditions and is based on sample cars off the production line or from the forecourt without any modifications.

2. More robust challenging of fuel efficiency claims across all car types by the motoring press.

3. Genuine increases in fuel efficiency.

In addition, we must also focus on alternatives to the car, such as active travel, public transport, private group travel and reducing demand for travel, some of which will be covered in further posts.

Published 30/3/2013. Minor grammatical edits 25/9/2026

What I Learned During Earth Hour

2013-03-24T09:49:00.000-04:00

A book and a wind-up torch.

During Earth Hour, I learned the following:

The origin of apples;
A little about the last few months of Leon Trotsky’s life before being exiled;
That I can still read a book in the dark with a torch (like I did as a child, under the blanket after bed time);
And, thanks to @glasgow_kat, that petrochemical candles have much higher emissions than an electric light.

Earth Hour is a fantastic way to highlight the problem of climate change in solidarity with people across the globe but it is not enough on its own. Switching the lights off on landmarks from Sidney Opera House to the Eiffel Tower to the Empire State Building for one hour is purely symbolic. Even switching them off permanently would be insignificant. The kind of reduction in fossil fuel use that we need to achieve would be more like everyone everywhere turning off the lights, heating, air conditioning, refrigeration, computers, televisions - everything for an hour. Not just once a year, a week or even a day but for four or five hours a day with all if the saved energy being from fossil fuels. And without increasing consumption in the periods in between.

It is a huge challenge but it is the one we face if we are to have a hope of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change and we can't afford to wait until next year to face it.

And the apples? They originated in the area around present day Almaty in Kazakhstan.

The 100th Post - A Retrospective

2013-03-12T18:52:00.000-04:00

On noticing that this would be EcoWarriorMe's 100th post, I thought it would be a good opportunity to review what we set out to do and how the blog has developed over the past two years and to highlight some of the most popular posts and personal favourites.

The blog was born of a frustration at the general apathy and lack of progress towards a more sustainable society including climate change, pollution, wasteful squandering of precious resources and the relentless despoiling of our natural environment. I aimed to highlight things that we can do to reduce our negative impact and demystify some of the competing arguments for and against particular courses of action. I knew that I didn't have all of the answers and I still don't. I don't even know all the questions although I'm working on that. I enjoy learning and am interested in the science and engineering on which our modern society is based but I expected to probe a bit deeper rather then taking things at face value: it says its greener so it must be, or is it? I hoped to use this desire for knowledge, and sharing the knowledge, to stimulate debate and encourage others to also ask the awkward questions.

The first few posts were little more than re-posts of other article with some additional commentary, such at the first post on the use of biofuels in transport at the expense of deforestation and rising food prices.

One of the first full posts was on the Fukushima disaster, where I suggested that this incident shouldn't be used as an excuse to reject nuclear power. There are sufficient other reasons to avoid nuclear power.

Not long after starting this blog, the Scottish National Party were returned to power at Holyrood with a commitment to achieve 100% of Scotland's electricity from renewable sources by 2020 - a bold target by any standard, one of the toughest targets in the world. In reality, Scotland is an integral part of the UK's National Grid and it will continue to rely on non renewable sources of energy as part of balancing mechanisms beyond 2020. The mix of generation in the UK as a whole is therefore relevant, hence the review of a paper in the journal Engineering Sustainability on possible scenarios to meet targets for low carbon electricity and to assess the possible energy mix in 2030 in what has been one of the blog's most popular posts.

While it is important that we tackle the causes of climate change - and our energy mix is a big part of that - it is also important that we do not lose sight of the many other environmental issues competing for our attention. These include population growth, pollution, recycling, habitat loss, loss of biodiversity and access to safe food, water and sanitation. This list is, of course, not exhaustive.

One of the blog's aim is to investigate whether green claims really stack up. This is often difficult because a product may be designed to improve its environmental performance in one regard but within unintended consequences in another. Examples include using less packaging which could result in a higher carbon footprint and more waste to landfill, zero emission electric vehicles that still have emissions.

Certain posts have proven more popular than others and the five most popular posts of all time have been:

1. Plastic bags: it's not all about carbon - there is more to the eternal plastic bag than simply its carbon footprint;
2. Clyde Fastlink - A Revolution in Public Transport - Glasgow's big investment in a marginal public transport scheme while the city chokes on polluted air;
3. 2030 Electricity Generation Mix - a review of possible scenarios for the UK's future low carbon energy supply;
4. Tell Shell - promoting the Greenpeace campaign to stop Shell drilling in the arctic;
5. The Big Energy Switch Swindle? - on a futile attempt to take on the energy oligopoly.

In addition to the Tell Shell campaign at number four above, the blog has also supported the Tigertime campaign to stop tiger farming and end the legal trade in tiger parts in China, Water Aid's campaigns for universal access to drinking water and sanitation, a local campaign opposing a waste incinerator and a campaign to encourage MSPs to stick to their targets for reducing carbon emissions. While this is not the main purpose of the blog, it is a useful platform to promote these causes and make connections between different areas of concern.

Although not the most popular, some personal favourite posts are:

The Aralkum Desert - one of the starkest examples of how careless exploitation of natural resources has led to ecological catastrophe and creation of the world's newest desert;
Summer Holidays - about tracking of British cuckoos on their long migration to central Africa;
Here Comes the Rain - Part 1 - a basic analysis of rainfall records of Paisley (Glasgow Airport) over the past 50 years;
Rest and be Thankful, but not about Climate Change - some anecdotal evidence of the direct influence of climate change;
Sea Levels are Rising - presenting some evidence of rising sea levels;
Milk - os the true cost of your daily pinta.

Quite a mixed bag that represent the range of EcoWarriorMe's interests, all topics which may be revisited.

It is all well and good to reflect on the past and possibly learn from it but what about the future? It's where we are all going and it is when we must make the big changes. Many things about our modern lifestyles must become more sustainable, making more efficient use of scarce resources and protecting the natural world. Future EcoWarriorMe posts will attempt to cover some of these topics such as how we can use energy more efficiently and increase use of renewables, how we transport people and other stuff about, including active travel, commuting, aviation and eco-tourism and conservation of wildlife and natural resources.

We must understand the problems before we can evaluate the solutions, then as the solutions are developed we must convince society to adopt the solutions. This transition from pure science: the maths, physical, chemical and biological processes of climate through to engineering solutions follows well established principles but sociological and psychological obstacles lie in the path widespread adoption of sustainable societies and lifestyles. This is another area for further investigation by EcoWarriorMe.

EcoWarriorMe invites you along on the journey to discover what we can do and what we can ask others to do on our behalf. We only have one world, let's make it last.

To the Future!

Nature's Connections

2013-02-26T18:18:00.003-05:00

On the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.

Simple cause and effect is not enough to explain a chaotic world. A single action seldom result in a single reaction. More often, it triggers a chain of reactions, a wave of perturbations through the fabric of reality, like ripples on a pond. Some are obscure, like dropping a small pebble in a big ocean while others stand out like a large rock dropped in a mill pond with long lasting ripples reflecting back from the edge generating complex interference patterns.

It may sound philosophically abstract but here are two examples of such complex interactions in nature. The first involves the smallest primate, Madame Berthe's Mouse Lemur and the second involves the largest land mammal, the African Elephant.

Malagasy Miniature

At only 10cm long and weighing 30g, Madagascar's Madame Berthe's Mouse Lemur(microcebus berthae) is the smallest primate. Despite its diminutive stature, it travels up to five miles a night searching for food.
Although it is an omnivore, it's major food source is the sweet honeydew excretion from a particular plant hopper bug (flatida coccinea) that feeds exclusively on the sap of a particular type of Liana that grows in the island's dry forest[1]. If any part in this network is broken, all subsequent parts will fail too in a linear domino effect.

Madame Berthe's Mouse Lemur, which is categorised as endangered, was first described as a distinct species in the year 2000. In the fifteen years from 1985 and 2000 approximately half of the forest in which it lives had been cleared for timber or agriculture. In some locations as much 80% of the first has gone and only a few Baobab trees remain. Another fifteen years and this species of mouse lemur could well become extinct.

African Giant

This second example is more intriguing. Conservationists in Scotland know that a large population of deer can have a devastating effect on forests by overgrazing on shrubs and saplings but a study in Kenya has shown that the opposite can also be true. The investigators compared the health of the whistling thorn acacia tree (acacia drepanolobium) with and without large grazing animals such as elephants and giraffes present over a ten year period[2]. Their surprising conclusion was that those with the animals excluded became less healthy and grew slower. Could the animals breaking off parts of the tree stimulate new growth? Or could they be eating diseased parts?

Further investigation found that ants were responsible. The tree grows hollow thorns and secretes nectar when attacked. This nectar provides an attractive food to a particular species of ant which lives in the hollow thorns and protects the tree from other parasites. When the large mammals were excluded, the trees produced less nectar and the ant colonies declined. This in turn allowed long-horned beetles to colonise the trees, creating cavities and weakening the wood thus the poor health and slower growth.

So as elephants are being slaughtered at a horrendous rate by ivory poachers we should be concerned not only about the elephants but the health of the habitat as a whole and all other plants and creatures that are interrelated. Large mammals such as elephants are often thought of as an indicator species, a species that flourishes when the habitat is healthy but this shows that they are more than that, they are a fundamental part of that habitat and their success is required for the health of the habitat.

Both of these cases warn us of the consequences of meddling with finely balanced ecosystems where small, seemingly innocuous, actions can have large unintended consequences. There are many other such relationships and gaining an understanding of them is crucial for us to take a holistic approach to conservation and to prevent further degradation and collapse of ecosystems.

[1] From "Attenborough and The Giant Egg"
[2] Breakdown of an Ant-Plant Mutualism Follows the Loss of Large Herbivores from an African Savanna,

Todd M. Palmer,
Maureen L. Stanton,
Truman P. Young,
Jacob R. Goheen, R
obert M. Pringle,
and Richard Karban,

Science, 11 January 2008: 319 (5860), 192-195. [DOI:10.1126/science.1151579]

which was brought to my attention by the The Naked Scientist.

Vulpine Vulpine, Villain or Wrongly Vilified?

2013-02-19T13:40:00.000-05:00

Two headlines caught my attention this week, both about animals attacking children. One article went into the details of the attack, how an infant was attacked in his home, had a finger bitten off which was then re-attached by surgeons and there are still doubts over whether he will regain use of his hand. The other was a much shorter article about a toddler being attacked in the street and suffered severe facial injuries.

The former made national headlines with follow up articles and politicians demanding action to prevent a similar incident happening again while the latter is confined to history, no one is interested in reporting on how she is recovering. What is the difference? The former attack was by a wild fox (vulpine vulpine) and the latter by a domestic dog.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has called on action to curb the number of foxes living in the city: a cull by any other name. But why not the same outcry and demands for culling pet dogs? The answer may well be related to the fact that the estimated 8 million pet dogs make their home in almost one in four UK households. That is a lot of people to speak up for them, stopping politicians taking knee-jerk action. The foxes only have a few of us tree huggers and Brian May (@DrBrianMay: On Bri's Soapbox) to speak up for them.

According to NHS data, 6,450 people were treated in hospital in the year to the end of April 2012 for dog bites or strikes. In contrast, prior to this most recent case, five people have been hurt in four fox attacks since 2002. There are about thirty times more dogs than foxes but this does not account for the far higher attack rate, especially when dog owners have a responsibility for their behaviour. Further, unlike dogs, there have been no reports of foxes killing people. Dogs are therefore a much more dangerous than foxes. I am absolutely not suggesting a cull of pet dogs but this would do more to protect people than a fox cull.

Before concluding whether foxes are the villains or are unfairly vilified, it is worth considering why more than 1 in 8 foxes live on our towns and cities. On the one hand, pressures on their habitat has driven then out of the countryside and on the other hand, our urban spaces provide an attractive habitat. Urban sprawl has paved over the countryside over the past fifty or sixty years and changes in agricultural practices led to less attractive habitats over a similar period.

The same urban sprawl provides an attractive new habitat in many respects: there is plenty of cover in gardens - under bushes and hedges, behind sheds and so on - and thanks to our wasteful and untidy habits, plenty of opportunities to scavenge food. The only down side is the presence of noisy people.

In summary, we took over their homes, invited them back in and on the rare occasion when there is conflict they are depicted as the villain. The evidence shows that they are much less of a danger to infants than domestic pets, no danger at all to older children and adults. They try to avoid contact with humans and would run away unless cornered or protecting their young.

Vulpine Vulpine is not the villain but unfairly and wrongly vilified to sell a few papers and score political points.

Related Post: The Hunt, On illegal fox hunting

Horse Trading

2013-02-11T03:10:00.001-05:00

We are told not to buy counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbags or DVDs from down the Barras or from e-bay because they fund criminal gangs that are often involved in other unsavoury activities such as human trafficking and drug smuggling. What we aren't told is that is we keep on the straight and narrow using legitimate brands and widely respected retailers we could still unwittingly fund the same criminal gangs. As the story of the horse meat sold as beef scandal develops it is becoming clearer that that is what is happenning: Polish and Italian criminal gangs using intimidation to get the horse meat signed off as beef before exporting to traders in Cyprus and the Netherlands before reaching producers in France which then process it before finally sending it to the UK.

On reflection, it is not a surprising outcome of the way the food system works: a combination of globalisation, long supply chains and a constant pressure to reduce costs. The big four supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsburys) command over three quarters of the groceries market and can make or break their suppliers. If they want the price to drop, suppliers have to reduce the cost or risk going out of business, which in the horse meat case led to sourcing ingredients from further afield with less cross border accountability and traceability.

Over the coming weeks and months, as investigations continue and conclusions are drawn, new regulations may be recommended to avoid repetition but those responsible will most likely move on to a new scam.

EcoWarriorMe is of the opinion that this is only the tip of the iceberg. It is something that can be tested for and for the many people who have eaten affected products it can be a distressing time. That makes for a great story - there is a clearly defined people and it could directly affect you. The other stories that we don't hear so often are of more tangential relevance. The orangutans illegally slaughtered and their homes cleared to expand palm oil plantations for example. Not all palm oil comes from such plantations and it is difficult, if not impossible, to discern one from the other if it has been corruptly certified. Corruption and criminality can be in the supply chain of many products, whether it is illegal logging, mining, land grabs or bonded labour and we can be sure that standards of employee welfare and environmental protection are not a priority.
As a consumer it is very difficult to identify what we should avoid and what is acceptable. If retailers such as the co-operative which has a strong ethical and environmental policy can get caught out, how can we as individuals going to make the right choices?

We can avoid processed foods - it is harder to pass off whole foods as something else. Keeping it local can also help. When we source produce from a local farmers market, green grocers or butcher we have more confidence in its providence compared with food that has passed through numerous middle men to the big supermarkets.

In a bizarre twist to this story, it would appear that the glut in cheep horse (and donkey) meat has resulted from new laws to force horse drawn carts of Romania's roads to make way for cars.

Energy from Waste

2013-01-31T16:16:00.000-05:00

We must find alternatives to fossil fuels for our energy.

We must also tackle the huge amount of waste we send to landfill. Waste that is packed with energy.

An obvious solution would be to extract energy from the waste but it is never that simple. Energy can be extracted using different technologies such as anaerobic digestion used in some material recovery facilities or direct combustion (incineration) of the waste.

EcoWarriorMe has previously commented on anaerobic digestion which produces methane gas that can be burned to produce heat, generate electricity or, in the case of CHP, both. The main criticism of this technology is that it generates demand for waste, particularly organic waste such as food.

Incineration is probably the most controversial of the technologies due to the toxins which can be emitted from the plant. In the 1980s, controversy surrounded the waste incineration plant at Bonnybridge near Falkirk which was blamed for illness in livestock which grazed locally. This was blamed on dioxins and furans emitted by the plant however the long running court case concluded that emissions were too low to cause ill health in animals or humans. Our understanding of the harm these chemicals can cause has progressed in the twenty years since this case and the conclusions may differ if the studies were repeated.

Nevertheless, the risk to health of very small concentrations of highly toxic and carcinogenic compounds emitted from incineration of municipal waste is very real. According to SEPA, there are no safe exposure limits.

Regulations limit the emissions to fairly stringent levels, for example dioxins must form less than one tenth of a thousandth of a millionth of a gramme or 0.1 nano grammes per cubic metre (0.1 ng/m 3). The waste management industry claims that technology has improved sufficiently to achieve these requirements but evidence of the plant in Dumfries does not support such a stance.

The Dargavel plant near Dumfries began commissioning in 2009 and after repeated problems, was closed in early 2011 for a year to allow design and installation of a new boiler system. This did not solve all the problems and the plant had breached limits on dioxin and furan emissions on several occasions and had omitted to inform regulators on at least one occasion. An explosion at the plant is also being investigated by the Health & Safety Executive. The technology is not proven.

In addition to the dioxins, there have been 200 emission exceedances and dozens of complaints about noise and the plant has accepted waste out with permitted working hours. The amount of electricity generated is also way below expectations.

Yesterday, Glasgow City Council approved plans by Viridor for a new waste to energy incinerator at Polmadie within the city of boundary. Despite many objections to the plant located in a densely populated area the approval seemed a formality with, apparently, the local councilor being prevented from addressing the planning committee. This is not surprising considering it is a key part of the councils strategy to reduce the quantity of waste going to landfill. The council currently has the lowest recycling rate in Scotland and probably the worst of any comparable city in Europe so it plans to burn the waste instead.

The scheme locks Glasgow into generating waste for the next twenty five years to feed the plant with, we understand, financial penalties if sufficient waste is not provided thus thwarting efforts t use resources more sustainably. It also threatens the city's already poor air quality and the health of people in one of the most sickly cities in Europe.

Glasgow - the Dear Green Place, Canditate city for European Green Capital. Just don't ask about the Zero Waste policy.

The Hunt

2013-01-15T19:09:00.002-05:00

You know how it ends. The bloody and torn carcass, ripped apart by dogs and barely recognisable as the fox it so recently was, fresh blood on the snout of the most successful hounds and riders pleased with a successful hunt.

It is illegal of course, and has been since 2005 when The Hunting Act, 2004 came into effect. But that hasn't stopped it and the reaction of many associated with the hunt do not appear to accept that the law applies to them. Between 2005 and 2010 there have been only eight convictions of employees of registered hunts. Why is the number so low? Is it because the Act is effective and hunts are no longer killing foxes or is it because the authorities are turning a blind eye?

Even when hunts do obey the law and follow an artificially laid scent trail rather than live quarry, the dogs can not be controlled if they catch a live scent. It is not unknown for the dogs to maul family pets when they stray into gardens. These cases appear to be treated as "accidents" caused by careless pet owners allowing their animals to go outside when a hunt is on and are rarely prosecuted as animal cruelty.

In the recent case of the Heythrop Hunt, where the local worthies are known to rub shoulders with Prime Minister David Cameron, one has to question why the police and Crown Prosecution Service failed to investigate and prosecute the hunt. It was left to the RSPCA, a charity, to successfully prosecute the Hunt and two individuals for hunting illegally on four separate occasions in 2011 and 2012 at a reported cost to the charity of £326,000. Those prosecuted were find £6,800 and ordered to pay less than £20,000 in expenses.

Rather than accepting their fate, the guilty parties attacked the RSPCA, accusing it of waging an unjustified vendetta against hunting. This judge also made comment on the cost of the case, questioning whether the use of funds for this purpose was what donors had intended and implying that it would have been better to leave the hunt to carry on breaking the law. A group of MPs and peers, no doubt the same ones trying to repeal the Hunting Act, have also written to the Charity Commission suggesting that an animal welfare charity may have broken charity rules for taking action against people guilty of animal cruelty. It beggars belief.

The reasons given for repealing the Hunting Act include that it is part of the traditional way of life in the countryside, something townies won't understand and that it is necessary to control the population of foxes and protect livestock. These claims can not really be justified as only 20,000 people in England and Wales participate in hunts, according to research carried out for Lord Burn's inquiry into hunting with dogs, which preceded The Hunting Act, and the same research found that hunting with dogs accounted for around 5% of fox deaths.

Is it not strange that the same party of MPs are so concerned about rural traditions that they have tried to privatise our national forests and are even now trying to reform planning laws to make it easier for rural landowners to rip up their fields and build housing on a grand scale? No, not really its true to form for politicians that want to enjoy their blood sports and cash in on a depressed housing market (=cheap builders) rather than trying to deal with the problems that led to 128,000 people relying on emergency food banks in the past year..

In the short term we should support the RSPCA's decision to prosecute the Heythrop Hunt but we should also make clear to our own MPs our opposition repealing the Hunting Act. A free vote is expected in the Commons sometime before the next general election in 2015.

Where Has The Water Gone?

2012-10-04T18:45:00.000-04:00

Two headlines caught my attention today.

The first was from Tuesdays Glasgow Evening Times:

Save water plea ... after wet summer

It was about Scottish Water's recently launched campaign to encourage people to save water. The reason for this campaign is not a shortage of water but a drive to save energy in treatment and pumping of the water. While I do support any measures that we can take to reduce energy use and carbon emissions, I feel that this is Scottish Water trying to pass the responsibility on to the public rather than dealing with their own wasteful inefficiencies. They lose more water through leakage than the total domestic consumption, as noted here, so whatever individuals do to save a little bit of water is nothing compared with the amount leaking from pipes. The volume of water lost through leakage will not reduce even if the volume used by consumers is reduced significantly, in fact it may increase as the pressure in the system would increase (leakage is higher at night when water demand reduces for this very reason).

This brings me on to the second headline, from Dundee's Courier:

'Void the size of a double decker bus' under main Dundee street

A large void was discovered below Albert Street, a major road in to Dundee, after a pothole opened up last weekend. The void has been caused by an undetected leaking water main, the water from which has scoured the soil from beneath the road surfacing resulting in a dangerous situation. It is fortunate that nobody was injured when the road began to collapse.

Void below Albert Street, from The Courier

We do not know how long the pipe here has been leaking and how much treated water has leaked out but that isn't the biggest issue. The bigger issue in this case is the consequential impact. The collapse happened on a main road with high traffic flows which will be temporarily diverted on to secondary streets that are less well suited to buses and HGVs. The additional carbon emissions caused by the ensuing congestion are likely to be much higher than the carbon emissions wasted by the leaking water, however, these emission will not be considered as part Scottish Water's total emissions from providing potable water. If the leakage had been detected earlier, the extent of road repairs would be less and repair of the main could be planned to take place during a quiet period, with only part of the road closed and with a suitable series of diversionary routes which would mitigate the effects of the leak.

If Scottish Water seriously wants to reduce their carbon footprint they need to get their own house in order by improving leakage detection with a follow up repair programme. In the meantime, you can help them out by turning the tap off when you brush your teeth - shaving perhaps a whole kilogramme of your annual carbon footprint, less than 1/10 000th of the typical UK carbon footprint!

Martyr or Mug

2012-09-27T03:55:00.000-04:00

It’s early. 5:45 AM to be precise. I have a large paper cup of coffee in front of me with one of those dastardly plastic lids. The ones that jettison steaming hot coffee up your sleeve when you walk. Looking to my left, out of the window, I see the lights of the still sleeping city rumble by. Full of people snuggled up in bed, still in their own personal dreamland: dreaming of past glories and future ambitions, subconsciously sifting through the meaning of life. I should be there too.

Now I look forward. I see a long and wearisome day ahead. Two days ago, my presence was requested, nay, demanded, at a meeting in London later this morning. Other commitments yesterday and tomorrow mean that I must travel there and back again in a day so I’m on the day’s first Virgin train service out of Glasgow. I hope to arrive 400 miles away in London in four and a half hours.

I thought long and hard about how to travel. Whether to go for the speed of flying versus the slower but greener train, eventually opting for the train despite the ungodly hour of departure. And while almost everyone else sleeps on I ponder whether I’m being a martyr to the environmental cause or just a mug making a meaningless gesture; a misplaced idealist or true eco warrior.

I have read articles in the press and on blogs by journalists and individuals writing about how much they have managed to reduce their carbon footprint, pointing out that they have ignored the thousands of airmiles they have collected on business trips: that is work therefore not in my personal control therefore I can ignore it. To me this is a cop out - if we need to be in a certan place for a certain time we can choose how to travel. The expectation may be that we fly but we can challenge that for domestic trips. There may be no other travel options for longer trips but are there other options that avoid traveling, such as video conferencing?

Planes are not all that inefficient at carrying people about, the problem is the ease with which we can travel long distances. If every passenger on a plane made the same journey by a relatively inefficient car, the total fossil fuel consumption would be similar, but if the planes didn’t fly, not everyone would drive (some are travelling in groups and would share, others would take the train or coach and some wouldn’t make the journey at all) and burning fuel at a high altitude causes two to three times the global warming effect. All the figures suggest that the train is a much greener option but this morning I’m beginning to wonder. By choosing the train rather than the plane will not stop the plane flying and the amount of fuel used does not vary greatly between flying empty and flying full. If I had flown the carbon emissions per passenger would have dropped.

The train would also run regardless of whether I used it and, similar to the plane, most of the energy is used to move the train rather than the passengers. Although trains are, on average, an efficient way to move people about, I don’t think this morning’s train is very efficient. For the first hundred miles (Glasgow to Carlisle) I shared a 60 seat carriage with three other people, two or three first class carriages were completely empty when I passed minutes before departure and other carriages had only a handful of people. I guess that the train was running at 5-10% of seating capacity. With the train this empty I really do wonder if flying would be the more environmentally friendly option at this time of day.

I suspect it is not as simple as this: the train will get busier as the journey progresses and this train set may have been busy last night when it came north. I also expect the return journey this afternoon to be busier. I think the 5:40 departure is just too much for Glaswegians – there are very few options for getting in to the station for that time. There is no car parking at the station, unlike the airport, most public transport hasn’t started so that leaves taxis which are expensive forr anything but short journeys.

Given that both would run regardless of my choice, does my decision make any difference? That is the big question on my mind. I don't think a single decision by an individual makes a difference. We need lots of small decisions from lots of people for it to be meaningful. If you are reading this, I hope you will make the right decision.

The coffee is finished now and I’m left with a plastic lid that will hang around a landfill site for a hundred years or more, all for a few minutes convenience.

It’s not easy being green.

The Engineering EcoWarrior

Low Emission Zones: Cleaner Air, But What Comes Next?

The London ULEZ

The Glasgow LEZ

Impact on Air Pollution Levels

London

Glasgow

Revenue

London

Glasgow

Society, equity and inclusion

Next Steps

Notes :

Further Reading

Biofuel Status 2026

Fifteen Years On: Are Biofuels Delivering on the IEA’s 2011 Vision?

The 2011 Roadmap

The Reality (2011–2026)

Biofuel Production Expanded More Slowly Than Expected

Electric Vehicles Changed the Equation

Aviation Has Become Biofuels’ Strongest Growth Market

Sustainability Standards Became Central

Advanced Biofuels Did Progress — Slowly

Where the Roadmap Was Too Optimistic

The Scale Target Now Looks Ambitious

Land and Food Concerns Proved More Serious Than Expected

Where the Roadmap Was Too Pessimistic

Innovation in Certain Biofuel Pathways Accelerated

Biofuels Became More Strategically Valuable

Was the Original Vision Right?

The Carmont Train Crash

What it means for Infrastructure Climate Resilience

What actually happened on the day?

What were the root causes?

What lessons can we take from this tragedy?

How did Network Rail respond?

Conclusion

Notes

Quietly does it...

Why now?

But we are dealing with climate change, aren't we?

So, what's next?

What does this mean for the EcoWarriorMe?

And Finally...

Getting Back in the Saddle

How I fell off my bike

The Blue Marble

Please join me in celebrating fifty years of this iconic image.

December Weather Patterns

Is There a Place for Genetics in Agriculture?

Can't see the Wood from the Trees (because the forest is burning)

Plastic Bag Charge

The Clyde Fastlink - A Follow Up

Bus firms ditch 'too slow' £40m fast lanes in Glasgow

Connecting with Nature

The Time is Right for GM Crops

400

Testing Times

What I Learned During Earth Hour

The 100th Post - A Retrospective

Nature's Connections

Vulpine Vulpine, Villain or Wrongly Vilified?

Horse Trading

Energy from Waste

The Hunt

Where Has The Water Gone?

Martyr or Mug