Scientific Alliance Newsletter
The consequences of misunderstanding risk |
24.05.2013 |
It is natural to try to avoid risk. All animal species try to protect themselves, and we are no exceptions. However, just as our bodies are still essentially adapted to a semi-nomadic, hunter/gatherer way of life but now have to cope with a largely settled and secure existence in a manmade environment, so our instincts are still essentially for a flight or fight response to perceived immediate danger.
Over the roughly ten millennia following the development of farming and the formation of settled communities, risks have changed. Like pretty much everything else, the rate of...
How best to spend £30 billion |
17.05.2013 |
The UK government announced some time ago its intention to build a second high-speed railway line – somewhat prosaically called HS2 – linking London initially with Birmingham and later with Leeds, Manchester and other northern cities. This major infrastructure project has been highly controversial from day one, but the necessary legislation has been outlined in this year’s Queen’s speech and the government is very bullish on the project (despite considerable opposition from rural Tory heartlands which lie on the route).
Opposition varies from the local (...
Biomass used to be good |
09.05.2013 |
Large-scale initiatives – and they don’t come any larger that trying to ‘decarbonise’ the global economy – often make sense on a broad scale, but the policymaking process tends to give some patently absurd outcomes. Consider just three examples: the EU Emissions Trading System, the prescription of renewables as the way to reduce emissions and the love affair with biomass.
First, the ETS. The objective of this is to reduce emissions of CO2 across the EU by assigning the right for a certain level of emissions to large energy users. In theory, by...
Banning neonicotinoids: a cautionary tale |
03.05.2013 |
After an extended and hard-fought battle, the European Commission this week agreed to put in place a temporary ban on a widely-used class of insecticides – the neonicotinoids – because of their link to declining bee populations. This is a clear victory for supporters of the precautionary principle. In the eyes of many people, the fact that lab experiments had shown that exposure to certain levels of this class of compound could harm bees was enough to justify the ban. But the way in which it came about shows that this is not at all a clear-cut issue.
For a start, only...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the world’s first Climate Change Act. At the time, this appeared to be almost universally approved of by the political class, with only three MPs voting against. Not only that, but the Bill was only passed after the government revised it to make it more stringent. The final Act enshrined into law a target of 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (up from the original proposal of 60%) and included aviation and shipping along with land-based activities.
The Act also set up the Climate Change Committee, an independent body with a...
At the turn of the century, climate change was arguably the single biggest issue around the world, or so it seemed in Europe. There had been a rising trend of global average surface temperature from the mid-1970s. The Kyoto protocol had been adopted by the signatories to the UN Climate Change Convention (although difficulties with ratification meant that it was 2005 before it finally came into force). The IPCC had already published two mammoth assessment reports and the third came out in 2001. This featured the striking ‘hockey stick’ graph produced by Professor Michael...
Government policy needs public acceptance |
11.04.2013 |
Governments in a democracy are elected to represent the voting public, but also to take the lead on necessary but sometimes controversial issues. Sometimes, legislators respond to lobbying from interest groups with an agenda for change, and are ahead of public opinion. In the rich world, this is very obvious in the education sector for example, where a strong clique of academics and professionals have moved teaching away from disciplined learning of facts to a more creative, child-centred approach. Most parents did not ask for this, and many right-of-centre politicians might be...
Current EU energy policy is built on three key premises:
1. That there is an urgent need to reduce the burning of fossils fuels to limit the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide and lessen the chance of ‘dangerous’ climate change
2. That an essential plank of the plan to achieve this is an obligation to meet targets for the use of renewable energy for electricity, heat and transport
3. That where the EU leads, others will follow
Many people have recognised for some time...
When evidence and models conflict |
22.03.2013 |
It is becoming increasingly clear that climate models, complex as they are, are not only a poor approximation for the reality of what goes on in our atmosphere but also actually give misleading results. The composite results published by the IPCC are from a range of different models (with different assumptions and giving widely-differing outputs). The input data is based on a number of scenarios which themselves make assumptions about the path of future population growth, economic development and energy mix.
The net result is a projection for the future average lower atmospheric...
The benefits of the modern food supply chain |
08.03.2013 |
With all the headlines recently about horsemeat in processed food products, it would be easy to lose sight of the fact that the supply chain works remarkably well in delivering good quality, affordable food to people, in many countries 24 hours a day. This is a real achievement, but in the real world nothing is perfect.
Fortunately, the latest scandal is not about a risk to people's health. Rather, it is the inclusion of unexpected and unwanted material, however safe and wholesome it may actually be, which causes concerns. But in instances where products purporting to be made...
