Over the past days, many of us have received invitations to a conference called "The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change" in New York. At first sight this may look like a scientific conference - especially to those who are not familiar with the activities of the Heartland Institute, a front group for the fossil fuel industry that is sponsoring the conference. You may remember them. They were the promoters of the Avery and Singer "Unstoppable" tour and purveyors of disinformation about numerous topics such as the demise of Kilimanjaro's ice cap.

A number of things reveal that this is no ordinary scientific meeting:

• Normal scientific conferences have the goal of discussing ideas and data in order to advance scientific understanding. Not this one. The organisers are suprisingly open about this in their invitation letter to prospective speakers, which states:
  

  "The purpose of the conference is to generate international media attention to the fact that many scientists believe forecasts of rapid warming and catastrophic events are not supported by sound science, and that expensive campaigns to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not necessary or cost-effective."

  So this conference is not aimed at understanding, it is a PR event aimed at generating media reports. (The "official" conference goals presented to the general public on their website sound rather different, though - evidently these are already part of the PR campaign.)

• At the regular scientific conferences we attend in our field, like the AGU conferences or many smaller ones, we do not get any honorarium for speaking - if we are lucky, we get some travel expenses paid or the conference fee waived, but often not even this. We attend such conferences not for personal financial gains but because we like to discuss science with other scientists. The Heartland Institute must have realized that this is not what drives the kind of people they are trying to attract as speakers: they are offering $1,000 to those willing to give a talk. This reminds us of the American Enterprise Institute last year offering a honorarium of $10,000 for articles by scientists disputing anthropogenic climate change. So this appear to be the current market prices for calling global warming into question: $1000 for a lecture and $10,000 for a written paper.
• At regular scientific conferences, an independent scientific committee selects the talks. Here, the financial sponsors get to select their favorite speakers. The Heartland website is seeking sponsors and in return for the cash promises "input into the program regarding speakers and panel topics". Easier than predicting future climate is therefore to predict who some of those speakers will be. We will be surprised if they do not include the many of the usual suspects e.g. Fred Singer, Pat Michaels, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, and other such luminaries. (For those interested in scientists' links to industry sponsors, use the search function on sites like sourcewatch.org or exxonsecrets.org.)
• Heartland promises a free weekend at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan, including travel costs, to all elected officials wanting to attend.

This is very nice hotel indeed. Our recommendation to those elected officials tempted by the offer: enjoy a great weekend in Manhattan at Heartland's expense and don't waste your time on tobacco-science lectures - you are highly unlikely to hear any real science there.

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This week Blackpool City Council announced the sale of its famous illuminations. I went to see them whilst on a work trip to Blackpool (yes, I know, the high life!) and despite the pouring rain, it was quite an impressive sight.  But it did get me thinking about the carbon emissions of such a massive display (over a million bulbs!).

The council has done quite a lot over the past few years to dispel the potentially bad green image; most of the display uses low voltage bulbs and has recently gone to ‘green’ electricity, and it aims to go completely carbon neutral by 2010. Put this in context, last year it took 915kw of electricity to light the display (or the same as a very large office).

Several people are up in arms about this “waste” of electricity.  I’d like to remind them that there we were, not one month ago, collectively doing our best to cancel out the night-sky via street-upon-street of chavvy christmas horror shows.  I took my trusty camera out one night over the festive season and came back a broken man. Here are just some of the abominations…

But that’s nothing compared to Japan! More on that next time…

Nick

Things are beginning to roll on Project Dirt. We’ve been focusing our efforts in two areas … both could be very exciting.

Wandsworth Borough Council
Last Friday we met the Mayor of Wandsworth. By 10:15 we were sitting down in an oak panelled office, scoffing on digestives, drinking tea (with saucers) and enthusing about Project Dirt. We are very keen to work with Wandsworth because i) all the dirt team lives here ii) it’s the ideal context to initiate practical sustainable thinking and iii) successful pilot studies can be rolled out to other UK boroughs. Mayor Thom was charming, incredibly helpful and even took notes. The right questions were asked, Nick’s composting fetish wasn’t over-exposed … and the prospect of working with Wandsworth seems a real possibility. Let’s see …

Cambridge University
Now he’s soon to hit 30, Nick’s keen to hark back to the days of his youth … ahhhh those glorious Cambridge Uni days. We’ve been in touch with some environmental figureheads at the University to get feedback on our plans for the website and understand their needs. The response has been positive and the feedback detailed, succinct and very helpful. It’s an interaction I can really see working; we provide the website, Cambridge provide the people, societies and projects. We both provide the passion and direction.

There we go. A quick update. No video or picture this time (sorry) … the next entry will make up for it.

Mark

Free energy saving light bulbs this weekend – in exchange for conventional bulbs at B&Q and British Gas London stores. This is a big step. It’s a statement, it’s a practical project and it shows how far sustainability has moved up the agenda. If I’d told you 2 years ago this would happen in Jan 2008 … the majority of people would tell me to b*gger off – and Gardner would be told to head back to the Library to swot. But it’s here – a straightforward step to lowering energy usage and consumer costs. The press release can be read here which also contains some juicy facts and figures.

The branding is spot on – they’re calling it a “Light Bulb Amnesty” … which provides an immediate negative spin on using traditional bulbs. In short, conventional bulbs are out, finished, redundant and useless. They are the 20th century, inefficient, useless and objects of pollution. Energy saving bulbs are now the modern norm …

Limitations? There’re a couple. It’s limited to London and it’s limited to 2 bulbs per person. The London point is interesting though … because it’s an initiative started by the Mayor’s office. It shows the importance of having someone in power driving and co-ordinating change. Will the other cities follow suit? Is London just a pilot? Let’s see.

Mark

I said I’d write to discuss the death-throes of my Christmas tree. I’m afraid come the start of January, it began to look like it was suffering from a post-christmas hangover worse than Mark after three spritzers. I did keep it well watered, but I guess a potted tree really is the only truly sustainable solution. Anyway, the council did let us know that they would be picking up our tree from outside the house and recycling it. I guess it gets chipped / mulched to provide compost somewhere. I’ll try to find out.

Now, it seems a mite expensive to say the least, but if all else fails then you can spend £20 getting Pines and Needles to collect and recycle your tree for you.

Anyway, it was a sorry sight wandering through the streets of Balham last night, seeing what must have amounted to an entire forest’s worth of temporary trees littering the pavement. It looked like someone had turned the pavements of London into a pine forest, only to be thwarted at the last moment by an inopportune hurricane.

Don’t forget you should also recycle your christmas cards… (I didn’t send any, but instead am donating £3 for all those I received to the Woodland Trust), which - incidentally - is running a great scheme, along with several major High Street stores, which aims to recycle 100million cards(!) to plant 24,000 trees. Sheesh kebab!!! Check out their excellent website , which explains exactly what will happen to your cards!!!

Nick

I have been skiing and come back suitably rested with aching legs and minus a big toe nail (my boots are too small). I’ve also now had a chance to look into the off-setting thing – and how the airlines are dealing with this. There are two flights I have been on recently; New York with Virgin and Geneva with BA. Both have schemes. Seeing as New York’s further - I’ll concentrate on the Virgin scheme today.Virgin has two off-setting projects based in India – a hydro scheme and an agricultural waste power plant. The projects can be read about here. All seems simple and straight forward. Ricky B seems to have tied this up nicely. Virgin appears transparent, practical and working with neutral agencies. I sum up the pros of their off-set scheme below:

1. A guaranteed 85% of the donation goes to the projects themselves.
2. Virgin is transparent about non-CO2 gasses in the exhausts (with similar greenhouse properties) and allow/encourage further off-setting for these if you want.
3. There is a difference allowed for calculating CO2 for First, Club and Economy members (Economy produces the least). It therefore seems pretty accurate.
4. Virgin has accreditations from the Gold Standard. Virgin works with an independent project management firm Myclimate which adds credibility to their schemes.

So … OFFSETTING A RETURN NEW YORK FLIGHT WAS £11.98. Did I do it … yes – of course. Why? Seems a small price to pay, clears the conscience and supports projects which reduce CO2. Would I do it again … Yes. Do I think it’s expensive … No I don’t, when comparing it to the overall cost of the flight. Was it easy to do … Yes, it took me 3 minutes on the internet – it couldn’t have been easier.I know off-setting is not the long term answer to air travel – but I do think it’s a good start. It does mitigate things in the shorter term … and I am not a believer that we simply shouldn’t fly. With the comparatively low cost of the schemes (per flight) … perhaps obligatory off-setting should be introduced anyway? What do you think? Thoughts welcome …Mark