Fusion Salvation?

The BBC is running what might just be the most important story this year, maybe ever.  It is about a giant leap forward towards controllable fusion and limitless energy.  It's typical that the BBC, obsessed with getting their vengeance on Tony Blair, are not running it on the main news page but in Science and Technology.  Maybe they don't understand what its significance is. Call me an optimist but I reckon that this is the beginning of the end of our carbon dependence and so maybe global warming, resource wars, desertification and poverty.  Not there yet but watch this space!

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Featured on the BBC

I recently had a photograph featured on the BBC Photo Blog site.  A great thrill.
It was taken in Lanzarote and I particularly liked the colour contrast between the sand basket and the brilliant green door.  Wish I could do pictures like this all the time.  Sigh!

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Malta Here We Come

Off to Malta to catch some warmth and hopefully sun.  Last went to Malta some 30 years ago so I expect there will be changes.  Loved it last time so I hope I'll love it this time!  Lots of pictures to follow I expect.

The Weather: Who Should We Believe?

Now that the thaw has arrived the recriminations are starting.  Following on from the Met Office's notorious "barbecue summer" quip came , what will surely become equally notorious, the forecast of a Winter of "above average temperatures" for a Winter that was actually the worst and coldest for 30 years.  These amazing predictions have led many to rightly question the viability of the Met Office's longer range forecasts.
But there are other problems as well.  The issue of Severe Weather Warnings has been well and truly overdone with many in our area (Dunblane) proving to be far too pessimistic.  This only serves to reduce people's confidence so that when the real warning comes it will be ignored.  And equally there has been an extraordinary disparity between Met Office and BBC forecasts, both in the nature of the weather expected and the temperatures.  In one case the Met Office and the BBC temperature forecast for Dunblane was different by 6 degrees!  Given that the BBC uses the raw data feed from the Met Office how can this be so?  And who are we supposed to believe?  And why does the BBC have "meteorologists"(rather than just televisual presenters) when the Met Office has them too?  And why do they give different forecasts?  We should be told.

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MoD 'pays more in compensation to chicken farmer than injured soldier'

From the Telegraph.  There could not be a better example of what ministers think of the military than this.  Its crassness beggars belief.  Shame, shame, shame.

MoD 'pays more in compensation to chicken farmer than injured soldier': "The Ministry of Defence has been condemned amid claims it paid less compensation to an injured soldier than to a farmer whose chickens were
disturbed by RAF jets."

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Squirrels

Britain has a native squirrel, the Red Squirrel, Sciurus vulgaris,  which was fairly widespread until the introduction of the American Grey Squirrel Sciurus carolinensis at the turn of the 19th century.  The larger Grey Squirrel outcompeted the more timid Red Squirrel by being more aggressive, more omnivorous and probably more fecund.  So now the Red Squirrel, once widespread is relatively uncommon.  Because this invasion was so dramatic and extensive a number of "Squirrel Myths" have arisen:

1. Grey Squirrels give Red Squirrels the Pox (Squirrel Pox that is!).  Probably true but the science is probably not as conclusive as some might think it is.
2. Grey Squirrels have a terrible effect on indigenous woodland bird populations.  Not so apparently. A new survey by the British Trust for Ornithology concludes  "Grey squirrels do not have a significant impact on the populations of many of England's woodland bird species"
3. Red Squirrels are now extremely rare and secretive, surviving only on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour and in the remote Scottish Highlands.  Not so as the picture below taken from my study window in suburban Dunblane shows.

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The Mighty Mo Returns

The USS Missouri has returned to Pearl Harbor after a three-month refit looking like new.  It is of course an incredibly historic battleship having hosted the signing of the surrender of Japan at the end of WW2 and fought in the  Korean and First Gulf Wars. In 1993 the Missouri was decommissioned and preserved as a museum ship at Pearl Harbor. There are no preserved Royal Navy battleships.  A pity really.

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Birdlife International is carrying an item on a model for wildlife-friendly energy development in Wyoming.  We would do well to study this carefully here in Scotland.  The main direction for future energy production in Scotland is renewables; particularly wind farms which have drawn many objectors owing to the assertion that such installations are detrimental to wildlife, notably birds. The Wyoming situation involves an even more damaging modus operandi - oil and gas production and its impact on near-threatened species such as Sage Grouse.  Let us hope that we can learn from the changes made by the Federal Bureau of Land Management  and not dismiss them, as we so often do, as being NDH (not designed here).

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

You may be forgiven in asking what on Earth happened to Aston Martin.  Latest news is that AM could build a hybrid badged as a Lagonda.  So in the last 50 years AM has gone from:

A paragon of sports cars - fast, gorgeous and a race winner

to this:

Lardy, ugly and a vulgar heap of metal that looks like it was penned by Subaru (no insult to Subaru - they make excellent cars but  good looking ones: you cannot be serious!).

Is this the end of Civilisation as we know it?

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