food for health

McCarrison Society Scotland

The deposed president is famous for his efforts to fight climate change, but his lifelong struggle has been for democracy – and now I fear for his safety

In the never-ending battle for democracy and civil rights, sometimes democracy loses. So it was today, with the visit by the Russian foreign minister to Damascus to shore up the murderous Assad regime, and the sudden fall of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. These two events are related, for Nasheed has a claim to have started the Arab Spring. The first democratically elected leader of a 100% Muslim country, he swept away the 30-year dictatorship of Maumoon Gayoom in national elections back in 2008. Now the Maldives sadly sees its spring being rolled back: a leader elected through the ballot box has just been deposed by street violence and intimidation.

I doubt that Russia, China or other autocratic regimes will shed any tears for Nasheed, but those governments of the world that do value democracy and the rule of law should not be under any illusions about what has just taken place. The former dictator Gayoom and his forces never accepted the outcome of the 2008 elections, and their networks of power and influence were increasingly threatened by Nasheed's campaign against corruption in the judiciary. Indeed, this crisis was sparked by the arrest of senior court judge who had repeatedly refused to prosecute corruption cases in order to protect powerful allies from the former regime. Recently the opposition had begun to use inflammatory antisemitic and jihadi hate-speech to falsely accuse Nasheed of undermining Islam.

Using violence and then taking over the TV station, as well as recruiting converts among the police, the anti-democratic opposition faced Nasheed with a choice – to either use force or resign. Ever the human rights activist, he chose the latter option and stepped down to avoid bloodshed. Even as I write, his whereabouts are still unknown, and though he is supposedly in the "protection" of the military I fear desperately for his personal safety and that of his family. I have heard that he is currently being held against his will under military house arrest, in which case he must be immediately released. All I can do is take comfort from the fact that the struggle can only continue for a man famous in the west for his outspokenness on climate change, but whose real lifelong cause has been his commitment to bringing democracy to his Indian Ocean island homeland.

Over two decades of campaigning against the Gayoom regime, Nasheed set up the Maldivian Democratic Party in exile, and was imprisoned 16 times. He spent six years in jail, and 18 months in solitary confinement in appalling conditions, also suffering torture at the hands of Gayoom's thugs. Nasheed's resignation speech says a lot about the man: "I don't want to run the country with an iron fist," he said. I can only imagine what he must be going through now, and what he has gone through already in the past. He was declared an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience in 1991. I don't think I have ever met a braver or stronger person.

I was lucky enough to work for president Nasheed over the last two years, as his climate change adviser. His commitment to turning the Maldives into the world's first carbon-neutral country was typically ambitious, and – although all bets are now off – serious progress has already been made. He personally stood up to bullying by China at the ill-fated Copenhagen talks in 2009, helping secure a better deal for vulnerable island nations like his own.

I do not want this to sound like Nasheed's political obituary. If I know the man at all, this coup will not be the last word. We do not yet know whether democracy and freedom of expression will be safeguarded in future in the Maldives under the new government, but if it is not, I am certain Nasheed will be at the forefront of any effort that is needed to protect these universal values. I pledge to stand with him, and I hope others will, too.

An 18m tonne rise in climate-warming gases is due to the nation's dreadfully draughty homes and fickleness of nuclear power: new boy Ed Davey must deal with both

The big jump in the UK's carbon emissions has two searing lessons for energy and climate secretary Ed Davey, newly installed in the hot seat.

First, he must prevent his department's flagship "green deal" plan to boost the warmth of the nation's ageing and draughty homes from self-combusting in a blaze of apathy, as it is currently on course to do. Secondly, he must pour a little cold water on the UK establishment's burning love affair with nuclear power, to take better account of its unreliability.

The biggest single cause of the first rise in the nation's carbon footprint since 2003 was from the increased heating of homes during cold weather at the start and end of 2010. People faced a choice when winter's chill began to bite: they could turn up the heating, despite the soaring cost of energy, or tackle the draughts through which the heat escapes. The 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide added to national emissions from home heating alone - two-thirds of the entire rise - shows the people of Britain overwhelmingly chose the former.

Yet almost half of all lofts in the UK - 10 million - remain poorly lagged or completely bare, while 8m homes have empty cavity walls. Installing this type of insulation instantly cuts bills and some energy companies, driven by soon-to-end regulation, will do it for free.

The government has trumpeted its green deal as the solution to this woeful state of affairs, calling it a world-leading programme set to transform 14m homes in a decade. Homeowners will be able to take out loans for refurbishments, with the repayments guaranteed to be lower than the energy cost savings.

Warm words, but sadly adrift from reality. The government's own impact assessment shows that loft lagging will plummet by 93% when the green deal starts. Instead of 2m lofts a year being stuffed with plump, cosy fibres, as is needed to curb carbon emissions in line with legal targets, just 70,000 will be done. People have been reluctant to let in the workmen even when the work was free, so why would they do so when they have to take out a loan?

The good news for Davey is that all is not yet lost ahead of the green deal's October launch. He already has £200m from the Treasury to shower on early adopters, but many more incentives are needed. Council tax rebates and cuts in stamp duty are on the table and getting them will be an early test of his ability to win cabinet arguments.

Virtually all of the rest of the leap in the UK's carbon emissions comes from technical problems forcing nuclear power stations to shut down. The biggest reactor in the country, Sizewell B, was offline for six months, meaning more coal and gas had to be burned to fill the electricity gap, pumping more climate-warming gases into the air. Other reactors had problems too in 2010 and more recently events as varied as a rogue school of jellyfish and winter tornadoes have closed atomic energy plants.

When a wind turbine explodes, as in a recent storm, a megwatt of power is lost. When a nuclear plant falls off the grid, 1000 megawatts is lost. The comparison puts the lie to the sceptics charge that wind power is "unreliable".

Davey has stridently opposed nuclear power in the comfort of opposition, but now has to back it. An even more difficult test of his political skills will be to win the argument on the clear benefits of wind power, in particular with the 100 Tory MPs and their supporters who greeted his first day in the office by demanding drastic cuts to onshore windfarms.

Keeping energy bills down, keeping the lights on and keeping the world safe from global warming was never the easiest brief in Whitehall. The new leap in carbon emissions means Davey is set for a baptism of fire.

Consultancy will not publish full findings of report, after leaked press release criticising green energy costs sparked media storm

KPMG is refusing to publish the full findings of a controversial study examining the cost of the government's green energy policies, which was originally used as a basis for a series of media reports attacking the cost of renewable energy.

The preliminary findings of the report, dubbed Thinking about the Affordable, were made public last November. They claimed Britain could meet its 2020 carbon reduction targets more cost effectively by building nuclear and gas-fired power stations instead of wind farms.

The report was seized on by critics of the government's green agenda and also formed the basis of a number of media reports, including a BBC Panorama special that attacked the cost of renewable energy subsidies.

The preliminary findings of the report suggested the UK could save £34bn by ditching plans for a massive expansion in wind power capacity and instead focusing on nuclear and gas capacity.

It was the first of a series of studies that have been published during the last few months, claiming wind power is too unreliable and costly to provide an effective means of keeping the lights on while reducing carbon emissions.

Trade body RenewableUK slammed the KPMG study as inaccurate on the grounds it had failed to consider the full lifetime and operating costs of new conventional power plants. Green campaigners have also repeatedly called upon KPMG to publish the full version of the report and disclose its methodology.

But Sorrelle Cooper, a spokeswoman for KPMG, told BusinessGreen that the company had decided not to release the full report as researchers had deemed it was "ripe for misinterpretation".

"The assumptions and parameters used in the model – which examined the investment and lifetime costs of different energy generation sources – produced large swings in the financial outcomes," she explained.

"To avoid any misinterpretation we have decided not to publish any findings, although we are discussing our analysis with interested clients and stakeholders in the energy industry."

Cooper acknowledged that a leaked press release, obtained by the Sunday Times, BBC's Panorama and BusinessGreen, had opened the study up to accusations of bias, which had also been a factor in the team's decision not to publish.

"Unfortunately things do get boiled down into a headline and the findings are too complex for that," she said.

Cooper admitted there had been mishandling of the release of the report, maintaining that the draft press release had been leaked, although she refused to provide further details on how it had been made public.

However, Cooper stood by KPMG's methodology, adding that the research team had since come to an agreement with RenewableUK over how the figures were derived.

She also maintained that KPMG had close ties with the green energy industry, was not "anti-wind" and had last week been involved in a major wind farm deal.

But a spokesman from RenewableUK said that while it had met with KPMG since the preliminary findings were published, it stood by its original concerns over the report's methodology.

"We welcome the decision by KPMG not to release this report. The methodology they used did not properly compare with how power generation systems function in the real world," he said.

"KPMG needs to be made more aware of the benefits of wind energy. The cost is just £10 per household per year, according to the independent regulator Ofgem. Gas hit a three-year high of 75p per therm in Britain on Friday [3 February] as a result of the cold snap across Europe. We have to get off the fossil fuel hook to stop our energy bills escalating."

KPMG's reluctance to release the report will be seized on by green and renewable energy campaigners who have in recent months been forced to defend renewable energy policies from a series of reports about the cost of green energy, which they regard as misleading and inaccurate.

Renewable energy industry insiders expressed disappointment that KPMG was unwilling to release the controversial research, despite the fact that the preliminary findings had already been used to shape the current debate on energy policies.

Critics are also likely to ask questions over the BBC's willingness to use an incomplete report as the basis for one of its flagship current affairs programmes. 

"The fact that this report isn't being published also shows the BBC was wrong to use it in their Panorama programme in November, which painted an inaccurate picture of the impact of wind energy on current household bills," said the spokesman for RenewableUK.

"We will be seeking further clarification from the BBC's Panorama programme about exactly why they felt this report was worth using as a major part of their arguments against clean energy."

The news will also provide a boost to incoming energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey, who has already been forced to defend the government's wind energy policies from a group of around 100 Conservative MPs who last week wrote to David Cameron complaining that support for wind farms is proving too costly. 

The news comes just days ahead of the broadcast of an ITN Tonight programme on the cost of green policies, due to air on Thursday 9 February, which has sparked fears among green groups that flagship renewable energy policies will again come under attack.

Keith Allott, head of climate change, WWF-UK, said KPMG's decision provided further evidence that the cost of renewables was becoming an increasingly emotive issue.

"The whole issue of energy bills and renewable energy has been whipped up into a media storm over recent months, with scant regard to the real evidence base," he said. 

"The Daily Mail has run three corrections to lead articles which tried, erroneously, to blame green policies for the increase in consumer bills. KPMG's report led to a Sunday Times article and informed a very skewed BBC documentary on renewables, but now it seems that it may never see the light of day. We urgently need to inject some integrity and honesty back into this debate."

In related news, the BBC posted a clarification notice on its website last week about the controversial Panorama programme.

"While the film focussed on government energy policy going forward - and the associated costs - we feel it worth repeating that the rise in current energy bills is predominantly linked to the increase in winter gas prices," said the BBC in a statement.

It added that it would have been "helpful" if this point had been made more clear to the audience.

A new energy secretary means a new chance for David Cameron to mend fences with the coalition and reaffirm his commitment to making 'the greenest government ever'

It was, Ed Davey says, his strong views on the environment that pushed him into becoming politically active – and following his sudden promotion to energy and climate change secretary last week, he now has a fantastic opportunity to act on his concerns and play a crucial role in developing a cleaner, safer future.

The initial signs are encouraging. In his first outing in his new job on Monday, he was keen to emphasis the impact of our overdependence on fossil fuels imports "where the price is high and variable", and the need to develop "our own energy production that's clean and green".

This hits the nail firmly on the head. If we want to escape soaring fuel bills that have plagued families and businesses over recent years, we must become far more energy-efficient and properly develop the nation's abundant home-grown sources of clean power. Exploiting the UK's wind, wave and solar potential will not only get us off the fossil-fuel fix, it will also create exciting new business opportunities and tens of thousands of jobs.

But there are significant hurdles to negotiate in the race to develop a low-carbon economy.

Despite David Cameron's promise to lead the greenest government ever, there are those in the coalition who appear to be peddling a distinctly anti-environmental agenda.

Once again, the main stumbling block is the Treasury. Chancellor George Osborne's speech last autumn to the party faithful blaming "a decade of environmental laws and regulations" for "piling costs on the energy bills of households and companies" shows the scale of the challenge facing Davey and other progressive voices in government.

The new energy secretary must become a strong voice at the cabinet table, persuading his colleagues that protecting the economy and the planet are two sides of the same coin. If the rumours of a personality clash between Osborne and the previous energy secretary are true, the fact that Davey isn't Huhne could be a distinct advantage. The prime minister should tell his chancellor to use Huhne's exit to mend fences within the coalition by collaborating with Davey.

Another powerful challenge comes from the "big six" energy firms, who have effectively controlled our energy system for decades, keeping the nation hooked on gas and coal while raking in bumper profits for shareholders. Their power and influence must be curbed so we can fix our broken energy system.

This Thursday, Davey has a fantastic opportunity to take decisive action on building a cleaner economy when he publishes the results of a public consultation into the government's controversial solar subsidy proposals.

Everyone agrees subsidy payments should fall to reflect falling installation costs. But the government's cack-handed approach has left solar firms fighting for their future, jeopardised up to 29,000 jobs and undermined business confidence in the coalition's commitment to a clean economy.

Following a legal challenge by Friends of the Earth and two solar firms, Solarcentury and Home Sun, one of the proposals – to cut subsidy payments by 12 December 2011, 11 days before the consultation closed – has been declared illegal by both the high court and court of appeal.

Davey could draw a line under this unfortunate episode by announcing amended proposals that would safeguard the industry, protect jobs and allow more people to plug into clean power.

During the last parliament, Cameron and Nick Clegg played prominent roles in the passing of the Climate Change Act. This truly ground-breaking piece of legislation commits the UK to legally binding cuts – 80% by 2050 – in its greenhouse gas emissions.

It established the UK as a genuine leader in tackling climate change, the greatest challenge the planet faces. But in recent years our leadership has waned.

The prime minister and his deputy must show they are still committed to cutting emissions by backing the new energy secretary in his crucial job of transforming our expensive, dirty and inefficient energy system.

They must join him in re-establishing the UK as a major global voice, by pushing the EU to make more ambitious emission cuts in the first half of this year, under the amenable Danish presidency. This would give a much-needed ambition boost to the woefully weak agreement reached at Durban in December last year, and help deliver progress in the next round of climate negotiations coming in a few months' time.

If the prime minister and deputy prime minister give firm backing to the new energy secretary, this could still be the greenest government ever.

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University of Illinois wind farm researcher responds to how his paper was reported in the media and on the internet

Such is the viral nature of information flow on the internet, we can sometimes see myths and memes developing before our very eyes. Just such an example has occurred over recent days with the rather irresistible news that wind farms can "increase climate change".

The article that really gave this idea a push online was published on Sunday evening on the Daily Mail's website. It was delivered with the headline: "Wind farms can actually INCREASE climate change by raising temperatures and causing downpours, warn academics."

Somewhat predictably, that headline quickly attracted attention and was being disseminated with particular gusto on climate sceptic sites such as Climate Depot and JunkScience. The news was also reported on Dallasblog.com ("Wind Farms Cause Global Warming, some Scientists say") and then on the Orange County Register website with the headline: "Another Global Warming Oops Moment." The article itself was clearly rejoicing in being able to ladle big dollops of schadenfreude:

More windmills to fight global warming = more global warming. You have to love it.

But if we reverse up a bit, we can actually see how this new myth was born. The Mail – which has a long track record of running stories hostile to wind farms, and more, widely, climate science - was clearly picking up on a story that day by Jonathan Leake in the Sunday Times. This story is behind a paywall, but it ran with a headline that fairly summed up the thrust of the article: "Giant wind farms can alter weather." However, the Australian - yet another climate sceptic paper - has since republished Leake's article, albeit with a new headline: "Big wind farms 'alter climate', but could be used to control the weather."

The Leake article, which attempts to summarise some of the research being conducted into how wind farms might affect localised weather conditions, led with the findings of a study published by Somnath Roy, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But Roy's study was published in 2010. So why has the Sunday Times – again, another paper that is hostile to wind farms - run it as a news story now? Could it be a way for the paper to frame the news, contained within the article, that some Tory MPs have expressed their own hostility to wind farms?

The germ of this current interest in Roy's study can most likely be pinned to an article in the New Scientist published on 30 January, entitled: "Power paradox: Clean might not be green forever." It covered a lot of very interesting research, including a passing mention of Roy's 2010 study. (Interestingly, the New Scientist itself got into a spot of bother last year over a headline covering similar research.) But it was an article - as you might expect given it was reflecting the state of fledgling research into this topic - peppered with words such as "could", "possibly" and "might". It also made it clear that Roy's study was focused on how wind farms can affect their local climate (within an area 300 metres "downwind" from the turbines), not, as might be interpreted from the Mail's headline, the much wider phenomenon of "climate change". In fact, Roy's study can be read in full here. (A curio: it appears to be one of the very last paper's edited by the late climate scientist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University.) From the abstract:

Utility-scale large wind farms are rapidly growing in size and numbers all over the world. Data from a meteorological field campaign show that such wind farms can significantly affect near-surface air temperatures. These effects result from enhanced vertical mixing due to turbulence generated by wind turbine rotors. The impacts of wind farms on local weather can be minimized by changing rotor design or by siting wind farms in regions with high natural turbulence.

Yesterday, I asked Roy himself to summarise his paper. He said:

My Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper is on local-scale processes where we find that wind farms may make the nights warmer and days cooler in their immediate vicinity. Climate change is a longer-term phenomenon involving process that operate at larger spatial scales…My expertise is in small-scale (what we call atmospheric boundary layer and/or mesoscale) processes, not climate. Additionally my paper does not talk about precipitation. The impacts of the wind farms that I have studied are confined to the lowest part of the atmosphere. To affect rainfall, the wind farms have to reach pretty high into the troposphere where clouds are formed. I am familiar with research done by others on this topic. At this point there is no agreement. Some global scale studies (pdf) show that extremely large wind farms covering millions of sq km will affect rainfall. On the other hand, a recent study (pdf) of a approximately 500 GW wind farm showed that the impact on rainfall would be about 1%.

I then asked him if he felt his 2010 study had been fairly represented this week in the media. He said that Leake had interviewed him for the Sunday Times article and that "the 2-3 paragraphs on my research discussed in the body of the article are a reasonable representation of a PART of our paper". He added: "The headline probably reflects the work of other scientists rather than mine."

We then moved onto the Mail's article. He said:

I am already getting emails on this. I will have to categorically say that the headline is not an accurate representation of my work. But I guess there is little I can do now.

I then showed him how the Mail's headline was starting to get picked up elsewhere. He replied:

Wow! Actually I also heard from some colleagues. Strangely, nobody has read the Sunday Times article or the Nature editorial [from 2010], but everybody knows about the Daily Mail piece!

And, lo, a myth was born.

Wenlock Edge: In the woods, a fall of invisible hail-like ice crackled like static through bare branches

Yellow wallflowers stunned by frost. Blackcaps jittery around empty bird feeders, perhaps the first generation of their kind without a memory of migration. Rolled tongues of wild garlic leaves poked stiffly. The ground dry with a strange violet-grey dustiness and a freeze thickened in the mud. The weather forecast was full of predictions for conflict between warm Atlantic air clashing against cold Russian air to bring snow and using the same angst-ridden tones that newsreaders speak of politics and economics in. This ill-humoured petulance pushes us further from our experience of weather.

Out of a puddle-grey sky, the wind bringing the first hint of snow was chill and sweeping in all directions. In the woods, a fall of invisible, hail-like ice crackled like static through bare branches. In the open, the wind roared darkly through pines, soughed in the ash and hissed around limes and oaks. The small birds – blue tits and great tits squeaking in the treetops and wrens plumped up like bobbles – scarpered into the undergrowth. A ratty-winged buzzard trying to get back to safe shelter was intercepted by a raven in a brief ritual skirmish. A gang of jackdaws flung themselves from a lone tree into the wind and back.

Out on the Edge, between the woods and the fields, the wind ice came needling, stinging any exposed skin. It took a couple of hours before this turned to snow but it was only a loose swirl of 10p-piece-sized flakes and it softened into white quiet. The following morning the text of another world was written on the snow: trident marks of pheasant, double slots of fallow deer, dabs of rabbit. The slush trickled into drains taking the journal of that night with it. Yellow wallflowers began to recover.

I was delighted to read of the government's strong commitment to support UK industry in developing offshore wind power (Nick Clegg defends wind power subsidies in face of Tory attack, 7 February). This exciting form of clean, low-carbon energy is a real "win-win" for our energy needs and economy. Germany has created over 350,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector alone and Scotland is creating thousands of new jobs as well, so it's surprising that so many backbench Conservative MPs seem unwilling to support what could, and should, be a jobs bonanza in their recent letter on wind power to the prime minister.

So I'm pleased that both the PM and the deputy PM have firmly rebuffed this letter. But I'm disappointed to hear the new UK energy minister Ed Davey do the same as Chris Huhne and repudiate his long-held opposition to nuclear power by supporting the proposed UK nuclear new build programme.

I urge Ed Davey, as the architect of the Lib Dems' anti-nuclear pre-election policy, to challenge whether nuclear new build really stacks up, and where on earth the nuclear industry or the government will find the money to finance it when the industry is debt-laden and the radioactive waste bill soars. There is still time to think again
Cllr Brian Goodall
Chair of UK and Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities

• Ed Davey has got off to a good start in his new job (Report, 3 February) firmly backing an agenda for green growth, jobs and defending wind power. His visit with Nick Clegg yesterday to a home energy-saving technology centre is a clear indication that they intend to put household bill payers and cutting-edge UK industry at the heart of their energy policy. Davey should have vocal support from the prime minister too. He will face a tough battle against the Treasury, the gas and nuclear industry, and the politicians who are putting those interests above bill payers, industry and jobs.

Davey and the PM now need to provide the policy clarity and certainty on energy saving, renewables and decarbonisation of the energy system that shows the UK is a long-term good bet for green business. The test of Davey's success, and that of the government, will be if they deliver a timely boost to the economy, thousands of skilled jobs, and get a good deal for consumers.
Andy Atkins Chief executive, Friends of the Earth, David Nassbaum Chief executive, WWF, John Sauven Executive director, Greenpeace

• Environmentalists who oppose the use of geoengineering to tackle climate change should think again (Concern grows over role of scientists and billionaire backers urging climate fix, 6 February). To say that research into technological solutions "could undermine efforts to reduce emissions" ignores the fact that those efforts have already failed. International conferences and resolutions can't alter the political reality of electorates not supporting the radical changes to their lifestyles which would be required by significant emissions cuts. So we need to invest urgently in geoengineering, as well as carbon capture and storage, and ending deforestation.
Richard Mountford
Hildenborough, Kent

• We hope Mr Davey will rebuild the relationship with local government - based on mutual respect – which was severely strained and undermined by the Department for Energy and Climate Change deciding to prematurely cut the Feed in Tariff for Solar installation. It caused industry turmoil and job losses, forcing councils to reduce or abandon long-planned investment in cheaper, cleaner energy for tens of thousands of domestic homes and public buildings.

A major step in rebuilding the relationship between DECC and local government would be for Davey to instruct his department to abandon the farcical and humiliating appeal to the Supreme Court against Friends of the Earth's successful Judicial Review, and enter dialogue with councils, business, and the environmental sector on strengthening the future of solar and renewable energy, rather than undermining. This would immediately build trust and confidence between Davey and those partners who share responsibility for reducing carbon emissions, tackling fuel poverty and developing a low carbon economy with the jobs that will come with it. It is a chance not to be missed.
Cllr Clyde Loakes London borough of Waltham Forest, Cllr Tim Moore Liverpool city council, Cllr Ed Turner Oxford city council, Cllr Tracey Simpson-Laing City of York council, Cllr Tony Newman London borough of Croydon

• Your lead article (Report, 6 February) is cause for concern, but not primarily for the reasons voiced by the environmentalists you quoted.

As most of them (including, in particular, Clive Hamilton, whose book "Requiem for a species" provides a brilliant analysis of our collective failure to address the seriousness and urgency of climate change) will be only too aware, current global policies will, on present projections and despite high level assurances to the contrary, result in CO2 levels of at least 650 ppm and a global average temperature increase of 4-6c later this century — well past tipping points which will trigger uncontrollable climate change. Given the world's continuing obsession with economic growth at any cost, this is unlikely to change within the timeframe necessary to avoid such catastrophic consequences. Recourse to geoengineering may, therefore, be the only option available to buy time for the world to catch up with reality. At the very minimum, it is essential that we research such possibilities as a precautionary measure.

More fundamentally, the blanket rejection of all geoengineering as unwelcome needs challenging. Humanity has, by default, already been engaged for the last 200 years in a progressively disastrous experiment in geoengineering by virtue of its rapidly growing GHG emissions. A significant area of research supported by Bill Gates, Murray Edwards and Richard Branson is atmospheric carbon reduction, which offers the possibility of reversing history through permanently sequestering CO2 emissions as part of the natural carbon cycle, with none of the risks associated with other geoengineering options such as SRM (solar radiation management). Including such potentially valuable work under the same generic heading as other, understandably contentious interventions, is nonsensical.

For nearly 30 years, progress on dealing with climate change has been hampered by the undue influence of powerful vested interests. Environmentalists should be pleased that a new generation of influence is on the right side.
Nigel Tuersley
Carbon Order, Tisbury, Wiltshire

Seagrass plants alive today may have begun life in the late Pleistocene at the dawn of humanity

A sprawling meadow of seagrass in the shallows of the Mediterranean may be the oldest living organisms on Earth.

Scientists calculated the age of the plants from DNA tests on clumps gathered from the seafloor between Spain and Cyprus.

They revealed the typical age of the seagrass, Posidonia oceanica, to be thousands or tens of thousands of years old, though some appeared to more ancient still. A 15km-wide stretch of seagrass lying in waters off the Spanish island of Formentera could be 200,000 years old, the scientists found, dating it to the late Pleistocene and the dawn of humanity.

Until now, a contender for the oldest living organism was a Tasmanian seagrass thought to live more than 40,000 years.

P. oceanica is the most widespread seagrass in the Mediterranean, but populations are in global decline as the meadows are damaged by trawlers, coastal development and warming waters. In the past 100 years, seagrass has declined around 10% in the region.

The team of scientists led by Sophie Arnaud-Haond at the University of Algarve in Portugal describe their work in the journal, PLoS One. The researchers tested seagrass at 40 locations across the Mediterranean, separated by up to 3,500km.

Seagrasses spread by creating clones of themselves, leading to vast meadows of genetically identical plant life that can extend for tens of kilometres. The plants grow very slowly, taking over 600 years to cover around 80m of seafloor.

P. oceanica grows so large and lives so long because it has few native competitors and no major predators in the marine habitat. The extensive subsea meadows support some of the most valuable ecosystems on the planet.

Scientists hope that a better understanding of the giant seagrass meadows will lead to fresh ways to protect them from decline.

The world most's profitable companies are valued by their carbon reserves – never mind the resulting ruin to the planet

If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet – as we shall see – it's unfortunately largely invisible to us.

In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology. Last month, for instance, Nasa updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization's gallery: "Blue Marble", originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on 4 January, a good day for snapping photos because there weren't many clouds.

It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web's most widely read meteorologist, explains:

"The US and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the western US is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s."

In fact, it's likely that the week that photo was taken will prove "the driest first week in recorded US history". Indeed, it followed on 2011, which showed the greatest weather extremes in our history – 56% of the country was either in drought or flood, which was no surprise since "climate change science predicts wet areas will tend to get wetter and dry areas will tend to get drier." Indeed, the nation suffered 14 weather disasters, each causing $1bn or more in damage last year. (The old record was nine.) Masters again: "Watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids."

In the face of such data – statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet – you'd think we'd already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we're witnessing an all-out effort to … deny there's a problem.

Our GOP presidential candidates are working hard to make sure no one thinks they'd appease chemistry and physics. At the last Republican debate in Florida, Rick Santorum insisted that he should be the nominee because he'd caught on earlier than Newt or Mitt to the global warming "hoax".

Most of the media pays remarkably little attention to what's happening. Coverage of global warming has dipped 40% over the last two years. When, say, there's a rare outbreak of January tornadoes, TV anchors politely discuss "extreme weather," but climate change is the disaster that dare not speak its name.

And when they do break their silence, some of our elite organs are happy to indulge in outright denial. Last month, for instance, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by "16 scientists and engineers" headlined "No Need to Panic About Global Warming". The article was easily debunked. It was nothing but a mash-up of long-since-disproved arguments by people who turned out mostly not to be climate scientists at all, quoting other scientists who immediately said their actual work showed just the opposite.

It's no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. (Of the 16 authors of the Journal article, for instance, five had had ties to Exxon.) Writers from Ross Gelbspan to Naomi Oreskes have made this case with such overwhelming power that no one even really tries denying it any more. The open question is why the industry persists in denial in the face of an endless body of fact showing climate change is the greatest danger we've ever faced.

Why doesn't it fold, the way the tobacco industry eventually did? Why doesn't it invest its riches in things like solar panels and so profit handsomely from the next generation of energy?

The answer is more interesting than you might think.

Part of it's simple enough: the giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can't stop gorging themselves. ExxonMobil, year after year, pulls in more money than any company in history. Chevron's not far behind. Everyone in the business is swimming in money.

Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they've got a deeper problem, one that's become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won't be burned if we ever take global warming seriously.

When I talked about a carbon bubble at the beginning of this essay, this is what I meant. Here are some of the relevant numbers, courtesy of the Capital Institute: we're already seeing widespread climate disruption, but if we want to avoid utter, civilization-shaking disaster, many scientists have pointed to a two-degree rise in global temperatures as the most we could possibly deal with.

If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we'll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons – five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground.

Put another way, in ecological terms, it would be extremely prudent to write off $20tn-worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela).

If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that's far scarier than drought and flood. It's why you'll do anything – including fund an endless campaigns of lies – to avoid coming to terms with its reality. So, instead, we simply charge ahead. To take just one example, last month, the boss of the US Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donohue, called for burning all the country's newly discovered coal, gas, and oil – believed to be 1,800 gigatons-worth of carbon from our nation alone.

What he and the rest of the energy-industrial elite are denying, in other words, is that the business models at the center of our economy are in the deepest possible conflict with physics and chemistry. The carbon bubble that looms over our world needs to be deflated soon. As with our fiscal crisis, failure to do so will cause enormous pain – pain, in fact, almost beyond imagining. After all, if you think banks are too big to fail, consider the climate as a whole and imagine the nature of the bailout that would face us when that bubble finally bursts.

Unfortunately, it won't burst by itself – not in time, anyway. The fossil-fuel companies, with their heavily-funded denialism and their record campaign contributions, have been able to keep at bay even the tamest efforts at reining in carbon emissions. With each passing day, they're leveraging us deeper into an unpayable carbon debt – and with each passing day, they're raking in unimaginable returns. ExxonMobil last week reported its 2011 profits at $41bn, the second highest of all time. Do you wonder who owns the record? That would be ExxonMobil, in 2008, at $45bn.

Telling the truth about climate change would require pulling away the biggest punchbowl in history, right when the party is in full swing. That's why the fight is so pitched. That's why those of us battling for the future need to raise our game.

And it's why that view from the satellites, however beautiful from a distance, is likely to become ever harder to recognize as our home planet.

This handsome Ethiopian mystery bird is placed into several taxonomic families, depending upon which authority you refer to

Rüppell's black chat, Myrmecocichla melaena (synonym, Thamnolaea melaena; protonym, Saxicola melaena), Rüppell, 1837, also known as the black chat, as Rüppell's (Rueppell's) chat or, according to email from a reader, as the chiru by the indigenous Etritrean peoples, photographed at Lalibela, northern Ethiopia (Africa).

Image: Dan Logen, 9 February 2011 (with permission) [velociraptorize].
Nikon D300s, 200-400 mm lens at 400, f/5.6, 1/800 sec, ISO 800

Question: This handsome African mystery bird is endemic to Ethiopia and Eritrea. It also is placed into several taxonomic families, depending upon which authority you are referring to. Can you identify this mystery bird's taxonomic family(ies) and species?

Response: This is an adult Rüppell's black chat, Myrmecocichla melaena. It is locally common in its very small range, being found exclusively in highland rocky areas with waterfalls. It was originally placed with the thrushes into Turdidae but some authorities have removed it into the Muscicapidae family (chats & Old World flycatchers). However, there are more than 500 passerines in the Turdidae-Muscicapidae lineage, and the relationships between them are a gigantic tangled mess, so we really won't know much until the entire lineage has been subjected to extensive study and revision.

This monomorphic species resembles the white-fronted black chat, M. albifrons, but Rüppell's black chat is easily distinguished by its larger size, by the lack of white on its forehead, b y the presence of a bold white underwing patch (only visible in flight) and by its preference for higher elevations.

You are invited to review all of the daily mystery birds by going to their dedicated graphic index page.

If you have bird images, video or mp3 files that you'd like to share with a large and (mostly) appreciative international audience here at The Guardian, feel free to contact me to learn more.

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When the WFP has to get food aid into a famine-stricken region fast, it is the big grain traders who deliver

How £50m in UN food aid went to buy wheat from Glencore

My colleague Rupert Neate has been looking at who gets the money from the UN World Food Programme's purchase of emergency food. He reported on Tuesday that Glencore International, the FTSE 100 grain trader in the spotlight over an expected merger with mining group Xstrata, sold WFP more than £50m (around $79m) round of wheat over the last eight months, despite a UN pledge to buy from poor farmers when it can.

It is hard, in fact, to see what else WFP could have done. A big purchase of $22.5m was made from Glencore in July, which is when famine was declared in the Horn of Africa.

Save the Children and Oxfam have recorded how there was a dangerous delay in responding to the early warning signs of crisis in the Horn that led to needless starvation and death. But WFP has to wait for funding from donor countries before it can make most of its purchases, and that tends only to come once a crisis is full blown. By July it needed to get food in fast and that will nearly always mean turning to one of the big grain traders and, moreover, buying from them just as the prices are highest because famine has emerged out of shortage.

WFP humanitarian aid in July came mostly from the Black Sea countries and Brazil, but of the $1.23bn-worth of food it purchased in 2011, nearly one-third was sourced in least-developed and low-income countries (LDCs). In 2010, more than half of WFP purchases were form LDCs. One of the reasons for the fall from year to year was precisely because there had been drought in the Horn where WFP would normally hope to buy grain.

The problem is that humanitarian aid is typically hand to mouth and last minute, which forces agencies to buy on international markets at their peak, as Chatham House fellow Rob Bailey points out. What is needed is for donors to look further ahead and cough up money in time. At the moment, WFP has a $150m revolving fund with which it is allowed to buy ahead to anticipate crises, small stuff compared with the $1.23bn total it needed to feed the starving in 2011. It would be good, too, if its programme to buy from small farmers locally and improve storage capacity in poorer countries were bigger.

That is not to say that the idea of speculating grain giants profiting from hunger doesn't stick in the craw as several readers on Twitter @lawrencefelic have pointed out. The allegations of tax avoidance in Africa that have swirled around Glencore, although denied by the company, and the way it has been able to be a price maker as well as price taker in markets that are so concentrated, adds to the sense of injustice. But, then, the big corporate grain traders are hardly philanthropists.

This dramatic little Central American mystery bird is notable because it has no sister species

Mystery Bird photographed at the Arenal Volcano Observatory, Alajuela province, Costa Rica (Central America). [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]

Image: Nick Athanas/Tropical Birding, 8 February 2010 (with permission) [velociraptorize].
Canon EOS 50D

Question: This dramatic little Central American mystery bird is notable because it has no sister species. Can you identify this bird's taxonomic family and species? Is this a male or female?

The Rules:

1. Keep in mind that people live in zillions of different time zones, and some people are following on their smart phones. So let everyone play the game. Don't spoil it for everyone else by identifying the bird in the first 24 to 36 hours.
2. If you know the mystery bird's identity, answer the accompanying questions and provide subtle ID hints so others know that you know. Your hints may be helpful clues for less experienced players. Keep in mind that some hints may read like "inside jokes" and thus, may discourage others from participating.
3. Describe the key field marks that distinguish this species from any similar ones.
4. Comments that spoil others' enjoyment may be deleted.

The Game:

1. This is meant to be a learning experience where together we learn a few things about birds and about the process of identifying them (and maybe about ourselves, too).
2. Each mystery bird is usually accompanied by a question or two. These questions can be useful for identifying the pictured species, but may instead be used to illustrate an interesting aspect of avian biology, behaviour or evolution, or may be intended to generate conversation on other topics, such as conservation or ethics.
3. Thoughtful comments will add to everyone's enjoyment, and will keep the suspense going until the next teaser is published. Interesting snippets may add to the knowledge of all.
4. Each bird species will be demystified approximately 48 hours after publication.

You are invited to review all of the daily mystery birds by going to their dedicated graphic index page.

If you have bird images, video or mp3 files that you'd like to share with a large and (mostly) appreciative international audience here at The Guardian, feel free to contact me to learn more.

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One of the Olympic rings is green. But how green is London 2012 turning out to be? The various bodies involved in delivering the event have long aspired to providing "the greenest Olympic and Paralympic Games yet" and planned for sustainability, but judgments of their success depend a lot on how greenness is defined and how broadly those judgements are made.

Organisers LOCOG have taken a bit of stick over the 4,000 mostly fossil-fuelled BMWs that will be shipped to the capital to cart officials and dignitaries between sporting venues and their hotels using the road network's dedicated "games lanes," in some cases with personal chauffeurs.

BMW is "proud" to be the enterprise's "automotive partner." But Caroline Pidgeon, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly member who chairs its transport committee, has said that only electric vehicles should have been considered and Green Party AM Jenny Jones, who is also her party's mayoral candidate, thinks more of the VIPs should use public transport as we mere mortals are being urged to do.

The choice of Dow Chemical to fund the Olympic stadium's decorative wrap has prompted widespread protest and the recent resignation of a member of the watchdog Commission for a Sustainable London 2012. Meanwhile, the dark cloud of air pollution continues to float above the build-up to July's sporting jamboree. All those gas-guzzling BMWs seem unlikely to help.

There is, though, a happier tale being told as well. Jenny's Jones's fellow Green assembly member Darren Johnson wrote in Business Green last spring that some of the "greatest achievements" of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), which has been responsible for building the Olympic Park, have gone largely unrecognised. He praised the ODA's work in "reducing the embodied carbon of construction" by, for example, making the main stadium lightweight by reusing gas piping and re-designing the aquatic centre's temporary stands to reduce its use of steel.

The London Assembly's Liberal Democrats applaud the widespread re-use of materials throughout the construction period, including for the park's own combined cooling heat and power plant. They point out that the land the park has been built on was previously heavily contaminated and is now home to large quantities of greenery. The Environment Agency announced on Monday that the clean-up work is complete.

There has been political approval for all of the above, and for the improvement of the waterways that flow through and around the park. Labour assembly member Murad Qureshi is among those supporting a cross-party call for volunteers to help with tidying up the Lee Navigation canal in advance of July. He'll be keeping company with Tory mayor Boris Johnson's environment director and an environment minister at the launch of a campaign led by environment charity Thames21 at Hackney Wick on Wednesday.

But Qureshi also points to the disappointment of the games missing their renewable energy targets - it was announced last April that it will manage only 9% instead of their 20% target. Plans to build a wind turbine at Eton Manor were dropped in 2010. "It's a real pity, because that would have symbolised very visibly what can be done," he says. (Darren Johnson has since persuaded the ODA to indirectly offset this by insulating homes around the Olympic Park).

Any green audit of the games would have to take into account everything from re-surfacing the local towpaths for walkers, cyclists and runners - I live nearby and am all three - to fundamental questions about the whole concept of the Olympics being held in a different place every four years, with all the draw on Earthly resources that entails. Qureshi would like serious consideration to be given to finding a permanent home for the Olympics. Alas, Greece, the obvious romantic choice, has a decaying stadium on its hands and other matters on its mind.

For London 2012 just avoiding that terrible fate will be a green triumph for a kind. But will it be as great it should have been?

193 nuclear tests carried out on the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls between 1966 and 1996 have left a dangerous legacy

Seen from the air, the coral ring that separates the deep blue of the ocean from the lighter water of the lagoon lends Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls a sense of normality. But the picture changes dramatically as you come closer. Parts of the islands are covered in concrete and the vegetation usually found in the Tuamoto archipelago has given way to aito trees, a form of she-oak. "At home on Tuamoto we depend on the island for our livelihood but here it is dead," says an indignant Tuamotuan.

France carried out 193 nuclear tests on these two atolls from 1966 to 1996: 41 atmospheric and 137 underground tests, with a further 15 "safety trials". In 2006, the French ministry of defence acknowledged that 22 underground tests had given rise to the release of radioactive gases. Radioactive waste has been collected and buried in 27 pits on Mururoa.

Despite the repeated demands of the Polynesian authorities, a bill passed by the French parliament in 2010 disregarded the environmental consequences of the nuclear tests. It did, however, acknowledge their impact on public health and provide for compensation.

In January, the territorial assembly of French Polynesia voted in favour of a bill to rectify this omission. The next day France's upper chamber approved a motion that provides for Mururoa and Fangataufa, currently under the control of the defence ministry, to be restored to the Polynesian public domain, though the bill stands little chance of becoming law. "We realise that they are the two largest nuclear dumps in an ocean environment. But in Oceania you cannot separate human beings from their ecosystem," says the author of the bill, Senator Richard Tuheiva. "Restitution [of the atolls] is a way of soothing the psychological wounds [caused by the nuclear era]."

The bill provides for lasting "environmental remediation and constant monitoring of radiation and geological movement on the two atolls".

Every year the nuclear test centre monitoring department (DSCEN), a branch of France's arms procurement agency (DGA), takes samples from the land and lagoon of both atolls, and the surrounding ocean, publishing the results within two years. The most recent report, for 2009, notes "a low level of artificial radioactivity". But about 5kg of plutonium is trapped in the sediment at the bottom of the Mururoa and Fangataufa lagoons, according to the spokesman for the bill, the Socialist senator Roland Courteau. There is no question of them returning to "normal" use.

The test cavities still contain fission products and various radioactive substances. Two pits have been dug specially for the storage of nuclear waste.

The total activity of the waste that has accumulated in the Mururoa subsoil amounts to 13,279 terabecquerels (TBqs), according to a June 1998 assessment by the International Atomic Energy Authority. "That's 371 times the threshold for the classification of basic nuclear installations," says Bruno Chareyon, head of the committee for independent research and information on radioactivity (Criirad), a French non-profit laboratory. More than 3,200 tonnes of various types of radioactive waste was tipped into the Pacific, sinking to depths exceeding 1,000 metres off the coast of Mururoa and Hao island. In February last year, the defence ministry admitted that it was possible that part of Mururoa atoll might cave in, sapped by the underground tests. A landslide could lead to radioactive matter currently enclosed in rock being released into the sea.

"Mururoa is a real nuclear tip," says Maina Sage, a representative of the pro-autonomy Ia Ora te Fenua party in the Polynesian territorial assembly. She is demanding an independent study to assess the scope for consolidating the storage facilities and criticises the bill's failure to provide for declassification of the atolls. If the same rules for the treatment of nuclear waste applied here, as elsewhere, it would prevent the persistence "double standards".

For a long time the Polynesian authorities were fooled by the official story of clean tests and the prospects of economic development. Government secrecy neutralised their efforts too. But now they distrust what they are told. In July 2010, the former leader of the territorial council, Gaston Tong Sang, wrote to the then environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, and dared to suggest that the environment ministry – which would enjoy "greater independence and legitimacy" – should take charge of environmental monitoring.

To guarantee the transparency of information available to Polynesian residents, the bill requires the military authorities to task the Nuclear Radiation and Safety Institute (ISRN) with a specific mission for Mururoa and Fangataufa. Courteau thinks that the rules on military secrecy should be adapted to suit "the reality of the risks incurred", in which case a national commission would be set up "to monitor the impacts and effects of climate change on geomechanical stability and emissions of hazardous radioactive nuclides".

In his letter, Sang also asked for clarification of the radiation status of Hao, which was used as a forward base for the Pacific Experimentation Centre (CEP) and France's Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). This request was repeated in June 2011 by the DSCEN delegate from French Polynesia. A month later, on 11 July, the high commissioner, Richard Didier, refused to initiate further observations. He said that "all the results obtained show the absence of radioactive contamination". Contacted by Le Monde, the government representative in French Polynesia refused to answer questions.

Some 1,500 people live on Hao island. In 2009, the defence ministry started a huge environmental remediation scheme. A study of the extent of pollution, in particular by hydrocarbons and heavy metals, is due to be published by June.

This article originally appeared in Le Monde

UK carbon emissions are up for the first time in seven years. See where they come from and find out what's happened
• Get the data

UK carbon emissions are up - for the first time since 2003. What's going on?

Carbon emissions have been declining, with some blips, since the Kyoto protocol's baseline year of 1990. This year, according to the latest data from the Department for Energy and Climate Change covering 2010, they have started rising again.

The recession

Carbon emissions are supposed to follow GDP change - the Stern review calculated that a 1% change in GDP brings a 0.9% change in emissions. That should change, however, as energy generation and transport fuels decarbonise over the next two decades - and you can see from the chart above how they don't always match. The biggest drop came in the figures published last year, covering 2009, which show a nearly 9% drop. A rise after that is inevitable.

Where do our emissions come from?

Generating energy is responsible for the biggest single wedge of UK carbon emissions - 204.3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, or 35% of the total for 2010. Transport is not far behind though - 121.9 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, or 20% of the total. The biggest part of that? Passenger cars, which generated 68 million tonnes in 2010.

The big increases in these very detailed emissions details have come from unexpected source - residential emissions, for instance (up 15% because of the very cold winter that year), but also incerases from biomass burning, HGV lorries, the production of Halocarbon (anyone have any idea why?) and offshore gas burning.

This is how those have changed over time (with more details at the bottom of the page)

As John Vidal wrote in 2009 when we first covered this:

If you ever wanted evidence of Britain's decline as a coal burning, manufacturing nation and transformation into a car-based consumer society which depends on others for our goods, this is it

Our true carbon footprint

Some say the figures are meaningless, largely because the UK imports so many things. Peters et al calculated the effect of factoring in imports - which some say gives a much truer picture of what's happening to emissions.

The full data is below. What can you do with it?

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Supermarket hopes newly developed packaging will keep tomatoes and avocados fresh for longer

Tesco is the latest supermarket to trial new packaging that will keep fruit and vegetables fresher, in a bid to reduce food waste.

It will become the first retailer to see how the packaging performs in prolonging the freshness of tomatoes and avocados – produce that triggers the highest wastage in the food industry. Tesco estimates the new packaging could lead to a potential saving of 1.6m packs of tomatoes and 350,000 packs of avocados every year. If successful, it could be rolled out across 80% of the varieties of tomato it sells.

The packaging contains a strip that absorbs ethylene, the hormone that causes fruit to ripen and then turn mouldy. The strip was developed in the UK by It's Fresh Ltd, which says it is 100 times more effective than any similar existing materials.

Initial trials further down the supply chain have been a success and suggest the device could be used across a wide range of fruit and vegetables. There will be no added cost to shoppers, according to Tesco.

Tesco ambient salad and avocado technologist Steve Deeble said: "The packaging is a major breakthrough in the fight to combat food waste and could save the fresh produce industry tens of millions of pounds each year. But it would also mean that shoppers will be able to keep fruit and vegetables for longer without feeling pressured to eat them within days of buying them."

Deeble said if the trials were a success "we could start rolling out the packaging by Easter".

Last month, Marks & Spencer launched the packaging for all its strawberries.

Trials in M&S stores showed a minimum wastage saving of 4% – which during the peak strawberry season would equate to 40,000 packs, or about 800,000 strawberries. M&S says it is committed to reducing waste as part of its programme to be the world's most sustainable retailer, and hopes to extend the packaging to all berries.

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Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series

Caroline Flint says George Osborne believes 'environmental policies are a luxury that can only ever be afforded when times are good'

Labour has accused the chancellor of the exchequer of "actively revelling in contempt for environmental protection", in the latest broadside in the row over green policies that has consumed the coalition since the resignation of Chris Huhne on Friday.

Caroline Flint, shadow energy secretary, warned that the Tory right was breaking apart the cross-party consensus on climate change, thereby endangering the UK's economic health as well as threatening the planet with untrammelled global warming. Her intervention follows days of controversy as more than 100 Tory MPs wrote to the prime minister to call for wind farm subsidies to be cut, in the most serious attack on green policies yet.

Ed Davey, who replaced Huhne after the former minister resigned to face criminal charges on an alleged driving offence, tried to regain the high ground on Monday by insisting the government strongly backed renewable energy, but the impression was left of a coalition in disorder on the issue.

Tensions over green policies have been simmering for months, after last year in a series of speeches the chancellor, George Osborne, earned cheers from the Tory right by attacking environmental regulation as "costly" and a "burden". His words were echoed by claims from free-market thinktanks that green policies would add hundreds or even thousands of pounds to energy bills, claims the government has refuted.

Flint laid the blame for the coalition's disarray firmly at the chancellor's door: "The likes of the present chancellor not only believe that the green agenda is bad for business, bad for jobs and bad for growth, but actively revel in their contempt for environmental protection. According to this view, environmental policies are a luxury that can only ever be afforded when times are good."

Flint rejected that view, arguing instead that green growth was the best way to revive job creation. "Investing in the green economy is not just a route out of recession, but a necessary and urgent adaptation to the economy and society we will need in the decades ahead," she said. "This is not a journey of economic altruism, but a battle for economic survival."

Flint accused the coalition of destroying the long-running political consensus on climate change, by which all of the UK's main parties agreed on the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions and pursue a green economy, though they differed on how to achieve this. In a speech on Tuesday morning to the Aldersgate Group, made up of companies with an interest in green technologies, she said: "We are fortunate in the UK that one of the legacies of Labour's period in office was broad acceptance of the need to tackle climate change. Today, the question marks over the government's green credentials have proliferated and raise genuine scepticism over whether the government is sincere in its support for that consensus."

She called for "an active industrial strategy" to promote green growth. Without it, she warned, other countries would forge ahead in the quest to lead the world in clean technology. Renewable energy is already worth billions to the Chinese economy each year.

But Flint also rejected the "extreme eco" argument, put forward by some greens, that would force people to accept a lower standard of living, for instance by driving less and taking fewer holidays abroad. She said: "Both the extreme eco view and the Tory right share one central premise – that economic growth and environmental sustainability are inherently irreconcilable. [But] here is a path between untrammelled growth at all costs, and a sustainable zero-growth world. We can grow our economy and benefit the planet. We can provide for our citizens and meet their aspirations without ruining our planet. It is not a zero sum game."

She warned that this opportunity must be grasped now, without waiting for the recession to pass: "The longer we delay action, the costlier mitigating and adapting to climate change will become – and the economic opportunities will slip through our fingers."

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The 8.7% fall in carbon emissions as industry activity slumped during recession was a blip, figures show

• Comment: Leaping UK carbon emissions deliver two red-hot lessons

The dramatic fall in the UK's greenhouse gas emissions caused by the recession has proved to be a blip, with national emissions rising 3.1% in 2010. The new energy and climate change secretary, Ed Davey, attributed the rise, the first in almost a decade, to increased home heating during a cold winter and shutdowns at nuclear power stations after technical problems.

"One year won't knock the UK off meeting its long-term emission reduction targets, but it serves to underline the importance of the coalition's policies for insulating homes to cut bills and emissions and moving to greener alternative forms of energy," said Davey, a Liberal Democrat who took over from Chris Huhne, who resigned on Friday after being charged over an alleged attempt to avoid prosecution for a speeding offence.

On Sunday, a letter to the prime minister from over 100 Tory MPs was made public, which advocated cutting subsidies to renewable energy, despite renewable energy's role in reducing emissions. But environmental groups see the rise in emissions last year as a warning and said the sharp jump in home heating emissions showed the government had to increase the ambition of its home insulation plans, dubbed the "green deal". "This was meant to be the decade when we slashed our emissions and sparked a green jobs bonanza, but instead we're seeing progress stalling," said Louise Hutchins from Greenpeace. "The fact that rise is partly down to the cold snap in 2010 is no excuse, after all Sweden has colder winters but their bills are lower because they have better insulated homes. To copy their success the government's flagship green deal will need more resources, and that requires greater political ambition."

Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF-UK, said: "If the government ever needed a wake-up call on greenhouse gas emissions here it is.

"It is alarming to see emissions from homes rising when people are struggling to pay their energy bills. The UK's overreliance on gas has pushed up emissions along with people's energy bills. It's a clear sign that the government needs to back investors in renewable energy and get us off the fossil fuel hook once and for all."

The UK's carbon dioxide emissions, which are the tenth largest of any nation in the world, have been falling over the past 20 years as power stations used less coal and more gas to generate power. The rise in 2010, of 18m tonnes of carbon dioxide, follows a steep year-on-year fall of 8.7% in 2009 when the financial crisis hit as economic activity.

The department of energy and climate change statistic, published on Tuesday, showed 11.8m tonnes of carbon dioxide came from the increased heating of homes, mainly by gas. Problems with the country's biggest reactor Sizewell B reactor in Suffolk, which meant it was shut down for six months in 2010, led to more coal and gas being burned. That added 5.6m tonnes to the UK's emissions of climate-warming gases. Other sectors, including business, agriculture and transport, remained all but unchanged.

Despite the rise, the UK's emissions are about 23% lower than in 1990, the benchmark year for the nation's international commitments to tackle global warming under the Kyoto protocol, meaning the current Kyoto pledge has been comfortably met. A legally binding domestic target of cutting emissions 35% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, also remains likely to be met. However, since 1990 manufacturing taking place in the UK has fallen sharply and goods imported from elsewhere have filled the gap. When the emissions linked to those imported goods are included, the UK's national carbon footprint has risen by 20%, though critics argue that the exporting country, which benefits from the employment, rightfully is responsible for these emissions.

The Nasa climate scientist James Hansen has calculated that, in order to keep the global temperature rise within the 2C limit accepted by the world's nations, industrialised countries would have to cut their emissions by 6% a year from 2013 onwards. Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation said: "The market set up to give incentives to cut carbon is not delivering in anything like the speed or scale necessary. The UK's 3% rise is so wrong, it takes the breath away."

Historically, greenhouse gas emissions have move in lock-step with GDP, as higher economic activity uses more energy, which generates more emissions. The Stern review in 2006 of the economics of climate change calculated that a 1% change in GDP brings a 0.9% change in emissions. However, the 2010 data for the UK shows that the 3.1% in carbon emissions occurred with just 2.1% of GDP growth.

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Solid results will improve confidence if, of course, BP can avoid prosecution over the Gulf oil spill

Bob Dudley has tried, over his short tenure as boss of BP, a few eye-catching – but ultimately unsuccessful – moves to attract the attention of investors and restore the company's still-sagging share price.

More workaday news such as Tuesday's bounceback to profitability and decision to raise the dividend 14% plus a series of positive statistics about how many wells are being drilled and the successful acreage secured, might be a better way of achieving his goal.

Dudley tried to tie up a glitzy partnership with Rosneft last year which came to grief because he had not counted on opposition from his old adversaries – I mean friends – at TNK-BP in Russia. Then a mega deal to raise more than $7bn (£4.4bn) through the sale of the BP stake in Pan American Energy to Argentina fell apart.

BP now seems resigned to a long slog of improving confidence through notching up steady milestones such as getting eight rigs working in the Gulf of Mexico – scene of a drilling moratorium following the Macondo well spill that did so much financial and reputational damage to the company in the spring of 2010.

But Dudley must still overcome what is perhaps the biggest hurdle of them all: the New Orleans court case with the Department of Justice that kicks off on 27 February.

Gross negligence charges against BP for the Deepwater Horizon accident have still not been ruled out although they seem somewhat unlikely on the evidence that has come out so far.

Former BP chief executive John Browne promised to go "beyond petroleum" and now Dudley must get "beyond prosecution" to really set the scene for the company's complete revival.

BP is on the right path, says chief executive Bob Dudley, as it revealed fourth quarter profit of $7.6bn on the back of higher oil prices

BP has declared itself "back on the right path" following the difficulties of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill with annual profits bouncing back from a $3.7bn (£2.3bn) loss to a $25.7bn profit.

A 14% increase in the dividend to eight cents per share for the final three months of 2011 was a clear signal of management confidence although net debt still lies at almost $30bn.

"BP is on the right path," said Bob Dudley, the chief executive who took over from Tony Hayward following the Deepwater Horizon accident.

"2012 will be a year of increasing investment and milestones as we build on the foundations laid last year. As we move through 2013 and 2014, we expect financial momentum will build as we complete payments into the Gulf of Mexico Trust Fund, restore high-value production and bring new projects on stream," he added.

The dividend hike was the first since the company resumed payouts last year and had been eagerly anticipated by the City.

It came as the oil group reported a fourth quarter profit of $7.6bn, boosted by higher oil prices. The group increased its oil and gas reserves by 103% over the last 12 months through new discoveries although this did not take account of any asset disposals.

BP said it had won "unparalleled" access to new exploration prospects in 2011 and is now increasing spending for the new financial year – from $19bn to $22bn.

"We believe this resulted in more new net acreage than accessed by any of our peers in 2011," said Dudley. "We now have a robust pipeline of opportunities with exploration prospects that will generate new resources and projects well into the next decade. We will see a continued ramp up of exploration over the next two to three years."

BP expects to drill 12 exploration wells in the coming year, twice the number during 2011, and will have eight drilling rigs operating in the US Gulf where an oil spill from the Macondo well in the spring of 2010 caused 11 deaths and devastated beaches.

The London-based energy group has already sold off $20bn worth of properties to raise money to pay for liabilities flowing from Macondo and intends to dispose of a further $18bn by the end of next year.

BP will face the beginning of a key legal trial in New Orleans into the spill later this month but Dudley said he was still hoping some out-of-court settlement could be arranged with the US department of justice.

"As I have said before, we are prepared to settle if we can do so on fair and reasonable terms, but equally, if this is not possible, we are preparing vigorously for trial."

Shares in BP rose 2p to 492p in early trading.

£50bn merger with Xstrata will be latest City coup for billionaires behind commodities trader

More than £50m of World Food Programme aid to feed the starving has ended up in the hands of a London-listed commodities trader run by billionaires, despite a pledge by the United Nations agency to buy food from "very poor farmers".

Glencore International, which buys up supplies from farmers and sells them on at a profit, was the biggest single supplier of wheat to the WFP over the last eight months, the Guardian can reveal.

Glencore, which was able to operate with secrecy from its base in Baar, Switzerland, until it floated on the London stock exchange last May, is expected on Tuesday to announce a merger with mining group Xstrata to become one of the 10 biggest FTSE 100 companies with a market value of more than £50bn.

Details of the dealings with Glencore, which controls 8% of the global wheat market, emerged a year after the head of the WFP committed to buying food from local farmers.

"Our new motto is to help people feed themselves," Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the WFP, told China's state news agency. "When we can, we purchase our food from the very poor farmers who suffer because they are not connected to local markets."

Raj Patel, an economist expert in the global food trade and former UN employee, said it was shocking how much food aid money was "funnelling to one of the largest commodity traders".

The rising price of wheat has squeezed the incomes of millions of the world's poorest people. Many have been forced to turn to the WFP, which last year fed more than 90 million people in 73 countries.

Over the last eight months Glencore has sold wheat worth $78m (£50m) to the WFP, according to details of contracts published on the agency's website.

In the biggest single deal, the WFP bought $22.5m of Glencore wheat in July last year to feed Ethiopians in one the worst famines in recent memory. The WFP also bought Glencore wheat, sorghum and yellow split peas for Kenya, Djibouti, Bangladesh, Sudan, North Korea and Palestine. Last month the WFP spent $10.8m on wheat for drought-stricken Djibouti.

In its latest half-year financial results Glencore, which previously attracted controversy for environmental breaches and accusations of dealing with rogue states, including Iraq under Saddam Hussein, reported that revenue from agricultural products doubled to $8.8bn. The company said its performance had been "driven by stronger profits in grains and oil seeds" for which "prices were substantially higher in H1 [the first half of] 2011 compared to H1 2010".

The company said: "There were increased geographic arbitrage opportunities [buying commodities cheaper in order to sell them on later at a higher price] available in wheat and edible oils." It said the average wheat price of a bushel [8 gallons] of wheat increased by 60% over the previous year to $778.

A spokeswoman for the WFP said: "As a humanitarian agency that depends entirely on voluntary donations we always aim to get the most competitive price when purchasing food on the open markets. Rising food prices do have an impact on our budget and they can be driven up by any number of factors, including speculation."

Glencore said it won the WFP tenders because "we were able to offer the commodities needed at the lowest possible price".

Rob Bailey, a senior research fellow in food security at Chatham House in London, said the WFP often buys from traders such as Glencore, Cargill and Viterra, because food donations are not available and local farmers cannot provide the quantities needed. "It is concerning that the World Food Programme is left at the whim of international markets precisely when prices are high," he said.

"Such crisis periods of high volatility are also when the big traders make the most money, because they have the best information on likely supply and demand and how markets are going to evolve, allowing them to take positions in the market to turn profits."

John Hilary, the executive director of the War on Want, said: "Glencore's self-confessed speculation on grain markets last year forced up prices at a time of world shortage, driving more people into extreme hunger. The WFP needs to rethink its priorities and support local markets rather than corporate giants such as Glencore."

Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System, said: "It's a shocking amount of money to be funnelling to one of the largest commodity traders. That financial entities are now making their presence felt – and Glencore is among the most powerful of these new corporations – points to the increasing financialisation of food in the 21st century."

Glencore admitted that it bet on a rising wheat price after drought in Russia, according to investment bank UBS. "[Glencore's] agricultural team received very timely reports from Russia farm assets that growing conditions were deteriorating aggressively in the spring and summer of 2010, as the Russian drought set in … This put it in a position to make proprietary trades going long on wheat and corn," UBS said in a report to potential investors, disclosed by the Financial Times.

On 3 August 2010 the head of Glencore's Russian grain business, Yury Ognev, urged Moscow to ban grain exports, according to the UBS report. Two days later Russian authorities banned wheat exports, which forced prices up by 15% in two days.

On Monday Glencore said UBS's account of its role in the Russian grain crisis was "simply untrue. In any case, the export ban did not help our business".

A spokesman said: "We share the view that financial speculation in agricultural products markets can be harmful. Our business is physical – we produce, buy, store and blend agricultural commodities.

"We bridge the gap between harvests that last for a couple of weeks and demand which is fairly constant throughout the year.

"Because we are physical holders, we are always net sellers in the agricultural products futures markets which actually has a downward effect on the prices of agricultural products futures."

Glencore's chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, earned the moniker "the $10 billion man" when his stake was valued at £5.76bn at last May's flotation. Four other partners – Daniel Maté, Telis Mistakidis, Tor Peterson and Alex Beard – were also made paper billionaires. More than $3.6bn was given to the WFP last year, with the US contributing $1.2bn and the UK £144m.

Merger deal anticipated

Glencore is on Tuesday expected to announce plans to merge with mining group Xstrata to become one of the 10 biggest companies listed on the London stock market. It will be the latest move in Glencore's journey from secretive trading house founded by Marc Rich, a commodities traderwho was charged by US authorities with selling oil to Iran during the 1979-81 hostage crisis, to global powerhouse in the sale of commodities from copper and coal to sugar and wheat.

The largest shareholder in the combined company – dubbed Glenstrata – will be Ivan Glasenberg, Glencore's multibillionaire chief executive. But Glasenberg, who makes so much money he indirectly funded a generous Christmas tax break for the other residents of the Swiss village where he lives, is understood to be planning to step aside to become deputy to Mick "the miner" Davis, the head of Xstrata.

Davis, already one the highest paid executives in the FTSE 100, is likely to be offered a "golden handcuffs" deal to stay at the company. A change of control clause could also see Davis collect an additional £10.7m in long-term shares.

The deal is likely to see Glencore pay about an 8% premium to buy up the Xstrata shares it does not already own.

Sir John Bond, Xstrata's chairman and a former chair of HSBC and Vodafone, will lead the Glenstrata board, while Glencore's chairman Simon Murray, who has been attacked for his "unbelievably primitive" views on women in business, is likely to step aside.

Tony Hayward, the former boss of BP, is likely to be appointed the senior independent director of the combined company, which will have more than 120,000 staff across five continents.

Portland, Dorset: As the ground sloped away on the sheltered side, there was a change; we came to a little enclave with a character anything but bleak

The eastern side of Portland was sheltered, even on a windy day, with views of cliffs gently stretching away. The calm was in contrast to the buffeting we had received standing on the exposed Atlantic edge of the island, where the landscape fitted the customary descriptions of Portland as bleak and treeless.

With its geology and centuries of quarrying Portland is, of course, where most buildings are made of the one material. We passed old houses made in the characteristic sturdy, low style with severe stone porches, proof against any weather. But as the ground sloped away on the sheltered side, there was a change; we came to a balmy, wooded area, with mown lawns and cedar trees, a little enclave with a character anything but bleak, and more like that of Torbay than of the coast we had just left. Here, some of the buildings, like the pastiche, castellated Pennsylvania Castle built between 1797 and 1800, had their own distinctive style and taste.

The Portland museum is housed in two picture-postcard, 17th-century cottages attractively gabled and thatched, with a warm and welcoming look. One was adopted by Thomas Hardy as the home of Avice in his Portland novel, The Well-Beloved. A lane beside the museum leads to where steps go steeply down to Church Ope cove, a quiet inlet protected from the wind, said to have been used by smugglers but now a place of recreation; we looked down on bathing huts and small boats. Above the cove are the ruins of St Andrew's church scattered among the debris of successive landslips, but much higher again and close beside us, towering above the beach, was a rocky bluff on top of which stand the sheer walls of the ruined Rufus Castle. The original was said to have been built for William Rufus, the son of William the Conqueror. It peers out over the sea with a field of vision that no invader could have escaped.

Scientists have used the exquisitely preserved, fossilised remains of a Jurassic bush-cricket to recreate its chirp

A love song that carried on the wind through the ancient forests of the late Jurassic has been reconstructed by scientists in Britain.

Researchers pieced together the staccato mating call of the long-gone creature, a distant relative of the modern bush-cricket, from fossilised remains unearthed in Mongolia.

The insect's body and wings were preserved in such exquisite detail that specialists in bioacoustics at Bristol University could measure the parts used to produce mating calls and recreate the sounds. The cricket, Archaboilus musicus, lived 165m years ago, when much of northwest China was a sparse forest of coniferous evergreens and giant ferns. "This is one of the oldest mating calls ever reconstructed from a fossil," lead researcher Fernando Montealegre Zapata told the Guardian.

The insect was large compared with many modern crickets, growing to 12cm and sporting 7cm-long wings. Each wing was furnished with the stiff plectrum and a toothed file that produce the familiar chirp of the cricket's mating call when rubbed together.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describe how they used high-resolution images of the extinct creature's wings to count the number and spacings of teeth on each file. Each had around a hundred tiny teeth.

The scientists compared the insect's song-making equipment with that of 59 living cricket species, whose mating calls have all been documented. Taking this information into account, they calculated that the ancient cricket produced chirps lasting 16 milliseconds. The song was a repetition of single notes, with a frequency of around 6.4 kilohertz. The top range of human hearing is around 20 kilohertz.

The brief bursts of sound produced by the plectrum scraping over the file caused the insects' wings to vibrate and amplify the sound. The call was well-suited to life on the forest floor, where the notes would carry a long distance to females far away.

"The work tells us that the elaborate structures used for producing and listening to these songs were already evolved 165m years ago," said Montealegre Zapata.

Further studies of the insects might give scientists some hints why the mating calls of many modern crickets have much higher frequencies, in the ultrasonic range beyond human hearing. Today, all similar species that use musical calls are nocturnal.

Daniel Robert, a co-author on the paper, said: "For Archaboilus, as for living bush-cricket species, singing constitutes a key component of mate attraction. Singing loud and clear advertises the presence, location and quality of the singer, a message that females choose to respond to, or not. Using a single tone, the male's call carries further and better, and therefore is likely to serenade more females."Such amorous calls are not without risk though. Mating calls make males more conspicuous to predators if they have evolved to eavesdrop on the sounds.

The mating call of an extinct bush-cricket has been reconstructed, using the microscopic wing features of a fossil

Deputy PM targets green investment after backbenchers call for cut in subsidy for onshore wind farms

Nick Clegg has led a fightback against concerted attacks by Conservative MPs on government subsidies to support wind power.

A letter to the prime minister signed by more than 100 Tory backbenchers called for a "dramatic cut" in subsidies for onshore windfarms, and new planning rules to make it easier for local communities to object to them. But the deputy prime minister defended subsidies to help renewable energy compete with fossil fuels, highlighting a growing division in the coalition over energy policy.

"The race is on to lead the world in clean, green energy," Clegg said at his first public event with the new Liberal Democrat climate secretary, Ed Davey. "Last year we saw record-breaking global investment in renewables, outstripping the cash piled into fossil fuels. The new economic powerhouses – China, India, Korea, Brazil – are now serious contenders for that capital. In today's world, the savviest states understand that going for growth means going green. Low-carbon markets are the next frontier in the battle for global pre-eminence. I want the UK to be the number one destination for green investment. We're in this race to win it."

Davey, who took over the climate brief when Chris Huhne resigned on Friday, said: "I've been a lifelong supporter of renewable and wind power and I'm not going to change now. I think that onshore and offshore wind power has a real place in a balanced mix of energy generation so I'm a huge supporter of renewables and I'm going to make sure that they have a real role to play in the future."

"We don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past where we have polluted our planet, where our country has been dependent on fossil fuel imports, where the price is high and variable … we want to make sure we have our own energy production that is clean and green."

The letter's organiser, Conservative MP Chris Heaton-Harris, said he had asked only backbenchers to sign, and not ministers, whips or parliamentary private secretaries. The strength of support – including big names such as the former defence secretary Nicholas Soames and two-time leadership candidate David Davis – will encourage the view that MPs feel they have support from ministers, including the chancellor, George Osborne.

Davey responded with what party insiders called a "strong rebuke" to the signatories, who included two Lib Dem MPs.

"I think the case [for wind subsidies] is pretty compelling," Davey said. "Already we've seen through the subsidies that this government has invested in onshore wind that the price has come down to make onshore wind competitive, so we've got money to invest in all sorts of renewables because of the success of these investments."

Laura Sandys, a Conservative MP who supports wind power, said: "Wind often gets a bad press but actually it costs the average UK household only £10 a year and generates electricity 80% of the time. Onshore, offshore, marine, solar, waste to energy should all form part of our mixed energy economy. As a collective, these technologies have the capability to help guard families across the country against energy price shocks."

Zac Goldsmith, Tory MP and one of the party's foremost environmentalists and supporters of renewable energy, said he would write to Davey to urge an analysis of wind power to address claims it is too expensive and unreliable. He said: "The government has to make a clear and robust case or it's going to lose the argument."

Davey was also confronted with a critical article in Monday's Times by the economist Dieter Helm, who claimed that the policy of reducing demand to offset the extra costs of renewable energy such as wind power was "hype", and was not helping cut climate change emissions from fossil fuels because industries were simply moving to countries with lower prices.

Another contentious area within the coalition is nuclear power, which is widely supported by Tories but has traditionally been opposed by many Lib Dems. Davey said there would be "no change" on nuclear policy from the coalition agreement, which made special arrangements that the government would produce new planning guidelines to allow existing nuclear reactors to be replaced, and that Lib Dem MPs could oppose the move and abstain in any vote on the issue in parliament.

"There have been understandable concerns given the expensive mistakes made in the past which the taxpayer is still paying for," Davey said. "But coalition agreement is crystal clear: new nuclear can go ahead so long as it's without subsidy. Developers will be required to put money aside from day one to pay for the eventual decommissioning and waste management."

Clegg's strong words were welcomed by environmental and energy campaigners, who have warned government that signs of political wavering on support for renewable energy are making investors nervous of spending money in the UK.

long-term policy signals and ministerial support were crucial for boosting private investment in renewable energy and the green economy.

David Nussbaum of WWF-UK said: "Investor confidence is vital to build a sustainable and resilient economy, so it's essential that senior members of the government give consistent vocal support to renewables, green jobs and the low-carbon economy. I've heard from renewable energy investors that negative comments from senior politicians on going green impact directly on their ability to raise funds for investment in the UK."

One of the MPs who signed the letter was Simon Reevell, the Conservative MP for Dewsbury, in Yorkshire, where the engineering company David Brown last week announced a big contract with Samsung to boost a new research and innovation centre it is building for wind turbine gears for offshore windfarms.

Reevell said he was opposed to onshore wind turbines, which he said were an eyesore for many local communities and caused a health and safety threat.

In December, Siemens announced it was developing a wind turbine manufacturing plant in Hull, and in January the Port of Sheerness submitted a planning application for a new turbine manufacturing facility proposed by Vestas.

First major study of practicality of planetary-scale solar radiation management concludes it is a potentially cost-effective option

Dimming the sun by engineering the effects of an artificial volcano is a feasible and potentially cost-effective option to reduce temperatures on Earth, the first major study of the practicality of planetary-scale solar radiation management (SRM) concludes.

The authors, US aerospace company Aurora Flight Sciences, consider the challenge of lifting and releasing 1-5m tonnes a year of sulphur dioxide to altitudes approaching 100,000ft. This would create sulphate particles in the thin air and provide a partial shade to the sun's rays, potentially reducing temperatures 1-2C. But no attempt is made to quantify the potential benefits or the risks involved in the likely disruption of weather patterns on earth.

The easiest, but by far the most expensive, way to launch vast quantities of sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere would be via batteries of 16-inch naval guns, says the report. But to lift 5m tonnes of particles a year 100,000ft into the stratosphere might need 70m gun shots a year and could cost an astronomical $700bn a year. Over 20 years, considered by many scientists the minimum needed to have a lasting effect on earth, this would be more than Africa and India together earn in a year.

Instead, the authors consider a far less expensive but technically more challenging way to lift and disperse 1-5m tonnes of sulphur particles to around 100,000ft. This would be to design and build a fleet of massive helium-filled blimps, costing $8-10bn a year to run, with each blimp costing possibly $500m. However, the technology of airships operating at this altitude is not developed.

The study, commissioned by the University of Calgary in Canada, was published 15 months ago but has received little attention so far. However, it shows how advanced SRM advocates are in their attempts to persuade governments to license large-scale experiments.

It was managed by the leading geoenegineering Harvard University scientist David Keith, one of two administrators of Bill Gates's Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (Ficer) which contributed $100,000 to the study.

By far the most effective way to lift the sulphur, the study concludes, would be to adapt, or to build, a fleet of Boeing 747s aircraft. About 14 of these planes working round the clock from bases on or near the equator, might cost about $8bn a year.

The study supports the views of scientists who argue that more experiments should be done into geoengineering to prepare a "plan B" if politicians and industry fail to find a way to reduce emissions in climate talks.

"The primary conclusion to draw from this feasibility and cost study is that geoengineering is feasible from an engineering standpoint and costs are comparable to quantities spent regularly on large engineering projects or aerospace operations.

"Aeroplane geoengineering operations are comparable to the yearly operations of a small airline, and are dwarfed be the operations of a large airline like FedEx or Southwest," says the study.

Critics of political attempts to reduce emissions have long argued that it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in low-carbon energy to achieve the same results.

To date, the uncertainty and inherent riskiness of large-scale solar radiation management have not been quantified.

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A group representing the UK's offshore wind industry plans to ensure more than half the supply chain is UK-sourced

British industries from boat-building to concrete, and electric cabling to gearbox manufacturing are in the line-up to benefit from the construction of thousands of offshore wind turbines, if new plans go ahead.

A group representing the UK's offshore wind industry on Monday adopted a target of ensuring that more than half of the supply chain for offshore windfarms is sourced from the UK. At present, less than a third of the value of the goods and services needed to construct offshore wind farms actually originates in the UK.

The adoption of the new target came as the UK's wind industry faced its fiercest ever assault, from a group of more than 100 Tory MPs calling on the government to cut subsidies for onshore windfarms. Their campaign, in the form of a letter to the prime minister, marked the first crisis for the incoming energy and climate change secretary, Ed Davey, after taking over from Chris Huhne on Friday. Huhne resigned when it was announced he would face criminal charges over an alleged driving offence.

"The UK has created the world's biggest offshore wind market and that should be attracting manufacturers and support companies," said Keith Anderson, chief corporate officer at Scottish Power and co-chair with the energy minister, Charles Hendry, of the Offshore Wind Developers' Forum. "This is a massive opportunity. There has been a lot of investment in offshore wind in the UK, but very little in UK suppliers."

The size of the potential market runs to many billions – the government estimates that at least £200bn in investment will be needed in the whole energy sector by 2020, to overhaul the UK's creaking grid infrastructure, bring power stations up to European standards and meet renewable energy and emissions targets.

Outlining the wider benefits of offshore wind, Anderson pointed to Belfast, where the harbour is being redeveloped as a hub for offshore windfarm construction, at a cost of about £50m. The work will create 150 jobs in construction, as well as requiring about 1m tonnes of stone from local quarries, which will create hundreds more jobs. "It is the first dedicated harbour upgrade for offshore wind," Anderson said.

Under European Union laws, the government would not be allowed to specify that a certain amount of the supplies for offshore wind should be homegrown. However, this initiative is technically one that has come from the industry itself, so it is permissible for the government to endorse it.

But critics pointed out that the target of sourcing more than half of supplies from the UK had no deadline attached, and represented "more of a vague aspiration" than a concrete plan. "It's a nod in the right direction of a strategy, but what is the strategy?" asked one person involved with the industry, who could not be named.

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Industry figures reveal more than 9.6GW of capacity added last year, taking overall EU total to about 94GW

The EU added 9,616MW of wind energy capacity during 2011, making up more than a fifth of total new power installations, industry figures have today revealed.

Offshore growth in the UK and onshore projects in Sweden and Germany helped push member states to a combined total of 93,957MW – an 11 per cent rise on 2010 and enough to supply 6.3 per cent of the EU's electricity – the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) said.

Overall, Germany remains the EU country with the largest installed capacity, followed by Spain, France, Italy and the UK.

The level of capacity added is slightly down on the 9,648MW that came online in 2010, due in part to falling numbers of installations in mature markets such as France and Spain.

However, the EWEA points out that the industry has delivered an average annual growth of almost 16 per cent over the past 17 years.

"Despite the economic crisis gripping Europe, the wind industry is still installing solid levels of new capacity," said Justin Wilkes, the EWEA's policy director. "But to achieve the EU's long-term targets we need strong growth again in future years.

"It is critical to send positive signals to investors by European governments maintaining stable policies to support renewables and for the European Union to commit to putting in place a binding renewable energy target for 2030."

Last year saw growth across the continent's renewable energy sector, with more renewable power capacity installed during 2011 than any other year. Renewable power installations accounted for 71 per cent of the 44,939MW of new power capacity added – an increase of around 38 per cent compared with 2010.

The EU's total installed power capacity increased by 35,468MW to 895,878MW, with wind power increasing its share of installed capacity to 10.5 per cent, and renewable capacity accounting for just over 31 per cent.

Map: What difference do anti-windfarm MPs make? Where are those MPs based - and where are the windfarms?