Japanese knotweed was named yesterday as the most invasive and unwanted of all the imported species in Britain. Fallopia japonica headed a list of the ten most unwanted invasive species compiled by the Environment Agency, which spends thousands of pounds each year trying to eradicate it. So tenacious is the variety, originally imported from Japan as an ornamental garden plant, that it can cause damage to buildings and roads and chokes native species as it spreads. It is particularly common along riverbanks and roadsides but is also found in suburban gardens. It is causing such problems that it is illegal to plant it and there are strict rules on its removal. This summer the agency will issue guidelines for land developers on how to get rid of the plant. The new approach is expected to halve the cost of clearing the weed, which can cost 50,000 pounds per acre. It is estimated that attempting to clear it from Britain would cost 1.56 billion.
American signal crayfish came second in the list of unwanted invaders. They were introduced in the 1970s for farming, but are deadly to native white-clawed crayfish because they carry the fungus Aphanomyces astaci, known as crayfish plague. A family of the American variety can spread more than half a mile along a canal or river in a year. It can causedamage to riverbanks as it digs a complex of burrows that cause them to collapse. At present they are common in freshwater lakes and rivers across England and Wales and if caught by anglers must be killed. But they have the advantage, a spokesman for the agency said, of being "tasty in a bisque". They were introduced in the 1970s for commercial farming.
Mink, Mustela vison, is another species that was brought to Britain to be farmed - in this case for fur - but which now thrives in the wild and has become a pest. It has devastated the numbers of some native creatures, most notably the water vole and moorhen, which are easy prey.
Among the lesser-known invasive species highlighted yesterday is parrot's feather, Myriophyllum aquaticum, a plant that chokes waterways by forming dense mats of vegetation and has adapted to become more frost resistant than in its native central South America. It is known to be in 150 sites in the wild, mostly in southern England, but conservationists fear that it will move north. A spokesman for the agency said: "These invasive species have been identified by the Environment Agency as the biggest threat to safeguarding native species and biodiversity. Japanese knotweed at No 1 is not surprising, given its impact on the natural and built environment. "This is why a new control programme has been developed that will help developers identify the knotweed and choose the most cost-effective way of destroying it. "Parrot's feather is increasingly regarded as a problem. This species is largely confined to the South, but is likely to move northwards due to milder winter temperatures."
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BRITISH "CLIMATE PORN"
Apocalyptic visions of climate change used by newspapers, environmental groups and the UK government amount to "climate porn", a think-tank says. The report from the Labour-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says over-use of alarming images is a "counsel of despair". It says they make people feel helpless and says the use of cataclysmic imagery is partly commercially motivated. However, newspapers have defended their coverage of a "crucial issue".
The IPPR report also criticises the reporting of individual climate-friendly acts as "mundane, domestic and uncompelling". "The climate change discourse in the UK today looks confusing, contradictory and chaotic," says the report, entitled Warm Words. "It seems likely that the overarching message for the lay public is that in fact, nobody really knows."
IPPR's head of climate change Simon Retallack, who commissioned the report from communication specialists Gill Ereaut and Nat Segnit, said: "We were conscious of the fact that the amount of climate change coverage has increased significantly over the last few years, but there had been no analysis of what the coverage amounted to and what impact it might be having."
They analysed 600 newspaper and magazine articles, as well as broadcast news and adverts. Coverage breaks down, they concluded, into several distinct areas, including:
* Alarmism, characterised by images and words of catastrophe
* Settlerdom, in which "common sense" is used to argue against the scientific consensus
* Rhetorical scepticism, which argues the science is bad and the dangers hyped
* Techno-optimism, the argument that technology can solve the problem
Publications said often to take a "sceptical" line included the Daily Mail and Sunday Telegraph. Into the "alarmist" camp the authors put articles published in newspapers such as the Independent, Financial Times and Sunday Times, as well as statements from environmental groups, academics including James Lovelock and Lord May, and some government programmes. "It is appropriate to call [what some of these groups publish] 'climate porn', because on some level it is like a disaster movie," Mr Retallack told the BBC News website. "The public become disempowered because it's too big for them; and when it sounds like science fiction, there is an element of the unreal there."
No British newspaper has taken climate change to its core agenda quite like the Independent, which regularly publishes graphic-laden front pages threatening global meltdown, with articles inside continuing the theme. A recent leader, commenting on the heatwave then affecting Britain, said: "Climate change is an 18-rated horror film. This is its PG-rated trailer. "The awesome truth is that we are the last generation to enjoy the kind of climate that allowed civilisation to germinate, grow and flourish since the start of settled agriculture 11,000 years ago."
Ian Birrell, the newspaper's deputy editor, said climate change was serious enough to merit this kind of linguistic treatment. "The Independent led the way on campaigning on climate change and global warming because clearly it's a crucial issue facing the world," he said. "You can see the success of our campaign in the way that the issue has risen up the political agenda."
Mr Retallack, however, believes some newspapers take an alarmist line on climate change through commercial motives rather than ideology. "Every newspaper is a commercial organisation," he said, "and when you have a terrifying image on the front of the paper, you are likely to sell more copies than when you write about solutions."
Mr Birrell denied the charge. "You put on your front page what you deem important and what you think is important to your readers," he said. "If our readers thought we put climate change on our front pages for the same reason that porn mags put naked women on their front pages, they would stop reading us. "And I disagree that there's an implicit 'counsel of despair', because while we're campaigning on big issues such as ice caps, we also do a large amount on how people can change their own lives, through cycling, installing energy-efficient lighting, recycling, food miles; we've been equally committed on these issues."
The IPPR report acknowledges that the media, government and NGOs do discuss individual actions which can impact greenhouse gas emissions, such as installing low-energy lightbulbs. But, it says, there is a mismatch of scale; a conclusion with which Solitaire Townsend, MD of the sustainable development communications consultancy Futerra, agrees. "The style of climate change discourse is that we maximise the problem and minimise the solution," she said. "So we use a loud rumbling voice to talk about the challenge, about melting ice and drought; yet we have a mouse-like voice when we talk about 'easy, cheap and simple' solutions, making them sound as tiny as possible because we think that's what makes them acceptable to the public. "In fact it makes them seem trivial in relation to the problem."
Mr Retallack believes his report contains important lessons for the government as it attempts to engage the British public with climate change. "The government has just put 12m pounds into climate change communication initiatives," he said, "including teams which will work at the local level. "It's vital that this motivates and engages the public."
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A NEW DISASTER FOR THE LIST: GLOBAL WARMING CAUSED THE WAR IN SUDAN!
Or so the article below tries to claim. They are right that desertification in areas near or around the Sahara is an underlying problem but blaming it on global warming rather than on the well-known cause -- overgrazing by goats and other domestic animals -- is just another Greenie absurdity
Though a sudden agreement gave hope for peace in Darfur, the lack of support from small anti-government groups, the spillover of refugees into Chad and the opposition of the central government to UN peacekeepers mean that the conflict drags on. Lost in discussions about ending the Sudanese government's attacks on its people, however, is the acknowledgment of how the dispute began: Darfur may well be the first war influenced by climate change.
In recent years, increasing drought cycles and the Sahara's southward expansion have created conflicts between nomadic and sedentary groups over shortages of water and land. This scarcity highlighted the central government's gross neglect of the Darfur region-a trend stretching back to colonial rule. Forsaken, desperate and hungry, groups of Darfurians attacked government outposts in protest. The response was the Janjaweed and supporting air strikes.
Though a sudden agreement gave hope for peace in Darfur, the lack of support from small anti-government groups, the spillover of refugees into Chad and the opposition of the central government to UN peacekeepers mean that the conflict drags on. Lost in discussions about ending the Sudanese government's attacks on its people, however, is the acknowledgment of how the dispute began: Darfur may well be the first war influenced by climate change.
In recent years, increasing drought cycles and the Sahara's southward expansion have created conflicts between nomadic and sedentary groups over shortages of water and land. This scarcity highlighted the central government's gross neglect of the Darfur region-a trend stretching back to colonial rule. Forsaken, desperate and hungry, groups of Darfurians attacked government outposts in protest. The response was the Janjaweed and supporting air strikes.
"The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor. We should see this as a warning sign."
The theory that current climate change will result in resource scarcity that could spark warfare has gained traction in the past decade, with research on the topic commissioned by organizations ranging from the United Nations to the Pentagon. In March, British Home Secretary John Reid publicly fingered global warming as a driving force behind the genocide in Darfur. "[Environmental] changes make the emergence of vio-lent conflict more rather than less likely," he said. "The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur. We should see this as a warning sign."
Desertification and increasingly regular drought cycles in Darfur have diminished the availability of water, livestock and arable land. "The effect of climate change on these resources has been a latent problem," said Leslie Lefkow, an expert on Darfur with Human Rights Watch. "And instead of addressing the cause of that tension and putting money into development of water resources...the government has done nothing. So the tensions have grown. And these tensions are one of the reasons why the rebellion started."
Chalking the Darfur conflict up to climate change alone would be an oversimplification, argues Eric Reeves, a leading advocate and a professor of English literature at Smith College. "The greater cause, by far, lies in the policies of the current National Islamic Front regime," he said. Marc Lavergne, a researcher with the French National Center for Scientific Research and former head of the Centre D'Etudes et de Documentation Universitaire Scientifique et Technique at the University of Khartoum, agrees. "The problem is not water shortage as such, and water shortages don't necessarily lead to war. The real problem is the lack of agricultural and other development policies to make the best use of available water resources since colonial times."
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Windy idea blows itself out in Australia
The company behind the South Gippsland wind farm that fell victim to the orange-bellied parrot has scrapped plans for one near Ballarat. Wind Power has axed plans for a 14-turbine farm at Haddon, 15km west of Ballarat, known as the Bo Peep wind farm. The company yesterday cited lack of financial viability and local opposition as among the reasons for the about-face. Wind Power is fighting federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell in the Federal Court over his controversial decision to blackball the Bald Hills project.
Wind Power director Andrew Newbold said a pre-feasibility study found that Bo Peep would not make money. "The studies show it could only sustain three or four (turbines), which is not commercially viable," he said. "This is just part of what we do, (it is) a decision we take quite often." The wind farm would have had turbines almost 100m tall with blades up to 55m long.
Mr Newbold said the company was conducting pre-feasibility studies for two sites in the Lexton area, about 47km northwest of Ballarat. He said Wind Power had considered local opposition against the Bo Peep farm. "It was not a determining factor, but certainly a factor we took into account," he said. A study found the area could only take three or four turbines, a big reason for ending the project. The State Government would not comment on the axing of the Bo Peep farm yesterday. Bo Peep would have generated less than 30 megawatts of electricity, which means that Ballarat Council, not the State Government, considers the planning permit.
Wind Power's fight against Senator Campbell will return to the Federal Court this month. It is seeking to overturn a decision that banned construction of the Bald Hills wind farm, about 20km southeast of Inverloch, because of the danger it posed to the orange-bellied parrot. But a report showed the wind farm would possibly threaten one parrot every 1000 years.
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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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