Tesco to put carbon scores on goods

“Tesco to put carbon scores on goods” says The Torygraph. Sounds like a good idea in principle. Do go on …The labels – which will be put on 30 products, including tomatoes, potatoes, orange juice, light bulbs and washing detergent – will detail how many grams of CO2 were created in their production, packaging, distribution and disposal. Well, that still sounds good. Whats the downside?

However, the scheme has come under fire from rival retailers, consumer groups and academics, who say shoppers – already bombarded by complex information on packaging – will be further confused. Hmmm. Sounds like typical whinging. Paul Monaghan, the head of ethics at the Co-operative group, said: “It is unfair to put the burden on to the consumer. “It should be up to retailers to use the information to lower their emissions.” Sounds barking. If people will avoid higher-carbon stuff, then good. They need the information to do so, though. Hopefully the info will be reliable, though I’m not sure how that will be established. Hopefully also Waitrose will start doing this.

Bellowhead & Wild Willy

Monday: to The Junction, that singularly unappealing Cambridge venue, for Bellowhead who were superb. You can find them on Youtube but its not the same as watching them live. They’re on UK tour now…

If you’re in Cambridge and that way inclined, on wednesday you can hear John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett. I’ve heard Wild Willy at the folk fest and he was superb and bizarre. Strongly recommended, I’d go but I have an outing. Read this.

Stern takes bleaker view on warming?

Says the FT, via DSB. Since I’ve already argued that Stern is over-bleak, Im surprised he has got more pessimistic. Whats up?

Is Gray a liar?

Just a provocative title, to point you towards I accept Bill Gray’s climate bet offer – will he seal the deal? by Brian Schmidt. My feeling is that Gray will wimp out – I’ll even put money on it if anyone is interested 🙂

Don’t believe a word of it, guv

1.5 m sea level rise this century, that is. Nature sez the “estimate released today says that it could be as as much as 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) by the end of this century”. Their source seems to be Reuters, and we’ll pause briefly to condemn the oh-so-typical inflation of the worst case from the range into the only number mentioned in the headline. Sigh.

BUFAPOPO

Do you realise that bufapopo doesn’t get a single google hit? Its outrageous. Badger would be appalled.

[Seems pretty clear that youre not going to get it, so I’ll have to tell you. Read on…]

Short term temperature trends

I’ve realised that I’ve been dismissing a load of nonsense merely on the grounds that its discussing short trem trends, without troubling to look at those trends. But everyone else is talking about them, so why shouldn’t I?

So Anyway, Lucia says that trends since 2001 are negative, based on a fitting procedure no-one has ever heard of. John V says they are positive.

First sign of summer

Last night we had the first ice-cream van of the summer around our streets. But we didn’t stop it and buy one.

Dog poo and car stereos

To the annual parish meeting. Thankfully I am no longer a parish councillor so am not obliged to go; but since a friend told me it was on I turned up. Of those who did, most were parish councillors, one was the district councillor, two were dogs walkers (I’ll come on to that), two were my friend and me, and the remaining one was my friends daughter (who had done a very good hand-drawn childrens newspaper). [Update: oops, I forgot the sole stoic parishioner who turned up, and has turned up to every one for the last 20 years.]

He’s at it again, again

Predictably enough, the Grauniad has picked up on Hansens target 350 stuff. And what he said before about W Ant now seems to have got transmogrified into:

Hansen said that he now regards as “implausible” the view of many climate scientists that the shrinking of the ice sheets would take thousands of years. “If we follow business as usual I can’t see how west Antarctica could survive a century. We are talking about a sea-level rise of at least a couple of metres this century.”