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Archive for August 5th, 2008

Energy firm recruits children as ‘climate cops’

Tuesday, August 05th, 2008 | Author: Chris Brown

Did you know that German owned, Npower, is attempting to turn the children of its customers into spies, all under the guise of saving the planet, which makes it all right? Well actually it doesn’t make it all right, not by a long chalk it doesn’t!

Npower ran an advertisement in the Sunday times on July 26th, and on August 2nd the Sunday Telegraph an article that was highly critical of Npower for taking such an improper approach (this article is reproduced below).

We too should be angry for Npower’s actions amount to little more than the attempted perversion of our children (Npower = Nazi-Power it seems). Recruiting children as climate Stazi, is simply resurrecting old Nazi methods for indoctrinating children and turning them into informers. It is an utterly abhorrent practice, and it should be condemned!

Equally abhorrent has been the response from the Advertising Standards Authority, which has refused to condemn the advertisements. That the body responsible for policing all advertising in the UK - to ensure that parental responsibility is not compromised - should renege on its own rules shows that we can expect no help from the authorities! But Npower is a commercial concern so why not deluge them with complaints, and, if you happen to be one of their customers - change supplier!

Npower Executives may be contacted via this link

Energy firm recruits children as ‘climate cops’

Last week’s Sunday Times carried a large advertisement for the German-owned energy company npower, inviting children to “save the planet this summer” by becoming “climate cops”. A picture showed a sleeping dad, with a notice on his head warning in a childish scrawl that he had been found guilty of “climate crime” by “falling asleep with the tv still on”.

For more “interactive games and fun downloads”, readers were invited to contact npower’s Climate Cops website. This explains in comic book format how children can spy on their parents, relatives and neighbours to catch them out in seven “climate crimes”, such as leaving the TV on standby, putting hot food in a fridge or freezer (as is recommended by hygiene experts) or failing to use low-energy light bulbs.

Children could record these offences in a “climate crime case file”, while teachers are offered a full “learning resource” pack for use in schools, including a PowerPoint presentation and posters for classroom walls.

When my colleague Richard North asked the Advertising Standards Authority how they squared this with their rules prohibiting “marketing communications” which “undermine parental authority”, they replied (as he records on his EU Referendum blog) that they had “considered you (sic) objections but do not feel it have (sic) breached our Codes on the basis you suggest”.

My own advice to children tempted to become “climate cops” is that they might begin by looking at npower’s own record as operators of 13 fossil fuel power stations.

Its coal-fired Aberthaw power station in Wales, for instance, emits more CO2 in two months than is notionally saved in a year by all the 2,000 wind turbines now disfiguring Britain’s countryside. If merely going to sleep in front of the TV is a “climate crime”, why haven’t the directors of npower put themselves behind bars long ago?

Sunday Telegraph

Category: Energy, General | Leave a Comment

Bees & CCD: Time for DEFRA to get a grip!

Tuesday, August 05th, 2008 | Author: News Team

It is reported that over the last two years London’s beekeepers lost half their hives. Indeed, during last winter alone, it is estimated that almost a third of British hives lost their bees. According to the chairman of the London Beekeeepers Association: “If you give hives a thump, you get a little roar coming back, and I didn’t get any roars. Some had bees but the mysterious ones had virtually nothing. Everything had disappeared.” The last time bee losses were this serious, according to the record books, was before the First World War.

Land & People has previously reported on “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD), a so far unexplained phenomenon that has led to the loss of more than a third of US hives this year and a considerable number across Europe. Although a number of theories to explain this phenomenon are extant “ the favoured appears to be that the radiation from mobile phone mast transmitters are disorientating bees to the extent they are unable to find their way back to their home hive.

The problem is larger than many appreciate and goes much further than the production of honey. According to DEFRA, bee pollination alone is worth around £200 million per annum to agriculture. So potentially serious is the issue that DEFRA commenced a public inquiry on improving the health of honeybees, which concludes at the end of this month. In addition the loss of so many bees will inevitably have an effect on Britain’ honey producers “ an industry that normally produces around £30 million of honey per year.

In the US not only has the industry been ravaged by CCD for much longer than either here in Britain, or across the Channel in Europe, but the scale of the problem is far larger. There the US Department of Agriculture estimates that bee pollination adds around £8 billion to crop values. Consequently it should come as no surprise that US government scientists are engaged in an investigation into the problem. Amongst possible causes being investigated are pesticides, natural diseases, parasites, man-made factors (mobile phone radiation) or any combination of these!

Here in Britain the experts tell us that we have all the components of the US-style disorder in terms of disease. In addition, it is clear that the onus is on DEFRA to act because failure to resolve the problem will be reflected in lower crop yields. Bee pollination is estimated to be worth around £90 million to apple producers and around £20 million to both oilseed and raspberry growers.

The importance of the humble bee to agriculture is enormous - bees pollinate a third of everything that we eat - a shortage of bees means a shortage of food “ the problem extends far beyond honey.

Yet despite the importance of this issue Labour’s DEFRA has only budgeted a paltry £200,000 on research “ this is about what it costs to “run” a single one of their parasitic Westminster MPs. To put this figure into some sort of comparison, the beekeepers’ association says an extra £7.7 million is needed over five years to properly fund bee studies. As one expert commented: “In the sum of the whole of the agriculture business, it’s a drop in the ocean. There’s insufficient allocation for research, and bees are so fundamental to our environment.”

To make matters worse it is believed that funding of the bee health program is unlikely to change next year, though an additional £90,000 is being spent this year for the National Bee Unit to study the winter losses, DEFRA claims.

Land & People are agog at the Government’s apparent apathy in respect of this problem. Are ministers incapable of grasping the potential enormity of this issue we ask? Can’t they comprehend that failure to pollinate crops on a substantial scale not only threatens abysmal harvests but puts huge sections of the farming industry at risk? In a recent article on this Government’s attitude towards the farming industry we asked whether Labour’s mismanagement of farming was due to misfortune or design? We are still asking!

Category: Bees, Farming, Threats | Leave a Comment

‘Major discovery’ primed to unleash solar revolution

Tuesday, August 05th, 2008 | Author: Chris Brown

Splitting from the Grid???

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Watch a  video presentation, by Daniel G. Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, and read the full article via this link:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html


Category: Energy, Renewables | Comments off