They found that the sheep had shrunk by about 2cm (0.8 inches) and 81g (2.9oz) each year. This amounted to five per cent of their body mass.

The sheep were completely unattended and it’s thought that the smallest lambs would usually die in the cold weather of early spring. However, as spring is getting warmer, more of these lambs survive. Their ‘small’ genes then get passed to the next generation of sheep.

Interestingly, similar reductions in size have been seen in fish like salmon and cod, marine iguanas and large-horned Canadian sheep.

The study was published in the journal, Science

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“For the first time the G8 has agreed what I believe are vital decisions that take us on the road to Copenhagen and change the way we look at energy policy in the future.

We have agreed for the first time that average global temperatures must rise by no more than 2C. That is a historic agreement.

“We have agreed as G8 that we want to cut our emissions by 80% by 2050 and we believe that this will allow the world to reduce its emissions by 50%.”

Mr Brown said he expected the agreement on 80% emission cuts to be greeted with “excitement” by the many people in the UK who are interested in moving towards a low-carbon future.

And he revealed that the Government will be announcing the first of its eco-towns within the next few days.

Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, said: “Now we have the 2C goal, that can act as a yardstick to drive up ambition, which is what we need to do over the next six months.”

In the British Parliament, on 15th July 2009, Mr Miliband announced the UK’s plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and move towards a low-carbon economy. He noted that tackling climate change will require “comprehensive changes” in the UK’s economy and society

He set out how the UK would meet its legally-binding targets to cut emissions by 34% by 2020. 40% of electricity would be generated from low carbon sources including renewables, nuclear and clean coal by the end of the next decade. The UK has also signed up to EU targets to source 15% of all energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Ministers aim to change the UK to a low carbon economy, which includes a green transport strategy, energy efficiency measures and increasing the number of environmental industry jobs.

Mr Miliband told the House of Commons that 7 million homes would be given pay-as-you-save energy makeovers, with grants which would be repaid through savings in energy bills.

Also, one and a half million households would be helped to produce their own clean energy through a “feed-in tariffs” system which will pay them for the electricity they generate.
Renewable energy, from wind, marine and other sources, will supply around a third of the UK’s electricity. The power and other heavy industries will be required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of 22% by 2020, while agriculture and waste will cut carbon emissions by 6% and there will be savings of 14% in transport, according to Mr Miliband.

Concern has been expressed that consumers will bear the financial brunt of the new measures. But Mr Miliband said there would be no added costs for consumers before 2015, and new policies to reduce the emissions of the power sector would add around £75 to the average fuel bill by 2020. In all, existing and new climate policies could add around 8% to the average bill, about £92 annually , by 2020.

The UK’s measures are a step in the right direction. Those countries which embrace low-carbon economies first are likely to have a comparative advantage, in just the same way as as Britain enjoyed during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. But whether the political and popular will is there to see through the process, especially when it becomes difficult, is another matter.

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The White House released this statement which makes interesting reading:

Energy & Environment

“So we have a choice to make. We can remain one of the world’s leading importers of foreign oil, or we can make the investments that would allow us to become the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy. We can let climate change continue to go unchecked, or we can help stop it. We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity.”

-President Obama, March 19, 2009
Progress

* The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included more than $60 billion in clean energy investments that will jump-start our economy and build the clean energy jobs of tomorrow:
o $11 billion for a bigger, better, and smarter grid that will move renewable energy from the rural places it is produced to the cities where it is mostly used, as well as for 40 million smart meters to be deployed in American homes.
o $5 billion for low-income home weatherization projects.
o $4.5 billion to green federal buildings and cut our energy bill, saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
o $6.3 billion for state and local renewable energy and energy efficiency efforts.
o $600 million in green job training programs – $100 million to expand line worker training programs and $500 million for green workforce training.
o $2 billion in competitive grants to develop the next generation of batteries to store energy.
* Increasing, for the first time in more than a decade, the fuel economy standards for Model Year 2011 for cars and trucks so they will get better mileage, saving drivers money and spurring companies to develop more innovative products.
* The President issued a memorandum to the Department of Energy to implement more aggressive efficiency standards for common household appliances, like dishwashers and refrigerators. Through this step, over the next three decades, we’ll save twice the amount of energy produced by all the coal-fired power plants in America in any given year.
* Supporting the first steps of a legally-binding treaty to reduce mercury emissions worldwide.
* On Earth Day 2009, the President unveiled a program to develop the renewable energy projects on the waters of our Outer Continental Shelf that produce electricity from wind, wave, and ocean currents. These regulations will enable, for the first time ever, the nation to tap into our ocean’s vast sustainable resources to generate clean energy in an environmentally sound and safe manner.

Guiding Principles

To take this country in a new direction, the President is working with Congress to pass comprehensive legislation to protect our nation from the serious economic and strategic risks associated with our reliance on foreign oil and the destabilizing effects of a changing climate. Policies to advance energy and climate security should promote economic recovery efforts, accelerate job creation, and drive clean energy manufacturing by:
Investing in the Clean Energy Jobs of the Future

President Obama does not accept a future in which the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders. It is time for the United States to lead again. Under President Obama, we will lead again, by developing an American clean energy industry, a 21st century economy that flourishes within our borders.

* Creating new Jobs in the Clean Energy Economy. Drive the development of new, green jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced.
* Investing in the Next Generation of Energy Technologies. Invest $150 billion over ten years in energy research and development to transition to a clean energy economy.

Securing our Energy Future

Our reliance on oil poses a threat to our economic security. Over the last few decades, we have watched our economy rise and fall along with the price of a barrel of oil. We must commit ourselves to an economic future in which the strength of our economy is not tied to the unpredictability of oil markets. We must make the investments in clean energy sources that will curb our dependence on fossil fuels and make America energy independent.

* Breaking Dependence on Oil. Promote the next generation of cars and trucks and the fuels they run on.
* Producing More Energy at Home. Enhance U.S. energy supplies through responsible development of domestic renewable energy, fossil fuels, advanced biofuels and nuclear energy.
* Promoting Energy Efficiency. Promote investments that reducing energy bills in the transportation, electricity, industrial, building and agricultural sectors.

Closing the Carbon Loophole and Cracking Down on Polluters

We must take immediate action to reduce the carbon pollution that threatens our climate and sustains our dependence on fossil fuels. We have had limits in place on pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and other harmful emissions for some time. After decades of inaction, we will finally close the carbon pollution loophole by limiting the amount of carbon polluters are allowed to pump into the atmosphere.

* Closing the Carbon Loophole. By stemming carbon pollution through a market-based cap, we can address in a systematic way all the energy challenges that we face: curbing our dependence on foreign oil, reducing our use of fossil fuels, and promoting new industries right here in America.
* Protecting American Consumers. Revenues generated by closing the carbon loophole will be returned to the people, especially vulnerable families, communities, and businesses.
* Promoting U.S. Competitiveness. Ensure a level playing field for domestic manufacturing and secure significant actions to combat climate change by our trading partners.

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The Sun’s core is hot: 15 million degrees centigrade to be precise. Whizzing around it at great speeds are hydrogen atoms. They collide, fuse together and provide a burst of energy in the form of light. This never-ending process uses around 600 million tons of hydrogen every second. Without this process, life could not exist on this planet.

But the Sun’s core is not the hottest place in the solar system. Surprisingly, that honour goes to an innocuous-looking research establishment near Oxford in the United Kingdom. Culham Science Centre is where the JET (Joint European Torus) nuclear fusion reactor is based. There, a gram of hydrogen is heated to 200 million degrees centigrade by high-energy beams. See what happens below.

Conventional nuclear reactors use nuclear fission, the opposite of fusion. Energy is released when the heavy atoms in uranium decay to form smaller atoms. A fusion reactor works in the opposite way by catching the sub-atomic particle formed by the fused hydrogen atoms in lithium liquid causing it to boil. The boiling lithium liquid is then used to drive electricity-producing steam turbines.

No carbon dioxide emissions and a plentiful supply of raw material (ie. water from which the hydrogen is produced) mean that the fusion is better for the environment than fission. Added to that , the process is more stable and the reactor tiles only become mildly radioactive and are safe within one hundred years. So there isn’t any radioactive material to worry people.

But there’s a downside. The fusion process can’t be made to last long at present and produce more energy than is put in to speed up the hydrogen atoms. JET is only able to return 65% of the power put into it and the reaction only lasts a few seconds. And JET is the largest and most advanced fusion reactor on the planet.

JET, though, is being used to develop a new reactor, ITER. It’s hoped ITER will be operational by 2018. This will generate electricity from fuel in ordinary seawater. Amazingly, just one cubic kilometre of seawater contains enough material to release more energy than all the oil reserves!

ITER is a massive project. It’s the largest joint science project since the International Space Station. So important is it, that the UK has promised almost half of its energy-research budget to the ten billion euro programme.

Unfortunately, it’s likely to take another three decades before fission power stations are a reality. But as John Parris, of the HiPER project which is looking into laser-drivin fusion, told the Mail On Sunday: ‘This is save-the-world science. Fusio is the only serious answer to future energy demands – this is the energy Holy Grail. The human race has a massive, ravenous demand for power, and there is no other way to provide grid-level energy’.

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As you’re biting into that nice, juicy king-size burger, have you ever thought how much you’re contributing to global warming?

I hadn’t. Cattle, though, are a major problem for the environment. As cows are busy munching away in their pastures, their multiple stomachs are producing methane.

Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide for global warming. According to The Journal of Animal Science, livestock produce between 250 and 500 litres of methane every single day! At the top end of the estimate, that enough to fill 250 large bottles of Coke.

And what’s worse, there are estimated to be 1.5 billion livestock around the globe. If the average animal produces 350 litres of methane daily, then that’s 525 billion litres of methane being released into the atmosphere each day. And then there are about a billion sheep and 800 million goats.

What about pigs? There are a billion pigs, but they produce much less methane than cows.

As countries have got richer, demand for meat has increased in the last 50 years by about 500 per cent.

The livestock sector is by far the single largest use by humans of land. Grazing occupies 26 percent of the Earth‘s terrestrial surface, while feed crop production requires about a third of all arable land.

Expansion of grazing land for livestock is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America. Some 70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, and feed crops cover a large part of the reminder. About 70 percent of all grazing land in dry areas is considered degraded, mostly because of overgrazing, compaction and erosion attributable to livestock activity.

There are other serious problems with livestock that contribute to global warming. The United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) estimated that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport.

Livestock farming accounts for nine percent of man-made carbon dioxide emissions, most of it due to expansion of pastures and arable land for feed crops. It generates even bigger shares of emissions of other gases with greater potential to warm the atmosphere: as much as 37 percent of methane from humans’ activities, mostly from fermentation by cows and other ruminants, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide created by man’s activities, mostly from manure.

According to the UN FAO, the average American eats about 275 pounds of meat per year (more than any other country). The average Chinese eats 108 pounds per year (Earth Policy Insitute, 2005). According to a 2005 FAO study on meat consumption between 1998 – 2002, the average meat consumption per Chinese is 52 kg, compared to Americans at 125 kg, and Britain at 80 kg.   note:  there are smaller countries which (on average, per person) consume a little more meat than the US – 300 mil. people (for example: New Zealand – 4 mil. people, Denmark 5.5 mil. people, and some countries which consume around the same amount of meat. If the whole world ate meat at the American rate, only 2/5 of the world’s population (2.5 billion people) would be fed (Lester Brown).

Some countries are taking the problem seriously. For example, Germany’s environment agency has recommended that Germans should eat less meat, if they want to lower their carbon footprint and stop global warming.

Speaking at Berlin’s Grüne Woche (Green Week), Andreas Troge, president of the UBA (Germany’s environment agency) said:

“We must rethink our high meat consumption. I recommend people return to the Sunday roast and to an orientation of their eating habits around those of Mediterranean countries.”

Troge said that agriculture caused 15% of Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions. Meat production, he explained, was the most energy-intensive form of farming. Germans derive a high percentage of their calories from meat, 39% compared to the Italians’ 25%.

The US Environmental Protection Agency wanted to tax cattle, but this plan seems to have been dropped after protests from the powerful farming lobby.

So next time I’m in the supermarket, Quorn burgers are going in my basket!

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