I have been trying to address a few glitches affecting this blog. I am aware of issues but it may be a matter of impaired performance until I eventually fix it.
19/3/24 Not had any faults for a while. I’ve been trying to fix i but think that it may be thanks to that reclusive character my secret secretary. Thanks to my Secret Secretary and all the others who help me.
The Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has been criticised after failing to call Diane Abbott at PMQs, despite the MP having racist remarks made about her by the Tory party’s biggest donor, a topic which dominated this week’s session.
Labour leader Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak clashed in the Commons over racism within the Tory party, after the Guardian revealed that the Conservative party’s biggest donor, Frank Hester, had said that said Diane Abbott made him “want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”.
The Guardian revealed that Hester made the comments during a business meeting in 2019.
He is reported to have said: “It’s like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV, and you’re just like … you just want to hate all black women because she’s there.
“And I don’t hate all black women at all, but I think she should be shot.”
Huge volumes of toxic and cancer-causing forever chemicals are flowing into the River Mersey in north-west England. With a busy, industrialised skyline and both Manchester and Liverpool nearby, it’s the second-most populated river catchment in the UK after the Thames.
None of England’s rivers are in good chemical health. The recent State of Our Rivers 2024 report from The Rivers Trust found that one of the most concerning groups of synthetic chemicals, per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS), contaminates almost every river in England.
My team of hydrologists and I found that levels of two cancer-causing PFAS washing off the land and into the Mersey – perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)– are among the highest in the world. Both PFOS and PFOA, now banned in most countries, were used to make many consumer and industrial products including furniture, cookware and fire-fighting foams.
Our study established that around 50% of PFOS, a type of PFAS that’s classed as probably carcinogenic, in the River Mersey was coming from supposedly clean water discharges from 44 different wastewater treatment works. PFAS are found in treated water because they are very difficult to remove using current water treatment technologies. Almost all wastewater treatment work effluents in the UK contain PFAS.
Our research highlights that we don’t really know where the remaining 50% of that PFOS is coming from. Other potential sources include runoff from airports where big amounts of fire-fighting foams are used, agricultural land and landfills. Some PFAS could contaminate groundwater or surface waters used as drinking water.
PFAS chemicals are all around us and impossible to avoid. Found in everything from food packaging to cosmetic products, they are also used to manufacture green energy technologies like electric cars and wind turbines.
Whenever PFAS are used to make these products they end up draining into rivers, so wildlife and humans living in the river basin are exposed to them. We don’t really know the long-term implications of the current exposure levels. But these chemicals will persist. If we keep discharging them into the environment, PFAS exposure levels – and potential risk to humans – can increase through drinking water contamination and accumulation in the food chain.
Pinpointing exactly where, how and when these chemicals enter rivers is not straightforward so scientists and governments don’t really have the regulatory measures and tools to hold polluters to account.
Dilute, disperse and detect
Since the 1850s, the Mersey has been a hub of industry, particularly for cotton manufacturing and chemical production. Most cities, including Liverpool and Manchester, have been built close to rivers and seas, partly to dilute pollution and transport it away. Out of sight, out of mind.
Today, enormous volumes of toxic waste are discharged into rivers and seas because dilution reduces chemical concentrations to extremely low or undetectable levels. But undetectable does not mean toxic chemicals are not present.
PFAS are ubiquitous. These forever chemicals have been detected almost everywhere we look, including in Antarctica, in whales and polar bears and in rainwater. Most people on Earth probably have detectable concentrations of PFAS in their blood. An estimated [97% of the US population] have PFAS in their blood, according to one study of 1,682 people.
A state of flux
Governments need to phase out PFAS from society to reduce human exposure and halt their accumulation in the environment and wildlife. The development of safer, healthier, greener alternatives is essential.
Even if the tap gets turned off immediately, the PFAS already in the environment, and in the River Mersey, will persist for thousands of years. To prevent further PFAS entering our rivers, more needs to be known about how they move into and through river systems. As part of our study, we measured this flux.
Instead of measuring a chemical’s concentration, flux is a measure of how much PFAS, for example in kilograms per year, flows off the land and out to sea. By measuring PFAS flux at multiple locations across a river basin like the Mersey, we can distinguish different sources of PFAS to the river, such as runoff from landfills, and establish how much comes from that source.
Governments and environmental regulators need more data like this to develop strategies that will prevent PFAS entering rivers. Our study not only confirmed wastewater treatment works effluents as a source of PFAS to the Mersey, we established exactly how much is coming from that source. This direct accountability is required to effectively target regulations and apply measures that make a difference.
Greater understanding of the flux and movement of PFAS in rivers and seas will help ensure better monitoring and regulation of these toxic forever chemicals – especially in hotspots like the Mersey that should be a top priority for enforcement.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
“The implementation of this plan is already underway with the destruction of our infrastructure across the Gaza Strip,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner-general.
The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees told the U.N. General Assembly on Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies are intentionally trying to decimate the critical aid body as mass starvation looms in the Gaza Strip.
“UNRWA is facing a deliberate and concerted campaign to undermine its operations, and ultimately end them,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner-general. “Part of this campaign involves inundating donors with misinformation designed to foster distrust and tarnish the reputation of the agency. More blatant, is the Israeli prime minister openly stating that UNRWA will not be part of post-war Gaza.”
“The implementation of this plan is already underway with the destruction of our infrastructure across the Gaza Strip,” he continued. “Attempts to evict UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem, and from a nearby vocational training center for Palestine refugee youth, are underway. Draft legislation in the Israeli Knesset seeks to prohibit outright any activity by UNRWA on Israeli territory.”
The UNRWA, the most important aid agency operating in Gaza, has long been a target of the Israeli government. But attacks on UNRWA have escalated since October 7, with Israeli forces killing more than 150 of the agency’s employees during its war on Gaza and accusing a small number of the body’s staffers of taking part in the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel.
The Israeli government has not provided any evidence to support its claims, but the allegations alone led more than a dozen countries—including the United States—to suspend aid to UNRWA, putting its operations in Gaza and across the Middle East at risk of total collapse.
Last month, the U.S. Senate passed legislation that would prohibit any U.S. funding for UNRWA.
On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed—again, without providing evidence—that 450 of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees are “military operatives in terror groups in Gaza.”
Lazzarini noted Monday that he swiftly terminated agency staffers accused of playing a role in the October 7 attack and that an independent probe into Israel’s accusations was launched by the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services.
“Despite these prompt and decisive actions, and the unsubstantiated nature of the allegations, 16 countries have paused their funding, totaling $450 million,” said Lazzarini, thanking the countries that maintained or boosted their funding as the agency faced a potentially existential threat. The European Union has also agreed to partially restore funding.
“Thanks to them, the agency, which is the backbone of humanitarian assistance in Gaza, can continue operating and remains a lifeline for Palestine refugees across the region,” he said. “But for how long? It is hard to say. We are functioning hand-to-mouth. Without additional funding, we will be in uncharted territory—with serious implications for global peace and security.”
“I shudder to think of what will still be revealed about the horrors that have taken place in this narrow strip of land.”
Lazzarini said conditions on the ground in Gaza are “impossible to adequately describe” as Israel continues its bombing campaign and blockade, which have prevented badly needed aid from reaching large swaths of the territory.
“Doctors are amputating the limbs of injured children without anesthetic. Hunger is everywhere. A man-made famine is looming,” said Lazzarini. “Babies—just a few months old—are dying of malnutrition and dehydration. I shudder to think of what will still be revealed about the horrors that have taken place in this narrow strip of land.”
Ahead of Lazzarini’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly, a coalition of aid organizations issued a joint statement warning that if “funding suspensions are not reversed, the risk of a complete collapse of the already restricted humanitarian response resulting in preventable loss of lives in Gaza becomes even more likely.”
“Over 1 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering in UNRWA facilities across Gaza,” the groups said. “UNRWA’s 13,000 staff in Gaza far outstrip the collective capacity of the rest of the humanitarian sector in the territory. Their role in the facilitation and delivery of lifesaving humanitarian aid at scale in this crisis has been heroic. UNRWA’s supply of vital shelter, food, and basic services like sanitation, as well as the use of infrastructure by other aid organizations, is irreplaceable.”
Earlier this year, the UK’s weather and climate service, the Met Office, announced average global temperatures in 2023 were 1.46°C above pre-industrial levels. This made it the hottest year on record, 0.17°C higher than the previous record in 2016.
However, shortly after that announcement, the Met Office also forecast a multi-day blast of cold Arctic air bringing sub-zero temperatures, snow and ice to many parts of the UK. When the cold snap arrived, temperatures dropped to -14°C in the Scottish Highlands and -11°C even in England.
Ten days later, a village in the Scottish Highlands reached a balmy 19.9°C, the warmest January temperature ever recorded anywhere in the UK – by a full degree Celsius. That might seem more in keeping with the global warming trend. Yet just ten days on from that record warmth, much of the UK has again been hit by unusually cold and snowy weather.
It’s not just the UK. This winter, record-low temperatures have been observed right across Canada, the US and China.
This might seem confusing. Why are the weather and the climate producing such opposing signs? The reason is that they refer to atmospheric characteristics on substantially different timescales.
You cannot sense the climate
I do not think there is a person on Earth who can truly experience a “global annual average” of temperature. No one really knows what a degree of extra warmth over a century feels like, especially given temperatures might vary by 10°C between day and night in the UK, for example, or by 20°C and more between a hot summer day and a cold winter night.
This means we usually have a hard time feeling or recalling seasonal averages and how they change with passing years. We can spot climate changes in environmental shifts like receding glaciers or early flowering plants, and we can track changes with instruments. But it remains very hard to “feel” climate change.
In contrast, we feel and much better remember the weather on daily and weekly timescales – particularly extreme weather like a cold snap, heatwave or strong storm.
Hot one day, cold the next
Weather phenomena are very rapid and variable compared with climate properties that are defined and changing on longer time scales. The weather might be hot one day and cold the next, but an annual mean climate cannot suddenly slide from warm to cold.
The climate is essentially an accumulation of weather across a considerable amount of time. For example, weather information might refer to the local temperature at noon or 4pm, the daily minimum, average or maximum temperatures, or the weekly average. Whereas climate is much longer term.
Climate information might refer to, for example, average temperatures over a month, or averages over seasonal (three-month) periods, years or decades. In climate analysis, we usually look for anomalies with respect to the “baseline” – a longer-term average of perhaps 30 or 50 years of data.
The line wiggles upwards
We can use more than a century of data to spot patterns, such as the close relationship in the left graph (above) between global atmospheric CO₂ and near-surface temperatures. There are, of course, some variations of around 0.1°C or so – the wiggles in the red line – as the climate does not change perfectly smoothly. That’s why 2016 was exceptionally hot, and the years after were slightly cooler.
These variations become more pronounced when we zoom in and examine a smaller regional area or shorter time units. For example, the right-hand graph above shows data from the Central England Temperature (HadCET) record, the world’s longest-running instrumental temperature record which began in 1659. This graph, which shows both winter and summer mean temperatures for central England, picks up more substantial variability over the same period from 1850 by both measures – on the order of 1°C. The internal variability of these seasonal means in essence drowns out long-term climate change at this regional scale before 1960s.
Looking at the right-hand graph alone – 174 years of data – you’d struggle to spot recent climate change. But zoom out to the global annual mean data in the left graph, and the long-term trend becomes clear.
We can zoom in even further to look at daily winter weather variability in the English county of Oxfordshire (HadUK-Grid). The histograms below show daily minimum temperatures (the left panels 2.a and 2.c) and daily mean temperatures (the right panels 2.b and 2.d) from two distinct 21-year periods.
They show that the chances of experiencing sub-zero weather is still significant even in the more recent 2002-2022 period. However, the “tail” of daily minimum temperatures to the left of the mean is thinner, so extreme cold temperatures are less common. The average daily minimum of 0.59°C (the number in blue) has increased by about 1°C to 1.6°C in the more recent period, while the daily mean increased by 1.29°C – both increases are greater than global warming over this time.
These are signs that Oxfordshire is warming over the long term, and its winters are warming slightly faster than the world as a whole. Global climate change makes high temperature extremes more likely, even in winter. It does not forbid winter cold snaps, but it does reduce their likelihood.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Neven S. Fučkar, Senior Researcher, School of Geography and the Environmen, University of Oxford, and Lecturer, School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews
THE “bullied” Commons Speaker has “effectively lied” to Parliament and public, according to the SNP’s Westminster leader.
Stephen Flynn MP made the remarks on BBC Radio Scotland as he discussed the fallout of the chaotic opposition day debate when Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle effectively prevented voting on the SNP’s ceasefire motion.
Instead the house was left to accept or reject a Labour amendment, which omitted an SNP reference to “collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Mr Flynn said: “He was obviously bullied into a position last week by the leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, following a private conversation in the back rooms of Westminster.”
Responding to Sir Keir and Sir Lindsay’s denials of collusion, Mr Flynn added: “That’s like me denying that I’m a bald man — it would just defy reality and logic.
“Everyone on Westminster’s estate knows what happened last week.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has announced it will dispose of 100 Starlink satellites over the next six months, after it discovered a design flaw that may cause them to fail. Rather than risk posing a threat to other spacecraft, SpaceX will “de-orbit” these satellites to burn up in the atmosphere.
But atmospheric scientists are increasingly concerned that this sort of apparent fly-tipping by the space sector will cause further climate change down on Earth. One team recently, and unexpectedly, found potential ozone-depleting metals from spacecraft in the stratosphere, the atmospheric layer where the ozone layer is formed.
The relative “low earth orbit” where satellites monitoring Earth’s ecosystems are found is increasingly congested – Starlink alone has more than 5,000 spacecraft in orbit. Clearing debris is therefore a priority for the space sector. Newly launched spacecraft must also be removed from orbit within 25 years (the US recently implemented a stricter five-year rule) either by moving upwards to a so-called “graveyard orbit” or down into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Lower orbiting satellites are usually designed to use any remaining fuel and the pull of the Earth’s gravity to re-enter the atmosphere. In a controlled reentry, the spacecraft enters the atmosphere at a pre-set time to land in the most remote part of the Pacific Ocean at Point Nemo (aka the spacecraft cemetery). In an uncontrolled re-entry, spacecraft are left to follow a “natural demise” and burn up in the atmosphere.
Nasa and the European Space Agency promote this form of disposal as part of a design philosophy called “design for demise”. It is an environmental challenge to build, launch and operate a satellite robust enough to function in the hostility of space yet also able to break up and burn up easily on re-entry to avoid dangerous debris reaching the Earth’s surface. It’s still a work in progress.
Satellite operators must prove their design and re-entry plans have a low “human-hit” rate before they are awarded a license. But there is limited concern regarding the impact on Earth’s upper atmosphere during the re-entry stage. This is not an oversight.
Initially, neither the space sector nor the astrophysics community considered burning up satellites on re-entry to be a serious environmental threat – to the atmosphere, at least. After all, the number of spacecraft particles released is small when compared with 440 tonnes of meteoroids that enter the atmosphere daily, along with volcanic ash and human-made pollution from industrial processes on Earth.
Bad news for the ozone layer?
So are atmospheric climate scientists overreacting to the presence of spacecraft particles in the atmosphere? Their concerns draw on 40 years of research into the cause of the ozone holes above the south and north poles, that were first widely observed in the 1980s.
Today, they now know that ozone loss is caused by human-made industrial gases, which combine with natural and very high altitude polar stratospheric clouds or mother of pearl clouds. The surfaces of these ethereal clouds act as catalysts, turning benign chemicals into more active forms that can rapidly destroy ozone.
Dan Cziczo is an atmospheric scientist at Purdue University in the US, and a co-author of the recent study that found ozone depleting substances in the stratosphere. He explains to me that the question is whether the new particles from spacecraft will help the formation of these clouds and lead to ozone loss at a time when the Earth’s atmosphere is just beginning to recover.
Of more concern to atmospheric scientists such as Cziczo is that only a few new particles could create more of these types of polar clouds – not only at the upper atmosphere, but also in the lower atmosphere, where cirrus clouds form. Cirrus clouds are the thin, wispy ice clouds you might spot high in the sky, above six kilometres. They tend to let heat from the sun pass through but then trap it on the way out, so in theory more cirrus clouds could add extra global warming on top of what we are already seeing from greenhouse gases. But this is uncertain and still being studied.
Cziczo also explains that from anecdotal evidence we know that the high-altitude clouds above the poles are changing – but we don’t know yet what is causing this change. Is it natural particles such as meteoroids or volcanic debris, or unnatural particles from spacecrafts? This is what we need to know.
Concerned, but not certain
So how do we answer this question? We have some research from atmospheric scientists, spacecraft builders and astrophysicists, but it’s not rigorous or focused enough to make informed decisions on which direction to take. Some astrophysicists claim that alumina (aluminium oxide) particles from spacecraft will cause chemical reactions in the atmosphere that will likely trigger ozone destruction.
Atmospheric scientists who study this topic in detail have not made this jump as there isn’t enough scientific evidence. We know particles from spacecraft are in the stratosphere. But what this means for the ozone layer or the climate is still unknown.
It is tempting to overstate research findings to garner more support. But this is the path to research hell – and deniers will use poor findings at a later date to discredit the research. We also don’t want to use populist opinions. But we’ve also learnt that if we wait until indisputable evidence is available, it may be too late, as with the loss of ozone. It’s a constant dilemma.
The UK has withdrawn from an international treaty that lets fossil-fuel companies sue governments pursuing climate policies for billions in compensation for lost profits.
The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is meant to make it easier and cheaper to trade energy between countries.
But signatories have struggled to reform it – and late on Wednesday, the UK quit the treaty calling it “outdated”.
Green campaigners welcomed the news.
Energy Security and Net Zero Minister Graham Stuart said: “Remaining a member would not support our transition to cleaner, cheaper energy and could even penalise us for our world-leading efforts to deliver net zero.”