In 2007, the then EDF chief executive said that by Christmas in 2017, turkeys would be cooked using electricity generated from atomic power from Hinkley. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
EdF’s bosses must be thanking their lucky stars that President Macron decided to take complete control of EdF back in 2022. Otherwise, its latest announcements about further delays and cost increases for its new reactors at Hinkley Point would have sent any remaining investors running for the hills.
The scale of those announcements is staggering:
The price tag for Hinkley Point C has now been reset at £31-34 billion (in 2015 prices), twice the original £18 billion.
In today’s money, that’s around £46 billion – with further delays and cost hikes (rising to at least £50 billion) all but inevitable.
EdF’s shortfall in completing Hinkley Point has risen substantially, and could now be as high as £25 billion on its balance sheet.
EdF has admitted that 2029 is now the earliest Hinkley Point will come online. Fat chance of that!
Which makes Hinkley Point C even more of a bust than EdF’s current worst reactor construction nightmare at Flamanville in France. And significantly worse than its plant at Olkiluoto in Finland, which it just managed to get over the line last year.
A man holds both Palestinian and Turkish flags at a rally in Istanbul on January 1, 2024. (Photo: Ilker Eray/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
“Israel’s murder of more than 22,000 Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom were women and children, in Gaza for nearly three months should not go unpunished in any way,” said a Turkish spokesperson.
South Africa is no longer alone in bringing its claim of genocide by the Israeli government to the International Court of Justice, following announcements from the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they support the case.
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oncu Keceli said Wednesday that those responsible for the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza since October 7 “must be held accountable before international law.”
“Israel’s murder of more than 22,000 Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom were women and children, in Gaza for nearly three months should not go unpunished in any way,” Keceli said. “We hope that the process will be completed as soon as possible.”
Turkey has officially backed South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice, which rightly accuses the israeli enemy of genocide https://t.co/TBBTzBfgh2
The ICJ is scheduled to hear the case on January 11-12. Israeli representatives are expected to appear at the hearing.
International rights groups issued a call on Wednesday for other countries to file Declarations of Intervention at the court, whose authority Israel recognizes, to bolster South Africa’s case.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said it expects “that within the framework of this application, the ICJ will decide on provisional measures involving those to stop Israel’s attacks on Gaza.”
The Malaysia Ministry of Foreign Affairs said late Tuesday that it “welcomes the application by South Africa instituting proceedings against Israel… concerning the violations by Israel of its obligations under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
A spokesperson for the South African Foreign Ministry told The Jerusalem Post that it expects other countries to soon follow Turkey and Malaysia’s lead and back its case.
In its 84-page complaint, South Africa detailed the genocidal intent that’s been displayed in numerous public statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, and other top officials, as well as Israel’s bombardment of civilian targets and forced displacement of civilians.
Heatwaves around Mediterranean have damaged harvests and forced producers to import from South America
Olive oil groves by Birding In Spain, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Europe has almost run out of local olive oil supplies and is set for more shortages, after extreme weather damaged harvests for a second year.
The world’s largest producer has said it is having to import supplies from South America to keep up with demand.
“Today it is almost physically impossible to buy olive oil. It is sold out,” Walter Zanre, the chief executive of the UK arm of Filippo Berio, said.
Olive trees have been cultivated around the Mediterranean for thousands of years, with Spain alone producing half of the world’s supply of olive oil, but wildfires and soaring summer temperatures mean the future of this ancient industry is looking increasingly uncertain.
Global production is expected to fall to 2.4m tonnes according to the International Olive Council, less than last year’s harvest and well short of global demand of about 3m tonnes, after drought and heatwaves of more than 40 degrees hit production in Spain.
Extreme weather in other important growing regions including Greece, Italy and Portugal as well as Turkey and Morocco has added to the crisis.
Recent images of the devastating flash floods caused by Storm Daniel in Greece hit close to home literally and figuratively. As a Greek who has completed a PhD and worked for the past eight years on flash floods, the scenes unfolding across my homeland are painfully real: a stark reminder of the broader environmental challenges we face both on a local and a global scale.
These unprecedented flash floods were triggered by rainfall from the arrival of Storm Daniel on Monday September 4 which also affected Turkey and Bulgaria. The following day, in the village of Zagora, a record-breaking 754mm of rain fell in just 18 hours, leaving parts of the region of Thessaly in crisis and unable to respond.
To put this in perspective, London gets about 585mm of rain over the course of a year while Thessaly gets 495mm, meaning that on Tuesday September 5, about 1.5 years’ worth of rain fell in 18 hours. Imagine the most torrential rain you have ever experienced, perhaps a cloudburst lasting 20 minutes or so. Now imagine it raining that hard but without pause for an entire day.
Flash flooding is short in duration but extremely intense, and typically happens within six hours of heavy rainfall. Unlike regular floods, which develop more slowly and can be predicted in advance, flash floods catch people off guard due to their rapid onset and are rarely recorded in the field.
Across the three affected countries the floods have killed at least 18 people, with many others seeking refuge on their rooftops. There are ongoing power and water outages, infrastructure has been damaged, houses and even entire villages have been completely submerged.
I asked Andrew Barnes, an academic at the University of Bath with expertise in using AI to analyse extreme events why this event was so exceptional. He told me that throughout Tuesday, a strong low-pressure centre formed across the south of Greece creating a large rotating weather system known as a cyclone.
This cyclone carried large rain clouds from both the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey. But it did not dissipate, and instead its low-pressure centre moved southwest and settled just south of Italy, with its bands of rain clouds also moving south and covering most of mainland Greece.
Trending across the region
It is crucial to emphasise that flash floods are not confined to Greece alone. They are in fact part of a broader pattern of extreme weather that has become more intense and frequent across the Mediterranean region.
The author’s friend saw this flooding in the village of Chorto. Irini Arabatzi
Researchers who looked at 150 years of flood data in the Mediterranean found that most were flash floods, with their highest occurrence during the summer and autumn months. The region is particularlysusceptible to these floods due to the combined effects of climate change and urbanisation. The latter has increased urban development in flood-prone areas and increased impervious surfaces (like roads and pavements), preventing the natural absorption of water into the ground.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s chapter on the Mediterranean region issued a warning that extreme rainfall events are going to occur more often and be even more intense, elevating the risk of flash floods. This warning, in combination with records of flash floods in 2023 in Spain, Italy, Turkey, Bulgaria, France and Greece, underscores the urgent need for proactive measures to address these climate-related challenges.
Research is advancing
Flash floods might be rare, but they are severe enough to be a matter of significant concern. Fortunately, research has advanced considerably in recent years. We’re now better able to forecast when flash floods might happen, which areas might be susceptible, and to assess their impact in real-time.
My colleagues and I are working on a project that combines historical documentary sources and modern hydraulic modelling. This way we can shed light on past floods and better understand the risks they pose, helping us design effective mitigation strategies for the future. Practically, in the case of a flash flood some basic but very important actions can be found on the poster below.
Tips from a flash floods expert. Ioanna Stamataki
A complete eradication of flooding is neither technically feasible nor economically affordable. Instead on a larger scale it is key to start identifying flash-flood prone areas especially in catchments with historical flash floods. We should then focus on advocating for climate action and resilience measures, which can be anything from “hard” defences like new flood walls, through to policies and better public awareness of the risks. Only this will offer hope of a safer and more resilient future.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Rescue workers and medics carry a woman out of the debris of a collapsed building in Elbistan, Kahramanmaras, in southern Turkey, Tuesday, February 7, 2023
THE death toll from Monday’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria has soared above 5,000, with some experts predicting that the tally could reach as high as 20,000.
Thousands of people have been injured by the magnitude 7.8 earthquake but many more have yet to be accounted for.
Search teams and emergency aid from 30 countries poured into the affected areas on Tuesday as rescuers dug through the remains of buildings flattened by the earthquake and the reported staggering 145 aftershocks.
But with the damage spread over a wide area, the massive relief operation has struggled to reach devastated towns and voices that had been crying out from the rubble fell silent.
