blogs

A seagull could be affected by wind turbines

New answer to wind farm blades: Skybrators

by Ian Lamont
April 7, 2021April 7, 2021

Does it ever seem that every time mankind invents a solution to tackle a problem within the climate change sphere, the solution creates another problem?

Electric vehicles, for example, might not need removal of carbon emissions for petrol. But carbon emissions are, nonetheless, created, mostly by the process of making the vehicles. And of course they need batteries and for that we still need to mine the earth. The full solution is to use public transport, of course.

Likewise, while solar panels mean we don’t have to burn fossil fuels for heating, their manufacture still requires metals and the batteries to store energy require us to mine the earth. We are working through a series of “least worst” options.

These thoughts came to mind when I read about Skybrators – the reinvented wind turbine. A company in Spain, Vortex Bladeless, has invented the bladeless version, solving various complaints about wind turbines.

Plucked parsnips prompt plan to improve soil

by Ian Lamont
February 23, 2021February 23, 2021

I’ve never really bothered about the leaves flailing around my garden in winter. I leave them to settle and lie on the grass and flowerbeds. They disappear by mid-spring. Or summer at the latest.

This year, however, I decided to take advantage of a bright day and put them to good use. The prompt was parsnips.

Last weekend, after the snow had melted, I dug up some of the parsnips I had planted last May. We had tried a couple before Christmas – after a ‘first frost’, as advised by many people – but they tasted very floral. Which was weird. It was also pretty small, and had bunched itself into a sphere, rather than a cone shape.

The most recent crop were also large and bulbous at the top, but retained oddities in shape. They had several long tentacles, like Hollywood might imagine an alien, but not one, uniform cone-shaped tail.

Former gasholder site Earlswood is ripe for solar conversion

Could Redhill talk climate talk with a gas to solar tale?

by Ian Lamont
January 27, 2021February 14, 2021

Take a peek over a wall in a forgotten, derelict corner of Earlswood and you’ll see a muddy plot of land, acting as a flood plain at present, it seems. But could it be ripe for converting to a renewable energy project?

There is no sign that this abandoned pocket of this Redhill suburb was once home to a towering, cylindrical gasholder structure.

Warnings about the plot being monitored by CCTV adorn one end of this land. Nestling near a popular convenience store and surrounded by houses on pretty much all sides, its fate seems inevitable.

Housing. Yet more dwellings to add to the population, traffic to add to the busy Hooley Lane which, at the best of times, is reduced to single lane traffic because cars park on one side. Better that this site – a former industrial area – was used for more homes than, say, further large open space or greenbelt land, yes?

Put a green thorn in fossil site planning laws

by Ian Lamont
January 20, 2021January 25, 2021

“I take your point,” Alok Sharma replied, when asked if the approval of a new coal mine was “an embarrassment” ahead of the UK hosting the COP26 Climate Summit.

The questions to Mr Sharma, President of the UK-hosted COP26 in Glasgow in November, came from the Commons business select committee.

Even Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, told the committee there was a “slight tension” between Cumbria County Council approving the mine and national efforts to clean up – or green up – the economy.

Ministers could have reversed the decision by “calling in” the plans. But they declined to do so, saying that the coal was required for creating the heat to make steel. Otherwise coal would have to be imported, the applicant and council agreed. This would increase carbon emissions, given the travel to reach the UK.

Sharma’s COP26 challenge: plan to follow Greta’s lead

by Ian Lamont
January 14, 2021January 26, 2021

There are signs of progress of sustainability – saving our planet – in many walks of life. However, only with a sense of history can we judge if the Climate Emergency is truly being addressed.

Those judging whether humanity is making progress don’t have to have lived through the attempts or to have been old enough to make value judgements for all that time, either.

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist, has been pretty vocal for a number of years. Having only just turned 18, on January 3, she has started the year and her adult life being outspoken and caustic. Just as outspoken and caustic as she was when she shot to fame as the girl who went on strike from school to highlight climate change.

Shouting from that modern rooftop, Twitter, she has roundly condemned political leaders. They have, she said, failed to achieve any of their ambitious biodiversity goals, set in 2010 and agreed at a conference in Aichi, Japan.

Controversial pesticide use? UK is the bees knees

by Ian Lamont
January 12, 2021January 12, 2021

Well that didn’t take long, did it? No sooner was the United Kingdom out of its European Union child reins, or however the pro-Brexiteers wish to describe it, than the Government broke a promise on a bee pesticide.

According to a report by the Guardian, a pesticide that is believed to kill bees was banned by the EU two years ago – and now it has been cleared for use in the United Kingdom.

A product containing a particular pesticide has been allowed for emergency use, after lobbying by the National Farmers’ Union and British Sugar. Wouldn’t you think these were two organisations that surely should know better? Their argument is that it will kill off the threat posed by a virus. We don’t want another one of those in 2021 to turn into a pandemic, I suppose.

Pomelo, artichoke, fennel and passion fruit

Unusual fruit salad and other Oddbox wonders

by Ian Lamont
December 23, 2020January 7, 2021

The joy of finding something new and environmentally beneficial at the end of a troublesome year brings hope, enlightenment and a sense of fresh beginnings. And it has been very timely indeed.

I have mentioned Oddbox before. My first delivery was fascinating. I knew this home delivered (in the dead of night no less) fruit and vegetable package to be rescuing food that would otherwise fall out of the supply chain. Items are rescued from the UK and abroad.

I wouldn’t have bought beetroot or melon at this time of year. I was certainly pleasantly surprised by purple carrots!

Oddbox doesn’t allow you to choose what arrives. What they can deliver entirely depends on what is available – that would be going to waste. But the choices of boxes do say how many types of vegetable or fruit will be contained within.

Sweet potato experiment: results you’ve all awaited

by Ian Lamont
December 19, 2020December 23, 2020

How did the sweet potatoes go this year, I hear you ask? I’ve been flooded with enquiries. You’ll remember I planted them as this year’s experiment in the garden, to expand the range of what I knew how to grow.

Those sweet looking plants arrived with beard-looking roots back in May. I planted them variously. A few in growbags, like the pictures from Marshalls suggested would be an idea. I downloaded and printed off a set of reasonably specific instructions from the RHS website.

They seemed like a great source. They train people in how to garden. And my cousin also uses them as his “go to” for advice. He’d decided to join me in growing these, although I think he started much later and decided to nurture something tangible for next year.

Priory site’s future propels Reigate Society online

by Ian Lamont
November 29, 2020December 2, 2020

History is in the making. The Reigate Society, which cares about historic and modern buildings in Reigate and Redhill, will hold its first online meeting. The subject? A key historic landmark in the borough.

The point of doing so is to discuss the future of the Priory building in Reigate Park – the very same building that sparked the formation of the society in 1952.

Back then, there were plans to build a bypass through the park, that would have involved the removal of the building. For the past few years, this building has been the home of the Reigate Priory School.

The foundations of the Augustine building can be traced back to 1235. Those parts are really only visible from the inside, but the building today is still an imposing site.