roads of stone

226. The price of oil: 5 – Deepwater Horizon and the missing toolkit

Roads — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:16:53 +0000

Dear Don
And so they’ve capped the well for now, although storms aren’t far away and the oil is still out there across the Gulf. I really hope your Florida beaches manage to avoid it.

Elsewhere around the coast it’s a mess, and although hurricanes might spread the oil, a silver lining from experience of the Braer oil spill off the Shetland Islands in the 1990s is that severe storms may finally help to dissipate the slick.

Deepwater drilling is challenging. High Pressure / High Temperature drilling is difficult.

Combining these operations into drilling HP/HT deepwater wells is new within the past decade, pushing the technological envelope while incorporating the difficulties of both.

Although vilified for his PR gaffes, finally Tony Hayward did get it exactly right in one of his pronouncements last month, when he said that the real problem is we just didn’t have the toolkit to deal with problems in this setting.

In that sense, the Deepwater Horizon, just like the Sea Gem or Piper Alpha, will be a disaster which changes the way we do things for ever more beyond.

The problem is that as we push the boundaries, there is always the temptation to keep streamlining procedures for as long as we keep getting away with it.

BP got it wrong, but the same problem might have happened to any of the companies drilling in this setting.

The environmental manuals foresaw a spill on the scale of hundreds or a few thousands of barrels via a discharge from the rig floor itself.

No one expected that a BOP with its multiple safety mechanisms and double redundancy control systems would fail, but then perhaps no one thought that drilling might continue where those failsafe systems had gone down.

The response effort co-ordinated by BP since then has been criticised for being slow, but they’ve been inventing the missing toolkit in real time and for the very first time.

The response could only ever be about damage limitation until the flow of oil was stopped.

Finally they succeeded, and along the way the missing toolkit has been designed and implemented, more or less from scratch. A huge engineering achievement — if only the toolkit hadn’t been missing in the first place.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, perhaps, this is the crux of my argument against nuclear. The (theoretically) best-managed systems will (and do) break down from time to time. The unforeseen has the unfortunate tendency to occur.

From any reasonable probability analysis, it should be impossible for a modern and well-managed major oil store to blow up 20 miles from central London, but that’s what happened at Total’s Buncefield depot in December 2005.

In the nuclear industry, perhaps they would never keep working when their safety systems were prejudiced. But at the same time, Sellafield is looking at 20% staff cuts this coming year, and pressure on costs can lead to silly and costly mistakes in any operation.

As Chernobyl showed, we don’t have the toolkit to deal with problems in that environment either, and the timescale of the problem there is in hundreds of thousands of years. At Chernobyl, we barely held onto the edge of the precipice through the self-sacrifice of firefighters and helicopter pilots dropping concrete onto the sarcophagus of the plant. But we might not be so lucky next time.

At least oil does biodegrade in months or years, however bitter that really is to live through for all you residents on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico today.

225. Running on Roman Road 2 – from Stane Street to Guildford

Roads — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:01:36 +0000

It’s late on a summer’s evening and I’m cycling homeward along one of the most beautiful country roads in England.

This morning’s London to Brighton bike ride is well behind me now and I’m rolling towards the sunset on the longest day of the year.

Eighty miles are in my legs by the time I pass the pretty Saxon village of Slinfold, with twenty more ahead to Guildford.

Beyond the church, I slowly climb a steady rise and turn right onto the main A29. One of my favourite cycling stretches, this — perfect blacktop, arrow straight, and for now at least, heading gently downhill towards the river.

This is Stane Street — the Roman road from Chichester to London. Built in the 1st Century AD, it’s more than good enough for me now. I pause to eat and think at the bridge across the Arun. Here, inside the meander of the river, the Romans built a staging post or mansio.

Set around fifteen miles apart, these settlements offered a place for soldiers and travellers to stop and rest the horses, just as I am now. Aerial photographs show a rectangular enclosure — maybe once a fort, while geophysical surveys have revealed evidence of a string of houses set tight beside the road.

This place, Alfoldean, lies halfway on the 70 mile route from the coast to London. Further north on Stane Street, Roman settlements probably existed on either side of the Chalk Downs around the crossing of the River Mole at Dorking and beside the spring at Ewell.

In a similar way, Alfoldean was sited at the spot where the road crossed the River Arun as it headed north from the open, rolling plains of Sussex into rougher country amongst the Surrey Hills.

Ahead beyond the river lies a steep bluff where the legions had to climb steeply between the trees. On the map today that spot is still known as Roman Woods.

Ten minutes later, I’m rolling westwards once again. The River Arun is on my left now as the A281 to Guildford heads arrow straight to Rudgwick, then turning right up a slow and steady haul to Alfold.

I’ve found no reference to this as a Roman road, but the relentless up and downs seem diagnostic to my tired legs, and the bearing of the road heads for Chiddingfold Roman villa, ten miles south of Guildford.

* * * * *

On another day, a few months later, I cycle west from work in Horsham for a midday foray along Stane Street.

The A29 northeast from Billingshurst is as perfect for a lunchtime burn as I remember it, with only a short, steep rise along the ancient High Street requiring a shorter gear.

I return to Alfoldean with fresher legs this time, and stash the bike for a closer look at Stane Street’s hidden rise through Roman Woods. The modern A29 bypasses the hill here, forking right instead at the Roman Gate roundabout to rejoin the route of Stane Street further north near Ockley.

I used to drive past here each morning, and to the car traveller there’s little sign visible of the old road north of Roman Gate.

But on foot, amongst the trees, a treasure trove is revealed — a 2,000 year-old sunken lane with accompanying ditches and aggers running parallel for much of the way.

I follow northeast, Londonwards, for a kilometre or so in the footsteps of the legions until I reach the hamlet of Rowhook, set atop the bluff. From here, a spur leaves Stane Street to head northwest towards the Surrey Hills.

* * * * *

A summer’s morning high in ancient forest. Atop the longest, steepest climb of all, at the end of Barhatch Lane, I turn left and seek the Roman Road once more.

It doesn’t take long to find it. At a clearing in the trees, I see a narrow valley rising to meet Winterfold Lane.

I’ve cycled here a dozen times before, but now I see that this valley, Jelley’s Hollow, is as tight and steep as any sunken lane in Surrey — worn deep into soft Greensand across the centuries by countless feet and wheels.

Only this one has no modern lane within it — instead it’s the route of the ancient Roman road, forged through the rough country of these wooded hills.

Across the lane, the route tracks northwestwards through the forest towards the Roman temple at Farley Heath. Did the Roman road end here, or carry on towards Guildford?

No evidence is recorded either way, although a possible continuation across St Martha’s Hill and then to Burpham and Bagshot beyond has been proposed. But the soft sands of Blackheath and St Martha’s may not preserve many traces.

* * * * *

Late evening, on a different day, I cycle west from Albury, turning right onto the Downs Link path at Chilworth. The alignment of this track through Lockner Farm is perfect for a continuation of the Roman road — but did it really climb the steep south slope of St Martha?

Perhaps it did — there’s a modern, twisting path ahead floored with flints and rubble which I’ve run breathlessly towards the summit on hot summer days far more energetic than this.

Today I head more languidly across the bridge, through the Gunpowder Mills on the shady path beside the river and homeward across the hills. Back home I consult the local maps, and search satellite images for clues which might not show themselves readily on the ground.

Eventually, I see it — a straight line from Chilworth to a fording place across the Tilling Bourne, then striking left along the southern flank of St Martha’s Hill.

The line of a sandy track sets a course for the pass on Halfpenny Lane, the alignment continuing arrow straight on a forest track through The Chantries and onwards along my old favourite, Mile Path, to crest the chalk ridge at Pewley Down near a patch of pebbles right atop the ridge.

From there it’s an arrow straight continuation down Pewley Hill and beside the Norman castle to reach the River Wey at the fording place below Town Bridge.

Was this a main Roman route, or the fork of a fork off Stane Street? It’s hard to say — the development of the town of Guildford and the sandy soils above the Paleocene strata beyond make it difficult to follow further.

But the alignment is perfect — a continuation on this bearing leads northwestwards to Calleva, the important Roman town of Silchester now lying peacefully abandoned amidst Hampshire fields over twentyfive miles away.

I once ran along the Devil’s Highway, a famous stretch of the Roman road from Silchester to London set deep in Bracknell Forest. But I didn’t realise I ran a Roman route across the Downs almost every single week.

224. Leviathans of the deep – oil rigs in the Cromarty Firth, Scotland

Roads — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:01:19 +0000

As evening falls beneath the deepest black of a December northern sky, a thin veil of dark blue hangs streaked with vivid orange just above the pine trees.

The homeward rush hour in Inverness is a muted, half-hearted affair, and in minutes we’re sailing past the bright lights of the bridge towards the darkness of the Black Isle.

Half an hour ahead, the lights of Cromarty barely touch the depths of nightfall. The white houses of the Royal Burgh are hiding low against the shoreline.

There’s a menace to the silence now, faintly interrupted as it is by the bleak moanful sounds of grinding metal and hammering. Across the water, just half a mile offshore, the leviathans of the deep are waiting.

Here in the Cromarty Firth, oil rigs from around the world are waiting for the calmer seas of spring, wintering inshore through maintenance and upgrade programmes to equip them for ever deeper, more challenging drilling as our quest for oil expands.

* * * * *

Twelve hours later, the hotel door creaks as I fumble my way outside. It’s still completely dark and a thin frost lies upon the road ahead.

I didn’t sleep last night. We left the Cromarty Arms in good spirits — the ale, hospitality and food were warm, and they even offered up their old acoustic for a rusty bar or two. But it was the late-night tales of our hotel’s friendly ghost that kept me wide awake and wary, beneath a light bulb I didn’t dare switch off.

The run out of town takes no more than a minute. A few dozen houses fall swiftly behind me and then I’m alone in black empty silence.

Amidst the cold darkness of the Cromarty Firth, the deck of a semi-submersible is bathed in sodium orange as work continues around the clock while the onshore world is waiting for daylight, still an hour away.

Across the water, another scatter of lights marks out the engineering yard at Invergordon, where drilling and heavy lifting equipment is being prepared for future wells in the North Sea and far beyond.

It’s a strange kind of juxtaposition, this, pitching the urgency of international offshore energy operations into the unspoilt calm of a sleeping Scottish loch.

In the first ten minutes run, just a single car goes past, its driver peering grim-faced through a frosty windscreen on his early way to work in Inverness. And then it’s quiet for another mile of silent running before finally I turn back.

At the entrance to town, the sign announces Cromarty as the birthplace of geologist Hugh Miller, and I follow through the backstreets to find his house.

Born here in 1802, Miller was a self-educated stonemason who became a brilliant natural scientist and one of the foremost of all pioneering geologists, as well as a founder of the Free Church of Scotland. Miller was a gifted writer whose work showed that the Earth had been created over enormous time, with different species dwelling on it as life progressed through the ages.

In the mid-nineteenth century, before publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 and with Darwin’s great, world-changing thesis now formulated but as yet locked away inside his mind, these ideas were revolutionary – as they are still in much of modern North America.

Cromarty’s Georgian merchant houses and chapel are mostly built from the same red rocks of Devonian age which formed the mainstay of Miller’s research.

400 million years ago, giant desert plains and lakes floored the Orcadian Basin in northeast Scotland, laying down a thick pile of strata which Miller assigned to the Old Red Sandstone – a lithostratigraphic term still widely used today.

For many years after Miller, the geology of the North Sea lay quite unknown. Even when seismic surveying began around 50 years ago, it was widely assumed that deep fault blocks in the centre of the basin were of Devonian age, formed of rocks similar to those exposed along the coast.

It was only when offshore drilling began in the late 1960s and 1970s that a thick and unexpected succession of oil-bearing Jurassic rocks was finally discovered.

And across five decades since then, the North Sea has taken its place amongst the most prolific hydrocarbon basins in the world.

Miller’s house stands deserted in the frozen twilight, and so I keep running. It’s almost eight now, but still far more dark than day as I wend my way through narrow streets and down to the shore beyond.

It’s an imposing sight that greets me there, as the first faint light of a midwinter northern dawn is shaping the silhouette of a huge fifth generation deepwater semi-submersible, waiting for the day.

Later on, I’ll board that rig, casting a seasoned eye at the sheer scale and complexity of the endeavour, so distant from the calm of this ancient Scottish fishing town, and yet finally the reason that I’m here.

I pause a while to catch the view, and wander the last few steps along the beach. At the water’s edge, a solitary candle is burning, flickering lonely in the breeze beside the Emigration Stone, standing monolithic on the shore.

I stop to read the inscription of Miller’s words, telling of all the farmers and fisherfolk who abandoned their Scottish home for new lands across deep waters of the far horizon.

In the modern age, a different generation of young Scots has found work across a nearer sea beyond the cliffs upon the North Sea rigs.

Remarkably, Cromarty has survived intact, sheltered from time and tides beside the Firth until today’s new prosperity arrived through Scottish devolution and the growth of nearby Inverness as a capital for the Highlands.

For a moment as I watch, the past and future of this place stand still, inseparably bound with man’s harvest of the seas and the tales within the rocks.

Could Miller ever have imagined that his beloved geology would one day bring a dawn like this?

I turn my heels and run back towards the hotel. There’s a job to do today, and a new view from here to take forwards to tomorrow.

223. Cycling on Surrey and Sussex hills – from White Down to Ditchling Beacon

Roads — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:01:18 +0000

Ditchling Beacon is the high point of the London to Brighton Bike Ride each year, in lots more ways than one.

A whole year of training is finally distilled into one breathless blur of uphill climb.

And no matter how many hills I’ve toiled all winter, it never seems that success on Ditchling is guaranteed — because it’s the toughest ascent I do.

Here’s a map and a profile of the hill, and a comparison with White Down, the steepest climb in the Surrey Hills close to where I live, and the last training test I do before setting off to Brighton each year.

Ditchling Beacon (South Downs, Sussex):
Base: 88 m. Top: 226 m. Vertical: 134 m.
Length of climb: 1.0 mile / 1.6 km. Average gradient: 8.4 %. Maximum: 16.1 %.

White Down (North Downs, Surrey):
Base: 118 m. Top: 213 m. Vertical: 95 m.
Length of climb: 0.6 mile / 1.0 km. Average gradient: 9.5 %. Maximum: 19.3 %.

The key to Ditchling is its length. White Down has steeper pitches in its dark and ancient woods, which hide a World War II pill box beside the road as well.

But Ditchling keeps on climbing into open sky when the strength of legs and will are fading.

You can see the sea and all of Sussex from atop the Beacon. Eleven months of training all come down to eleven minutes to crest the climb. And it’s still the peak of any cycling year.

222. Cuba 2 – Viñales: Talking ’bout a revolution

Roads — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:58:19 +0000

I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further:
… In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.
– US President John F. Kennedy: 24th October, 1963

Daybreak, 210 km from Havana.

It’s dawn. The rainforest stands still etched in grey, the air dank and humid with half-forgotten warmth.

The sky is dimly promising a future brightening through blue, already revealing white-topped clouds in the firmament above.

Behind me, the friendly valley calls. The massive limestone mogotes above Viñales rise to frame a monochrome outline of last night’s perfect Cuban sunset. I turn the other way and run towards the sunrise.

The track is damp from unseen rain fallen in the night. The air is heavy, silent, folded thick amongst the trees and scrub lurking close around the path.

The Cuban Revolution started somewhere like this, in the Sierra Maestra above Santiago. The 82 men who sailed from Mexico in December 1956 on the yacht Granma were swiftly cut down to twelve when they landed on Cuba’s swampy southeastern shores.

The survivors, among them a charismatic Argentinian doctor named Che Guevara, fled for the refuge of the mountains where they could regroup and recruit fresh rebels for their cause.

Their ideals then were simple — to oust the corrupt and decadent regime of President Fulgencio Batista, and instal a people’s government run simply for the benefit of the people.

It took three years, but with perseverance, courage and inspiration, finally the revolution succeeded in its journey from a slow dawn in the rainforest to taking power in Havana in the very first days of 1960.

There’s been a lot of history since then. Growing tensions with the US led to the Bay of Pigs invasion on Cuba’s southern coast in April 1961, ultimately setting the stage for the Cuban Missiles Crisis in October of the following year, when the Soviet Union stationed nuclear weapons on America’s southern doorstep and it seemed the future of the world lay on a knife-edge.

Both sides backed away, leaving Cuba to live three uncertain decades propped up by the Communist bloc. The fall of the Iron Curtain and the withdrawal of Soviet aid in 1990 left the national economy in disarray, leading to a renewal of the emigration which had begun with the Mariel boatlift ten years before.

Once more thousands of balseros risked everything as they set out in makeshift rafts across the Florida Straits. Finally, in recent years, Cuba has gained another kind of notoriety through the enforced detainment and torture of Al Q’aida suspects in the US base at Guantánamo on the island’s eastern tip.

These events have helped to shape our modern world and the conflicts which still rage upon it. And yet it’s here in Cuba, unexpectedly perhaps, that the world has changed least of all. Five decades on, the same once-idealistic government is still in power.

Such limited and relative promise of prosperity which the arrival of non-US tourism brought since 2000 has proved transient in the face of a global financial crash, and once again now Cuba faces economic challenge on a massive scale.

Yet despite this, the achievements of the revolution were many. Not just in enduring — although given the trauma of invasion, international isolation and half a century of crippling trade embargo, arguably endurance was the greatest of them all. But beyond this, Cuba’s new revolutionary rulers set an agenda to stamp out corruption, to banish poverty and provide health and education services for everyone. And to a large extent they succeeded.

You won’t find shanty towns in Cuba. The people might not be wealthy (far from it) but the bleak bottom tier of deprivation, which blights the lives of so many in South and Central America, has been effectively eradicated here.

The Cuban universities offer free education — a precious gift we surrendered some years ago in Britain — and there are more excellently-qualified doctors per head of population than in almost any other country.

Given the backdrop to these achievements through fifty years of economic strangulation, during a period when trade and humanitarian support from the United States were banned, it’s remarkable that such progress could be made. Who needs wealth and materialism, when a different quality of life is assured?

It makes for vivid discussion between us — as always, the views of a new country proving as important in the way they reflect sharply on a different life at home.

Across these days and as we travel, we collect Cubans along our way. With access to cars a rarity here, we drive open and often completely unsignposted roads in the welcome company of a hitch-hiker or two.

That’s simply how it’s done in Cuba. On the way out of town and underneath any motorway bridge, you’ll find a gaggle of patient people waiting hopefully for a lift. It’s efficient use of the available resources, and an effective way to get around since drivers will happily stop to pick people up.

For us, it’s a good way to get to know the people. The Rough Guide suggests we don’t ask about politics, but after a few minutes of introductions, Emma still has time enough to get there. Qué piensas del gobierno, y de Fidel Castro? she asks. What do you think about the government, and its long-time leader?

The answers say so much we can’t read in any guidebook. Driving to a village in the south, one lady puts it well. Yo soy Fidelista, pero no soy comunista, she says, quietly — respecting the charismatic leader of the revolution, but with no time for Raúl Castro, who deputised for his ill brother in 2006 before becoming President in 2008. It’s a view we hear repeatedly.

One day we deliver a medical student to her training post in Pinar del Rio. She’s a strong advocate of the revolution, but then we learn from another passenger how university places are only awarded to supporters of the party.

At the hospital, the staff and director are very welcoming as we deliver a few simple supplies we’ve brought from home. The place is full of doctors, but it needs a lick of paint and some post-1950s equipment would surely help as well.

In the hotel, a complimentary copy of Granma is given to every guest. It’s the government’s newspaper — and the only one allowed. And while we can travel here to read it, the vast majority of Cubans aren’t allowed passports.

* * * * *

The day is lightening slowly, and I’ve run almost far enough. A small clearing beckons me towards a ridge where I might be able to catch a wider view, beyond the confines of the rainforest.

And so it proves — as a few steps through the bush reward me with an unforgettable view of sunrise across the Embalse de Salto — a hidden beauty of water which neither I nor the guidebook ever knew was there.

There’s so much to ponder about Cuba. How have colonial Spanish and modern revolutionary history fashioned the vibrantly cultural and yet politically contradictory place she is today — so full of charm, so firm in noble ideology and yet so poor in basic freedoms, too? How did a revolution with such overwhelming popular support come to leave its moral right behind?

Even to begin to understand this country, there’s much more we need to see. More steps I need to tread.

And so I turn my back to the rainforest and the sunrise, and run towards another Cuban day.

221. Back to the white and black – Oslo, Norway

Roads — Mon, 10 May 2010 06:00:25 +0000

The March sun was warming the first Spring evening in London just a few hours ago, but it’s a winter’s tail that tells of Scandinavia now. Thirty centimetres of snow drape the train tracks in the station.

I fumble my way outside, and pull my coat around me. A mile of dark, uncertain streets leads past the midnight girls and drug dealers (who thought this city knew such things?) to my hastily-booked hotel.

No alarm call needed, as morning brings the sounds of a building site next door. The day is lightening outside my window, and pretty soon I’m running beneath a chill grey sky as deserted shopping streets lead me towards the Cathedral.

I take a short diversion to reconnoitre the address for my meeting, and then my mental map of Oslo runs out. Five circular minutes later I’m slithering across white snowy gardens around the Akershus Fortress, and then on to reach the waterfront.

The Oslofjord lies black and still before me, the quaysides completely empty. Five minutes of quiet is the time I need to clear my mind and think.

Three years ago, another job hunt brought me to this city. And here I am again. Across the harbour, the shiny blocks of Aker Brygge stand low against the fog, much as I do now.

The future calls and in an hour it needs to find me, so I turn back towards the city, run beside the National Theatre standing this morning in a wide field of snow, and past the pretty houses of Burg to the hotel.

Midday finds me back at Aker Brygge for a cold lunch beside the harbour. An afternoon remains to kill, and I start out with the new exhibition at the Nobel Centre. From King to Obama honours this city’s newest Peace Laureate, and the echoes of the Civil Rights struggle which led to Obama’s election.

Over the next hour, I refresh my memory of famous words from the Washington Mall and Chicago’s Grant Park, and remind myself of the historic events of 2008.

Laid back in time, just a little, and set in perspective here aginst four decades of the civil rights movement, the epic scale of change and the long, heroic climb to the mountaintop look all the more inspiring.

Outside in the cold afternoon, I think some more. Norway may be a small player on the international scene, with just 5 million people to her name, yet her voice is heard each year through the Nobel awards. They make a difference.

Some saw it as surprising that Obama was voted as Peace Laureate for 2009, When he hasn’t done anything so far — and yet, I beg to differ.

Looking back already from just a year’s perspective, it’s clear that his landmark speech A More Perfect Union in Philadelphia and his Election Victory Speech will join the ranks of the most important oratory of our time.

Perhaps more significant still, his promise to the Muslim world in Cairo to seek A New Beginning set out a fresh agenda not just for US foreign policy, but for the wider world as well.

Obama said he would accept this Nobel Peace Prize as A Call to Action for all nations to address the new challenges of the 21st Century. Last December, Obama came here to receive the award in person.

I wander thoughtfully from the pages of recent history, and back to Norway, where a few gaps in my tourist book of Oslo still remain.

The Slottsparken grips me first, with its snowy wastes set wide around the Royal Palace. Then with an hour left before sunset, I traipse northwards to find my final destination.

But by the time I get there, the Munch Museum is closed for the day. And so the Munch and Denmark exhibition will pass me by, while The Scream must await another visit.

That should be disappointing, yet instead of Munch’s vision of primal fear above the fjord, Oslo shows me another view of Norway as I pass through the Asian district of the city.

It’s remarkable, in a way, that this nation with its Nordic roots and history should be quite so cosmopolitan, and yet here I find Bangladeshi stores, Indian tailors and a Turkish restaurant fresh from Istanbul. And now, in an Oslo winter’s dusk, that’s simply how the world is today.

By the time that evening wraps around me in the chilly district of Grønland, I’m more than ready for hot coffee, and the Evita Espressobar proves a warm and perfect place to ponder.

There are those who would make race and immigration into election issues, even in my country — but the times have moved on, and from Sharpsville to Scandinavia the world has become a bigger and a smaller place as well.

A few more minutes bring me back to the station. The cold darkness folds tight around my airport train, and soon, I must leave this city exactly as I found her. Yet with me I’ll take a winter’s dream of Oslo, of a future told in white and black.

220. Focus on a greener road ahead

Roads — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:35:29 +0000

My car was ten years old last week. As chance would have it, 100,000 miles came up on the same day. That’s the most miles of any car I’ve owned.

By European standards, it’s a middle of the road kind of vehicle. A 2000 Ford Focus with a 1.8 litre petrol engine, which has delivered 39.8 mpg over the life of the car.

The UK government launched a scrappage scheme last April, and extended it in September. My car qualifies. If I scrap the car, the government and dealer will each give me £1,000 off the full list price of any new vehicle I buy.

At first sight that’s good, but a new family car still costs £15,000. The cynic in me also noted that before the scrappage scheme began, dealers were offering discounts of £2,000 to drag buyers from the street. Those offers aren’t available within the scrappage scheme.

The result is that the taxpayer is writing a cheque for £2,000 to manufacturers for every new car sold, while the real savings to buyers are minimal. I’d be better off buying a one-year old model and saving £5,000 off the list price that way.

In addition to supporting the car industry, the scrappage scheme aims to offer environmental benefits by taking older, thirsty cars off the road and replacing them with modern, more fuel-efficient models. But does it?

My next car will be more fuel-efficient and likely smaller. I’ve seen a new Ford Fiesta Econetic claiming 76 mpg, and the equivalent Focus will do 66 mpg. Even a basic 2009 1.6 Ford Focus diesel gives 60 mpg. So is there a clear environmental case for scrapping my 10-year old car and buying a newer model?

It’s not easy to be sure. 10,000 miles a year in my present car burns 1140 litres of petrol. Every litre used produces 2.31 kg of CO2, so that equates to around 2.6 tonnes of CO2 added to the atmosphere.

A litre of diesel produces 2.68 kg of CO2. At 60mpg, a year’s motoring uses 760 litres, contributing only 2.00 tonnes of CO2.

There’s an embodied energy cost in building a new car, but the figures vary according to who publishes them. The Society of Motor Manufacturers claims that 1 tonne of CO2 is produced in building a new car, but most analysts see this estimate as far too low. Volkswagen’s Life Cycle Analysis for the new Golf indicates an energy cost from manufacture approaching 6 tonnes of CO2.

If I extend my car’s life by 50% by running it for a further five years, this will save half a new car from ever being built. Let’s say this will save 3 tonnes of CO2. That means that in driving 50,000 miles in the next five years, I’ll add 13 tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere. A new car would add only 10 tonnes, but the energy cost of building half an extra car pushes the total back up to 13 tonnes again.

These equations take no account of the waste of finite materials incurred in building a new car when the old one is still running well. So although I’m keen to reduce my carbon footprint, overall the environmental case is hardly made.

Will the car last? I’ve never driven a car this long before, but so far the car feels solid — touch wood.

Nearly all the common faults in Focuses have already happened. I’ve had two new wheel bearings. A new link arm. The car over-revs in car parks when it’s half warm and it stutters now and then. A speedo failed. And the central locking doesn’t ever work in winter.

The car isn’t as shiny as once it was. There’s a dent where the plumber drove into it while delivering our new and greener boiler. But I can live with all of that.

Reviewers say my Focus should be good for 150,000 miles. One determined optimist wrote that at 100,000 miles the car was only halfway through its life. The highest mileage car I found on sale had 146,000 miles, although scrappage gloss and pitiful resale values may deter folk from going further at the moment.

So decision made — now what more can I do to cut the carbon cost of driving?

* Avoid short journeys where the engine is run from cold
* Stick to speed limits
* Keep the tyres fully inflated
* Have the car regularly serviced and maintained
* Turn off the engine at traffic lights (like the Swiss do)
* Eliminate excessive acceleration and minimise braking
* Remove junk from the boot and seat pockets

I do all these already. I drive like a granny, and I walk or cycle my local errands. But there are two more things that I can do.

Most importantly, I need to drive less this year. And finally, at the car’s last service in December I switched to Michelin Energy tyres.

These are a little more expensive, but their lower rolling resistance offers a 2.5 % fuel saving.

That’s just 1 mpg. But there’s life in the old car yet. And in environmental terms, every little helps.

219. Santorini, Greece: the Minoan eruption

Roads — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:26:37 +0000

Monolithos was four fisherman huts along the water,
a miniature villa closed for years, and our farmhouse
a hundred feet behind. Hot fields of barley, grapes,
and tomatoes stretching away three flat miles
to where the rest of the island used to be.
– Not Part of Literature: from Monolithos, by Jack Gilbert (1982)

A cold January in London is always the perfect time to head inside. Sunday finds us at the British Museum, gazing enthralled at a small statue which transports us to a different world entirely.

Inside the case, an acrobat is jumping over the horns of a charging bull — a feat of agility captured in Bronze Age craftsmanship more than three and a half thousand years ago.

The Minoans who made the statue lived around the eastern Mediterranean for well over a thousand years.

Settling from 2600 BC around Knossos, near modern Heraklion on the Greek island of Crete, they built rich palaces which were destroyed and rebuilt several times after 1700 BC, before their sites were taken over by the Myceneans around 1420 BC.

* * * * *

It’s early morning and the sun is already hot across the blackness of the beach. To the south, the road snakes its way up the limestone cliff to Ancient Thera. It’s one of the most beautiful places on Earth, but the climb of Mesa Vouno will kill me long before I get there.

I head north along the shore, with the Aegean Sea on my right, and work my way slowly out of Kamari. The strip is quiet at this time of day, with just a few old folks up in search of breakfast. The rest of the resort is sleeping off last night.

The deserted boutique hotels and bars fall swiftly behind me, and soon I reach the end of town and the start of Greece.

It’s peaceful running here. Beside the road, straggly vines are draped across the ground in Santorini style. A few outposts of tourism potter by — a villa or two, a budget hotel, and a half-authentic looking café where a handful of braver holidaymakers await a tour bus towards the marvels of the caldera.

I trot past a pitch of pines, round a corner, and the vista opens up. Across the airport to my left, the horizon rises evenly through sparse brown fields. The white town of Pyrgos stands atop the hillside, looking out to Fira on the crater rim and the tourist trail to Oia.

No flights are moving yet, but a few cars drift past me, carrying workers to their travel agencies and hotels. Ten minutes goes by as the day grows warmer and my legs steadily measure out the long road beside the runway.

The church of Agios Ioannis (St John) lies up ahead. Not far beyond lies the pretty beach of Monolithos, with Vourvoulos hidden further on. Quiet, dreamy hideaways these, floating in the forgotten corners of a tourist island — yet still recalling the violent history of this place.

This landscape, between Ancient Thera, Pyrgos and Monolithos, formed around a smaller, older island which was buried in a series of volcanic eruptions throughout the past 200,000 years.

The road to Vourvoulos cuts through cross-bedded volcaniclastics, stuffed with vicious basalt boulders, each more than big enough to kill a man. Dating from an early volcanic eruption on Santorini, these rocks speak of a time before recorded human history.

The main event here occurred 40,000 years later, around 1645 BC. The Minoan civilisation ruled the eastern Mediterranean then. But the archeological record of the period is scant, perhaps consistent with the geological catastrophe which unfolded at that time.

Even the dramatic and cataclysmic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 scarcely holds a candle to events on Santorini, where the start of the main eruption saw the ejection of an ash column 36 km high, covering the island in a blanket of pumice up to 5 m thick and spreading an ash cloud all around the Eastern Mediterranean.

A second phase saw boiling pyroclastic flows spread out across the ground at up to 180 km/h. The flows were 10 m thick and draped relief up to 400 m in height. Seawater entering the crater reacted with the lava to set off violent explosions, sending huge angular chunks of basalt high into the sky and then raining back to Earth.

More ash falls up to 40 m thick fell around the crater edge in the third eruptive phase — these contain rock fragments up to 10 m in size within the flows. Finally, reworking of material from the eruptive cone laid down clastic fans up to 40 m thick across the coastal plains.

In all, the Minoan eruption saw the extrusion of some 60 million cubic metres of rock. The sound of the Krakatoa explosion was heard 5,000 km away and we can assume that the Santorini blast was heard throughout the ancient world. Surrounding coasts were likely devastated by terrible tsunami.

Throughout the Aegean and further afield across the eastern Mediterranean, the atmosphere would have been dark for days (or even weeks or months) as the ash cloud spread east and southeast on the prevailing wind.

These events echo with persistent myths of the ancient world. The lost land of Atlantis was described by Plato as a circular, concentrically-formed island bigger than (or set between?) Libya and Asia, graced with hot and cold springs, destroyed by fire and lightning and sunk overnight into the sea 9,000 years (in fact, 900 years) before the time of Solon. The Biblical plagues of Egypt around 1500BC saw day turned to night, hail mixed with fire and the River Nile turning red with blood.

On Santorini, the eruption buried the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri in a thick layer of pumice.

Further beyond, in Crete, tsunami damage to harbours and ships may be one reason for a dramatic weakening in the Minoans’ wealth and influence, which led to their conquest by the Myceneans not many years after.

* * * * *

I climb the hill to reach the church, and look out across a blue expanse of Aegean Sea.

Minoan trading ships called here, four thousand years ago. After the Myceneans came the Dorians, who founded ‘Ancient’ Thira around 900 BC. Then came Greeks, Spartans, Romans (later Byzantines) and Franks.

The Venetians named the island after Saint Irene. Then came the Ottomans, before Santorini gained independence in 1821, joining modern Greece in 1830.

I turn and gaze back across the island. New visitors fly in here now, each and every day. That’s because high above me, atop the crater rim, the sunken caldera hosts some of the most spectacular sunsets seen on Earth.

The pretty towns atop the ridge are as beautiful as anywhere I’ve seen, their outlook made all the more majestic by views of the slowly rising fresh volcanic island of Nea Kameni, far below. There a new shield volcano is steadily building towards the next devastating eruption on Santorini.

I kick my heels again, down past the airport and back beside the beach. The heat of a Greek summer’s day is building through five hot kilometres to Kamari, and my legs tire with every single footfall. Another day can start now, of a morning’s stay beside the pool and an afternoon ride to swim at Monolithos.

Ten kilometres on a hot Santorini morning will store safely yet for a winter’s day in London. These echoing skies from one instant of recent geological time, run across all of ancient history.

More information:
Santorini eruption much larger than originally believed
– Haraldur Sigurdsson, Univ. of Rhode Island (2006)
Santorini (Thera) and its eruption in the late Bronze Age
– David A. Sewell, PhD Thesis, Univ. Reading (2001)
The Minoan Eruption on Santorini
Santorini and the legend of Atlantis
Minoan bull leaper — British Museum, London
18: Minoan bull leaper — BBC Radio 4: A History of the World in 100 Objects

218. A turning tide – from Houston to Copenhagen

Roads — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:50:28 +0000

June in Houston. It’s 99F outside as we wait an hour at immigration.

A glossy US arrival video is playing on a giant screen above our booth, but we have to wait an hour and offer all our fingerprints before we’re free to pass.

Welcome to America.

Obama’s America — but has it really changed?

The freeway towards the city looks just the same. A little less traffic perhaps.

Wide blue skies are yawning high above the endless sprawl beside the road. The downtown towers inch nearer across the final swoop of our 5,000 mile journey to reach The Loop.

In the hotel at last, I flop my bag and body down and switch on the TV. There’s a programme talking all about energy costs, and today’s phone-in prize is (quite remarkably) a free green audit of your home.

And it strikes me that I’ve never heard this stuff in Texas before.

All fresh and showered by sunset, we walk on Main Street to find a place to eat. It’s hotter than July this evening, but after ten hours in an aluminium tube we’re in no mood for air-conditioned civility. Some al fresco nachos, a cold beer and a simple plate of enchiladas are all we seek.

We find them at Cabo on Travis. A perfect terrace to catch the steamy breeze of sundown.

And then unexpectedly, outside the restaurant, we find surprise again. A parked Mini, with just the perfect bumper sticker. Actual Size.

* * * * *

The morning is always slow in coming, when you wake six hours before the day.

Finally, the sky lightens and we’re running down the sidewalk. Right on Main Street, left past Cabo and onto Buffalo Bayou’s footpath beyond.

It’s perfect running. If you want to catch America, look above you at the looping freeways. Cast your eyes across the sunrise to a city touching clouds beyond the morning bayou.

We try to find another bridge. Eventually, I ask a runner. No problem — about a mile ahead, she says. And then she adds, mysteriously, You have to go to war.

Her words puzzle me. Because that’s bloody cryptic, from an American to a Brit. We were there with you in Iraq, you know. Even if we didn’t really want to be. But perhaps she means the running — and if she does, then that’s exactly right. In the morning summer heat, a war is precisely how this feels.

The sun is fully up now. We run east towards a distant skyscraper, and finally beneath it, we find our bridge. Waugh Street.

We laugh our way across the bayou as I look up. I’ve never noticed this tower before, but now the corporate logo screams its tale to anyone from anywhere around the globe. It’s AIG.

It’s three miles back to downtown Houston — towards the searing sun — and amidst my struggle I start to wonder. Can America really change?

It’s early days, here in the energy capital of the world. But there are signs. A little less traffic, a smaller car or two. A feature on energy saving on Texan television. A lonely logo on a single skyscraper which symbolises the changing financial climate of this world more strongly than any other image I know.

And suddenly it seems that the tide is turning in this battle, after all.

Copenhagen still lies six months ahead, and a positive outcome may be too much to hope for. But a narrow definition of success or failure at a single conference — however momentous — perhaps that’s not the issue.

The real news this morning is that the world has changed. For now, at least, the economic horizon is painted a different colour.

And on energy and this steamy climate, America will engage.

217. The Guitar Hero and the Gypsy – Fleetwood Mac live in London

Roads — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:51:17 +0000

Lightning strikes — maybe once, maybe twice
And it lights up the night
Fleetwood Mac – May 1982

The lights dim, the cymbals beat, and the guitar begins.

Right from the word go, there’s an energy about this — a foot-stamping, driving rhythm from front left of the stage. It defines Monday Morning, the opening song, and it runs all through the show.

And the truth is that I’ve listened to Fleetwood Mac for two decades and more, but it never struck me until now.

Lindsey Buckingham is a rock star. There’s just no doubt about it.

My kids know Fleetwood Mac mainly from Guitar Hero, which features the iconic solo from Go Your Own Way. And suddenly that seems appropriate, for Guitar Hero is exactly what he is.

All through those years, and like any other red-blooded male within the universe, it was always Stevie Nicks who held my ear and caught my eye — her west-coast voice tripping crystal visions of California, from far across a continent and over a wide ocean beyond.

The sound of warm sun and open freeways and emotional heartbreak which I’d happily have stepped in to solve.

That voice still sings the songs I loved so well. Dreams, sublime and echoing new harmonies across the years. Rhiannon, her dark witch safe within. Sara, a tale of loyalty and betrayal. Landslide, simply a perfect reflection on redemption.

Play: Dreams — Fleetwood Mac live in London, 2009

These songs alone are worth a lifetime’s wait to see Fleetwood Mac play live.

The history of Fleetwood Mac has been told in more rock magazines and media profiles than I could count.

Legend tells how a demo track by Buckingham and Nicks chanced into Fleetwood’s ear, while he was cruising the studios in search of a replacement guitarist after the departure of Peter Greene.

History continues as first John and Christine MacVie, and then Buckingham and Nicks, endured break-ups through the very sessions when Rumours was cut to vinyl — heartbreak which defined the unique emotional intensity of those songs.

That tension underpins all their output from front of stage. But behind the lights it’s a different story.

There sits Mick Fleetwood, the archetypal drummer’s drummer, with long ponytail, shorts and earring, looking like he’s left his VW camper van parked just outside.

In the shadows lurks John McVie, backbone of the band, his consummate bass always vital to the sound. He takes a brief spotlight to open up The Chain and then recedes, anonymous and unassuming beneath his white flat cap.

The contrast with Buckingham’s towering presence just couldn’t be more acute. Standing, strutting, soloing — Lindsey simply steals the show.

I’m sad to say I never really liked those annoying songs from Tusk, and even the cleverly constructed guitar pickers from Rumours would mostly leave me cold. In a band with three song writers — Buckingham, Nicks and Christine MacVie (now retired from the band, but in the London audience tonight), it didn’t seem to matter that much — since a great song would never be far away.

Now, the feel is different. Looking through the tour reviews after the show, the theme is all the same. ‘Lindsey is incredible,’ Buckingham rocks the night.’ And, most accurate of all, ‘Lindsey did god-like things on stage tonight.’

Because it’s true. John MacVie might be the most under-rated bass player of our time, but Buckingham is a genius, and somehow I never realised it until tonight.

All those tricky songs are played out of their skins by the man who wrote them, whose perfect riffs gave all the other songs their shape.

Best song of the night is — unquestionably — Buckingham’s Big Love. Buried on the 1987 revival album Tango in the Night, better known for its Nicks and Christine MacVie compositions, tonight we hear the song with different ears.

Big Love is transformed into a wild lament on Spanish guitar, picked with a demonic intensity within an atom of existence. Throughout its spell-binding, flawless execution, Wembley lies in silent thrall to the haunting echoes of Buckingham’s decade-long emotional desolation after he and Nicks had parted.

Later on, we hear a dark and fiercely brooding rendition of I’m So Afraid, and a rocking Don’t Stop — perhaps the most famous Fleetwood Mac song of all, following its adoption by the Clinton Presidential campaign in 1992.

But as my second favourite performance tonight I’d pick Gypsy — from the little-played album Mirage, it’s another track I never knew that well.

Play: Gypsy — Fleetwood Mac live in London, 2009

In her introduction, Stevie Nicks tells the story of the song — remembering the days when she and Buckingham toured California as support act to the great rock bands of the 70s, glancing back to her excitement in the moment when Lindsey first invited her to play with him.

And suddenly, rock history falls into place. Because the defining story behind this mesmerising show lay surely in that call.

From the moment when the Guitar Hero found the Gypsy, genius and charm were fused indelibly together.

They shaped the sound of Fleetwood Mac. And they’re still on stage today.