Category Archives: environment

134. Before the mast: Pewley Down, Guildford

Posted on 19 January, 2007 by | 12 comments

pewley-down-and-st-marthas-hill-may2006.jpgI love Pewley Down.

It’s a wonderfully scenic and beautiful piece of landscape, right next to the heart of Guildford.

The land was given to the town by the Friary Brewery after World War I, so that the hillside could be protected from development and enjoyed by local people in perpetuity.

I strolled up here one lunchtime soon after starting a new job in 1995, and the outlook which greeted me that day is certainly the reason I moved to Guildford a few years later. I’ve enjoyed walking and running here ever since. With time, this place has become a part of me, and even of who I am.

The views from here, both over the Weald Basin and the Surrey Hills to the south and towards London to the north, are outstanding, as is the green prospect of the Chalk ridgeline from the fields and countryside around the town.

And so it’s disappointing to recount that Orange has long been intent on erecting a massive telephone mast high on Pewley Down.
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Posted in 2007, environment, Guildford, Surrey and Sussex

133. Tomorrow – Avril Lavigne and global warming

Posted on 5 January, 2007 by | 31 comments

2006 is over, and it’s more than high time that I penned an update to my articles from 2004 and 2005 on global warming and the energy crisis.

Science content is a key component of this site, and I may yet return to write that article, but in truth I’ve been struggling with it all week.

As I ran today, my iPod was set on shuffle, taking me to places that I rarely go. And finally it struck me that instead of writing, I should just leave you with this simple message, delivered directly and emotionally by one young singer-songwriter.

It sounds like a conversation on the environment, from my daughter’s generation to mine.

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Posted in 2007, A1 - the best of roads of stone, environment, global warming, life and times, music, peak oil, science, winter

128. October is a summer month

Posted on 30 October, 2006 by | 14 comments

october1981.jpgOctober
And the trees are stripped bare
Of all they wear
What do I care ?

Words and music by U2, October 1981.

guildford_29oct2006.jpg

A lot can change in just twentyfive years. And this year, the trees aren’t bare, or even brown.

This October is different, because all the trees are green.

independent_31oct2006.jpgWho knows what the world will be like in another twentyfive years ?

But we know that answer already: October will be just another summer month.

As it already is in England, right now. Today.

emissions.jpg temperature.jpg sea-level.jpg

Related articles:
133. Tomorrow – Avril Lavigne and global warming
69. Running low on fuel
105. A crisis of energy
110. The hands that built America – Houston skylines
43. A sense of time – Earth history and the London Marathon
75. The Cruel Sea – the Indian Ocean tsunami

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Posted in 2006, environment, global warming, music, science, summer

110. The hands that built America – Houston skylines

Posted on 10 February, 2006 by | 2 comments

houston-skylines.jpg

Oh my love
It’s a long way we’ve -come
From the freckled hills
To the steel and glass canyons
U2 – November 2002

My watch says almost midday, and still I’m waiting for the sun to come up. I’ve been sitting in my hotel room for a couple of hours already, wide awake and yet bleary-eyed with jet-lag, but a glance out of the window and across the freeway shows a resolutely dark sky over the plains beyond The Loop.

Oh well. There’s no point in waiting any longer. I chuck on a T-shirt and shorts, lace up my shoes, trot out through the lobby and hit the sidewalk running.
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Posted in 2005, 2006, A1 - the best of roads of stone, divided by an ocean, environment, global warming, Houston, music, peak oil, science

105. A crisis of energy

Posted on 15 December, 2005 by | 2 comments

It was a less of a bang, and more of a low thud, which woke me on Sunday morning just after 6 am.

tarifa-windfarm-buncefield-fire-bp-alternative-energy.jpgSomething had fallen off a shelf downstairs somewhere, I thought, and I went back to sleep.

I’d never really believed those stories about the Krakatoa explosion being heard in India, 5,000 km away, or of Londoners being able to hear the First World War guns in France, but now I do.

Because that sound which woke me early on Sunday wasn’t generated in the house at all, but by an exploding oil storage facility on the other side of London, over 100 km away. Remarkable.
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Posted in 2005, A1 - the best of roads of stone, environment, global warming, peak oil, science

69. Running low on fuel

Posted on 26 October, 2004 by | Leave a comment

north-sea-sunrise.jpg‘Is the world running out of oil ?‘

It’s a question I hear a lot. At dinner parties, on school field trips, and always in taxis, pretty much anytime when I tell people I’m a geologist.

And I can almost guarantee what will come next. ‘The oil’s nearly all gone now, and the North Sea is finished, isn’t it ?‘ These are popular perceptions based on media reports, carrying elements of truth, but hiding the full story.

Almost 25 years after the first crude from the Forties field was brought onstream, North Sea oil production peaked in 1999. The North Sea is far from history, though, and today it still pumps 7 % of the world’s petroleum.

And global oil production has continued to grow right up to the present day. But does an oil price of $ 50 per barrel signal the imminent end of our oil supplies ?
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Posted in 2004, environment, global warming, peak oil, science