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State of Nature , a scientific collaboration of 25 UK conservation organisations, saying that our species are in already trouble, my thoughts turned to consider how climate change might be part of that. Especially when this UK report follows a recent global study , suggesting that more than half of common...

Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer I regularly get asked ‘do wind turbines save carbon emissions?’ A recent report by the Committee on Climate Change looks at the UK’s carbon footprint and the lifecycle emissions from different types of electricity supply and so answers...

We all know that we can’t afford to burn all of our fossil fuel reserves if we’re to stay within the ‘safe’ climate change of around 2°C average global temperature rise, but a new report last week has revealed just how big the mismatch is between economic and environmental...

John Lanchbery, Principal Climate Change Advisor We are not on course to save the world from climate change. Emissions are not heading downwards so as to ensure an average global temperature rise of less than two degrees, the target agreed by all nations. Instead they are surging upwards towards a...

Helen Blenkharn, RSPB Climate Change Policy Officer Last week we posted a blog on our concerns about proposals for a Severn Barrage that are being discussed by a Government committee . The project would involve a shore-to-shore barrage across the Severn Estuary, with potentially catastrophic consequences...

Tony Whitehead, RSPB South West Regional Office With the DECC Minister Greg Barker saying yesterday that it’s not at all realistic that a Severn Barrage Bill will come before parliament this term we think now is the ideal time for everyone to take stock and look anew at generating power from...

Researchers have found a common physical cause behind recent severe weather extremes, such as the heat waves in the United States in 2011 and Russia 2010, and the 2010 Pakistan flood. They say that man-made climate change repeatedly disturbs the patterns of atmospheric flow around the world’s northern...

Much of the UK is hunkering down for a weekend of expected snow. My friend Andrew, along with farmers across the land, will be bracing himself for a hard slog of feeding animals – he sent me this today from Wiltshire: It is January, when snow probably should be expected here, and it’s...

Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer Last year Rolling Stone magazine published an eye-opening article called ‘Global warming’s terrifying new math’ which said three numbers should be enough to convince you that we’re in serious trouble: Scientists agree that average...