The scheme, which would see loans remain attached to the house where insulation, solar panels or other green technology was installed, aims to overcome the financial barriers and upfront costs people face when trying make their homes greener.

With the expense of green technology and people moving house on average every nine to 12 years, householders may not have a long enough period for paying back the loan before they move to ensure they save more on their bills than the cost of the repayments.

Around 500 homes in Birmingham, Sunderland, Stroud and the London borough of Sutton have been testing out a £4m pilot for the Pay As You Save programme.

In the pilot, homeowners made repayments for green technologies over a long enough period so payments are lower than the predicted savings on energy bills, though the financial packages also included options in which they paid some of the upfront costs.

The whole house energy makeovers, which the government wants to roll out to improve the energy efficiency of the UK's 22m homes, will provide a range of technologies including insulation and small-scale renewables such as solar panels or ground source heat pumps to provide energy.

Miliband said: "Helping people save energy at home can make it easier and cheaper to keep homes warm and appliances running. It is also the best way to cut our carbon emissions.

"This new approach will allow people to pay for home improvements after they have had them installed rather than before.

"More people will be able to get the work they want done. That means less energy used, which is good for the environment, and lower bills, which is good for families, particularly when we have cold weather like we did this winter."

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) has already been in discussions with a number of sectors including retail and banking over how the loans can be delivered, while legislation will need to be introduced to allow for the loans to be attached to homes.

Miliband, who is visiting the Ecobuild exhibition on sustainable building at Earl's Court in London today, also announced the follow-up scheme to the carbon emissions reduction target (Cert) programme which requires power companies to help people make their homes more energy efficient.

Press Association

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/02/ed-miliband-loans-green-home

The coldest winter since 1981 has kept the natural world locked up tight, substantially setting back the blossoming of trees and spring flowers, and delaying the emergence of hibernating insects such as bumblebees, and red admiral and peacock butterflies.

Over the last 15 to 20 years, spring has advanced considerably because of the warming climate – according to the Met Office, Britain's average temperature has increased by a full degree centigrade since 1970 – and by mid-February in most years, blossom and spring flowers are in evidence, as well as butterflies on warm days.

But this year the natural world is only just awakening. At the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for example, the million or so Crocus tommasinianus which form a quite spectacular carpet of pale violet began to flower on Friday – whereas they were out in early February last year.

Similarly, Kew's spectacular display of daffodils is not yet in evidence, but this time last year the yellow blooms had been vivid for nearly a month. And Kew's snowdrops, which last year came out in January, made a February emergence in 2010.

The man who looks after Kew's grounds, the head of the arboretum, Tony Kirkham, doesn't see this as a late spring. He sees it as a normal one.

"Over the past 20 years we've got accustomed to it being very early, but this really is a normal year, in terms of the way things used to be," he said.

Mr Kirkham welcomed the freezing winter, as trees and plants shut down completely and "had a good rest", he said. He is also hopeful the freeze will have damaged one of Kew's major insect pests of recent years, the horse-chestnut leaf-miner moth, which came to Britain from eastern Europe and whose caterpillars now turn horse-chestnut leaves brown and dessicated long before the onset of autumn.

Mr Kirkham hopes the cold will have reduced the number of life-cycles the moth can go through in a year and brought down the stress on the trees.

The cold has certainly affected insects, according to Alan Stubbs, the chairman of Buglife, the invertebrate conservation charity. "Normally you might have expected to see some of the bumblebees, and some of the hibernating hoverflies by now, as well as some of the overwintering butterflies, but I haven't seen any of them yet," he said.

"Things that hibernate need to find sources of energy quickly when they come out, but there's nothing for them yet. It's only in the last few days that the worms in my compost heap have become active, but as regards flying harbingers of spring, there haven't been any so far."

Birds are not so quite dependent on the weather for starting their mating season, and some species are pairing up, while the earliest breeders of all, ravens, are already nesting in places such as the Lake Vyrnwy reserve in North Wales.

"Ravens will have laid eggs by now," said a spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Grahame Madge. "Their early nesting is probably something to do with the fact that they are carrion feeders and there's more carrion around at the end of winter."

Crossbills, which feed on pine cones, are also starting to nest, but it will be another month or so before most songbirds begin their breeding cycle, and a few weeks more for migrants like swallows, cuckoos and nightingales.

The RSPB must wait to see which of Britain's birds will have been hardest hit by the severe winter, especially the snows and ice of early January, which prevented birds from finding food. "Kingfishers are the species which everybody is most worried about," Mr Madge said. "In the hard winters of 1947 and 1963 they went down by 85 per cent." Initial indications from observers were that the population might have been reduced by half, he said. There were also worries about bitterns, the very rare brown relative of the heron, and also about green woodpeckers and goldcrests.

The results of the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch survey, which will give a clear indication of what species have lost out most, will not be known for another month.

When does spring start?

*There are two opinions as to when spring starts: the meteorological one and the astronomical one.

The first, used by the Met Office and sanctioned by the World Meteorological Organisation, bases the seasons on the months of the calendar, in three-month blocks. Thus, winter is December, January and February, spring is the months of March, April and May, and so on.

This is now used all over the world so that climate statistics can be easily comparable across the globe.

But there is another, astronomical way of marking the seasons, using day length – with the equinoxes and solstices, those moments in the earth's annual progression around the sun when days are of equal length (the spring and autumn equinoxes), and when they are longest and shortest (the summer and winter solstices).

This year the spring, or vernal equinox, falls on Saturday 20 March, at 5.32pm Greenwich Mean Time.

So if conditions aren't warm enough for you today, or there's not enough blooming or buzzing or billing and cooing going on, you're perfectly at liberty to say spring doesn't really start for another three weeks.

Michael McCarthy

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/spring-is-back-to-normal-ndash-after-15-freak-mild-years-1913668.html

From the UN News Centre

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33778&Cr=unep&Cr1=

When it is up and running in 2014, the factory will turn 500,000 tonnes of landfill waste – including household and industrial rubbish – into 16 million gallons of carbon-neutral aviation fuel every year.

It will produce enough fuel to power all of BA's flights from nearby City Airport twice over. And with 95 per cent fewer emissions than traditional kerosene, the plan will be equivalent to taking 48,000 cars off the roads.

Biofuel for aeroplanes has made slow progress, hampered by tricky technicalities including the necessary high energy capacity, and the extreme cold at which it must operate. BA's rival Virgin conducted the first commercial flight powered by biofuel in February 2008, and last January saw the first algae-fuelled jet take off from Houston.

But the fuel to be produced at Solena's east London plant will be altogether different. Rather than existing types that must be blended with normal fossil fuel jet fuel, Solena is aiming for a green fuel sufficient to fly the aircraft without any jet fuel added.

BA's chief executive, Willie Walsh, believes the scheme will help BA to meet its target to cut net carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2050. "We believe it will lead to the production of a real sustainable alternative to jet kerosene," he said yesterday. The London Mayor, Boris Johnson, is also behind the plan – which will source as much of its waste material from local rubbish as possible.

There are four sites under consideration for the plant, which will be built and run by Washington DC-based Solena, with BA guaranteed to buy all of its output. It will employ up to 1,200 people. Alongside the reduction in carbon from the jet fuel itself, it will also cut the methane produced from landfill and generate 20 megawatts of electricity per year as a byproduct.

By Sarah Arnott
The Independent

To read the full article please visit:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/british-airways-to-fly-jets-on-green-fuel-made-from-londons-rubbish-by-2014-1900732.html

"As fog decreases, the mature redwoods along the coast are not likely to die outright, but there may be less recruitment of new trees; they will look elsewhere for water, high humidity and cooler temperatures," explains coauthor Todd E. Dawson, professor of integrative biology and University of California, Berkeley professor of integrative biology with the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM).

This drop in fog occurrence along with the change in temperature contrasts means that "coast redwood and other ecosystems along the U.S. West Coast may be increasingly drought-stressed, with a summer climate of reduced fog frequency and greater evaporative demand," adds Dawson. "Fog prevents water loss from redwoods in summer, and is really important for both the tree and the forest. If the fog is gone, we might not have the redwood forests we do now."

The authors are uncertain whether the temperature changes, and thereby the decline in fog, is apart of a natural cycle or linked to human impacts such as climate change. But in order to find the answer they plan to next look at redwood tree ring data and stable isotopes from redwood cellulose to construct the past climate of the coast.

Jeremy Hance
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0215-hance_redwood.html

Private-sector companies, including Jaguar Land Rover, its parent company Tata Motors, and the high-end motoring engineers Zytek and Ricardo, will also put £10m into the programme, which will be carried out in partnership with Warwick and Coventry universities.

The Midlands is the fifth "low- carbon economic area" and the second focussing on the automotive sector. The strategy envisions 1.2 million "green" jobs by 2020, and a low-carbon industrial base capable of supplying both domestic and international needs.

The key is to build up Britain's low-carbon supply chain, according to Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary.

To read the full article please click here

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/midlands-car-industry-in-line-for-low-carbon-funding-boost-1897115.html

By Sarah Arnott

The trust – the UK's largest private landowner and custodian of many of Britain's most treasured historic buildings – said the move would cut its carbon emissions from energy use for heat and electricity by 45%. That would exceed the government's overall target of a 34% reduction in CO₂ emissions by 2020, though the trust said the initiative would not cover the millions of car journeys by visitors.

The plans are set out in detail in a new report, Energy – Grow your own (pdf), which analyses the challenges of harnessing renewable resources in a sustainable way within the context of the natural and historic environment.

The initiative will apply to the trust's entire building stock, which includes 300 major historic houses, office buildings, visitor centres and 360 holiday cottages. The trust currently spends nearly £6m a year on electricity, oil and gas and said there was "a direct business incentive" for better use of energy.

By Rebecca Smithers, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 February

To read the full article please visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/10/national-trust-fossil-fuels

The Chagos archipelago, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, is a group of 55 tropical islands over half a million square kilometres of Indian Ocean that have belonged to Britain since they were captured from France in 1814 during the Napoleonic Wars. The islands include Diego Garcia, the site of a controversial joint British-American military base.

The archipelago boasts the world's largest coral atoll and the world's cleanest, most pristine waters, that are home to at least 220 coral species and more than 1,000 species of fish. The underwater landscape of 6,000m deep trenches, oceanic ridges and sea mounts, is also a refuge and breeding ground for large and important populations of sharks, dolphins, marine turtles, rare crabs, birds and other vulnerable species. It is Britain's greatest area of marine biodiversity.

Rachel Jones, the deputy team leader of ZSL London zoo's aquarium, said: "If Gordon Brown declares the Chagos archipelago a marine protected area it will be one of the biggest conservation breakthroughs for 100 years.

"This underwater Garden of Eden could be a legacy that Gordon Brown will really be proud of."

"If done in the right way, the Chagos protected area could be as important as the reserves which protect the Galapagos islands and Great Barrier Reef. Indeed, it would protect one of the world's most resilient coral reefs and some of the finest coral habitats remaining in the Indian Ocean," said Tony Juniper, green party candidate and campaigner.

Pollutant levels in Chagos waters are exceptionally low because of minimal human influence. Since the 1960s the islands have been set aside for defence purposes, with no inhabitants except for the military personnel and civilian contractors at the US military base on Diego Garcia.

As a result, the ecosystems of the Chagos have so far proven resilient to climate change and have been lagely immune from threats to other reefs worldwide.

But the Chagos Conservation Trust, a member of the CEN, says legal and illegal fishing has impacted the area despite regulations, with sharks, sea cucumbers, turtles and fish known to have declined. "An increased level of environmental protection and enforcement is now urgently required," said William Marsden, the chairman of the trust. "A protected area in Chagos would contribute to a richer Indian Oceans and would benefit people living in and around it."

The consultation, which ends on 12th February, is examining three options for protection. One is to declare a full "no-take" marine reserve for the entire territory; a second is the creation of a marine reserve of the same size but one that would allow some deep-sea fishing in certain zones at certain times of the year, and a third, to establish no-take reserves to protect only the vulnerable reef systems.

Jessica Aldred

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/27/gordon-brown-britain-great-barrier-reef

Luke Walsh

http://www.edie.net

L

The Arctic Fox, Leatherback Turtle and Koala have all been identified in a report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The “top ten” list includes a range of wildlife, on land and in the sea, with the Beluga Whale and Emperor Penguin on the unenviable list.  Also threaten is the Clownfish, made famous to many, especially those with children, by the Finding Nemo movie.

The impact of climate change on sea ice means polar species make the list.  The Emperor Penguin, highly adapted to unforgiving Antarctic conditions, faces a similar problem as regional sea ice, which it needs for mating, chick-rearing and moulting, is declining. Reduced ice cover also means less krill, affecting food availability for the Emperor Penguin and many other Antarctic species.

The Arctic tundra on which the Arctic Fox depends is disappearing as warming temperatures allow new plant species to flourish. As the habitat changes from tundra to forest, the Red Fox, which preys on the Arctic Fox and competes with it for food, is able to move further north, reducing the Arctic Fox’s territory.

In tropical areas, many coral species are being severely affected by rising ocean temperatures, which causes coral bleaching.  Clownfish, of “Finding Nemo” fame, are also victims of ocean acidification.  Salmon are threatened by increases in water temperature, which reduces water’s oxygen levels, increasing their susceptibility to disease and disrupts their breeding efforts.

Australia’s iconic Koala faces malnutrition and ultimate starvation as the nutritional quality of Eucalyptus leaves declines as CO₂ levels increase. The Leatherback Turtle, another iconic species, is being affected by rising sea levels and increased storm activity due to climate change which destroys its nesting habitats.

Following a consumer survey of 400 shoppers, 72% want to know the carbon footprint of the products that they are buying.  The survey also asked if the shoppers know their own personal carbon footprint, with 83% not knowing the answer.

The report supports the growing awareness of climate change and the move to "buy green", indicating a change in purchasing linked to the carbon footprint of a product.

Individuals and business can work out their carbon footprint on-line with co2balance – please follow this link.

African delegations were angry at what they saw as moves by the Danish host government to sideline talks on more emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.

As news spread around the conference centre, about 200 activists responded with chants of "We stand with Africa - Kyoto targets now".

It is unclear how matters will proceed now, though informal talks are likely.

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Copenhagen

To read the full article please visit 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8411898.stm

The conclusion comes from a study by the UK Met Office (UKMO).

Even if emissions peaked in 2020, there would be a 50% chance of temperatures rising by more than 2C, the target adopted by the G8 at its July summit.

Meeting the lower target of 1.5C favoured by some developing countries is virtually impossible, the UKMO says.

The findings come from the Avoid programme, run by the Met Office in conjunction with other UK research institutions under government funding.

The latest results were presented at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

The Avoid programme aims to use the latest scientific understanding to make risk-based assessments of the impacts, global and regional, of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

'Virtually impossible'
Echoing the general conclusion of other analyses, including by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Avoid researchers conclude that the earlier global emissions peak and begin to decline, then the gentler that decline can be.

So peaking in 2018 and shrinking emissions by 4% per year after that would give a 50% chance of keeping warming below 2C, it calculates.

But if the peak came just two years later, in 2020, the decline would then have to be 5% per year for the same odds of staying below 2C.

"If you go to 2025 before peaking, it's virtually impossible to stay under 2C," said Vicky Pope, head of climate science at the Met Office.

Drawing on socio-economic research from other institutions in the project, the Avoid team believes that cutting emissions by more than 5% per year would be the maximum feasible.

'Negative emissions'
A bloc of small island states and vulnerable African countries are demanding that any new deal on climate change should aim to keep the temperature rise below 1.5C.

But the Met Office analysis suggests that would be very difficult.

"There's no way you'd get a 50% chance of avoiding 1.5C," Ms Pope told BBC News.

"If you reduced everything to zero immediately you'd still get about 1.3C because of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere."

Policies to ensure a reasonable chance of remaining under 1.5C would involve "negative emissions" - sucking CO2 out of the air - she said.

And if emissions peak later than 2020, negative emissions - a form of geo-engineering - would be needed even to hit the G8's 2C target.

The concept of geo-engineering has its adherents but it is also fraught with economic, social and technical difficulties.

 A report by the UK's Royal Society, released in September, concluded that although the approach might have a role, there were "major uncertainties regarding its effectiveness, costs and environmental impacts", and was no substitute for curbing emissions.

Climate change is especially important to many Commonwealth members, as many are island states threatened by rising sea levels.  The plan would start next year and build to $10bn (£6bn) annually by 2012.  Half of the fund is set to go towards helping developing nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and the other half towards helping them adapt to climate change.  

In addition, the United Nations chief has urged world leaders to "seal a deal" on climate change when they meet in Copenhagen.  Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he believed an agreement was in sight, with recent moves by some countries a positive step to cutting emissions.

Danish PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he hoped to see "money on the table" at the UN conference he will host.

The Copenhagen summit, from 7-18 December, will see more than 85 national leaders gather to discuss climate change. The Commonwealth's 53 nations comprise nearly two billion people, a third of the planet's population.

US researchers found that across the continent, conflict was about 50% more likely in unusually warm years.  Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they suggest strife arises when the food supply is scarce in warm conditions.

Climatic factors have been cited as a reason for several recent conflicts.  One is the fighting in Darfur in Sudan that according to UN figures has killed 200,000 people and forced two million more from their homes.

Previous research has shown an association between lack of rain and conflict, but this is thought to be the first clear evidence of a temperature link.

The researchers used databases of temperatures across sub-Saharan Africa for the period between 1981 and 2002, and looked for correlations between above average warmth and civil conflict in the same country that left at least 1,000 people dead.

Warm years increased the likelihood of conflict by about 50% - and food seems to be the reason why. "Studies show that crop yields in the region are really sensitive to small shifts in temperature, even of half a degree (Celsius) or so," research leader Marshall Burke, from the University of California at Berkeley, told BBC News.

"If the sub-Saharan climate continues to warm and little is done to help its countries better adapt to high temperatures, the human costs are likely to be staggering."

Conflicting outcomes

If temperatures rise across the continent as computer models project, future conflicts are likely to become more common, researchers suggest.  Their study shows an increase of about 50% over the next 20 years.

When projections of social trends such as population increase and economic development were included in their model of a future Africa, temperature rise still emerged as a likely major cause of increasing armed conflict.

"We were very surprised to find that when you put things like economic growth and better governance into the mix, the temperature effect remains strong," said Dr Burke.

At next month's UN climate summit in Copenhagen, governments are due to debate how much money to put into helping African countries prepare for and adapt to impacts of climate change.

"Our findings provide strong impetus to ramp up investments in African adaptation to climate change by such steps as developing crop varieties less sensitive to extreme heat and promoting insurance plans to help protect farmers from adverse effects of the hotter climate," said Dr Burke.

Nana Poku, Professor of African Studies at the UK's Bradford University, suggested that it also pointed up the need to improve mechanisms for avoiding and resolving conflict in the continent.

"I think it strengthens the argument for ensuring we compensate the developing world for climate change, especially Africa, and to begin looking at how we link environmental issues to governance," he said.

"If the argument is that the trend towards rising temperatures will increase conflict, then yes we need to do something around climate change, but more fundamentally we need to resolve the conflicts in the first place."

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8375949.stm