Climate News and Knowledge #5

Climate News and Knowledge is our fortnightly round up of some of the main stories covering climate change and sustainable farming.

‘Artificial’ meat for the future?
The Royal Society has been pondering the difficult question of how we’re going to feed the nine billion humans we’re expected to number by 2050. Although they say there will be increased yields because of more CO2 in the atmosphere, and we can make big savings through better food storage in developing countries and less waste in developed countries, we may have to learn to love meat grown in vats if we’re to keep our Western diet. They also raise the very interesting issue of intellectual property in agricultural R&D, highlighting the dominance of large organisations such as Monsanto. Could this power be holding back our public institutions’ ability to rise to the challenge? The reports are available through an open edition of the rather elaborately-named Philosophical Transactions B journal, which you can find here. They are part of the Foresight Food and Farming study.

Over in Oz – making low carbon farming pay?
The incumbent Labor Government in Australia has promised to introduce a ‘Carbon Farming Initiative’ if re-elected this weekend. The plan is that polluting companies or organisations could buy Kyoto-compliant offsets, such as low emissions management of livestock, avoided land clearing, new carbon forests and the management of fire in tropical savannahs.
But it’s not quite all it’s cracked up to be. Without an emissions trading scheme, it’s not expected there will be much domestic demand, and although it could be attractive to the international market, the credits will not be counted towards Australia’s international obligations. But with both main parties supporting some kind of carbon farming scheme, Australia could be on the verge of big changes in the industry. Find out more at the Climate Institute site.

Carbon Code for tree planting
The Forestry Commission launch their Woodland Carbon Code today. It aims to provide an assurance to individuals or businesses investing in carbon offsetting by creating an online register of accredited schemes and a label. The Code kicks off as a pilot phase with the scheme opening in 2011. You can find out more in yesterday's blog about it. And Forestry Commission Scotland have gone one step further by launching a scheme to lease land from farmers for ten years to establish woodland.  Industry leaders have responded cautiously, with concerns raised that the land leased could traditionally be used for livestock production – thus reigniting debates over what our land should be used for with the food security issue continuing to loom large. Find out more here.

Solar shines a light for farmers
Renewables have been in the news again, with the Sunday Telegraph reporting that solar pv is taking the countryside by storm. Our own blogger, Stephen Frankel was quoted as saying, "The county is swarming with people in suits and shiny shoes looking for a few acres to shove a solar panel in". Small-scale solar benefited from a very healthy FiT and with barn roof space being readily available to farmers, it can mean a great investment – the article suggests a typical income of £20,000 a year for an average barn roof and the technology has the advantage of being much quicker to install and start generating than others such as wind or AD. Read the Telegraph’s story here.

Can we link the Russian heatwave and Pakistan floods to climate change?
An export ban in Russia, a fifth of Pakistan under water, and 2,000 cattle in Kansas succumbing to the heat – but are these extreme weather events attributable to climate change? The Met Office think so. They say that the recent events are entirely consistent with their understanding of the physics of our climate. Whilst that alone is not enough to prove the connection, they will say that the likelihood of a particular weather event has changed. For example, the probability of the very hot European weather we had in 2003 has very likely doubled as result of human influence. You can read the US take in this NY Times article.

But more research is needed to get a better understanding of how we can predict these specific weather outcomes. US and UK climate scientists have been meeting in Colorado this week to work out just how to do this. We wish them luck!

Madeleine Lewis co-manages the Farming Futures project. You can contact her on m.lewis@forumforthefuture.org

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