Tim Worstall

I couldn’t believe this nonsense. Observers monitoring European fish quotas are being regularly intimidated, offered bribes and undermined by the fishing crews they are observing, a Guardian investigation has discovered. More than 20 former and current observers on Portuguese and Spanish ships said that they had experienced tactics such as beingput under surveillance, deprived of [...]

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Why? Why bother? That’s at least 10 times the scrap value. Set a few charges and leave the remains to rust on the reef.

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It’s all very Arts and Crafts, William Morris, isn’t it? Society was better in every way before that nasty industrial revolution, wasn’t it?

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The sea is under attack from both ends. To the north, the once mighty Jordan, on which it depends for replenishment, has shrunk to a polluted trickle, carrying only one fiftieth of the water it did 70 years ago: after gushing spectacularly out of the side of Mt Hermon far to the north, the river [...]

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And to think that this bloke used to actually write a good chunk of the government’s drivel on the subject. These are, please note, consecutive sentences from his blog post. I have not just collected the worst parts: The paper uses scientific analysis to calculate the world’s total subsidies to oil, coal and gas companies [...]

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The blunt warning from Linden Homes, the housebuilding division of Galliford Try, is just one of a barrage of policy criticisms submitted last month to a government consultation on new Building Regulations. The regulations would require higher efficiency standards on new homes from next year and are a step toward the government’s plan to make [...]

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Do not expect representatives from Saturday’s Connect the Dots day to show up on Sunday’s talk shows. Over the last three years, those inside-the-Beltway extravaganzas have devoted 98 minutes total to the planet’s biggest challenge. Last year, in fact, all the Sunday talk shows spent exactly nine minutes of Sunday talking time on climate change [...]

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Yes, yes, OK, Isambard and Bazalgette, lovely. But how can anyone write about the use and conservation of a limited resource like water without even once mentioning the incentive that makes all such efforts work? Price?

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Platinum is one metal for which absolute scarcity is likely (Bloodworth pers comm), because of its unique catalytic properties (eg car exhaust cleaning and process chemistry). The related metals palladium, rhenium and osmium may also become limiting. Rhenium is not a platinum group metal. Rhodium is. If they’re getting this sort of stuff wrong then, [...]

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The main problem with this approach is that the Global Footprint Network tries to account for all of humanity’s multifaceted demands on the planet by reducing them down to one comparable unit: land area. This can miss some important side effects and whole activities. For example, energy produced by nuclear power is converted to global [...]

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This really doesn’t bode well. While they’ve a very good economist on the panel; (Sir Partha Dasgup[ta, who really does know what he’s talking about) they’ve also got Johnny Porritt who would put all into full body condoms. An example of misunderstandings: Many resources are subject to collective action problems: if each actor pursues what [...]

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So, I wonder, how will it actually work? For example, I’ve a flat in a Georgian building in Bath. Grade II* listed. So you’re not allowed to put in double glazing. The walls are, so I’m told, 4 inch ashlar (erm, I think that’s the same as a slab of Bath Stone). There’s no cavity [...]

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Dear God: What people really need is the ability to adapt to their environment, rather than be fobbed off with the promise that if they work hard, they can escape it. Well, that’s the entire premise of civilisation buggered then. Pity, Mrs. Will Self is usually quite reasonable.

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Meanwhile, keeping the sward green and encouraging it to grow requires – as well as copious water – regular applications of oil-based fertiliser. What buggering oil based fertilisers? We make fertiliser through the Haber Bosch process, in which we use methane (CH4) to fix the nitrogen (N) from the atmosphere to make ammonia (NH3) and [...]

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Pollution levels are measured in tiny particles of soot and dirt. The particulate matter, known as PM10s, can cause lung and heart problems when inhaled. In order to meet the European Commission targets the daily limit for PM10 in the UK must not exceed 50 micrograms per metre squared more than 35 times in a [...]

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But, last week, Nick found himself asking a question in the House of Lords (where he sits as the Earl of Clancarty, an independent crossbench peer) on the very future of the Quantock Hills. Somerset County Council, we had learnt, was in the process of divesting itself of about 2,000 acres of Quantock land – [...]

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While the board contains retired senior executives from AstraZeneca and Merck Sharp & Dohme, it includes no one from a patient group, or any other body representing people whose health could be damaged by its decisions. … The other council members include executives or directors from Pfizer, Kardia Therapeutics and Microgen Ltd, but no one [...]

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The global mining, oil and gas industries have expanded so fast in the last decade they are now leading to large-scale “landgrabbing” and threatening farming and water supplies, according to a report by environment and development groups in Europe, Africa and India. “The catalogue of devastation is growing. We are no longer talking about isolated [...]

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On the way the solar power FiT works: As Lord Marland put it this week: “It is already going to cost the consumer £7 billion for £400 million of net present value.” This makes the consumer £ 6.6 billion poorer of course. We really do want to remember only to do those things which have [...]

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It’s not as if this hasn’t been explained enough times. For one thing, the model used by the MIT scientists didn’t make precise “predictions”, but projected what was likely to happen if certain trends continued, allowing for “adjustable assumptions” of resource use. Their real finding was not that collapse was likely to occur by a [...]

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