A new assessment of European birds has revealed that nearly one fifth of species are at risk of extinction across the European Union.

Of the 82 ‘at risk’ species, 11 are ‘critically endangered; 16 Endangered and 55 Vulnerable. The greatest threats to their survival are habitat loss, climate change and increasingly intensive farming.

This list of threatened species in the UK includes 37 birds of the 246 species that regularly occur, including lapwing, puffin and curlew. The Balearic shearwater, a regular seabird visitor from the Mediterranean to UK shores, is listed as ‘critically endangered’ – the highest category of threat.

Other species such as the black-tailed godwit, eider, Arctic skua and kittiwake are listed as ‘endangered’, the second highest category of threat.

The findings come in the newly published European Red List of Birds, prepared over three years using IUCN’s methodology by a consortium led by BirdLife International and financed by the European Commission.

“These red list assessments provide another red warning that nature across Europe is in trouble”, said Martin Harper, the RSPB’s Conservation Director. “It would have been unthinkable 20 years ago that birds like lapwing and curlew would be threatened species in Europe – the status of many species is deteriorating across Europe.”

Notable successes amid the gloom

Over Europe as a whole, birds were faring better, with 13% at risk – 67 of the 533 species. Among the ten ‘critically endangered’ are the Sociable lapwing, Yellow-breasted bunting, and Slender-billed curlew. The study also found that 18 species are ‘endangered’ and an additional 39 ‘vulnerable’.

There have also been some improvements: 20 species previously considered regionally threatened and are now classified as ‘least concern in Europe’. These include the Dalmatian pelican, Ferruginous duck, Stone-curlew, Black kite, Lesser kestrel, Black-throated diver and Great bustard.

Another 25 species are still threatened in Europe, but now have a lower extinction risk than a decade ago, and have seen their threat level downlisted. For example, Zino’s petrel and Azores bullfinch, both previously considered to be ‘critically endangered’, are now merely ‘endangered’.

The Azores Bullfinch was driven to the edge of extinction on Sao Miguel, the only island where it occurs, mainly by the impact of invasive alien vegetation that had overrun its native forests. Habitat restoration spearheaded by BirdLife Partner SPEA has brought the species back, allowing it to be downlisted from ‘critically endangered’ to ‘endangered’, with the population bouncing back from 40 to around 400 pairs.

Karmenu Vella, European Commissioner for Environment, Fisheries and Maritime Policy, said: “These reports contain some worrying statistics – but they also show the value of well-targeted actions to protect the biodiversity we depend on both economically and socially through the services they provide.

“Our task is to find ways of building on those successes, and spreading them to other areas. They are also a valuable input to our on-going Fitness Check – Europe needs nature legislation that is fit for purpose.”

Ivan Ramirez, head of conservation at BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, said: “It is inspiring to see that many species targeted by conservation efforts, and supported by key tools such as the Birds Directive and the LIFE programme, are recovering. Yet it is shocking to see many species that used to be common and are now listed as threatened.”

Crisis demands a ‘deeper and broader response’

The conservation status of some species that were identified as being in trouble a decade ago haven’t improved, for example the  Egyptian vulture, Aquatic warbler, Greater spotted eagle and Little bustard.

Of these the Egyptian Vulture (‘vulnerable’) is endangered by poisoning, both in the Mediterranean breeding grounds and on its African wintering grounds. It also falls victim to electrocution on powerlines, shooting and loss of extensive agriculture habitat.

The Greater Spotted Eagle (‘critically endangered in the EU’), which nests in mature riverine forests in Eastern Europe, is declining owing to extensive habitat loss and persistent persecution.

Christina Ieronymidou, the European Species Programme Officer at BirdLife, said: “The European Red List tells us that we have done a decent job at rescuing the rarest species by protecting their last strongholds and taking actions such as eradication of invasive species and insulation of killer powerlines.

“But we are now faced with much bigger challenges, from the ecological degradation of our farmland to climate change. These problems require a much broader and deeper response.”

Such is the case, for example, of the ‘critically endangered’ Balearic shearwater , a seabird with a tiny breeding range on Spain’s Balearic Islands. Its small population of 3,193 breeding pairs is undergoing an rapid population decline owing to  predation at breeding colonies by introduced mammals and at-sea mortality as a result of fisheries by-catch.

Also ‘endangered’ from fishing are the Atlantic puffin and Northern fulmar, iconic birds of the North Atlantic seabird colonies, whose populations are plummeting under the combined blows of overfishing and climate change.

Intensive agriculture is the main threat for the ‘endangered’ Black-bellied Sandgrouse, which has declined owing to extensive loss of its steppe habitat in Spain, Portugal and Turkey, along with the Lanner falcon.

The large scale conversion of dry grasslands and traditional dryland cereals to intensive agriculture is driving declines in a whole suite of species across the Mediterranean.

Setting the agenda for the EU’s conservation policy

The European Red List of Birds assesses birds across two geographical levels: the European Union (except Croatia); and the wider continent of Europe (stretching from Greenland eastwards across Europe to Turkey and European Russia).

The RSPB, the UK partner of BirdLife International, believes the publication will set the base for European conservation and policy work to be done in the coming years.

“The Red List data provides a solid baseline for monitoring future trends in European biodiversity and for guiding conservation actions”, said Craig Hilton-Taylor, Head of the Red List Unit, IUCN Global Species Programme.

“The European Red List of Birds clearly shows the need for constant vigilance and increased action if we are to prevent the loss of biodiversity in Europe.”

The report: ‘European Red List of Birds‘.

The recent unveiling by Tesla founder Elon Musk of the low-cost Powerwall storage battery is the latest in a series of exciting advances in battery technologies for electric cars and domestic electricity generation.

We have also seen the development of an aluminium-ion battery that may be safer, lighter and cheaper than the lithium-ion batteries used by Tesla and most other auto and technology companies.

These advances are exciting for two main reasons. First, the cost of energy storage, in the form of batteries, is decreasing significantly. This makes electric vehicle ownership and home energy storage much more attainable.

The second, related reason is that these cheaper green technologies may make the transition to a greener economy easier and faster than we have so far imagined (although, as has been recently pointed out on The Conversation, these technologies are only one piece of the overall energy puzzle).

Beware the industrial option

These technological advances, and much of the excitement around them, lend themselves to the idea that solving environmental problems such as climate change is primarily a case of technological adjustment.

But this approach encourages a strategy of ‘superindustrialisation’, in which technology and industry are brought to bear to resolve climate change, through resource efficiency, waste reduction and pollution control. In this context, the green economy is presented as an inevitable green technological economic wave.

But the prospect of this green economic wave needs to be considered within a wider environmental and social context, which makes solving the problems much more complex. Let’s take electric vehicles as an example.

The ecological damage of cars, electric or otherwise, is partly due to the fact that the car industry generates more than 3 million tonnes of scrap and waste every year. In 2009, 14 million cars were scrapped in the United States alone.

The number of cars operating in the world is expected to climb from the current 896 million to 1.2 billion by 2020. The infrastructure associated with growing vehicle use, particularly roads, also makes a significant contribution to the destruction of ecosystems and arguably has important social costs.

Are electric vehicles ‘better enough’?

Electric vehicles (EVs) offer a substantial greenhouse gas emission improvement from the internal combustion engine. However, this improvement depends on green electricity production.

An EV powered by average European electricity production is likely to reduce a vehicle’s global warming potential by about 20% over its life cycle. This is not insignificant, but it is nowhere near a zero-emission option.

In large part, the life-cycle emissions of an electric vehicle are due to the energy-intensive nature of battery production and the associated mining processes. Indeed, there are questions around battery production and resource depletion, but perhaps more concerning is the impact that mining lithium and other materials for the growing battery economy, such as graphite, will have on the health of workers and communities involved in this global production network.

Processes associated with lithium batteries may produce adverse respiratory, pulmonary and neurological health impacts. Pollution from graphite mining in China has resulted in reports of ‘graphite rain’, which is significantly impacting local air and water quality.

The production of green technologies creates many interesting contradictions between environmental benefits at the point of use, versus human and environmental costs at the production end.

Baoding, a Chinese city southwest of Beijing, has been labelled the greenest city in the world or the world’s only carbon-positive city. This is because Boading produces enormous quantities of wind turbines and solar cells for the United States and Europe, and has about 170 alternative energy companies based there.

But last year the air in the city of Baoding was declared to be the most polluted in China – a country where air quality reportedly contributes to 1.2 million deaths each year. These impacts need to be placed into any discussion or policy frameworks when exploring the shift to a ‘greener’ future.

Beware new problems from new solutions

We should be excited about the shift to greener cars and affordable home electricity storage units, but in the process of starting to solve the technological challenges of climate change we must ensure that we are not creating environmental problems, particularly for the largely unseen workers and communities further up the production stream.

Our response to climate change needs to be more than just a technological adjustment. We argue that the shift to a green economy requires more transformative social political actions via skills and training, worker participation, and the coming together of environmental organisations, unions, business and government.

Indeed, the world of work is a critical site for emission reductions: 80% of Europe’s carbon emissions are workplace-related.

As we adopt emerging greener technologies, we will have to look beyond our shiny new Powerwall, or the electric car parked on the front drive, to ensure that the environmental and social changes promised by green technologies are not just illusions.

Caleb Goods is Postdoctoral research fellow at York University, Canada.

Carla Lipsig-Mumme is Professor of Work and Labour Studies at York University, Canada.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

In his recent book ‘Altered Genes,Twisted Truths‘, US public interest attorney Steven Druker exposes the fraudulent practices and deceptions that led to the commercialisation of GM food and crops in the US.

Not long after the book’s release, he wrote an open letter to the Royal Society in Britain calling on it to acknowledge and correct the misleading and exaggerated statements that is has used to actively promote GMOs and in effect convey false impressions.

Druker cited specific instances where members of The Royal Society have at various times made false statements and the Society’s actions were not objective or based on scientific reasoning but seemingly were little more than biased and stridently pro-GMO.

He argued that The Royal Society has misrepresented the case for GMOs and has effectively engaged in a campaign of disinformation.

Impartial scientific institute? Or all-out lobbyist for GMOs?

The Royal Society acts as a scientific advisor to the British government. It is a self-governing fellowship of many of the world’s most distinguished scientists drawn from all areas of science, engineering, and medicine.

The Society disseminates scientific advances through its journals. It also promotes science information and communication with the public. The Royal Society is a prestigious institution that feeds into policy formulation processes at national level in the UK. The Royal Society counts. It is a very big deal.

By the mid-1990’s, Druker notes that The Royal Society had become a partisan defender of GM foods and embraced a proactive policy on their behalf.

In pursuing this proactive policy, he argues that several individuals holding prominent positions within the Society – and even the Society itself – have issued misleading statements in regard to GM foods that have created significant confusion and illegitimately downplayed their risks.

He then goes on to document specific instances of occasions when this occurred. Certain claims made in favour of GMOs were not supported by solid scientific evidence, neither did they clearly represent a consensus within the scientific community.

A monstrous attack – Dr. Arpad Pusztai

However, Druker notes that the Society’s most deplorable actions in defence of GM foods were directed at the research on GM potatoes conducted at the Rowett Institute under the direction of Dr. Arpad Pusztai.

That research study is still one of the most rigorous yet performed on a GM food. It continues to be highly relevant because it controlled for the effects of the new foreign protein – which entails that the adverse results it registered were attributable to a broader feature of the genetic engineering process itself.

Druker then goes on to present seven specific instances of the Society’s offences against that particular piece of research, including what could be described as a PR campaign mounted against Pusztai and his study.

Even the editor of the respected journal The Lancet published an editorial rebuking the Society for a “gesture of breath-taking impertinence to the Rowett Institute scientists”.

Druker states that having unfairly attacked the research, the Society then strove to prevent it from being published. Even after the research was published (in The Lancet in October 1999), the Society continued to unjustly malign it.

But would they admit the truth?

In an open letter sent in early March, he called on the Society to clear up the confusion caused by the misleading statements it has made to promote GM food and issue a formal statement acknowledging the following:

A. That there is not now nor never has been a consensus within the scientific community that GM foods are safe, that many well-credentialed experts do not regard their safety as having been established, and that a substantial number think that the research as a whole casts the safety of many of them in doubt.

B. That neither you nor any other scientific body has directly confronted and refuted the cautionary reasoning in the 2001 report issued by the Royal Society of Canada (which it has never retracted or revised) – and that this report stands as one of the compelling testaments that there is not a scientific consensus that GM foods are safe.

C. That the process of creating new varieties of food crops via genetic engineering is not more precise and predictable than conventional breeding in regard to food safety and instead entails a greater likelihood of unintended effects that could directly impact consumer health.

D. That although there are known instances in which genetic engineering has induced the production of a novel toxin or allergen, there are none in which conventional breeding has done so.

E. That Dr. Pusztai’s research was properly peer-reviewed and gained publication in The Lancet based on its merits, with five out of six referees voting in favor – and that, contrary to claims that the Society and other proponents of GM foods have advanced, the research has never been refuted or in any way discredited by subsequent studies – which entails that it is still relevant today.

F. Your statement should also contain a formal apology to Dr. Pusztai and his colleagues for the irresponsible manner in which the Society and several of its members have besmirched their reputations and derided the integrity of their research.

Druker continued by stating:

“Unless you promptly take these steps, it will demonstrate that your commitment to promoting GM foods is stronger than your commitment to honoring the truth and upholding the integrity of science.”

According to Druker, it is time The Royal Society confronted the facts about GM foods and set the record straight. He also challenged it to find factual or logical inaccuracies in his book:

“I challenge you to read my book and specifically list any inaccurate statements of fact that you find in it, accompanied by an explanation of why the statement is erroneous and a reference to the evidence that corroborates your assertion.”

And he finished his letter by stating: “If you have not done so by 20 April 2015, the world will have a right to assume that it [his book] is as sound as the experts who reviewed it have affirmed – and that GM foods are therefore unacceptably risky and must be banned.”

Royal Society maintains its ‘right to silence’

It is now three months since Steven Druker addressed the Royal Society in his open letter and 44 days since 20 April. There appears to have been no response from The Royal Society – and certainly not a public one – except for a brief and deliberately insulting statement issued today:

“The Royal Society bases its views on evidence, evidence that has been closely scrutinized by people with expert knowledge and that has stood up to that scrutiny.  Personal opinions and unsubstantiated anecdotes are unhelpful to having a rational public debate on science and the use of new technologies.”

The Royal Society is the preeminent scientific body within the UK that advises the government. It therefore has an obligation to the British public to provide a public response and ‘put the record straight’ on GMOs – not least because the current staunchly pro-GMO Cameron-led administration will likely sanction the planting of GM crops in England within the next couple of years, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal could open the floodgates to GM foods appearing on the shelves of UK supermarkets.

The purpose of The Royal Society is according to its website to “recognise, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.”

The Royal Society’s record on GMOs has been shameful – though as a prominent public body in the UK, it is certainly not alone in this respect. Given what is at stake, its silence towards the issues raised by Steven Druker is little better.

This article was originally published on Colin Todhunter’s website.

An ambitious ‘Apollo’ plan to make wind and solar power cheaper in every country in the world than electricity generated from coal, launched today, is already on the agenda for next week’s meeting of the G7 in Germany.

“Carbon-free energy must rapidly become less costly to produce than energy based on coal, gas and oil”, according to the Global Apollo Programme. “This requires a major scientific and technological programme of research, using the best minds in the world and the best science.”

The target is to ensure that “new-build base-load energy from renewable sources becomes cheaper than new-build coal in sunny parts of the world by 2020, and worldwide from 2025.”

All countries will be invited to join Apollo, and in doing so will commit to “devote at least 0.02% of GDP to public expenditure on the Programme over a 10-year period” from 2016 to 2015 in order to raise an estimated $150 billion.

The main foci of research are to be wind and solar power generation, electricity storage, and the ‘smart grid’ – a power grid engineered to accommodate many small distributed generators, and featuring ‘dynamic demand’ that responds to the amount of power that’s available moment by moment.

Apollo’s aims reflect the agreement by world governments to limit the world’s rise in temperature to 2C from the pre-industrial era, in order to avoid irreparable damage to the global climate system.

“This means an absolute limit on the total accumulated CO2 that can be produced”, states Apollo. “On present trends that limit will be breached by 2035. So we must urgently reduce our annual output of CO₂.”

Will Apollo gain traction?

The timing of Apollo’s launch is certainly impeccable. As well as feeding directly into next week’s G7 meeting, it also comes just as climate negotiators meet in Bonn to prepare the way for the substantive UN climate talks in Paris this December.

“We urge the Heads of Government to agree on a Global Apollo Programme by the Paris meeting in 2015”, Apollo states. “The Programme should begin immediately after that.”

Regardless of how committed national governments are – or are not – to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, none wish to be branded as ‘climate villains’ at the Paris talks, and all wish to appear to be making efforts in the direction of reducing emissions. Signing up to Apollo is clearly one way of doing this – while making no commitment to reduce their use of fossil fuels.

What is also going to help the Apollo gain acceptance is that it’s the brainchild of a highly influential (and richly titled) group of scientists, economists and businessmen at the heart of the British establishment.

They are Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser; the LSE’s Lord Richard Layard; Lord Gus O’Donnell, the former Cabinet Secretary; The Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees; Lord Adair Turner, Former Chairman of the Financial Services Authority and the Committee on Climate Change; Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Report on climate change; and Lord John Browne, the former CEO of BP, who attempted to relaunch the company as ‘Beyond Petroleum’.

So when they say that “Over the last year the Programme has been privately discussed with Governments worldwide and has been widely welcomed … it is hoped that by the end of the year the major countries of the world will have decided to join”, they have to be taken seriously.

And when they state “it is hoped that the management of the Programme will be co-located with the International Energy Agency in Paris, but the Programme will include many countries that are not members of the IEA”, you can be sure that it’s already a done deal.

Still, a mountain to climb

But huge changes will be needed to bring the Apollo vision to reality, for example with the scale of investment into renewable energy. “We are talking about the greatest material challenge facing humankind”, the launch document states.

“Yet the share of global publicly-funded RD&D going on renewable energy worldwide is under 2%. Remarkably the share of all energy research in total publicly-funded R&D expenditure has fallen from 11% in the early 1980s to 4% today. This is a shocking failure …

“Public expenditure on R&D to reduce the cost of renewables has been minimal – some $6 billion. This cannot be a sensible balance of support. In Europe the position is similar to elsewhere: the ratio of public R&D to public subsidies for the supply of existing renewables has been roughly 1:30.

“At the same time, fossil fuel is getting a subsidy of at least $544 billion worldwide – making climate change worse, not better.”

So far investment in renewable energy technology has been left almost entirely to the private sector, Apollo points out. However this approach is at odds with other major technological advances that have taken place in modern times:

“Most of the main technological advances of the last hundred years have derived from publicly funded R&D – the computer, semiconductors, the internet, genetic sequencing, broadband, satellite communications, and nuclear power.

“Yet in the case of climate change the main focus has been on incentives for the private sector: carbon prices, feed-in tariffs, and regulatory standards.

“These are of course essential and must remain central to the climate change agenda for many decades. But publicly funded RD&D (research, development and demonstration) is also vital.”

And the authors conclude on an upbeat note: “By harnessing the power of the sun and wind in time, we have a good chance of preserving life on earth as we know it. Unlike fossil fuel, they produce no pollution, and no miners get killed. Unlike nuclear fission, they produce no radioactive waste.

“We are talking about a crisis more serious than most major wars. This is the biggest scientific challenge of the 21st century. Let us show we have the collective intelligence to understand and overcome the danger that faces us.”

More information: the Global Apollo Programme.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

The recent unveiling by Tesla founder Elon Musk of the low-cost Powerwall storage battery is the latest in a series of exciting advances in battery technologies for electric cars and domestic electricity generation.

We have also seen the development of an aluminium-ion battery that may be safer, lighter and cheaper than the lithium-ion batteries used by Tesla and most other auto and technology companies.

These advances are exciting for two main reasons. First, the cost of energy storage, in the form of batteries, is decreasing significantly. This makes electric vehicle ownership and home energy storage much more attainable.

The second, related reason is that these cheaper green technologies may make the transition to a greener economy easier and faster than we have so far imagined (although, as has been recently pointed out on The Conversation, these technologies are only one piece of the overall energy puzzle).

Beware the industrial option

These technological advances, and much of the excitement around them, lend themselves to the idea that solving environmental problems such as climate change is primarily a case of technological adjustment.

But this approach encourages a strategy of ‘superindustrialisation’, in which technology and industry are brought to bear to resolve climate change, through resource efficiency, waste reduction and pollution control. In this context, the green economy is presented as an inevitable green technological economic wave.

But the prospect of this green economic wave needs to be considered within a wider environmental and social context, which makes solving the problems much more complex. Let’s take electric vehicles as an example.

The ecological damage of cars, electric or otherwise, is partly due to the fact that the car industry generates more than 3 million tonnes of scrap and waste every year. In 2009, 14 million cars were scrapped in the United States alone.

The number of cars operating in the world is expected to climb from the current 896 million to 1.2 billion by 2020. The infrastructure associated with growing vehicle use, particularly roads, also makes a significant contribution to the destruction of ecosystems and arguably has important social costs.

Are electric vehicles ‘better enough’?

Electric vehicles (EVs) offer a substantial greenhouse gas emission improvement from the internal combustion engine. However, this improvement depends on green electricity production.

An EV powered by average European electricity production is likely to reduce a vehicle’s global warming potential by about 20% over its life cycle. This is not insignificant, but it is nowhere near a zero-emission option.

In large part, the life-cycle emissions of an electric vehicle are due to the energy-intensive nature of battery production and the associated mining processes. Indeed, there are questions around battery production and resource depletion, but perhaps more concerning is the impact that mining lithium and other materials for the growing battery economy, such as graphite, will have on the health of workers and communities involved in this global production network.

Processes associated with lithium batteries may produce adverse respiratory, pulmonary and neurological health impacts. Pollution from graphite mining in China has resulted in reports of ‘graphite rain’, which is significantly impacting local air and water quality.

The production of green technologies creates many interesting contradictions between environmental benefits at the point of use, versus human and environmental costs at the production end.

Baoding, a Chinese city southwest of Beijing, has been labelled the greenest city in the world or the world’s only carbon-positive city. This is because Boading produces enormous quantities of wind turbines and solar cells for the United States and Europe, and has about 170 alternative energy companies based there.

But last year the air in the city of Baoding was declared to be the most polluted in China – a country where air quality reportedly contributes to 1.2 million deaths each year. These impacts need to be placed into any discussion or policy frameworks when exploring the shift to a ‘greener’ future.

Beware new problems from new solutions

We should be excited about the shift to greener cars and affordable home electricity storage units, but in the process of starting to solve the technological challenges of climate change we must ensure that we are not creating environmental problems, particularly for the largely unseen workers and communities further up the production stream.

Our response to climate change needs to be more than just a technological adjustment. We argue that the shift to a green economy requires more transformative social political actions via skills and training, worker participation, and the coming together of environmental organisations, unions, business and government.

Indeed, the world of work is a critical site for emission reductions: 80% of Europe’s carbon emissions are workplace-related.

As we adopt emerging greener technologies, we will have to look beyond our shiny new Powerwall, or the electric car parked on the front drive, to ensure that the environmental and social changes promised by green technologies are not just illusions.

Caleb Goods is Postdoctoral research fellow at York University, Canada.

Carla Lipsig-Mumme is Professor of Work and Labour Studies at York University, Canada.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

In his recent book ‘Altered Genes,Twisted Truths‘, US public interest attorney Steven Druker exposes the fraudulent practices and deceptions that led to the commercialisation of GM food and crops in the US.

Not long after the book’s release, he wrote an open letter to the Royal Society in Britain calling on it to acknowledge and correct the misleading and exaggerated statements that is has used to actively promote GMOs and in effect convey false impressions.

Druker cited specific instances where members of The Royal Society have at various times made false statements and the Society’s actions were not objective or based on scientific reasoning but seemingly were little more than biased and stridently pro-GMO.

He argued that The Royal Society has misrepresented the case for GMOs and has effectively engaged in a campaign of disinformation.

Impartial scientific institute? Or all-out lobbyist for GMOs?

The Royal Society acts as a scientific advisor to the British government. It is a self-governing fellowship of many of the world’s most distinguished scientists drawn from all areas of science, engineering, and medicine.

The Society disseminates scientific advances through its journals. It also promotes science information and communication with the public. The Royal Society is a prestigious institution that feeds into policy formulation processes at national level in the UK. The Royal Society counts. It is a very big deal.

By the mid-1990’s, Druker notes that The Royal Society had become a partisan defender of GM foods and embraced a proactive policy on their behalf.

In pursuing this proactive policy, he argues that several individuals holding prominent positions within the Society – and even the Society itself – have issued misleading statements in regard to GM foods that have created significant confusion and illegitimately downplayed their risks.

He then goes on to document specific instances of occasions when this occurred. Certain claims made in favour of GMOs were not supported by solid scientific evidence, neither did they clearly represent a consensus within the scientific community.

A monstrous attack – Dr. Arpad Pusztai

However, Druker notes that the Society’s most deplorable actions in defence of GM foods were directed at the research on GM potatoes conducted at the Rowett Institute under the direction of Dr. Arpad Pusztai.

That research study is still one of the most rigorous yet performed on a GM food. It continues to be highly relevant because it controlled for the effects of the new foreign protein – which entails that the adverse results it registered were attributable to a broader feature of the genetic engineering process itself.

Druker then goes on to present seven specific instances of the Society’s offences against that particular piece of research, including what could be described as a PR campaign mounted against Pusztai and his study.

Even the editor of the respected journal The Lancet published an editorial rebuking the Society for a “gesture of breath-taking impertinence to the Rowett Institute scientists”.

Druker states that having unfairly attacked the research, the Society then strove to prevent it from being published. Even after the research was published (in The Lancet in October 1999), the Society continued to unjustly malign it.

But would they admit the truth?

In an open letter sent in early March, he called on the Society to clear up the confusion caused by the misleading statements it has made to promote GM food and issue a formal statement acknowledging the following:

A. That there is not now nor never has been a consensus within the scientific community that GM foods are safe, that many well-credentialed experts do not regard their safety as having been established, and that a substantial number think that the research as a whole casts the safety of many of them in doubt.

B. That neither you nor any other scientific body has directly confronted and refuted the cautionary reasoning in the 2001 report issued by the Royal Society of Canada (which it has never retracted or revised) – and that this report stands as one of the compelling testaments that there is not a scientific consensus that GM foods are safe.

C. That the process of creating new varieties of food crops via genetic engineering is not more precise and predictable than conventional breeding in regard to food safety and instead entails a greater likelihood of unintended effects that could directly impact consumer health.

D. That although there are known instances in which genetic engineering has induced the production of a novel toxin or allergen, there are none in which conventional breeding has done so.

E. That Dr. Pusztai’s research was properly peer-reviewed and gained publication in The Lancet based on its merits, with five out of six referees voting in favor – and that, contrary to claims that the Society and other proponents of GM foods have advanced, the research has never been refuted or in any way discredited by subsequent studies – which entails that it is still relevant today.

F. Your statement should also contain a formal apology to Dr. Pusztai and his colleagues for the irresponsible manner in which the Society and several of its members have besmirched their reputations and derided the integrity of their research.

Druker continued by stating:

“Unless you promptly take these steps, it will demonstrate that your commitment to promoting GM foods is stronger than your commitment to honoring the truth and upholding the integrity of science.”

According to Druker, it is time The Royal Society confronted the facts about GM foods and set the record straight. He also challenged it to find factual or logical inaccuracies in his book:

“I challenge you to read my book and specifically list any inaccurate statements of fact that you find in it, accompanied by an explanation of why the statement is erroneous and a reference to the evidence that corroborates your assertion.”

And he finished his letter by stating: “If you have not done so by 20 April 2015, the world will have a right to assume that it [his book] is as sound as the experts who reviewed it have affirmed – and that GM foods are therefore unacceptably risky and must be banned.”

Royal Society maintains its ‘right to silence’

It is now three months since Steven Druker addressed the Royal Society in his open letter and 44 days since 20 April. There appears to have been no response from The Royal Society – and certainly not a public one.

The Royal Society is the preeminent scientific body within the UK that advises the government. It therefore has an obligation to the British public to provide a public response and ‘put the record straight’ on GMOs – not least because the current staunchly pro-GMO Cameron-led administration will likely sanction the planting of GM crops in England within the next couple of years, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal could open the floodgates to GM foods appearing on the shelves of UK supermarkets.

The purpose of The Royal Society is according to its website to “recognise, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.”

The Royal Society’s record on GMOs has been shameful – though as a prominent public body in the UK, it is certainly not alone in this respect. Given what is at stake, its silence towards the issues raised by Steven Druker is little better.

This article was originally published on Colin Todhunter’s website.

An ambitious ‘Apollo’ plan to make wind and solar power cheaper in every country in the world than electricity generated from coal, launched today, is already on the agenda for next week’s meeting of the G7 in Germany.

“Carbon-free energy must rapidly become less costly to produce than energy based on coal, gas and oil”, according to the Global Apollo Programme. “This requires a major scientific and technological programme of research, using the best minds in the world and the best science.”

The target is to ensure that “new-build base-load energy from renewable sources becomes cheaper than new-build coal in sunny parts of the world by 2020, and worldwide from 2025.”

All countries will be invited to join Apollo, and in doing so will commit to “devote at least 0.02% of GDP to public expenditure on the Programme over a 10-year period” from 2016 to 2015 in order to raise an estimated $150 billion.

The main foci of research are to be wind and solar power generation, electricity storage, and the ‘smart grid’ – a power grid engineered to accommodate many small distributed generators, and featuring ‘dynamic demand’ that responds to the amount of power that’s available moment by moment.

Apollo’s aims reflect the agreement by world governments to limit the world’s rise in temperature to 2C from the pre-industrial era, in order to avoid irreparable damage to the global climate system.

“This means an absolute limit on the total accumulated CO2 that can be produced”, states Apollo. “On present trends that limit will be breached by 2035. So we must urgently reduce our annual output of CO₂.”

Will Apollo gain traction?

The timing of Apollo’s launch is certainly impeccable. As well as feeding directly into next week’s G7 meeting, it also comes just as climate negotiators meet in Bonn to prepare the way for the substantive UN climate talks in Paris this December.

“We urge the Heads of Government to agree on a Global Apollo Programme by the Paris meeting in 2015”, Apollo states. “The Programme should begin immediately after that.”

Regardless of how committed national governments are – or are not – to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, none wish to be branded as ‘climate villains’ at the Paris talks, and all wish to appear to be making efforts in the direction of reducing emissions. Signing up to Apollo is clearly one way of doing this – while making no commitment to reduce their use of fossil fuels.

What is also going to help the Apollo gain acceptance is that it’s the brainchild of a highly influential (and richly titled) group of scientists, economists and businessmen at the heart of the British establishment.

They are Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser; the LSE’s Lord Richard Layard; Lord Gus O’Donnell, the former Cabinet Secretary; The Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees; Lord Adair Turner, Former Chairman of the Financial Services Authority and the Committee on Climate Change; Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Report on climate change; and Lord John Browne, the former CEO of BP, who attempted to relaunch the company as ‘Beyond Petroleum’.

So when they say that “Over the last year the Programme has been privately discussed with Governments worldwide and has been widely welcomed … it is hoped that by the end of the year the major countries of the world will have decided to join”, they have to be taken seriously.

And when they state “it is hoped that the management of the Programme will be co-located with the International Energy Agency in Paris, but the Programme will include many countries that are not members of the IEA”, you can be sure that it’s already a done deal.

Still, a mountain to climb

But huge changes will be needed to bring the Apollo vision to reality, for example with the scale of investment into renewable energy. “We are talking about the greatest material challenge facing humankind”, the launch document states.

“Yet the share of global publicly-funded RD&D going on renewable energy worldwide is under 2%. Remarkably the share of all energy research in total publicly-funded R&D expenditure has fallen from 11% in the early 1980s to 4% today. This is a shocking failure …

“Public expenditure on R&D to reduce the cost of renewables has been minimal – some $6 billion. This cannot be a sensible balance of support. In Europe the position is similar to elsewhere: the ratio of public R&D to public subsidies for the supply of existing renewables has been roughly 1:30.

“At the same time, fossil fuel is getting a subsidy of at least $544 billion worldwide – making climate change worse, not better.”

So far investment in renewable energy technology has been left almost entirely to the private sector, Apollo points out. However this approach is at odds with other major technological advances that have taken place in modern times:

“Most of the main technological advances of the last hundred years have derived from publicly funded R&D – the computer, semiconductors, the internet, genetic sequencing, broadband, satellite communications, and nuclear power.

“Yet in the case of climate change the main focus has been on incentives for the private sector: carbon prices, feed-in tariffs, and regulatory standards.

“These are of course essential and must remain central to the climate change agenda for many decades. But publicly funded RD&D (research, development and demonstration) is also vital.”

And the authors conclude on an upbeat note: “By harnessing the power of the sun and wind in time, we have a good chance of preserving life on earth as we know it. Unlike fossil fuel, they produce no pollution, and no miners get killed. Unlike nuclear fission, they produce no radioactive waste.

“We are talking about a crisis more serious than most major wars. This is the biggest scientific challenge of the 21st century. Let us show we have the collective intelligence to understand and overcome the danger that faces us.”

More information: the Global Apollo Programme.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

An ambitious ‘Apollo’ plan to make wind and solar power cheaper in every country in the world than electricity generated from coal, launched today, is already on the agenda for next week’s meeting of the G7 in Germany.

“Carbon-free energy must rapidly become less costly to produce than energy based on coal, gas and oil”, according to the Global Apollo Programme. “This requires a major scientific and technological programme of research, using the best minds in the world and the best science.”

The target is to ensure that “new-build base-load energy from renewable sources becomes cheaper than new-build coal in sunny parts of the world by 2020, and worldwide from 2025.”

All countries will be invited to join Apollo, and in doing so will commit to “devote at least 0.02% of GDP to public expenditure on the Programme over a 10-year period” from 2016 to 2015 in order to raise an estimated $150 billion.

The main foci of research are to be wind and solar power generation, electricity storage, and the ‘smart grid’ – a power grid engineered to accommodate many small distributed generators, and featuring ‘dynamic demand’ that responds to the amount of power that’s available moment by moment.

Apollo’s aims reflect the agreement by world governments to limit the world’s rise in temperature to 2C from the pre-industrial era, in order to avoid irreparable damage to the global climate system.

“This means an absolute limit on the total accumulated CO2 that can be produced”, states Apollo. “On present trends that limit will be breached by 2035. So we must urgently reduce our annual output of CO₂.”

Will Apollo gain traction?

The timing of Apollo’s launch is certainly impeccable. As well as feeding directly into next week’s G7 meeting, it also comes just as climate negotiators meet in Bonn to prepare the way for the substantive UN climate talks in Paris this December.

“We urge the Heads of Government to agree on a Global Apollo Programme by the Paris meeting in 2015”, Apollo states. “The Programme should begin immediately after that.”

Regardless of how committed national governments are – or are not – to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, none wish to be branded as ‘climate villains’ at the Paris talks, and all wish to appear to be making efforts in the direction of reducing emissions. Signing up to Apollo is clearly one way of doing this – while making no commitment to reduce their use of fossil fuels.

What is also going to help the Apollo gain acceptance is that it’s the brainchild of a highly influential (and richly titled) group of scientists, economists and businessmen at the heart of the British establishment.

They are Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser; the LSE’s Lord Richard Layard; Lord Gus O’Donnell, the former Cabinet Secretary; The Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees; Lord Adair Turner, Former Chairman of the Financial Services Authority and the Committee on Climate Change; Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Report on climate change; and Lord John Browne, the former CEO of BP, who attempted to relaunch the company as ‘Beyond Petroleum’.

So when they say that “Over the last year the Programme has been privately discussed with Governments worldwide and has been widely welcomed … it is hoped that by the end of the year the major countries of the world will have decided to join”, they have to be taken seriously.

And when they state “it is hoped that the management of the Programme will be co-located with the International Energy Agency in Paris, but the Programme will include many countries that are not members of the IEA”, you can be sure that it’s already a done deal.

Still, a mountain to climb

But huge changes will be needed to bring the Apollo vision to reality, for example with the scale of investment into renewable energy. “We are talking about the greatest material challenge facing humankind”, the launch document states.

“Yet the share of global publicly-funded RD&D going on renewable energy worldwide is under 2%. Remarkably the share of all energy research in total publicly-funded R&D expenditure has fallen from 11% in the early 1980s to 4% today. This is a shocking failure …

“Public expenditure on R&D to reduce the cost of renewables has been minimal – some $6 billion. This cannot be a sensible balance of support. In Europe the position is similar to elsewhere: the ratio of public R&D to public subsidies for the supply of existing renewables has been roughly 1:30.

“At the same time, fossil fuel is getting a subsidy of at least $544 billion worldwide – making climate change worse, not better.”

So far investment in renewable energy technology has been left almost entirely to the private sector, Apollo points out. However this approach is at odds with other major technological advances that have taken place in modern times:

“Most of the main technological advances of the last hundred years have derived from publicly funded R&D – the computer, semiconductors, the internet, genetic sequencing, broadband, satellite communications, and nuclear power.

“Yet in the case of climate change the main focus has been on incentives for the private sector: carbon prices, feed-in tariffs, and regulatory standards.

“These are of course essential and must remain central to the climate change agenda for many decades. But publicly funded RD&D (research, development and demonstration) is also vital.”

And the authors conclude on an upbeat note: “By harnessing the power of the sun and wind in time, we have a good chance of preserving life on earth as we know it. Unlike fossil fuel, they produce no pollution, and no miners get killed. Unlike nuclear fission, they produce no radioactive waste.

“We are talking about a crisis more serious than most major wars. This is the biggest scientific challenge of the 21st century. Let us show we have the collective intelligence to understand and overcome the danger that faces us.”

More information: the Global Apollo Programme.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

An ambitious ‘Apollo’ plan to make wind and solar power cheaper in every country in the world than electricity generated from coal, launched today, is already on the agenda for next week’s meeting of the G7 in Germany.

“Carbon-free energy must rapidly become less costly to produce than energy based on coal, gas and oil”, according to the Global Apollo Programme. “This requires a major scientific and technological programme of research, using the best minds in the world and the best science.”

The target is to ensure that “new-build base-load energy from renewable sources becomes cheaper than new-build coal in sunny parts of the world by 2020, and worldwide from 2025.”

All countries will be invited to join Apollo, and in doing so will commit to “devote at least 0.02% of GDP to public expenditure on the Programme over a 10-year period” from 2016 to 2015 in order to raise an estimated $150 billion.

The main foci of research are to be wind and solar power generation, electricity storage, and the ‘smart grid’ – a power grid engineered to accommodate many small distributed generators, and featuring ‘dynamic demand’ that responds to the amount of power that’s available moment by moment.

Apollo’s aims reflect the agreement by world governments to limit the world’s rise in temperature to 2C from the pre-industrial era, in order to avoid irreparable damage to the global climate system.

“This means an absolute limit on the total accumulated CO2 that can be produced”, states Apollo. “On present trends that limit will be breached by 2035. So we must urgently reduce our annual output of CO₂.”

Will Apollo gain traction?

The timing of Apollo’s launch is certainly impeccable. As well as feeding directly into next week’s G7 meeting, it also comes just as climate negotiators meet in Bonn to prepare the way for the substantive UN climate talks in Paris this December.

“We urge the Heads of Government to agree on a Global Apollo Programme by the Paris meeting in 2015”, Apollo states. “The Programme should begin immediately after that.”

Regardless of how committed national governments are – or are not – to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, none wish to be branded as ‘climate villains’ at the Paris talks, and all wish to appear to be making efforts in the direction of reducing emissions. Signing up to Apollo is clearly one way of doing this – while making no commitment to reduce their use of fossil fuels.

What is also going to help the Apollo gain acceptance is that it’s the brainchild of a highly influential (and richly titled) group of scientists, economists and businessmen at the heart of the British establishment.

They are Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser; the LSE’s Lord Richard Layard; Lord Gus O’Donnell, the former Cabinet Secretary; The Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees; Lord Adair Turner, Former Chairman of the Financial Services Authority and the Committee on Climate Change; Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Report on climate change; and Lord John Browne, the former CEO of BP, who attempted to relaunch the company as ‘Beyond Petroleum’.

So when they say that “Over the last year the Programme has been privately discussed with Governments worldwide and has been widely welcomed … it is hoped that by the end of the year the major countries of the world will have decided to join”, they have to be taken seriously.

And when they state “it is hoped that the management of the Programme will be co-located with the International Energy Agency in Paris, but the Programme will include many countries that are not members of the IEA”, you can be sure that it’s already a done deal.

Still, a mountain to climb

But huge changes will be needed to bring the Apollo vision to reality, for example with the scale of investment into renewable energy. “We are talking about the greatest material challenge facing humankind”, the launch document states.

“Yet the share of global publicly-funded RD&D going on renewable energy worldwide is under 2%. Remarkably the share of all energy research in total publicly-funded R&D expenditure has fallen from 11% in the early 1980s to 4% today. This is a shocking failure …

“Public expenditure on R&D to reduce the cost of renewables has been minimal – some $6 billion. This cannot be a sensible balance of support. In Europe the position is similar to elsewhere: the ratio of public R&D to public subsidies for the supply of existing renewables has been roughly 1:30.

“At the same time, fossil fuel is getting a subsidy of at least $544 billion worldwide – making climate change worse, not better.”

So far investment in renewable energy technology has been left almost entirely to the private sector, Apollo points out. However this approach is at odds with other major technological advances that have taken place in modern times:

“Most of the main technological advances of the last hundred years have derived from publicly funded R&D – the computer, semiconductors, the internet, genetic sequencing, broadband, satellite communications, and nuclear power.

“Yet in the case of climate change the main focus has been on incentives for the private sector: carbon prices, feed-in tariffs, and regulatory standards.

“These are of course essential and must remain central to the climate change agenda for many decades. But publicly funded RD&D (research, development and demonstration) is also vital.”

And the authors conclude on an upbeat note: “By harnessing the power of the sun and wind in time, we have a good chance of preserving life on earth as we know it. Unlike fossil fuel, they produce no pollution, and no miners get killed. Unlike nuclear fission, they produce no radioactive waste.

“We are talking about a crisis more serious than most major wars. This is the biggest scientific challenge of the 21st century. Let us show we have the collective intelligence to understand and overcome the danger that faces us.”

More information: the Global Apollo Programme.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

An ambitious ‘Apollo’ plan to make wind and solar power cheaper in every country in the world than electricity generated from coal, launched today, is already on the agenda for next week’s meeting of the G7 in Germany.

“Carbon-free energy must rapidly become less costly to produce than energy based on coal, gas and oil”, according to the Global Apollo Programme. “This requires a major scientific and technological programme of research, using the best minds in the world and the best science.”

The target is to ensure that “new-build base-load energy from renewable sources becomes cheaper than new-build coal in sunny parts of the world by 2020, and worldwide from 2025.”

All countries will be invited to join Apollo, and in doing so will commit to “devote at least 0.02% of GDP to public expenditure on the Programme over a 10-year period” from 2016 to 2015 in order to raise an estimated $150 billion.

The main foci of research are to be wind and solar power generation, electricity storage, and the ‘smart grid’ – a power grid engineered to accommodate many small distributed generators, and featuring ‘dynamic demand’ that responds to the amount of power that’s available moment by moment.

Apollo’s aims reflect the agreement by world governments to limit the world’s rise in temperature to 2C from the pre-industrial era, in order to avoid irreparable damage to the global climate system.

“This means an absolute limit on the total accumulated CO2 that can be produced”, states Apollo. “On present trends that limit will be breached by 2035. So we must urgently reduce our annual output of CO₂.”

Will Apollo gain traction?

The timing of Apollo’s launch is certainly impeccable. As well as feeding directly into next week’s G7 meeting, it also comes just as climate negotiators meet in Bonn to prepare the way for the substantive UN climate talks in Paris this December.

“We urge the Heads of Government to agree on a Global Apollo Programme by the Paris meeting in 2015”, Apollo states. “The Programme should begin immediately after that.”

Regardless of how committed national governments are – or are not – to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, none wish to be branded as ‘climate villains’ at the Paris talks, and all wish to appear to be making efforts in the direction of reducing emissions. Signing up to Apollo is clearly one way of doing this – while making no commitment to reduce their use of fossil fuels.

What is also going to help the Apollo gain acceptance is that it’s the brainchild of a highly influential (and richly titled) group of scientists, economists and businessmen at the heart of the British establishment.

They are Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser; the LSE’s Lord Richard Layard; Lord Gus O’Donnell, the former Cabinet Secretary; The Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees; Lord Adair Turner, Former Chairman of the Financial Services Authority and the Committee on Climate Change; Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Report on climate change; and Lord John Browne, the former CEO of BP, who attempted to relaunch the company as ‘Beyond Petroleum’.

So when they say that “Over the last year the Programme has been privately discussed with Governments worldwide and has been widely welcomed … it is hoped that by the end of the year the major countries of the world will have decided to join”, they have to be taken seriously.

And when they state “it is hoped that the management of the Programme will be co-located with the International Energy Agency in Paris, but the Programme will include many countries that are not members of the IEA”, you can be sure that it’s already a done deal.

Still, a mountain to climb

But huge changes will be needed to bring the Apollo vision to reality, for example with the scale of investment into renewable energy. “We are talking about the greatest material challenge facing humankind”, the launch document states.

“Yet the share of global publicly-funded RD&D going on renewable energy worldwide is under 2%. Remarkably the share of all energy research in total publicly-funded R&D expenditure has fallen from 11% in the early 1980s to 4% today. This is a shocking failure …

“Public expenditure on R&D to reduce the cost of renewables has been minimal – some $6 billion. This cannot be a sensible balance of support. In Europe the position is similar to elsewhere: the ratio of public R&D to public subsidies for the supply of existing renewables has been roughly 1:30.

“At the same time, fossil fuel is getting a subsidy of at least $544 billion worldwide – making climate change worse, not better.”

So far investment in renewable energy technology has been left almost entirely to the private sector, Apollo points out. However this approach is at odds with other major technological advances that have taken place in modern times:

“Most of the main technological advances of the last hundred years have derived from publicly funded R&D – the computer, semiconductors, the internet, genetic sequencing, broadband, satellite communications, and nuclear power.

“Yet in the case of climate change the main focus has been on incentives for the private sector: carbon prices, feed-in tariffs, and regulatory standards.

“These are of course essential and must remain central to the climate change agenda for many decades. But publicly funded RD&D (research, development and demonstration) is also vital.”

And the authors conclude on an upbeat note: “By harnessing the power of the sun and wind in time, we have a good chance of preserving life on earth as we know it. Unlike fossil fuel, they produce no pollution, and no miners get killed. Unlike nuclear fission, they produce no radioactive waste.

“We are talking about a crisis more serious than most major wars. This is the biggest scientific challenge of the 21st century. Let us show we have the collective intelligence to understand and overcome the danger that faces us.”

More information: the Global Apollo Programme.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.