Environment news, comment and analysis from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

Prime minister writes to 100 Conservative backbenchers who complained about wind farm subsidies and planning rules

• Norman Baker: We must capitalise on a low-carbon future

The prime minister has mounted a strong defence of the government's plans to build huge wind farms around the country in the face of strong opposition from his own members of parliament.

David Cameron has written to more than 100 of his own backbenchers who published an open letter to the PM asking for subsidies for "inefficient" on-shore wind power to be slashed, and complaining about planning policies putting national energy policies ahead of local objections.

In his reply, addressed to Chris Heaton-Harris, the Tory MP who organised the original letter, Cameron says he has sympathy with local residents' concerns, but insists there are "perfectly hard-headed reasons" for building more on-shore wind farms – regardless of the UK's commitments to meet targets for renewable energy and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

"On-shore wind plays a role in a balanced UK electricity mix, alongside gas, nuclear, cleaner coal and other forms of renewable energy," said the prime minister. "A portfolio of different supplies enhances energy security and prevents the UK from becoming over-reliant on gas imports."

In a nod to the growing pressure on the government to do more to stimulate the economy and in particular meet ambitious promises to create thousands more "green jobs", Cameron added: "I am also determined that we seize the economic opportunities in renewable energy supply chains as the global race for capital in low-carbon sectors intensifies."

The PM also repeated the government's existing policy of cutting subsidies to on-shore wind by 10% in the near future in recognition that the building cost had fallen.

The letter will offer some reassurance to the renewable energy industry, but is likely to disappoint MPs who signed the original letter, including some senior party figures such as the former party chairman and leadership challenger David Davis, and Nicholas Soames.

In return Heaton-Harris, who believes he has enough cross-party support – including at least 10 Labour MPs – to form an all-party group to keep the issue alive, said they would request a meeting with the PM to press for further concessions.

"I obviously didn't expect the prime minister to just say: 'OK, you are right,' and change policy in this area and I am pleased he understands the massive concern that local residents have about these plans," Heaton-Harris told the Guardian.

"However, those who signed the letter would like to see a cut in subsidy to on-shore wind greater than the 10% proposed, and hope that our suggested amendments to the national planning policy framework are taken on board. We are also concerned at how the cost of this type of renewable energy is adding to fuel poverty."

The prime minister's letter also said that new government planning laws were intended to give residents more say in combating unpopular planning proposals in their areas, while the Department of Energy and Climate Change has put forward a scheme under which local communities could take a financial stake in new renewable energy and claim some of the profits.

Some are beginning to argue that the environment is a luxury we can't afford. They couldn't be more wrong

David Cameron this week strongly defended onshore wind power, saying that he is determined to seize the economic opportunities in renewable energy supply chains, a position I strongly support.

Last year I launched a white paper on local transport, Creating Growth, Cutting Carbon. As far as I am concerned, they are two sides of the same coin. Yet with increasing concerns about the prospects for the economy, not least with the chill winds blowing from the Eurozone, some are now beginning to argue that the environment is a luxury we can't afford. They couldn't be more wrong.

The way to grow jobs is not by propping up the past, but by investing in the future. At the Department for Transport, we have made it clear that we need to do all we can to decarbonise road transport. Our firm commitment to low-carbon vehicles is beginning to pay off, not simply in lower carbon emissions but in terms of investment in jobs for the future. We will shortly see manufacture of the new electric Nissan Leaf begin in Sunderland, safeguarding 360 jobs and creating 200 more with the production of the new lithium ion battery.

Our ambitious investment in rail, particularly in electrification, is creating jobs today and cutting carbon tomorrow. Our Green Bus Fund, now in its third round, is not just cleaning up our buses, but proving a real boon for British bus manufacturers, both in terms of domestic supply and export potential. And our record spend on local sustainable transport is cleaning up our cities and boosting their economies.

So embracing green is good for jobs. The environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, hit the nail on the head at a Rio+20 Earth summit event recently, when she said: "Being green is integral to sustainable economic growth."

The simple fact is that while much of the economy is struggling, there is a growing demand for green products. Private companies invested £2.5bn in renewable energy projects in the seven months from last April, with 11,619 new jobs being created, often in areas of higher unemployment such as the north-east, an area which has also enthusiastically embraced the move to electric vehicles.

Overall, Britain has the world's sixth largest low-carbon and environmental goods sector, employing over 900,000 people and growing by 4% a year. As a government we are determined to build on this using the British genius for invention and innovation to capitalise on the low-carbon future the world is embracing.

One reason why investment levels have been buoyant in green areas is because industry understands that we have to do things differently in the future. To take just one example, the growth of the emerging economies, particularly China, has led to a real terms increase in commodity prices of 147% over the past decade. If we want to prosper tomorrow, we cannot simply pull away at yesterday's levers. We need new answers, and ideally ones which are free from price fluctuation or the whims of unstable regimes. And that means reducing our dependency on oil for transport and energy. The result: more energy security, more UK-based jobs, less carbon.

But we also need to ensure that the decisions that individual departments like Transport take are properly joined up across government. We have set ourselves a tough challenge: to be the greenest government ever. It is a challenge that we in government are determined to meet, working across government departments rather than pigeon-holing the environment in only one or two departments of government. Safeguarding our environment has to be a cross-government purpose as important to the Business Department, the Treasury or Communities and local government as it is to Defra or Decc.

Governments can of course only do so much, but one key way to make a difference is to set a clear direction of travel and stick to it. So another reason why green investment has been buoyant is because of the clear buy-in by all three major political parties that tackling climate change is an essential, not just for environmental reasons, but economic ones too. If anyone doubted that, the game-changing Stern report, emanating from the heart of the City, made it very clear that the price of doing nothing was greater than the price of taking action.

That is why creating growth and cutting carbon are twin objectives that we are determined to remain focussed on in government so that we can deliver both a stronger economy and a safer world.

Caroline Spelman says genetically modified drought-resistant crops will be considered as a way of ensuring food security

Drought may be the new norm for the UK, with drastic measures including growing genetically modified crops likely to be considered as part of the solution, the environment secretary has said.

With large parts of the south and south-east of England officially in drought, and areas of the Midlands at risk, Caroline Spelman warned that households across the south-east were likely to face water usage restrictions this spring, starting with hosepipe bans. Reservoirs have reached record lows in some places and rainfall would need to be more than a fifth higher than normal in the next three months to relieve the drought, but forecasters have said this is unlikely.

"Two very dry winters – this may be the new norm," the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs told the National Union of Farmers annual conference on Tuesday. "We asked the question at the drought summit [on Monday] – what if this is what climate change means and this is the new normal?"

She said the UK had to look at how to make plants resistant to drought, pointing to an Australian project to develop drought-resistant genetically modified rice. "This technology, if used responsibly, may be one of the tools in terms of food security that we need going forward."

She predicted GM rice would be an important crop in areas where rice was a staple food, but made it clear that similarly modified crops should be considered for the UK. "It could be one of the tools in the tool kit to help us with food security. The key thing is to keep investing in the science base."

The union president, Peter Kendall, said it was "desperately worrying" that genetically modified crops were not being developed in Europe at the same rate as in China, the US and other countries.

Spelman warned that households would bear the brunt of water restrictions this year, as the drought has worsened. Last year, the government and water companies focused on reducing the water use of businesses and farmers, some of whom had their licences to draw water from rivers and underground sources changed or revoked.

Despite drought being declared across large areas last year, there were no hosepipe bans. But Spelman said this was unlikely to last this year. She insisted households should take more responsibility for saving water: "What came out of the drought summit was how much it's about individuals making decisions."

She said the most important counter-drought measure for the whole country was to capture the rain and store it, and pledged that changes to the planning system would make it easier to build reservoirs.

Farmers were changing some of their cropping patterns this year to cope with the expected drier conditions. But this would not stop food prices rising, Kendall warned. "As sure as night follows day, if it doesn't rain, food is going to cost more money."

He said farmers had recently lost a tax break on building reservoirs for their own use, making it more expensive to store water on farms and causing more farmers to rely on shared public water sources.

Spelman said drought was the biggest issue for the water industry for the next 20 years, and used the term "new norm" five times to describe current conditions, underling the depth of her concern.

The conference also heard that the government is to accept 159 of about 215 recommendations made by a farming deregulation taskforce, with most of the others only rejected because they were outside Defra's remit.

Chief among the changes will be fewer inspections in order to cut duplication, and measures to ensure they do not need to file the same information to the government more than once.

Spelman said less regulation would not mean weaker regulation. "The government's red tape challenge is to lighten the burden of regulation without compromising the integrity – [there will be] no loss of environmental protection or animal welfare."

But the environmental group WWF warned that current farming subsidies under the EU's common agricultural policy (CAP) risked encouraging the destruction of the environment, and applauded moves to ensure farmers had to undertake certain environmental measures in order to receive subsidies.

"Nobody wants to see farmers tied up in red tape, but equally it's wrong to see greening measures in CAP reform as a threat. It's essential that direct payments [to farmers] are linked to environmental improvements," said Mark Driscoll of WWF.

Some farmers are concerned that reforms to the CAP being proposed by Brussels to tie environmental protection more closely to subsidies could actually mean worse environmental protection in the UK. That is because some farmers have taken a lead in implementing measures such as preserving field margins, woodlands and permanent pasture, but under the proposals some measures already taken might not receive full credit.

One issue scarcely mentioned inside the Birmingham conference hall, but the focus of a vociferous protest outside was badgers, which are blamed by farmers for helping to spread tuberculosis to cattle.

The union and the government are united in favour of the badger-culling trial that involves shooting a proportion of badgers in some of the worst-hit areas, with the marksmen paid by groups of farmers. Spelman said shooting was a good control method for wild animals, citing rabbits, foxes and deer as examples of other species culled with guns.

A group of at least 30 demonstrators, many wearing badger costumes or holding badger toys, shouted "shame on you, NFU" for its stance, and called for the culling trials to be halted.

Mippy Valentine, one of the protestors, told the Guardian: "It's just poor practice, and it doesn't even work. The badgers are not to blame [for bovine TB] – look at the Isle of Man, where they have TB but no badgers."

Court denies freedom of information request for charity body to name seed funder of GWPF chaired by Lord Lawson

The climate sceptic thinktank chaired by former chancellor Lord Lawson, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has been ruled not "influential" enough to warrant making the Charity Commission disclose its seed funder, an information rights tribunal ruled on Tuesday.

The verdict followed a freedom of information request to identify the individual or organisation that gave the GWPF £50,000 when it was launched in 2009 to lobby against action on global warming, just days before a major climate change summit in Copenhagen attended by world leaders including Barack Obama.

The GWPF's claim that it had significant influence over policymakers, said the judge, was "rather surprising" given its status as an educational charity. She added that the "claim [is] unsupported by evidence of actual influence" and, regardless, it is a matter for the Charity Commission to investigate, not the tribunal.

The freedom of information request for the funding information had been pursued by Brendan Montague, an investigative journalist and director of the Request Initiative. He was seeking to appeal an earlier ruling by the information commissioner's office that had judged that there was no public interest in ending the secrecy around the financing of Lawson's educational charity.

Montague had learned via a separate freedom of information request that the Charity Commission has in its possession a bank statement which reveals the name of GWPF's seed donor. The only other clue released as to the donor's identity was that it was a "well-known" person of "considerable personal wealth".

Judge Alison McKenna said in her ruling: "We are not satisfied that the charity is so influential as to make the disclosure of its financial affairs a matter of legitimate public interest outweighing the privacy rights of the data subject."

Judge McKenna, who used to work as a legal advisor for the Charity Commission, added that she found it "especially puzzling" that the GWPF's lawyers had sent an unredacted copy of the bank statement to the Charity Commission during the process of registering as a charity in 2009 "if a policy of [donor anonymity by the GWPF] was already in operation".

Montague says he is now "seeking legal advice with a view to appealing this decision", but added that, if granted further leave to appeal by the tribunal, he is prepared to take his case all the way to the supreme court.

Montague told the Guardian: "Judge Alison McKenna has found against me on the grounds that Lord Lawson's climate sceptic thinktank is simply not as influential as the former chancellor has made out in his own company accounts. We provided evidence of Lawson enjoying private lunches with the current chancellor, George Osborne, and so I only wish I shared her view."

He added: "The tribunal has found the claims of influence over policymakers by Lord Lawson 'surprising' in light of the fact the Global Warming Policy Foundation is registered as an educational charity. The judge states this is 'a matter for the Charity Commission' and I hope the regulator will now properly investigate this highly-connected lobbying machine."

As part of his supporting evidence, Montague had gathered statements from prominent climate scientists, including Nasa's James Hansen, arguing that GWPF routinely misrepresents and casts doubt on climate science. Montague also argued that it was in the public interest to know if GWPF receives any funding from fossil fuel interests.

Before the case was heard by the tribunal, Lord Lawson told the Guardian that he had "no intention of responding to Mr Montague's political attack on me and on the GWPF".

Lawson did, however, refer to an earlier statement he published last year alongside the foundation's first set of accounts, which revealed that it received an income of £503,302 in its first year and had no more than 80 paying members. In the statement, he said: "The soil we till is highly controversial, and anyone who puts their head above the parapet has to be prepared to endure a degree of public vilification. For that reason we offer all our donors the protection of anonymity."

The GWPF has also stated that it does not accept donations from the energy industry, or anyone with a "significant interest" in the energy industry.

Moscow meeting agrees package of measures to push EU to 'cancel or postpone' aviation emissions trading

Simmering tensions between the EU and the group of countries opposed to the bloc's expansion of its emissions trading scheme (ETS) to include aviation increased further today, after officials signalled that the so-called "coalition of the unwilling" had agreed a package of retaliatory measures.

Speaking following a meeting in Moscow of the group of 26 countries opposed to the new EU carbon pricing mechanism, Russia's deputy transport minister Valery Okulov told reporters diplomats had agreed a package of measures the countries could now use to undermine the scheme.

"Every state will choose the most effective and reliable measures which will help to cancel or postpone the implementation of the EU ETS," he was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters.

He also confirmed the group would meet again in the summer in Saudi Arabia as it looks to increase pressure on the EU to delay or abandon its plans.

It remains unclear precisely what measures countries opposed to the ETS could adopt, although the Moscow Times newspaper yesterday quoted state carrier Aeroflot as saying the Kremlin is considering passing legislation that would make it illegal for Russian airlines to comply with the EU's rules.

"The Russian government is now reviewing a bill prohibiting Russian airlines to participate in emission trading: it means considering a retaliatory approach," the company said ahead of the Moscow talks.

China has similarly said it has banned its airlines from participating in the scheme, while the US Congress is also considering legislation that would have the same effect.

There are also reports that countries could suspend talks with the EU on new routes and landing rights, further hampering EU airlines.

Under the changes to the ETS, which came into effect at the start of this year, all flights in and out of the bloc must take part in the cap-and-trade scheme with airlines carrying emission allowances equivalent to their annual emissions. The vast majority of these allowances will be handed out for free, but firms will have to purchase some allowances, adding to their running costs and potentially leading to increased ticket prices.

The EU maintains that the scheme will incentivise airlines to operate more efficient fleets and encourage passengers to look at greener alternatives, such as rail and videoconferencing. Analysts have also argued that during the initial stages of the scheme carbon pricing will add only a couple of euros to ticket prices.

However, airlines and the countries opposed to the scheme have repeatedly argued that a regional scheme will lead to trade distortions and have called on the EU to drop the scheme in favour of long-running, but as yet unsuccessful talks, to agree an international carbon pricing mechanism.

It remains to be seen how the EU will respond to any retaliatory trade measures, although officials have repeatedly insisted that they will not water down the scheme, despite the escalating threat of a full-blown trade war.

Writing on Twitter in response to the meeting, EU Climate Change Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said: "Unfortunately, our question for Moscow meeting participants remains unanswered: what's your concrete, constructive alternative?"

The week's top environment news stories and green events

• If you're not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

• Gleick apology over Heartland leak stirs ethics debate among climate scientists
• David Cameron defends windfarm plans to Tory MPs
• Climate change sceptic thinktank not 'influential' enough to reveal funder
• Drought may be new norm for UK, says environment secretary
• Civilisation faces 'perfect storm of ecological and social problems'
• Climate change increased likelihood of Russian 2010 heatwave – study

• Clothes 'swishing' parties go global
• Revealed: How fossil fuel reserves match UN climate negotiating positions
• Leaked Heartland Institute documents pull back curtain on climate scepticism

• The week in wildlife – in pictures
• Lab-grown burger to be served up in October - video
• Fukushima chief dismisses rumours of overheating reactor – video
• Drought in England and Wales – map
• Inside Fukushima – in pictures

• Bob Ward: Heartland Institute leak exposes strategies of climate attack machine
• Caroline Lucas: Why we must phase out nuclear power
• New EU-US organics partnership is good news for both sides of Atlantic

• Carbon Commentary: Eden Project installs UK's first employee-owned solar plant
• Yale Environment 360: 'Fossil fuels are the new whale oil', says environmentalist Amory Lovins
• ChinaDialogue: Measuring China's pollution from space
• BusinessGreen: UK could become leading exporter of wave and tidal power, say MPs
For more of the best environment comment and news from around the web, visit the Guardian Environment Network.

• 'Bacteria battery' boosted by space microbes found in river Wear
The development takes microbial power technology a stage nearer its goal of providing a renewable source of energy

The diplomatic options are narrowing on Iran after failure of second UN mission

There is no ambiguity about the failure of latest UN mission to Iran. Statements by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are normally studies in blandness, giving nothing away. The lines the agency put out at 1am Vienna time, however, reflected deep frustration at the lack of progress produced by two missions to Tehran within a month. This is what it says:

A senior IAEA expert team is returning from Iran after two days of discussions with Iranian officials held on 20 and 21 February 2012. The meeting followed previous discussions held on 29 to 31 January 2012.

During both the first and second round of discussions, the Agency team requested access to the military site at Parchin. Iran did not grant permission for this visit to take place.

Intensive efforts were made to reach agreement on a document facilitating the clarification of unresolved issues in connection with Iran's nuclear programme, particularly those relating to possible military dimensions. Unfortunately, agreement was not reached on this document.

"It is disappointing that Iran did not accept our request to visit Parchin during the first or second meetings," IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said. "We engaged in a constructive spirit, but no agreement was reached."

The emphasis put on Parchin is particularly striking. In the last agency report on the Iranian nuclear programme, the inspectors raise particular questions about Parchin, and cite evidence of a steel vessel said to have been used for explosives testing of the type necessary to build a warhead. There had been previous IAEA visits to Parchin which had turned up nothing, but supposedly this vessel was on a different part of a sprawling facility and the inspectors wanted to have another look.

It seems that Herman Naeckerts, the IAEA deputy director general and head of the safeguards department who led the mission, decided to make Parchin the main litmus test for success, and he was thoroughly rebuffed. Speaking at Vienna airport this morning he said his team "could not find a way forward". This from a man who declared the January visit "a good trip", although it later became clear that he had got nowhere.

As Naeckaerts' team was flying home, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei held an unusual meeting with nuclear scientists and repeated the substance of his fatwa against nuclear weapons, declaring:

We are not seeking nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic of Iran considers possession of nuclear weapons a sin ... and believes that holding such weapons is useless, harmful and dangerous.

The Islamic Republic of Iran wants to prove to the world that possessing nuclear weapons does not bring power and that might doesn't come from atomic weapons. Might based on nuclear weapons can be defeated and the Iranian nation will do this.

The unanswered question here is why the Iranians, under extreme pressure from all sides, did not try harder to keep talks going with the IAEA. "They didn't even seem interested in going through the motions," said a diplomat briefed on the trip.

This may have something to do with the fact that parliamentary, Majlis, elections are coming up in a matter of days in Iran and a highly politicised Supreme Leader did not want to appear to be bowing to foreigners on a matter of national security. If that is the case, the timing of the IAEA visits is unfortunate.

It is worth also recalling the Iraqi experience, in which a paranoid regime bristled at foreigners nosing around its military sites, even though it had no WMD. Or in the Iranian case, the regime might have something it does not want seen.

Either way, there seems little doubt that the new IAEA report on Iran, due to be distributed to member states on Friday, will be damning, and that could complicate hopes of a resumption of broader talks with the P5+1 group of powers in March.

The Iranian nuclear crisis has been on a downward spiral a long time now, and the agreement on this IAEA mission was a very rare bright spot on a dark diplomatic landscape. That seems now to have been well and truly extinguished.

A new all-party Parliamentary group for the region has been formed. Andrew Percy, its co-chair and Conservative MP for Brigg and Goole, explains why and sets out its priorities

With the emergence of City Regions, Local Enterprise Partnerships, and the clear commitment by all major political parties to "localism", is now the right time to establish a new, regionally-based, cross-party group of Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire MPs?

The clear consensus is "Yes".

The question of whether to join political forces in the greater interests of Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire has been something that we and a number of our fellow MPs have been asking ourselves of late.

The answer has come, loud and clear, that now – perhaps more than ever – is the time to put party politics aside and work together as MPs to help unlock the growth that our local constituents need, however they may choose to vote.

The fact is that the region of Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire does not get the attention or credit it deserves, in terms of the critical role it plays for the UK economy – e.g. it provides almost 20% of the UK's electricity needs and almost 30% of the country's petrochemical products, so vital to industry. It also has unparalleled potential for future, sustainable growth.

The year ahead promises to be fundamental to the future economic success of the region, with an array of key investment and economic policy decisions anticipated. These relate to a wide range of organisations - from global industry giants to Whitehall departments - covering sectors from potash mining and offshore wind, to the location of the Green Investment Bank.

So now feels exactly the right time to establish a new, cross-Party commitment for the region as a whole, to fight for the greater good of Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire, in what is undoubtedly an extremely challenging economic climate.

This is why we have set up our new All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), to focus attention on the ways that industry and Government at all levels must work together to unlock the huge growth potential that exists across the region. For a number of years MPs may have met together regionally, within their party structures - but this is the first time that MPs will come together, across party lines, to focus on areas of common ground, which need coordinated action.

To be known as the APPG for Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire, the Group has now met for the first time, to agree its membership and identify its early priorities.

To emphasise our cross-Party commitment, the APPG is jointly chaired – by myself and Barry Sheerman, Labour MP for Huddersfield. We've also drawn the Group's vice-chairs from all three major Political Parties.

At our first meeting we identified three key themes, where we will focus out attention during 2012 - all linked to the overarching priority of driving greater economic growth.

Firstly renewable energy – how can we unlocking its enormous growth potential and harness the benefits for the entire region (and beyond), in terms of its supply chain, jobs growth that could number in the tens of thousands, skills improvements and wider community benefits?

Secondly, transport infrastructure – in particular to examine the extension of High Speed Rail to the region and the establishment of the "Northern Hub" for rail services, as well as the wider infrastructure needed to unlock growth in the short term.

Finally, tourism, culture and the regional brand – what more needs to be done to build on increasing visitor numbers and ensure the region is at the forefront in the minds of potential visitors and investors?

It's worth noting that the APPG has also been strongly welcomed by our partners in local government, with the secretariat support for the APPG being provided through Local Government Yorkshire and Humber (LGYH), the cross-party alliance of all local authorities in the region.

A formal launch event is now being planned for 14 March, where we are looking to secure the involvement of a number of high profile figures from across the region. The launch will set the scene for all three focus areas; but also, critically, act as a showcase for all the things that are great about Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire, showing off the unmatched offer and potential that it has.

More news on this from the Guardian Northerner as we go along.

New solar array in Cornwall hopes to make the case that renewable energy is not just for well-off householders

A new 50 kilowatt PV array at the Eden Project has just become the UK's first employee owned renewables installation. Ebico, the Witney-based social enterprise that is the UK's only not-for-profit electricity supplier, lent money to a new company that put 200 panels on the roofs of some of Eden's storage buildings. Employees are now able to buy shares in the new business and the proceeds of this unique offer will be used to pay back Ebico. Savers putting in as little as £200 each will share in the feed-in tariff income for the next 25 years. Returns are projected to be over 10% per year for small investors.

Feed-in tariffs, particularly for solar PV, have been attacked because they subsidise richer householders at the expense of the rest of the population. The aim at Eden has been to show that renewables can also be of financial benefit to people not able to afford to put PV on their own roofs. I helped structure this deal and wrote the document that offers the shares to employees.

The recent changes in the solar PV tariffs mean that installation such as the one at Eden are less attractive to small investors. Other technologies, such as wind and anaerobic digestion, are now much more appropriate for employee or community financing. The returns to investors can be at least as high as we project for savers buying shares in the PV array at Eden.

The aims of feed-in tariffs are to encourage smaller renewable energy installations, push down the cost of new low-carbon technologies and, third, to assist in the decentralisation of electricity supply. The solar PV tariffs worked extraordinarily well at building up an efficient and competitive base of installers and reducing the price of household installations by about 50% in the space of two years. Anybody wanting an array on the roof of their house in 2009 would have got a quote of about £5,000 per kilowatt. Today, that price can be below £2,500 for a larger installation. There is no doubt that the PV tariffs successfully met the first two of the three aims that the government had for the tariffs.

What about the third objective- the decentralisation of electricity supply? The evidence here is mixed. Although hundreds of thousands of household PV installations have taken place, the impact on the electricity supply of the UK has been of the order of 0.1%. Wind turbines owned by community companies must surely be the next step. One 500 kilowatt wind turbine, the sort of size that might sit on a small hill at the edge of a town, can typically provide the same power output as three or four hundred domestic PV installations or twenty five times as much as the Eden array (the 50 kW Eden array will deliver about 47,000 kilowatt hours a year, or just under 1,000 kilowatt hours per kilowatt capacity. A well sited wind turbine will deliver a 'capacity factor' of over twice as much.)

The striking thing about community ownership of wind turbines is that local resistance disappears if people have a financial stake in their success. One wonderful Dutch study even showed that people ceased to hear the swishing noise of the blades if they had some ownership of the wind farm. Community ownership is the only way we are ever going to see the UK use its under-exploited resources of onshore wind. Today, the costs of the subsidies for renewable energy are borne by everybody but the benefits are largely flowing to the large electricity companies and richer householders. Larger scale community energy installations, such as the one at Eden, can achieve rapid growth of low carbon energy sources and also remove the regressive element in the feed-in tariffs.

The development takes microbial power technology a stage nearer its goal of providing a renewable source of energy

Scientists have doubled the power output of a "bacteria battery" by selecting microbes from a UK river estuary, including one normally found in space.

The development takes microbial power technology a stage nearer its goal of providing a portable, independent and renewable source of power for use with low-energy devices and in parts of the world without electricity.

A multi-disciplinary team from Newcastle university focussed on the river Wear estuary to collect and test different bacteria for their power-generation potential. The microbial power process is well-established in sewage treatment and water cleansing, but remains well short of providing a significant supply of electricity.

The Newcastle survey, reported in the latest issue of the American Chemical Society's Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, shows how a prolonged dredge of just one site can come up with a formidable range of relatively powerful microbes. One of the best, whose presence startled the scientists, was Bacillus stratosphericus which is found in large quantities 30km above the Earth and brought down to the planet by atmospheric cycling.

The survey tested 75 species before combining the best into a Microbial Fuel Cell whose output then rose from 105 watts per cubic meter to 200, or enough to run an electric light.

"The research and findings show the potential power of the technique," said Grant Burgess, professor of marine biotechnology at Newcastle. "What we have done is deliberately manipulate the microbial mix to engineer a biofilm that is more efficient at generating electricity.

"This is the first time individual microbes have been studied and selected in this way. Finding B. stratosphericus was quite a surprise but what it demonstrates is the potential of this technique for the future – there are billions of microbes out there with the potential to generate power.

"We have got used to seeing road signs powered by small solar cells. In the same way, an MFC could potentially be portable and just need immersing in water or sticking in soil for the bacterial process to start."

Selected by Time magazine three years ago as one of contemporary science's 50 most important inventions, microbial power harnesses the glow-worm-like electricity naturally generated by some microbes during their processing of waste water or mud. Commercial versions coat carbon electrodes with a bacterial slime whose tiny organisms convert nutrients into electrons and pass the power into a battery.

The research brings the lead in MFC technology back to the part of the world where it first began. In 1911, Prof M C Potter at Durham university produced electricity from E.coli bacteria in his botany department, a breakthrough little-remarked at the time but followed up from 1930s onwards.

Samples of microbe "pick-and-mix" are likely to follow from an increasing range of places including the deep sea. Prof Burgess's current lecture topics include snotworms, whose ability to decompose the bones of dead whales on the seabed is attracting scientific interest.

Majestic birds are spreading - and in the north east - thanks to an excellent conservation programme. If Shakespeare were here, though, he might be worried about his pants

What is the obvious thing to do if you see a rare or exciting bird?

Tweet, of course.

So I did, last Friday, when for the very first time, I saw a Red Kite wheeling over Rawdon, the north-western suburb of Leeds where I live.

I've been waiting for this, ever since the Yorkshire Red Kite Project, for which no praise can be too high, released birds at Harewood House in 1999 from the previous successful reintroduction in the Chilterns. I don't know if you ever use the M40 down there, but you always see the majestic, russet, fork-tailed kites wheeling around on the stretch near the dramatic cutting and escarpment at Christmas Common.

That has also been the case in the Harewood and Eccup area of north Leeds for some years now; and gradually, under the watchful eye of Doug Simpson and his team, the birds have moved west (and also east, rather more dramatically, to form a flourishing separate colony in the Wolds). My mother lived to see one over her garden in Adel. And now we have them at last.

So what? Well, the responses to my Tweet were really encouraging, especially in terms of the wonderful prospect of kites resuming their ancient role of rubbish collecting in towns. Here's a sample:

Over Otley regularly (and Bramhope) - gorgeous creatures!

I saw a few of them around Denton near Ilkley last year.

Red kites are pretty much a daily site aroundBarwick-in-Elmet. Also over Seacroft. Flourishing it seems.

See one weekly at work in Meanwood. The kids at school aren't interested, but I love it

No joke, but sometimes see one hovering over Harehills on way back from work.

I regularly see a couple over York Road, near Gipton, so they are getting closer to Leeds.

And Mike Booth of the YRK, in response to my click on their website's 'Sightings' button, says:

We are now getting a good number of sightings from the Rawdon area, and as your Tweet confirmed from many places far and wide. 

The last four Tweets are specially encouraging because, as the final one says, this is getting very close to central Leeds. Just think! What an attraction. Manchester has its peregrines. Let's hope that Leeds is the first city centre to have daily kites.

Quite apart from their majestic appearance, they are excellent scavengers, useful deputies to the wheeliebin crews. They are entirely human (and pet) friendly; the worst than can be said of them, during the nesting season, is Shakespeare's reference in A Winter's Tale to smalls on washing lines:

When the kite builds, look to lesser linen.

Gateshead/Newcastle, famed home of Europe's largest urban colony of kittiwakes, is Leeds likeliest rival as the first city centre site; the birds established close to a Tesco in the Derwent Valley are doing well. They even have a Red Kite Bus service there, service 45, 46 and 46A run by Go North East.

As the Red Kite Project says, the whole operation is the longest and most successful reintroduction in the UK and another jewel of the north (and the Chilterns).

There's no such thing as safe and accidents are always covered up. So why let Obama build a whole new generation of reactors?

In March 2011, novelist Kristen Iversen's memoir, Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, was waiting sedately among piles of other manuscripts at various publishing houses. Then, Japan was hit by a tsunami, and the cooling systems of the Fukushima nuclear reactor were overwhelmed, giving the world apocalyptic images of toxic floods and floating cars, of whole provinces made uninhabitable.

Immediately, Iversen's book was auctioned, and the timing of its publication, in June, could not be better – since, incredibly, in the shadow of the Fukushima disaster, and even as Japan and other nations see movements against the use of nuclear power ever again – President Obama is planning more investment in nuclear energy. The US is soon to start construction on several new reactors for the first time in three decades.

Iversen, a softspoken woman with a laid-back western vibe, wearing jeans and lavender scarf, seems an unlikely prophet of nuclear catastrophe. But her message is searing. She grew up in a small town near Rocky Flats, Colorado, where a secret nuclear weapons plant built over 70,000 plutonium "triggers" for nuclear bombs.

Iversen spoke with me this week about her research in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where we were at a writer's conference. She explained that "triggers" was a euphemism: the plant, which, throughout her childhood, was so secret that her mother believed they made cleaning supplies, was actually producing plutonium "buttons". In other words, these were the nuclear bombs themselves; they needed only a casing of explosives to be activated.

"They made Nagasaki bombs in my backyard," she explains.

Unknown to the families living in the shadow of the classified facility, deadly plutonium particles were seeded among the stunning beauty of the mountain landscape. As Iversen grew up, she became aware of the growing incidence of bizarre cancers being diagnosed in local children. Iversen's reporting, extensive interviews, and review of FBI and EPA documents, shows how classifying a toxic nuclear site led to the ruin of hundreds of lives – and continues to pose ever-escalating threats as the legacy of what we know about such nuclear contamination is being swept under the rug by developers, energy lobbyists and government agencies colluding with them, at the risk of exposing more of us, more severely.

The nature of the cover-up is incredible: in 1989, the FBI joined forces with the EPA to raid on the plant. The plant, in turn, was owned by the Department of Energy.

"It's the only time in the history of our country that, to my knowledge, two government agencies have raided another," notes Iversen. A grand jury investigation followed the raid, and jurors called for indictments against Rockwell, the manufacturer, and Department of Energy officials. In spite of this, not one indictment was ever issued. The jurors, furious, actually wrote their own report on the contamination and the suppression of the facts – which, astoundingly, still remains under seal.

But cancer rates are telling the tale: they remain elevated in neighborhoods around Rocky Flats 30 years on (plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years). Recent tests confirm earlier findings: there is still contamination in the soil.

Although there is a scientific consensus that no exposure is safe, no matter how brief, Iversen reports:

"There's a big push in Denver right now to build a highway, the Jefferson Parkway, on the contaminated area. This is all prime real estate and many developers and city politicians are pushing to develop the area and pretend that Rocky Flats never existed."

So, profit motives are driving the push to develop lands that, according to scientists, can never be inhabited safely again. And profit motives are driving an even more demented plan on a state-by-state level, astoundingly, to ship American schoolchildren into these no-go areas.

Clean-up of nuclear contamination is expensive, and laws allow an area to remain as is, with high levels of contaminants in the soil, so long as they are designated "wildlife refuges". To save money and effort, the US government, as well as individual state governments around the country, are now pushing to turn former nuclear weapons sites around the nation into wildlife refuges, which schoolchildren would be taken to visit on class trips.

Nuclear scientists Iversen interviewed are horrified by these plans, arguing that these areas should be permanently closed off to the public and declared "National Sacrifice Zones". And as if enough damage had not been done, a new nuclear pit production facility is planned for Los Alamos, Texas, with the capability of producing up to 450 plutonium triggers per year.

Although the accident at Fukushima raised global awareness about the lasting, overwhelming dangers to human beings of radioactive contamination, the money that the energy lobby sees in building more nuclear facilities is just too good to rein in, catastrophe or no catastrophe. US energy policy, driven by industry lobbyists, remains committed to developing nuclear power, even as nations around the world are canceling their own nuclear plans: last month alone, Germany spent $2.15tn to abandon nuclear power, a decision taken after witnessing Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster.

"At a time when the world is supposed to be decreasing the nuclear arsenal, our government is talking about producing nuclear triggers again. We need to pay attention," warns Iversen.

While the rest of the world, especially countries whose legislatures are less dominated by special interests, do the sane thing regarding nuclear power and the threat of catastrophe, the US scampers merrily in the direction of madness. President Obama recently announced – as if this were a good thing – that the Department of Energy has given the green light to an $8bn loan guarantee program to build two, brand new nuclear power plants in Georgia. This, in spite of scientific warnings about dangers posed by those plants' risk to local residents by nuclear waste disposal issues.

There have been numerous nuclear disasters or near-disasters, besides Fukushima, in recent decades: they include the Mayak facility in Russia, as well as spills and contamination at other former nuclear weapons sites around the United States such as Hanford and Fernald.

Iversen, who has family members who've experienced tumors and other cancer scares, worries about her own health. For her, the time to sound the alarm about America's plans for a new generation of nuclear facilities is now.

"One fact is for sure: there is no safe level of exposure to plutonium. One millionth of a gram, particularly if it is inhaled into the lungs, can cause cancer.

"Rocky Flats happened in my backyard. [This will be] happening in everyone's backyard."

Wenlock Edge: Shaken by the suddenness of snow, small birds cluster in the lattice of hedge trees like dark fruit, staring across fields of crackling white

Inside looking out: small birds cluster in the lattice of hedge trees like dark fruit. Shaken by the suddenness of snow, they face west together, staring across fields of crackling white under a sky crashing with light to the far hills. They sound anxious and their notes fall like the patter of thawing drips inside the stone tower of the derelict windmill. Inside the wood, in the shadiest places along the rims of limestone pits, spurge laurel is hiding yellowy-green, flask-shaped flowers under dark green leather strips of leaves.

What will pollinate these now? Perhaps insects will emerge when the weather soon warms, but so far the only likely suspects have been December moths seen flickering through the beams of car headlights. I like the thought of the nocturnal pollination by moths of spurge laurel; it has a mysterious, occult appeal. It has no colour to speak of and little scent, but that may be enough to lure moths at night. It must be the first of the native, non-wind-pollinating flowers to open here. It is subtle, strange and beautiful, and although it's a signature plant of the Edge it's easily overlooked in the dark rocky places where it lurks.

There is surveillance overhead. A helicopter circles, a dark machine blattering, probing into moss and snow below with a sense of menace. Unlike the buzzards and ravens which orbit these trees, seeking, checking, registering every movement and slip of shadow in the wood, the helicopter has no business here, which only seems to reinforce a recurring anxiety that neither have I. The small birds in the hedge trees make a break for it.

Outside looking in: the sun is out and warms the path between wood's edge and the field. Here a row of blackbirds, lined up like plimsolls on a step, soak up the sunlight and mutter their charm and chide little songs. Now they're looking outwards; perhaps the time is nearing for them to leave.

The may have complex brains and abilities, but should dolphins and whales really have their own bill of rights?

Age: Immaterial. Sentience is all.

Appearance: Weren't you listening? NON-HUMAN.

What does that mean? A person is a human. A human is a person. Oh, you speciesist, doubtless-something-centric horror, you! I'm talking about all those people who are animals.

I see. Do you take many tablets? Did you take them today? I am perfectly lucid. It is you who are blinded by prejudice and primitive thinking, unlike the group of scientists and ethicists who just spoke at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and proposed a bill of rights for dolphins and whales.

What the what? I can see people breaking their hearts over gorillas and chimps and things and wanting to give them freedom, housing benefit and banana allowances and stuff, but whales and dolphins? These "scientists" are clearly in the pay of Big Cretacea. The proponents argue that these creatures have sufficiently complex brains and abilities we attribute to personhood – they can recognise themselves, use tools, understand symbols and abstract concepts – and so …

I get it: therefore, if we ascribe the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the cast of Towie, who can perform none of these things without warning and intensive verbal coaching, we should extend our protection to the big fish that outpace them too. Whales and dolphins aren't big fish, but otherwise your reasoning is sound.

It does still sound a bit wild though, no? Has it really come to this? Human rights for animals? Sounds like sentimental, anthropomorphic rubbish to me. Maybe. Or maybe it's a sign of an increasingly civilised society. After all, it used to be argued that black people and women should be denied rights because they weren't considered to be full persons. Perhaps we will come to see this the same way. The Balearics gave legal rights to great apes in 2005, New Zealand did so in 1992. Ten years ago, Germany became the first EU member to guarantee rights for animals.

Still, big fish ain't people. S'all I'm saying. That is indeed all you're saying. We'll try this again next year.

Do say: What a brilliant spoke in the wheels of whaling nations and entertainment zoos such a bill would be! Sign me up!

Don't say: Bring me a non-dolphin friendly tuna sandwich on panda bread and a disposable plastic plate. It's political correctness gone mad!

Scientist Peter Gleick apologises for 'serious lapse in judgment and ethics', but supporters say Heartland remains the villain

The outing of the researcher who exposed the Heartland Institute's efforts to discredit climate change has thrown the scientific community into tumult, with fierce debates raging on Tuesday over whether to brand his actions heroic, or misguided.

Peter Gleick, a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute, admitted in a blogpost on Monday night to using a false name to dupe the thinktank into sending him confidential board materials, which he then forwarded to campaigners and journalists.

He apologised for the deception – which he described as "a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics" – but added in the blog post published at the Huffington Post: "My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts – often anonymous, well-funded and co-ordinated – to attack climate science."

Gleick's admission – nearly a week after Heartland's financial plans and donors list was put online – set off a fierce online debate about whether his actions made him a hero or a villain, and whether he had helped or set back the cause of climate change.

He suffered his first fallout on Tuesday, when he decided against taking up a new position on a board that fights for science education in schools. Gleick was to have headed a new venture defending climate science in classrooms.

The National Centre for Science Education said it had accepted his decision not to take up a board post, and that it did not condone his action.

For some campaigners, such as Naomi Klein, Gleick was an unalloyed hero, who should be sent some "Twitter love", she wrote on Tuesday.

"Heartland has been subverting well-understood science for years," wrote Scott Mandia, co-founder of the climate science rapid response team. "They also subvert the education of our schoolchildren by trying to 'teach the controversy' where none exists."

Mandia went on: "Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist, just used the same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the hero and Heartland remains the villain. He will have many people lining up to support him."

Others acknowledged Gleick's wrongdoing, but said it should be viewed in the context of the work of Heartland and other entities devoted to spreading disinformation about science.

"What Peter Gleick did was unethical. He acknowledges that from a point of view of professional ethics there is no defending those actions," said Dale Jamieson, an expert on ethics who heads the environmental studies programme at New York University. "But relative to what has been going on on the climate denial side this is a fairly small breach of ethics."

He also rejected the suggestion that Gleick's wrongdoing could hurt the cause of climate change, or undermine the credibility of scientists.

"Whatever moral high ground there is in science comes from doing science," he said. "The failing that Peter Gleick engaged in is not a scientific failing. It is just a personal failure."

But other scientists said Gleick did far more harm than good.

Richard Klein, a climate researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, said he was astounded at Gleick's actions. "All I can say is: what was he thinking?" he said. "It's an own goal. It's not just his own credibility, his own integrity on the line. It's a whole community of climate scientists who, with the odd exception, want to do good science and make sure science is recognised."

He went on: "It doesn't just blur the line between climate science and science policy. It blurs the line between what are acceptable and what are not acceptable methods. He is not perceived by the outside world as acting in his personal capacity. He acted also by responding as Peter Gleick the scientist and of course that hurts other scientists as well."

John Nolt, a professor of environmental ethics at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, said his big fear was that the furore over Gleick's deception would distract from efforts to act on climate change. The revelations in the Heartland document - many already familiar to the environmental community - were not worth that cost, he said.

"Nothing serves climate change deniers better than the loss of perspective that ensues when debate turns from urgent matters of science and policy to largely inconsequential disputes about personal behavior," said Nolt.

Nolt said he did not subscribe to the argument that Gleick's wrong was minor in comparison to the damage done by Heartland. "I do think he crossed a line. It is unethical to obtain documents through deception in that way and I don't think it matters what the other side is doing," he said.

For many veteran of the climate wars, there was an uncanny parallels to the breach of Heartland materials and the hack of scientists' emails from East Anglia's climate research unit in 2009. However, scientists almost invariably noted that Gleick had come clean, unlike those who carried out the East Anglia hack.

"It's wrong to obtain documents under false pretenses, just as it was wrong for hackers to have taken scientists' emails from the University of East Anglia. There's no excuse for fighting deception with deception," Kevin Knoblach, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote. "Gleick has now come forward to publicly acknowledge his responsibility in this matter. Obviously, the person or persons who took scientists' emails have not felt a similar need to come clean."

The climate science legal defence fund went even further, in a letter tweaking the Heartland Institute for its complaints about invasion of privacy.

There was also intense speculation on Tuesday about whether Gleick had exposed himself to criminal prosecution or a law suit brought by Heartland. The thinktank president, Joseph Bast, said the unauthorised release of confidential documents, and a two-page memo which Gleick said was sent to him anonymously, had caused permanent damage to its reputation.

"A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage," Bast said in a statement. He said Heartland was consulting legal experts.

Heartland claims the two-page memo, which summarises other documents that appear to be authentic, is a fake.

In a sign of combat to come, Gleick has taken on Chris Lehane, a top Democratic operative and crisis manager. Lehane, who worked in the Clinton White House, is credited for exposing the rightwing forces arrayed against the Democratic president. He was Al Gore's press secretary during his 2000 run for the White House.

In his admission, Gleick claimed that he carried out the hoax on Heartland as a means of verifying the authenticity of a document that appeared to set out the thinktank's climate strategy.

"At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute's climate programme strategy," Gleick wrote. "It contained information about their funders and the Institute's apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it.

"Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else's name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues."

Gleick, a well regarded scientist, has been an important figure in the increasingly heated climate wars, and has spa...

Operator of Britain's largest coal-fired power station blames lack of financial help from government for decision which involved £1.4bn investment

Drax, operator of Britain's largest coal-fired power station, is scrapping plans to build two biomass plants in the UK with Germany's Siemens in a fresh blow to the future of renewable energy. The company blamed a lack of financial help from the government for the decision which involved an investment of around £1.4bn.

Dorothy Thompson, the chief executive, said: "We have expressed disappointment with the proposed level of support for this technology, which makes the investment case for the independent [biomass] generators highly challenging.

"The development planned for the Drax power station site has proved the most [problematic] for a number of reasons, including its inland location which increases logistics costs."

Thompson added that given the significant financial liability that "we would face were we to delay our investment decision until we have certainty over the final support level for dedicated biomass, we have decided to cancel the project."

Drax has also shelved plans to build a second plant at another UK site, but is exploring options to develop a biomass facility with Siemens at the port of Immingham on the River Humber. Biomass typically burns wood chippings, agricultural waste and straw pellets, a process that cuts carbon emissions by around 80% compared to coal.

Thompson was more upbeat about prospects for boosting profits and reducing pollution by mixing increasing quantities of biomass with coal, so-called "co-firing," at its huge Drax plant in North Yorkshire. The plant, near Selby, supplies 7% of Britain's electricity.

A £450m development programme to boost "co-firing" is under consideration, but the rate of expansion is also dependent on government financial help. Co-firing currently accounts for 6% of Drax output, but the long-term plan is to take it to over 50% – a move that could eventually make up for the lost megawatts that would have been attributed to biomass, if new plants had come on stream.

Ministers are currently reviewing the financial regime governing the use of renewables to meet the EU target for 15% of energy to come from renewable sources by 2015. Its findings are expected to be published in the spring.

Green campaigners are still reeling from a decision last year by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) to slash solar power subsidies in a move that infuriated the industry, including many small businesses, some of which have gone bankrupt as a direct result of the clampdown. Although the high court has ruled the proposed cuts are illegal, because of botched consultation procedures, the government is drawing up emergency measures to cap the cost of solar panel subsidies.

Analysts says Drax is in a difficult position because its future will be determined by the shape of future regulation decided in Whitehall, while at the same time the level of profit from burning coal for power generation is uncertain from 2013 with the introduction of a minimum price for carbon. But Drax says it can easily replace half its coal-fired capacity with biomass to reduce toxic emissions, if sufficient government help is forthcoming.

The company revealed its financial results for the year to the end of December 2011, with underlying earnings falling 15% to £334m due largely to higher commodity prices. But pre-tax profits rose from £255m to £338m, thanks to a one-off tax credit and gains from hedging activities. The company cut the total dividend from 32p to 28p.

Thompson said: "We continue to operate at less than our installed renewable biomass capacity because of the current low level of regulatory support. However, the results of our biomass combustion trials give us full confidence in our technical capability to become predominantly biomass fuelled."

Liberum Capital analyst Dominic Nash said: "Drax has provided more clarity on its biomass trials and capital expenditure. This is significant in our view as it indicates that co-firing above 50% is a possibility … and could be an important value-driver later in the decade."

The energy expert and physicist describes his vision of how the world can attain a green energy future by 2050

Amory B. Lovins is fond of referring to the Rocky Mountain Institute, where he serves as chairman and chief scientist, as a "think and do" tank, and it's clear that to Lovins the doing is every bit as important as the thinking. Hardly lacking in confidence or ambition, Lovins — in conjunction with his colleagues at the institute — has published Reinventing Fire, his step-by-step blueprint for how to transition to a renewable energy economy by mid-century.

Impressive in both its scope and detail — Lovins discusses everything from how to redesign heavy trucks to make them more fuel efficient to ways to change factory pipes to conserve energy — the book lays out a plan for the U.S. to achieve the following by 2050: cars completely powered by hydrogen fuel cells, electricity, and biofuels; 84 percent of trucks and airplanes running on biomass fuels; 80 percent of the nation's electricity produced by renewable power; $5 trillion in savings; and an economy that has grown by 158 percent.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360 senior editor Fen Montaigne, Lovins discusses how business and society can pull off this transformation even if the U.S. Congress keeps failing to act, why climate change need not even enter the discussion, and why the oil industry will ultimately forego fossil fuels and jump aboard the green bandwagon. "One system is dying and others are struggling to be born," says Lovins. "It's a very exciting time."

Yale Environment 360: Given that we're in the midst of what could only be described as a fossil fuel boom, with the discovery of new unconventional sources and new oil sources being found all over the world, how do you speed this transition and get from here to there?

Amory Lovins: Well, I'm not sure what boom you're talking about. When I read the Wall Street Journal, I see a headline a few weeks ago about coal running out of steam.

e360: China is consuming tremendous amounts of coal.

Lovins: Hang on — I look at the data and I find that in the United States, coal's share of the electrical services market, which is 95 percent of its market for fuel, has fallen by a quarter from 2005 through 2010, displaced by cheaper gas, efficiency, and renewables. And then when you look in the forward prices and the options market, that spread is going to keep widening. And when I hear how cheap natural gas is, I remember that it's also very volatile. This has nothing to do with the many uncertainties around fracking, which will take a decade to resolve — if they work out well, we'll be satisfied with a new option; if they don't, that's okay because we won't need that much gas, so we won't be very disappointed.

e360: Certainly in China, India, and the developing world there is a fossil fuel boom going on.

Lovins: But in a global context, there is a remarkable boom in efficiency and renewables in China, the world leader in five renewables. Part of the story in China is that the extraordinary vitality of renewables is coming very largely from the vibrant private sector, while all of the nuclear and half the coal business are the old state enterprises. So the story of incumbents and insurgents is partly the story of the reshaping of the Chinese economy from the old and rather bureaucratic command organizations. That is, I think, an encouraging trend.

Last I looked a couple of years ago, the private sector in China was something like 50 to 70 percent of the profits, the growth, and the new jobs. Of course there is still a lot of momentum in the coal bureaucracy in China and India, which together burned half the world's coal and account for about three-quarters of the projected increase, but I think those projections are looking quite dubious. In China, for example, they have lately retired over 70 gigawatts of inefficient coal plants, so that their coal plant fleet is now more efficient than ours. In 2010, 59 percent of their net new [electricity] capacity was coal. It used to be much higher.

e360: You feel we're in a period where fossil fuels over the next decade or two are going to be increasingly like whale oil?

Lovins: Yes.

e360: You've got the president of Shell writing a foreward to your book. There are prominent quotes from the president of Texaco in one section of the book. How do you persuade these oil companies that are making billions of dollars now and into the foreseeable future to get on board with this renewable energy revolution? What is going to persuade them to be on what you see as the right side of history?

Lovins: Mainly risk management, and as a member of the National Petroleum Council, having worked in this industry for 38 years, I've seen a lot of concern about risk. Oil is like airlines. It's a great industry and a bad business. Look at its fundamentals. It is extremely capital-intensive, long lead time, based on a wasting asset of which you only own about 6 percent and the rest can be taxed away or confiscated at any time. It is a business overflowing with all kinds of risk — technical, political, financial. It is unpopular politically. Its subsidies are at some political risk in this country. Put all that together and you have a magnificent recipe for headaches. Why would you want to be in a business like that?

e360:You're making huge profits at this point.

Lovins: Well, sometimes yes, and sometimes it gushes red ink. So the smarter leaders in that industry have been trying to get out of the business since at least 1973, and have constructed some pretty intelligent portfolios of both activities and options that are getting rather rapidly diversified. Some companies that were not very foresighted, even though they were operationally excellent, are starting to smell the coffee.

I think there is a bright future for what we now think of as the oil industry in the new energy era, using its formidable capabilities and assets, but in different ways. A lot of refineries will turn into biorefineries; a lot of drilling will go to geothermal, possibly carbon sequestration and other pursuits. The fuel logistics will diversify into hydrogen — which of course is mainly a business of the oil industry right now and it's a very big business — and into electricity and biofuels. Shell is already the world's biggest distributor of biofuels. The average cost of getting our U.S. transport system off oil is about $18 a barrel for the efficiency and electrification part, or if you include the biofuels to run the trucks and airplanes to the extent they're not on hydrogen, it might be at most about $25 a barrel. So I don't much care what the world oil price is, this is a better bet and it very much better manages the risks.

e360: In the spheres that you write about — transportation, electricity generation, industry — what pieces of the puzzle need to be put in place in the coming decade or so to do this massive scaling up that's going to be required to attain your vision of an economy that by 2050 is primarily powered by renewable sources?

Lovins: Broadly we need to pay attention to allow or require full and fair competition, preferably at honest prices. And to use our most effective institutions to end-run our least effective institutions.

e360: For example?

Lovins: Well, we use private enterprise, co-evolving with civil society and sped up by military innovation, to end run Congress. The transition we describe requires no act of Congress. It's led by business for profit.

e360: So you want the private sector to end-run the dysfunctional political system?

Lovins: At the federal level, yes. There are policies required to unlock or speed the transition we described, but they could all be done administratively or at the state level, where most of the action is.

e360: From a technological point of view, how do you scale up wind and solar to the point where it can be generating the volume of electricity that you envision by 2050?

Lovins: The w...

The people of Kilifi County value the protection of the complex ecosystems of Arabuko Sokoke above the demands of miners, poachers and illegal loggers

The conservation of forests in Kenya has been a challenge to policy makers. The majority of the rural population rely on charcoal and firewood for domestic use. Illegal logging, land grabbing, and human encroachment are some of the challenges facing the whole country. There's one area that is an exception: Arabuko Sokoke, where the people of Kilifi County have conserved the largest indigenous coastal forest in East Africa.

Arabuko Sokoke is the remnant of the largest block of coastal indigenous dry forest on the continent, which once stretched from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. The forest, which covers 420 sq km and measures 41,765 hectares, is in Malindi, 110km north of Mombasa. It borders the Indian Ocean.

The forest was first declared a crown land in 1934.

"The people of Kilifi value conservation," says Blessingtone Maganga, of the Kenya Forest Service (KFS). "There is no logging, charcoal burning, illegal fuel wood collection, mining or poaching." Blessingtone adds that Somalia, Tanzania and Mozambique have destroyed parts of their share of the forest due to human settlement.

The forest consists of three ecosystems: mixed forest, Brachystegia (tropical timber) forest and Gynometra forest. Arabuko is a designated Unesco Biosphere Reserve, and believed to contain titanium deposits.

"Yes there is a lot of it here. It is visible on the surface, especially in the western side of the forest," says Blessingtone, adding that many private investors have shown an interest in starting mining, but "the community and the government don't want it, because the forest is for conservation".

The name Arabuko Sokoke derives from words used by the Waata tribe that lived in the forest: arbi meaning elephant, huk'o meaning thin, and sokoke "short (trees)". It therefore means, a "forest of the thin elephant". The story goes that Waata men found a thin elephant in the Gynometra region of the forest, where typically trees are about 50cm in diameter and less than seven metres high.

The local community has conserved their forest despite pressure by land grabbers and loggers. "Arabuko is our heritage, and we have fought tough battles to protect it," says Hamis Juma, 46, a volunteer scout. "Sometimes we camp in this forest for months, armed with machetes and bows and arrows to flush out loggers and to protect it from land grabbers."

Arabuko has a rich biodiversity, and is home to endangered flora and fauna. It is considered the second most important area for bird conservation after the Congo rainforest, and is home to 230 bird species, of which six are globally threatened. Fifty-two mammal species have been recorded in the forest, among them three groups that are in danger as well as the golden rumpled shrew, of which 90% of the known population live in Arabuko Sokoke. There are also 150 elephants and 250 butterfly species.

"I'm a member of the Waata, the indigenous tribe of this forest," says Peter Mashauri, 53, of the Friends of Waata Association. "We were hunter-gatherers, and lived near trees and wildlife. We hunted the most aged animals, and killing of young animals was an offence under our tradition."

Together with the Waatas, the Giriama tribe make up the majority population in Kilifi County. The two tribes have conserved forest for nearly 80 years.

The community, under the Arabuko Sokoke Forest Adjacent Dwellers Association (Asfada), comprising 152,000 members from 52 villages, manages the project in collaboration with the Kenya Forest Service and Kenya Wildlife Service.

Asfada, an umbrella body of three community forest associations (CFAs) – Gede, Jilore and Sokoke – manage different parts of the forest.

The community has also set up several income generating projects. These include butterfly farming (Kipepeo Project), which exports live butterflies and other insects to Europe, the US and beyond. There are also other user groups for bee-keepers and for those who practise herbal medicine. Asfada has also set up a guesthouse, the Arabuko Jamii Villa, about 20kms from Malindi town.

The people of Kilifi have kept their forest intact despite high level of poverty. According to figures released last year by the Commission of Revenue Allocation, 71.4% of the people in Kilifi live below the poverty level (less than $1 a day). "It is true that our people are poor, but in terms of natural resources Kilifi County is an island of millionaires in a sea of poverty," says Charo Ngumba, chairman of Gede CFA.

Charo says unlike in other forests, there is no human-wildlife conflict in Arabuko Sokoke because the Community Development Trust Fund, a project of the EU and Kenyan government "funded the fencing of the forest to the tune of 14m Kenyan shillings (kes), the community contributed 4m kes ($50,000)".

Anyone who refers a 'vulnerable' person to the energy firm for free loft and cavity wall insulation will receive cash bonus

British Gas will pay £50 to anyone who refers "vulnerable" family members, friends and neighbours for free loft and cavity wall insulation from the company.

Referrers will receive the sum for every individual on qualifying benefits whose details they pass on, with no limit to the number they can refer. Those who qualify must be on pension credit, certain income-related benefits or receiving child tax credit, and have an income of less than £16,190.

The referred customer will also receive £50 once the installation has been carried out, in addition to the money they will save on their bills following insulation.

Neither the referrer nor the beneficiary need to buy gas or electricity from British Gas to take part in the scheme, but the firm is also offering free insulation to all new and existing energy customers.

It takes less than a day to insulate a home, according to British Gas. Loft insulation is a thick material rolled on to the loft floor, while cavity wall insulation is filling squirted into the gap between your exterior and interior walls. Loft insulation can save households up to £175 a year on their heating bills, and cavity wall insulation can save up to £135.

Yet nearly half of Britain's homes are not insulated adequately, according to the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Jon Kimber, managing director of British Gas New Energy, said: "With household budgets stretched we know that people are looking at ways to save money. £1 in every £4 spent on heating is wasted due to poor insulation, so energy efficiency can have a massive impact."

Customers interested in taking up the offer should call the British Gas insulation team on 0800 975 1195, when a free survey will be arranged at a convenient time for the customer. Calls must be made by the customer who is having the insulation installed, and they should give the details of the person who referred them.

Other companies are also offering incentives to encourage people to accept free insulation: E.ON pays £100 to households that have insulation installed, while Southern Electric will give a high street voucher worth £25 to anyone – not just customers – who take up their offer of free insulation.

Such incentives may go some way to helping those suffering from an "energy postcode lottery", revealed in research by Energyhelpline.com.

It shows that the gap between those paying the most and least for their energy has widened by more than 50% in the past year to £92.

Those in the west of the UK are paying more for their gas and electricity than those in the east, with consumers in Merseyside and north Wales having the highest energy bills in the country. A typical customer there will pay £1,373 a year – £82 more than those in the East Midlands and £92 more than people living in north Scotland.

Consumers in the West Midlands have the second highest annual bills, typically £1,333, with those in central and south Scotland close behind (£1,329).

Mark Todd, director of Energyhelpline.com, said: "It appears there is a band of higher prices sweeping across the country from Birmingham to Holyhead that is cutting deep into people's pockets.

"It is difficult to explain these variations, other than the fact suppliers charge what they feel they can get away with. Often the disparities arise because loyal customers stick to the same suppliers and these areas become profit hot spots. Switching supplier is the best way to send a message that higher prices will not be tolerated."

See if you can save money on your gas and electricity bills with guardian.co.uk

The move would see fewer inspections of farms as part of efforts to reduce regulation of business

The government said on Tuesday that it would adopt dozens of measures aimed at cutting "red tape" for farmers as part of efforts to reduce regulation of business.

The move would see fewer inspections of farms which already meet high environmental and animal welfare standards, steps to reduce form-filling and efforts to make it easier for farmers to access government services online.

The government also pledged more effective lobbying by the UK on EU farming laws, said there would be a fly-tipping summit to support action on the issue and efforts to look for voluntary solutions to problems wherever possible.

The farming minister, Jim Paice, said: "The government wants to help create the right conditions for businesses to thrive and remove unnecessary burdens which hold back UK economic growth.

"With rising global demand for food, farmers and their skills are in huge demand, which brings business opportunities."

He added: "We're fundamentally changing the way we work with the farming industry - this is a balance of trusting farmers' expertise and ability to do the right thing, and farmers demonstrating that they can fulfil their responsibilities on protecting the environment, and upholding animal welfare and food safety standards."

He said the move to implement the measures showed clear action that would help farmers get on with their jobs, making the industry the first to benefit from the government's pledge to slash red tape which hinders business.

Efforts to reduce red tape have been welcomed by business leaders across the economy, though there are concerns it is not going far or fast enough, but has provoked consternation among green groups as it has put up key legislation including the Climate Change Act and wildlife protection rules for review.

Ministers said they were adopting 159 out of more than 200 recommendations put to the Environment Department (Defra) in the Macdonald review of farming regulation, and were considering 31 more.

The Food Standards Agency has accepted all but one of the 18 directed towards it.

The government committed to a series of measures including meetings between the National Farmers' Union and the Department for Transport on changing rules restricting tractor and trailer weights and Defra workshops with farmers to look at how to reduce paperwork.

Ministers also pledge to simplify messages to farmers about environmental protection rules so they know exactly how to comply and to try to remove rules requiring a six-day "standstill" on livestock after new animals are brought in.

Richard Macdonald, who led the farming regulation task force, will oversee the implementation of the commitments made by ministers.

The documents show how groups play up controversy to undermine confidence in well-established scientific findings

After the leak from the Chicago-based thinkthank the Heartland Institute, much attention is now being focused on the alleged deception used by the water scientist Peter Gleick to obtain the sensitive internal documents.

And while acts of deception cannot be condoned, it is also important to note that the documents obtained by Gleick provide an insight into how some of those groups that are fundamentally opposed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases attempt to convey the impression that their arguments are founded on science rather than on ideology.

The Heartland Institute states on its website that its mission is "to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems", and that the aim of its work on climate change is to promote "market-based, rather than government-based, solutions to environmental problems". The Institute has been one of the most active lobbyists against policies in the United States to curb emissions, primarily by attempting to undermine confidence in the findings of scientific research that climate change is driven mainly by human activities.

One of the newly released documents shows very clearly how the institute intends to target teachers and schoolchildren with this strategy. It begins by claiming:

"Many people lament the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 [kindergarten to 12th grade] students on global warming that isn't alarmist or overtly political. Heartland has tried to make material available to teachers, but has had only limited success. Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective."

The document then suggests that it will pay Dr David Wojick, described as "a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the US Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science", to produce teaching materials which emphasise controversy and uncertainty:

"Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact ("environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather"), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on."

This, of course, is a biased and distorted representation of current scientific knowledge, and conflicts with the approach to school lessons outlined by a recent workshop on climate change education, hosted by the United States National Academy of Sciences, which begins with the statement: "The global scientific and policy community now unequivocally accepts that human activities cause global climate change".

However, the emphasis on uncertainty and controversy is very much in line with another famous leaked document, the so-called Luntz memo, which came to light in 2003. It was prepared by Frank Luntz, the favourite opinion pollster of President George W Bush, and contained advice for Republican activists on how to talk to potential voters about environment issues. On climate change, the memo offers the following recommendation:

"The scientific debate remains open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."

The strategy of playing up controversy and uncertainty to undermine confidence in well-established scientific findings was pioneered by the tobacco industry to avoid and delay regulation of its products. As Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway point out in their book Merchants of Doubt:

"Doubt is crucial to science – in the version we call curiosity or healthy scepticism, it drives science forward – but it also makes science vulnerable to misrepresentation, because it is easy to take uncertainties out of context and create the impression that everything is unresolved. This was the tobacco industry's key insight: that you could use normal scientific uncertainty to undermine the status of actual scientific knowledge."

The Heartland Institute documents also contain details of another activity designed to give its ideological campaign against emissions regulations a veneer of scientific credibility. It notes that the Heartland Institute sponsors the "Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), an international network of scientists who write and speak out on climate change".

Again this echoes an approach outlined in the Luntz memo:

"You need to be even more active in recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view, and much more active in making them part of your message. People are much more willing to trust scientists, engineers, and other leading research professionals, and less willing to trust politicians. If you wish to challenge the prevailing wisdom about global warming, it is more effective to have professionals making the case than politicians."

And it also copies the tactics of cigarette companies which, according to Oreskes and Conway, hired a renowned geneticist in the 1950s to "head the Tobacco Industry Research Committee and spearhead the effort to foster the impression of debate, primarily by promoting the work of scientists whose views might be useful to the industry".

The Heartland Institute documents demonstrate once again how those driven by ideological dogma or vested commercial interests attempt to hide their true motives behind a facade of false controversy and uncertainty in science.

• Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science

Energy for all is a key development aim, but realising it will require a convergence of international aid, carbon finance and government spending, with political will and good governance

For decades, achieving universal energy access has been a key development goal. Once solved, the resolution of many other development challenges might follow: lighting, cooking, heating, cooling, mobility and communications.

But the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook for 2011 estimates that 1.3 billion people across the world do not yet have access to electricity and 2.7 billion rely on traditional biomass for their energy needs. If we continue as we are, according to a recent report from development NGO Practical Action, 900 million people will not have access to electricity in 2030 and 3 billion will still be cooking with traditional fuels. That means 900 million people will live without decent lighting in their homes, and many millions will die of avoidable, smoke-related diseases.

In the run-up to the UN conference on sustainable development, Rio+20, achieving universal energy access remains a complex problem. In the past, significant resources have been marshalled and various strategies adopted in an attempt to realise the goal, from donated equipment, such as efficient cooking stoves, to finance from international development banks for electricity grids and power stations. Energy markets have been liberalised, often at the behest of the World Bank and other lenders, and equipment and fuels have been subsidised. The results have been mixed. In some cases – notably China in the 1980s and 1990s – access rates have improved dramatically. But for many poorer nations, it is hard to find evidence of significant progress.

The problems increase when the need to achieve sustainability goals is also factored in. Globally, drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are required to tackle climate change. The UN has put these issues at the top of the agenda, with the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. But given the poor record on achieving universal energy access – particularly for the poorest communities – what can we do to make a difference now, and can we do this while keeping within environmental limits?

Within the UN system, debates on energy access can often get lost within the official negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Under this convention, mechanisms designed with development in mind already exist. Most important is the clean development mechanism (CDM), which has been in operation for several years.

When proposed by Brazil, the aim was to help developing countries access low carbon technologies. In return, investors (largely from industrialised countries) can access carbon emissions allowances that can then be sold. Billions of dollars have flowed through the CDM, but the biggest beneficiary has been China. Sub-Saharan Africa barely registers in the CDM project statistics. While the CDM has clearly had positive impacts in China – not least in the wind power sector – it has done little to assist the poor.

In his book The Hidden Energy Crisis, Teodoro Sanchez, of Practical Action, proposes an alternative approach to the energy access challenge. He argues that the world's poor should not be constrained to low carbon energy options, and that a full range of methods should be employed to help the poor climb out of energy poverty.

Sanchez estimates that half the world's energy-poor could switch to cooking on sustainable biomass and half to liquefied petroleum gas. Furthermore, half could access electricity from diesel generators while the other half do so from renewable sources. If these plans were implemented, he argues, the increase in global CO2 emissions would be less than 2% above 2005 levels.

If the world takes climate change seriously, this increase could easily be absorbed by cuts in industrialised country emissions and further action to slow emissions growth in the rapidly developing countries (especially China). The cost of this up to 2030 would be about $570bn (including capacity building and institutional costs); less than 3% of the estimated global energy investments needed during the same period.

Doing the maths in this way is simple. However, putting such plans into practice is another matter – not least because this is only one view of the future, and elements of it are controversial. For example, if diesel generators are used so widely, how do the countries concerned avoid carbon lock-in – and make the eventual shift to other energy sources?

As our Steps Centre paper on energy pathways in low carbon development demonstrates, energy access is such a difficult problem partly because different actors in the developed and developing world disagree about the "best" way to solve it. Indeed, many different approaches are likely to be required, differing from country to country.

As Sanchez argues, a combination of international aid, carbon finance and government spending will be needed to realise these goals – alongside political will and good governance. But it is also critical to understand energy systems in the fullest sense if such interventions are to work. Interventions need to build on what already exists and to work with established stakeholders. There are some good pioneering examples already, such as the development of the solar-home system market in Tanzania, which involved local institutions such as TaTedo in partnership with multilateral agencies and local private firms.

Crucially, local institutions, markets and capacity in developing countries will need to be nurtured across a wide range of skills and knowledge – for example in policy, management, design, installation, maintenance, operation and innovation. The real challenge, therefore, is to implement such strategies effectively while learning from the mistakes of the past.

• Rob Byrne and Jim Watson head the energy and climate change team at the Steps Centre

Although the heatwave was made three times more likely, the size of the event was within natural limits, say scientists

The extreme Russian heatwave of 2010 was made three times more likely because of man-made climate change, according to a study led by climate scientists and number-crunched by home PC users. But the size of the event was mostly within natural limits, said the scientists, laying to rest a controversy last year over whether the extreme weather was natural or human-induced.

The 2010 heatwave broke all records for Russia – temperatures in the central region of the country, including Moscow, were around 10C above what they should have been for the time of year. More than 50,000 people died from respiratory illnesses and heat stress during that time. The temperatures also had a substantial impact on that year's Russian wheat harvest, leading to economic losses of more than $15bn.

Two studies published in 2011 looked at the causes of the extreme weather, but they disagreed on whether it was a natural event or whether it was a result of anthropogenic climate change.

An American team led by Randy Dole of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) suggested that the heatwave was mostly natural in origin. "They based that on the fact that there was no basis for anticipating the heatwave given the conditions which applied at that time in Russia," said Myles Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford University. "Heatwaves of that nature had happened in the past on a 100-year timescale and there wasn't an obvious significant trend in temperatures in that region or in the statistics of hot temperatures in that region. They came to the conclusion this was an event that was mostly natural in origin. There was no need to induce climate change to explain this event."

A separate study by Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research near Berlin suggested otherwise. "What they [said] was that the risk of the heatwave occurring had gone up by a substantial factor, the odds of it occurring were 80% due to the large-scale warming trend and, of course, most of that large-scale warming is attributed to human influences on climate," said Allen.

To resolve this apparent condundrum, Allen and his team ran a series of climate models that simulated the weather in different parts of the world, using observed data from the 1960s and the 2000s. This allowed them to observe the frequency of extreme weather events in Russia during each decade, with and without the effects of the warming due to human-induced climate change.

"What we conclude about the Russian heatwave is that the risk has gone by a factor of three, perhaps not as high as Rahmstorf's estimate, but within error bars consistent with theirs," said Allen. "But we also point out that Dole et al's conclusion is also correct in the sense that the size of the human contribution to the event was only perhaps a degree or so, whereas the actual event itself was 10C."

In terms of size, the 2010 heatwave was mostly natural. In terms of probability of the event occurring at all, the risk had been increased caused by human activity.

"We have a tendency, whenever a weather event happens to say "it was caused by x" but that's never the case, you have multiple causes for an event," said Allen. "People just have to learn that there's no such thing as a weather event that has only a single cause. This is a complicated, interacting system."

The latest study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out with the resources of the Weather at Home project, which runs regional weather models on the idle processing capacity of the home computers of volunteers. Members of the public can download some software that runs atmospheric models of Europe, southern Africa or the western US, to a resolution of 120km.

"To say with any confidence what caused an extreme weather event, such as the Russian heatwave, you need to run not one but a whole series of climate models," said Friederike Otto of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University and an author of the latest research. "Our work, using the weatherathome.net project, demonstrates that you don't need a supercomputer to do this, we ask volunteers to run climate prediction experiments on ordinary computers. We show how you can use such an ensemble of simulations to investigate the magnitude and frequency of occurrence of intrinsically unpredictable extreme events."

Peter Gleick, a water and climate analyst, says he was blinded by his frustrations with ongoing attacks on climate science

• Bob Ward: Heartland Institute documents expose strategies of climate attack machine

A leading defender of climate change admitted tricking the libertarian Heartland Institute into turning over confidential documents detailing its plans to discredit the teaching of science to school children in last week's sensational expose.

In the latest revelation, Peter Gleick, a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute who has been active in the climate wars, apologised on Monday for using a false name to obtain materials from Heartland, a Chicago-based think tank with a core mission of dismissing climate change.

"My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts – often anonymous, well-funded and co-ordinated – to attack climate science," Gleick wrote in a piece for Huffington Post.

The admission – nearly a week after Heartland's financial plans and donors' list was put online – looked set to further inflame the climate wars, in which a network of fossil fuel interests, rightwing think tanks and politicians have been working to block action on climate change.

In a sign of combat to come, Gleick has taken on a top Democratic operative and crisis manager, Chris Lehane. Lehane, who worked in the Clinton White House is credited for exposing the rightwing forces arrayed against the Democratic president. He was Al Gore's press secretary during his 2000 run for the White House.

As one environmental campaigner said: "Now it's gone nuclear."

Heartland's president Joseph Bast said the unauthorised release of confidential documents – and a two-page memo it has condemned as a fake – had caused permanent damage to its reputation.

"A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage," he said in a statement.

Bast also disputed Gleick's account that he had received the first document – the faked two-page memo – from an anonymous source.

He said Heartland was consulting legal experts.

In the piece, Gleick made the odd claim that he carried out the hoax on Heartland as a means of verifying the authenticity of a document that appeared to set out the think tank's climate strategy. Heartland declared the two-page memo a fake.

"At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute's climate programme strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute's apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it," Gleick wrote.

"Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else's name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues."

Gleick's admission was seen by some as crossing a new line in the increasingly vitriolic debate between scientists, campaigners, businesses and politicians who want action on climate change and a small but well-funded group of those who deny the existence of man-made climate change.

Some were dismayed the revelations. Others suggested that Heartland had got what it deserved – given its support for efforts to discredit science.

"Heartland has been subverting well-understood science for years," wrote Scott Mandia, co-founder of the climate science rapid response team. "They also subvert the education of our school children by trying to ;'teach the controversy' where none exists."

He went on: "Peter Gleick, a scientist who is also a journalist just used the same tricks that any investigative reporter uses to uncover the truth. He is the hero and Heartland remains the villain. He will have many people lining up to support him."

Gleick, a well regarded water scientist, has been an important figure in the increasingly heated climate wars, and has sparred often in print against Heartland and others who deny the existence of climate change, such as the Republican Senator Jim Inhofe.

Last month, Gleick signed on with a new initiative to defend the teaching of climate change.

He offered that bruising experience on Monday as an explanation for his actions.

But Gleick does not appear to have experienced immediate remorse. He did not move to claim the ruse until there was already feverish online speculation about his involvement. He responded to a request by The Guardian for comment last Wednesday by saying he did not wish to comment.

Those actions may have undercut an entire career, the journalist Andrew Revkin wrote.

"Gleick's use of deception in pursuit of his cause after years of calling out climate deception has destroyed his credibility and harmed others," he wrote.

"The broader tragedy is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the "rational public debate" that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed."

Kert Davies, the research director of Greenpeace USA, said it would be unfortunate if the row over Gleick and his methods to obtain the documents distracted from Heartland's work to block climate action.

"There are a lot of people involved with Heartland's multimillion dollar climate denial machine who want to change the subject to anything else."

Campaign for intelligent marine mammals to have right to life, which would protect them from hunters and captivity

Campaigners who believe that dolphins and whales should be granted rights on account of their intelligence are to push for the animals to be protected under international law.

A group of scientists and ethicists argues there is sufficient evidence of the marine mammals' intelligence, self-awareness and complex behaviour to enshrine their rights in legislation.

Under the declaration of rights for cetaceans, a term that includes dolphins, whales and porpoises, the animals would be protected as "non-human persons" and have a legally enforceable right to life.

If incorporated into law, the declaration would bring legal force to bear on whale hunters, and marine parks, aquariums and other entertainment venues would be barred from keeping dolphins, whales or porpoises in captivity.

"We're saying the science has shown that individuality, consciousness and self-awareness are no longer unique human properties. That poses all kinds of challenges," said Tom White, director of the Centre for Ethics and Business at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

"Dolphins are non-human persons. A person needs to be an individual. And if individuals count, then the deliberate killing of individuals of this sort is ethically the equivalent of deliberately killing a human being. The captivity of beings of this sort, particularly in conditions that would not allow for a decent life, is ethically unacceptable, and commercial whaling is ethically unacceptable," White said.

The group spoke at the annual meeting in Vancouver of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to raise support for the declaration among scientists and the visiting public. The 10-point declaration sets out a framework to protect cetaceans' "life, liberty and wellbeing", including rights to freedom of movement and residence in their natural environment, and protection against "disruption of their cultures".

"The next step is taking the science and advocating for law in different places, from a regional point of view, from a national point of view, and eventually from a multinational and international view," said Chris Butler-Stroud of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

Decades of research on cetaceans, and dolphins in particular, has revealed that their brains, while markedly different from humans, are large, complex and capable of sophisticated behaviour. Observations of dolphins have shown that they can recognise themselves, use tools and understand symbols and abstract concepts.

In 2001, Lori Marino of Emory University in Atlanta, who is promoting the declaration, tested whether dolphins recognised themselves by drawing temporary marks on different parts of their bodies and watching them check the mark by swimming up to an immersed mirror. "When we did that with two dolphins they passed with flying colours," she said.

Orcas off Patagonia displayed a seemingly extraordinary act when an aged member of the group suffered jaw damage and could no longer eat properly. The whale's companions kept the animal alive by feeding it. "The animal, we would say, was past its sell-by date, an older creature. They must have conceptualised that if it wasn't fed, something would have happened to it, and they were able to work out what was needed to keep it alive," said Butler-Stroud.

At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, a dolphin named Kelly outwitted its human keepers and passed on some of its tricks to its offspring. Dolphins at the centre were rewarded with fish if they collected litter from their tanks and carried it in their mouths to the staff but Kelly found a weakness in the scheme. When people dropped paper into her tank, she hid it under a rock on the bottom. When a keeper next approached, she swam down and tore a small piece off, and returned to the surface to claim her reward. She worked out that a small piece of paper earned the same reward as a big piece, and so maximised her meals.

Then one day, Kelly managed to grab a gull that flew into the tank. When she delivered it to her keepers, she got an especially large fish reward. The next time Kelly was fed she hid the fish at the bottom of the pool, and later brought it to the surface to lure more gulls into the pool. The strategy proved so successful that she taught her offspring, who went on to teach others.

Though much of the declaration is intended to bring pressure on whaling nations and venues that keep cetaceans in captivity, the document has major implications for conservation programmes and environmental assessments that impinge on communities of dolphins, whales and other cetaceans.

As an early step, the special rights for cetaceans are being considered by the UN as part of its convention on migratory species, which aims to protect migrating species over their entire ranges.

Enshrining the rights in law could be some time, though. "If we are lucky it could take 10 years," said White. "We are at the stage of climate scientists 20 years ago. This is the first step."