I wonder what it is that draws us to sunsets? As I went to a nearby beach to watch the sun drop into the Irish Sea once more, there were as ever, a collection of cars lined up facing out toward the water. Their occupants were of all ages, some couples, some groups, some alone, but all gathered to watch the spectacle that is an assured crowd pleaser.

Some years ago, when my finances were tighter, friends and I used to go and watch the sunset several times a week. It was the cheapest form of entertainment for us all, and we never grew tired of it. We would goof around writing our names in the sand or throwing stones into the waves counting how many times we could make them hop on the surface before they sank. And sometimes we would just sit on the sand or the wave breakers and watch the sun disappear from view and listening to the waves without saying a word to one another.

On the horizon tonight there were some new additions. Wind turbines under construction as part of the new Burbo offshore wind farm. When complete there will be 25 such turbines just outside the mouth of the River Mersey on the Burbo Flats four and a half miles off New Brighton in the Liverpool Bay.

Some people might feel that such a wind farm would spoil an otherwise undisturbed scene, but I actually think these wind turbines could add something to the experience of watching a sunset.

To me they are symbols of optimistic forward thinking representing a more responsible way of living. Upon it’s completion the Burbo offshore wind farm will provide clean renewable energy for somewhere in the region of 75,000 homes.

It won’t be the only wind farm you can see from the beaches where I live though. Just off the North Wales coast is the North Hoyle offshore wind farm. Built in 2003 it was the UK’s first major offshore wind farm. On clear days it’s visible from beaches around the Wirral Peninsula, including New Brighton. There are six wind turbines at the Royal Seaforth Dock, Liverpool, and just a few miles north, but out of site from the beaches where I live, is the Barrow offshore wind farm.

The new Burbo offshore wind farm will be in commission for 20 years at which point its status will be reviewed. If decommissioned the turbines can be disassembled and removed in a relatively short amount of time, returning the coastal horizon to its state. It’s hard to imagine a coal, oil, or nuclear power station being able to make that same claim.

I can’t imagine that the windmills will detract from my enjoyment of any future sunsets. If anything they might offer new photographic challenges. But really, when it comes down to it as good as any photograph of a sunset might be, there really is only one way to best enjoy them, and that’s to actually be there. I plan to do more of that.

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Burbo offshore wind farm
North Hoyle wind farm (off North Wales coast)
Barrow offshore wind farm
Embrace Wind Energy
Yes 2 Wind
[Movie] North Hoyle wind farm
[Movie] Sunset (a very short movie I made)

This is somewhat old news but in the light of recent gun discussions we’ve had here, I thought I might post some ’sort-of’ good news on the weaponry front. That news being that war and weaponry will very soon be better for the environment!

Arms manufacturering giant, British Aerospace (BAE), has joined the growing number of global companies trying to show their softer side by reducing their impact on the environment.

The production of lead-free bullets and recyclable explosives are among key developments being put proposed by arms manufacturer. Other initiatives include grenades that produce less smoke, compostable explosives, and bombs that make less noise in order to reduce noise pollution.

“No company, regardless of what they make, can now just make a product, bung it out there, and then forget about it.” Said Dr. Deborah Allen, director of corporate responsibility for the company. “We all have a duty of care to ensure that from cradle to grave products are being used appropriately and do not do lasting harm.”

One industry analyst, Sarah Bentley, said that bombs made from biodegradable plastics and compostable materials would in fact play a key role in regenerating the environment that they had initially destroyed.

I swear to you, this is absoluely not a joke!

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British Aerospace corporate responsibility information
United States Military sustainability website

Perhaps I shouldn’t even joke about my theory that if more scientists had significant interactions with women there might actually be less sciencey stuff being done in the world. I shouldn’t say such a politically incorrect thing of course, so allow me to retract that now and instead present to you the video below which is a recent Channel 4 documentary by Martin Durkin about how global warming is a huge swindle, a conspiracy if you will!

TiVo picked up the documentary the other night and I watched it yesterday evening over a cup of tea and some stolen chocolate that’s been stashed in my fridge for a few weeks now. Titled ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle‘ I was somewhat tempted to simply delete it without giving it so much of a chance to get passed the opening credits, not because I’m closed minded on the subject of global warming, but because TiVo currently has about seven thousand hours of CSI recorded for me and if I’m going to get through that then I really have no time for anything else.

However, after the opening sequence I decided that the documentary was interesting and engaging enough for me to stick with it. Personally the whole global warming debate is simply a lot of hot air, if you pardon the pun. It seems logical to me that burning oil and coal is a rather foolish thing to continue to do when we have the technology and know how to harness the earths clean and renewable resources. Exploration and development of such energy is surely not only good for our environment, but also for our global political stability. After all, it’s hard to envisage a war for oil if oil was in no way as central to our every day lives as it is right now.

It was, however, an interesting documentary. A televisual rebuttal to Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth.’ Featuring a lot of fuzzy haired science types whom I have never heard of (and frankly, why would I have heard of them) telling us all that this theory was wrong and that hypothesis was flawed. They sounded very convincing to me, but regardless of whether their view was right or not, the result was never going to mean that I rush out and buy an SUV, leave every light on in my apartment, and crank the central heating up to full power around the clock. As I said before, the issue of global warming is interesting, but not nearly as pressing as the issue of what I term ‘responsible living.’

Perhaps unsurprisingly the documentary caused somewhat of a stir. Flying in the face of the popular opinion it seeks to discredit, the director, Martin Durkin, surely expected to come under serious fire.

A few days after the documentary was shown The Independent newspaper in Britain called Durkin’s film “flawed with major errors which seriously undermine the program’s credibility.”

Dr Armand Leroi, from Imperial College, and Simon Singh, the respected scientific author, are two eminent British scientists who questioned the accuracy of Durkin’s documentary. Durkin’s response didn’t rely heavily on science when he called one of the “a big fat cock” and told them both to “go and f**k yourself!”

After being criticized regarding the origins of a graph of global temperatures in recent years that was crucial to his argument recent film Durkin is quoted as saying “The original Nasa data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find”.

Had I have known how controversial and unbalanced Durkin’s work is reputed to be, I might not have sat through the one and a quarter hour documentary. In the past Durkin’s films have received similar complaints about being biased and misrepresentative of the facts and opinions of the participants. One such documentary, again shown on Channel 4, argued that silicone breast implants were in fact beneficial to a woman’s health.

Notwithstanding the evidence that suggests I simply wasted one and a quarter hours of my life, I would still say that it’s a documentary worth watching if only to hear what those who still argue that we should carry on as we always have might to say. Either way it makes little difference to my opinion that we should all think carefully about how our lives impact not only the environment, but perhaps more importantly the lives of those around the world whom are not as fortunate as us. For me responsible living is more about the moral and ethical implications of the individual decisions we make. It would seem to me that this kind of thinking automatically encompasses much of what is often called ‘environmentalism.’

For example, knowing that Coca-Cola have caused formerly lush farmland to dry up and become arid due to their use of essential groundwater at Indian Coke plants, should lead us to make a choice as to whether we want to support this kind of behavior or not. Like any such ethos, such thinking could be taken to the extreme and drive you mad. But in essence my idea of responsible living is nothing more complicated than the biblical principle of ‘loving thy neighbor’ and no one ever called that a foolish notion did they?

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[Video] The Great Global Warming Swindle
Clips from the documentary
Channel 4’s website about the documentary
A comedic response
The real global warming swindle
C4’s debate on global warming boils over

The Reverend Jerry Falwell, former head of the ‘Moral Majority‘ Christian political lobbying group, has stepped up to offer the world some holy reassurance on fears that we might be in the grip of a global climate crisis. In his sermon on February 25th Falwell described global warming as “a myth” and that “the Church must quickly get serious about denouncing the accelerating effort to promote the alleged catastrophic human-caused global warming.”

Speaking to his faithful baptist congregation in Lynchburg, Virginia, Falwell said that the growing environmental awareness among Christians and “naive Christian leaders” is “Satan’s attempt to redirect the church’s primary focus from evangelism to environmentalism.”

“The problem is global warming has become a trendy issue of limousine liberals and Hollywood elitists, and the media are promoting it as virtual, if not substantive, fact.” Said Falwell.

His recent sermon isn’t the first time he’s spoken on the subject of global warming or environmentalism. He’s been dismissing all science about the subject for many years and has called it a “myth” on a number of previous occasions.

On CNN’s ‘Inside Politics‘ show in November 2002, Falwell dismissed global warming as “created to destroy America’s free enterprise system and our economic stability.” Frequently interrupting the shows other guest whose views opposed his, Falwell went on to say “I urge everyone to go out and buy an SUV today.”

Falwell believes Jesus Christ will soon return to earth and a violent apocalyptic battle will take place and therefore there is little need for Christians or anyone to worry about any perceived threat of an impending climactic catastrophe.

Of course, it’s hard to take the so-called “Christian leader” seriously when he seems so adept at regularly spewing the ill considered hateful garbage he so often does. In 2002 he angered Muslims by calling Islam’s prophet Mohammed a “terrorist” as well as “a demon-possessed pedophile.” Indeed, just two days after the 9/11 attacks on America Falwell infamously said on Pat Robinson’s ‘700 Club’ TV show that the attacks were God’s judgment on America for “throwing God out of the public square”

Falwell did say in his sermon that he believes Christians should give the environment some consideration but they should not become “first-class nuts.” As yet the reverend has not given any solid direction on how a Christian might become environmentally aware, and it seems unlikely that there will be a follow up sermon offering practical Falwell endorsed eco-friendly hints and tips.

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Jerry Falwell Ministries
Falwell : Global warming is [still] a myth
[MP3] Falwell talks… well, crap in 2006.
Fallwell to get Jesus a Hummer
Biblely stuff about the environment
Falwell foolishly blames gays, lesbians, the ACLU and others for 9/11
Falwell sheepishly falls back from his original 9/11 position

I’m not entirely sure that I feel that a ‘buy nothing day’ really has much worth. I mean, what’s the point? It’s not like that thing you might have bought on that day isn’t just going to purchased by you the day after is it? But the thinking behind it isn’t a bad idea and maybe that’s the point.

I think we’re all guilty of short term thinking. We pick up a product from the shelf with little or no thought as to where it came from, who made it, how it’s packaged, what happens to that packaging, and what will happen to the product once we’re done with it.

A tiny proportion of the world are using most of its resources, and we should probably all take a moment to ponder that for a while I guess.

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Adbusters : Buy nothing day 2006
Buy nothing day UK 2006