The Dangers

When asbestos fibres are inhaled in large quantities you significantly increase your chances of contracting one of four life changing diseases. These consist of mesothelioma (always fatal), lung cancer (almost always fatal), asbestosis (low chance of fatality but often very debilitating) and diffuse pleural thickening (not fatal). These diseases won’t necessarily affect you immediately and will often appear later in life. It is important to note that asbestos that is undisturbed cannot cause you any harm, it is only dangerous when its fibres are broken apart and inhaled.

Who’s at risk?

In general, anyone that is likely to disturb asbestos in their normal everyday work life will be at risk. In particular, this relates to people whose profession deals with the inner workings of any structure that was built before the year 2000. Examples of such professions include plumbers, roofers, joiners, architects, electricians, building surveyors, demolition workers, gas fitters, plasterers, and construction workers.

Asbestos Awareness Training

If you or your employees fall into anyone of the at-risk categories then it vitally important that they receive proper asbestos awareness training from a qualified professional. For those affected asbestos awareness will fall under the rubric of health and safety training. The training itself will teach workers the best procedures in how to avoid the risks associated with asbestos and how to properly protect themselves.

There are additional levels of training that you can receive depending on the work that you intend to carry out. In particular, it falls into two categories, non-licensable and licensed asbestos work training. Non licensable training is directed at workers who may knowingly disturb lower risk asbestos containing materials (drilling holes, laying cables, removing tiles ect.). During these courses you will learn about waste handling procedures, how to make suitable risk assessments, and safe work practices. If you intend to work with high risk asbestos containing materials then you must be a licensed contractor. Your employees will need to have additional training and use the appropriate respiratory protective equipment.

Due to the dangers of asbestos, refresher training should be carried out every year to further ensure your work force is continually following the best practices available.

Under the health and safety laws in the UK many workplaces are required to complete a process that is known as a ‘risk assessment’. Failure to having been seen to comply with this process has been known to adversely effect outcomes where the company is subject to litigation for accidents at work.

Conducting a risk assessment is not rocket science, unless of course you work for NASA, in which case a certain amount of rocket science does come into it. As an aside, did you know that because the earliest astronauts could not be granted life insurance their families were given memorabilia to auction in the event of the worst happening? True story.

Doing a risk assessment is part of the whole risk management process. That process involves first identifying risks, and then taking reasonable steps to ameliorate these dangers.

There are typically five stages in a risk assessment. The first, logically enough is to identify the hazards. These are likely to be fairly obvious to anybody doing a job. Examples could include working at heights or with chemicals or electricity.

The next stage is to get a grip on who could be hurt or harmed and how. It is important to remember that certain workers may have different requirements. For instance pregnant women may need extra though. It is also important to remember to think about everybody who will be going into the environment, including visitors, cleaners and so on.

Evaluating the risks is the next stage. This involves coming up with some estimate as to how likely it is that a hazard will actually cause harm, and then taking appropriate measures. If it is not very likely, then it is foolish to waste to much time and effort guarding against it. For instance swarms of killer bees could be very dangerous in most workplaces, but are not very likely to strike.

Accurately recording and implementing the findings of a risk assessment process is important. This kind of accurate record keeping needs to extend to the keeping of an incident book in which near misses and accidents are recorded, in order to ensure that procedures are best in line with the current knowledge – and this is the last stage, one that never really ends, continual vigilance.

It is possible to get in outside contractors to do risk assessments for you. There are two disadvantages to this, the first being the price, and the second being that outsiders will not have the same level of knowledge of the workplace and the work. You can send a delegation to one of the health and safety courses that are available, and they can then become qualified to conduct the assessment themselves.

• Throw one less thing away
• Buy one more fairtrade item
• One more thing from a developing country
• One less item of meat or dairy

Watch the video to find out  how these simple things can help. Those wishing to support Oxfam in their work can of course visit their donations page if they are so inclined.

Clean water and decent public sanitation are things which, we, in the developed world, pretty much tend to take for granted; getting potable water is as simple as turning on a tap, it’s something which most of us do many times a day without even thinking about it.
So, maybe it’s all too easy for us to forget that we are, in fact, extremely fortunate to have such ready access to such a vital luxury!

In the third world it’s a very different story! Approximately 4,000 children die every day from preventable water related diseases

4,000!
That’s more than the combined effects of HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles!

It’s just mind bloggling, that this is still going on in the 21_st century!

Please, if you can take the time to do something, if not today, then tomorrow, or the next day; If you can afford it then even a few quid can make a hell of a difference! Part of what makes water poverty such a huge scandel is that providing clean water doesn’t cost the earth!
Even if you can’t afford to make a donation, then take a few minutes to write something, to help raise awareness, on your own blog, or forums you frequent. Help spread the word, even if it’s just mentioning it to your mates while you’re out having a few this weekend.
For all that it’s a massive problem, the solution is relatively simple & if we all pitch in then it shouldn’t be too much of an imposition, in terms of either time or money, for anybody.

If nothing else, please, take the time to sign the petition below, let the politicians know that this is an important issue!

Satellite images from last year (left) and earlier this month (right) give an indication of the extent of this year's Pakistan Floods. Terrible though they are, are they just a taste of things to come?

Really, you’d have to be living in a complete news vacuum to have missed the awful disaster which this year’s monsoon floods have caused in Pakistan; The UN has now declared that the scale of the crisis is greater than the combined effects of the Haiti earthquake (Jan ’10), the Kashmir earthquake (Oct ’05) & the Asian tsunami (Dec ’04) and has left over 14,000,000 without food or shelter and at risk of falling victim to the host of diseases which commonly occur in the aftermath of major flooding.
One bright note is that this disaster has seen an unprecedented response from the public, with donations actually increasing as the crisis entered it’s second, then third week; very different from the usual pattern seen in these kinds of cases, where “donor fatigue” tends to kick in after the first week irregardless of how well the effects of the disaster are being dealt with at that stage.
However, for all that the response, both in the UK and internationally, has been amazingly generous so far there is still much work for the aid agencies to do, and many, many flood victims who still need the help of the international community if they’re to have any hope of returning to a normal way of life any time in the foreseeable future!
Unfortunately there are many despicable scammers in this world, and in particular on the internet, who’ll take any chance to profit from the misery of others, so if you’re planning on making a donation it’s best to go through the DEC, or one of their well known, reputable members such as Oxfam who, like most of the major UK charities, now have a page dedicated to the Pakistan Flood appeal.

Anyway, that was all a bit of an aside, an incredibly important aside, but a tangent none the less.
The real question I wanted to ask in this blog post was whether these floods, described as a “once in a century” event, are another sign that Climate Change is indeed a real and pressing problem which should concern the whole global community?

I understand the principle that climate is a long term pattern, and that it can’t judged by single isolated events, no matter how catastrophic, but it seems to me that we’ve been getting more and more of these “once in century” type of weather events over the past decade or so, and I truly wonder how much longer the climate change deniers will be able to keep their heads in the sand and continue to refute that there is a shift occuring in the planet’s weather patterns?
I can accept that there’s still a lot of debate to be had over the extent of anthropogenic climate change, and, in turn, how much humanity can do to mitigate the global climate change, but surely we’re now getting to a stage where denying the existance of a pattern of climate change is a thoroughly asinine position, and one which is only likely to be held by either the woefully gullible or those who are motivated by profound self-interest.

Hardly a gardener's favourite, will the dandelion, and other wild flowers, soon be nostalgic memories?

Still, with most of the countryside given over to agriculture, the nation’s verges are one of the more common refuges left for the Britain’s wildflowers, and there are concerns that we may see some species disappear altogether if the Danish rampage continues.

If it was just the dandelion I doubt anyone would mind, but it would be a shame if, in the future, the only way to see some of the nation’s flowers was to order them from a florist.

In anycase it looks like the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit is set to be a massive failure; We’ll probably get some kind of ineffectual, face-saving agreement pulled out of the fire at the very last moment, but the chances that it amounts to anything substantive, let alone does enough to combat the dangers which climate change pose to all of us, not to mention future generations, are in my opinion very depressingly slim indeed.

A big sticking point seems to be the Kyoto protocal; it seems like everyone who didn’t sign up for it wants to keep it, while those who did would rather sort out a new agreement which includes those who didn’t. To be honest I have more sympathy with the Kyoto signatories, it seems stupid to try and insist that a group of developed nations, which don’t include the US, should abide by an agreement when the world’s two largest pollutors, the US and China, aren’t to be bound in the same way; frankly we need them on board if we’re to achieve the kinds of CO₂ reductions which the science suggests are necessary.

Ultimately I wonder if this is where humanity demonstrates that it is an evolutionary dead end; short-sighted greed seems to be stymying attempts at taking longer term action to solve a problem which stands to effect us all, or rather the next generation. The impacts of climate change are already being seen in some of the world’s poorest regions, and yet relatively petty arguments between nations look set to make a farse of the Copenhagen Summit.
Faced with such monumentally selfish stupidity I guess we just have to hope that, against the vast weight of evidence to the contrary, it turns out that the climate sceptics are right, and it’s not going to be too great a problem.
Not a comforting thought at all!

As always though the devil is well and truly in the details. We certainly need the US, along with China, to sign up to any deal that is reached for it to actually have any meaning; without the participation of the world’s two most polluting nations any climate change agreement that is reached is just so much hot air, as we saw with Kyoto.
As of yet China’s president, Hu Jintao, hasn’t made any committment one way or the other as to whether he’ll attend Copenhagen, so even with Obama’s attendance at this stage there are no guarentees that anything substantive or meaningful will come out of Copenhagen. Still, at least one of the big two polluters appears to be prepared to start taking action, undoubtedly a step forward in the battle to mitigate the impact of climate change before it’s too late.

Unfortunately, although Obama seems genuinely committed to taking action on the issue, how much he’ll be able to achieve is another question entirely. Generally Americans are far less concerned about the threat of climate change than he is. Currently the US has a Climate Bill in front of Congress, which aims for a 20% reduction in US CO₂ emissions by 2020. However it’s taking 2005 as it’s base level, whereas Europe and many other countrys are setting their reduction targets based on 1990 emisson levels. Even then it’s looking like Obama’s going to have to reduce his preposed target from 20% in order to get the necessary support to pass the bill through Congress; hence why he’ll only be pledging a 17% cut, by 2020, when he attends Copenhagen.
It also has to be noted that currently he’s only planning to attend the summit for one day, before heading off to Oslo to accept his Nobel Prize, and won’t be returning to Copenhagen for the crucial final days of the summit, when any agreement will be hammered out.

Overall it has to be seen as a positive step, that a US President is finally engaging in the fight to tackle the effects of Climate Change, but it also has to be remembered that he ultimately serves his electorate, and so, even if Obama is on-board with the struggle to reduce the effects of climate change it’s quite clear that his hands will, to an extent, be tied until he’s able to convince more of the US population that climate change is everybody’s problem!

The study in question was carried out by British and Australian academics & investigated the likely effects of global warming on flowers, and other plant species. My first reaction was actually pedantic rage brought on by NASA’s use of the phrase “Global Warming“. All too often this term is used incorrectly as a synonym for climate change, and it’s one of my pet hates, since the label “global warming” implies that climate change will lead to warmer weather globally; whereas the reality of climate change is that some places will get hotter while others get colder, or that specific locations will become hotter in the summers but get colder winters than they’ve previously experienced.

In short, climate change comes down to much more than the idea that everythings going to get warmer, & I believe imprecise use of the term “global warming”, when one is talking about climate change as a whole, only adds confusion to a debate which is already bogged down in misunderstanding, statistical chicanery, &, at times, downright dishonesty.
For a start it implies that everywhere is going to get warmer, which makes some people wonder “What’s the problem, hotter summers would be nice!”, but it also gives especially ignorant anthropogenic climate change sceptics an excuse to crow on about how “global warming” is a myth, whenever it snows badly, or there’s a cold snap. Of course, what the poor fools are missing is that climate change could very well lead to much hotter, wetter summers for us in the UK, but leave us (in worse case scenarios) with winters they’d be more familar with in Moscow; London’s only a few degrees of latitude south of Moscow, and if the Gulf Stream &/or Jet stream were to pack up it’s likely that the UK would become a good deal colder!

In anycase misuse of “global warming” to mean “climate change” it’s one of my pet hates, and it especially grates when a source which should know better does it, hence my initial reaction to the piece. However, on reading through it I discovered that I had perhaps been too hasty, as the piece in question appears to be looking at a “global warming” scenario, rather than climate change as a whole; Of course how much validity there is in a study which is predicting an overall warming pattern, rather than considering the possibility that weather will become more extreme, and erractic, all round is another question entirely, and one which I’ll maybe rant about another day.

Think of the flowers! won't somebody please think of the flowers?

“So what’s the problem?” you may be asking; how do flowers appearing earlier in the year have a negative impact on anyone, except for possibly shops which sell flowers losing sales around Valentine’s day. The answer is that, most likely, there wouldn’t be any direct negative effects for humans, but when one thinks about the numbers of other species, particularly insects, whose life cycles rely in some way on flowers, and other species who, in turn, rely on those species, it’s clear that ecologically this could be a pretty big deal.
A great deal of effort is spent on highlighting how climate change might end up directly effecting humans, and while that is definitely a worthy goal, I think that too often it’s wider ecological effects are only vaguely touched upon. The stark truth is that, despite all of our scientific advances, humanity’s welfare is still, very much, tied to the ecosphere which we inhabit, and if other species which play important roles in the ecosystem start to fail then the overall impact of climate change could be far greater than many realise.