Be Eco Friendly

Homeowners will soon be able to take out “solar panel loans” to cover the high costs of renewable energy. Solar panels typically cost up to £12,000 to install yet take decades to pay for themselves in energy savings.

From April, homeowners who generate electricity from domestic solar panels and wind turbines will also be paid hundreds of pounds a year by the Government, it was confirmed yesterday. The “feed-in tariff”, funded by a levy on home fuel bills, will give householders a much greater guaranteed income with which to repay their loan.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/solar-panel-loans-to-help-homeowners-invest-in-green-energy-1886341.html

The “climategate” controversy intensified last night when the senior British scientist at its centre, Professor Phil Jones, faced fresh accusations that he attempted to withhold data that could cast doubt on evidence for rising world temperatures.

The charges follow an analysis of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, of which Professor Jones is the director.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climategate-scientist-hid-flaws-in-data-say-sceptics-1886487.html

It was supposed to have been a small side event at the Copenhagen climate conference but it quickly turned into an ugly slanging match that eventually had to be resolved by burly security guards escorting one of the protagonists from the room. But for Stephen Schneider, a veteran climatologist, it was yet more evidence of the deeply divisive nature of climate science.

Schneider, a professor at Stanford University in California, had gone to Copenhagen to publicise his latest book, Science as a Contact Sport, but his press conference was soon hijacked by a little-known film-maker and climate sceptic who pressed him persistently about the emails leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-change-shoot-the-messenger-ndash-not-the-message-1889941.html

Read more: http://www.sidewaysnews.com/environment-nature/zero-carbon-schools-be-built-uk

A highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably carried out by a foreign intelligence agency, according to the Government’s former chief scientist. Sir David King, who was Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser for seven years until 2007, said that the hacking and selective leaking of the unit’s emails, going back 13 years, bore all the hallmarks of a co-ordinated intelligence operation – especially given their release just before the Copenhagen climate conference in December.

Read full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-emails-hacked-by-spies-1885147.html