ANOTHER PLANET

Global warming causes big freeze? It seems that global warming is set to make Britain's winters to be far colder - just like they have been for the last two years with temperatures in Britain far far below what they have been in ercent history. Dr Simon Boxhall from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton has said that melting ice in the Arctic Ocean over the last four years means that the  ice cover is at its sma;lest area since records began and this creates a high pressure system that sends freezing weather south to the United Kingdom. Brrrrrrrrrr!Julie’s Bicycle and Music Week have announced the launch of the Julies Bicycle Green Business Award in recognition of environmental achievements made by companies working in the UK music industry.  This is the first award of its kind and is open to any company operating within the UK music industry. The presentation will be made at The Music Week Awards, taking place at The Roundhouse in London on 24th May 2011.  If your company has introduced successful green initiatives in 2010, you can enter and full details on how to be considered for the award can be found at the official Music Week website at www.musicweekawards.com/enter or alternatively please get in touch with Julie’s Bicycle at info@juliesbicycle.com . The Application fee is £30.Mediterranean fish such as anchovies and sardines are migrating into the North Sea and could be caught of the coast of Scotland within the decade according to Jan-Gunnar Winther, director of the Norweigian Polar Institute. Warming oceans are causing noticeable shifts in fish populations he told the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromso, Norway.I've just lined my new food caddy with a corn starch liner for the first time as Islington introduces food waste recycling - almost all food waste will now diverted from landfill and will be recycled back into compost. Food waste is  30% of the average household's waste - so this is a bog step forward - and it all looks lovely ! www.islington.gov.uk/recycling .The RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch has shown that there are some exotic visitors to Britain's gardens as birds such as the rarely seen waxwing and the redwing thrush look for food in urban areas, many driven to the UK by harsh winter conditions in Russia and North Eastern Europe. See www.rspb.org.uk .A Suffolk based inventor believes he has afound a solution to the tens of millions of plastic milk bottles that end up in landfill every year - a paper based bottle which was inspired by a papier-mache balloon  made Martin Myerscough's son - although it does have a thin plastic lining. The GreenBottle will be trialled by Asda in East Anglia.Broadcaster Melvin Bragg (aka Lord Bragg) has joined the growing number of voices alarmed by the coalition government's plans to sell of the UK's wppdlands - in particular in the Lake District where he was born. He told reporters in the North West that "we need more of the Lake District in public hands, not less". Forests at risk include Grizdale, Whinlatter and Ennerdale. See more at www.savelakelandsforests.org.uk  and http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/save-our-forests#petition .Cheap, green and nutritious - is there a diet that can save the planet? The Observer reports on the World Wildlif fund has come up with a new diet that shifts consumers away from processed food and meat - increasingly blamed for obsesity, diabetes and heart disease . Meat is one of the key environmental issues - in the US alone 70% of land is given over to growing animal feeds along with asssociated water resource and pollution issues, and vast areas of rainforest are being cleared to satisfy our meet needs. In the UK we eat an average of 79Kg of meat each year - the new Livewell diet reduces this to 10Kg a year. See more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/30/livewell-plate-diet-nutritionThe annual get together of 'World leaders' in Davos, Switzerland, you know, the politcians, the business leaders, the bankers, seem to have come to the conclusion that the banker bashing must now stop, that politicians and bankers weren't really to blame, and they all need to be left alone to work out how to work on a clever new economic recovery. meanwhile .... not too much has been heard about clever solutions to climate change .....