About biofuels
“A biofuel is a source of energy that is derived from material that was once living. This sounds simple enough, but there are so many ways of generating biofuels that things quickly get complicated.

“In its simplest form, burning wood on a fire for warmth is using a biofuel. The wood was once alive and part of a living tree and it became ‘energyrich’ through the process of photosynthesis. This, as many of us know, is where the plant uses the energy from sunlight to allow it to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into sugars, and ultimately into all the carbon containing structures within the tree. These structures contain energy that has been converted from the sunlight.

“Burning the wood allows this ‘trapped energy’ to be liberated as heat and also light. Indeed, any plant material that can be burnt can be used in a similar way. “You may not be aware that some of the electricity you use is produced by burning biomass. The largest power station in the UK, Drax in North Yorkshire, produces around seven per cent of the UK’s electricity and burns around 300,000 tonnes of biomass a year. It is looking to increase the amount of biofuel it uses to around 1.5 million tonnes, at the expense of the fossil fuel coal that it normally uses.

Advantages of biofuel over fossil fuel
“There are advantages to using biofuels compared with fossil fuels such as coal that are derived from plants that were alive millions of years ago. To produce a fossil fuel, plants died, became buried and subsequently compressed and ultimately produced fossil fuels such as coal and oil, which are energy-rich in the same way as living plant material is.

“Burning fossil fuels, however, releases both the energy and the carbon dioxide which was trapped millions of years before. The energy is useful, but the carbon dioxide is widely accepted to be a cause of global warming. “Burning a biofuel, however, releases carbon dioxide that was trapped only a few years prior. It is therefore classed as ‘carbon neutral’ and won’t cause an increase in global warming. “We have already seen that wood can be used as biofuel but there is a lot of interest in using certain types of grasses such as Miscanthus which can grow rapidly, using minimal inputs of fertiliser, and can be grown on land that is not used for growing agricultural crops.

These last two points are important, as producing fertiliser requires energy and so it is nonsensical to use energy-requiring fertiliser to produce something that is going to be used as an energy source. Also, using land for growing biofuel that could be used for producing agricultural crops is hard to justify in a time of increasing food shortage.

“Indeed, the increases in the global cost of wheat in 2008/09 were partly caused by poor worldwide harvests, but also by the USA using around 25 per cent of its harvest to produce biofuel for transport purposes.

Using other fuels
“The transport fuels petrol and diesel can both be substituted by liquid biofuels. Both the sugars and starches that are found in plants’ stems and seeds can be fermented to produce alcohol such as ethanol. This is what happens when beer is produced – barley seeds rich in starch have the starch converted to sugar and then yeasts break the sugar down to produce ethanol. In the case of beer, we drink the ethanol but it can be used to produce bioethanol and used as a replacement for petrol. “Biodiesel is produced in a slightly different way: the oils found in many seeds and nuts of plants such as sunflowers, oil seed rape or palm oil can be “The problem with using seeds and nuts as a biofuel is that you are using a potential food source for fuel purposes”

The problem with using seeds and nuts is that you are using a potential food source for fuel purposes. Additionally, growing huge areas of plants such as palm oil, some of which is used for biofuel, has caused large tracts of biodiverse rainforest habitat
to be cut down, threatening such species as the orangutan.

“Scientists have found solutions to such problems. Some transport biofuels such as the biodiesel produced from the fruit of the Jatropha tree do not have such disadvantages. Jatropha fruit is inedible and, also importantly, the tree can tolerate drought conditions and grow on land unsuitable for agricultural crops. One example where Jatropha has been used successfully is in India where the diesel train that runs from Delhi to Mumbai uses 15 per cent biodiesel derived from Jatropha. “Biofuels, though, are not a full answer to our energy needs.

Many experts believe that biofuels have an increasing and significant role to play in the generation of our fuels, but in the UK particularly there is extensive pressure on our land resource from population growth and the requirements for both housing and for food production. Biofuels are part of the answer, alongside other renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power.

“In some countries with greater land reserves than the UK, biofuels could be even more useful. In Brazil, for instance, 40 per cent of cars run on bioethanol and there are plans to increase this percentage. “The overall answer to our fuel issues is to use less fuel in the first instance, to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, increase our reliance on biofuels and to work for a solution that requires global initiatives to maximise the use of non-agricultural land for producing biofuel crops.”
 

Find out more:

• S173 Plants and people
• Photo by: Matt Murf

An indigenous people are taking on the government over access to land and water. Open University researcher Alessandra Marino reports from Madhya Pradesh, India.

With children gathering under the trees for their morning classes, a handful of men cooking food on the fire and other villagers farming in the fields behind the green tent in which I write, it is easy to forget that I am in the heart of a struggle. But I am.

Under this tent, for more than three weeks, over 130 people have carried out the longest occupation of government-owned land ever registered in Madhya Pradesh (a state in central India). The occupiers are ‘oustees’, displaced from their land by the Sardar Sarovar and the Jobat dam projects. Mostly adivasis (indigenous people) associated with the NBA (Narmada Bachao Andolan) movement, they have never been compensated for the loss of their land. The demonstrators are demanding fair land-based rehabilitation for themselves, their families and all the oustees.

In the district of Alirajpur and Badwani, the overwhelming majority of the victims of displacement are adivasis. People belonging to different villages, from the hilly village of Bhadal and Jalsindhi to the villages in the plains around Jobat, have united in this satyagraha (non-violent action).

How long will the protest last? The villagers claim they will hold on to this site until the state materially compensates them. A starting point would be the granting of rights to the land that they now occupy. Divided into lots it could accommodate between 15 and 17 families. The demonstrators will keep on sleeping under the tent, cooking on site and farming in the fields; if jailed, they are likely to go back to site.

 In 2007, the NBA organized a similar occupation in Badwani, but on the 12th day of the protest, the villagers were assaulted and lathi-charged while they were having dinner and then conducted to jail. After the opening of a court case on this episode, the state was compelled to pay to 92 oustees compensation of 10,000 rupees, 5,000 of which have been already disbursed under the Supreme Court’s directions.

Perhaps fearful of a repeat episode, the government has not undertaken any forcible vacation of the protest site, nor has it used violence against the people. Apart from the collector of the Alirajpur district, who has so far been sympathetic to the protesters’ requests, the authorities have not shown any interest.

There has been a less visible response: after the first week, water and electricity supplies were cut, leaving the site in darkness and endangering the cultivation of crops. In spite of this, life goes on. Disruption to farming has been kept to a minimum through the use of new technologies that require less water. Today all the villagers, 40 of which are children, eat, bathe and cultivate the land using a single, private water-pump. With the cold winter nights and the lack of electricity, the living conditions are not easy, but over 15 years of displacement and survival on hilltops are motivation enough to keep on struggling.

There is another precedent that fuels hope too. In Maharashtra, a similar occupation took place in 2003 for less than 20 days in a place called Somaval. After that, three resettlement sites were set up in Javdavadi, Vadchil and Chikli. The official process of allocation of the land to the oustees continues to this day. The oustees in Madhya Pradesh ask with reason why they cannot benefit from the same process.

For the protesters, this tent is far from being an illegal encroachment. It represents a legal right to peaceful protest, which they exercise as Indian citizens against the long-lasting silence of the authorities on the issue of rehabilitation and the corruption of this process; and against the abstract justice of court judgments that were never implemented.

Listening to the people’s demands, many questions arise over the relation between the state and the rights of citizenship, and the concepts of justice and legality. Given the continuing dispossession of adivasi people from their right to land, they live in a permanent state of exception; why should we, then, use legality as a key for interpreting the protest? Who or what is illegal here is hard to decide.

Alessandra Marino 9 January 2012

Alessandra Marino is research associate working for the Open University's Oecumene project. 

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

Oecumene is exploring citizenship after Orientalism: how the concept of citizenship is being refigured and renewed around the globe. This blog first appeared on the Oecumene blog site. There is a helpful analysis of the adivasis' plight here.

Marie is currently studying for her BA (Hons) in Leadership and Management with the OU.

How long does a telephone campaign last and what hours do you have to work as a caller?
The telephone campaigns tend to last between 2 and 4 weeks depending on the type of campaign. The hours typically involved are 2 evenings in the week just for 3 hours a night and then one weekend day. It is really flexible and you can work as many or as few of those as you like, it’s great.

You currently work full-time so is this is an extra job?
Yes, I have my own business in insurance so because of the hours with the business, the evenings are really good to earn some extra pocket money.

What was your main reason for applying for the role of telephone caller?
I’ve been studying with the OU on my BA Hons degree since 2009. In my first year I had a lot of support financially because in your first year in business there isn’t much money coming in. I really wanted to give something back to the OU because without it I wouldn’t have been able to get onto the path of studying. I do telephone calling a lot in my job and wanted to do something that was making a difference.

Is there a lot of training involved to become a caller?
You have to be competent and have a certain level of confidence to go on the phone for the first time. The first training was over a weekend and then refresher training tends to be half a day to a day after that. So it’s not a lot of training but they do make sure you’re confident and you’re happy to go on the phones. It’s also on going during the campaigns as well.

Is it difficult to ask for donations? And does it get easier?
I don’t find it hard to ask for donations because you’re having a conversation with somebody who studied with The Open University and if you can really have a good conversation with them it’s just a natural progression. At first you are thinking ‘oh gosh I have to ask for money’ and as you get more confident I wouldn’t say it gets easier but you do get better at handling any questions should any arise. It’s not particularly hard to start with as long as you do what you’ve been shown the training is there to make it easier for you.

What kind of questions do you get asked?
You get asked if you’re a student yourself and what it is you are styudying/studied. So it’s good to have a recap of the courses you’ve done. You’ll often get asked where the money is going (that’s a big one) although you’ll explain campaigns to them. They want to know what their money is going to do. Is it going to go on just admin, does it pay the callers or does all of it go to the causes?

Do you have crib sheets to help you?
Yes you have prompts so if for example someone says “I already give to charity I really can’t do something how do you expect me to find the money?” There are ways of being able to reassure people. And we get asked “how do I know you are calling from the OU?” and there are ways of managing that as the information we have only the OU would know.

How would you sum up your experience as a caller?
Working on the first campaign really changed my life around. When you work on your own or just have a team of 2 or 3 people working remotely for you, you don’t have a lot of human contact so it’s really easy to become quite cold and icy towards people. Being on the calling team formed me. It helped me to be more personable and made me remember why I went into business in the first place. I’ve got a lot more confidence. From a study point of view I’d taken a break after a particularly difficult 2010 and it gave me the little push to go back and study again which I’m doing now.

Has doing this role changed the way you feel about the OU? (If so, how?)
The OU always in my mind has always been unique but the campaign has reinforced that it’s just a really amazing community to be around and it is unlike any other form of studying. There’s nowhere else you can go to be able to keep doing what you’re doing and still work towards a degree. If you need help it’s there. So it’s just reinforced my belief in the good work that it does and especially with everything changing in the next year how important that is going to be because without the OU there would be hundreds, thousands of people who wouldn’t be able to get a degree.

Why do you think those in the OU community should give calling a try?

Find out more:

• Telephone campaign: become a caller
• Giving to The Open University
• BA (Honours) Leadership and Management
   

The good news is that more than ten years of open2.net content has been moved to a new website at open.edu/openlearn, creating one home for all the Open University's free online learning for the public. 

The new site continues to support OU-BBC broadcasts, but also gives access to iTunes U podcasts, YouTube videos, free study units taken from OU modules and topical content, arranged under subject areas relating to the OU curriculum. 

There's lots to do - you can watch Evan Davis exploring the state of British manufacturing; explore the frozen planet; get to know the science and history of the Olympics or have a look at our study units in LearningSpace.

Any existing links that direct people to open2.net content will automatically send people to the relevant pages on the new site.

You’ll find more information at open.edu/openlearn. 

Longer summers with no ice are probably the main reason why many polar bear populations are dropping. So what is happening to the bears? Different things in different parts of the Arctic, but here is what the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission say about it:

In 2009, of the 19 recognised subpopulations of polar bears, 8 are in decline, 1 is increasing, 3 are stable and 7 don’t have enough data to draw any conclusions. Figure 1 below compares the data for 2005 and 2009.

Recent research findings show that the increased evaporation from the Arctic ocean, as a result of warming, will cause more cloud cover, thus counteracting its adverse effect, so isn’t that good news?

Cloud feedback is not thought to be as strongly negative feedback, so this argument is outdated and fundamentally wrong.

The idea is that clouds reflect the solar radiation from the planet which would mean there would be less reaching the ground to warm up. It is a nice simple idea but this view is outdated and very likely completely wrong.

It depends on where the clouds form. Low altitude clouds will reflect more heat (what he is saying) whereas high altitude ones trap it (which he doesn’t mention). Overall there is an increasing amount of evidence that increasing the overall cloud cover will actually increase the warming.

There have been reports of a modest increase in mean global temperature (about half a degree Centigrade) during the last quarter of the 20th century. For this century, the UK Met Office and World Meteorological Office said there has been no further global warming. Have we stopped the trend?

Global mean temperature is not polar mean temperatures and it is inaccurate to quote the former when referring to the latter

The global mean temperature is derived from averaging data from all over the planet. Some parts are warming and some are cooling. Overall the global trend is relentlessly upwards.

Focussing on a very short timescale, e.g. 10 years, would not be an accurate reflection of the global trend which is relentlessly upwards. So let's look at the Arctic. This is the trend of annual average Arctic temperature for a meteorological data set from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the range 80-90N over the last 60 years.

The trend is approximately -32C in 1950 to approximately -25C by 2010.

The winter temperature of the Arctic has warmed by a huge amount since 195.

The Dow Chemical sponsorship of London 2012 tarnishes the Olympic ideal, and insults the memory of the tens of thousands of victims of the 1984 Bhopal disaster, argues Dick Skellington.

The news that the 2012 London Olympics will be sponsored by Dow Chemical, has caused consternation in India. There have been calls to the Indian Olympic Association to boycott the games. Dow Chemical is the company that bought the infamous Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters of modern times when up to 10,000 people died at the corporation's Bhopal plant in India during December 1984. Fifteen thousand more victims are estimated to have perished since. 

As part of the sponsorship Dow Chemical will produce a £7m decorative wrap to cover the external facade of the Olympic Stadium. Both London Organising Olympic Committee (LOC) chief, Sebastian Coe and London Mayor Boris Johnson have enthusiastically welcomed Dow, calling the deal the 'icing on the cake', but campaigners seeking justice for Bhopal gas victims are up in arms. Amnesty International has questioned whether the deal, which gives Dow Chemical 'exclusive marketing rights' to the main Olympic Stadium, complies with London's 2012 ethical code. 

There is nothing past tense about the situation in Bhopal. Living around the former Union Carbide factory site are some of the poorest people in the city, who for the past 27 years have been slowly poisoned by contaminated groundwater which they use for drinking, cooking and bathing.  

Dow continue to maintain that they can not be held responsible for what happened at Bhopal before they took over UCC. But this stance has caused uproar in India, and a spokesman for the International Campaign for Justice In Bhopal described it as 'offensive'. He said: 'This crass attempt by Dow to detoxify their brand won't wash with the thousands of victims of the Bhopal disaster, nor ordinary Londoners."  

What happened in Bhopal
Early in the morning of 3 December 3 1984, forty tonnes of a toxin called methyl isocyanate (MIC) leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide factory and settled over the slums in Bhopal, killing thousands as they slept.  Survivors’ leader Champa Devi Shukla explained ‘The pain was unbearable. We were writhing, coughing and slobbering froth. People just got up and ran in whatever clothes they were wearing. Some were in their underclothes, others wore nothing at all. It was complete panic. Among the crowd of people, dogs and even cows were running and trying to save their lives and crushing people as they ran.’

In the stampedes through narrow alleys many were trampled to death. Some went into convulsions and dropped dead. Most, struggling to breathe as the gas ripped their lungs apart, drowned in their own body fluids. 

In the years since, more people have died of their injuries and illnesses. In some places the dead were so many that it was impossible to walk without stepping on them. The hospitals were full of the dying. Doctors did not know how to treat them because they did not know which gas or gases had leaked, and Union Carbide would not release the information, claiming it was a ‘trade secret’.

Toxic legacy
The problem for Dow is that many of the issues in Bhopal remain unresolved, long after the disaster people are still dying, and thousands still suffer from related health problems. The site of the former pesticide plant, now abandoned, is still polluted by poison.

In June 2010, after years of protracted legal action against UCC, a court in Bhopal sentenced eight former plant employees, all Indians, to two years each in jail over the gas plant leak.  The convictions were the first since the disaster.  Campaigners said the court verdict was ‘too little and too late’.

Union Carbide and the Dow Chemical Company still refuse to publish the results of studies into the effects of MIC. UCC paid £300 in compensation to each survivor, money that is meant to last the rest of their lives. 

Over the years the survivors have received little medical help. In 1994 the Indian government, eager to put the gas leak behind it, shut down all research studies into the effects of the gas, just as new epidemics of cancers, diabetes, eye defects and crippling menstrual disorders were beginning to appear. 

Abandoned by all who had a duty of care, the survivors launched the Bhopal Medical Appeal and set up the Sambhavna Clinic which offers survivors free treatment.

Still poisoning
A private Union Carbide memo, obtained via a US court case, reveals that as far back as 1989 the company had tested soil and water inside the factory. Fish introduced to the samples died instantly. The danger to drinking water supplies was obvious, but Union Carbide issued no warnings. Its bosses in India and the USA watched silently as families already ruined by the gases drank and bathed their children in poisoned water. 

The situation did not improve after the state government took possession of the site in 1998. The following year, when Greenpeace was testing soil and water around the factory, it found carbon tetrachloride in one of the hand pumps at levels 682 times higher than the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limit. In August 2009, a sample of water from the same hand pump was analysed by a Greenpeace laboratory in the UK. Carbon tetrachloride was found at 4,880 times the EPA limit. In the last decade, the water has become seven times more poisonous. The Indian government has filed a fresh demand for $1.1 billion in compensation from Dow, but Dow continues to deny responsibility for the legacy of the disaster.

The Bhopal disaster is continuing. Scores of children are born with unimaginable congenital defects: no eyes, fused fingers, physical and mental retardation and virtual catatonia are all commonplace. Entire families suffer chronic ill-health and the incidence of various cancers and reproductive problems are far higher than in other parts of India. The factory and its poisons remain in the heart of Bhopal. Union Carbide and Dow have not faced justice. 

The problem for the LOC is that this single act of sponsorship risks damages the Olympic ideal. Should we not respect humanity more than we respect profit? It is time that Dow Chemical cleaned up Bhopal, and that the LOC looked at its own ethics, and approached Dow seeking a withdrawal of the controversial sponsorship. If they did, there is no doubt that other bidders would come in with the lost £7m.  

There is a Facebook campaign seeking a review of the sponsorship decision.   

Dick  Skellington 28 November 2011

Cartoon by Catherine Pain 

Nicola Awford OU alumna, works for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Polar Regions Unit. Find out more about her job, how the OU has influenced her work and how her role relates to the current OU/BBC production of Frozen Planet.

You recently featured a link to the BBC/OU production: Frozen Planet on the FCO website. Can you tell us more about the FCO links to the programme and your own interest in Frozen Planet?
Frozen Planet offers a rare insight into the stunning polar regions and we hope it inspires viewers to learn more about the UK’s interests and activities in the Arctic and Antarctic. The UK has a very long and impressive history of polar science and exploration, which continues today. You might know about the tragic outcome of Captain Scott’s ill-fated trip to the South Pole one hundred years ago, but did you know that he also recorded scientific data that is still used today? Measurements from Scott’s expedition helped British Antarctic Survey scientists discover the hole in the Ozone in the 1980s.

• OU course S175: The Frozen Planet
• OU on the BBC: Frozen Planet
• FCO polar regions
• British antarctic territory
• Discovering the arctic
• Discovering antarctica