"Never say die -Up man and try.."

When I was a kid, I was once taken to tea with two ladies who lived in the next lane.  As kids do, I was looking at the ornaments in their sitting room and I saw a tiny jug, made out of pottery, no bigger than a minute coffee cup.  On one side was painted the words "Never Say Die - Up man and try".
"I like that!" I said, and one of them immediately gave it to me as a present.  My mum was a bit upset.  She said no, of course, I wasn't to take it.
When we went home, she explained that I wasn't to say I liked other people's things.  (I had just meant that I liked it... not that I wanted it.)  It seemed a bit silly to me that you couldn't tell someone that you liked what they had, but I had learned and I didn't do it again.
However, the kind lady really did want me to have it, and later it was presented to me....and I have it still.
Well, I have been in all sorts of messes, most of which I have made myself, but I still draw strength from the words.
Just now, in the world, it seems a good time to look at it again.Things are pretty much of a mess, I mean really pretty much of a mess, but there are always the good guys who haven't stopped trying and really, I mean really, are succeeding.
What gives me a lot of hope is the way the younger generation are trying for better things. Take this year's award for the best student film in the 2013 International Uranium Film Festival. "No to a Nuclear Jordan".  The director, Solenne Tadros, explains that she aims to present the dangers that come with having a nuclear power plant and what the alternatives are... but let her tell it in her own words, on their website.... http://www.uraniumfilmfestival.org/index.php/en/thursday-23-may-2013/213-at-3-pm/441-no-to-a-nuclear-jordan
I decided, as I wasn't able to see the film, to come up with some of my own recent discoveries about renewable energy alternatives.. and I wondered if they matched any discoveries of yours!
Fact one: For over 90 hours in Denmark recently, the wind power produced more than the nation's electricity requirements, peaking at 122%  on October 28th at 2 a.m.
http://ecowatch.com/2013/12/13/wind-denmark-electricity-needs/
http://oncirculation.com/2013/11/19/denmark-passes-100-wind-power/ 

That's just wind! And when it comes to solar, look at this enthusiasm in the USA:
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/25/mosaic-encourages-people-put-solar-new-year/
We could do with a bit more of this in the UK!
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2013/nov/03/weatherwatch-solar-power-renewable-energy
Did you know that solar panels pay for themselves in six months to one and a half years for Southern Europe and under three years for the rest of Europe, which as the author of the article winningly states, has approximately the solar irradiance levels of Alaska?...Scroll down to the bottom of the post for this gem! http://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/26/solar-energy-payback-time-charts/

 All we need now is some decent storage... but the geeks are working on it. At present my favourite schemes are for the kind you have stored up even when the power lines are down, micro storage, so here are a couple from one extreme to another:
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/19/hydrogen-storage-large-scale-renewable-energy-storage-demonstration-projects/  If you are thinking big
to http://cleantechnica.com/2013/10/30/energy-storage-silicon-chips-new-supercapacitor-creates-interesting-possibilities-solar-cells/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29
...if you want something that fits on the back of a silicon chip!


And here's a round up of just some of what's been going on.
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/23/13-huge-clean-energy-breakthroughs-2013/

 Meanwhile, what has been happening in Jordan?
The people are protesting..
http://jordantimes.com/tribesmen-azraq-residents-say-no-to-nuclear-reactor-location
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/11/jordan-nuclear-rosatom-environment-energy.html#

At this time of year, many of us Christians are remembering shepherds watching their flocks by night in a starlit field in Judea. Now, today, I am thinking of shepherds not so far away in the countryside of Jordan.  I wish you well.

Life or death?

This week I should have liked to have been in Window Rock, Arizona.  I should particularly like to have been there on Tuesday to see the film, Ground Zero -Sacred Ground. It shows Three Rivers, an ancient rock art site, where over 10,000 petroglyphs were created by the Jonada Mogollon people between 900 and 1400 AD. There are birds, fish, humans, insects and plants, as well as geometric designs, found over an area of 50 acres of the Northern Chihuahuan Desert. There are trails to walk and campsites where you can stay to see them for yourself.
Some  thirty five miles away, however, is the Trinity nuclear test site, now called the White Sands Missile Range. This lies in New Mexico, near the area of the desert aptly named Jornada del Muerto, or "Route of the dead man."
The one desert holds the pictorial  history of man living with nature, the other, a history of its destruction, written in the sand.
This contrast is explored in a description of the film, which can be read at the brilliantly visual website of the Uranium Film Festival. They staged the film's showing along with many others I would have liked to have seen, in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Window Rock, as part of their travelling film festival.
The next festival stopover is also in the USA, in Washington from February 10th-12th.  The festival program is on their website at http://www.uraniumfilmfestival.org/index.php/en/travelling-festival/usa-2014/washington  After that, it travels to New York City on February 14th until February 18th.

EU citizen? You can add your name to a couple of letters about nuclear power which may affect your future.

So... I'm really bad at getting round to writing letters... that's why, when someone else has done it for me, even better than me...I'm happy...especially when I can put my name to it, too.

There are two such letter out there at the moment, both about the fact that a whole lot of us don't want nuclear power and a whole lot of us don't want to subsidise it... and probably even more don't want their energy bills to go up in the future, especially when other people's are going down.

The first is an open letter from Energy Fair to E.U. Commissioner Almunia:

“No valid justification for subsidising nuclear power”, which you can endorse. The instructions are with their letter and they will make sure that your endorsement reaches the commissioner, with copies to Günther Oettinger, Commissioner for Energy, Connie Hedegaard, Commissioner for Climate Action, and President José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission.

The link to the letter is http://www.energyfair.org.uk/home/open-letter

The letter is also in The Ecologist, http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2160503/nuclear_subsidies_open_letter_to_commissioner_almunia.html

The other E protest is a new one from Global 2000. (Their previous successful petition against nuclear power being included in the EU subsidies for renewable energy was called “My Voice Against Nuclear Power”.)

This new E protest is “Not a single cent for nuclear power!” and is against any new state aid for nuclear power.   Using the Global 2000 form you can send the EU Commissioner for Competition Almunia an email.

This is the link   http://www.my-voice.eu/

Why?

These are six relevant articles!

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/10/30/hinkley-c-nuclear-power-plant-get-twice-rate-solar-pv-uk-government/?utm_source=Cleantechnica+News&utm_campaign=07cc6df6e8-RSS_

http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/news/comment/hinkley-a-huge-contribution-towards-yesterdays-energy-thinking/ 

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2013/oct/21/nuclear-power-energy-edf-deal

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2013/sep/04/fukushima-farce-nuclear-industry-flaw

http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=208

http://cus.net/news/news4.html

CENSORED NEWS: International Uranium Film Festival coming to Navajo Nation

CENSORED NEWS: International Uranium Film Festival coming to Navajo Nation

What happens when a film is about your life?

On November 27th  the travelling Uranium film festival arrives in the USA.  The main festival takes place each year in Rio de Janeiro, when films from all over the world are entered for the festival. It's the only one of its kind, showing films about nuclear power, uranium mining, nuclear weapons and the health effects of radioactivity. You can find out a lot more from their amazing website.
The first films will be shown in Albuquerque NM, followed by screenings in Santa Fe and Window Rock.  Next year films will be shown in Washington D.C. and in New York City in February.
One of the films is 'The River That Harms'.  Just fourteen weeks after the accident at Three Mile Island, which a great many people have heard about, there was another nuclear tragedy, which I for one, did not find out out about for many years.
When I read that ninety million gallons of liquid nuclear waste and eleven hundred tons of solid mill wastes burst through a broken dam wall at the Church Rock Uranium Mill Facility, contaminating the Puerco River,  and I had never heard about it, I was bemused.
Many of the people affected were from the Navajo Nation. It was the river they lived by. It was the land that their animals grazed and the water that they drank, and the pools that their children played in....
Now we have films about children who don't play outside in Japan and children whose lives were affected by a poisoned river in the USA. But did their parents ever think it would happen to them, or that a film would be made about them? If the films weren't made, would you know about them?
The uranium that powered the plants in Fukushima, apparently, came from mines in Australia, but I also read of protests and long protest marches by Aboriginal people along with international protesters against the mining of uranium  http://indymedia.org.au/2013/05/10/wgar-news-walkatjurra-walkabout-stepping-out-against-uranium-mining-wanfa-anawa
 Our children, your children, have the right to be in happy films in a bright future.  It's up to us to see that this happens.

travelling Uranium Film Festival comes to Munich and then Bamberg and Berlin.

This is the poster for the travelling Uranium Film Festival in Munich.  It is being held from 26th to 29th September which coincides with the Beerfest in Munich.  It will be a lively time to visit the city. The films are exceptional.  A truly international film festival, it hosts films from across the world, including Germany and the programme and details of the films being shown, as well as at previous festivals can be seen at the website, http://www.uraniumfilmfestival.org/index.php/en/
The website can be read in German, English and Brazilian and if you click on the German language version you can find all the details of the festival in Bamberg, from 30th September to 1st October and Berlin, from 3rd October to 7th October.
The website is worth visiting, even if you can't make it to the cinema; it is very visual.  If you are thinking of entering the 4th international festival, entry is open until 1st. January 2014 and it's free!
At a time when the world is slowly waking up to the seriousness of the situation in Japan and the consequences of nuclear power, weapons and waste, these films have a most powerful message.

Rio de Janeiro. The International Uranium Film Festival.

Yesterday, I saw the waves breaking on the shorerline of Rio de Janeiro.  I really did! Well, it was on EarthCam  Rio de Janeiro  If you have a moment, it's a lovely sight.... If I had really been there, I would have been making my way a little further up the coast to Flamengo Park and the Museum of Modern Arts where The Third International Uranium Film Festival  is being held.  They are showing forty eight films from a large number submitted this year from around twenty countries, too many for them all to be shown in the time. I always wonder about the forty ninth film.
This is one of those rare film festivals which shows films that the mainstream frequently seems to shy away from, often made by brave, deeply committed people who are determined that the truth should be heard and the victims given a voice. Even more bravely, when the victims themselves, speak out.
Like me, you don't have to go there to find out about them, the festival has a really amazing website. http://www.uraniumfilmfestival.org/index.php/en/ and if you go to their program, you can find out about individual films.
These people are making waves.