It is time to go blackberry picking, and I have already got stained fingers from this black, juicy, wild fruit which I enjoy gathering and then turning into puddings. The ripe wheat in the fields has been cut down and is now being carted away, leaving confused rabbits and field mice in bewilderment at the disappearance of the thick forest of tall cornstalks where they had been living. On our moors the heather is turning from pink into a deep purple, and some patches of bracken are turning brown.

I have watched a few wild birds in the hedges foraging for seeds and fruit berries, but many of the seeds are enclosed in a hard shell which birds cannot crack. Toadstools have sprung up in small groups, chiefly at the base of trees: these fungi have neither leaves nor flowers, but they do have colourful caps. In a local pine wood I have found toadstools almost as big as buns; a naturalist tells me that these fungi draw nourishment from dead leaves and rotting wood.

Pine marten numbers have declined in this county due to habitat loss and persecution; these small animals feed on carrion, rabbits and voles and beetles, as well as fruit, berries, nuts and fungi. One of their main enemies are foxes, which catch and kill them when they can, but pine martens cannot be easy prey for a fox because they are climbers, which foxes are not, and they climb quickly up tree trunks, gripping the bark with their strong claws.

On rare occasions I have seen a stoat or a weasel; these little hunters look alike in colour, but weasels are about a third smaller. Both animals have long bodies, long necks and little heads with pointed snouts and short tails. They are born hunters and live in burrows, usually in a field or, occasionally, in a warm cluster of weeds or gorse. Weasels prey chiefly on mice and rats and small birds, and must be crafty hunters to be successful; they are small enough to chase a field mouse down its underground tunnel.

Ric O'Barry, who appeared in the Oscar-winning film, delivers petition signed by 1.7 million people to US embassy in Tokyo

The star of an Oscar-winning film about dolphin hunting in Japan delivered a petition to the country's US embassy calling for an end to the practice.

Ric O'Barry, 70 – who appeared in The Cove and trained dolphins for 1960s TV show Flipper – was flanked by police and dozens of supporters carrying banners. The petition was signed by 1.7 million people from 151 countries.

O'Barry had hoped to deliver it to the Japanese fisheries agency but cancelled the plan after threats from a nationalist group with a history of violence. The Cove, which won this year's Oscar for best documentary, shows fishermen from the town of Taiji who scare dolphins into a cove before killing them slowly by piercing them repeatedly.

O'Barry said: "I'm not losing hope. Our voice is being heard in Taiji."

The annual hunt in the town began on Wednesday, but boats came back empty. The government allows the hunting of around 20,000 dolphins a year and argues that killing them is no different from breeding cows and pigs for slaughter. Most Japanese have never eaten dolphin meat and, even in Taiji, it is not consumed regularly.

Thirteen workers flee drilling platform but oil company denies spill

Fresh fears about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico were raised today when fire forced workers to abandon an oil and gas platform, just six months after the BP explosion that created an environmental disaster in the region.

The company, Mariner Energy, said none of the 13 workers, who fled the platform and took to the sea in immersion suits, were injured. The coastguard said they were taken by ship to a nearby platform and from there to hospital in Houma, Louisiana, to be checked. Ships, helicopters and a plane were sent by the coastguard from Houston, New Orleans and Mobile.

Photographs of smoke billowing from the rig alarmed politicians, environmentalists, fishermen and others on the Gulf coast, still coping with pollution from the BP oil spill.

Peter Troedsson, a spokesman for the coastguard, said the fire had been put out and, in spite of initial reports of an oil slick, ships and helicopters at the scene could see no pollution round the platform.

He said the initial report had come from a Mariner ship at the scene, but the coastguards could see no oil sheen at the site.

The fire is a setback for the oil industry, which has been arguing that drilling in the Gulf is safe and that the BP explosion was a rare event. It came only 24 hours after companies including Mariner had staged a rally in Houston against a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. About 5,000 employees had been bussed in for the rally.

Barbara Dianne Hagood, a spokesman for Mariner Energy, told the Financial Times on Wednesday: "I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this [the Obama] administration is trying to break us. The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the Gulf coast, Gulf coast employees and Gulf coast residents."

Another spokesman for Mariner, Patrick Cassidy, said he did not anticipate any pollution, as the platform had not been drilling and there had been no blowout. "There is no hydrocarbon spill," he said.

The fire had broken out on a facility above the water, at some distance from the wells, he added.

Dave Reed, an oil worker on a platform about 14 miles away, told CNN he could see the smoke and that a call had gone out for ships, helicopters and planes in the region to divert to the area. "It took an hour for the helicopters to get here and all 13 were taken from the water," Reed said.

The alarm was raised by a commercial helicopter flying over the platform. A coastguard spokesman, chief petty officer John Edwards, said: "We were able to confirm that all people were accounted for."

The fire broke out on the platform Vermilion Oil Rig 380, about 90 miles south of the Louisiana Coast and west of the earlier BP explosion that had killed 11 workers.

Both the White House and the coastguard said they did not anticipate any pollution, but that ships equipped with facilities to help clean up spills had been sent to the area as a precaution.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said: "We obviously have response assets ready for deployment should we receive reports of pollution in the water." The White House stressed that, unlike the BP rig, the platform was not a deepwater facility and was only working to a depth of 340ft.

BP's attempts to cap its well, which saw hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spill into the Gulf, were bedevilled by the depth at which they had been drilling. They finally capped the well in July.

Mariner is a small company in the process of being taken over by the Apache oil company in a deal worth an estimated $3.9bn (£2.5bn). The deal has not yet been completed. Shares in both companies fell after news of the fire.

Scientists say desertification of the mountain grasslands of the Tibetan plateau is accelerating climate change

Like generations of Tibetan nomads before him, Phuntsok Dorje makes a living raising yaks and other livestock on the vast alpine grasslands that provide a thatch on the roof of the world.

But in recent years the vegetation around his home, the Tibetan plateau, has been destroyed by rising temperatures, excess livestock and plagues of insects and rodents.

The high-altitude meadows are rarely mentioned in discussions of global warming, but the changes to this ground have a profound impact on Tibetan politics and the world's ecological security.

For Phuntsok Dorje, the issue is more down to earth. He is used to dramatically shifting cloudscapes above his head, but it is the changes below his feet that make him uneasy.

"The grass used to be up to here," Phuntsok says, indicating a point on his leg a little below the knee. "Twenty years ago, we had to scythe it down. But now, well, you can see for yourself. It's so short it looks like moss."

The green prairie that used to surround his tent has become a brown desert. All that is left of the grasslands here are yellowing blotches on a stony surface riddled with rodent holes.

It is the same across much of this plateau, which encompasses an area a third of the size of the US.

Desertification

Scientists say the desertification of the mountain grasslands is accelerating climate change. Without its thatch the roof of the world is less able to absorb moisture and more likely to radiate heat.

Partly because of this the Tibetan mountains have warmed two to three times faster than the global average; the permafrost and glaciers of the "Third Pole" are melting.

To make matters worse, the towering Kunlun, Himalayan and Karakorum ranges that surround the plateau act as a chimney for water vapour – which has a stronger greenhouse gas effect than carbon dioxide – to be convected high into the stratosphere. Mixed with pollution, dust and black carbon (soot) from India and elsewhere, this spreads a brown cloud across swaths of the Eurasian landmass. When permafrost melts it can also release methane, another powerful greenhouse gas. Xiao Ziniu, the director general of the Beijing climate centre, says Tibet's climate is the most sensitive in Asia and influences the globe.

Grassland degradation is evident along the twisting mountain road from Yushu to Xining, which passes through the Three Rivers national park, the source of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers. Along some stretches the landscape is so barren it looks more like the Gobi desert than an alpine meadow.

Phuntsok Dorje is among the last of the nomads scratching a living in one of the worst affected areas. "There used to be five families on this plain. Now we are the only one left and there is not enough grass even for us," he says. "It's getting drier and drier and there are more and more rats every year."

Until about 10 years ago the nearest town, Maduo, used to be the richest in Qinghai province thanks to herding, fishing and mining, but residents say their economy has dried up along with the nearby wetlands.

"This all used to be a lake. There wasn't a road here then. Even a Jeep couldn't have made it through," said a Tibetan guide, Dalang Jiri, as we drove through the area. By one estimate, 70% of the former rangeland is now desert.

"Maduo is now very poor. There is no way to make a living," said a Tibetan teacher who gave only one name, Angang. "The mines have closed and grasslands are destroyed. People just depend on the money they get from the government. They just sit on the kang [a raised, heated, floor] and wait for the next payment."

Many of the local people are former herders moved off the land under a controversial "ecological migration" scheme launched in 2003. The government in Beijing is in the advanced stages of relocating between 50% and 80% of the 2.25 million nomads on the Tibetan plateau. According to state media, this programme aims to restore the grasslands, prevent overgrazing and improve living standards.

The Tibetan government-in-exile says the scheme does little for the environment and is aimed at clearing the land for mineral extraction and moving potential supporters of the Dalai Lama into urban areas where they can be more easily controlled.

Qinghai is dotted with resettlement centres, many on the way to becoming ghettos. Nomads are paid an annual allowance – of 3,000 yuan (about £300) to 8,000 yuan per household – to give up herding for 10 years and be provided with housing. As in some native American reservations in the US and Canada, they have trouble finding jobs. Many end up either unemployed or recycling rubbish or collecting dung.

Some feel cheated. "If I could go back to herding, I would. But the land has been taken by the state and the livestock has been sold off so we are stuck here. It's hopeless," said Shang Lashi, a resident at a resettlement centre in Yushu. "We were promised jobs. But there is no work. We live on the 3,000 yuan a year allowance, but the officials deduct money from that for the housing, which was supposed to be free."

Their situation was made worse by the earthquake that struck Yushu earlier this year, killing hundreds. People were crushed when their new concrete homes collapsed, a risk they would not have faced in their itinerant life on the grasslands. Many are once again living under canvas – in disaster relief tents and without land or cattle.

In a sign of the sensitivity of the subject, the authorities declined to officially answer the Guardian's questions. Privately, officials said resettlement and other efforts to restore the grassland, including fencing off the worst areas, were worthwhile.

"The situation has improved slightly in the past five years. We are working on seven areas, planting trees and trying to restore the ecosystem around closed gold mines," said one environmental officer. The problem would not be solved in the short term. "This area is particularly fragile. Once the grasslands are destroyed, they rarely come back. It is very difficult to grow grass at high altitude."

The programme's effectiveness is questioned by others, including Wang Yongchen, founder of the Green Earth Volunteers NGO and a regular visitor to the plateau for 10 years. "Overgrazing was considered a possible cause of the grassland degradation, but things haven't improved since the herds were enclosed and the nomads moved. I think climate change and mining have had a bigger impact."

Assessing the programme is complicated by political tensions. In the past year, three prominent Tibetan environmental campaigners have been arrested after exposing corruption and flaws in wildlife conservation on the plateau.

Infestation

Another activist, who declined to give his name, said it was difficult to comment. "The situation is complicated. Some areas of grassland are getting better. Others are worse. There are so many factors involved."

A growing population of pika, gerbils, mice and other rodents is also blamed for degradation of the land because they burrow into the soil and eat grass roots.

Zoologists say this highlights how ecosystems can quickly move out of balance. Rodent numbers have increased dramatically in 10 years because their natural predators – hawks, eagles and leopards – have been hunted close to extinction. Belatedly, the authorities are trying to protect wildlife and attract birds of prey by erecting steel vantage points to replace felled trees.

There is widespread agreement that this climatically important region needs more study.

"People have not paid enough attention to the Tibetan plateau. They call it the Third Pole but actually it is more important than the Arctic or Antarctic because it is closer to human communities. This area needs a great deal more research," said Yang Yong, a Chinese explorer and environmental activist. "The changes to glaciers and grasslands are very fast. The desertification of the grassland is a very evident phenomenon on the plateau. It's a reaction by a sensitive ecosystem that will precede similar reactions elsewhere."

Phuntsok Dorje is unlikely to take part in any study. But he's seen enough to be pessimistic about the future. "The weather is changing. It used to rain a lot in the summer and snow in the winter. There was a strong contrast between the seasons, but not now. It's getting drier year after year. If it carries on like this I have no idea what I will do."

Additional reporting by Cui Zheng

Reducing funding for household generation of renewable energy will jeopardise job creation and energy security, Huhne is told

A coalition of green, countryside and housing groups has warned energy secretary Chris Huhne not to cut subsidies for green electricity and heating as part of the government's spending review. The 22 groups, including green energy trade body the Renewable Energy Association, the National Farmers Union and the Federation of Master Builders, said in a letter to Huhne that cutting schemes that subsidise household generation of renewable energy would jeopardise job creation, energy security and greenhouse gas targets.

The move was sparked by comments from the Department of Energy and Climate Change's minister of state, Charles Hendry, who recently said he was "closely reviewing" the £27bn renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme due to start in April next year to encourage the take-up of green heating devices such as heat pumps, and the £8bn feed-in tariff (FIT) launched in April which pays small-scale generators of green electricity.

"We inherited a situation where we could see who was going to benefit commercially but we couldn't really see how it was going to be paid for and that it would create pretty substantial bills," Hendry told the Telegraph in an article that suggested both schemes could be "slashed". Justine Greening, economic secretary to the Treasury, also recently attended a launch of a report by the right-leaning Policy Exchange thinktank that was highly critical of the FIT and the RHI. "...We will focus on the most cost-effective approaches [to tackle climate change]," said Greening at the event. "In fact, the more you care about climate change, the more value for money counts. We have to make sure every penny saves the maximum emissions possible. And we will put a stop to the last government's obsession with equating high levels of expensive inputs with high impact."

The rate paid for the feed-in tariff is currently due to be reviewed in 2012 and its introduction has caused a solar gold rush in the UK as a record number householders and business installing solar photovoltaic panels to earn the tariff. But the groups behind today's letter are worried such language from senior government figures indicate the FIT and the RHI could be victims of the comprehensive spending review, the results of which are due to be published on 20 October.

"As you know, heat is responsible for 47% of UK emissions and 49% of UK energy demand, so no government serious about climate change or energy security can ignore half the problem," wrote the signatories, including Howard Johns of the Solar Trade Association, William Worsley of the Country Land and Business Association and David Caro of the Federation of Small Businesses. The letter continues: "Costs come down when the industry can plan and invest with confidence, and economies of scale are achieved – that is one of the simple aims of these policy mechanisms."

Ed Miliband, shadow energy secretary and Labour leadership candidate, also warned today of cutting the schemes. "This government promised to be the greenest ever but it is already betraying this promise," he said. " Unless we go ahead with the feed-in tariff and renewable heat incentive as planned, we will never achieve the greening of our energy supplies that we need. Instead of creating uncertainty and delay, the government should reaffirm the commitments made by the previous Labour government."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said accusations that the RHI was going to be "slashed" were speculation. "The government is doing what people would expect any responsible government to do, especially in the current economic climate," she said. "That is looking across all our policies and inherited spend, which includes the not insubstantial costs associated with the proposed renewable heat incentive and the feed-in tariff scheme, to ensure that what is being spent is being spent in the best and most efficient way." Climate minister Greg Barker recently also wrote that feed-in tariffs were "at the heart of our efforts to 'green' Britain".

Labour MP and sustainability adviser for Friends of the Earth, Alan Simpson, said that mixed messages from government would scare off investors: "You have government scaring the living daylights out of local authorities and businesses, but also the investment community who look at long-term signals. So you risk all investment decisions being put on hold, because different ministers are saying 'maybe we will, maybe we won't' – it sends completely the wrong messages."

In a separate development today, M&S became the latest household name to offer solar panels to consumers. Following British Gas's launch of solar photovoltaic products last week, the high street retailer said it had partnered with Scottish and Southern Energy to offer solar photovoltaic panels and solar thermal systems.

Coalition of green, countryside and housing groups warns that cutting schemes that subsidise household generation of renewable energy would jeopardise job creation, energy security and greenhouse gas targets

Dear secretary of state [for energy],

A recent newspaper article based on an interview with Charles Hendry (Minister with the energy to bat for Britain, 23 August) suggested that funding "may be slashed" for feed-in tariff technologies such as solar PV and the forthcoming renewable heat incentive. As you know, heat is responsible for 47% of UK emissions and 49% of UK energy demand, so no government serious about climate change or energy security can ignore half the problem.

Both renewable heat and solar PV are decentralised technologies, which put the power to generate directly in people's hands. Costs come down when the industry can plan and invest with confidence, and economies of scale are achieved – that is one of the simple aims of these policy mechanisms. They are demonstrably effective at reducing costs – for example, the cost of PV halved in a decade in Germany under a similar scheme and costs under the UK scheme are forecast to more than halve by 2020. The UK's PV market is now finally getting off the ground, with jobs projected to treble in 2010 alone.

You published a report with your July energy statement estimating that the cost to households of energy and climate change policies could be counterbalanced by savings from existing energy efficiency policies. We hope Decc ministers will advocate this approach, including in the Comprehensive Spending Review, to explain how essential technological innovation can be paid for. We were disappointed not to see this argument made in recent media coverage. Pursuing energy efficiency alongside renewables is clearly the right approach.

Yours sincerely,

Gaynor Hartnell
Chief executive, Renewable Energy Association

Alan Simpson
Sustainable energy adviser, Friends of the Earth

Peter Kendall
President, National Farmers' Union

David Caro
Chair, FSB Environment Committee, Federation of Small Businesses

John Sauven
Executive director, Greenpeace UK

Ray Horwood CBE
Chief executive, National Federation of Roofing Contractors

Peter Kindersley
Farmer and entrepreneur

William Worsley
President, Country Land and Business Association

Tony Juniper
Sustainability adviser and campaigner

Frances O'Grady
Deputy general secretary, TUC

Howard Johns
Chairman, Solar Trade Association

Brian Berry
Director external affairs, Federation of Master Builders

Chris Baugh
Assistant general secretary, Public and Commercial Services Union

Andrew Lee
General manager, Sharp Energy Solutions Europe

Neil Schofield
Head of sustainable development, Worcester Bosch

Gavin Hayes
General secretary, Compass

Ed Mayo
Secretary general, Co-operatives UK

Julia Craik
Managing director, The Premises Studios Ltd

Derry Newman
Chief executive, SolarCentury

John Meadows
Managing director, Schott UK

Dave Sowden
Chief executive, Micropower Council

Leonie Greene
Campaign manager, We Support Solar

Andrew Leech
Executive director, National Home Improvement Council

Craig Jackson
Senior architectural technician, South Yorkshire Housing Association Limited

Instead of producing reports 3,000 pages long, the IPCC should focus only on the key questions that everyone is interested in

If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change didn't exist, would we need to invent it? Many people find it helpful to have a single point of reference on the big, global questions that everyone is interested in: can we detect human influence on climate, how large are changes expected to be in future, what are the main impacts likely to be and what can (not should) be done about it? These are questions on which the level of scientific consensus is far higher than most non-scientists believe, so an institution like the IPCC clearly has a role to play to assess and communicate the extent – and limits – of that consensus.

Where the IPCC has gone wrong, in my view, is mission-creep. Everyone is emphasising that "there were bound to be a couple of mistakes in the 3,000 pages" of the IPCC 4th Assessment, but no one is asking why there were 3,000 pages in the first place. The IPCC started out as a simple assessment of the literature when there wasn't much climate literature to assess. As the volume of the literature has exploded, the IPCC has tried to keep pace, with ever larger reports and teams of authors. Most readers of IPCC reports don't have 10 times as many questions about climate as they had in 1990, so why do they need reports that are almost 10 times as long? The reason is that the IPCC has allowed itself to be bullied into trying to address all the questions about climate change that someone might ask, rather than confining itself to the questions that everyone is asking.

Governments are exploiting the IPCC to get climate assessments done on the cheap – authors and editors are not paid – and the scientific community is falling for it hook, line and sinker. Using an intergovernmental panel to tell the government of the Netherlands how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, or even the governments of India, China and Nepal how fast Himalayan glaciers are receding, is a bit like asking the US 101st Airborne Division to build primary schools in Afghanistan. It works, but it is not the most efficient way of doing things, and the impact of mistakes is massively magnified.

If an Afghan contractor breaks a child's foot, that's a tragedy, but a local one: if the digger is being driven by a US paratrooper, the poor kid becomes a poster child for al-Qaida. If the "2035 for 2350" mistake had been made in a regional assessment commissioned by Himalayan governments, perhaps using methods and standards of assessment endorsed by the IPCC, users of the regional assessment might have been mildly irritated, but that is all. I haven't heard of any Indian, Nepalese or Chinese hydrologists claiming to have based any decisions on the 2035 figure: they would look pretty silly if they had done, since the number was clearly wrong and contradicted elsewhere.

The only reason the 2035 mistake mattered was that it gave some journalists an excuse to talk about "the catalogue of errors in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report", failing to tell their listeners, readers and viewers that none of these errors had any impact whatsoever on the assessment's headline conclusions.

If we are going to produce regular international assessments of the climate issue, reviewed with the rigour the InterAcademy Council rightly called for this week, then they cannot be 3,000 pages long and address every aspect of climate change that is of interest, however pressing, to some government department somewhere in the world. Instead, we need reports a few hundred pages long covering the issue as a whole and addressing only the key questions that everyone is interested in. This is hardly a revolutionary idea: it is simply going back to what was done in 1990.

A key part of the IPCC's remit should be to recommend methods and standards for regional assessments. We clearly need different countries to interpret the phrase "impact of climate change" in similar ways. But undertaking these regional assessments should be up to regional governments. If the government of India wants help from the scientific community in assessing the impact of climate change on India, then we should provide it, but the IPCC has no business to do the assessment for them. The IPCC could still conduct regional assessments as special reports commissioned by interested governments, provided these are clearly separate from the regular global assessment, so no one can claim that a single mistake contaminates the whole batch.

Clearly, none of this is relevant to the 5th Assessment due to be published in 2013-2014: too much work has been done to make major changes at this stage, with author teams already in place. It will be thousands of pages long and will contain a couple ("catalogue") of errors that will be gleefully pointed out sometime in 2015. But now is the time to start thinking about what happens afterwards. We don't need to keep doing this to ourselves.

• Dr Myles Allen is head of the Climate Dynamics group at Oxford University's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics department.

Win a pair of tickets to a one-off screening on Tuesday 7 September 2010

Severe weather forces campaigners to give up their perilous position on British-owned rig off the coast of Greenland

• Greenpeace shuts down Arctic oil rig

Four Greenpeace activists who halted drilling by a British-owned oil exploration rig off Greenland have been arrested after they abandoned their occupation because of severe weather.

Greenlandic police arrested the four after high winds buffeted the Stena Don drilling rig overnight, forcing them to abandon mountaineering-style platforms they had suspended by ropes underneath the platform less than 48 hours earlier.

The activists' arrest is a setback for Greenpeace, which believed a longer-term occupation of the rig would be a serious blow to attempts by the Edinburgh-based exploration firm Cairn Energy to strike oil or gas before the intense Arctic winter sets in.

However, sources in the region had predicted when the four protesters clambered on to the platform at dawn on Tuesday that severe weather forecast for early this morning would cut short their occupation.

Greenpeace has warned that if Cairn strikes oil or gas, it will provoke an "oil rush" in the vulnerable and unspoilt waters of the Arctic.

Today the circumstances surrounding the activists' arrest provoked a bitter row after Greenpeace accused the police of spreading "disinformation" about last night's events.

Morten Nielsen, deputy head of Greenland police, told the Guardian that the four men were "rescued" before midnight local time using baskets and ropes lowered from the Stena Don's deck after severe winds and waves up to 6m (18ft) battered the platform.

But Greenpeace's lead climber on board its protest ship the Esperanza, which has been shadowing the drilling operation in Baffin Bay west of Greenland for 11 days, said that was "simply not true".

Dean Plant said the police had "flat out" refused Greenpeace requests to get the climbers down safely before the severe weather hit the rig last night. "Given that the weather was fine at this point, we regard this refusal as irresponsible. Because the police wouldn't let the climbers come down by the safest method, the activists were instead forced by the police to go up on to the rig," he said. "To call the operation a rescue demonstrates a startling lack of honesty by the Greenland police."

A Greenpeace spokesman added that had the campaign group been allowed to retrieve the four men as requested, they would have expected them to be arrested and taken into Greenlandic custody. "We take full responsibility for what we're doing. We certainly wouldn't expect to up anchor and high tail it out," he said.

Nielsen said the protesters, from the US, Germany, Poland and Finland, have now been arrested under Greenlandic regulations for breaching the 500m safety zone around the rig and under Danish criminal law for trespass.

"Basically we were readying ourselves for any eventuality but it worked out. What needed to be done was a rescue operation," said Nielsen.

He also revealed that the police yesterday in the town of Qeqertarsuaq seized a helicopter used by Greenpeace on the Esperanza to photograph the rig.

The four protesters will make their first court appearance in about 24 hours, after being transferred from the rig to the town of Aasiaat.

In a further row, a senior Inuit politician accused Greenpeace of damaging relations among the Arctic First Nations. Aqqalak Lynge, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), an umbrella body with official representation at the UN, said the protest was hindering debate about offshore drilling.

Although many Inuit were unhappy with offshore drilling because it threatened the seas, Lynge said Greenpeace was widely disliked by Inuit because of its stance on seal hunting.

"We support development on land but not out in the ice fields, in the very pristine waters off Greenland. We live by fishing. That's our economy, our industrial economy," he said. "I think what Greenpeace is doing, they are destroying a discussion, a more nuanced discussion among the Inuit people. We are tired of being told by Greenpeace what to do and what not to do."

Mads Christensen, executive director of Greenpeace Nordic, confirmed the group had reputational problems with many Inuit because of its campaigns against seal culling in the 1970s and 80s. However, he said there were Greenlanders who opposed offshore drilling, including fishing organisations, but public debate was being stifled by Greenland's desire for economic independence from Denmark.

Cairn Energy said drilling resumed as soon as the four were arrested and that the company had built delays and unscheduled stoppages into its schedule.

Greenpeace attempted to widen its campaign against deep sea drilling by threatening to take the British government to court, accusing it of breaching EU and domestic environmental and safety legislation.

The group has sent the government a "letter before action", warning that it plans to apply for a judicial view, claiming ministers have issued new licences for deep sea drilling in British waters before they had found out what caused the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

In a letter to energy secretary Chris Huhne, Greenpeace has highlighted admissions in official reports that the UK has little chance of tackling a major oil spill in the Atlantic because it does not have the equipment.

The government's own environmental assessment says the Maritime and Coastguard Agency has "very limited capability for surface oil recovery, and there is currently no capacity for large-scale containment and recovery in the offshore UK continental shelf (or in adjacent national waters, including Norway and Ireland)".

John Sauven, Greenpeace UK's executive director, said: "The world needs to go beyond oil, but here in the UK the government is waving through applications for new drilling as if the Deepwater Horizon explosion never happened.

"The Gulf of Mexico disaster was a game changer, so ministers should suspend new deep water licences and companies like Cairn Energy must stop dangerous drilling in the Arctic and start investing in clean alternatives instead."

The Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh explains in his new book how a Buddhist approach could benefit ecology

• Zen and the art of protecting the planet

There is something extraordinarily child-like about the 84-year-old Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh.

To portray him out of context could make him appear naive and unworldly. It is therefore understandable that he does not like to be interviewed by journalists who have not already spent some time in his presence and meditated with him. The Daily Mirror was interested in running a piece only if they could get a picture of him with a major celebrity, which is not particularly helpful since he believes fame is one of the key paths to suffering.

After a rare private audience and five days in a retreat in Nottingham which nearly a thousand other people took part in, I have come to recognise that his way of being could be an antidote to our politicised and intellectualised world.

He has an uncanny ability to clear away the complexities of our lives by reminding us to think about the essence of who we are and offering some simple steps to challenge our habitualised problems and neuroticism.

In recent years, he has turned his full attention to the dangers of climate change and recently published the best-selling book The World We Have – A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology.

He discusses in the book how he sat and consulted with the Buddha for many hours and came away with the recognition that we could be facing the end of our civilisation unless we can achieve a spiritual awakening and change our individual and collective behaviour.

"In my mind I see a group of chickens in a cage disputing over a few seeds of grain, unaware that in a few hours they will all be killed," he writes.

Above all else, Thay – as he is known – teaches that the world cannot be changed outside of ourselves. The answer is for each one of us to transform the fear, anger, and despair which we cover-up with over-consumption. If we are filling our bodies and minds with toxins, it is no surprise that the world around us also becomes poisoned.

He also argues that those who put their faith in technology alone to save the planet are bowing to a false god.

Like many other spiritual leaders, he sees the genesis of our pain as coming from our dualistic mindset that sees our connection to god, or Buddha, or spirit as outside ourselves and accessible only after our death. As a result we have developed a strong ego that sees itself as separate and threatened and needs to amass things like wealth to feel strong and protected. But none of these can fill the chasm created by our deep sense of separation.

He condones eco-activism but only if done with the right motives:

"I know ecologists who are not happy in their families. They work hard to improve the environment, partly to escape their own unhappy family lives. If someone is not happy within herself, how can she help the environment?"

"The energy we need is not fear or anger, but the energy of understanding and compassion. There is no need to blame or condemn. Those who are destroying themselves, societies and the planet aren't doing it intentionally. Their pain and loneliness are overwhelming and they want to escape. They need to be helped, not punished. Only understanding and compassion on a collective level can liberate us."

Thay believes that within every person are the seeds of love, compassion and understanding as well as the seeds of anger, hatred and discrimination. Using a gardening metaphor, he says our experience of life depends on which seeds we choose to water.

To help water those positive seeds and create a new global ethic, Thay's Order of Interbeing has distilled the Buddha's teachings on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path into five core principles.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings, updated in the last year to make them relevant to our fast-changing world, are not a set of strict rules but a direction to head in.

Thay explains that in the First Training we vow to cherish all life on Earth and not support any acts of killing. In the Second Training we pledge to practice generosity and not support social injustice and oppression. In the Third Training we make a commitment to behave responsibly in our relationships and not engage in sexual misconduct. The Fourth Training asks us to practice loving speech and deep listening in order to relieve others of suffering. The practice of mindful consumption and mindful eating is the object of the Fifth Mindfulness Training.

While Thay sees following these trainings as a way out of the environmental mess we are in, he is not certain that people are yet ready to change their consumerist way of life.

"Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come," he warns. "Civilisations have been destroyed many times and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different."

Researchers at Columbia University have demonstrated that a layer of plants and earth can cut the rate of heat absorption through the roof of a building in summer by 84%

Green roofs, like the one pictured above, benefit more than just their owners, according to Stuart Gaffin, a researcher at Columbia University. "They are a win-win on so many fronts," he said.

Perhaps the greatest overall benefit of green roofs comes in tackling the "urban heat island" effect, which Gaffin suggests is responsible for two-thirds of New York's localized warming over the last century. The conventional black rooftops that he calls "tar beaches" are major contributors to this phenomenon, absorbing and re-radiating the sun's energy as heat. "We're going to want to cool regional climate down, especially where people are living," Gaffin noted. "So we're going to have to confront the urban heat island effect."

While conventional roofs can reach temperatures of 80 °C at 1.00 p.m. even outside of high summer, green roofs always stay closer to ambient temperatures. "These [conventional roofs] are almost dangerously hot spaces," Gaffin told environmentalresearchweb. "That's a huge heat load that we can get rid of."

Plants in green roofs regulate their temperatures through evapotranspiration. "They evaporate copious amounts of water," Gaffin explained. "That takes a lot of energy and means it's a great way to stay cool." Eliminating extreme temperature cycles allows green roofs to be designed as relatively low maintenance options. They experience less thermal expansion and contraction stress, leading to predictions of at least a doubling of lifespan compared to black roofs.

The urban heat island effect is often used by critics of climate research to suggest that measured temperature rises don't indicate global warming. "Generally the climate research community avoids even using urban weather stations, or attempts to make corrections, because you know that's a warming bias," Gaffin explained.

The Columbia team is considering whether meteorological stations on green roofs might provide improved measurements for urban studies, however – although even this wouldn't enable them to assess climate change. The US National Weather Service recommends placing sensors at least 100 feet from paved or concrete surfaces. "One of the major restrictions says 'don't put them near black asphalt rooftops'," Gaffin explained. "When you put green roofs up, they are like meadows in the sky."

White is another roof colour used to fight both the urban heat island effect and global warming in general, by simply reflecting light back into space. This offers cheaper installation than green roofs, but needs special maintenance to prevent dirt reducing its effectiveness. Together, Gaffin expects green and white to replace black roofs. "I think the way we're going to cool things down in cities is going to be a combination of vegetation and brighter surfaces," Gaffin said. "There's going to be a contribution from both."

These stunning images from August include Moscow covered in smoke, heavy rains in Pakistan and plankton blooms changing the colour of the North Atlantic ocean

Hawthorn Hive is a hotspot for butterflies, in every sense. We found 15 species on the wing and soon lost count of the number of individuals. I cannot recall seeing so many butterflies in such a small area and, without doubt, it's the warmth of this sheltered beach that's a key factor in their abundance. The cliffs shield wild flowers below from the prevailing south-westerlies and yesterday, with blue skies and only a few drifting clouds, their limestone walls reflected the sun's warmth on to this narrow strip of beach where only the slightest breeze disturbed the feeding insects. As we walked through dense patches of devil's bit scabious, scores of peacock butterflies – sometimes two to a flower head – rose and fluttered around us. Hemp agrimony, bird's-foot trefoil and knapweed attracted the attention of commas, common blues, red admirals and the only painted ladies we've encountered so far this year.

Down here on the shore the floral calendar was a fortnight in advance of the cooler cliff top. Marjoram, releasing its aroma from underfoot, was already running to seed. Hips of downy rose, whose foliage yields a delicious resinous aroma when crushed between finger and thumb, had turned scarlet and were softening. It's a rare day when there is no cool breeze on the North Sea coast but yesterday, in this haven, butterflies shimmered through a heat haze that rose from the rock-strewn beach that had, until 30 years ago, been a dumping ground for colliery waste and still bears scars of industrial abuse. Now it's becoming a rich site for wildlife again, where colonising species inhabit the precarious zone between cliff scree and high-tide line. Most plants here are natives, with one notable garden escape. How montbretia, a native of the South Africa veld, became established – miles from the nearest garden – is a mystery, but its orange blooms, as incandescent as coal in a furnace, added a fiery hue to a hot afternoon.

Bjørn Lomborg's change of mind on climate change is welcome, and some of his suggestions good, but your glowing review of his new book failed to examine deeply his shift in position (Top climate sceptic calls for $100bn fund to fight warming, 31 August).

Dr Lomborg last year began to call for an investment of $100bn per year on research and development for low-carbon technologies, instead of the $25bn he was advocating 18 months ago. He now proposes that this should be raised through a carbon tax of $7 per tonne of carbon dioxide, rather than the $2 per tonne for which he previously argued.

However, his strategy is alarmingly risky – invest heavily in R&D and hope that this alone will keep atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases low enough to avoid the risk of serious and damaging impacts from climate change. This might work, but it might not.

A more robust approach to managing the risks of climate change would be not only to invest in R&D, but also to use a carbon tax (or cap-and-trade) to discourage greenhouse gas emissions in the short run. The latter, not raising revenue, would be the primary purpose of introducing a carbon price. But to encourage enough emissions cuts in the next few years to keep greenhouse gases at low enough atmospheric concentrations, a carbon price considerably higher than Dr Lomborg's $7 per tonne is required.

We welcome the fact that Dr Lomborg has implicitly acknowledged that his previous arguments about climate change were flawed, but it would be wise to remain wary of his pronouncements, no matter how much publicity they attract.

Dr Alex Bowen, Dr Simon Dietz, Dimitri Zenghelis and Bob Ward

Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, LSE

• What might be of equal surprise to Bjørn Lomborg's "U-turn" is that there are practical solutions available to raise the money that is needed without dipping into cash-strapped treasuries. A Robin Hood Tax on banks, levies on shipping and aviation emissions, money raised from the auctioning of emissions allowances from emissions trading schemes and redirecting fossil fuel subsidies are all realistic options.

Environment ministers from around the world meeting in Switzerland today must consider these options if the world is to move closer to a financial solution in tackling climate change and protecting poor people who are already vulnerable. Meanwhile, the shipping industry, which has faced no restrictions to its emissions so far, must begin to play its part by agreeing to a shipping levy when the International Maritime Organisation meets in London on 27 September.

Phil Bloomer

Campaigns and policy director, Oxfam

• I note with interest that Bjørn Lomborg has changed his mind on global warming. I also note that he has a book to sell.

Rod Shone

Walkern, Hertfordshire

James Lee, named as hostage taker at Discovery Channel building, had a bizarre record of targeting the TV network

James Lee, the man police identified as the gunman who entered the headquarters of the Discovery Channel and took a group of hostages, was a self-styled eco-warrior and author of a manifesto describing humans as "the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures" destroying the planet.

Lee waged a one-man campaign aimed at forcing the Discovery Channel to run programmes encouraging human sterilisation and wildlife preservation. In his manifesto, posted online and headlined: "The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet", Lee wrote:

Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

Among his other demands, Lee wanted the channel to stop "encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants" and that TV programmes instead encourage human sterilisation and infertility.

The Discovery network airs series such as Jon & Kate Plus 8, a reality TV show that followed a couple with sextuplets and twins, and 19 Kids and Counting, about a family of nine boys and 10 girls all born to the same parents.

In 2008 Lee was arrested and convicted for holding a week-long protest outside the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring, Maryland, in which he hired homeless people to form a crowd, and threw around bundles of cash to encourage bystanders to join in.

At the time of his conviction in 2008, Lee was a 40-year-old identified as living in San Diego.

When you're on a bad run, you're on a bad run. One might have thought that a nut who has taken a hostage at the headquarters of the Discovery network in Silver Spring, Maryland might be from the right, because Discovery devotes lots of admirable programming to saving the environment and the whales and on and on. But no, he's a left-wing nut.

This is happening about a mile from my house, folks. The whole area has been evacuated. Could make getting home a bit tricky.

All right, I shouldn't make light of it until the hostage is freed. I'm sure some of you have already tried to go to the web site savetheplanetprotest.com, where the hostage taker's demands are enumerated. But you won't get through. It doesn't have the bandwidth.

Helpfully, I was sent a cached version of the demands. They include:

1. The Discovery Channel and it's affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael" pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other's inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order...

...3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also, keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE!...

5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that...

6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don't build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth!

And so on. Number 5 is right-wing, so it's a little bit of a hybrid. This fellow would seem to be an acolyte to some degree of the voluntary human extinction movement, whose web site you can visit here. I really didn't know it existed until today. Same with American fox hunts. With regard to many humans I know, I think this guy has a point about breeding. Glad we snuck Margot in under the wire before the world capitulates to his demands.

Controversy erupts over attempts to keep trapped miners' spirits up by censoring bad news in newspapers and family letters

The 33 trapped Chilean miners were today delivered their first hot meals in nearly a month, as a debate broke out over how much information should be shared with the men before they are rescued.

The first delivery of hot food – rice with meatballs – and cheese sandwiches was a sign that efforts to improve the men's living conditions 700 metres inside the San Jose mine are gradually bearing fruit.

Rescue crews have promised that the trapped men will remain on a daily diet of about 2,500 calories, but at the rescue headquarters at the mine head, a fierce debate has begun over communication between the men and the outside world.

Government psychologists are helping family members craft letters to the men in an effort to avoid upsetting them with any bad news from home. Newspapers sent to the men are allegedly censored, with disturbing crime stories removed.

Government health officials are undecided over what movies the men should be shown on a video projector which was lowered into the shelter last week.

"They have told us to not ask any questions to the men in our letters," said Carolina Lobos, 26, daughter of trapped miner Franklin Lobos. "We are supposed to write in a positive way that will bring them up."

But Professor Nick Kanas, who has studied for over a decade the impact distance and isolation has on astronauts, and is co-author of Space Psychology and Psychiatry, warned that censoring the men's letters could create a climate of mistrust and suspicion between them and their rescuers: "I would not screen anything; if you start to do that you are setting up a base for mistrust. The miners will then ask, 'What else are they hiding from me?'"

As Chile nears its national bicentennial, aides to President Sebastián Piñera are looking for ways to include the miners in the national celebration. "The whole nation will sing the national anthem at noon on the [September] 18th," said Ena Von Baer, a spokeswoman for the president. Asked whether that included the trapped miners, Van Baer said, "When I say all Chileans, I mean every Chilean."

"That sounds tricky," said Kanas. "It would be good in that it will link the miners to the surface and they will feel they are part of a celebration. But care should be given that the miners do not feel used by anyone else for their own advantage, that will not work very well."

A poll released on Wednesday showed Piñera's approval rating has jumped 10 points to 56% since the mining drama began nearly a month ago. Throughout the rescue operation, Piñera has taken centre stage, positioning himself as the hard-nosed executive who will spare no cost to save the lives of his countrymen.

Information about the miners' health has been released to the public, including a controversial statement by Jaime Manalich, the Chilean minister of health, who diagnosed five of the men as suffering from depression, then the next day announced they had been cured.

"That is probably not such a good idea," said Lawrence Palinkas, a medical anthropologist and professor of social policy and health at the University of Southern California, when asked about making the depression diagnosis public. "These diagnoses carry a certain stigma … and the miners have no control over the conditions which caused this – which makes it all the more important that the government protect confidentiality."

The selective release of video footage of the men has raised the question of how the Chilean government seeks to both help the miners while also shaping the perceptions of a worldwide audience.

The latest video of the miners, a brief take with no audio released, showing the men in clean red shirts, many having had a fresh shave, was in stark contrast to the dirty and tired faces seen last week.

Social networking site under fire over intention to run giant new data centre mainly on coal-powered electricity

Social networking website Facebook is coming under unprecedented pressure from its users to switch to renewable energy. In one of the web's fastest-growing environmental campaigns, Greenpeace international says at least 500,000 people have now protested at the organisation's intention to run its giant new data centre mainly on electricity produced by burning coal power.

Facebook will not say how much electricity it uses to stream video, store information and connect its 500m users but industry estimates suggest that at their present rate of growth all the data centres and telecommunication networks in the world will consume about 1,963bn kilowatt hours of electricity by 2020. That is more than triple their current consumption and more electricity than is used by France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.

Facebook announced in February that it planned to build what is expected to be the world's largest centralised data storage centres in Portland, Oregon. Although it will include some of the world's most energy-efficient computers, the sheer scale of the Facebook operation will almost certainly use more electricity than many developing countries.

The company has said it will source its electricity from Pacific Power. It uses coal power – the dirtiest form of power generation – for 67% of its electricity, and produces less than 12% of its electricity from renewable sources. The company has said it plans to generate more electricity from renewables in future but has given no detailed information.

In a statement Facebook said: "It is true that the local utility for the region we chose, Pacific Power, has an energy mix that is weighted slightly more toward coal than the national average. However, the efficiency we are able to achieve because of the climate of the region and the reduced energy usage that results minimises our overall carbon footprint.

"Said differently, if we located the data centre most other places, we would need mechanical chillers, use more energy, and be responsible for more overall carbon in the air – even if that location was fuelled by more renewable energy."

Kumi Naidoo, director of Greenpeace International, urged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to commit his company to a plan to phase out the use of dirty coal-fired electricity. In a letter to Facebook, Naidoo said: "Facebook is uniquely positioned to be a truly visible and influential leader to drive the deployment of clean energy."

Earlier this year Greenpeace admitted that many of its own web hosting operations are also housed in data centres powered primarily by coal and nuclear power. The environmental group said it offset all the energy used to power its main website in Amsterdam and used renewable energy where it could. Many of its servers in Washington also used wind power.

Retailer EV Stores will sell the Italian-built, lithium-ion-powered Tazzari Zero for £21,500. From BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network

Specialist electric vehicle retailer EVStores has announced it will begin selling the Tazzari Zero electric vehicle in the UK from later this month.

The company said the Zero, a compact two-seat vehicle, purpose built for battery electric propulsion, will be available from its London showroom from 12 September.

The Zero is powered by lithium-ion batteries that boast a range between charges of around 140km or about 87 miles. The car is also expected to reach an electronically capped top speed of 100 km/h (62mph) and will deliver acceleration from zero to 50km/h (31mph) in less than five seconds, ensuring the Zero should feel sufficiently powerful for urban roads.

The car is built by Tazzari, an Italian firm with a background in aluminium casting and other engineering services. Unsurprisingly, the Zero makes substantial use of aluminium in its construction to provide a light and strong frame. Including its 142kg battery pack, the Zero weighs under 550kg, or about 200kg less than a petrol-powered Smart ForTwo city car.

However, unlike the Smart, the Zero has been built to fit within European quadricycle rules, rather than the full-blown passenger car regulations. Quadricycles are not required to pass crash tests or meet other safety regulations.

EVStores said the UK on-the-road price for the Zero including batteries will be £21,500.

However, because of its quadricycle designation, the Zero is unlikely to qualify for the £5,000 grant that will soon be available to purchasers of full-blown electric cars, such as the upcoming Nissan Leaf or Mitsubishi i-Miev.

The government has yet to confirm precise eligibility criteria for its revised plug-in vehicle incentive scheme, but when the programme was unveiled by Labour in February it applied only to vehicles crash-tested to European, US, Japanese or an equivalent standard for cars.

The rules are widely expected to be retained, meaning that existing electric cars such as the Tazzari Zero and the iconic G-Wiz will not qualify for the incentive.

Computer scientist urges software developers to help climate scientists produce better modelling tools. From BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network

A study by a computer scientist at the University of Toronto suggests that the computer models used to predict climate change may be undermined due to a lack of programming expertise.

Steve Easterbrook at the University's Department of Computer Science, has had his paper, Climate Change: A Grand Software Challenge, accepted by the 2010 FSE/SDP Workshop on the Future of Software Engineering Research. In the paper, he suggests that because many climate prediction software modelling tools are built by climate scientists rather than software engineers some of the resulting software has room for improvement.

Climate scientists commonly use so-called Global Circulation Models (GCMs) that simulate the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere and biosphere at a global scale, Easterbrook said. Underpinning them are data analysis tools designed to crunch the underlying numbers.

"Most of this software is built by the climate scientists themselves, who have little or no training in software engineering," said Easterbrook in his paper. "As a result the quality of this software varies tremendously: The GCMs tend to be exceptionally well engineered, while some data processing tools are barely even tested."

Easterbrook called for climate scientists to use applications written by experts in software design that would enable cross-disciplinary work to address climate change questions. These analysis tools would be proven capable of processing "earth models", he said.

Secondly, Easterbrook argued that information sharing systems, such as games, reputation analysis software, and crowdsourcing tools could help to disseminate information on climate change efficiently and responsibly.

Finally, he said that energy efficient green IT systems are needed to reduce power consumption in all areas where climate modelling software is used.

"A massive mobilisation of talent will be needed. Other disciplines are already developing disciplinary responses to this challenge," Easterbrook concluded. "It is time for the software community to step up to the plate."

• This article was amended on 2 September after Steve Easterbrook said the original headline - "Climate scientists should not write their own software, says researcher" - was inaccurate.

The profiteering Pachauri story joins a host of falsehoods about climate change which keep resurfacing despite being disproved

• Rajendra Pachauri innocent of financial misdealings

If ever you need evidence that a smear can keep spreading after it has been discredited, look no further.

Last week I showed that the Sunday Telegraph's claims that Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has been "making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies", profiting to the tune of "millions of dollars", were entirely false.

A review by the auditors KPMG, of Pachauri's full financial records and the accounts of the organisation he works for, shows that the story is without foundation. In the 20 months to December 2009, he received only his £45,000 annual salary and a maximum of £2,174 in outside earnings. The auditors' report concluded that:

"No evidence was found that indicated personal fiduciary benefits accruing to Pachauri from his various advisory roles that would have led to a conflict of interest."

But if people want a story to be true, no refutation, however powerful, can change their beliefs. When the InterAcademy Council published its review of the IPCC on Monday, deniers of man-made climate change and the newspapers which support them used it as an excuse to resuscitate the Sunday Telegraph's falsified claims. Here's what the Daily Mail said about Pachauri yesterday:

"The 70-year-old lives in an exclusive district of New Delhi and is said to enjoy a lavish personal lifestyle with a taste for expensive suits. He has dismissed claims he profited from his links to green energy firms, saying he gave away all the money earned from directorships."

Well yes, he is said "to enjoy a lavish personal lifestyle with a taste for expensive suits", even though the claim is completely untrue. As Pachauri revealed to the Guardian in December, his suits are made by a local tailor in Delhi, for 2,200 rupees (£30) apiece. Having seen them close up, I can believe it. They make Boris Johnson look elegantly attired.

I once heard one of David Icke's followers assert that the editor of the Daily Mail is in fact a seven-foot lizard. Were the Guardian to adopt that paper's editorial standards, it could report that Paul Dacre "is said to be a seven-foot lizard", even though it knows that the story (as far as we can determine) is untrue.

The Mail's claim that Pachauri said "he gave away all the money earned from directorships" is also false. Pachauri did not and could not give that money away, because it never went to him in the first place. What he did give away was an award for lifetime achievement, which he was perfectly entitled to keep.

The Australian newspaper, in the same vein, reported that Dr Pachauri "has been accused of conflicts of interest over his many business directorships".

Yes, he has been, but falsely. And Richard North, one of the authors of the original Sunday Telegraph article, continues to assert that: "The main accusations against Pachauri stand."

But he still fails to back up his claims. Loudly repeating a false accusation does not make it true.

So the Pachauri story now joins a host of other falsehoods about climate change which keep resurfacing, however many times they are disproved.

It's a common feature of all conspiracy theories: falsified stories refuse to die. Zombie myths that people are desperate to believe keep circulating many years after they appeared to be dead and buried.

monbiot.com

New research shows motorists no longer consider cyclists weirdy beardy Guardian readers – in fact, they envy us

News just in from the world of academia: cycling is no longer considered the preserve of the sort of hippies historically associated with this newspaper. It is even widely thought of as "cool". A professor told me so, and he has the stats to prove it.

Prof Alan Tapp and a team of researchers from the University of the West of England have carried out a big piece of research asking 3,855 people for their opinions on bicycles and the people who ride them.

What makes this survey worth listening to is that the vast majority of those who took part don't actually cycle much, if at all. Of course we think we're hip, but to hear non cyclists (and therefore likely motorists) say so is just not just a novelty but also very encouraging for the future of cycling.

The results make fascinating reading - if you're into that sort of thing, and I know you are. Most respondents consider bike riding as normal (65%) and only 7% reckon cyclists are strange. Amusingly, those who cycle the most are disproportionately likely to think others consider them weird - 24% of those who use their bike at least once a week said they believed most normal people think cyclists were "a bit odd". Which does explain the proliferation of "I'm mad, me" types one occasionally encounters in the bike lane.

Just 10% of UWE respondents agreed that "urban cyclists are just left-wing hippies", which surprised Tapp, who told me, "I expected there to be quite a high proportion of the total who still had the negative view of cyclists as weirdy beardy Guardian readers."

And only 10% thought that most cyclists are middle aged men, which rather contradicts that Mintel report from the other week which claimed that most people who cycle are middle-aged men who read broadsheets.

While more people in the survey said cycling was "cool" than "uncool", cyclists themselves are not quite as trendy as they think - 59% of regular cyclists agree that cycling has become cool nowadays, compared to 37% of lapsed cyclists.

A heartening 69% of those questioned overall said cyclists should be taken seriously, and many admitted that when they are stuck in traffic jams they sometimes wish they were cycling (43% compared to 29% who disagreed). Fifty percent of those surveyed disagreed with the statement that "Roads are for cars not bikes" (compared to 28% who agreed).

At the same time, though, more people than not said they would be unwilling to drive more slowly if it encouraged more people to get on their bikes. And 54% do not want to see pro-bike measures that penalises car drivers.

But as someone who genuinely believes that cycling makes me more cheerful, I was pleased to see that when the researchers asked people whether they were happy, current cyclists said were far more likely than lapsed ones did (39% compared to 18%).

Regular pedallers were also more likely to describe themselves as independent, confident, free-spirited and rebellious than those who no longer saddle up. But then we would say that, wouldn't we?

Despite the general approval of cycling, Britain's top riders are far less well known than celebrities who cycle. When shown a list of people who ride bikes, far more people recognised David Cameron as a cyclist than the Olympic gold medal winner Victoria Pendleton (59% compared to 27%).

Those surveyed were a random selection of society who seem fairly representative in terms of their cycling habits: just 6% said they cycled "very often" (ie at least once a week), 5% "often", 28% "sometimes or occasionally nowadays" and 46% were lapsed cyclists. Half were men; half were women. Fifty-five percent were in the social class ABC1 and 45% were C2DE. Just over half said they owned a bicycle. YouGov did the polling.

The research has not yet been published, so I can't give you a link, apologies. But does this make you feel hopeful about the future of cycling in the UK?

Day 27: Mining boss hopes 'terrible situation' ends soon, as Nasa team says cigarettes and alcohol to be withheld from men

Owners of the Chilean mine where 33 workers face months awaiting rescue have appealed to the trapped men for forgiveness.

Alejandro Bohn, a co-owner of the San Esteban mining company, which owns the San Jose mine, faced questioning from a government committee investigating safety failures that led to the accident.

Speaking about those presently underground, Bohn said: "The pain caused by this unwanted, unforeseen situation warrants we ask they forgive us for the anxiety they have suffered these days. It has been a terrible situation and we hope it ends very soon."

His remarks came as Nasa medical advisers told the miners they should not be given any alcohol, for now, to help make their plight less uncomfortable. Cigarettes seem likely to be banned for the duration of the rescue.

The Nasa team, who recently arrived in Chile and have studied videos of the men, said celebrities and even astronauts might be called in to help boost their spirits. Food, dry clothes, sleeping mats, medical supplies, projectors, videos and games have all been sent down narrow boreholes since the men were found alive 10 days ago.

The priority is to nourish the miners, who have lost an estimated 10kg (22lbs) each during the 17 days they lay undiscovered after a tunnel collapse. High-calorie, high-protein nourishment is needed, as the men will have to move thousands of tonnes of rock to help their own rescue before they can be lifted back to the surface.

"From the alcohol standpoint, we need to first get their nutrition up before we make any considerations there," said James Michael Duncan, Nasa's deputy chief doctor, according to Reuters news agency.

Some of the men have also asked for cigarettes, and health officials have sent them nicotine patches and gum as substitutes. "It's an environment that's pretty enclosed and we don't want to contribute to any of the problems within the atmosphere of the mine," he said at a press conference in Santiago.

There was a need to increase the miners' calorific intake, get them on a regular sleep schedule and ensure they remained optimistic. Duncan said: "These miners showed us tremendous strength in surviving as long as they did without any contact with the surface. What we want to try to avoid is any kind of situation of hopelessness on the part of the miners."

The men have moved to a drier spot 200 metres down a tunnel from their previous camp. Constant humidity has made sleeping difficult and led to severe skin infections. With signs that they are susceptible to ailments ranging from depression to extreme weight loss, the ministry of health has established a strict daily routine.

"We provide medication, we do tests – measure their blood pressure, temperature and waistline every day," said the health minister, Jaime Mañalich. "We vaccinated them, and established an adequate daily supply of water and food so they can begin to recover."

In what he called an end to a period of "stabilisation", Mañalich announced the priority was now to keep the men under constant medical supervision during their estimated three-month wait for rescue.

The machine used for drilling the escape tunnel is expected to advance six metres a day. The Chilean president, Sebastian Piñera, has named the rescue mission Operation San Lorenzo, in honour of the patron saint of miners.

Julia Gillard's deal ensures the Greens' support for Labor in a hung parliament, in return for policy concessions

Australia's caretaker prime minister, Julia Gillard, has signed a deal with the Greens that will ensure their support for Labor in the country's hung parliament.

One and a half weeks after the election, both Gillard's Labor and the conservative opposition are still three seats short of an overall majority, with four independent MPs yet to decide whom they will support.

In return for the Greens' backing, Labor has agreed to a number of concessions on policies and parliamentary procedures. The biggest is a commitment to a cross-party committee on climate change. Members on it must acknowledge that "reducing carbon pollution by 2020 will require a carbon price".

The opposition leader, Tony Abbott, a climate change sceptic, criticised the deal, the first to be done by either of the two main political parties in the hung parliament. "Clearly the Greens will be in the driver's seat of any renewed Gillard government and what this means is there will be a carbon tax," he said.

Gillard acknowledged that the hung parliament required new ways of working but said she did not believe the deal with the Greens would affect Labor's chances of winning the support of the other four independents. "They understand that anybody seeking stable and effective government in these circumstances is going to be talking to a range of people," she said.

Climate change policy has dogged Labor since Kevin Rudd was unable to get his emissions trading scheme through parliament, marking the start of his fall in popularity. During the election campaign, Gillard promised a "citizens' assembly" to forge community consensus on climate change, but the idea was derided. She said she would still work for the assembly through the proposed committee.

The three independent MPs from rural areas have continued briefings with treasury and finance officials. None of them have said whom they will support in a minority government, although they all come from traditionally conservative electorates.

Two of them received a briefing from Lord Nicholas Stern, who is in Australia, on the impact of climate change. He told them a price on greenhouse gases was needed so people could feel the consequences of their actions through the markets.

The rogue Queensland independent MP Bob Katter did not attend the meeting, dismissing Lord Stern's views as "lightweight" with which he disagreed "dramatically".

We learned that swifts – "feathery tearaways, little bits of Africa" – are dwindling in number – with a third of the birds lost in the UK in the past 20 years

Saving Species (Radio 4) gives itself a tall order. It is, says the ever cheerful presenter Brett Westwood, "the programme dedicated to saving the world's wildlife".

Yesterday's edition began with tadpole shrimps that, while not bonny ("they look primeval"), are significant. "They're the oldest extant species on earth," we heard. They are also fantastically self-sufficient: hermaphrodite females who self-fertilise easily: "Blown in the wind, or washed in the waves – it's enough to seed a whole new population". They are also easily pleased, and happy to spend "their entire existence in a cow's hoof print".

Things are less sunny for swifts. Westwood explained how "these feathery tearaways, little bits of Africa" are dwindling in number, with a third of the birds lost in the UK in the past 20 years. We heard from a swift observation project, set up by David Lack in the 1940s. His widow, Elizabeth, now in her 90s, recalled the frantic days of swift-watching, climbing up the tower on wooden ladders. "You never took a book or anything," she said, "you were very busy".

One of the extraordinary things about the young swifts is that, while they prepare for their long flight to Africa in their nests ("they do their press-ups a lot," said Lack), the first time they fly is that challenging migration itself.

Quarter of the way in, we are perhaps further from holding back the warming tide than when we began. But there is still time

Twenty five months ago, working with my colleague, a climate scientist, Dr Victoria Johnson, and others, I decided to find out how long it would take before, on the best data available, we would begin to cross red lines where climatic instability and extremes were concerned. A quarter of that time has now passed.

To minimise the danger of alarmism, but without hiding from the facts, we set our parameters to assume that humanity would be on the lucky end of the spectrum of environmental risk. We were optimistic, perhaps too much so, about the speed and likelihood with which ecological dominoes might fall in a warming world. Nevertheless, what we found was startling. One hundred months on from August 2008 we were set to cross an atmospheric threshold.

The accumulation and concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would make it more likely that global average temperatures would rise 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. That point was significant because 2 degrees is generally thought to be the temperature around which a number of complex environmental changes start to feed off each other, making their dynamics harder to predict and harder to control.

Vitally these changes, such as glacier melt, forest die-back, and the weakening of ecosystems' ability to absorb carbon – are both the result of warming, and also likely to add more fuel to the fire. In other words, it represents the beginning of a process which could become uncontrollable and irreversible.

Since then, an international recession, rooted in a market failure of the financial system underlying Anglo-Saxon economies, has partially and temporarily slowed the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, as economic activity slowed.

Unfortunately it has not, at the same time, led to a low-carbon re-engineering of the energy, transport, and agricultural systems of those same economies. The potential for a win-win response to recession was passed-by. A "green new deal"-type package of economic stimulus could have created jobs, lowered energy costs, increased security and set an example for tackling climate change to the wider world.

Instead, for a short time at least, the old systems were propped up. Car companies were bailed-out and people were encouraged to keep over-consuming – shopping till they dropped – to resuscitate the economy.

Then came the new coalition government's bonfire of the environment. Many of the institutions and much of the resources key to a low-carbon transition have been either run-down or axed.

So, here we are. One finger of a four-finger KitKat eaten. The first bend of a 400 metre race run. Act one of a four-act play complete. Yet, we are perhaps further from holding back the warming tide than when we began to count down the months in which meaningful action could take place.

What will happen when the months have run their course? Even without action, nothing in particular will occur on the stroke of midnight on the last day of the last month. But something will have shifted.

There will be the dull creeping awareness of an opportunity missed to prevent inexorable, destabilising change. A rise, perhaps, in bashful apologies and excuses about why it was impossible to do the right thing while there was still time. We may feel like kicking ourselves, often.

And what will the future look like? The severe droughts during August in Russia, and the huge floods in Pakistan may not be directly, causally related to current patterns in warming (although their scale and severity might well have been influenced by it).

But these are the kind of extreme events set to become more common in a warming world. High and volatile food prices are another intimation of the weakening security we all face.

But, there is still time. Changes in direction as fast and as large as those needed now have been achieved before, and during the lives of many people living today. We cannot escape the fact that will take enormous collective action – a form of rugged collectivism as brave as any acts of individual heroism. There are signs, finally, that walls of reluctance are beginning to crack. Yesterday the Guardian reported that Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled "Sceptical Environmentalist" had overcome his dismissive attitude to climate change and now thought it worth spending $100 billion a year to stop it.

Three fingers left to eat, two straights and a bend to run, three acts still to play.

• Take action and visit onehundredmonths.org

Instead of spending taxpayers' money propping up factory farms, UK government should support planet-friendly farming

• Guardian campaign Biodiversity 100
• Tell us how governments should halt biodiversity loss

Mankind has a problem. We're heating the Earth and destroying its ecosystems so fast that we're killing off life as we know it. The fragile world around us, from rainforest canopies to marine life in our oceans, is the life support system we all depend on – for food, for shelter, for clean air. But we're trashing it, quickly, many habitats at a time, and putting ourselves in grave danger within our lifetimes.

The overriding challenge of our generation is to protect the world around us – there is no planet B. We must halt biodiversity loss before it is too late and precious species go for good. Reducing our ecological footprint goes hand in hand with tackling climate change. It means putting the breaks on our damaging consumption habits and living fairly within our environmental limits – making wiser use of resources and clean energy.

The Guardian's Biodiversity 100 campaign is one way of saying enough's enough. Taking collective action to ask governments to protect ecosystems is the best way of getting our voices heard. National targets for protecting biodiversity have been missed year after year, but the meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Japan this October is a chance to put that right – and it's up to all of us to hold world leaders to account.

Yes it's an international problem and yes every nation can help solve it, but it's only fair that rich countries take the lead. We can't criticise others until our own house is in order – and the UK has a lot to put right. Friends of the Earth's 2008 report What's feeding our food? revealed an unsavoury truth: rainforests and wildlife in South America are being destroyed to make way for vast soy plantations to grow animal feed for Britain's factory farms. The very sausage on your barbecue or burger in your bun is costing forest habitats – it's enough to leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

Many unique ecosystems like the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado grasslands in South America are being decimated by soy farming and cattle ranching. The Atlantic Forest, which runs along the eastern coast of Brazil and inland to Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay, is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. It is home to around 8,000 unique plant species and more than 20 critically endangered species including the white-collared kite, and black-faced lion tamarin. 92 per cent of its amphibians are unique to the area. It's shocking that agricultural activity here has shrunk the forest to less than a tenth of its original size, as trees have been cleared to make way for ranches and soy plantations, and small farmers pushed deeper into the forests. Worrying too, that in 2010, the region of Brazil containing the remaining Atlantic Forest showed the biggest increase in soy plantations in the whole country.

Rainforest and wildlife in South East Asia are also being lost – this time in the EU's drive for biofuels. But biofuels are far from the green energy solution big business says they are. The habitats of the orangutan and Sumatran tiger are being trashed in Malaysia and Indonesia to make way for biofuel crop, and in 2008 the UN estimated that if logging rates continue, virtually all rainforest there will be destroyed by 2013. Worse still, Friends of the Earth research in 2009 revealed that biofuels could even be contributing more carbon emissions than the fossil fuels they replace, equivalent to putting half a million extra cars on the roads.

To stop this habitat destruction – and the additional atmospheric carbon that is exacerbating climate change – there needs to be some urgent rethinking. The good news is we know the solutions – but now we must use them. Instead of spending taxpayers' money propping up factory farms, the UK government should be backing planet-friendly farming. Friends of the Earth's recent Pastures New report shows that half of the animal feed imported to the UK could be replaced with home-grown alternatives – saving an area of forest the size of the Yorkshire Dales every year. More than 40,000 people have backed our campaign so far – and we've got a Sustainable Livestock Bill in parliament as a result. If successful it will overhaul UK farming, benefiting both farmers in Britain and biodiversity here and abroad – so we're urging MPs to back it.

Similarly the EU's target to fuel 10% of road transport with biofuels by 2020 is impossible to reach sustainably – the expansion of plantations for biofuel crops such as palm oil is the main driver of deforestation in south-east Asia. The UK should drop its share and promote greener alternatives to driving instead. More than half of UK car journeys are less than five miles long and many of these could be completed by other means. The government should fund local schemes that get people walking, cycling and using the bus, and make rail a cheaper and more convenient option for longer trips.

2010 is the UN year of biodiversity, but the world's species and habitats are millennia old. If we fail to take bold action to protect the colourful diversity of life on Earth, for the sake of the world's people and future generations, the world will not only be greyer, but life-threatening for us and future generations.

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust presents an exhibition of pictures taken by three of the world's most celebrated wildlife photographers – Joachim Schmeisser, Michael Nichols and Robert Carr-Hartley

Bosses to be quizzed over safety failures that led to 33 miners being trapped, as engineers begin drilling rescue shaft

The owners of Chile's San Esteban mining company faced questions yesterday from a government committee about safety failures which led to the accident that has trapped 33 miners underground.

Alejandro Bohn and Marcelo Kemeny have so far failed to explain why the mine was reopened after an earlier accident on 11 July, when a rock fall severed the leg of one miner, Gino Cortés.

Speaking of those presently underground, Bohn said yesterday: "The pain caused by this unwanted, unforeseen situation warrants we ask they forgive us for the anxiety they have suffered these days. It has been a terrible situation and we hope it ends very soon."

Following July's accident the San José mine was shut to take "corrective measures". On 28 July, eight days before the recent collapse, a health official, Raúl Martínez Guzmán, signed a note allowing the mine to reopen. He resigned on Monday.

Prosecutor Héctor Mella is seeking a court order to stop Bohn and Kemeny leaving Chile while he investigates. Asked whether he would bring criminal charges against the pair, Mella said: "We'll leave that until the end. At this point nothing is decided."

In the meantime the mine's workers on the surface fear they may not be paid. The owners have repeatedly said it is "difficult" to continue to pay salaries and asked for assistance, a request the government rejected. "Have the company be in debt with the state, not with the workers," pleaded Eveyln Olmos, president of the miners' union.

After delays, engineers yesterday began drilling a rescue tunnel through 700 metres of solid rock to reach the trapped miners. Their Strata 950, a giant Australian machine, is expected to advance six metres a day. Chilean president Sebastian Piñera called it Operation San Lorenzo, in honour of the patron saint of miners.

The men have moved to a drier spot 200 metres down a tunnel from their previous camp. Constant humidity has made sleeping difficult and led to severe skin infections. With signs that they are susceptible to ailments from depression to extreme weight loss, the ministry of health has established a strict daily routine.

"We provide medication; we do tests – measure their blood pressure, temperature and waistline every day," said health minister Jaime Mañalich. "We vaccinated them, and established an adequate daily supply of water and food so they can begin to recover."In what he called an end to a period of "stabilisation", Mañalich announced the priority was now to keep the men under constant medical supervision during their estimated three-month wait for rescue.

A team of Nasa scientists is on the way to Chile from the United States to help with routines to stave off medical and mental problems.

"We think some of the things we learned [in space] can be adapted," said one.

Lime seeds spiralled on the westerly, helicoptering out of Edge Wood overhead into a field of barley which hadn't crackled in the sun for weeks but had set instead to a grimy grey-brown sulk. Rowan berries reddened, sloes on a wind-thrown branch darkened. Sparrows at the top end of a hedge, chaffinch in the middle and yellowhammers at the far end kept their abrasive little calls to themselves, flying only short loops from the hedge as if they knew the wind would sweep them away on its fierce currents to the east. A ladybird clung to a grass stem – a metronome. A speckled wood butterfly folded. The tops of the cooling towers at Buildwas power station vanished as a drizzly mist filled Ironbridge Gorge, spilling over the wooded banks and up along the Edge. The sky was almost clear over Brown Clee. A pair of ravens tumbled from an old ash tree into the wind.

All these things happened at more or less the same time, and I was watching them, just trying to steal a moment. I had missed many others. Somehow I missed the way summer slipped away – not that we'd had much of it to speak of. Wet and cloudy, summer had somehow run out of definitions for itself: it was not high summer or late summer; it followed a pattern of recent years and stopped being a season at all. The few hot sunny days seemed long past; the dregs went down the river. I missed the moment swifts went. They left a silence where their reckless screaming over rooftops had been as they always did. I watched bands of swallows and house martins zipping around sycamores on the lane and making their twittery leaving songs, but I bet I miss the moment they leave too. I don't know what this time is, this changing of things before autumn really happens, but – like twirling lime seeds in the wind – it has a strange significance in danger of being overlooked.