National Trust puts 3.5m members in front line against climate change

It controls 900-square miles of land and 710 miles of coastline and has far more members than the armed services, the teaching profession, the prison population, environmental groups and political parties combined.

Now the National Trust is hoping to become a new green army. To mark membership in England, Wales and Northern Ireland reaching 3.5 million - equivalent to the population of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow and Sheffield (Britain's four largest cities after London) - the trust yesterday declared that it wants to become "the largest green movement in the world".

In what the the conservation charity calls one of the most fundamental shifts in its 103-year history, the trust announced the intention to mobilise this vast public support "to drive conservation and quality of life agendas, and in particular to combat climate change".

From now on, said director-general Fiona Reynolds, the trust will advise people how to adapt their lifestyles to climate change and challenge government to be more ecologically aware. "If we think that public policy is not right, then we will say so."

In a strategy document, the trust said it was in a unique position to help counter climate change. "The biggest challenge of our time is climate change," said Ms Reynolds. "We are like a miner's canary anticipating the effects that others will feel. Our practical experience ranges from coastal erosion and 18th century drainpipes being overwhelmed by heavier rainfall, through to book collections damaged by pests now surviving warmer winters."

The trust is already confronting BAA on plans to expand Stansted airport in Essex on grounds of noise pollution, but declined to say on what else it intended to campaign. As Britain's biggest landowner it is known to want to influence agriculture to reduce damaging emissions.

"In the past we have been cautious about expressing our voice loudly. Now we recognise that we have to engage in public debate on a very wide scale. If our knowledge tells us, say, that expanding airports leads to problems, then it is right we should say so," said Peter Nixon, the trust's director of conservation. "If you have 3.5m members you can go to government with a different kind of authority."

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Catastrophic Flooding Changed The Course Of British History

A catastrophic megaflood separated Britain from France hundreds of thousands of years ago, changing the course of British history, according to research recently published in the journal Nature.
The study, led by Sanjeev Gupta and Jenny Collier from Imperial College London, has revealed spectacular images of a huge valley tens of kilometres wide and up to 50 metres deep carved into chalk bedrock on the floor of the English Channel.

Using high-resolution sonar waves the team captured images of a perfectly preserved submerged world in the channel basin. The maps highlight deep scour marks and landforms which were created by torrents of water rushing over the exposed channel basin.
To the north of the channel basin was a lake which formed in the area now known as the southern North Sea. It was fed by the Rhine and Thames, impounded to the north by glaciers and dammed to the south by the Weald-Artois chalk ridge which spanned the Dover Straits.
It is believed that a rise in the lake level eventually led to a breach in the Weald-Artois ridge, carving a massive valley along the English Channel, which was exposed during a glacial period.

Full story: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070718140833.htm