Taoiseach Kenny wins concessions on EU plans for emissions
TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY’S TOUGH STANCE HAS PAID OFF.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny appears to have secured concessions on carbon emissions reduction targets for Ireland.
At an EU summit Mr Kenny demanded that Ireland be given special treatment because of the country’s large number of cows, which produce methane, a damaging greenhouse gas.
A deal on the table would benefit Ireland as it will go beyond just an emissions-reduction target based on the size of the economy and population.
The new proposal will allow for “agriculture and land use” to be a factor, along with the need to balance the EU’s food production with climate change demands.
Although the details are not yet sorted out, the European Commission will examine the best way of “encouraging the sustainable intensification of food production, while optimising the sector’s contribution to greenhouse gas mitigation and sequestration”.
Government sources said the insertion of the language on agriculture into the deal was hugely significant for Ireland.
The details are expected to be thrashed out after the 2015 United Nations Climate Change conference in Paris.
The Taoiseach had been under pressure from farmers to secure concessions on what they warned could otherwise be a “catastrophic” carbon emissions deal at the summit.
Mr Kenny had taken a tough stance in talks on a deal for carbon-emissions reductions up to 2020 and demanded concessions for Ireland.
He had said he believed the Government should be given special concessions for Ireland’s beef sector and pointed out the dairy sector would also expand when milk quotas were dropped next year.
The EU agreed in 2008 that carbon emissions would be cut by one fifth by the end of the decade, but Mr Kenny was highly critical of this deal. The Taoiseach indicated he would not support the draft deal.
“In Ireland’s case we have a legacy that is truly catastrophic and [the deal] should never have been accepted in the way that it was based on per capita income at a time when our country was in a very different position financially from now. And it means that if the language that is now on the table were to be translated it would mean that whatever government was in office from 2020 would be in a very difficult position,” he said.
The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) said Ireland needed a “fairer climate package” from Europe.
IFA president Eddie Downey said the country had a high carbon-efficient model of food production.
“At this time of increasing global demand for protein-based foods such as beef, it is important that past mistakes in climate talks are not repeated.
“Carbon-efficient countries, such as Ireland, must be encouraged to meet this demand, instead of being displaced by regions that are less carbon efficient,” he said.
Speed limit imposed on wind-farm to stop scaring sheep
VEHICLES ON TYRONE WINDFARM MUST KEEP TO 3 MPH, HIGH COURT RULES
Legal proceedings centre on the competing rights of sheep farmers to graze flocks. Defendants in the case include the descendants of tenants going back as far as 1925.
A High Court judge has imposed a 3mph speed limit on vehicles operating on a mountain windfarm project in a bid to stop sheep being scared.
Mr Justice Deeny also ruled that a renewable energy firm should only drill bore holes at Ballymongan Hill in Co Tyrone when flocks had been taken off for winter.
With potential profits from the project predicted in the region of £15 million, he said those behind the scheme should provide alternative pasturage and bear the costs of moving the animals.
SSE Renewables Developments UK Ltd aims to erect up to nine wind turbines on the 508-acre mountain close to the Donegal border. Planning permission has been granted.
The company has agreed to lease land from the estate of Fitzhenry Augustus Smith, who owned Ballymongan Hill up to his death in 1930.
Legal proceedings centre on the competing rights of sheep farmers to graze their flocks. Defendants in the case include the descendants of tenants going back as far as 1925.
One has a flock of 600 sheep while another keeps 40 animals on the mountain. With the main action yet to reach trial, SSE sought orders restraining the defendant farmers from stopping its workers accessing Ballymongan Hill or interfering with the turbine construction.
Mr Justice Deeny said the work would indisputably interfere with the defendants’ rights. Up to 25 per cent of the area would be affected in the long-term, the court heard.
Dealing with the issue of potential damages, the judge cited predictions by the plaintiffs that £15 million profit would be lost if it could not get on the site now to complete the windfarm by May 2017. A government subsidy scheme is due to be replaced on that date.
Stressing its large-scale project would bring benefits to the neighbourhood, the plaintiffs are promising to create jobs and make an annual local contribution of £161,000.
They have agreed to pay modest income streams to 18 other families with rights on the mountain if and when the windfarm is in operation. But the judge also acknowledged the loss to farmers if any sheep fell down bore holes or fled after being frightened by machinery. Granting the injunction, he said it would cover any pedestrian access to the mountain by company workers.
However, he added: “If they want to take on to the mountain, as they do, the Argo all-terrain vehicle for carrying out seismic tests it is not to be driven at a speed in excess of 3mph . . . a walking pace that should be less likely to scatter or scare sheep.”
Expressing concern at the “urgent desire” to sink bore holes, he said it should only occur when the sheep were off the mountain – normally in the middle of winter.
With farmers having been prepared to leave 250 animals on the hills due to the lack of other land, the judge suggested the plaintiffs provide alternative accommodation. “If the profits of this development really are of the extent claimed by the plaintiffs this would not be unduly onerous,” he said.
Music therapy a practical way to cut depression
Music therapy is a practical intervention which involves children writing songs or composing music to express their feelings.
Music therapy can significantly reduce depression in children, it has been claimed.
The social skills and self esteem of young people suffering emotional, behavioural and developmental problems was dramatically improved when their medical treatment was enhanced by music therapy, according to new research.
It is hoped the study, by Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), will help pave the way for the treatment becoming more mainstream.
Ciara Reilly, chief executive of the Music Therapy Trust which provides the service in Northern Ireland said: “The findings are dramatic and underscore the need for music therapy to be made available as a mainstream treatment option.
“For a long time we have relied on anecdotal evidence and small-scale research findings about how well music therapy works. Now we have robust clinical evidence to show its beneficial effects.”
It is estimated that about 20% of Northern Ireland’s youth population present with a mental health problem before their 18th birthday.
Music therapy is a practical intervention which involves children writing songs or composing music to express their feelings. Guitars and keyboards were the often the most popular choice of instruments for participants.
Karen Diamond, also from the Music Therapy Trust said: “It is a non-verbal intervention. The children do not have to say anything. Instead the therapist may ask the child to play a tune to describe their week or how they feel. And, f or a seven or eight-year-old with a mental health problem words can be difficult at the best of times.”
The study was the largest of its kind anywhere in the UK.
Researchers monitored 251 young people aged between eight and 16 between March 2011 and May of this year.
Participants were divided into two groups with 128 being given the usual care options, while 123 were assigned additional music therapy.
All of the young people were being treated for emotional, developmental or behavioural problems.
The study, which was funded by the Big Lottery fund, found that those who received music therapy had improved communicative and interactive skills, compared to those who only received usual care options.
Early findings suggest that the benefits sustained as a result of music therapy are long term.
Dr Valerie Holmes from the Centre for Public Health, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences and co-researcher, added: “This is the largest study ever to be carried out looking at music therapy’s ability to help this very vulnerable group.
“What we found was that while music therapy improves communication and interaction skills for all children there is significant evidence that it benefits those aged 13 and older.
“At the minute, music therapy is not a mainstream clinical option. This study gives us evidence and we hope that the results will help ensure that music therapy may become a mainstream option for children and young people with mental health difficulties.”
Professor Sam Porter of the School of Nursing and Midwifery at QUB, who led the study, said the results were “hugely significant” in terms of determining treatments.
The research findings will be presented at a conference in Riddel Hall at Queen’s University Belfast today.
Men like it fast and cheap when shopping for their groceries
Men are less likely to open their wallets when shopping for food, preferring to rack up the bargains instead, according to research into consumer habits.
While men appear to be more price-conscious, women are more concerned with healthy purchases.
They also admit to spending longer in-store than men, though not by much. Women take an average of 41 minutes to complete the shop, only five minutes longer than men.
Fewer than half of adults make a shopping list and stick to it. On average, journey time to the supermarket takes around 13 minutes. Most of the main grocery shopping takes place between 2pm and 3pm, while most top-up shopping is done at 6pm.
The survey employed the latest in eye-tracking technology, which essentially measures what someone looks at and how long they look at it for.
Shoppers in Cork and Dublin were shown footage of a typical trip to the supermarket taken from a customer’s point of view.
The eye-tracking component then tracked second-by-second eyeball movement and iris focus to see what caught people’s attention the most.
The participants were also asked to fill out questionnaires after watching the video.
The majority of people go grocery shopping less than twice a week, while those who like to buy fresh produce go up to three times a week.
Those over the age of 30 are more likely to buy leading brands, apparently, and are more likely to use loyalty cards or vouchers than younger shoppers.
Those behind the research, Kinetic, Mindshare, and GroupM, wanted to gain insight into consumer shopping patterns, specifically in relation to out-of-home advertising — that which is seen “on the go” in public places.
Gráinne Dilleen, communications director in Kinetic, said the project provided a valuable insight into how consumers interact with this advertising. Hilary Tracey from Mindshare said they can now improve the relationship between products and consumers.
Oldest high-altitude human settlement discovered in Andes
Archaeologists excavate a rockshelter in the Peruvian Andes that was used more than 12,000 years ago by human settlers.
The oldest-known evidence of humans living at extremely high altitudes has been unearthed in the Peruvian Andes, archaeologists say.
The sites a rock shelter with traces of Ice Age campfires and rock art, and an open-air workshop with stone tools and fragments are located nearly 14,700 feet above sea level and were occupied roughly 12,000 years ago.
The discovery, which is detailed Oct. 23 in the journal Science, suggests ancient people in South America were living at extremely high altitudes just 2,000 years after humans first reached the continent.
The findings also raise questions about how these early settlers physically adapted to sky-high living.
“Either they genetically adapted really, really fast within 2,000 years to be able to settle this area, or genetic adaptation isn’t necessary at all,” said lead study author Kurt Rademaker, who was a University of Maine visiting assistant professor in anthropology when he conducted the study. [See Images of the High-Altitude Ancient Settlement]
In follow-up work, the team plans to look for more evidence of occupation, such as human remains.
COASTAL CLUE
The recent discovery of these high-altitude artifacts was made possible by work that started in the 1990s. At that time, Rademaker and his colleagues were studying a 13,000-year-old Paleoindian fishing settlement on the coast of Peru called Quebrada Jaguay. There, they found tools made of obsidian, a volcanic rock. There were no rivers or other geologic forces to carry the volcanic rock to the coast, and the closest volcanoes were in the Andes Mountains, roughly 100 miles away, said Rademaker, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tbingen in Germany.
“This obsidian told us that early on, Paleoindians must have gone to the highlands,” Rademaker told Live Science.
Rademaker and his colleagues analyzed the obsidian and determined that it likely came from around the Pucuncho Basin, an arid, cold plateau ringed by 21,000-foot-tall volcanoes, Rademaker said.
THE HIGH LIFE
After years of searching around the plateau, the researchers found a rock shelter with two alcoves, ceilings blackened with soot and walls decorated with rock art. The site also showed evidence of burnt detritus from ancient people’s campsites. The rock shelter was used for thousands of years, starting around 12,400 years ago, and may have been a temporary base camp where herders sheltered from the rain, Rademaker said.
The coastal obsidian point likely came from a nearby outcropping, near what would’ve been an ancient open-air workshop at the time, the researchers said. The workshop contained hundreds of ancient tools, from spear points to scrapers to bifaces, or hand axes, some of which dated to 12,800 years old. The researchers also found large mammal bones from vicua, the wild ancestors to alpacas, similar animals called guanacos, and taruca deer.
It’s still not clear whether the people living along the coast and in the highlands were the same individuals, or whether they maintained trading networks across large distances, Rademaker said. [In Photos: Human Skeleton Sheds Light on First Americans]
EARLY SETTLERS
The findings suggest people were living at high altitudes earlier than previously thought.
“People were really settled in and using this environment at the end of the ice age around 12,400 years ago,” said Michael Waters, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who was not involved in the study. “They were going back and forth between the coast and this high-altitude site.”
People in modern culture, perhaps because of stories of pioneers going west and getting trapped in the mountains (and eating each other), tend to see the highlands as poor living environments, said Bonnie Pitblado, an archaeologist at the University of Oklahoma, who was not involved in the study.
“There was this cultural stereotype that mountains are just impediments, that they get in the way,” Pitblado told Live Science. But for prehistoric cultures, “mountains are these places with just the most amazing array of resources.”
For instance, the highlands may have had hot springs and ice caves, glacial melt streams and other water sources, and the rock needed for stone tools, such as quartz, chert and obsidian, Pitblado said.
The findings also call into question just what is needed for people to live in high altitudes. At those locations, the air is much cooler and thinner, meaning it holds less oxygen than lower elevations. So, past studies have found that people living at high elevations have genetic adaptations that help them efficiently use oxygen from the thin mountain air, as well as mutations that can shield them from heart disease and strokes caused by chronic mountain sickness.
But the current research suggests that either people evolved these adaptations in just a few thousand years, or that these mutations weren’t necessary for the first inhabitants.
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