CHARLES KEY was Labour MP for Poplar when I was first elected to Parliament in 1962. A hero of the blitz, Key used to shake his finger at us young MPs, saying: 鈥淏eware of the Montgomery!鈥� Why? Sixty years ago an American second world war liberty ship, the USS Richard Montgomery, sank in the Thames estuary a couple of kilometres from the town of Sheerness in Kent with a cargo of 13,700 bombs. There it has remained, and fears are growing that it will explode in the next 10 to 20 years, with disastrous effects (快猫短视频, 22 January, p 3).
David Jamieson has ministerial responsibility for logistics and maritime policy, so I asked him what the government is doing to ensure that the wreck of the Montgomery is safe. He said that the government is aware of public anxiety about the ship. A 2001 survey for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency showed the risk of explosion to be small.
Regular subsequent surveys using ultrasound have revealed that the wreck is stable, with no discernable hull deterioration. The wreck is protected under section 2 of the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973, which prohibits people and vessels from entering an exclusion area around it. The port authority keeps the wreck under 24-hour radar surveillance and maintains warning notices around it to ensure no one enters the area.
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The government accepts that new risks need to be assessed. It is updating the 2001 survey to make plans for managing the site and protecting the public. The new assessment will take into account changes in legislation, advances in technology and new knowledge. It should be completed by the end of this month, said the minister.
BUZZ, buzz, buzz, bees again! Old bee-keepers like me can鈥檛 be kept from their favourite topic for long. The small hive beetle (Aethina tumida) has become a pest to bee-keepers worldwide. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says small hive beetle larvae turned up in an unauthorised shipment of queen honeybees travelling from the US to Portugal, and the department is in regular contact with the European Commission on this matter. The EC says that a laboratory attached to a border inspection post in Portugal first identified the larvae. In view of the significance of this pest, the Portuguese authorities have drawn up precautionary measures to stop the beetle spreading, including the destruction of bees, hives and equipment in affected apiaries, and disinfection of soil at apiary sites.
They will not, as many bee-keepers wish, ban all imports of queen honeybees. But the EC has at least introduced and strengthened import certification requirements. If correctly applied, these should limit the importation of bee pests and diseases into the European Union.
鈥淭he American liberty ship sank in the Thames estuary with a cargo of 13,700 bombs鈥�
CONFERENCES, meetings and research papers on climate change continue to appear at an awesome rate. It is clear that if we continue to produce vast quantities of greenhouse gases, key parts of the climate could respond in an abrupt and irreversible way once a particular temperature threshold has been reached. Are we perhaps closer to dangerous thresholds than we previously thought? I asked Elliot Morley, the environment minister.
Morley agreed that we urgently need to improve our understanding of these climate thresholds. The prime minister, Tony Blair, said in his speech to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on 27 January: 鈥淭his year offers a unique set of opportunities. I am committed to using the UK鈥檚 G8 and European Union presidencies to try to make a breakthrough on Africa and climate change.鈥�
The UK continues to take a lead internationally and to push for action from others in tackling climate change, Morley said. In 2000, the government set out its policy on reducing greenhouse gas emission and the action to be taken to achieve this in its publication Climate Change: the UK programme. The government committed itself to targets agreed in the 1997 Kyoto protocol of reducing emission of greenhouse gases to 12.5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Levels were about 14 per cent below these base levels in 2003.
The government launched its latest review of climate change policy in December 2004. It will consider the action needed to ensure the UK moves towards its domestic goal of a 20 per cent cut by 2010 and towards a longer-term goal of a 60 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, the minister said.
Certainly, current estimates suggest that if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, developed countries will need to cut around 60 per cent of their carbon dioxide emissions by the middle of this century.
