europe

The Untapped Energy Riches of Uzbekistan

While many Western investors remain fixated on somehow acquiring a slice of Turkmenistan’s natural gas riches, despite a recent scandal over the country’s actual reserves, there is another country further east whose energy and mineralogical reserves have been overlooked – Uzbekistan.

While a number of factors are responsible for this oversight, including relative geographical isolation (Uzbekistan, along with Liechtenstein, is one of the world’s doubly landlocked nations, requiring crossing two other nations to gain access to the oceans), which currently limits energy exports available for the global market, there are a number of pluses that the country has for investors willing to “think outside the box.”

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Up to a Quarter of British MEPs in Denial Over Climate

Back in June, Frank Swain and I argued for evidence-based policy ahead of the European Elections, and called for greater scrutiny of the various parties' policies on science. Inevitably for a pair of science bloggers pretending to be Guardian journalists, we were ignored. The election came and went, people elected a parade of fringe characters, and the result for science policy can be seen in the following statistic, researched and calculated over several very tedious evenings.

By my count, 23% of Britain's 72 MEPs are either explicit climate 'skeptics', or are members of 'skeptic' parties who remain silent on the subject (I use the term in quotes since climate 'skeptics' are generally about as 'skeptical' as 9/11 'truthers' are truth-oriented - googling for things that support your case and credulously accepting them as 'fact' isn't skepticism).

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Remember, Remember, the 9th of November

Even though the German National Holiday (German: "Tag der deutschen Einheit", "Day of German Unity/Unification") that celebrates the Re-Unification of the Federal German Republic (West-Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East-Germany) takes place on October the 3rd [1] (formerly June 17 [2]), there is another day in Germany that is laden with historic meaning.

Tomorrow, on November the 9th, Germany remembers some of the most important dates in its history. On four different occasions during the 20th Century, fundamental and inimitable events took place on this day, sometimes called a "Day of Fate" for the Germans: The end of the Monarchy in 1918, the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, the Night of Broken Glass in 1938, and the fall of the Berlin Wall 1989.

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Our Guardian Piece: Science and the European Elections

Here's my first ever piece for The Guardian, co-authored with Frank Swain.

On Thursday, millions of us will go to the polls to decide how Britain is represented in the European Parliament, but few will have the faintest idea where the candidates stand on issues that affect the food we eat, the air we breathe, the energy in our homes and the chemicals in our environment.

Continue reading at The Guardian.

For all the party responses we received, see here.

Find me on Twitter! @mjrobbins

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