Call me a softie, but this is taking things a bit far: Bullet-Hit Baby Survives Family Massacre.

The adults had allegedly shot their seven-month-old daughter and two-year-old son before turning the gun on themselves at a house in Argentina.

The couple, Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 23, apparently had agreed a suicide pact over fears about global warming.

I’ve said in the past (when talking about contraception) that there’s nothing worst for the environment than a human baby, but that was just a joke – to imagine anyone caring enough to go to these lengths over it is just horrible.

Weird as well that the couple should have changed their minds so soon after having a baby as well. You have to hope there was more to it than the article suggests…

Hurrah for the Food Standards Agency, who have just reported that organic food isn’t any better for you than normal food. I’ve always disliked the organic movement. It’s not just because it cons people into buying organic by an appeal to an unquantifiable “new-agey” sense of being somehow “good” without really explaining why (on the contrary, you could see that as a voluntary tax on the gullible, so I’m fine with that).

No, what irks me about it is the way it is just so silly and unsustainable.    We’ve barely got enough room to feed 6 billion of us as it is, we’re already chopping down rainforests to make more room to create more food – given that, how can it be sensible to promote a production method which is less efficient and takes up even more space?

The disappointing thing is the way the story has developed in the press and the organic lobby’s repsonse to the FSA report has been given such a prominent voice in the media. The Food Standards Agency says there are no “differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food” so the Soil Association and the like change the goalposts, arguing that the reason you should buy organic food is because you don’t like pesticides and are worried about the environment. The papers have diligently reported this too.

The Soil Association’s response is pretty unimpressive. If the evidence challenges you, the right thing to do is to take time to consider it and if necessary have a think about whether your position is really the right one. What the Soil Association have done instead is to immediately come out making unwarranted attacks on the evidence (taken apart by Ben Goldacre here) and then saying “The evidence doesn’t matter anyway, I can’t hear you because I’ve got my fingers in my ears.”

Not very well done them.

Shamefully picked up the Metro on my commute this morning, where else are you supposed to find ridiculously unguided environmental news?

In the US they’re using “a giant tractor-pulled ‘hairdryer’” in order to kill pests and increase shelf-life of fruit and veg. “It provides a non-toxic, non-chemical pest-control alternative that is less problematic for the environment.” Apparently.

And what’s powering this ‘heat-shock?’ Gas. Just Google ‘gas pollution’ and the figures are there. In a time where our emissions are increasing exponentially, these are the ideas that are meant to be saving the planet.

This is amusing and upsetting in equal parts.
Someone recently asked on Yahoo Answers “what is better for the environment, bus or train?”  And of all the answers, the best one, the BEST, the one that the other half wits voted for as settling the argument was by someone who thought that trains were better because:
“some types of trains run on electricity not on fuel, this way it does not pollute the environment.”
Can anyone see a flaw in that, because I can’t?