Drilling into history

Over the past 40 years, ice cores have revealed more about the earth’s climate than any other scientific technique. It was by chance that Danish climatologist Willi Dansgaard realised the benefit of analysing the ice caps and went on to develop modern ice core science in the 1950s. 

According to Dansgaard "a minor - but to me fateful - miracle" whilst watching the rain fall, he wondered whether its isotopic composition changed from one shower to the next.  He tested his hypothesis, collecting samples during a rainstorm which turned out to be an unusually well-developed front system. When the rain began in western Jutland, it had not stopped raining in Wales, 1,000 km to the west. The miracle was his decision to start the sample collection under these unusually favourable conditions.

Dansgaard discovered that the ratio between two isotopes of oxygen depended on the temperature at which the rain was formed within the clouds and he then reasoned  that the relationship between temperature and delta value might also hold going back in time: "Old water might reflect the climate at the time of formation of the water," he recalls.

His theory was further developed in conjunction with Norwegian zoologist Per Scholander who noticed that gas bubbles tended to develop under ice, and also that a chunk of ice chopped from a glacier gave off bubbles of gas when put into a drink to cool it. Scholander determined that ice is virtually impermeable to gases; this made him wonder whether the air trapped deep in the glaciers contained a permanent record of the composition of the atmosphere in earlier periods. Scholander developed ingenious methods to mine the tiny bubbles of ancient air.

In 2004 a 3,270 metre-long ice core taken from Antarctica - the oldest taken - has proved one of the most useful, stretching back 800,000 years. Dating an ice core is a bit like counting tree rings; near the surface of an ice core, annual layers are usually visible.

Ice cores have confirmed that a great chill reached its climax in the 1600s when London festivals were held on the frozen River Thames, and that when the Viking adventurer Eric the Red named "Greenland'' in 985AD the weather there was warmer.  These ice cores have also been valuable in finding details of volcanic activity.  Ash blasted into the atmosphere during a volcanic eruption is often dispersed over a wide area within a few days or weeks. With very few records of volcanic eruptions from before 10,000 years ago on land these ice cores add considerably to our knowledge of volcanic history much further back in time.

With so much still to be learned from ice cores about our weather, scientists hope to go back up to 1.4 million years. Antarctica has been covered in ice for around the past 30 million years.

So if the climate is constantly changing why do scientists believe our present climate changes are anything different?

With records reaching 800,000 years back in time scientists can see that the gas bubbles show that the concentration of CO₂ was stable over the last millennium until the industrial revolution. It then started to rise exponentially, and its concentration is now a massive 40% higher. Other measurements have revealed that the increasing CO₂ is from fossil fuel usage and deforestation.

The fastest large natural increase, measured in older ice cores, is around 20ppmv (parts per million by volume) over 1000 years, as the earth came out of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. However CO₂ concentration has increased by the same amount - 20ppmv - in just the last 11 years.

The evidence is very compelling and even more worrying for the next generation.

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”

Albert Einstein

Bathing with goats milk soap...

This has been a busy month for Muddy Carrot with lots of new sellers coming on line.   

One  such seller is Cyril's Soap Shed selling their wonderful fragrant soaps, made using goats milk fresh from  their own goats. 

Goats milk has been valued for its exceptional moisturising and healing properties for hundreds of years.  The key reasons why it is so good is it has a similar pH level to human skin, and is naturally high in vitamins, minerals and Alpha Hydroxy acids, that nourish and rejuvenate. 

These soaps are completely handmade by the ancient method of cold process. Using quality, ethically sourced, natural oils with the lye from the goats milk, once all the ingredients are mixed, they are poured into handmade wooden moulds to set for 48 hours. The soap is then hand cut into individual bars and left to 'cure' for several weeks.  the finished soap is gentle and caring, delicate enough for even the most sensitive of skin

  

We at Muddy Carrot love local and Cyril's soaps tick all the boxes; they even use home grown herbs from their own garden to add gentle swirls of colour and texture to their soaps. There are no harsh chemicals, just 100% pure, natural ingredients.  The fragrances are from pure essential oils. 

A big thumbs up to Cyril's Soap Shed!

If you'd like to get your hands on a bar visit their shop or you could try your luck at entering our Muddy photo competition  where they have kindly donated a soap as a prize to help clean up the winning entry!!

What is the Greenest Christmas Tree Option?

This is a dilemma faced by so many of us coming up to Christmas. Is it best to have an artificial tree that can be pulled out year after year, or a real tree? In the UK 8 million Christmas trees are sold during the Christmas season and the number of real trees is growing year on year. Can this be good?

Christmas trees are grown in the UK as a sustainable crop. Approximately 40 million trees are grown in the UK absorbing 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Provided you are able to buy from a local grower this has to be good news.

Another alternative is a pot grown tree. We have one of these at Muddy Carrot HQ. We bought it 10 years ago and had it in the house over Christmas, it was small but perfectly formed. After Christmas time we all took turns in digging a hole and planted it within view of our window so we still enjoy it now.

It is now large and gorgeous. It has withstood the harsh storms that so many trees have struggled to establish themselves against, and we still love it and light it up every year. It somehow connects our Christmases. OK this is not practical solution for all, and we could not bring it in year on year. We do often have an indoor tree as well, but we love our live Christmas tree.

How green the solution you choose depends not just on the care with which you source but equally on the care with which you dispose of the tree after Christmas. 

Official figures show that most trees go into landfill at the end of the festive season and yet they can so easily be recycled. They are ideally suited to composting and wood chipping that could provide nutrients for depleted soil.

Most councils offer a tree recycling service and have the capability of turning your lovely tree into valuable compost. So this Christmas when you are thinking what tree to get think also about how you intend to dispose of it. It would be a great way to start 2013 on a green note…

Well Done Rosewood Farm on #SBS win!

Theo Paphitis of Dragon's Den has recently selected Rosewood Farm  as a winner of his 'Small Business Sunday', a weekly initiative on Twitter to support small businesses.  We feel this is very well deserved.  They produce an excellent range of meat and strive to do this in as environmentally friendly a way as possible for which they were awarded the Think Green Business of the Year award in 2011.

Green Roofs and Heavy Rain

Did you notice the green roof on the shipping container garden office on George Clarke's Amazing Spaces? (great up-cycling, by the way...)

Some of you may have noticed the sedum roof on our house here at Muddy Carrot HQ. Looks good, I think you'll agree, but is there any more to it than that? A lot of effort to go to perhaps, so there must be more logic to it than mere aesthetics?

It's made up of an absorbent substrate which we planted with 4,000 assorted sedum and alpine plug plants that we grew in the polytunnels here. Now, four years on, the plugs are getting knitted together to create a living carpet which changes colour with the seasons and will ultimately help the building blend in with its surroundings.

But the recent heavy rainfall has brought home another benefit of green roofs - recognised in Germany where something like one in ten new builds in built-up areas includes a green roof. That benefit is rainwater runoff attenuation. Underneath the planting substrate is an egg-box like structure that provides thousands of little rainwater reservoirs to sustain the plants through dry periods. Above that is a membrane followed by the planting material which itself is absorbent (it's made of little pellets of aerated brick material) plus of course the plants' roots also absorb a certain amount of moisture. So from a dry state there are three ways in which rainwater is held before it finds its way to the gutters and downpipes.

Although this house is surrounded by fields so flooding isn't a problem, where green roofs really come into their own is in heavily built up areas. The abundance of non-absorbent surfaces such as concrete, tiles and tarmac exacerbate the effects of heavy rain, but this can be slowed down by absorbing the water of an initial downpour so it can trickle away slowly over time. Where better to do this than above our heads on rooftops, making good use of otherwise inaccessible areas?

November Snow in Dorset

Saturday was a pleasant enough day; it had been dry for a while so I was able to give the lawn at Muddy Carrot HQ its last mow before winter.  That evening we went to watch the fireworks over Lyme Bay and enjoy a bonfire on Lyme Regis beach, appreciating the clear night sky with just a gentle breeze - not too cold.



Then Sunday dawned.  It had rained quite heavily overnight, and as the grey light dawned the noisy spatter of rain softened yet the drops were getting bigger and falling more slowly. Yuk - sleet.  But within minutes the sleet got whiter and thicker and started to settle.  It was hard to believe yet within less than an hour there were over two inches of snow, and still it came!
 

Wasting no time, the children donned hats, gloves and waterproofs and were straight out there making snow angels and rolling big snowballs to make lumpy people and animals.  The sun even came out for a couple of hours - it was like being in a ski chalet!  Our Angora goats came outside to explore, seeming a little nonplussed by this turn of events.

 Then it was all over as quickly as it started.  By tea time we'd had rain, and all that was left was a few patches of slush in the shady corners.  To quote the cook from Nanny McPhee, "there'll be snow in August next!"

Mud, Mud, glorious Mud!

We've had some great entries to our this months mud competition.  Here are a few of the highlights of the October Competition...

Pigs being part of the local soil

Pigs have proved popular with their muddy antics, let's face it you can't have a muddy photo competition without featuring some pigs.  Peter Bryant sent us a cracking image of his pigs enjoying a bit of mud and Carole Williams sent a  spectacular photo of her Pedigree Tamworth Pig, Spartacus, smiling happily as he enjoys a lovely mud bath!  You could meet this wonderful character by attending one of The Husbandry School's fantastic courses in Devon.

Pumpkin Season

Being Halloween we could hardly miss out on these knobbly (though not so muddy) pumpkins sent in by Paul Woodmin.  Lovely photo, I hope they got put to some good use!

The Big Dig

Thank you Hester Jones for this picture taken at Vale Farm north London as part of The Big Dig -  of this lovely white dog  who volunteered to help dig; getting just the tips of his paws mucky.  We love his total involvement helping to push the fork in!!  A really good effort and in aid of a really good cause, bringing clean water to thousands in rural Malawi.

Festive Fun

Mud and festivals seem to go together. Sarah shared this picture of her legs when she got back from Download festival this year and removed her socks - that was one muddy festival!

You may need longer wellies next year.