So, the presents have been opened and the over-eating survived. What now remains of your ‘spirit of Christmas’? For me, the answer is always the same – it’s the lights.

Since childhood, they have fascinated me. I would wander the streets, marvelling at efforts people made to light up their houses and neighbourhoods.

It didn’t have to be much; just a symbolic willingness to do something that illuminated far more than it lit up. This has always been my ‘spirit of Christmas’.

Societies need their lights to be guided by, never more so than today.

I have been trying to find some of the same altruism or mysticism in the government’s own leap into ‘keeping the lights on’ politics. This has taken the form of the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC’s) first round of ‘capacity market’ auctions.

Remember Enron? It’s a game …

An idiots guide to capacity markets would tell you they are essentially a game for idiots. You can’t auction the unknown. It becomes a game for gamblers not legislators.

So, predictably, in the first round of auctions Santa (ie the public) threw a £1bn (pre-Christmas) subsidy to big energy companies and they agreed to pocket it.

The nominal deal also included Big Energy agreeing to keep Britain’s lights on. DECC breathed a sigh of relief and went back to writing its own letters to Santa.

For most people, keeping the lights on remains a pretty important test of government competence … and energy companies know this. That is why, a couple of years ago, they started mothballing existing gas power stations (and permissions to build new ones).

On the surface, the explanation was that power prices were too low for the stations to remain viable. But behind the scenes, energy companies were already preparing to ‘game’ the system – and needless to say, keep the suckers (that’s us) in the dark.

Power companies ‘manufacturing insecurity’

If you can manufacture the prospects of a shortfall, you can manufacture the case for a new subsidy system to avoid it. Big Energy invented the idea of capacity markets and sold it to civil servants in DECC.

The embarrassment is that the government fell for such an obvious sucker punch. It wasn’t as though parliament lacked other / better choices.

In various sectors of a modern economy, maintaining reserve capacity is just a legal obligation. Major data centres – particularly those dealing in credit referencing and financial transactions – have to operate every second of every day. Heavy fines, market disqualification and / or imprisonment would follow a failure to ‘keep their own lights on’.

Similarly – until they were allowed to convert into casinos – all the major banks were obliged to maintain robust ‘reserve requirements’, sufficient to keep the banking ‘lights’ on too.

Moreover, I’m astonished at how quickly governments have forgotten the motivating effect that ‘the avoidance of going to prison’ can have in their discussions with corporate executives.

If this sounds too brutal, the government could just as easily have sequestrated the generating capacity that was being mothballed. If falling power prices (never passed on to the public) were making gas power stations uneconomic, the government could have bought them for a song.

Subsidies or safety nets?

The UK was never short of more coherent alternatives. The problems began with how we defined the problem.

In any economy, back up energy capacity is always difficult – if only because you never know how often, or how much, you will need it. The government’s most dubious assumption, however, was that this provision had to be marketised.

Once upon a time, such back-up generation power would have been referred to as Britain’s ‘strategic reserve’; a back-up, held and operated by the State, providing society with a safety net, not a market.

Today, a different version of the same thinking could have taken the form of building more interconnectors, particularly with Europe. These would have been much cheaper (and quicker) than an everlasting round of bribes and bungs.

Within a more imaginative mindset, the government could have financed measures promoting reduced energy consumption rather than increased energy production.

One of the minor / major tragedies of the UK’s first round of capacity market ‘auctions’ was that less than 1% of the contracts went into such ‘demand reduction’ measures.

Politicians could easily have changed the nature of the auction by specifying that 50% of the contracts would go into an energy politics designed to consume less … but they didn’t.

Instead, they actually made it harder for ‘demand reduction’ providers to compete by limiting their contracts to just one year, when new power generation contracts last up to 15 years (see ‘UK’s unlawful £35 billion support to fossil fuels in ECJ challenge‘).

No less boldly, they could have set a carbon ‘cap’ on where this energy came from, or a minimum proportion that had to come from renewable sources … but they didn’t do that either.

Britain’s capacity auctions were designed by and for energy producers; a point apparently lost on our political leaders – freshly returning from Lima discussions about cutting carbon emissions, rather than maintaining carbon subsidies.

Clean connections before dirty

Interconnectors could have offered Britain a much cleaner energy-balancing act than the capacity market auctions. Norway, Iceland and increasing parts of the EU can already offer renewable energy surpluses through the use of their interconnectors.

In the EU, what also matters is that retail electricity prices are 50% lower than in the UK. An increased use of interconnectors could keep Britain’s lights on and cut electricity costs at the same time. But none of this would have propped up the rewards to Britain’s Old Energy cartel.

To get out of the trap Britain is in, we have to start looking for a new source of ‘illumination’, and within a different mindset. The good news is that this is where many of today’s brightest ‘guiding lights’ are already working.

Seasonally, perhaps I should have gone looking for three Wise Men to offer you, but maybe two and two halves will suffice.

Following yonder stars

The two ‘halves’ are different organisational ‘stars’ Britain should be taking its bearings from.

The first is a collection of academics based around the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. Fraunhofer has just completed its latest scientific audit about Germany’s transition plans towards a clean/green energy economy. The Audit’s conclusion is as stark as it is inspirational –

“It is economically to our [Germany’s] advantage to move as quickly as possible to a system of 80% renewable energy”, said Eicke Weber, the institute’s director and a professor of physics at Freiburg University.

80% ?!… Britain’s current political leaders would have palpitations about Committing to half this amount … in their political lifetimes! Yet what the Germans seem to grasp is that this is as do-able as it is desirable. But it involves a fundamental shift in mindset about what ‘keeping our lights on’ actually means.

Aiding and abetting this collectivity of German scientists and engineers is the Twitter-site of their Energy Transition movement – @EnergiewendeGER. The site offers a constant stream of energy insights that are tragically missing from the UK energy debate.

But it is to the smaller ‘lights’ that we might want to direct the most heartfelt Seasonal blessings to. They are the equivalent of the individual houses whose Christmas lights I gazed at as a child, and whose lights seemed to capture the sense of vision and hope that politics often lacks.

An American abroad

The first of these ‘lights’ is Craig Morris (a refugee Americam living in Germany). Against all odds, Morris has maintained a broadsheet that many in the Environmental movement have come to rely on.

Operating beneath the banner of ‘Petite Planete‘ his Renewables International internet platform constantly analysed (and corrected) all the garbage, misinformation and ‘dark light’ put out by climate-denying lobby organisations.

His has been a David and Goliath endeavour – buttons versus billions – that defied the might of money and power. Yet even Renewables International has its limits.

Faced with a dwindling supply even of buttons, the continued existence of RI itself is now in question. If there was ever a case for crowd-funding something that consistently ‘keeps the lights on’ about brighter choices, this is it.

No less ‘illuminating’ is the work of my second wise man – Jeremy Leggett, the founder of Solar Century and now SolarAid. Leggett came back from Lima with a plan to replace every oil-burning lamp in Africa with a solar lamp, by 2020.

Into the darkness of continued global oil and coal subsidies, Leggett wants us to shine the light of renewable energy into the lives of those least able to do so for themselves. Re-writing Aladdin, he promises to swap new lamps for old, clean for dirty.

Whilst global leaders continue to throw money at an unsustainable past, Leggett (and others) want us to ‘light up’ a different future.

New lights for old

My guess (and hope) Is that society Is looking for new lights to follow. And these lights will be sustainable, accountable, open and equitable: with new voices leading where today’s Leaders fear to go.

These are ‘lights’ that would have us invest in a future we can survive in, dis-invests in the one that is destroying us, and which remembers that this ‘Petite Planete‘ of ours is the only one we’ve got.

I guess that, as a child, this was the ‘illumination’ I began looking for as I gazed in over garden gates.

As the year ends, yet another report, Renewable energy versus nuclear power – comparing financial support – details the way that consumers, across the EU, could see their electricity bills cut by 37% (and more) if government’s shifted support from nuclear to renewables.

It is unlikely even to register in a British debate that remains trapped in backward looking, ‘Dim vs Dimmer’, energy politics. For brighter choices, we need to get out more; taking greater notice of the ‘lights’ outside, and less of the lobbying inside.

Have a Brave New Year!

Alan Simpson is a recovering politician, Energiewende admirer, advisor on energy policy, climate change and fuel poverty.

Twitter: Alan tweets @AlanSimpson01.

This article was originally published at Evernote.

Video: ‘Lights’ by Ellie Goulding.

With nuclear power falling ever further behind renewables as a global energy source, and as the price of oil and gas falls, the future of the industry in 2015 and beyond looks bleak.

Renewables now supply 22% of global electricity and nuclear only 11% – a share that is gradually falling as old plants close and fewer new ones are commissioned.

New large-scale installations of wind and solar power arrays continue to surge across the world. Countries without full grids and power outages, such as India, increasingly find that wind and solar are quick and easy ways to bring electricity to people who have previously had no supply.

Developed countries, meanwhile, faced with reducing carbon dioxide emissions, find that the cost of both these renewable technologies is coming down substantially.

Subsidies for wind and solar are being reduced and, in some cases, will disappear altogether in the next 10 years.

Renewables’ enviable speed of installation

The other advantage that renewables have is speed of installation. Solar panels, once manufactured, can be installed on a rooftop and be in operation in a single day. Wind turbines can be put up in a week.

Nuclear power, on the other hand, continues to get more expensive. In China and Russia, costs are not transparent, and even in democracies they hard to pin down. But it is clear that they are rising dramatically.

Building of the proposed twin European Pressurised Water reactors, called Hinkley Point C, in Britain’s West Country is due to start in 2015, but the price has risen several times already. Estimated construction costs have now jumped from £16 billion to £24 billion – before the first concrete has even been poured.

The other problem with nuclear is the time frame. Originally, Hinkley Point C was due to be completed by 2018. This has now slipped to 2024, but even this is optimistic judging by the performance of the two prototypes in Finland and France, both of which are late and over budget.

The Finnish plant was due to open in 2009, but is still at least three years from commissioning. The French plant is five years overdue.

In many countries, there are plans on paper for new nuclear stations, and China, South Korea and India are among those that are continuing to build them. Other countries, particularly where private capital is needed to finance them, are putting their plans on hold.

Extend life

The US, which still has the largest number of reactors of any country in the world, is opting instead to extend the life of its plants. Many operators are considering applying for such extensions from 60 to 80 years.

Provided they are up to modern safety standards, there seems no barrier to this. However experience shows that as reactors age they become less reliable – both requiring scheduled maintenance, and prone to sudden unexpected cut-outs that place huge demands on power grids.

Many other countries, including the UK, are also extending the lives of their plants as long as possible, however, so the industry won’t be disappearing any time soon.

But one of the key problems for the nuclear sector is that reactors have been designed to be at full power all of the time. With renewables taking an increasing share of the market, a combination of nuclear, wind and solar can produce more electricity than required – leaving a problem of what to turn off, or how to use the surplus power.

A way round this problem being developed in Britain is large, strategically-based batteries. A five-megawatt battery, the largest in Europe, has just been commissioned in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, in the middle of England.

This is charged up when there is too much power in the grid, and releases its energy when there is a surge in demand.

If, during a two-year trial, this works to smooth the peaks and troughs of demand, and cuts the costs of switching on expensive gas turbines, then a network of batteries will be installed across the country to harvest the intermittent supplies of renewables.

The only bright spot for nuclear at the moment is the development of small nuclear reactors. These are from 30 megawatts upwards and are designed to be built in a factory and assembled on site – a bit like wind turbines are.

These can be installed singly or in a series, depending on the demand. Their two greatest selling points are that they would be good in remote locations far from other power sources, and are said to be much safer than their larger cousins.

Price tag

However, a drawback is the price tag of around $3 billion dollars. Both the US and UK are supporting private firms in research and development, but commercial operation is a long way off.

Whether a small nuclear power station would be any more welcomed than a wind or solar farm to provide power in a neighbourhood is a question still to be tested.

Nuclear enthusiasts – and there are still many in the political and scientific world – continue to work on fast breeder reactors, fusion and thorium reactors, heavily supported by governments who still believe that one day the technology will be the source of cheap and unlimited power. But, so far, that remains a distant dream.

In the meantime, investors are increasingly sceptical about putting their money into nuclear – whereas renewables promise an increasingly rapid return on investment, and may get a further boost if the governments of the world finally take climate change seriously.

Paul Brown writes for Climate News Network.

By the end of the festive season nearly three quarters of us will have struggled to eat all the food we’ve bought. Across the UK 2 million turkeys and 74 million mince pies will have been binned, costing us money and harming the environment.

This staggering number could be significantly cut if more of us froze food before it goes to waste. Independent research has shown that the average family could save £250 a year and cut food waste by half through freezing leftovers.

Polling carried out by the new charity Hubbub has discovered that the freezer is the Siberia of the kitchen – where food is sent never to return. 55% of those who do freeze food forget about it.

Over half the people polled told us that a lack of space in the freezer causes food to go waste. Two-fifths of people were unsure what they could freeze and how long it is safe to keep something frozen.

Festive Freeze

In response to this, Hubbub is today launching Festive Freeze, urging us to embrace our freezers this Christmas and transform festive leftovers into spring dinners.

It’s easy too – we’ve put together some top tips and tools around what’s hot and what’s not when freezing food.

The campaign dispels the main myths around freezer use – what can and can’t be frozen; the impact on nutrition; the cost of running a freezer; and the impact on food quality. We’ve provided downloadable tools to help such as a freezer inventory and labels.

Plus we’ve collected a flurry of freezer-friendly recipes that transform tired turkey and stodgy sprouts into tantalising meals that can be frozen ready to fight off the January blues.

Hugh Fearney-Whittingstall offers chestnut and sage soup, Mark Hix shows us how to make Moroccan turkey cigars, Tom Hunt gives us a brussel sprout detox salad, there’s a turkey, sausage and bacon pie from Tom Aikens, brandy butter from Darina Allen and much more – and a few of our own favorites follow below.

Most of us know that by this time of year bank balances have shrunk and waist lines have grown. In a (chest)nutshell Festive Freeze helps households save money and stamp out the absurdity of food waste.

So let’s all come together and make a New Year resolution to freeze food before it goes to waste – it will benefit your wallet as well as the planet!

Charred sprout dip

To use up leftover sprouts we would suggest embracing the strong flavour of these brassicas (one of the finest vegetable species in our opinion, yielding cultivars such as broccoli, savoy cabbage and the still hip kale) by making them into a dip.

Ingredients:

Leftover cooked sprouts
Milk and thick yoghurt / creme fraiche as desired
Cider vinegar
Salt

Method:

Take any leftover cooked sprouts, slice them in half lengthways and heat cut face down on a griddle or heavy pan over a high heat. Re-cook the sprouts in this way until they are partly charred on the underside. You don’t want them to be totally blackened, but a good strong char will give a great flavour.

Whilst still warm, blend the charred sprouts in a food processor or blender with enough warmed milk to form a thick puree. Mix your choice of creme fraiche or thick (e.g. Greek-style) yoghurt into the puree, to add richness and dairy tang.

Add a little at a time and stop when you have a balance that you like, there are no rules here. Finally season with a little cider vinegar and salt to taste.

Recipe by Mike Knowlden of Blanch & Shock.

Turkey pilaf with seasoned yoghurt

Leftover turkey will give us all the flavour we need to make a delicious stock. A stock takes minutes to prepare makes the most of what we have and steps the dish up a notch giving it an unbelievably good flavour.

This meal for four costs next to nothing to make yet feels decadent and exotic. Recipe by Tom Hunt, Eco chef and food waste activist.

Video available online for guidance.

For the stock (makes about 450ml):

1 leftover turkey or chicken carcass, with any meat picked off and kept to one side. 
1 carrot, onion, stick celery, all finely chopped
Any veggies that need using up, such as courgettes, broccoli, kale, mushrooms…

For the pilaf:

500g roast carrots and parsnips, cut into rough cubes  
2 medium onions, sliced 
4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon ground coriander
Pinch of cinnamon 
150-250g of leftover turkey or chicken meat, shredded
150g wholegrain basmati
50g nuts, crushed 
Yoghurt to serve, spiced with coriander, salt and pepper

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C

1. First make the stock. Pick all the meat from the carcass and put to one side. Put all the bones and stock vegetables in a pan and cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer for one hour. Strain. 

2. Meanwhile in a thick, ovenproof dish, gently fry the sliced onions in light olive oil for 10 minutes until they are soft and caramelized. Add the coriander, cinnamon and garlic and fry for a further 2 minutes. 

3. Add the rice and stir, coating each and every grain with oil, onion and spice. 

4. Add the turkey or chicken meat and cover with stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat. Taste and adjust the seasoning as required. Put the lid on and put in the oven for 45 minutes until the water has evaporated. 

5. Sprinkle with nuts and serve with the spiced yoghurt.

Christmas pudding ice cream

A cheat’s version of Rum and Raisin using leftover Christmas Pudding. Recipe by Love Food Hate Waste.

Ingredients:

125g leftover Christmas pudding, crumbled.
150ml chilled ready made custard.
150ml double cream, whipped.
Liquor such as branch, rum, whisky or Baileys. 

Method:

Mix together the custard and whipped cream then stir in the crumbled Christmas pudding. Freeze in a large Tupperware container and stir every half hour or so until it’s the consistency you want.

For a softer freeze, add a little brandy or leftover Christmas liquor such as rum, whisky or Baileys.

For more ideas, receipes, and to submit your own recipe, visit Festive Freeze.

Gavin Ellis is one of the Founders of Hubbub. Previously Gavin was Senior Client Manager at Global Action Plan, one of the UK’s leading environmental charities. He has been involved in communicating sustainability to mainstream audiences for more than ten years.

Climate scientists are confident that the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as any other part of the planet, but now comes evidence from researchers in Finland that the rising temperatures are being felt further south than the polar regions.

Most governments have agreed that the global temperature should not be allowed to rise more than 2°C above its pre-industrial level in order to prevent the onset of dangerous climate change. Finland’s experience shows how fast this threshold may be reached.

The marked rise is reported in a study by researchers from the University of Eastern Finland and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, published in the journal Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment. They say their study “exhibits a statistically significant trend, which is consistent with human-induced global warming.”

Winter months are warming fastest

Records show that, over the past 166 years, the average temperature in Finland has risen by more than two degrees Celsius.

The average increase observed was 0.14°C per decade, which is nearly twice the global average. Since the 1960s, the temperature has risen faster than ever before, with the rise varying between 0.2 and 0.4°C per decade.

One of the study’s co-authors, Professor Ari Laaksonen, said: “The biggest temperature rise has coincided with November, December and January. Temperatures have also risen faster than the annual average in March, April and May. In the summer months, however, the temperature rise has not been as significant.”

One consequence of the rising temperature is that Finnish lakes now freeze over later in the year than they used to, while the ice cover melts earlier each spring. Some of Finland’s trees are also beginning to blossom earlier than before.

No slowdown in temperature rise

The study found that the temperature has risen in two phases – the first lasting from the start of the observation period in 1847 to the late 1930s, and the second from the late 1960s until now. During the intervening 30 years or so, the temperature remained nearly steady.

Dr Santtu Mikkonen, the lead author, said: “The stop in the temperature rise can be explained by several factors, including long-term changes in solar activity and the post-World War II growth of human-derived aerosols in the atmosphere. When looking at recent years’ observations, it seems that the temperature rise is not slowing down.”

“Our study shows that the warming is taking place all over Finland. In addition to the results shown in the paper we made some tests with data only from southern Finland  and from individual stations in different parts of the country, and the trend was similar in all these analyses. The area of higher warming is reaching further south than it has been recorded before.”

The temperature time series was created by averaging the data produced by all Finnish weather stations across the country. Because the Finnish weather network did not cover the entire country in the early years, data obtained from weather stations in neighbouring countries was also used.

Finland, lying between the Atlantic and the Eurasian continent, is subject to very variable weather. The researchers say they used a method that made it possible for them to take into consideration the seasonal changes typical of Nordic conditions, as well as significant annual variation.

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

On 17 July 2014 Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over the Eastern Ukraine.

Although the precise circumstances were at that point unknown the western media were quick to blame Ukrainian ‘rebels’. The means by which MH17 was destroyed, the media alleged, was a surface to air BUK missile supplied to the ‘rebels’ by Russia.

For a host of reasons it was almost certainly not a BUK missile that caused the crash. The stage was set however, for a demonization of Russia in general as the alleged supplier of the missile, and President Vladimir Putin in particular.

The relentless propaganda enforcing this view has continued unabated to this day, although the evidential foundation for the allegations remains at best remote.

First the verdict … and hide the evidence

The Russians produced an initial denial of involvement. Four days after the tragedy however, as anti-Russian hysteria was escalating to extreme levels, the Russian military held a press presentation. The fact of this presentation was barely reported in the western media. The content, more importantly, was either ignored or misrepresented.

The Russians disclosed, inter alia, their radar and satellite data. These data showed that MH17 had been diverted from its scheduled route so that it flew directly over the war zone in eastern Ukraine. They asked for an explanation but one has never been forthcoming.

These data also showed that MH17 had been shadowed during its last minutes by two SU25 fighter jets, a model flown by the Ukrainian air force. Again the Russians asked why this had happened.

The main response was a claim that the SU25 could not fly above 10,000 metres. Not only is this untrue, as an examination of military resources readily demonstrates, but the Wikipedia entry on the SU25 had been altered days before the shoot down to claim that the SU25’s operating ceiling was only 7,000 metres. Again the western media ignored this obvious alarm bell.

The Russians further disclosed that at the precise time of the shoot down an American spy satellite was directly overhead the scene and would have recorded the sequence of events.

The Russians invited the Americans to share these data with the official investigation that had been launched, but to date the Americans have failed to do so. Again, the western media are singularly incurious as to the reason for this lack of cooperation.

IATA rules misapplied to excldue Malaysia

Under IATA Rules, the parties responsible for the investigation would be the Malaysians, as owners of the plane and home country of the airline, and the Ukrainians over whose territory the atrocity occurred.

It was the Dutch however, who took the lead role, citing two facts: the plane had departed from Amsterdam; and they had suffered the largest number of their nationals as victims.

The Malaysians were initially excluded from the inquiry for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained. They were finally invited to join the Joint Inquiry on 2 December 2014.

Instead, the initial inquiry group consisted of Ukraine, the Netherlands, Australia and Belgium. The Australians suffered the third largest loss of life but had no standing to be one of the investigatory nations, and certainly less of a claim than the Malaysians.

The Australian Prime Minister and some other politicians had been at the forefront of making extreme allegations against Russia and President Putin. Why Belgium was included remains a mystery.

Secret agreement gives Ukraine a veto on the findings

On 8 August 2014 these four investigating nations signed an agreement that the results of the investigation would not be published unless all four countries agreed.

This gave one of the prime suspects in the atrocity, Ukraine, an effective veto over any investigations result that attributed blame to them. This is an astonishing situation and probably without precedent in modern air crash investigations.

More significantly however, is that the existence of this secret agreement was not announced by the Australian government, nor to the best of my knowledge has any report about the existence of the agreement or its extraordinary terms, been published in any mainstream publication.

The Dutch magazine Elsevier, under Dutch Freedom of Information laws, sought a copy of the agreement. On 19 November they announced that the request had been refused on the grounds that it “could endanger the relations with other countries involved.”

An Australian citizen (name redacted) wrote to the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development (Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss) seeking a copy of the agreement. By letter dated 15 October 2014 the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) replied on behalf of the Minister, refusing the requester a copy of the agreement as its contents were “classified”.

The present writer wrote to DFAT on 21 August 2014 seeking a copy of the agreement of 8 August 2014 under the Freedom of Information Act. The department declaimed responsibility and said that they had passed my request on to the Attorney-General’s Department.

Australia’s federal police refuse FOI request

This was odd, but even odder was advice from the Attorney General that my request had been passed in turn to the Australian Federal Police who were the responsible body.

This must be the first time in Australian history since 1901 that negotiations and agreements between sovereign nations had been conducted on Australia’s behalf by the Federal Police.

On 2 December 2014 the Australian Federal Police finally gave their decision on the FOI request. It was declined on the basis that disclosure of the document (which they acknowledged existed) under section 33 would, or could reasonably be expected to, cause damage to:

• (i) the security of the Commonwealth; or
• (ii) the defence of the Commonwealth; or
• (iii) the international relations of the Commonwealth

The refusal also relied upon section 37(1)(a) of the Act which exempts a document if it could reasonably be said to prejudice the conduct of an investigation.

Thirdly, the Federal Police relied upon section 37(1) (c) where disclosure could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of a person.

The fourth ground of refusal was under section 37(2)(b) which exempts disclosure where it might reasonably be expected to prejudice an investigation by disclosing methods of investigation or detection of unlawful activity.

In the circumstances of this case it is very difficult to see how any of those provisions would apply. The agreement, it should be remembered, is to give any one of the four investigating countries a veto over publication of the results. A final report would be entitled to withhold details of the investigation that would truly prejudice matters of national security.

An investigation of a crash of an aeroplane is however, carried out under IATA Rules and its procedures are well established and well documented. Whose life or safety might be endangered by releasing the agreement is unspecified.

Geopolitics trumps justice

One is left with the conclusion that 33 (iii) is the real ground and the ‘international relations’ referred to are the difficulty Australia and other nations have got themselves into by prematurely blaming Russia when all of the emerging evidence points squarely at Ukraine.

Given the existence of this agreement it is difficult to see how anyone can have any confidence in whatever final report is published by the Dutch. The preliminary report was careful not to apportion blame or even state the cause of the crash other than to say that the plane was hit a by a large number of “high velocity objects” which were undefined.

Another major question is why have the mainstream media kept up a barrage of misinformation up to and including the recent G20 debacle, when they know, or ought to know that the investigation is a sham?

It is also difficult to see how the continued demonization of Russia and Mr Putin for manifestly geo-political reasons (and the probable reasons for the shoot down in the first place) represents any form of justice for the families of the 298 victims and in particular the 37 who were Australian citizens or residents.

It is clear that the Government’s professed support for Security Council Resolution 2116 (2014) for a “full, thorough, and independent international investigation into the incident in accordance with international civil aviation guidelines” is no more than window dressing for a much wider geopolitical agenda.

James O’Neill is a former academic who has practiced as a barrister for the past 30 years. He has a special interest in international human rights issues. He may be contacted at j.oneill@bigpond.net.au

In a new paper published today in the Royal Society’s journal Interface, researchers from the University of Glasgow describe how mussels’ shells become more brittle when they are formed in more acidic water.

The world’s oceans are becoming increasingly acidic as they absorb some of the atmospheric carbon dioxide which contributes to climate change.

The water reacts with the carbon dioxide to form carbonic acid, which is gradually lowering the pH of the oceans (indicating an increase in acidity). Scientists expect the pH of the world’s oceans to have dropped from 8 today to 7.7 by the end of the 21st century.

“What we’ve found in the lab is that increased levels of acidification in their habitats have a negative impact on mussels’ ability to create their shells”, said research team leader Susan Fitzer of the University’s School of Geographical and Earth Sciences.