Anyone who has read Venus Aqueous episode 4 will know how we feel about wildlife carnage caused by wind turbines, so when I got an email today from Greenpeace, asking me to write to my MP and get them to tell Michael Gove to end the UK’s ban on land-based windfarms, I was very concerned indeed. Not because I am against renewable energy you understand, only methods of generating it which maim and kill.
There is much information, at the bottom of the Venus #4 page, about alternative technology which generates wind energy without bird-and-bat-bashing blades, some of it invented more than ten years ago, and yet all the big energy companies are ignoring them and sticking with turbines. Now the government, encouraged by Greenpeace, is thinking about doing the same, but anyone who believes that the potential consequences for all life on Earth should be considered before anything is built or installed should read this article by Whit Gibbons, and then write to their MP and ask them to tell Michael Gove NOT to lift the ban on new UK wind farms.
This planet does not belong to us.
“Although viewed as a clean and sustainable energy source, wind power is not without environmental costs and hazards that should be acknowledged and addressed. Unequivocal documentation exists that windmills kill more than 300,000 birds each year, especially species that fly at night [as well as bats]. …. However, another aspect of wind turbines also needs to be considered. How does wind energy development and operation on a commercial scale affect nonflying wildlife? An article in Applied Energy by Jeff Lovich (U.S. Geological Survey) and Josh Ennen (Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute) provides important perspectives on environmental impacts of windfarms. Wind power is a promising source of renewable energy and has gained popularity among advocates in recent years. Wind is widely seen as an alternative to fossil fuels. However, the costs as well as the benefits need to be considered when adopting windmills or any other energy source.
Lovich and Ennen conducted an exhaustive scientific literature survey of research addressing environmental consequences from all aspects of windmill energy production. Their findings reveal some of the downsides of giant windmill farms other than whacking birds and bats out of the sky with enormous spinning blades. Power companies, regulators and politicians advocating wind turbines need to pay attention to the findings.
Following are factors, other than killing flying creatures, that should be considered when assessing the pros and cons of wind as an energy source.
Environmental impacts of destruction and modification of habitat at the windmill site: Roads are never environmentally friendly, and the permanent presence of those needed for windmill construction and maintenance can cause lasting ecological damage to animals that must travel between habitats. During construction, heavy machinery may cause soil compaction and erosion that can kill subterranean animals. Wind turbines sit on enormous concrete pads that eliminate native habitat from use by plants and animals.
Effects due to air and ground vibration, constant noise, shadow flicker from propellers during the day: Although more research is needed, these disturbances may have negative impacts on ground-dwelling animals. The droning noise of propellers and the near-imperceptible but ever-present vibrations could also be a problem for people living nearby.
Offsite impacts related to acquiring, processing and transporting construction materials: Building a wind turbine and moving it to the site requires considerable expenditure of energy before the windfarm itself begins to offer a positive return.
Microclimate changes downwind: Natural climate regimes can be altered as far away as 14 miles downwind of a large windfarm. One finding showed that ground level temperatures were higher at night, but lower than normal later in the day. Such changes may be small but they create conditions that native plants and animals have not previously experienced. More studies are necessary to determine if downwind impacts have long-term effects on wildlife.
Hang on a minute – the Alpha311 addresses all these problems!
“While our turbines can be placed anywhere, the optimal location is next to a highway, where they can be fitted on to existing infrastructure. There’s no need to dig anything up, as they can attach to the lighting columns that are already there and use the existing cabling to feed directly into the grid. The footprint is small, and motorways aren’t exactly beauty spots.”
Mike Shaw, a spokesperson for the company.
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Now that’s what I’m talking about! Why are they still installing bird-bashers?! These babies generate energy from the whoosh of passing traffic. Tell that to Michael Gove!
The story continues from yesterday but, if you missed the beginning, you can read the whole vegan comic here 😀
Woohoo! Don’t you just love a happy ending? 😀
If you’d like to read more funny and exciting stories, go home, and don’t forget to FOLLOW so that you don’t miss new stories when they come out (for email followers, it’s that white button in the sidebar with a white word you can’t read. I’ve tried to change the colour of the text but nothing I’ve done works. Anybody know how? 😀 )
Have a great weekend! ❤
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Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating funny, exciting and always entertaining vegan children’s books since 2012.
I’m sorry the penultimate instalment of our current story has had to be postponed until tomorrow, due to unfinished artwork which Miranda is – as we speak – hurrying to complete. If you haven’t been following it, or you’ve missed any of it, you can read what’s happened so far in this exciting vegan comic, 😀 and while you’re waiting for its conclusion, enjoy this commercial break 😀
Go on – you know you want some 😉
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Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating funny, exciting and always entertaining vegan children’s books since 2012.
Desperate to rescue Sindy Snowdrop from the evil Flat-Capped Menace are Marvellous Mildred and her friends, the Girl Scout Twins. The story continues from yesterday and you can read the whole vegan comic here 😀
😮 Oh Sindy! Just keep chewing! Hurry Mildred, hurry!
Don’t miss what happens next, tomorrow!
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Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating funny, exciting and always entertaining vegan children’s books since 2012.
Hot on the trail of the evil Flat-Capped Menace are Marvellous Mildred and her friends, the Girl Scout Twins. The story continues from yesterday but if you missed the earlier instalments of Marvellous Mildred #4, you can read the whole vegan comic here 😀
I’m holding my breath – and I hope they are too! Good luck girls, I hope you make it. Find out tomorrow if they do 😀
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Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating funny, exciting and always entertaining vegan children’s books since 2012.
Vegan superhero comic for kids, Reflecto Girl #8, concludes. For the whole story, click here 🙂
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Stay in touch, episode 4 of Marvellous Mildred and the Girl Scout Twins resumes on Monday, but until then, there are plenty more comics to choose from here.
Have a great weekend 😀
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Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating funny, exciting and always entertaining vegan children’s books since 2012.
“We cannot wait for governments – we must act immediately – and moving to a plant-based diet is the most impactful thing any individual can do”
Dr Richard Nicholson, Councillor for Haywards Heath
In July 2022, Haywards Heath Town Council became the first town in Europe to endorse the Plant Based Treaty, this was later followed by the City of Edinburgh Council in January 2023.
Dr Richard Nicholson, Councillor for Haywards Heath says, “The South East of England has endured the highest ever summer temperatures in history and people’s properties have been destroyed by fire and flood. We cannot wait for governments – we must all act immediately – and moving to a plant-based diet is the most impactful thing any individual can do to help address the grave situation we face. I’d encourage all Town, District, County and Metro councils to sign the Plant Based Treaty immediately.”
A coalition of groups is urging town and city councillors up and down the country to support sustainable diets by signing the Plant Based Treaty.
You can read the Plant Based Treaty in full here but, in a nutshell, it is a promise from the towns and cities who sign, not to build new or expand existing animal farms; to promote the benefits of plant-based diets in hospitals and schools; to teach farmers how to transition from animal to arable farming; and to redirect subsidies to fruits and vegetables growers so that everyone has access to healthy food.
Twenty cities have so far endorsed the Plant Based Treaty – in India, Turkey, the USA, and the UK – have you written to your town council? It’s easy to do. The nice people at the Plant Based Treaty have written the letter for you (which you are free to personalise) and have already worked out who the councillors are for each town so all you have to do is add your name 😀
It’s that time of year again and, for those who haven’t read it before, here begins our Christmas Story: Big Blue Sky. I will share a little of it every day this week, but if you want to read it all at once, here it is 😀
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Story continues tomorrow ❤
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Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating funny, enlightening and sometimes action-packed vegan children’s books for readers of all ages since 2012.
I’ve always loved bread but it doesn’t love me, so in recent years I’ve had to avoid it. I feel better if I avoid gluten and yeast most of the time but once in a blue moon I just can’t resist a bit of toast. So I decided to have a go at soda bread. Unfortunately, they usually put egg and/or milk in shop-bought soda bread, and anyway it comes in a plastic bag. So I looked online for vegan soda bread recipes and discovered that they include buttermilk, which is made by adding vinegar to milk and makes the air bubbles form in the dough when it’s cooking. The vegan recipes therefore do the same with plant-based milk. But I didn’t have any of that either, so I thought I’d try substituting plain old water. And it worked! Here’s how: First pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 6 (200*c, 400*f).
Weigh out 12 ounces of self-raising, gluten-free flour and put it in a mixing bowl. You can add a couple of pinches of salt if you want to.
Separately, add one tablespoon (15ml) of organic apple cider vinegar to 250ml of cold water and mix.
Add the liquid to the flour and mix well with a wooden spoon.
4. Then spoon the moist mixture into a lined loaf tin,
and flatten it with the back of a wet spoon.
5. The next bit is VERY important – I learned this the hard way and still have a scar on my left index finger. Before you put it in the oven, cover the tin with foil. If you don’t, the top crust will bake very hard and the weight you’ll have to put behind your sharp, serrated bread knife to slice through it, could result in a bloody mess 😮
I use if you care foil and greaseproof paper because it’s recycled and eco-friendly. Since this won’t make the foil dirty, you can fold it up afterwards and reuse it 🙂
Oh, I’ve just noticed, on the if you care website, that they have an illustration of a roasted chicken on one of their products, which is very disappointing.
I’ll have to tell them that people who care wouldn’t be roasting chickens. It’s horrible when someone you trusted lets you down.
Anyway, back to the vegan soda bread:
Bake in a medium-hot oven (gas mark 6) for 40 to 45 minutes.
7. Don your oven gloves, hold your head away from the oven when you open the door, take out your loaf, remove the foil and put the bread on a wire rack to cool.
When it’s cool you can use it right away, or freeze it, but what I do at this point is slice up the whole loaf and put a small piece of greaseproof paper in between each slice, wrap it, put it in a container, and then freeze it.
That way, I can take my bread out of the freezer a slice at a time, keeping it fresher for longer.
I prefer mine toasted, so it goes straight from the freezer to the toaster, add some peanut butter, Marmite and baked beans for a delicious nutritious meal in minutes. 😀
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Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating vegan stories, vegan comics, vegan poems, vegan things-to-make-and-do, and vegan children’s books since 2012.
If you’d like your own Megan doll (from the Megan & Flos vegan science fiction comics), here’s how to make one 😀
First, find a pattern. I used Jean Greenhowe’s “ten of the best” pattern which is from this book but there are plenty of others to choose from, including lots of free ones you can download.
So, I won’t give you pattern details, you can just download whichever pattern you fancy and then make her look like Megan. If you don’t know how to knit yet, you can either learn, or sew a ragdoll instead 🙂
Anyway, this is what I did:
I used DK (Double Knitting thickness) acrylic yarn from my bag of oddments – no need to buy anything new. Her clothes don’t have to be blue, you can choose what she wears, and if you don’t have a bag of oddments, they often sell bags of leftover yarn in charity shops. I used UK size eleven (3 mm) needles.
The pattern I used starts at the ankles and works up to the top of her head (working in stocking stitch – one row knit, one row purl). I started in dark blue, for her jeans, then I changed colour, and knitted her light blue top, up to her shoulders,
then I changed colour again, to pink for her head. Then I cut the yarn, leaving a long length to thread through the stitches. Hey – didn’t I say I wasn’t going to explain the pattern? Sorry – I guess that’s useless information if you don’t have the pattern, and superfluous if you do. Oh well 😀
Excuse my photos by the way, my camera phone is very old. But you get the idea with that 🙂
Arms
Feet
Then I knitted the arms and the feet. Megan is wearing baseball boots, so I knitted the feet two thirds white, one third red. As you can see from the photo of the finished doll, they are proper red. I don’t know why the photos here make them look brown 😀 Then I sewed laces into the red part.
Then it was time to sew her up and stuff with kapok (natural organic fibre harvested from kapok trees, used for centuries – probably – for stuffing pillows and soft toys). But if you don’t have any kapok, you could fill your doll with cut up strips of old T-shirt. Any soft material will do.
Before stuffing, it was necessary to sew down the middle of the dark blue legs section, to create two legs, and after stuffing I tied a length of yarn around the base of the pink section, to make the head 😀 The boots were folded, sewn and stuffed before being attached to the ankles; and the arms sewn, stuffed and attached at the shoulders.
Next she needed a face! I just sewed her features on, and not very well at first – embroidery is not my strong suit – so I unpicked it and tried again. And again, until I was happy with it 😀
She doesn’t look like Megan yet does she? That’s because she needs hair!
So I made the hair by cutting lots of long lengths of yellow yarn, tying them in the middle, and sewing them from top to bottom of the back of Megan’s head. Ouch! Your pattern will show you how 😀
If you only have a little bit of yellow for her hair, the pattern shows you how to make a hat or a hood for her, and then you’ll only need a little bit to stick out the front. 🙂
Now she looks very Megan-ish! But there’s still one more thing she needs – do you know what it is?
Her solar-powered gravity-adjusting belt of course!
For this I cast on five stitches of purple and worked in moss stitch (every row knit) until it was long enough. I kept measuring it up against the doll as I went along, until it was the right length. Then I cast off, sewed the ends of the belt together, and added the gems. Or did I sew on the gems first, and then sew the ends together? You decide 😀
Ta-daa!
She looks ready for adventure doesn’t she?!
Why don’t you make yourself a Megan doll? Or a Reflecto Girl doll? Or any of our heroic vegan characters. And do send us photos if you make any, we’d love to see them 😀
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Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating vegan comics, vegan stories, vegan nursery rhymes, vegan children’s books and vegan things to make and do, since 2012.
What will you read next? There are tonnes of vegan children’s stories, with lovely vegan characters, to choose from on our stories and comics page. Read them for free, any time you like. 😀
Marvellous Mildred and the Girl Scout Twins, Episode 4 – Serious Trouble for Sindy Snowdrop – continues from Wednesday. For the story so far, click here 😀
Sindyyy!!!!! 😮
Why is the Flat-Capped Menace taking baby Sindy to a ship?! Will our heroes get there in time to stop him?! These questions and more will be answered when this story continues, which will happen as soon as Miranda finishes drawing it.
For now – have a great weekend! 😀
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Marvellous Mildred, the Girl Scout Twins and the Flat-Capped Menace are characters from the vegan comic by Miranda Lemon.
Marvellous Mildred and the Girl Scout Twins, Episode 4 – Serious Trouble for Sindy Snowdrop – continues from Monday. For the story so far, click here 😀
Blast that Flat-Capped Menace and his robots! Hurry Mildred – they’re getting away!
Come back on Friday to see if our heroes can stop them before they reach the ship 😀
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Marvellous Mildred, the Girl Scout Twins and the Flat-Capped Menace are characters from the vegan comic by Miranda Lemon.
Marvellous Mildred and the Girl Scout Twins, Episode 4 – Serious Trouble for Sindy Snowdrop – continues from Friday. For the story so far, click here 😀
Uh oh. This is not going well at all. Poor Sindy Snowdrop is getting further and further out of reach! Come back on Wednesday to see what our heroes do next! 😀
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Marvellous Mildred, the Girl Scout Twins and the Flat-Capped Menace are characters from the vegan comic by Miranda Lemon.
Marvellous Mildred and the Girl Scout Twins, Episode 4 – Serious Trouble for Sindy Snowdrop – continues from Wednesday. For the story so far, click here 😀
Bungee cord? Whatever next?!
Find out what’s next by coming back here on Monday 😀
Have a great weekend 😀
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Marvellous Mildred, the Girl Scout Twins and the Flat-Capped Menace are characters from the vegan comic by Miranda Lemon.
Marvellous Mildred and the Girl Scout Twins, Episode 4 – Serious Trouble for Sindy Snowdrop – continues from Monday. For the story so far, click here 😀
Uh oh 😮 Plan B?
If at first they don’t succeed, they’ll try and try again – on Friday 😀
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Marvellous Mildred, the Girl Scout Twins and the Flat-Capped Menace are characters from the vegan comic by Miranda Lemon.
Marvellous Mildred and the Girl Scout Twins, Episode 4 – Serious Trouble for Sindy Snowdrop – continues from Friday. For the story so far, click here 😀
Oh my goodness! So close! 😮
Will they be able to rescue little Sindy? Come back on Wednesday to find out 😀
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Marvellous Mildred, the Girl Scout Twins and the Flat-Capped Menace are characters from the vegan comic by Miranda Lemon.
For previous episodes of Marvellous Mildred and the Girl Scout Twins, click here. Episode 4 – Serious Trouble for Sindy Snowdrop – continues from yesterday:
😮 Pedal fast girls – that baby’s life depends on it!
Have a great weekend but don’t forget to come back on Monday to find out what happens next 😀
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Marvellous Mildred, the Girl Scout Twins and the Flat-Capped Menace are characters from the vegan comic by Miranda Lemon.
For previous episodes of Marvellous Mildred and the Girl Scout Twins, click here. Episode 4 – Serious Trouble for Sindy Snowdrop – continues from yesterday:
Hurry girls! Will our heroes get there in time to save Sindy Snowdrop? Come back tomorrow to find out! 😀
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Marvellous Mildred, the Girl Scout Twins and the Flat-Capped Menace are characters from the vegan comic by Miranda Lemon.
For previous episodes of Marvellous Mildred and the Girl Scout Twins, click here. Episode 4 – Serious Trouble for Sindy Snowdrop – continues from yesterday:
That evil kidnapping fiendish villain! Where on Earth are Mildred and the girls?! Come back tomorrow to find out! 😀
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Marvellous Mildred, the Girl Scout Twins and the Flat-Capped Menace are characters from the vegan comic by Miranda Lemon.