The third progress report from the Buncefield Oil Depot Inquiry into Europe’s biggest peacetime explosion has been released. Government Inspectors are worried about legal proceedings so they don’t dare say too much which makes it all a little unsatisfactory. But here is the gist of what the General Public are permitted to know about what happened.

At 1900 hours on 10th December 2005 operators at the Buncefield Oil Depot began filling Tank 912 with 20 000 cubic feet of petrol an hour. That is a bit faster than your run-of-the-mill petrol pump. By 0300 hours the tank was about three-quarters full. At this point the fuel level gauge stuck. Why it did so seems to be anybody’s guess.

By 0520 hours Tank 912 was full to overflowing and duly did so. It poured over the top and turned itself into vapour clouds. Half an hour later with petrol everywhere the rate of inflow increased itself to 30 000 cubic feet per hour for reasons unknown. Ten minutes later the whole lot exploded blowing out windows two miles away and waking up the Dutch two hundred miles away with the sound of the explosion. Those seem to be the facts. Then comes the rest.

Alarms should have sounded in the control room when the fuel gauge stuck. There were two control room staff, four maintenance men and plenty of tanker drivers around but nobody noticed that there was petrol everywhere. Didn’t anyone even smell anything? Another thing that has come to light is that the explosion was much too powerful. Blast pressures were between 700-1000 mbars but should have been between 20-50 mbars. Nobody knows where the spark came from that set everything off. The Buncefield Oil Depot’s fire-fighting equipment was destroyed in the explosion as well as much of the evidence. But apparently a somewhat charred fuel gauge turned up the other day.

A pretty light green cloud blew across from Denmark yesterday. Cars all down the East Coast were covered in the stuff when it floated to earth. We had been invaded by birch pollen. Apparently there is nothing unusual about this. But it was a new one on me. Trees get more and more interesting…like oceans and clouds. One of many new discoveries from the Climate Research boys and girls is that trees respond to variations in carbon dioxide levels by altering their water sweating rates. Each species of tree has its own particular response profile so you cannot generalise about the effects of carbon dioxide on planetary forest cover.

Not only do you need the dynamic profiles for the carbon dioxide…and water…absorption and emission rates but this must be matched with an individual forest profile. Climate is complicated and many models are so outdated that they are scientifically useless…although politically valuable as they churn out their global warming scenarios.

Back to our clouds of travelling pollen. Aerosols are also crucial to climate modelling as they offset the warming effect of greenhouse gases by causing the atmosphere to reflect more solar radiation into space than otherwise would be the case. Between the middle of February and the end of May one tree species after another sends its pollen into the atmosphere. Hazel and Alder are the first off…followed by Yew, Willow, Poplar and Ash in March and April. By the end of April Birch and Plane trees are sprinkling the countryside with their airborne angel dust. The last to go is the Oak Tree which comes into its own this month. Pity the poor pollen sufferers because it doesn’t stop there. Once trees have finished polluting the atmosphere oil seed rape lets fly…followed in July and August by grass and nettles.