A number of reports to stir up the environmental lobby have been published recently – some officially and at least one not so.

The eagerly-awaited second part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report into the effects of global warming, due for publication at the end of the month, has had a premature airing thanks to a report by The Independent that it has seen a leaked draft of the document. It makes grim reading, by all accounts, forecasting widespread crop failures and flooding, with consequential mass migrations. That, say the panel’s experts, will result in conflict and tensions.

Crop yields are forecast to reduce by an average of 2% per decade for the rest of the century, against a rise in demand of 14% per decade, The Independent reports. That will be the result of a 2.50C increase in temperature compared to the fall of 20C required to stave off disaster.

For someone who has been banging on about the rain for the past two and some years I suppose I’ve been a little quiet now that large swathes of the country have been under water for some considerable time. Large swathes of the country nowhere near where I am, you may be cynically thinking. It’s not that I have been avoiding the issue – I’ve been occupied with other things.

When I last had something to say on the subject it was to nearly sympathise with Owen Paterson over his treatment at the hands of the people of the Somerset Levels – which are still flooded! Money, however, is no object when it comes to tackling the crisis – now it has engulfed the South East and Oxfordshire, where PM Dave has his constituency. With even parts of London seeing waters rising, the chequebook came out.

• As I write this column the TV news is treating the nation to the tirade of abuse suffered by Environment Secretary Owen Paterson. I have long been sympathetic to government ministers accused of being responsible for the weather (I remember one woman in the West Midlands in recent years firmly placing responsibility for a tornado on the powers that be), but that sympathy gets a bit stretched when it concerns an environment minister who has presided over a 41% cut in funding for “climate change initiatives” in the UK. Those are figures published in The Independent on 26 January in response to a freedom of information request.

As we pass through the season of gluttony and full rubbish bins, the issue of food waste becomes more pressing than ever. It is also an issue that has returned to the headlines. One of the ‘challenge prizes’ developed by innovation charity Nesta in association with the Cabinet Office is the Waste Reduction Challenge, which carries a £10,000 funding boost for the winning project to develop its programme.

As the name suggests, the Waste Reduction challenge prize was offered to projects that helped reduce food waste. The winning project was the Gleaning Network, run by the admirable Feeding the 5000 – the waste-fighting charity whose free lunch events were reported on in this column back in May. The Gleaning Network aims to reduce waste at its source – the farm – by gathering in as much of the produce left behind during harvesting as possible for distribution to charities.

According to Nesta, to date the project has ‘gleaned’ 36.74 tonnes of fruit and vegetables, providing over 183,000 meals to beneficiaries.

It’s quite possible that the BBC’s North West Tonight could think I’m unfairly singling it out for criticism over its coverage of environmental issues when there is economic benefit to be had. The fact is, though, it’s the only regional news broadcast that I watch on a regular basis, so it has to be the one I comment on. Not only is it because of where I physically reside, but it is also a compliment to the BBC that, despite its faults, I still favour the public service broadcaster over the commercial. I’m a bit like a judge on Strictly – I expect such high standards I get picky.

However, I despair when I hear the programme’s trumpeting of how much cash is generated in the North West by the nuclear industry and how there are big bucks to be made from the new generation of nuclear power stations. Have we learned nothing?

This column has been dormant for a couple of weeks as the Stokes household has packed up its belongings and moved house. We are still in the same soggy valley, but we have downsized to take account of advancing years.

A significant and sobering issue has been the amount of ‘stuff’ that we have had to shed to fit into the smaller – single storey – property. A brief environmental ‘audit’ shows that a significant amount has been reused. Two sturdy fellows came and removed an entire spare room that was surplus to requirements, for resale at bargain prices – principally to formerly homeless people who have finally been offered a home. Other, smaller stuff is recycled via the ubiquitous charity shop.

A further chunk – redundant electrical goods etc – has proved to be recyclable via enterprising sorts who recondition and/or rebuild such things. The remainder will be disposed of properly by the relevant authorities.

After a short foray into the wider world for the previous post, this column has returned to Blighty to bring news of the opening for entries of the 2014 Greenbuild Awards. The awards celebrate what the organisers claim are “truly green buildings that show the project teams are serious about sustainability”. In the wake of an entertaining discussion at this year’s Greenbuild Expo – as part of which the awards are presented – entries need to provide energy performance data for the building in use, proving that it lives up to its design. There are many examples of building with impressive energy performance specs that fail because they don’t take into account the actions of people. They open windows and stuff like that!

One of the categories, that for New Retrofit Product, is in association with Salford University, which is my own alma mater. There I learned much about Kierkegaard and how to operate a TV camera – neither of which had anything to do with my course.

Once again the shortlisted entries will be on show at next year’s Greenbuild Expo in Manchester next May. The awards dinner will take place at the city’s Radisson hotel on 7 May.

Today, as expected, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on global warming came expressed itself firmly of the view that it is “extremely likely” that human activity accounts for more than 50% of the increase in temperature over the past century and a half.

The report states: “Warming in the climate system is unequivocal and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout the climate system that are unprecedented over decades to millennia. Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.”

The co-chair of the Working Group that produced the report, Qin Dahe, commented: “Observations of changes in the climate system are based on multiple lines of independent evidence. Our assessment of the science finds that the atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, the global mean sea level has risen and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.”