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.”

Seals appear to be inveterate posers. Wherever a colony is to be found basking on rocks by the shore they will inevitable turn to a casual observer, inviting a photograph. And so, it appears, is the case in the Thames Estuary – not hitherto renowned as a hot spot of seal activity.

No fewer than 708 seals were spotted in the Thames Estuary in a count carried out by the Zoological Society of London recently.

According to an article in the ZSL’s newsletter: “Conservationists and volunteers jumped into boats to help tally the number of grey and harbour seals along the Thames, whilst others took to the air for a bird’s eye view of the coast, or stuck to solid ground to investigate small creeks and rivers.”

Sadly, such abundance is not to be seen in other areas where the creatures where one more numerous.