Roderick Bale

Yes

Depending who does it, and it’s been a year or more since I commissioned any, I’d say in the region of £800- 1000+.

Fair question. And I’m not the best person to ask. Swansea university (who I work for and with) would be - www.oak-research.co.uk. Certainly with past projects, where I’ve already taken the samples and tried to rw date them, the cost to a client has been around the same as for a couple of c14 dates

Oxygen isotope dendro means we have dated timbers that even five years ago we couldn’t (ie short sequences from trees with invariate ring widths, often from regions with little available reference data- eg west Wales). It’s the homogenous isotopic signature in British rainfall that makes it possible

I sampled a building (2 joined cottages) in Hook, near Haverfordwest two years ago. Ring widths didn’t produce dates, short series of 35-40 rings. But oxygen isotope dendrochronology worked- 1752/53. It’s a real game changer for such timbers. The dates are reported in the latest VA isotope date list

There is a popular assumption that if a building is listed then we know everything about it. Modern archaeology has shown that most listed buildings have never been meaningfully researched. I'll be looking at why this is during an online event on 26 Feb...
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reinterpre...

Oxygen Isotopes in Tree Rings Track Neotropical Climate Dynamics Tree-ring δ18O from Abies guatemalensis in Central America captures interannual variations in boreal summer rainfall Lighter δ18O years are associated with a weakening of the Caribbean Low-Level ...

A new paper by @anaigmendez.bsky.social vin Geophysical Research Letters shows that the oxygen isotope ratio of the annual rings of tropical conifers in Central America records rainfall amount and tracks large-scale tropical atmosphere ocean dynamics! agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Digital Gangsters – Byline Times Shop Digital Gangsters The inside story of how greed, lies and technology broke democracy Online campaigning has transformed politics worldwide in the last 5 years. Electoral earthquakes such as Brexit and...

Lots of mentions in the Parliamentary debate today of former MP and DCMS member Ian Lucas’ book on information warfare ‘Digital Gangsters’ — three years old but ever more relevant subscribe.bylinetimes.com/product/digi...

Shipping marks on a basement ceiling conifer joist at Cambrian place Swansea 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿. Dated to first quarter of the 19th century

What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy? Fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous energy sources, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner.

ourworldindata.org/safest-sourc...

Conifer dendrochronology samples

Dendro samples from Gloucester Chambers, maritime quarter Swansea 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Amazingly, Zahawi only got round to deleting the below after the press conference announcing his defection to Reform.

A Black man was killed by ICE (off duty) in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. And like Renée Good, he was an American citizen. But most people have not heard about Keith Porter.

I need y’all to realize this. Black people experience this lack of visibility all the time when it comes to being victims.

Happy new year (s)

When is a sausage not really a sausage? Ask the meat lobby | George Monbiot European legislators may ban plant-based products from using the name to prevent ‘confusion’. Just don’t mention beef tomatoes or buffalo wings, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Thick as mince and thick as thieves. A column about the absolute idiots European legislators have made of themselves over the naming of food, at the behest of meat lobbyists.
You laugh and then you weep.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Fairness for our Farmers

www.partyof.wales/tegwch_fferm...

Dugin's 1997 description of the UK as a 'strategic floating base' of the USA that needs to be cut off from the EU keeps popping in my mind.

The fact that his wildest dreams have come to pass since then, and the USA is now a Russian ally, is really starting to make this island feel unsafe.

The Internet Loves These “Gay Sheep.” The Real Story Is Much Darker. A much-hyped fashion show with wool from “gay rams” obscures the brutal reality of an industry that exploits sheep sexuality at every turn.

"Interventions in the sex lives of animals are so intrusive and ubiquitous that..bestiality laws had to be rewritten to include explicit exceptions for farmers." love this piece by @jandutkiewicz.bsky.social & Gabe

newrepublic.com/article/2036...

Very cool work by Bryan Black here at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research establishing the exact date of the Electron Mudflow in the Puget Sound metropolitan area: 'Forest-floor burial in 1507 by the largest Mount Rainier lahar of the past millennium'
doi.org/10.1130/G537...

Petition: Call a public inquiry into Russian influence on UK politics & democracy We are concerned about reported efforts from Russia to influence democracy in the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere. We believe we must establish the depth and breadth of possible Russian influence campaig...

I've signed. Have you?

Petition: Call a public inquiry into Russian influence on UK politics & democracy petition.parliament.uk/petitions/74...

Yay!! I couldn’t be there but Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring just won gold at the APA podcast awards!!

Whole thing was crowdfunded by @the-citizens.bsky.social to highlight 5-year legal case to get an investigation into Russian interference in UK politics. Power to the people!

Willow trees on Prince William’s land in Devon poisoned with herbicide Exclusive: Unknown culprit suspected of spraying glyphosate on protected trees hoped to stop peat erosion and flooding

There are some people who seem to see the recovery of ecosystems in a deforested waste as a personal affront. It's about power, and different landscapes reflect the different ways in which power is distributed - or concentrated.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Seems the case in much of Wales. A denuded landscape by and large, propped up by tax payer subsidies, politicians (esp plaid/ tories) and powerful farming interests

How a ‘veggie burger’ ban nobody wanted became one Brussels might actually pass A fringe amendment to protect meaty vocabulary has become a test of Europe’s loyalty to tradition and its waning appetite for food innovation.

"as negotiations with EU governments begin, the amendment that everyone assumed would die in the first round is still standing — not because it has a powerful constituency behind it, but because almost no one is expending political capital to bury it."

[facepalm]

www.politico.eu/article/vegg...

This is Zelenskyy's "if necessary for years, if necessary alone" moment.

A chapter in history that will be remembered both for the shame of Washington's betrayal, and for the dignity, bravery, defiance and resolve of the Ukrainian people in the face of it all.

2025! The traditional end-of-year collage! Available as a 1000 piece jigsaw, limited edition art prints and tea towels!
👇👇👇👇👇
www.coldwarsteve.com/2025/11/18/u...

The Comforting Lie of Climate-Friendly Meat The industry insists that meat’s problems can be solved with technical fixes. We’ve seen this before.

It's the cow, not the how. Always has been. Always will be.
newrepublic.com/article/1775...

2017 tweet from Leave.EU thanking Putin for carpet bombing Syria which displaced 14 million & led directly to the refugee/boat crisis.

Age and origin of a Cahokian wooden monument at the Mitchell site, Illinois, USA Cahokia was the first and largest precolonial city outside of Mesoamerica in what is now the United States. Monuments and exotic goods were central to public life at Cahokia, but no high-resolution…

CAHOKIA, ILLINOIS — Using tree-ring radiocarbon from an A.D. 994 solar event, researchers precisely dated the Mitchell Log—Greater Cahokia’s largest known marker post—to about A.D. 1124, and strontium isotopes show the bald cypress wasn’t local, likely hauled ≥112 miles.

Read more:

Impacts and Legacies of Extreme Precipitation on Temperate Forests During Critical Ecological Windows Within seasonal temperate forests, changes in precipitation structure—its form, duration, and seasonal timing—is a dominant characteristic of climate change. While past research has focused primarily ...

Two new key papers on climate change and forests in the Northeastern US led by Jaclyn Hatala Matthes.

First, a review on the Impacts and Legacies of Extreme Precipitation on Temperate Forests During Critical Ecological Windows

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...