Around The Web

BBC's Megha Mohan finds out why voice assistant technologies often have female voices.

Shadow attorney general condemns Met’s plans to to charge 1,100 protesters

Shami Chakrabarti, the shadow attorney general, has accused police of stepping out of line by announcing plans to push for the prosecution of more than 1,100 Extinction Rebellion protesters.

Deputy assistant commissioner Laurence Taylor said on Friday that the Metropolitan police had a team of 30 officers preparing cases against those arrested during the protests over Easter, and that he anticipated putting “all of those [cases] to the Crown Prosecution Service for decisions”.

Continue reading...

Young people all over the world are walking out of school in protest of climate change - and Belfast is no different.

The Tasmanian forest fires of 2019 fit a world pattern of more destructive forest fires as rainfall changes, temperatures rise, and weather patterns shift. Tasmania’s fires which burned for weeks have had their effect on people’s psychological well-being.

A stalemate over iron ore waste has the mining magnate and Mark McGowan at loggerheads and 3,000 jobs on the line

Clive Palmer’s millions may not have bought him a seat in Parliament, but the eccentric billionaire is still firing political barbs across the nation.

This time his target is not Canberra, but Western Australia, where, on the back of his election defeat, he claimed a legal victory over his Chinese business partners.

Continue reading...

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Research shows type of events will change and they will become more frequent in central Pacific

New research in Nature Geoscience looks at coral records to show how the pattern of El Niño events has altered over the last four centuries.

El Niño, considered one of the most important climatic phenomena globally, involves a warming of the Pacific Ocean’s surface. The Spanish term for “The Boy”, referring to the infant Jesus, as El Niño’s effect may be most evident around Christmas. There are two types of El Niño, those in the eastern Pacific, close to South America, and those further out in the central Pacific.

As expected, the report found El Niño events have become more frequent. It also showed a change in the type.

“We used to have roughly the same number of central and eastern Pacific events,” says the lead researcher, Mandy Freund, of the University of Melbourne. “Most recently, we only have one eastern Pacific event and nine central Pacific events.”

Both types of events mean reduced rainfall in Asia and Australia, but the eastern Pacific version brings heavy rainfall and flooding in the Americas, while central Pacific events produce dry conditions. El Niño events also affect other weather phenomena around the globe, including cyclones and colder British winters.

The research will enable scientists to create better models to predict the effects of future El Niño events.

Continue reading...

Backyard beekeepers take part in citizen science program, community using social media to connect families in need with kind strangers, artist turning beach rubbish into marine-themed sculptures, couple show off collection of antique sewing machines.

Cattle company AACo blame extreme weather floods and droughts for $180m loss this year.

The reserve at North Bungulla is quiet all day until the winds of the evening make the trees creak in the falling light. The winds bring the news that Barbara York Main has died.

EUAs fell on Friday to unravel more of what remained of the week’s gains as the UK Prime Minister’s resignation stoked Brexit uncertainty and bearish sentiment despite an auction-starved week ahead.

A summary of legislative and regulatory action on carbon pricing and clean energy at the US subnational and federal level taken this week, including the push to finish Oregon’s WCI-modelled cap-and-trade proposal, Maryland’s governor proposing an alternative method of achieving 100% clean electricity, and several developments related to compliance waivers and proposed biofuel credit trading reforms under the federal Renewable Fuels Standard.

Hundreds of thousands walk out of lessons in 110 countries demanding urgent action

Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren across the world have gone on strike in protest at the escalating climate crisis.

Students from 1,800 towns and cities in more than 110 countries stretching from India to Australia and the UK to South Africa, walked out of lessons on Friday, the organisers of the action said.

Continue reading...

Plantations are an excellent way to combat climate breakdown, writes Andrew Weatherall, of the National School of Forestry. And Rachel Kerr says heather moorland is rarer than rainforest and the underlying peat is more effective at carbon storage than trees

The Forestry Commission was established 100 years ago to create a “strategic reserve of timber” after Lloyd George stated “Britain had more nearly lost the war for want of timber than of anything else”. The UK is 50% self-sufficient in food, but only 20% self-sufficient in wood, so we still want timber more than anything else.

Any call to redirect subsidies to restore woodlands is welcome (Use farm subsidies to rewild quarter of UK, urges report, 21 May). The Rewilding Britain report states: “Commercial conifer plantations should not be eligible, except where they are removed and replaced with native woodland.” This approach is understandable if the aim is to increase habitat for wildlife. However, plantations are an excellent way to combat climate breakdown, because the growing trees sequester carbon and the forests store it, just like in more natural woodlands, but harvested wood products also provide a carbon substitution effect when used instead of concrete or steel.

Continue reading...

Hundreds of thousands of young people walk out of lessons around the world as the movement snowballs

• Latest school climate strikes

Continue reading...

UN aviation body ICAO will restrict attendance at technical meetings for the CORSIA offsetting programme to members of the scheme’s 19-person advisory board, snubbing a central demand of environmental groups that have called for greater outside participation and transparency in developing the international carbon market.

Albatross lovebirds, white storks in England and a walrus mother and baby

Continue reading...

Closing prices, ranges and volumes for China's regional pilot carbon markets this week.

Got a question for the Swedish 16-year-old who started a youth climate revolution? Here’s your chance to ask her...

On 20 August 2018, Greta Thunberg, then aged 15, did not attend her first day back at school after the summer holidays. Instead, she made a sign that read “School strike for climate change” and stood in front of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm, demanding the government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris climate agreement.

Her protest sparked the international movement Fridays for Future, in which schoolchildren around the world skip class to insist their governments take urgent action to halt the ongoing climate crisis. Since then, Thunberg has given a TED talk on the subject, been named one of the world’s most influential teens by Time magazine, and been nominated for the Nobel peace prize. After she addressed the Houses of Parliament in April, MPs endorsed Jeremy Corbyn’s call to declare a climate emergency, aiming to “set off a wave of action from parliaments and governments around the globe”.

Continue reading...

A satellite spotted an oil slick trailing from a tanker mysteriously attacked off the UAE on 12 May.