Around The Web

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

The AFR is not done with battery storage. On Monday, it publishes opinion piece so ridiculous and so misinformed it beggars belief.

The post Why does the AFR print such utter garbage about battery storage? appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) could delay a vote on imposing a carbon charge in its wholesale power market after it sought additional analysis on the proposed policy, an official told Carbon Pulse on Monday.

Five RGGI compliance entities in the northeast US RGGI cap-and-trade programme failed to surrender sufficient allowances to meet their interim 2018 obligations, according to public reports.

California regulators should factor in the state’s long-term climate goals as they assess ways to increase the safety and reliability of Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) natural gas and power businesses, numerous stakeholders said.

Unusual weather may not seem so if we forget how things used to be

The record-breaking warmth at the end of February was remarkable, but as cases of extreme temperatures become more common do they have any effect on people’s attitudes to the climate?

A fascinating study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal looked at more than 2bn tweets in the US about unusual cold or hot weather, and revealed that people get used to such extremes fairly quickly. As time goes by and unusual weather becomes more frequent, people seem to view the new highs and lows as simply the normal state of the climate, and memories of the weather years ago fade away.

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"They're a bit like the canaries in the mind shaft as far as the health of our oceans go."

European carbon prices rose for a seventh day on Monday, rising 4% to clear €23 as the latest rally shows no sign of abating.

Wet winters are no longer a guide to the severity of wildfires in California, a new study suggests.

Buildings and human disturbance in Antartica is clustered in an ice-free zone that is essential to most of the continent's biodiversity. Shaun Brooks, PhD Candidate, University of Tasmania Julia Jabour, Leader, Ocean and Antarctic Governance Research Program, University of Tasmania Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Marine heatwaves, like their land counterparts, are growing hotter and longer. Sea species in southeastern Australia, southeast Asia, northwestern Africa, Europe and eastern Canada are most at risk. Dan Smale, Research Fellow in Marine Ecology, Marine Biological Association Thomas Wernberg, Associate professor, University of Western Australia Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The global conservation charity says it is commissioning an independent review into the claims.

Jeremy Vine and Chris Packham were among those protesting against a property developer’s use of nets in a hedge to keep birds away

A battle broke out at the weekend over a hedge in Lincolnshire. The hedge, near the town of Winterton, was covered in netting by Partner Construction, which has applied for planning permission to build 40 homes on the site. This is standard practice, the developer said, in order to prevent birds from nesting in a habitat that might be damaged if building work begins later in the year.

However, a group of local residents opposed to the development released a video showing birds trapped beneath the nets. Jeremy Vine and Chris Packham shared the footage, and their outrage, on Twitter. Packham said the nets showed “brutal ignorance” of how to look after the countryside, and said, if he were there, he would “rip those nets down”, in a tweet that has since disappeared. According to the Telegraph, some of the offending nets have now gone.

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Receding kelp forests, jellyfish blooms and disruption to fisheries are just some of climate change’s impacts on the ocean

As bushfires raged across Tasmania, Victoria and New Zealand, and north Queensland faced a massive cleanup after unexpected flooding, a different extreme weather event was silently forming in the Tasman Sea over summer.

For the second year in a row, a stubborn high-pressure system over the Tasman Sea was warming the surface of the ocean to above-average temperatures, forming a marine heatwave, wreaking destruction and providing a glimpse of the new ecological order in the marine Anthropocene. Globally marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and prolonged and affecting biodiversity, according to new research published in Nature Climate Change this week.

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Extreme temperatures destroy kelp, seagrass and corals – with alarming impacts for humanity

The number of heatwaves affecting the planet’s oceans has increased sharply, scientists have revealed, killing swathes of sea-life like “wildfires that take out huge areas of forest”.

The damage caused in these hotspots is also harmful for humanity, which relies on the oceans for oxygen, food, storm protection and the removal of climate-warming carbon dioxide the atmosphere, they say.

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One of the UK most successful space entrepreneurs says Brexit will do immense harm to industry.

These women from BirthStrike took the decision because they're so scared for the future of life on Earth.

Wondering how much the Model 3 will cost for Australian buyers? This handy calculator might help.

The post What will a Tesla Model 3 EV cost in Australia? Find out here appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australia’s opposition Labor party is positioning itself ahead of the May election as the more ambitious option on climate change, but even they might use the nation’s huge surplus of emission units from the UN Kyoto Protocol period to meet the country's 2030 obligations under the Paris Agreement.

Logging in Poland’s Vistula lagoon described by experts as part of a ‘war on nature’ across the continent’s ancient forests

A logging operation at Poland’s spectacular 55-mile-long Vistula lagoon is casting a “dark omen” of deforestation and biodiversity collapse across Europe’s forests, campaigners say.

Tree felling around the Natura 2000 site is aimed at clearing a path to the Baltic Sea for use by Poland’s navy, to the alarm of Russia. But they are just one front in what some academics describe as a war on nature.

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