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US wind continues record growth despite Trump’s coal fetish
Spanish solar thermal group models 85% renewable energy plan
Butler lambasts “pathetic” emissions target, “silly” pursuit of coal
Spider mower blitzes vegetation underneath PV panels
Manitoba releases draft framework for regulating large emitters under carbon tax
Livestock treatment may offer solution to antibiotics crisis, say scientists
Dosing animals with antibodies from their own immune systems could prevent illness and reduce the need for antibiotics
Using animals’ own immune systems may provide a way to reduce the overuse of antibiotics in farming, replacing the drugs with cheap farm byproducts and cutting the growing risk of resistance to common medicines, new research has suggested.
Natural antibodies, produced by the immune system without previous infection, in animals and humans, can protect the body against harmful bacteria. They are present in some usually unconsidered farm byproducts, such as the whey left over from milk production, and they could be administered to animals easily in feed.
Continue reading...Largest king penguin colony shrinks 90% in 30 years
The National Energy Guarantee is a flagship policy. So why hasn't the modelling been made public?
EU Market: EUAs hold above €17 as summer auction cuts near
California LCFS credits surpass $190 on eve of data release
Massachusetts GHG, energy goals bolstered with signing of international hydroelectric contract
Extreme weather could push UK food prices up this year, say farmers
Crops are wilting in parched fields, lowering the yields of kitchen staples including meat, wheat, potatoes, onions and milk
Staple foods from bread to potatoes, onions, milk and meat may be in shorter supply than usual this year and prices to consumers may have to rise, farmers have said, as they count the cost of the two-month drought and heatwave across the UK.
There will be little respite from the hot weather in many areas of the country, even as thunderstorms and heavy rains spread from the east, as farmers have seen their crops wilt, their fields parched and livestock struggle in the extreme conditions.
Continue reading...Australia's energy future
'This one has heat stress': the shocking reality of live animal exports
The global demand for meat means more animals are moved around the world than ever before. Activists say the conditions they endure are intolerable – and we are all turning a blind eye
At the Kapikule border crossing between Turkey and Bulgaria, Lesley Moffat charges forward, clipboard in hand, marching alongside the parked lorries loaded with live cows and sheep waiting in this no man’s land to be exported from the EU. Sometimes, the animals are left on the lorries for days, stuck inside metallic freight containers barely shielded from the blinding sun as truckers, bureaucrats, importers and exporters haggle over paperwork and fees.
The cows struggle to bring their heads close to the fresh air. Their containers are filled with urine and manure, levels of ammonia steadily rising inside the trailers as journeys wear on. Moffat – the founder of the Dutch-based charity Eyes on Animals – sticks her hand through the grating of one lorry to check the animals’ water supply. “Look at this,” she says, grabbing at the hay stuck into the water trough and pointing to the dung clogging it. “It gets full of dirty straw and shit, and they can never drink from it,” she says. “The drivers need to give them water in buckets.”
Continue reading...America spends over $20bn per year on fossil fuel subsidies. Abolish them | Dana Nuccitelli
While we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground, America is giving the fossil fuel industry billions to extract more
Imagine that instead of taxing cigarettes, America subsidized the tobacco industry in order to make each pack of smokes cheaper.
A report from Oil Change International (OCI) investigated American energy industry subsidies and found that in 2015–2016, the federal government provided $14.7bn per year to the oil, gas, and coal industries, on top of $5.8bn of state-level incentives (globally, the figure is around $500bn). And the report only accounted for production subsides, excluding consumption subsidies (support to consumers to lower the cost of fossil fuel use – another $14.5bn annually) as well as the costs of carbon and other fossil fuel pollutants.
Continue reading...NZ Market: NZUs see third day of minor corrections as bull run over for now
Big Butterfly Count 2018 – your best pictures
Naturalists including Sir David Attenborough have been encouraging the public to take part in the largest count of its kind. We asked to see some of the images you took while doing so