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How crows can use a vending machine

BBC - Fri, 2018-06-29 04:29
Watch how Emma the crow creates the currency required to operate a vending machine.
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EU Market: EUAs slip back to €15 to leave rally in stall mode

Carbon Pulse - Fri, 2018-06-29 03:58
EU carbon prices fell back to €15 on Thursday, fading in the final hour to stall the recovery in EUAs built up over the past week or so.
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US Paris targets off track even if clean energy costs keep falling -report

Carbon Pulse - Fri, 2018-06-29 03:43
The US will clearly miss its Paris Agreement GHG targets even if market forces benefit clean energy and planned federal environmental rollbacks do not move forward, according to a new study published on Thursday.
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What the fire near Saddleworth Moor means for wildlife

BBC - Fri, 2018-06-29 02:03
Experts warn it may take years for the wildlife to fully return to the burnt area near Saddleworth Moor.
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Biodiversity is the "infrastructure that supports all life"

The Guardian - Fri, 2018-06-29 01:17

Dr. Cristiana Pașca Palmer has a big job ahead of her: planning the 2020 UN Biodiversity Convention in Beijing. As the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Pașca Palmer is in charge of forming new goals with governments for the natural world post-2020. At the same time, a growing group of scientists are calling for a serious consideration of the Half Earth idea – where half the planet would be placed under various types of protection in a bid to prevent mass extinction.

Do you support the Half Earth model? What tweaks would you make to it?

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Scientists call for a Paris-style agreement to save life on Earth

The Guardian - Fri, 2018-06-29 01:17

Conservation scientists believe our current mass extinction crisis requires a far more ambitious agreement, in the style of the Paris Climate Accord. And they argue that the bill shouldn’t be handed just to nation states, but corporations too.

Let’s be honest, the global community’s response to the rising evidence of mass extinction and ecological degradation has been largely to throw crumbs at it. Where we have acted it’s been in a mostly haphazard and modest way — a protected area here, a conservation program there, a few new laws, and a pinch of funding. The problem is such actions — while laudable and important — in no way match the scope and size of the problem where all markers indicate that life on Earth continues to slide into the dustbin.

But a few scientists are beginning to call for more ambition — much more — and they want to see it enshrined in a new global agreement similar to the Paris Climate Accord. They also say that the bill shouldn’t just fall on nations, but the private sector too.

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Fund Climate Trust Capital ties with green group on Maine forest project

Carbon Pulse - Fri, 2018-06-29 00:52
US-based private fund Climate Trust Capital (CTC) teamed with green group The Nature Conservancy to close its largest carbon credit deal for an improved forest management project in Maine.
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Deepwater Horizon disaster altered building blocks of ocean life

The Guardian - Fri, 2018-06-29 00:03

Oil spill disaster reduced biodiversity in sites closest to spill, report finds, as White House rolls back conservation measures

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster may have had a lasting impact upon even the smallest organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have found – amid warnings that the oceans around America are also under fresh assault as a result of environmental policies under Donald Trump.

Lingering oil residues have altered the basic building blocks of life in the ocean by reducing biodiversity in sites closest to the spill, which occurred when a BP drilling rig exploded in April 2010, killing 11 workers and spewing about 4m barrels of oil into the Gulf.

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How trees secretly talk to each other

BBC - Thu, 2018-06-28 20:07
Plants share resources using an underground network called the "Wood Wide Web".
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Meet America's new climate normal: towns that flood when it isn't raining

The Guardian - Thu, 2018-06-28 20:00

In this extract from Rising, Elizabeth Rush explains ‘sunny day flooding’ – when a high tide can cause streets to fill with water

I spend the afternoon in Shorecrest, a neighborhood a couple of miles north of downtown Miami. To get there I leave the beach behind and drive past Arky’s Live Bait & Tackle, Deal and Discounts II, Rafiul Food Store, Royal Budget Inn, Family Dollar and Goodwill. As I continue north, the buildings all lose their mirrored glass and their extra floors, until most are single story and made from stucco.

Related: Flooding from sea level rise threatens over 300,000 US coastal homes – study

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South Korea to make deeper CO2 cuts at home, scales down plans to buy international offsets

Carbon Pulse - Thu, 2018-06-28 17:55
South Korea on Thursday released a revised 2030 roadmap for meeting its Paris obligations, scaling back the amount of international carbon credits it plans to buy and instead imposing tougher emission reduction goals on domestic industry.
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UK falling short on GHG targets, shouldn’t use offsets to meet them -adviser

Carbon Pulse - Thu, 2018-06-28 17:49
The UK is falling short in efforts to cut emissions in non-ETS sectors, but should not resort to buying foreign offsets to help meet its binding targets, the country’s climate advisers said Thursday.
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Housing and car industries should be ‘ashamed’ of climate record

The Guardian - Thu, 2018-06-28 15:01

Failure to build energy-efficient homes and clean cars risks UK missing its carbon targets, says government’s climate adviser

The homebuilding and carmaking industries “should be ashamed” of their efforts to tackle global warming, according to the UK government’s official climate change adviser.

Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), said housebuilders were “cheating” buyers with energy-inefficient homes and that motor companies were holding back the rollout of clean cars.

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Senator Storer to chair select committee on electric vehicles

RenewEconomy - Thu, 2018-06-28 14:41
Australia is uniquely placed to take a leading role in this transformation, with all the natural and human resources needed to build EVs from scratch.
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Carnegie and Tag Pacific to merge EMC and MPower

RenewEconomy - Thu, 2018-06-28 14:37
Carnegie and Tag Pacific to merge EMC and MPower to create leading regional renewables, storage and microgrid specialist.
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GreatWall Power energy storage products to help bar-headed geese protection at the source of Yangtze River

RenewEconomy - Thu, 2018-06-28 14:37
The development of energy storage technology not only plays an important role in energy saving and emission reduction, but also do jobs in wildlife protection in remote areas.
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BYD begins work on “world’s biggest battery factory” in China

RenewEconomy - Thu, 2018-06-28 14:35
China's BYD starts work on 24GWh battery plant, to meet demand from "new boom" and its own production goal of 60GWh total capacity.
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JA Solar receives the top brand PV Seal from EuPD research in Australia

RenewEconomy - Thu, 2018-06-28 14:27
JA Solar today announced that it has been awarded the "Top Brand PV Seal 2018" from EuPD Research in Australia.
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Newcastle fast-charging station paving the way for state’s EV drivers: NRMA

RenewEconomy - Thu, 2018-06-28 12:48
The NRMA has today launched in Newcastle, one of approximately 40 fast- charging electric vehicle stations to be rolled out across NSW and the ACT.
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Why your rooftop solar is best argument against extending coal

RenewEconomy - Thu, 2018-06-28 12:48
As federal Coalition votes to support One Nation push for new coal generator, the best argument against it may be installing more rooftop solar. If parliamentary democracy can't deliver rational outcomes, then maybe energy democracy can.
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