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Messing about on the river and waltzing back to Winton
Hong Kong's fish are eating plastic - and people could be too
China and India’s border dispute is a slow-moving environmental disaster
Australian firms told to catch up on climate change risk checks
New report says Australian companies lag behind international organisations
Australian companies are not doing enough work to model the risks of climate change and how it will affect their profitability, a new report by a thinktank says.
Progressive thinktank the Centre for Policy Development says that while most companies have committed to considering what climate change and the Paris climate agreement means for their business strategy, too few have begun using scenario analysis techniques to model what its impacts could be and how to respond to it.
Continue reading...'Not safe, not wanted': is the end of NT fracking ban a taste of things to come?
The NT government has lifted its fracking moratorium despite fierce opposition, reflecting the war of attrition being waged by gas companies
When the Northern Territory government announced a moratorium on fracking in 2016, it was a victory for those fighting the expansion of the unconventional gas industry.
That elation was replaced with shock and disappointment in April, when the chief minister, Michael Gunner, said the practice could resume following a 15-month scientific inquiry.
Continue reading...An unconventional gas boom: the rise of CSG in Australia
In two decades coal seam gas has come to account for 30% of gas production. Here’s how the picture varies state to state
Australia’s production of coal seam gas has risen exponentially since 1995, going from zero to 30% of the country’s overall gas production in 2015-16.
Continue reading...Surfers Against Sewage ride the wave of the 'Harry and Meghan effect'
In nearly 30 years, a bunch of surfers concerned about pollution have become a serious marine conservation force. An unexpected royal patronage has given them more funding and greater reach than ever to fight plastic pollution
Despite its eye-catching name, Surfers Against Sewage probably owes its existence to plastic. “The advent of panty-liners meant you could really see sewage slicks. Condoms, panty-liners and other plastic refuse made for a visceral, and visual, reminder of pollution,” Chris Hines, surfer and co-founder of this small charity in Cornwall, recalled in Alex Wade’s book, Surf Nation.
Sick of ear, throat and gastric infections, he and others called a meeting in St Agnes village hall. A who’s who of the most committed, passionate surfers in Cornwall – and just about the whole village – turned out. It was 1990 and Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) was born.
Continue reading...High risk of food shortages without pesticides, says chemical giant
Head of Syngenta, world’s biggest pesticide maker, says rejecting farming tech could have serious consequences within 20 years
The world is likely to face food shortages within 20 years if pesticides and genetically modified crops are shunned, according to the head of the world’s biggest pesticide manufacturer.
J Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Syngenta, also said the technologies to produce more food from less land are vital in halting climate change, but that better targeting will mean farmers around the world will use less pesticide in future.
Continue reading...Where have all our insects gone?
When Simon Leather was a student in the 1970s, he took a summer job as a postman and delivered mail to the villages of Kirk Hammerton and Green Hammerton in North Yorkshire. He recalls his early morning walks through its lanes, past the porches of houses on his round. At virtually every home, he saw the same picture: windows plastered with tiger moths that had been attracted by lights the previous night and were still clinging to the glass. “It was quite a sight,” says Leather, who is now a professor of entomology at Harper Adams University in Shropshire.
But it is not a vision that he has experienced in recent years. Those tiger moths have almost disappeared. “You hardly see any, although there used to be thousands in summer and that was just a couple of villages.”
Continue reading...The secret rainforest hidden at the heart of an African volcano - in pictures
A ‘dream team’ of international scientists scaled Mozambique’s Mount Lico and found a wealth of new species.
Continue reading...Feral science or solution? Unleashing gene drives
Faecal transplants ‘could save endangered koala’
Team of researchers changes microbes in koalas’ guts in order to improve type of food they consume
Scientists believe they have found a new weapon in the battle to save endangered species: faecal transplants. They say that by transferring faeces from the gut of one animal to another they could boost the health and viability of endangered creatures. In particular, they believe the prospects of saving the koala could be boosted this way.
The idea of using faecal transplants as conservation weapons was highlighted this month at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in Atlanta, where scientists outlined experiments in which they used the technique to change microbes in the guts of koalas.
Continue reading...California, Quebec entities blocked from trading with Ontario following WCI exit announcement
Horsefly season: How to avoid being bitten
UK cycling is worth more than the steel industry – where's the strategy?
A new report argues we’d all benefit if the government started taking the cycle industry seriously
If a country wants to make things, it needs a domestic steel industry. Our government considers this industry to be one of national strategic importance. But you would think it was also important to keep people moving, to make sure the air they breathe is clean and to look after their health.
It just so happens that cycling is one of the ways to unsnarl traffic congestion, reduce pollution and make folks hale and hearty. People who cycle to work even have fewer days off sick.
Continue reading...Country diary: a tragedy for the exotic hooligans occupying our loft
Stamford, Lincolnshire: A dead starling chick appears on the ground outside, almost fledged. I’m upset to see it
Scratchings rattle above an upstairs lintel in early April and I think little of it. That nest that’s been occupied for four consecutive years is being renovated, that’s all. The shadows of birds firing from gable to gable over the street, air alive with busy chatter. “But the nest has gone,” my wife says. “Those builders, last year.”
I stand over the street and watch with binoculars. A sharp-edged bird swoops in, then disappears beneath my roofline through what I see now is a hole. Starlings. Brash, boisterous, bully-birds – and colonising our loft.
I keep watch. I see them coming and going. Sometimes they watch me watching them, from an aerial perch, silhouetted against the sky with a wariness I can feel.
The starling is a striking bird. With a sharp yellow bullet for a beak and plumage of dark iridescence, they are exotic-looking, and shimmer in petrol-peacock blues and greens and purples when caught in light. Yet we see them as hooligans. Even the Latin name of the European starling, Sturnus vulgaris, suggests so. Starlings absorb the sounds of their surroundings into their song – car alarms, speech, infant cries. And now, moving in. The human-bird.
I hear them dig in their roost, then nothing for a while, then suddenly the thin mewling of chicks, at the same time loud and delicate in a way that makes you fearfully parental. The days pass and the cries strengthen; I hear scuttlings, then nothing. A dead chick appears on the ground outside, almost fledged, already oiled with that mercury look. I’m upset to see it.
Seasteading: could artificial floating cities be a lifeline for low-lying Pacific nations?
CP Daily: Friday June 15, 2018
Massachusetts Senate passes extensive carbon pricing, clean energy bill
A Big Country 16 June 2018
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