Around The Web

The Long Read: Most Australians' power bills have been rising for a decade. There are many reasons why, but the common thread is a lack of government willingness to get to grips with crucial policy problems. David Blowers, Energy Fellow, Grattan Institute Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

People across Britain reported seeing a large greenish light streak across the sky on Sunday evening.

Somebody cut the cake – new documents reveal that American oil writ large was warned of global warming at its 100th birthday party.

It was a typical November day in New York City. The year: 1959. Robert Dunlop, 50 years old and photographed later as clean-shaven, hair carefully parted, his earnest face donning horn-rimmed glasses, passed under the Ionian columns of Columbia University’s iconic Low Library. He was a guest of honor for a grand occasion: the centennial of the American oil industry.

Over 300 government officials, economists, historians, scientists, and industry executives were present for the Energy and Man symposium – organized by the American Petroleum Institute and the Columbia Graduate School of Business – and Dunlop was to address the entire congregation on the “prime mover” of the last century – energy – and its major source: oil. As President of the Sun Oil Company, he new the business well, and as a director of the American Petroleum Institute – the industry’s largest and oldest trade association in the land of Uncle Sam – he was responsible for representing the interests of all those many oilmen gathered around him.

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Toxic NO2 pollution affects most of urban areas of the UK, but London is worst hit. View live data from the capital to see which site is the first to break legal limits in 2018

In January 2017, Brixton Road in south London broke its annual legal limit for toxic nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in less than a fortnight, according to the final calibrated data. In 2016, Putney High Street was the first, in less than seven days.

The rapid breaching of the limits is a dramatic illustration of the illegal air pollution affecting most urban areas in the UK, which will see the government being sued in the high court for a third time early in 2018. High NO2 levels are estimated to cause about 23,500 early deaths a year.

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Turning turds into power is not new but most of this energy still goes to waste. A host of innovative projects aim to maximise poo’s full potential

A long winding road climbs into a gathering dusk, coming to an abrupt dead end in front of a house. Here, a solitary flickering flame casts out a warm glow, illuminating the nearby ridge line of the Malvern Hills.

Below the light sits a mysterious green contraption resembling a cross between a giant washing machine and a weather station. This is the UK’s first dog poo-powered street lamp, and it is generating light in more ways than one.

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UK does not have capacity to deal with extra plastic waste after a Chinese import ban, says industry group.

Battery powered vehicles are not as green as they are promoted due to the environmental economic, and geopolitical consequences from mining for minerals to their eventual disposal.

Black Banks Plantation, Weardale, County Durham Maintenance of insulating plumage is vital for a bird whose survival depends on feeding underwater

It was a morning of brittle beauty, the best kind of winter day. Last night’s magical transformation remained intact; rusty-brown bracken fronds fringed with frost crystals and ice-encrusted leaves that crunched underfoot. No hint of a thaw yet; the low elevation of the sun had left this side of the riverbank in deep shadow. The cold air stung our cheeks.

In still pools beside the river, the 6mm-thick ice must have frozen gradually overnight, from the edges inwards as the water level dropped, creating concentric oval patterns with elegant art nouveau flourishes around their margins. In a few places, ice sheets remained suspended between the trunks of alders, creaking and groaning when the wind disturbed their branches.

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Transport overtook power generation for climate-warming emissions in 2017 but the Trump administration is reversing curbs on auto industry pollution

Some of the most common avatars of climate change – hulking power stations and billowing smokestacks – may need a slight update. For the first time in more than 40 years, the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the US isn’t electricity production but transport – cars, trucks, planes, trains and shipping.

Related: Fightback begins over Trump's 'illegal and irresponsible' clean power repeal

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The BBC's global science correspondent, Rebecca Morelle, reveals what to watch out for in the new year.

BBC News looks ahead to some of the biggest science and environment stories coming up in 2018.

Alanna Mitchell's stage adaptation of her best-selling novel about the health of the world's oceans - Sea Sick.

Globally it's thought that shark populations and diversity are in decline, as scientists start the first systematic survey of sharks and rays in the Indo-Pacific.

A look back at the best science stories of 2017.

Paul Keating's government, faced with the prospect of international action on climate change, took steps to preserve the coal industry - a tactic that has been rebooted many times since. Marc Hudson, PhD Candidate, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Researchers in London have developed scanning techniques that show what is written on the papyrus that mummy cases are made from.

1 January 1918 It was from a food-hunting flock of tits, vigorously working from tree to tree, that a great tit detached itself with harsh cries of alarm

The birds are not sentimental; the death of the old year, the passing of time, does not worry them. They know that winter is a strenuous season, for food is hard to find and every beakful means a search; perhaps they feel at times that the days are lengthening and are stirred by the promise of better times, but beyond that the close of one year and the opening of the next have no meaning. It was from a food-hunting flock of tits, vigorously working from tree to tree, that a great tit detached itself with harsh cries of alarm. It came down from the upper twigs, dropping from bough to bough, until, still scolding, it was just above my head, and there, jerking its body from side to side, it made emphatic remarks in tit language. Mr. Hudson, in Birds and Man, tells how some Surrey goldcrests mobbed him because, he believed they mistook his tweed cap for a coiled-up cat. If this tit made a similar mistake it was surely short-sighted; I am rather inclined to the view that it had, even so early, felt the first vernal instincts that move the birds to seek mates and hunt for suitable nesting sites, and which later cause them to look upon intruders in the woods as possible enemies.

Related: Goldcrest combs the gorse for slim pickings

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Now that China and Hong Kong won’t take our rubbish, it’s time to get real

Right now you may well be surveying the wreckage of Christmas, all that old wrapping paper. Whereas in previous years I’ve skipped through the issue of post-Christmas waste in an upbeat “how to” guide, this year’s advice might be summed up as “Brace, brace”.

Let me explain. Back in July the Chinese government announced a clampdown on so-called “foreign garbage”. To get slightly more technical, that means bringing in very tight contamination limits on 24 categories of scrap, especially waste paper and plastic. This concerns us, because since 2012 the UK has shipped more than 2.7 million tonnes of plastic scrap to mainland China and Hong Kong. Put simply there is no other market to replace it right now.

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The second part of our selection of the best science and environment reads this year.

Using biomass instead of fossil fuels may not be the answer to averting global warming

Policies aimed at limiting climate change by boosting the burning of biomass contain critical flaws that could actually damage attempts to avert dangerous levels of global warming in the future. That is the stark view of one of Britain’s chief climate experts, Professor John Beddington, who has warned that relying on the cutting down and burning of trees as a replacement for the use of fossil fuels could rebound dangerously.

Beddington, a former UK government chief scientific adviser, said there was now a real risk that increasing wood-burning in order to help European countries, including Britain, reach renewable energy targets could turn out to be misguided. “These policies may even lead to a situation whereby global emissions [of carbon dioxide] accelerate,” he states in a blog on Carbon Brief, the UK-based website that covers climate and energy issues. He says wind and solar projects should dominate programmes to boost renewable energy generation in Europe.

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