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Fracking to begin in earnest in 2018 after tough year for industry
Firms leading UK push for shale gas say ‘we will see results next year’ after 12 months of opposition, protests and a ban in Scotland
British shale gas companies have said domestic fracking will finally begin in earnest in 2018, after another year passed without serious progress amid strong opposition.
Industry figures said next year would be crucial for the sector, as companies start the process of hydraulic fracturing to extract gas trapped underground in shale rock.
Continue reading...Electric and plug-in hybrid cars whiz passed 3m mark worldwide
Rapid growth is due to falling battery costs, government incentives and car makers competing to build new models
The number of fully electric and plug-in hybrid cars on the world’s roads has passed the 3m mark, as manufacturers ramp up their plans for mass production of battery-powered vehicles.
Industry watchers said the milestone was passed in November, with the growth rate indicating that electric car sales are now running at around 1m a year. The rapid growth is being driven by government incentives, manufacturers launching models for a wider mix of drivers and falling battery costs.
When butterflies aplenty hatched on the TV set | Brief letters
George Monbiot’s memory (Our selective blindness is lethal the living world, 20 December) is indeed bittersweet. As a boy I also recall summertime nettlebeds thickly hanging with the black caterpillars of peacocks and small tortoiseshells. We used to gather them and then watch them pupate and hatch on the top of our television set (a somewhat bulkier item in the late 1960s). I don’t recall seeing such butterfly fecundity for more than 40 years.
Mathew Frith
Director of conservation, London Wildlife Trust
• The light here in Kirkcudbright (Letters, 16 December) is also particularly treasured by artists (viz Hornel and the Glasgow Boys). Many of our beaches up here comprise millions of sea shell shards – scallop and cockle in particular – which make the coast glow on a beautiful sunny day.
Keith Langton
Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway
The Simple Life at Byron Writers' Festival
'Job done'
Eight amazing science stories of 2017
Country diary 1917: forest in the grip of a black frost
28 December 1917 In the sombre foliage of the forest firs we heard the short, high-pitched notes of the goldcrest, and saw two or three of the tiny birds hunting for insects
Iron-hard roads rang beneath our feet and cat-ice between the ruts scrunched and crackled; a black frost had the forest in its grip. Under the firs was a litter of stripped cones and scattered flakes; the squirrels, in spite of the frost, had been busy, and over and over again we disturbed them from their hunt amongst the fallen needles and sent them scurrying up the straight boles. It was in the sombre foliage of these forest firs that we heard the short, high-pitched notes of the goldcrest, and saw two or three of the tiny birds hunting for insects – hibernating insects too insignificant for larger birds to worry with.
Related: Walking in the winter woods: Country diary 100 years ago
Continue reading...The eco guide to the Christmas walk
Going out for a breather after the big meal is a tradition. But now you have to think about the quality of the air you’re taking in
The post-lunch Christmas walk is a family tradition in many households. What’s not to like? You get to walk off one of the biggest meals of the year. Young or old, most members of the family can manage a gentle stroll and you get some fresh air in your lungs.
But how fresh is that air? A new study by British researchers recently published in the Lancet highlights the fact that older members of the family need to be much more choosy about where they take their exercise.
Continue reading...Meet the free range reindeer that tour the UK
How Sea Shepherd lost battle against Japan’s whale hunters in Antarctic
A fleet of Japanese ships is currently hunting minke whales in the Southern Ocean. It is a politically incendiary practice: the waters around Antarctica were long ago declared a whale sanctuary, but the designation has not halted Japan’s whalers, who are continuing a tradition of catching whales “for scientific research” in the region.
In the past, conservation groups such as Sea Shepherd have mounted campaigns of harassment and successfully blocked Japan’s ships from killing whales. But not this year. Despite previous successes, Sea Shepherd says it can no longer frustrate Japan’s whalers because their boats now carry hardware supplied from military sources, making the fleet highly elusive and almost impossible to track. As a result the whalers are – for the first time – being given a free run to kill minke in the Southern Ocean.
Continue reading...Science Extra: The year in environmental science
Country diary: 'Demanding Ladies' blossom in a Victorian time warp
Hawkhurst, Kent One of Britain’s largest collections of Victorian glasshouses is being restored thanks to the fond memories of a wartime evacuee
Just outside Hawkhurst, in the Kentish Weald, there’s a walled garden so quintessentially Victorian that stepping inside feels like time-travelling. Rustic brickwork glows in the winter sun; in bright corners the skeletal arms of buddleia seem to beckon the ghosts of bees; and everywhere you look the light is reflected by shimmering glass.
There are 13 crumbling, deeply atmospheric glasshouses – the “Demanding Ladies” – most of them more than 140 years old. There’s a shaded fern house, a long, leaning peach case, a sunken glass corridor for melons and pineapples, a pelargonium house, a carnation house, a hot house with great vats that once steamed with heated water.
Continue reading...Bruce McCandless's pioneering spacewalk 'quite comfortable'
Tesco pledges to end edible food waste by March 2018
Supermarket announces plans to donate surplus stock to local charities, and urges other chains to follow suit
Tesco is to become the only UK retailer to no longer waste food fit for human consumption.
The company’s chief executive, Dave Lewis, has urged other supermarket chains to follow Tesco’s lead and adopt the changes that it will implement by March 2018.
Continue reading...Bruce McCandless, who made first untethered space flight, dies at 80
Mysterious lights over LA baffle onlookers
Hidden camera captures rare pig thought extinct
New lab-bred super corals could help avert global reef wipeout
Pioneering research on cross-species coral hybrids, inoculations with protective bacteria and even genetic engineering could provide a lifeline for the ‘rainforests of the oceans’
New super corals bred by scientists to resist global warming could be tested on the Great Barrier Reef within a year as part of a global research effort to accelerate evolution and save the “rainforests of the seas” from extinction.
Researchers are getting promising early results from cross-breeding different species of reef-building corals, rapidly developing new strains of the symbiotic algae that corals rely on and testing inoculations of protective bacteria. They are also mapping out the genomes of the algae to assess the potential for genetic engineering.
Continue reading...The nuclear boy scouts: radioactive obsessions and genius unleashed
'World's ugliest pig' caught on camera
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