Around The Web

If you missed the annual Geminid meteor shower, cameras captured the celestial display over China.

Concerns over air pollution, food security and the loss of forests are driving the Chinese response to climate change, according to Charles Bedford from The Nature Conservancy.

Every December Australia's air travel peaks, as we travel to family and friends (or flee on holiday). Many buy carbon offsets for these flights – but what do they actually do to our carbon emissions? Susanne Becken, Professor of Sustainable Tourism and Director, Griffith Institute for Tourism, Griffith University Brendan Mackey, Director of the Griffith Climate Change Response Program, Griffith University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Neonicotinoids have increasingly been linked to problems in bee populations.

Nasa finds a distant star circled by eight planets, equal to the complement in our own Solar System.

Out of 3,500 entries from across the world, this year’s funny winners include a laughing dormouse, a shocked seal, and bears caught in the act

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Geologists made the discovery while exploring volcanic rocks near Broadford.

Office for Nuclear Regulation approves design for new reactor at Horizon Nuclear Power’s plant at Wylfa, Anglesey

Plans for a major new nuclear power station in Wales have taken a crucial step forward as UK regulators approved the project.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation gave the green light on Thursday for the Japanese reactor design for Horizon Nuclear Power’s plant at Wylfa, marking the end of a five-year regulatory process.

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A flaw in Europe’s clean energy plan allows fuel from felled trees to qualify as renewable energy when in fact this would accelerate climate change and devastate forests

The European Union is moving to enact a directive to double Europe’s current renewable energy by 2030. This is admirable, but a critical flaw in the present version would accelerate climate change, allowing countries, power plants and factories to claim that cutting down trees and burning them for energy fully qualifies as renewable energy.

Even a small part of Europe’s energy requires a large quantity of trees and to avoid profound harm to the climate and forests worldwide the European council and parliament must fix this flaw.

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But it’s political corruption, not public opinion that’s blocking American climate policy

There’s a debate between social scientists about whether climate change facts can change peoples’ minds or just polarize them further. For example, conservatives who are more scientifically literate are less worried about global warming. In essence, education arms them with the tools to more easily reject evidence and information that conflicts with their ideological beliefs. This has been called the “smart idiot” effect and it isn’t limited to climate change; it’s also something we’re seeing with the Republican tax plan.

However, other research has shown that conservatives with higher climate-specific knowledge are more likely to accept climate change – a result that holds in many different countries. For example, when people understand how the greenhouse effect works, across the political spectrum they’re more likely to accept human-caused global warming.

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This year the Caribbean experienced its most destructive hurricane season in decades. While large countries dominated the headlines, the small island nation of Dominica suffered the worst devastation it has ever seen. Josh Toussaint-Strauss visits his family in the country and asks, with next year forecast to be worse, how Dominicans see their future

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A new book commissioned by David Attenborough’s charity, The World Land Trust, documents life on the small and important elephant corridor which allows the animals to cross safely between ranges in Kerala, India

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RN Drive rounds up the year in science.

After casting doubt on climate change for decades, skeptic consultants have turned their attention to air pollution

On sunny days, when his classmates run out to play, Gabriel Rosales heads to the school nurse for a dose of Albuterol.

The fine mist opens his airways, relaxing the muscles in his chest. Without it, recess could leave the nine-year-old gasping for breath. He gets a second dose at the end of the day before heading home from St John Bosco Elementary School, in San Antonio, Texas.

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In the 1700s the average-sized wine glass could hold just 66ml of the tipple. Today it’s not unusual to be handed a glass that holds almost half a litre

Our Georgian and Victorian ancestors may have enjoyed a Christmas tipple but – judging by the size of the glasses they used – they probably drank less wine than we do today.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that the capacity of wine glasses has ballooned nearly seven-fold over the past 300 years, rising most sharply in the last two decades in line with a surge in wine consumption.

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Scientists have identified 2 million species of living things. No one knows how many more are out there, and tens of thousands may be vanishing before we have even had a chance to encounter them. By Jacob Mikanowski

The Earth is ridiculously, burstingly full of life. Four billion years after the appearance of the first microbes, 400m years after the emergence of the first life on land, 200,000 years after humans arrived on this planet, 5,000 years (give or take) after God bid Noah to gather to himself two of every creeping thing, and 200 years after we started to systematically categorise all the world’s living things, still, new species are being discovered by the hundreds and thousands.

In the world of the systematic taxonomists – those scientists charged with documenting this ever-growing onrush of biological profligacy – the first week of November 2017 looked like any other. Which is to say, it was extraordinary. It began with 95 new types of beetle from Madagascar. But this was only the beginning. As the week progressed, it brought forth seven new varieties of micromoth from across South America, 10 minuscule spiders from Ecuador, and seven South African recluse spiders, all of them poisonous. A cave-loving crustacean from Brazil. Seven types of subterranean earwig. Four Chinese cockroaches. A nocturnal jellyfish from Japan. A blue-eyed damselfly from Cambodia. Thirteen bristle worms from the bottom of the ocean – some bulbous, some hairy, all hideous. Eight North American mites pulled from the feathers of Georgia roadkill. Three black corals from Bermuda. One Andean frog, whose bright orange eyes reminded its discoverers of the Incan sun god Inti.

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Sandy, Bedfordshire Up in the crown of the tree, a mistle thrush gave a rattling call, as if exerting its planter’s rights

Under the unkind umbrella of a spreading oak, a stunted horse chestnut tree had received a white feather. Dropped from a dove, it had landed on a big brown bud as sticky as a toffee apple. The winter elements had then set to work, soaking and battering the kiss-curl of down into limpness, laying it out in the bud’s protective goo and soiling it with dust, seeds and shards of leaves. But still the feather refused to dim its light.

This tree had caught not one falling star but two. I spotted another white feather at waist height, glued fast to another terminal bud. The chances of one feather snagging must have been small. The chances of two…

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Regulator finally approves demand management incentive scheme, encouraging networks to invest in battery storage and micro-grids, rather than poles and wires. Had it come a decade earlier, it might have negated the climate and energy wars.

The results of the federal government’s latest Emissions Reduction Fund auction have been released, revealing the purchase of nearly 8 million tonnes of carbon abatement for $104 million.

The last decade saw climate space occupied by activists, scientists, denialists and fossil fuel companies, but investors looking to de-risk portfolios will set stage for a very different 2018 and beyond.