Around The Web

Australian and Chinese banks have turned it down, and analysts say Adani’s failure to secure funding for the Carmichael mine leaves it high and dry

Adani’s operations in Australia appear to be hanging on by a thread, as activists prove effective at undermining the company’s chances of getting the finance it needs.

China seems to have ruled out funding for the mine, which means it’s not just Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine that is under threat, but also its existing Abbot Point coal terminal, which sits near Bowen, behind the Great Barrier Reef.

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One of the oldest and most complete skeletons of our ancestors is unveiled in South Africa.

The end of the era of throwaway plastic has been signalled by UN environment ministers meeting in Kenya.

A small group of civilian para-enforcers is taking the protection of Palawan’s threatened rainforest from illegal loggers into their own hands

Tata gives hand signals for his men to drop to the rainforest floor as the searing whine of a chainsaw fades, their mission to save a critically endangered piece of paradise in the Philippines suddenly on hold.

Former paramilitary leader Efren “Tata” Balladares has been leading the other flip flop-wearing environmental crusaders up and down the steep mountains of Palawan island for the past 15 hours in the hunt for illegal loggers.

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Wildlife photographer Ian Wood has been capturing great apes in the wild for decades, but when a young orangutan discovered his hidden camera on a recent Borneo trip he got some truly unexpected results

One of the challenges of wildlife photography is trying to come up with ways to take images that haven’t been shot before. Through my conservation work with orangutans I’ve had numerous opportunities to photograph these great apes over the last couple of decades, but on a recent annual fundraising trip to Tanjung Puting national park in Borneo I got some unexpected, close-up results.

I had decided to hide a GoPro camera near to where orangutans often appear, hoping to get some close-up wide-angle images of them in the forest. I figured that in the worse case, if an orangutan found my camera it would realise it wasn’t food and discard it.

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All of nature’s thermometers indicate a rapid rise in global temperatures.

The US Global Change Research Program recently released a Climate Science Special Report. It is clearly written – an authoritative summary of the science, and easy to understand.

The first main chapter deals with changes to the climate and focuses much attention on global temperatures. When most people think of climate change, they think of the global temperature – specifically the temperature of the air a few meters above the Earth surface. There are other (better) ways to measure climate change such as heat absorbed by the oceans, melting ice, sea level rise, or others. But the iconic measurement most people think of are these air temperatures, shown in the top frame of the figure below.

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Ruling by advertising watchdog could have knock on effect on other electric car advertising

The car company BMW has been censured by the UK’s advertising watchdog for claiming an electric car equipped with a small petrol engine was “clean” and “zero emissions”, in a ruling that could have a knock-on effect on other electric car advertising.

The advertising was published in the form of a Facebook post that used testimonials from real customers to extol the virtues of the BMW i3. That model is unusual among electric vehicles, as in addition to the electric drive, it also has a small petrol engine. However, unlike “hybrid” cars, which have a petrol-driven engine that can take over from the electric system when it runs out of charge, on longer journeys or at higher speeds, the i3’s petrol engine is only used to maintain the charge on the electric drive.

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New technology allows us to map the movements of animals in stunning detail and show how urban areas are affecting them. Cities present opportunities to some but are a threat to many others. These seven maps – extracted from Where the Animals Go by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti – offer a glimpse into the lives of animals trying to make their way in our increasingly urbanised world

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Wenlock Edge, Shropshire This shrub and its toxic fruit have a minor but magical part in ancient woodland

Shocking pink in a winter hedge, as if blown from some forever summer place, it is a colour out of season. And yet the spindle berries are perfectly at home in wood margins and hedges on the limestone of Wenlock Edge. It seems the spindle tree – which can grow six metres (20ft) tall but is usually a shrub – has a minor but magical part in ancient woodland and here associates with ash, field maple and dogwood. It has waxy, serrated-edge leaves, greeny-white four-petalled flowers and these extraordinary lipstick berries, each a four- or five-valved pod holding orange fruits that ripen in November-December.

Spindle is a square peg in a round hole, or vice-versa: its green stems begin round, develop a corky bark to become four-cornered, then turn rounder with age. It is named after the stick used to spin and wind thread from wool. In the psycho-mytho-panto of Sleeping Beauty, the goddess is deceived, pricks her finger on the spindle of human ambition, and sleeps until she is woken up by the god of rebirth. It is a winter story.

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Price jump in the VEEC market across the last 5 months has been massive, with speculation and then confirmation scheme administrator will reduce the attractiveness of some commercial lighting products.

Australian solar plant innovators 5B have announced plans to set up a production facility in Adelaide, and potentially a "gigawatt" production line in Asia.

Burning coal to generate electricity in era of solar at 1c/kWh makes as about as much economic sense as “burning dollar notes”, says leading researcher Martin Green.

AER report absolves big generators of predatory bidding during demand peaks, but they hardly need to: The cost of "baseload" coal supply in NSW has jumped so high that there is no such thing as "cheap" coal generation.

The new foreign donations laws announced this week will potentially stifle the work of foreign funded charities and environment groups working in Australia. Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Held at UTS, the hackathon brought together some of the best and brightest from the fields of sustainability, design and technology, the corporate and academic world, and the start-up community.

WOMADelaide today announced the full program of speakers and presenters for The Planet Talks, its renowned series of political, social and planetary discussions hosted as part of the festival from March 10 – 12.

Occupying 67,000 square feet over six rooftops in multiple orientations, the landmark installation overcomes shading challenges to power a large, fast-moving consumer goods company.

Groundbreaking study reinforces urgent need to reduce emissions, and advises over-60s to avoid polluted air by walking in parks and green spaces

The over-60s should stick to green spaces and parks when they go for a walk and avoid the city streets, according to a groundbreaking study that says air pollution from traffic fumes largely wipes out the health benefit from the exercise.

Walking is often recommended for older people, but the study from Imperial College London and Duke University in the USA suggests that the over-60s and those with lung and heart problems should steer clear of urban areas with heavy traffic. The negative effect may well be the same in younger people, say the authors, and it reinforces the urgency of reducing emissions in city streets.

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New UK research links toxic air to low birth weight that can cause lifelong damage to health, raising fears that millions of babies worldwide are being harmed

Air pollution significantly increases the risk of low birth weight in babies, leading to lifelong damage to health, according to a large new study.

The research was conducted in London, UK, but its implications for many millions of women in cities around the world with far worse air pollution are “something approaching a public health catastrophe”, the doctors involved said.

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We cannot see the tiny deadly particles that are killing people – but new digital advances are about to change that, which may spark action

In the days of London smogs it was possible to both see pollution and smell it. Now the deadliest particles are so small that it is hard for human senses to detect them, yet they are killing people just the same.

Health professionals and environmental groups may complain, but the general public seems oblivious to the danger that is damaging the health of children and adults alike in many towns and cities across the country. Perhaps it is our inability to see the cocktail of chemicals and particulates we are breathing in that has allowed successive governments to get away with doing so little about it for so long.

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