Around The Web
The week in wildlife – in pictures
A new species of spider, frolicking hares and migratory sea turtles are among this week’s pick of images from our overheated natural world
Continue reading...Petrichor: why does rain smell so good?
EU Market: Dip-buying helps keep EUA prices above €17
Fewer children walk or cycle to school despite air pollution fears
The government’s latest National Travel Survey reveals that more parents are using cars for school run amid mounting evidence of health harms
The proportion of parents who drive their children to school rather than walk or cycle is on the rise despite growing concerns about the impact of air pollution on young people’s health.
New figures from the government’s National Travel Survey show that the percentage of primary school children who walk or cycle in England fell from 53% to 51% in 2017.
Continue reading...CN Markets: Pilot market data for week ending Jul. 27, 2018
Climate change made heatwave 'twice as likely'
Heatwave made more than twice as likely by climate change, scientists find
The fingerprints of global warming are clear, they say, after comparing northern Europe’s scorching summer with records and computer models
The heatwave searing northern Europe was made more than twice as likely by climate change, according to a rapid assessment by scientists.
The result is preliminary but they say the signal of climate change is “unambiguous”. Scientists have long predicted that global warming is ramping up the number and intensity of heatwaves, with events even worse than current one set to strike every other year by the 2040s.
Continue reading...Woodside, Terra Carbon among beneficiaries in latest Australian carbon offset issuance
Australia readies Safeguard Mechanism changes that will increase carbon emissions
Is Zinke trolling San Francisco with plan to dismantle city's reservoir?
US interior secretary’s meeting with group in favor of Yosemite valley restoration met with puzzlement from experts
US interior secretary Ryan Zinke has prompted puzzlement by meeting with a group that seeks to dismantle a dam providing San Francisco’s water, as experts wonder whether he is taking the fringe proposal seriously or trolling the city.
Zinke’s Sunday discussion with Restore Hetch Hetchy concerned the dam at Hetch Hetchy reservoir in California’s Yosemite national park. Removing it would restore the valley, which was once so beautiful that the environmentalist John Muir called it “one of nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples”, to its natural state - and force San Francisco to figure out where else to store 90% of its water supply.
Continue reading...Consultation on draft amendments to the Safeguard Mechanism
Consultation on draft amendments to the Safeguard Mechanism
London's Tory mayoral candidates are stuck in the past on cycling
When the free-market case for bike infrastructure is so clear, why won’t Conservative candidates embrace it?
Among his many claims to political prominence, both good and bad, Boris Johnson was notable as a Conservative who built a lot of bike lanes fairly quickly (at least in the end).
Similarly, much of New York City’s bike renaissance was launched by Michael Bloomberg, the three-term mayor who, as a billionaire media tycoon and Republican, had more in common with most Bond villains than your stereotypical wind-in-the-hair bike advocate.
Continue reading...Are you walking your dog enough?
Why AGL should be worried by the ESB/ACIL price predictions
“This is huge” – rule changes to boost solar PV and batteries
Tesla owners hijack UK ICE racing event, Elon Musk impressed
Country diary: a change in the ecological weather
High Fields, Stoney Middleton, Derbyshire: These exhausted hay meadows, now owned by the National Trust, are on the way to being restored
Climbing up from the top of Coombs Dale, I turn up a rough road known as Black Harry Lane. I don’t know the origins of the name; my hunch would be that it’s related to the region’s distant lead-mining past. There was an 18th-century highwayman called Black Harry, who was gibbeted nearby, but he was named after the packhorse road, not the other way round.
On a warm summer’s evening, there is nothing malevolent about the place. The verges are thick with flowers: meadow crane’s-bill, a flower that when I notice it reminds me I’m home, its commonplace purple threaded with the subtler, paler scabious. The track itself has needed heavy repairs in recent years, thanks to off-road enthusiasts, whose local reputation, like that of highwaymen, is mixed.
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