Around The Web

Want to know why you've had weeks of sleepless nights? The BBC's Science editor looks at the cause of our numerous heatwaves.

A US Congressional subcommittee on Wednesday heard several experts testify on issues regarding the function and transparency of the biofuels credit market under the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which has experienced significant market and policy volatility this year.

How can a policy that is designed to do something that will happen anyway causes prices to be any lower than they would be anyway?

California state regulator ARB distributed 94,800 compliance-grade offsets this week to livestock projects, while Quebec's environment ministry awarded 23,100 credits in the agency's second issuance this month.

The Ontario government on Wednesday introduced a bill to formally repeal the province’s cap-and-trade programme, earmarking compensation equivalent to a tiny fraction of the nearly C$3 billion raised through allowance sales and effectively establishing compliance obligations for the scheme's emitters.

The 2016 heatwave that caused mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef didn't just kill corals - it also significantly changed the makeup of fish communities that call these reefs home. Rick Stuart-Smith, Research Fellow, University of Tasmania Christopher Brown, Research Fellow, Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University Daniela Ceccarelli, Adjunct Senior Research, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University Graham Edgar, Senior Marine Ecologist, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The seafood industry is a major contributor to modern slavery. Trevor J Ward, Adjunct professor, University of Technology Sydney Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Victoria Gill takes a looks at four key moments in the search for life on the red planet.

Researchers say failures allowed logging of 25% of old growth forest despite extinction threat

Habitat for the critically endangered swift parrot is being “knowingly destroyed” by logging because of government failures to manage the species’ survival, according to research.

Matthew Webb and Dejan Stojanovic, two of the Eureka prize finalists from the Australian National University’s difficult bird research group, say governments have stalled on management plans that would protect known feeding and nesting habitat in Tasmania.

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Samantha Harding says Coca-Cola’s rewards-based recycling initiative only fuels more consumption, and Jean Glasberg calls for more water fountains

As Coca-Cola launches yet another heavily branded rewards-based initiative around recycling (Recyclers get half-price tickets for attractions, 25 July), it’s interesting to note that the global behemoth apparently still wonders whether deposit systems for bottles and cans increase recycling. Not only was it on a government working group that found that they do, but it runs many deposit systems around the world that see recycling rates as high as 98.5%.

As reward systems only fuel higher levels of consumption, the question is why would a company promote a solution to waste that actually creates more waste? The answer, predictably, is that the system only benefits itself and other big businesses, rather than being better for taxpayers or the environment.

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Christopher Graffius of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation responds to a country diary about a Welsh game shoot

Your country diary (14 July) on the Llechweddygarth shoot in Powys is wrong. There are no grey partridge on the shoot. The game is not “tossed into the backs of Land Rovers” but hung properly in accordance with the Code of Good Shooting Practice on a purpose-built game cart. The game is not “sent for landfill” but respectfully processed and sold by a local small food business.

There is no shooting in the churchyard of Pennant Melangell; the nearest gun is two football fields from the church and birds are driven away from the shrine.

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Spain-based utility Iberdrola reported a 5% rise in its ETS-regulated thermal output over H1 2018 as gas-fired output ramped up, the company said in its Q2 results on Wednesday.

As a Senior Key Account Manager, you will have full responsibility of the complete sales cycle which includes preparing proposals in collaboration with our Carbon Portfolio and Consultancy teams, as well as managing and securing the timely delivery of our solutions.

Landmark decision means gene-edited plants and animals will be regulated under rules governing genetically modified organisms

Plants and animals created by innovative gene-editing technology have been genetically modified and should be regulated as such, the EU’s top court has ruled.

The landmark decision ends 10 years of debate in Europe about what is – and is not – a GM food, with a victory for environmentalists, and a bitter blow to Europe’s biotech industry.

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Researchers believe they have found the first existing body of liquid water on the Red Planet.

Wildfire is now an over-riding concern for many farmers, who are taking extra precautions to stop fires spreading as the hot spell continues

“It’s like a tinderbox out here,” says Lesley Chandler, looking down at parched fields where bleached-out grass struggles through baked, stone-hard earth. “Just a spark could set it all alight.”

Chandler farms 200 acres of arable land in Oxfordshire, where there has been virtually no rain for weeks. Pastures that would normally boast grass nearly a foot tall have instead a thin cover of dried-out vegetation.

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The European Court of Justice has ruled that altering living things using the relatively new technique of genome editing counts as genetic engineering.

EU carbon allowances jumped back towards their seven-year high early on Wednesday as the market comfortably absorbed an exceptionally large UK auction.

Facebook is still struggling to contain its fake news problem

Marc Morano is the real-world fossil fuel industry version of Nick Naylor. His career began working for Rush Limbaugh, followed by a job at Cybercast News Service where he launched the ‘Swift Boat’ attacks on 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. In 2006, Morano became the director of communications for Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who is perhaps best known for throwing a snowball on the Senate floor and calling human-caused global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Thus it’s unsurprising that in 2009, Morano began directing fossil fuel-funded think tanks designed to cast doubt on the reality of and dangers associated with human-caused global warming. As he admitted in Merchants of Doubt, Morano frequently embodies the strategy of climate denial known as ‘fake experts’:

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Australian Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg has told state premiers and ministers that the emissions target under the proposed National Energy Guarantee (NEG) could be open to review in 2024, a move that would allow a future Labor government to strengthen the scheme’s ambition.