Around The Web

Queensland premier says the LNP ‘intends to smear me and my partner’ over his work for PwC on Adani’s application for funding through Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility

The Queensland government will veto Adani’s application for a $1bn commonwealth loan to build a rail line for its massive Carmichael mine, Annastacia Palaszczuk has said.

Palaszczuk said the dramatic move, amid her campaign for re-election, came in response to what she believed was a federal Coalition plan to “smear” her and her partner, Shaun Drabsch, over his role in Adani’s loan application to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (Naif).

Continue reading...

An elevated level of climate change would lock in irreversible sea-level rises affecting hundreds of millions of people, Guardian data analysis shows

Hundreds of millions of urban dwellers around the world face their cities being inundated by rising seawaters if latest UN warnings that the world is on course for 3C of global warming come true, according to a Guardian data analysis.

Related: The three-degree world: the cities that will be drowned by global warming

Continue reading...

As sea levels rise, the county’s low-lying farm plains and coastline would flood, changing the entire shape of eastern England forever

Lincolnshire’s flat, low-lying agricultural plains, which stretch north from the fens, curling around the Wash to Skegness and Grimsby, have long been a frontline of mankind’s battle to claim and protect food-producing land from the sea.

But with sea levels rising, a managed retreat is underway that threatens to become a full-scale rout if global temperatures rise by 3C. The UN warns that they will unless governments take far more drastic action to reduce emissions.

Continue reading...

Average of 358 items per square kilometre found in 2016, of which more than three-quarters were plastic

There has been a dramatic rise in the amount of litter found on the seabed around Britain, according to new government data.

An average of 358 litter items were found per square kilometre of seabed in 2016, a 158% rise on the previous year, and 222% higher than the average for 1992-94.

Continue reading...

In the push to lower emissions and reduce energy prices, agricultural waste could be Australia's secret weapon. Bernadette McCabe, Associate Professor and Principal Scientist, University of Southern Queensland Craig Baillie, Director (National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture), University of Southern Queensland Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Ilkley, Wharfedale, West Yorkshire It is tempting to see the outward beauty and lethal potential of the river in the oversized eyes of a weathered stone relic

On this darkening evening, the sky above Wharfedale is wild and oceanic, and the river Wharfe is its turbulent likeness, swollen with rain and surging urgently eastwards. An excoriating wind, the kind that makes you grimace, whips brass, bronze, and copper foliage into the water for the current to swallow, hastening winter’s approach with every gust.

The sound and fury is suddenly muffled as I enter the centuries-brewed silence of Ilkley’s All Saints church. In the church’s collection of Anglo-Saxon crosses is an altar stone on which a figure is carved out of rough millstone grit. She wears a pleated robe and holds what appear to be two snakes in her hands. Her oversized eyes may have looked out on the world for almost two millennia.

Continue reading...

Australia is among nations calling for a 1 million square km marine park off East Antarctica. But Russia and China remain opposed, and a recent summit yet again failed to seal the deal. Cassandra Brooks, Assistant Professor Environmental Studies, University of Colorado Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Another round of UN climate negotiations kicks off in Bonn this month. With a Trump-shaped cloud hanging over the Paris Agreement, what approach can we expect Australia to adopt this time around? Marc Hudson, PhD Candidate, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Microgrid and wireless technologies will integrate renewable solar energy and reduce the use of fossil fuels to power World Heritage Site in South Africa.

The next event, if it occurs, may not be as damaging as the previous two, but could ruin the chances of coral recovery

The Great Barrier Reef could face more bleaching in the coming months, following unprecedented mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, which are believed to have killed half the coral.

Forecasts stretching to February are pushing the science to its limits, leaving significant uncertainty. But scientists say there is reason to be concerned, and some bleaching is very likely, although it won’t be anything like what happened during the past two years.

Continue reading...

Ausgrid offers big incentives for rooftop solar in Sydney, so it can save on network costs. It's a welcome change from the usual narrative about how rooftop solar is a burden to networks and consumers. Are battery storage and micro-grids next?

Australia is among the top seven countries worldwide responsible for 60% of the world’s biodiversity loss between 1996 and 2008, according to a study published last week in the journal Nature.

The University of Tasmania has been certified carbon as neutral against the National Carbon Offset Standard as part of its commitment to being a sectoral and community leader in sustainability.

Clean energy regulator takes action against solar company found to have installed rooftop PV systems without compliant Certificates of Electrical Safety.

Just days out from the start of the latest climate talks, PNG-based Oil Search has delivered a slap in the face to its Pacific neighbours.

Investors and activists have new ammunition to encourage public company disclosures on climate change risks and opportunities. They should use them.

Impact Investment Group secures $16.5m from specialist outfit Infradebt for 19MW merchant solar farm in northern Victoria.

There are fewer than 800 Tapanuli orangutan left in the wild.

Australia is among seven countries contributing to more than half of the world's biodiversity loss. Yet next month, a crucial network of long-term research sites will lose funding. Noel D Preece, Adjunct Principal Research Fellow at Charles Darwin and, James Cook University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Scientists have just identified a new great ape species - and it's already in danger.