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Many ostensibly rural creatures are thriving in our towns and cities, while adapting to survive

Last week, researchers revealed that bumblebees fare better in urban rather than agricultural environments. City colonies produced more males and reached a larger size, had more food stores and survived longer. They concluded that urban environments provide longer-lived, more varied flowers than intensively farmed agricultural areas.

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What goes in the blue bin, what goes in the yellow bin, and what do you do with pizza boxes?

Recycling should be straightforward: paper goes in the blue bin; plastics, glass and metal in the yellow bin; dead plants in the green bin and everything else in the red bin – right?

Except it’s not always quite that easy. What do you do with mixed packaging? How do you deal with neighbours doing the wrong thing? And what to do with pizza boxes?

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US communities near pellet mills complain of fumes while experts say burning wood is a ‘disaster’ for climate change

It is touted as a smart way for Europe to reach its renewable energy goals. But try telling Lisa Sanchez thousands of miles away in America that burning wood chips is a form of clean energy.

The bucolic charm of her rural home in the Piney Woods forest region of east Texas is undercut by the big German Pellets manufacturing plant just beyond the bottom of her garden. The German-owned plant is capable of producing 578,000 tons of wood pellets a year, which are destined to cross the Atlantic to satisfy a vibrant market for the product there.

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The last time a great white shark was spotted near Spain's Balearic Islands was in 1976.

Castlemartin, Pembroke: I thought about the brutal annihilation of its larger cousin the great auk. But I was worrying needlessly

Ten feet below the top of Mowing Word is a hollowed-out bedding-plane that stretches the whole length of this magnificent limestone cliff. Decades of nesting auks have whitewashed the rock, making their breeding site obvious even from a distance. Though it’s one of the best locations for sea-cliff ascents in Britain, voluntary bans negotiated years ago between naturalists and climbers have generally been scrupulously observed during the razorbill and guillemot breeding seasons. The critical period is during incubation, which generally takes place in June, is short, and concludes with the fledgling guillemot, accompanied by its father, flailing off the ledge to bounce and belly-flop its way to the water below.

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Do individual birds have consistent, unique personalities? Zoologist Dr Michelle Hall is trying to find out. This program has been selected from the Off Track archives for you listening pleasure.

It's often said that butterflies are dying out in the UK, but do the statistics back this up?

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

The Colombian Senate approved a climate bill this week that provides for the creation of an emissions trading scheme, but the country’s recent presidential election has cast uncertainty on when the carbon market would launch.

Keen gardeners and home cooks meet for a neighbourhood food swap; pizza's on the menu at a Victorian cheese factory; girl guides make shopping bags; and a rescue dog sniffs out truffles

EU carbon prices ended just below the €15 level they have been straddling all week, posting a 0.9% weekly decline but staying just within positive territory for June.

Fears are mounting that ICAO’s international aviation offsetting mechanism could collapse well before its 2021 start as China backtracks and other nations resist, while the scheme’s rules get severely weakened or delayed by infighting.

The former chief executive of a Canadian conservative media company and provincial gaming corporation was sworn in as Ontario’s new environment minister on Friday, making him a lead actor in efforts to scrap the province's cap-and-trade and reject the federal government’s ‘backstop’ carbon price.

Five-metre shark seen in area’s first confirmed sighting since fisherman caught one in 1976

A great white shark has been spotted near Spain’s Balearic Islands for the first time in at least 30 years.

Conservation workers saw the five-metre predator as it swam across Cabrera archipelago national park on Thursday morning.

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Iceland will probably need to buy carbon credits to ensure it meets its 2020 obligations under the UN Kyoto Protocol, according to the country’s environment minister.

We need an energy storage infrastructure, says Jim Waterton, the Swansea lagoon decision should be reviewed, argues Robert Hinton, while Dr Tim Lunel wants solar subsidies restored

Intermittency – in one word, the main problem facing many (not all) forms of renewable energy; in the UK, principally wind and solar, and now tidal (Hinkley Point C got the go-ahead despite its cost. So why not Swansea Bay? 27 June). So far, electricity from these renewable sources has been in modest amounts, and intermittency has been dealt with (I simplify, but only slightly) by backing-off gas-fired combined cycle (CCGT) plant which, together with nuclear, forms the backbone of the UK electricity generating system. When the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, CCGT plant is there to take the strain.

But this simple strategy fails if wind, solar, and now tidal presume to take over this backbone role. Smart metering (affecting consumers’ usage patterns) and international power exchanges can help, but the main action has to come from energy storage and regeneration plant, involving a new infrastructure to supplement hugely the existing pumped storage capability. This is bound to have serious cost implications, and until this is openly acknowledged, direct comparison of projected MWh costs from any intermittent renewable source with corresponding MWh costs from non-intermittent new nuclear generation is fundamentally invalid, and likely to be badly misleading.
Jim Waterton
Glasgow

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It’s time for the Treasury to allocate significant funding so the nation can reap the huge benefits of more people cycling

The government has announced £1m of funding to help police forces across the UK crack down on close passing of cyclists by drivers, and to improve driving instructor training around cycling safety.

Although the sum is small beer indeed in transport terms, split between two projects, poor driver behaviour is a key reason people are discouraged from cycling in the UK. If we can start to tackle the culture of poor driving, including at source with driving instructors, we could eliminate a major reason more people don’t cycle – but it needs more money.

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Below is a table of the closing prices, ranges and volumes for China's regional pilot carbon markets this week. All prices are in RMB, and volumes in tonnes of CO2e. Data sourced from local exchanges.

Shanghai has pushed back its compliance deadline to July 31, giving the local ETS participants one more month to fulfill their commitments, the local government said on Friday.

Flying pink flamingos, Hebridean red deer and a Sumatran tiger are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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