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Macron awards US scientists grants to move to France in defiance of Trump
France’s president awards millions of euros to 18 American scientists to relocate in effort to counter Donald Trump on the climate change front
Eighteen climate scientists from the US and elsewhere have hit the jackpot as France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, awarded them millions of euros in grants to relocate to France for the rest of Donald Trump’s presidential term.
The “Make Our Planet Great Again” grants – a nod to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan – are part of Macron’s efforts to counter Trump on the climate change front. Macron announced a contest for the projects in June, hours after Trump declared he would withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord.
Continue reading...Unique rivers deserve protection, say graziers and water experts
Tasmanian tigers were going extinct before we pushed them over the edge
Pacific 'baby island' is natural lab to study Mars
US flood risk 'severely underestimated'
Global warming will weaken wind power, study predicts
Wind farms are key to tackling climate change but warming will significantly cut wind power across US and UK, though Australia will see winds strengthen
Wind farms are key to tackling climate change but warming will significantly cut the power of the wind across northern mid-latitudes, including the US, the UK and the Mediterranean, according to new research. However, some places, including eastern Australia, will see winds pick up.
The research is the first global study to project the impact of temperature rises on wind energy and found big changes by the end of the century in many of the places hosting large numbers of turbines.
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Irish DNA map reveals history's imprint
Huntington’s breakthrough may stop disease
‘Tsunami of data’ could consume one fifth of global electricity by 2025
Billions of internet-connected devices could produce 3.5% of global emissions within 10 years and 14% by 2040, according to new research, reports Climate Home News
The communications industry could use 20% of all the world’s electricity by 2025, hampering attempts to meet climate change targets and straining grids as demand by power-hungry server farms storing digital data from billions of smartphones, tablets and internet-connected devices grows exponentially.
The industry has long argued that it can considerably reduce carbon emissions by increasing efficiency and reducing waste, but academics are challenging industry assumptions. A new paper, due to be published by US researchers later this month, will forecast that information and communications technology could create up to 3.5% of global emissions by 2020 – surpassing aviation and shipping – and up to 14% 2040, around the same proportion as the US today.
Continue reading...No more green rhetoric. A sustainable future is vital and possible
Climate change is at the heart of Labour’s industrial strategy, which means investing in green tech and renewable energy, and divesting from fossil fuels
The climate crisis is the most significant issue facing humanity. Natural disasters are already displacing entire communities. More intense droughts are leading to unprecedented levels of food insecurity and hunger across the globe. This summer saw hurricanes, floods and fires affect hundreds of millions of people from India to Niger, Haiti to Houston. The UK is also vulnerable to climate impacts, with more destructive storms, prolonged floods, and heatwaves becoming the norm.
Our climate reality is increasingly unpredictable and daunting. However, it is also opening the space to collectively reimagine a different future for the UK. Fossil fuels helped ignite the first industrial revolution, but we now know that their continued use will threaten our very existence. Within the UK we have the skills, ingenuity and people to drive the next energy revolution, powered by renewables. For us to make this change a success, our politics must have environmental sustainability and social justice at its core.
Continue reading...California's hellish fires: a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future | Dana Nuccitelli
California is burning in December. Climate scientists predicted global warming will make Christmas wildfires more commonplace.
In Charles Dicken’s ‘A Christmas Carol,’ the Ghost of Christmas Future appears to Ebenezer Scrooge to show what will happen if he doesn’t change his greedy, selfish life. California’s record wildfires are similarly giving us a glimpse of our future hellish climate if we continue with our current behavior.
The making of Vietnam
Meat tax ‘inevitable’ to beat climate and health crises, says report
‘Sin taxes’ to reverse the rapid global growth in meat eating are likely in five to 10 years, according to a report for investors managing over $4tn
“Sin taxes” on meat to reduce its huge impact on climate change and human health look inevitable, according to analysts for investors managing over $4tn of assets.
The global livestock industry causes 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions and meat consumption is rising around the world, but dangerous climate change cannot be avoided unless this is radically curbed. Furthermore, many people already eat far too much meat, seriously damaging their health and incurring huge costs. Livestock also drive other problems, such as water pollution and antibiotic resistance.
Continue reading...Country diary: even reduced to bare bones the bat's magic remains
Welburn, North Yorkshire With a tiny paintbrush and tweezers I salvage a skeleton: the tiny skull, the whisker-fine finger bones
I found it at the top of the field in July, after the barley harvest. A little body, wings folded and face scrunched. It was snagged on a scaffold of stubble like a miniature sky burial, overlooking a vista it must have known well until the previous night, when, somehow, all its knowing became nothing. Reflexively, I picked it up. In my hand, with its sky-tickling energy surrendered to gravity and its ultrasound din silenced, its dead weight might not have been there at all.
We were leaving on holiday next morning and in the frenzy of packing I almost forgot it. I should have taken measurements and got past a generic identification Myotis (mouse-eared bats). Instead, I hurriedly sealed the little corpse in a margarine tub with a perforated lid, along with a splash of water to prevent mummification, and left it on a shady sill in the garden.
Continue reading...The 'utopian' currency Bitcoin is a potentially catastrophic energy guzzler
Bird keepers at Sydney's Taronga zoo name their favourite Australian birds – video
As the result of the bird of the year poll is made public, Taronga keepers Brendan Host, Lille Madden, Ashleigh Page, Mark Domenici, Leanne Golebiowski and Michael Shiels select their favourites
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