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EU Market: EUAs prices rally from fresh 1-month low after auction
Should we be worried about surging Antarctic ice melt and sea level rise? | Dana Nuccitelli
Short answer: maybe
There’s recently been a spate of sea level rise denial in the conservative media, but in reality, sea level rise is accelerating and melting ice is playing an increasingly large role. In the first half of the 20th Century, average global sea level rose by about 1.4 millimeters per year (mm/yr). Since 1993, that rate has more than doubled to 3.2 mm/yr. And since 2012, it’s jumped to 4.5 mm/yr.
Continue reading...Bees get stressed at work too (and it might be causing colony collapse)
Australia starts slow on EVs, but could overtake global market
A 228MW Victorian wind farm to go ahead as big business snaps up cheap green power
ESB leaves some unexpected booby traps in latest NEG update
Deciding the viper's fate: country diary archive, 21 June 1918
21 June 1918 No doubt the viper is useful to the farmer, but it is also a danger to his children, his dogs, and even his sheep
Amongst the heather stems and grass I found the cast skins or sloughs of two harmless ring snakes. They were not lying on the grass, but were firmly jammed between the stiff bents; indeed, it was not possible to release them without injury, though as they lay there each transparent scale showed distinctly; except at the head, the skin was perfect. “Cast” skin sounds as if the reptile, weary of its old and dingy garment, had thrown it off as we throw off our clothes. Really it had struggled through the tightest squeezes it could find, emerging finally in bright and gleaming mail, leaving behind the discarded slough, like a long, empty glove-finger.
Related: An adder stirs, a brawny cable charged by the sun
Continue reading...Flooding from sea level rise threatens over 300,000 US coastal homes – study
Climate change study predicts ‘staggering impact’ of swelling oceans on coastal communities within next 30 years
Sea level rise driven by climate change is set to pose an existential crisis to many US coastal communities, with new research finding that as many as 311,000 homes face being flooded every two weeks within the next 30 years.
The swelling oceans are forecast repeatedly to soak coastal residences collectively worth $120bn by 2045 if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t severely curtailed, experts warn. This will potentially inflict a huge financial and emotional toll on the half million Americans who live in the properties at risk of having their basements, backyards, garages or living rooms inundated every other week.
Continue reading...NAB to play middle man with investors and large-scale wind, solar
Country diary: bottlenose dolphin attack shatters Flipper illusions
Chanonry Point, Moray Firth: These cetaceans kill their porpoise cousins. Do they see them as competition for food? Or are they just killing for sport?
There are occasions when nature shatters our cosy assumptions. Last week we were watching the bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) on the Moray Firth, much loved by tourists because they come so close to shore. They flip and leap, roll and dive, singly or in pods of a dozen or more, only a few yards from camera-clicking visitors thronging the shingle spit.
The dolphins gather in the Chanonry narrows to feast on salmon migrating upstream to spawn. We often see salmon being flung high in the air and swallowed whole. A feeding spectacle. We know dolphins eat fish and we are comfortable with it. But what we witnessed in front of our lenses that day spun us into shock. Forget film-star Flipper, forget frolicking Fungie in Dingle Bay, forget chummy Sebastian in Disney’s Shark Tale – these Moray Firth dolphins are killers.
Continue reading...Demand response is disrupting Australia’s ancillary services markets
Messing about on the river and waltzing back to Winton
Hong Kong's fish are eating plastic - and people could be too
China and India’s border dispute is a slow-moving environmental disaster
Australian firms told to catch up on climate change risk checks
New report says Australian companies lag behind international organisations
Australian companies are not doing enough work to model the risks of climate change and how it will affect their profitability, a new report by a thinktank says.
Progressive thinktank the Centre for Policy Development says that while most companies have committed to considering what climate change and the Paris climate agreement means for their business strategy, too few have begun using scenario analysis techniques to model what its impacts could be and how to respond to it.
Continue reading...'Not safe, not wanted': is the end of NT fracking ban a taste of things to come?
The NT government has lifted its fracking moratorium despite fierce opposition, reflecting the war of attrition being waged by gas companies
When the Northern Territory government announced a moratorium on fracking in 2016, it was a victory for those fighting the expansion of the unconventional gas industry.
That elation was replaced with shock and disappointment in April, when the chief minister, Michael Gunner, said the practice could resume following a 15-month scientific inquiry.
Continue reading...An unconventional gas boom: the rise of CSG in Australia
In two decades coal seam gas has come to account for 30% of gas production. Here’s how the picture varies state to state
Australia’s production of coal seam gas has risen exponentially since 1995, going from zero to 30% of the country’s overall gas production in 2015-16.
Continue reading...Surfers Against Sewage ride the wave of the 'Harry and Meghan effect'
In nearly 30 years, a bunch of surfers concerned about pollution have become a serious marine conservation force. An unexpected royal patronage has given them more funding and greater reach than ever to fight plastic pollution
Despite its eye-catching name, Surfers Against Sewage probably owes its existence to plastic. “The advent of panty-liners meant you could really see sewage slicks. Condoms, panty-liners and other plastic refuse made for a visceral, and visual, reminder of pollution,” Chris Hines, surfer and co-founder of this small charity in Cornwall, recalled in Alex Wade’s book, Surf Nation.
Sick of ear, throat and gastric infections, he and others called a meeting in St Agnes village hall. A who’s who of the most committed, passionate surfers in Cornwall – and just about the whole village – turned out. It was 1990 and Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) was born.
Continue reading...High risk of food shortages without pesticides, says chemical giant
Head of Syngenta, world’s biggest pesticide maker, says rejecting farming tech could have serious consequences within 20 years
The world is likely to face food shortages within 20 years if pesticides and genetically modified crops are shunned, according to the head of the world’s biggest pesticide manufacturer.
J Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Syngenta, also said the technologies to produce more food from less land are vital in halting climate change, but that better targeting will mean farmers around the world will use less pesticide in future.
Continue reading...Where have all our insects gone?
When Simon Leather was a student in the 1970s, he took a summer job as a postman and delivered mail to the villages of Kirk Hammerton and Green Hammerton in North Yorkshire. He recalls his early morning walks through its lanes, past the porches of houses on his round. At virtually every home, he saw the same picture: windows plastered with tiger moths that had been attracted by lights the previous night and were still clinging to the glass. “It was quite a sight,” says Leather, who is now a professor of entomology at Harper Adams University in Shropshire.
But it is not a vision that he has experienced in recent years. Those tiger moths have almost disappeared. “You hardly see any, although there used to be thousands in summer and that was just a couple of villages.”
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