Around The Web

Easton Hornstocks, Northamptonshire: A thousand years ago, mastiffs were allowed here if their front claws had been removed. Now it’s a national nature reserve, all dogs are banned

The dawn light astonishes but mostly it’s the smell: sharp, delicate, wild garlic, the last of the bluebells, dewy grass. Dappled light is spilled up the trees and on the ground, and swirls, as the leaves casting it sway, like reflections off water. Silver birch limbs, knotted with birch polypore fungus, lie pale on beds of fat-bladed grass. I find an ornate snail on one. Falling leaf litter. Birdsong. This place quietly seethes with life.

I’ve never needed a permit to go for a walk in England before. Easton Hornstocks is an old wood of lime and ash trees close to my home. It’s a national nature reserve, and I had to ask for access. It was easy. Free. I had to carry the permit. No bikes; fine, I don’t own one. No dogs; ditto. But I didn’t know how I felt about the idea. Rankled by the restriction? Or thankful for its sense of privilege?

Easton is a village, but Hornstocks is an unfamiliar word, certainly for a wood. There are other odd suffixes to woodland reserves in these parts: Everden Stubbs, Castor Hanglands, Bedford Purlieus. Archaic generics that had fallen obscure in the way that chase or heath hadn’t, maybe. One, purlieu, is a relic of the Forest Law, meaning an agricultural area on the edge of the trees.

Continue reading...

Scientists strap tiny bum-bags onto geckos in the middle of the night on an outback cattle station. They are tracking how cattle grazing impacts tiny lizards. PLUS BONUS #FieldWorkFail

Vanessa Pirotta will represent Australia at the Famelab final in Cheltenham.

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

The Netherlands said it will shut two of its coal power plants in 2024 and the other three before 2030 unless they switch fuels, adding further pressure to big-emitting generators ahead of the implementation of a planned domestic carbon floor price for power from 2020.

Several Californian agencies are discussing raising the carbon reduction target for natural and working lands (NWLs) in the state in order to meet the state’s 2030 GHG targets, which the departments laid out at a workshop on Friday.

Family sells off a vintage machinery collection; go fly fishing in Tasmania; indigenous language comes alive at Taree High; and a local shearing clothing brand turns 30.

EU carbon recovered from a mid-afternoon sell-off on Friday, with prices ending slightly lower in choppy trade after a bullish auction to hold above €15 for a 4.2% weekly rise.

The Senate version of a bill that would implement a carbon tax and rebate programme in New York was defeated in a legislative committee this week, the second such carbon pricing initiative to fall on the US east coast this week.

Readers respond for and against George Monbiot, including Tony Juniper of WWF

The natural world is an incredible wonder that inspires us all, but despite our love of wildlife and wild places, there is no doubt that it is facing catastrophic decline, here and abroad. George Monbiot (The UK government wants to put a price on nature – but that will destroy it, 15 May) suggests that in efforts to save the natural world there are grave dangers in putting a “price on nature”.

Yet one reason we are failing to do what is necessary is because nature is still seen as “nice to have”, rather than essential in sustaining our health, wealth and security. Many companies, economists and governments regard environmental destruction as a regrettable but inevitable consequence of economic growth – the “price of progress”. If we don’t change this mindset, then there will be little prospect for the revolution in ideas that is needed to avoid a mass extinction event and disastrous climatic changes. 

Continue reading...

Renewably generated hydrogen could supply energy storage at scales many times beyond which even the largest battery systems could attain, writes Mike Koefman; while John Ellis says it’s time for joined-up thinking on our future energy strategy

There is truth in Professor Underwood’s assertion (Letters, 16 May) that nothing can surpass the “round trip” efficiency of lithium-ion batteries from, for example, solar input to final user’s output. But in focusing on this undoubted advantage he omits the overriding issue of energy storage at very much larger scales. It is this concern which has driven the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (not in the “gas industry’s pocket”, by the way) to take a serious look at hydrogen, which used to be a substantial component of our former “town gas”, derived rather filthily from coal, but which can now can be derived very cleanly from solar and wind power, directed through the water-splitting magic of modern electrolytic machinery. Such renewably generated hydrogen could supply energy storage at scales many times beyond which even the largest battery systems could attain, and could do so both in the UK and in diverse economies throughout the world. Batteries will always be needed for specific uses, but in order to displace the carbon-laden fossil fuels which now imperil climate, ocean and the whole biosphere something rather different must be adopted – something storable at all scales, transmissible, fully functional as a fuel, and climate-neutral. Only hydrogen fills this particular bill.
Mike Koefman
Director, Planet Hydrogen, Manchester

• Professor Underwood correctly asserts that the efficiency of a Li-ion and heat pump system in terms of heat generation is far better than electrolysing water to make hydrogen. But the purpose of storing hydrogen was, it seems, to smooth out the supply of electricity from renewables in dead periods, not generate heat per se. Electricity generation is usually provided by turbines which are driven by steam at high temperatures. I may be wrong, but I thought heat pumps did not generally reach much above 80C and would not be suitable for electricity generation.

Continue reading...

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

Continue reading...

The area is so far flung that the nearest humans are often those aboard the International Space Station. But even that hasn’t saved it from the scourge of microplastics

Name: Point Nemo.

Age: First discovered in 1992 by survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela.

Continue reading...

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.

Sea otters, an African forest elephant and endangered Francois’ langurs are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Continue reading...

Hedgehog lovers are worried that a rat trap, licensed by the government in England, could harm their spiky friends.

Emissions covered under the EU ETS rose by 0.3% in 2017, the European Commission said Friday, confirming the small increase both reported in preliminary data released last month and predicted by analysts.

Three undergraduates are embarking on the direct action as part of an ongoing campaign to stop the university investing in fossil fuels

Three students at the Cambridge University have gone on hunger strike as part of an increasingly bitter campaign to stop the university investing in fossil fuel companies.

The move by the three undergraduates is part of an ongoing divestment campaign at the university that has been supported by hundreds of academics and scientists – including Sir David King, until recently the UK’s permanent special representative for climate change, Thomas Blundell, the former president of the UK Science Council and the author Robert Macfarlane.

Continue reading...

The EU’s highest court has ruled that chemicals firm Evonik is not entitled to additional free carbon allowances because its method of producing gases does not fall within a defined benchmark.

When Douglas Coupland saw debris from the Japanese earthquake washing up in Canada, he became fascinated by the centrality of plastic in our lives – and began to pick it up

In 1999, I was in a Tokyo department store walking down a household cleaning products aisle and had what you might call an ecstatic moment when the pastel-tinted plastic bottles on both sides of the aisle temporarily froze my reptile cortex: pink, yellow, baby blue, turquoise — so many cute-looking bottles filled with so many toxic substances, all labeled with bold katakana lettering.

I bought 125 bottles and took them back to my hotel room where I emptied them down the toilet. Yes, I can hear you judging me as an ecological criminal, but then let me ask you this: if I’d added some dead skin flakes or some shit to these chemicals, would that then have made it OK to deliver them into the Tokyo harbour?

Continue reading...