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Fracking can cause social stress in nearby areas: new research
'Wake-up call': microplastics found in Great Australian Bight sediment
Exclusive: Scientists say governments and corporations need to ‘legislate and incentivise’ to tackle ocean plastics
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Plastic has been found in ocean-floor sediments 2km below the surface in one of Australia’s most precious and isolated marine environments.
CSIRO scientists discovered the microplastic pieces while analysing samples taken hundreds of kilometres offshore at the bottom of the Great Australian Bight – a so-called “pristine” biodiversity hotspot and marine treasure.
Continue reading...EU Market: EUAs sink again below €13 but stay in upward channel
Noxious gas found on planet Uranus
Graphene 'a game-changer' in making building with concrete greener
Form of carbon incorporated into concrete created stronger, more water-resistant composite material that could reduce emissions
The novel “supermaterial” graphene could hold the key to making one of the oldest building materials greener, new scientific research suggests.
Graphene has been incorporated into traditional concrete production by scientists at the University of Exeter, developing a composite material which is more than twice as strong and four times more water-resistant than existing concretes.
Continue reading...GCF Planning Officer, Competence Centre for Climate Change and Environmental Policy, GIZ – Eschborn, Germany
Two men jailed for 26 years over UK-based carbon credit investment scam
Australian offset issuance steady, but market supply stays limited
Australian minister flags potential use of Asia-Pacific forest carbon credits
Pruitt promised polluters EPA will value their profits over American lives | Dana Nuccitelli
Pruitt is one of TIME’s 100 most influential people for his efforts to maximize polluters’ profits
TIME magazine announced last week that Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is among their 100 most influential people of 2018. George W. Bush’s former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman delivered the scathing explanation:
If his actions continue in the same direction, during Pruitt’s term at the EPA the environment will be threatened instead of protected, and human health endangered instead of preserved, all with no long-term benefit to the economy.
Continue reading...Country Drive: Indonesian online beef sales, Minister won't reveal cause of pony deaths and Victorian wood mills risk closure
World’s newest great ape threatened by Chinese dam
The discovery of a new great ape species – the Tapanuli orangutan – has not stopped a Chinese state-run hydropower company from clearing forest for a planned dam. Conservationists fear this will be the beginning of the end for a species only known for six months.
Last November scientists made a jaw-dropping announcement: they’d discovered a new great ape hiding in plain sight, only the eighth inhabiting our planet.
The Tapanuli orangutan survives in northern Sumatra and it is already the most endangered great ape in the world; researchers estimate less than 800 individuals survive. But the discovery hasn’t stopped a Chinese state-run company, Sinohydro, from moving ahead with clearing forest for a large dam project smack in the middle of the orangutan population. According to several orangutan experts, Sinohyrdo’s dam represents an immediate and existential threat to the Tapanuli orangutan.
Environment prize goes to Flint water activist
NEG will block renewables, favour hydro and big retailers
Smart Energy Council wages war against “anti-renewables” NEG
New solar “firming ” contracts to boost corporate demand for big solar farms
'Exploding ant' species found in South East Asia
$150,000 in community grants to help progress towards zero emissions
Country diary: perplexed by a sign of the tides
Afon Mawddach, Gwynedd: As I pondered my options, pools of water formed in the carpet of vegetation around my boots
Passengers for Morfa Mawddach station, to use the formal language of the announcement, “should inform the conductor that they wish to alight”. Your reward, if you do so, is a single narrow platform overlooking the salt marsh on the southern side of the Mawddach estuary. The station was once an important railway junction and, almost hidden by the undergrowth, an abandoned platform edge marks where a second track curled eastward towards Dolgellau. This line has been closed for more than 50 years, but the trackbed has found a new life as a route for walkers and cyclists.
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