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Victoria’s Minister D’Ambrosio visits accionaI MT Gellibrand wind farm
Trina Solar announces new efficiency record of 25.04% for large-area IBC mono-crystalline silicon solar cell
What lies beneath
Great White demystified
Amendments to the Threatened Species List
Musk's Tesla to stay in space for millions of years
Qld turns to jet-fuel and imports as coal plants wilt in face of record demand
'Nothing to do with threatened species': Coalition accused of overstating spending
Labor, Greens and environment groups call for urgent review of funding for species conservation
Labor has accused the federal government of overstating its spending on threatened species projects and the Greens have called for an urgent auditor general’s review of all threatened species expenditure by the Department of the Environment and Energy.
It comes after the Guardian revealed the government was claiming projects such as heritage building works at the Old Melbourne Gaol and the Polly Woodside – an old cargo ship in Melbourne’s CBD – had benefits for threatened animals and plants that are unlikely to occur at those sites.
Continue reading...Quantum computers 'one step closer'
Latest twist in the Adani saga reveals shortcomings in environmental approvals
AI does grunt work on China's pig farms
Marine scientists urge protection for endangered shellfish reefs
Shellfish reefs, formed by oysters or mussels in or near estuaries, have declined by up 99% since British colonisation
Marine scientists are lobbying the federal government to ensure protection for Australia’s most endangered – but least known – ocean ecosystem.
Shellfish reefs, formed by millions of oysters or mussels clustering together in or near the mouths of estuaries, have declined by up 99% since British colonisation.
Continue reading...Decline in krill threatens Antarctic wildlife, from whales to penguins
Climate change and industrial-scale fishing is impacting the krill population with a potentially disastrous impact on larger predators, say scientists
The Antarctic, one of the world’s last great wildernesses and home to animals such as whales, penguins and leopard seals, is being threatened by the plight of an animal just a few centimetres long, according to scientists.
Researchers and environmental campaigners warn that a combination of climate change and industrial-scale fishing is threatening the krill population in Antarctic waters, with a potentially disastrous impact on larger predators.
Continue reading...Crypto-currency craze 'hinders search for alien life'
Australia's new extinction crisis
A gold mine swallowed their village. This Amazon tribe is here to take it back
In 1996, Osvaldo Wuaru and his family arrived on the outskirts of the vast Munduruku Amazon Territory with a crucial mission: set up a village to hold back the invasion of pariwat (non-indigenous) gold miners. Twenty-one years later, it has all but failed, reports Climate Home News
Named Watch Post (the Portuguese acronym is PV), the village has been swallowed by the heavy equipment of hundreds of illegal gold miners (called garimpeiros). What was once a few huts hidden in the Amazon forest now resembles a bombed battlefield.
Underwater photographer of the year 2018 winners - in pictures
German photographer Tobias Friedrich has been named this year’s winner for his ‘perfectly lit and composed’ panorama of a wreck off the coast of Egypt, while British winner Grant Thomas captured a couple of affectionate swans
Continue reading...Country diary: new snow lay on wings of fungi
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: The one-step-forward-two-steps-back dance between winter and spring had time yet but many of the animals and plants had not
Overnight snow left anonymous gifts. Frost and a chill wind through the trees hardened what remained of the snowfall as the weather moved on, to leave a scattering of unopened envelopes. Snow on fungi: there was something very symbolic about these two kinds of ephemeral structures. The Armilaria fungi living in the rotten stump of a tree may have been what killed it. The fruiting bodies of russet flesh that bloomed from fibrous mycelium, forming a circuit between tree cells and a kind of organic afterlife in the soil, were now holding a frozen package of snow.
After days of sogginess with bright moments, the return of snow felt revenant. It was too clear and pure, even in its fleetingness. In Among the Summer Snows, Christopher Nicholson talked about the literary obsession with the whiteness of snow and quoted Shakespeare when Juliet declares that Romeo “wilt lie upon the wings of night/ Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back”. Love transcends death, or something.
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