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Planet rumbles
Why beetles are the most important organisms on the planet | Richard Jones
From the minuscule to the mighty, tree-dwellers to pond-swimmers, millions of beetle species reveal a wealth of information about the world we live in
New network of water refill points aims to reduce England's plastic waste
Free refill points and fountains will be set up in shops, cafes and high streets in every English town and city, under plans announced by the water industry
Consumers will be encouraged to refill their water bottles free of charge in tens of thousands of shops, cafes, businesses and water fountains in England under plans announced by the water industry.
The national scheme aims to fight the growing scourge of waste created by single-use plastic by preventing the use of tens of millions of plastic bottles every year, as well as increasing the availability of quality drinking water.
Continue reading...Country diary: a mighty poplar brought down by old age and the revenge of the wind
Sandy, Bedfordshire: At the tree’s base, an autopsy of its last seconds was written in splits, snaps, rips and a broken heart
When the last storm whipped through our valley it brought down the tallest tree on the river. An old Lombardy poplar, a spire without a church, it belonged to an age when planting poplars was popular. They were the leylandii of their day, for they shot up as fast as rockets and looked like them too. They were often grown in rows as windbreaks, though nobody much thought about old age and the wind’s revenge.
For a day or so after, my eyes clawed at the air, looking for the absent shape of a tower that had been a crow’s nest for a magpie, a labyrinth for tits, a cricked neck. I saw only a wooded ridge, some houses, and sky – so much sky that it snuffed out the memory. For a day or so only, passersby stopped to inspect the toppled giant, as they might view the corpse of a beached whale.
Continue reading...Tesla big battery setting market prices, including at $14,200 cap
Why is Australia misleading consumers on electric vehicle emissions?
App shows water refill stations to tackle plastic waste
Australia added 1.3GW of solar in 2017, and could treble it in 2018
‘We have to change capitalism’ to beat climate change, says world’s biggest asset manager
AusNet services to develop terminal station for Pacific Hydro’s crowlands wind farm
Conversion efficiency at 20.41%, LONGi solar creates world record of monocrystalline PERC module
Tesla among 19 groups competing to build Darwin big battery
Sound waves 'can help' early tsunami detection
Hundreds of wildflower species found blooming in midwinter
UK survey finds 532 types – far more than older textbooks suggest should be out
It’s been said that spring is coloured by flowers, while the colour of winter is only in the imagination.
Not so for intrepid botanists who discovered 532 species of wildflowers in bloom across Britain and Ireland around New Year’s Day.
Continue reading...Cloned monkeys: First primate clones are created in lab
How to escape from a lion or cheetah - the science
Exposing UK government folly of investment in new nuclear | Letters
In 1976, Lord Flowers pronounced that there should be no further commitment to nuclear energy unless it could be demonstrated that long-lived highly radioactive wastes could be safely contained for the indefinite future. Ever since, efforts to find a suitable site for a geological disposal facility have been rejected by communities (Wanted: community willing to host a highly radioactive waste dump in their district, 22 January).
There is, therefore, little evidence to support the government’s claim that “it is satisfied that effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose of the waste that will be produced from new nuclear power stations”. Deep disposal may be the eventual long-term solution but demonstrating a safety case, finding suitable geology and a willing community are tough challenges and likely to take a long time. The search for a disposal site diverts attention from the real solution for the foreseeable future, which is to ensure the safe and secure management of the unavoidable legacy wastes that have to be managed. It is perverse to compound the problem by a new-build programme that will result in vastly increased radioactivity from spent fuel and other highly radioactive wastes which will have to be stored indefinitely at vulnerable sites scattered around our coasts.
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