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The eco guide to New Year recycling
Now that China and Hong Kong won’t take our rubbish, it’s time to get real
Right now you may well be surveying the wreckage of Christmas, all that old wrapping paper. Whereas in previous years I’ve skipped through the issue of post-Christmas waste in an upbeat “how to” guide, this year’s advice might be summed up as “Brace, brace”.
Let me explain. Back in July the Chinese government announced a clampdown on so-called “foreign garbage”. To get slightly more technical, that means bringing in very tight contamination limits on 24 categories of scrap, especially waste paper and plastic. This concerns us, because since 2012 the UK has shipped more than 2.7 million tonnes of plastic scrap to mainland China and Hong Kong. Put simply there is no other market to replace it right now.
Continue reading...The best science long reads of 2017 (part two)
Burning wood for power is ‘misguided’ say climate experts
Policies aimed at limiting climate change by boosting the burning of biomass contain critical flaws that could actually damage attempts to avert dangerous levels of global warming in the future. That is the stark view of one of Britain’s chief climate experts, Professor John Beddington, who has warned that relying on the cutting down and burning of trees as a replacement for the use of fossil fuels could rebound dangerously.
Beddington, a former UK government chief scientific adviser, said there was now a real risk that increasing wood-burning in order to help European countries, including Britain, reach renewable energy targets could turn out to be misguided. “These policies may even lead to a situation whereby global emissions [of carbon dioxide] accelerate,” he states in a blog on Carbon Brief, the UK-based website that covers climate and energy issues. He says wind and solar projects should dominate programmes to boost renewable energy generation in Europe.
Continue reading...Spring flowers in autumn, birdsong in winter: what a freak year for nature
When Stephen Moss was a boy, the seasons followed predictable patterns
When I was growing up, in the 1960s and 1970s, we had what my nan used to call “proper weather”. Snow in winter, showers in spring, sun (or at least, sunny intervals) in summer and gales in autumn. Britain’s weather may have been changeable by the day, but the seasons were seemingly set in stone, with a reassuringly predictable regularity.
That certainly suited the country’s fauna and flora. Wild animals and plants, and by extension their habitats, evolved to cope with short-term unpredictability and long-term stability. If change did occur, it happened slowly, over decades or centuries; rather than rapidly, in a single year.
Continue reading...British astronaut Helen Sharman recognised in New Year’s honours
'It's shocking, it's horrendous': Ellen MacArthur's fight against plastic
She broke the solo record for sailing round the world, but now she is dedicating her life to an even greater challenge – saving it from the destructive tide of plastic pollution
Trophies from her past glories as a competitive yachtswoman are placed discreetly around the 16th-century building on the Isle of Wight, the base of Dame Ellen MacArthur’soperations today.
On a blackboard in one of the meeting rooms, the targets of a different passion are spelled out. From uncovering the scale of plastic pollution in the oceans to targeting the textile waste of the fashion industry, MacArthur, who in 2005 broke the solo record for sailing round the world, is dedicating her life to saving it.
Continue reading...Country diary: a nesting box, a broken window and a brooding robin
Comins Coch, Ceredigion For years the robins ignored our open invitation to take up residence above the shed door
We inherited the old garden shed when we bought the house a quarter of a century ago. Over the door, someone had fixed an open-fronted nest box of the type thought suitable for a robin but, whether it was too exposed or the aspect was wrong, no birds took up the offer of accommodation.
Eventually, while repainting the shed, I took down the box and, for want of anywhere else to put it, left it on a high shelf just inside the door. That winter, the apple tree nearby lost a branch, breaking the shed window and adding another line to the list of jobs I would never get around to.
Continue reading...Pecking order: how John Gould dined out on the birds of Australia
From rosella pie to the ‘delicate’ flesh of baby emus, the 19th century ornithologist relished the taste of the creatures he so meticulously studied
Of all the changes to the study of ornithology in the past 200 years, the most striking, when reading John Gould’s seven-volume 1848 treatise The Birds of Australia, is the apparent lack of interest among modern scientists in what their subjects taste like.
Gould left no such questions unanswered. The prototype of his beautifully illustrated guide, digitised and made available online by the State Library of New South Wales, contains many tips for the keen sportsman on how best to shoot each of the featured birds and, where Gould had opportunity to sample them, what they tasted like.
Continue reading...The best science long reads of 2017 (part one)
Busy year for storms
Live long, little lizard
Space science work recognised in New Year Honours
War on Waste revisited: Recycling seafood shells
The week in wildlife - in pictures
A rare golden monkey, Hawaiian green sea turtles and Malaysia’s last female Sumatran rhinoceros all feature in this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...The article that changed my view … of how civil disobedience helps the planet
Suganshi Ropia says a piece she read after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement helped her realise we shouldn’t wait to make our voices heard
Suganshi Ropia, 21, is a law student from Pune, India
I try to keep in touch with news related to climate change, and am particularly interested in environmental law. My compulsion to do something positive about climate change was one of the reasons I decided to study law. When I read the opinion piece Civil disobedience is the only way left to fight climate change, by Kara Moses, in spring 2016, it crystallised my feelings about the responsibility we have as a community of humans to do more.
Alarming link between fungicides and bee declines revealed
Fungicides are found to be the strongest factor linked to steep bumblebee declines, surprising scientists and adding to the threats to vital pollinators
Common fungicides are the strongest factor linked to steep declines in bumblebees across the US, according to the first landscape-scale analysis.
The surprising result has alarmed bee experts because fungicides are targeted at molds and mildews – not insects – but now appear to be a cause of major harm. How fungicides kill bees is now being studied, but is likely to be by making them more susceptible to the deadly nosema parasite or by exacerbating the toxicity of other pesticides.
Continue reading...World first for dog's broken leg
'It's a perverse system': how Colombia's farmers are reforesting their logged land
In the wake of Colombia’s peace deal, the rush to clear Amazon jungle for cattle ranches and coca caused deforestation to soar. A new scheme hopes to enable farmers to make a sustainable living from the forest
In a cool forest patch along a rutted dirt road outside the Amazon jungle town of El Retorno in Guaviare, southern Colombia, Luis Vergara lifts his machete to clear a path through the brush. He walks through a 90-hectare plot of land he has replanted with valuable abarco trees – Colombian mahogany – in an attempt to replace what he logged from it.
Gardens under threat from 'game changing' plant disease
Nice to meet you: amazing new animal species discovered in 2017 – in pictures
From the Pink Floyd shrimp that makes a noise so loud it can kill small fish, to giant stick insects and new types of orangutans and gibbons, here is a round up of new animal species discovered this year
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