Around The Web

Andrew Warren of the British Energy Efficiency Federation says that Rolls-Royce’s calls for public subsidies are unwarranted

You report that the defence firm Rolls-Royce has been lobbying for government funds to assist it to diversify into building nuclear reactors (Millions on offer to develop small nuclear plants, 4 December). It is arguing that the switch to electric transport will “drive up future demand”.

The National Grid concludes that, provided that vehicle recharging is concentrated into non-peak demand hours, even large-scale electrification of surface transport requires an increase in electricity system capacity by around 15%.

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Tim Evans says that UK beekeepers should swap their frame hives for top-bar hives if they want to avoid chemical interventions and sugar feeding

The photograph accompanying your piece (How Liberia’s killer bees are helping to rebuild livelihoods, 4 December) shows a Liberian beekeeper holding curved comb from a top-bar hive, not the oblong combs of the frame hives generally used in the UK. Top-bar hives, traditional in Africa, allow bees to build comb in the shape they wish, and to structure their nest according to their natural instincts. These hives are usually managed without constant intrusive inspections, chemical interventions and sugar feeding.

A significant minority of UK beekeepers have adopted these methods. We find that they keep bees healthier than conventional systems, and our experience is borne out by the work of Cornell University’s eminent Professor Thomas Seeley, among other scientists.

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After a series of set backs the international project is back on track, say scientists, giving tentative hope for a major new source of clean power by 2025

An international project to generate energy from nuclear fusion has reached a key milestone, with half of the infrastructure required now built.

Bernard Bigot, the director-general of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter), the main facility of which is based in southern France, said the completion of half of the project meant the effort was back on track, after a series of difficulties. This would mean that power could be produced from the experimental site from 2025.

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Australian and Chinese banks have turned it down, and analysts say Adani’s failure to secure funding for the Carmichael mine leaves it high and dry

Adani’s operations in Australia appear to be hanging on by a thread, as activists prove effective at undermining the company’s chances of getting the finance it needs.

China seems to have ruled out funding for the mine, which means it’s not just Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine that is under threat, but also its existing Abbot Point coal terminal, which sits near Bowen, behind the Great Barrier Reef.

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One of the oldest and most complete skeletons of our ancestors is unveiled in South Africa.

The end of the era of throwaway plastic has been signalled by UN environment ministers meeting in Kenya.

A small group of civilian para-enforcers is taking the protection of Palawan’s threatened rainforest from illegal loggers into their own hands

Tata gives hand signals for his men to drop to the rainforest floor as the searing whine of a chainsaw fades, their mission to save a critically endangered piece of paradise in the Philippines suddenly on hold.

Former paramilitary leader Efren “Tata” Balladares has been leading the other flip flop-wearing environmental crusaders up and down the steep mountains of Palawan island for the past 15 hours in the hunt for illegal loggers.

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Wildlife photographer Ian Wood has been capturing great apes in the wild for decades, but when a young orangutan discovered his hidden camera on a recent Borneo trip he got some truly unexpected results

One of the challenges of wildlife photography is trying to come up with ways to take images that haven’t been shot before. Through my conservation work with orangutans I’ve had numerous opportunities to photograph these great apes over the last couple of decades, but on a recent annual fundraising trip to Tanjung Puting national park in Borneo I got some unexpected, close-up results.

I had decided to hide a GoPro camera near to where orangutans often appear, hoping to get some close-up wide-angle images of them in the forest. I figured that in the worse case, if an orangutan found my camera it would realise it wasn’t food and discard it.

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All of nature’s thermometers indicate a rapid rise in global temperatures.

The US Global Change Research Program recently released a Climate Science Special Report. It is clearly written – an authoritative summary of the science, and easy to understand.

The first main chapter deals with changes to the climate and focuses much attention on global temperatures. When most people think of climate change, they think of the global temperature – specifically the temperature of the air a few meters above the Earth surface. There are other (better) ways to measure climate change such as heat absorbed by the oceans, melting ice, sea level rise, or others. But the iconic measurement most people think of are these air temperatures, shown in the top frame of the figure below.

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Ruling by advertising watchdog could have knock on effect on other electric car advertising

The car company BMW has been censured by the UK’s advertising watchdog for claiming an electric car equipped with a small petrol engine was “clean” and “zero emissions”, in a ruling that could have a knock-on effect on other electric car advertising.

The advertising was published in the form of a Facebook post that used testimonials from real customers to extol the virtues of the BMW i3. That model is unusual among electric vehicles, as in addition to the electric drive, it also has a small petrol engine. However, unlike “hybrid” cars, which have a petrol-driven engine that can take over from the electric system when it runs out of charge, on longer journeys or at higher speeds, the i3’s petrol engine is only used to maintain the charge on the electric drive.

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New technology allows us to map the movements of animals in stunning detail and show how urban areas are affecting them. Cities present opportunities to some but are a threat to many others. These seven maps – extracted from Where the Animals Go by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti – offer a glimpse into the lives of animals trying to make their way in our increasingly urbanised world

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Wenlock Edge, Shropshire This shrub and its toxic fruit have a minor but magical part in ancient woodland

Shocking pink in a winter hedge, as if blown from some forever summer place, it is a colour out of season. And yet the spindle berries are perfectly at home in wood margins and hedges on the limestone of Wenlock Edge. It seems the spindle tree – which can grow six metres (20ft) tall but is usually a shrub – has a minor but magical part in ancient woodland and here associates with ash, field maple and dogwood. It has waxy, serrated-edge leaves, greeny-white four-petalled flowers and these extraordinary lipstick berries, each a four- or five-valved pod holding orange fruits that ripen in November-December.

Spindle is a square peg in a round hole, or vice-versa: its green stems begin round, develop a corky bark to become four-cornered, then turn rounder with age. It is named after the stick used to spin and wind thread from wool. In the psycho-mytho-panto of Sleeping Beauty, the goddess is deceived, pricks her finger on the spindle of human ambition, and sleeps until she is woken up by the god of rebirth. It is a winter story.

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Price jump in the VEEC market across the last 5 months has been massive, with speculation and then confirmation scheme administrator will reduce the attractiveness of some commercial lighting products.

Australian solar plant innovators 5B have announced plans to set up a production facility in Adelaide, and potentially a "gigawatt" production line in Asia.

Burning coal to generate electricity in era of solar at 1c/kWh makes as about as much economic sense as “burning dollar notes”, says leading researcher Martin Green.

AER report absolves big generators of predatory bidding during demand peaks, but they hardly need to: The cost of "baseload" coal supply in NSW has jumped so high that there is no such thing as "cheap" coal generation.

The new foreign donations laws announced this week will potentially stifle the work of foreign funded charities and environment groups working in Australia. Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Held at UTS, the hackathon brought together some of the best and brightest from the fields of sustainability, design and technology, the corporate and academic world, and the start-up community.

WOMADelaide today announced the full program of speakers and presenters for The Planet Talks, its renowned series of political, social and planetary discussions hosted as part of the festival from March 10 – 12.

Occupying 67,000 square feet over six rooftops in multiple orientations, the landmark installation overcomes shading challenges to power a large, fast-moving consumer goods company.