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Government bid to delay air pollution plan fails
Harvard 'pausing' investments in some fossil fuels
University stops short of fully divesting its $36bn endowment from coal, oil and gas but green groups welcome the breakthrough after a five-year campaign
Harvard University is “pausing” investments in some fossil fuel interests following a five-year campaign by some students and environment groups to pressure the university to divest itself from coal, oil and gas.
Continue reading...Air pollution plan would be election campaign bomb, court hears
Government’s advocate applies to delay publishing proposals until 30 June, saying controversy might be seen as ‘Tory plan’
The government wants to delay publishing its plan to tackle air pollution in England and Wales because it would be like dropping a bomb into the election campaign, the high court has heard.
James Eadie QC, representing the government, said it would be better to put the publication on hold until after the general election to avoid the controversy over how to tackle the air quality crisis being seen as a “Tory plan”.
Continue reading...The other cane toad invasion
The Republicans who care about climate change: 'They are done with the denial'
As despair intensifies over Trump’s agenda, the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus brings Democrats and Republicans together to break the deadlock
The failure of American politics to deal with, or even coherently discuss, climate change was perhaps best illustrated when James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, took to the floor of the US senate with a ziploc bag and a mischievous grin in February 2015.
Related: March against madness - denial has pushed scientists out into the streets | Dana Nuccitelli
Continue reading...New study: global warming keeps on keeping on | John Abraham
A new paper finds no statistical evidence that global warming slowed down in recent years or that it’s sped up just yet
As humans continue to dump heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the Earth continues to warm. In fact, it has been warming for decades and we now routinely hit temperatures that are 1°C (about 2°F) above the temperatures from 100 years ago.
But despite what we may expect, temperatures across the globe don’t rise little by little each year in a straight line. Rather, temperature changes are a bit bumpy. They go up and they go down somewhat randomly as they increase. Think of a wiggly line superimposed on a straight rising line.
Dr Jane Goodall on empathy, conservation and women in science
Look, no cars! Riding the closed-road Etape Loch Ness
Peter Walker takes in stunning views and steep climbs on one of an increasing number of UK cycling sportives that take place on routes shut to motor traffic
If there is one single activity most responsible for the recent mini-boom in Britons taking up road biking, it is arguably the sportive.
These organised, entry-only mass cycling events have sprung up around the UK in ever-increasing numbers. For various legal and insurance reasons they are not races but instead challenge riders only against the clock.
Continue reading...French tourist survives rare shark attack in New Zealand
Tourist survives, suffering only moderate injuries, after rare attack at Curio Bay in the South Island
A French tourist survived a rare shark attack in New Zealand on Thursday, suffering only moderate injuries, rescuers and locals said.
The woman, aged in her 20s, was bodyboarding in the afternoon at Curio Bay in the South Island when the shark attacked her leg, St John Ambulance said.
Continue reading...Victoria seeks two 20MW large scale batteries to be installed by January
British Veterinary Association slams designer cat breeding
Santos: Doing the bare minimum on climate change
Turnbull’s gas changes will lift cost of capital, but won’t relieve prices
Cobalt gems luminous in the bright light
Sandy, Bedfordshire Two kingfishers, with daggers of beaks and undercarriages of deep orange, were engaged in a chase
In the days before we gave names to storms, an anonymous blow laid low a riverside tree. Years later, leafless and lifeless, its branches bare of bark, the tree still lay across the water, an antlered jetty.
That gale had heaved the tree over, root plate and all, taking a giant’s bite out of the riverbank. The tree’s sheared and weathered anchors stuck out like pirates’ bones from the caked soil at the base of the trunk. A long-ago flood had wrapped a silt-stained shred of black plastic around one of the protruding roots.
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