Around The Web
Fukushima town revealed in Google Street View two years after tsunami
Two years after Fukushima's triple nuclear meltdown forced tens of thousands of residents to flee, it is possible to take a virtual journey deep into the exclusion zone to one of the towns they left behind.
Google Street View has published striking images of the devastation visited on Namie by the March 2011 tsunami and nuclear meltdown: abandoned homes, shops and restaurants, fields blanketed in grass and weeds.
Continue reading...Easter eggs rated by palm oil use
Lindt, Thorntons and Guylian have come bottom of a green ranking of Easter eggs based on their use of palm oil. Divine Chocolate came top, with the Co-operative and Sainsbury's close behind in the survey of more than 70 brands by Ethical Consumer magazine and charity Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK).
The organisations are launching a campaign in response to the increasing threat that unsustainable palm oil is posing to the world's rainforests, their indigenous wildlife, and the people whose livelihoods depend on the forests. Having destroyed vast areas of forest in countries such as Indonesia, palm oil companies are now planning to expand in the rainforests of the Congo Basin in Africa.
Continue reading...Shark species facing extinction - in pictures
1.5C rise in temperature enough to start permafrost melt, scientists warn
A global temperature rise of 1.5C would be enough to start the melting of permafrost in Siberia, scientists warned on Thursday.
Any widespread thaw in Siberia's permanently frozen ground could have severe consequences for climate change. Permafrost covers about 24% of the land surface of the northern hemisphere, and widespread melting could eventually trigger the release of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide and methane, which would have a massive warming effect.
Continue reading...Chinese environment official challenged to swim in polluted river
Widespread outrage against China's environmental issues that began when Beijing's air pollution hit record levels last month has spread to encompass another major public health threat: water pollution.
Last week, an eyeglass-retailer executive from Rui'an City, coastal Zhejiang province, offered the city's environmental protection chief Bao Zhenming more than £20,000 to take a 20-minute dip in a highly polluted local river. The entrepreneur, Jin Zengmin, posted the dare to his microblog beneath pictures showing the waterway overflowing with discarded aluminum cans, polystyrene boxes and paper lanterns. He blamed the river's industrial demise on dumping by a local rubber shoe factory.
Continue reading...After 30 years, is a GM food breakthrough finally here?
Scientists say they have seen the future of genetically modified foods and have concluded that it is orange or, more precisely, golden. Next year, golden rice – normal rice that has been genetically modified to provide vitamin A to counter blindness and other diseases in children in the developing world – could be given to farmers in the Philippines for planting in paddy fields.
Thirty years after scientists first revealed they had created the world's first GM crop, hopes that their potential to ease global malnutrition problems may be realised at last. Bangladesh and Indonesia have indicated they are ready to accept golden rice and other nations, including India, have also said that they are considering planting it.
Continue reading...Devastation on England's east coast after 1953's 'Big Flood' – in pictures
Florida’s inaugural Python Challenge hunt – in pictures
Stranded killer whales break free from Hudson Bay ice
A dozen killer whales, trapped and facing near-certain death in the frozen expanse of Canada's Hudson Bay, broke free on Thursday morning, to the vast relief of locals and many thousands monitoring their plight online.
Pictures of the whales clustered around a 10-foot hole in the ice that was their last source of oxygen had set off a desperate search for rescue options.
Continue reading...Why cycling in high-vis may be not as safe as you think | Peter Walker
A couple of years ago I took a condensed version of the training programme for cycle officers with London's City police, a process which began with my instructor following me to assess my riding as we pedalled through the busy streets. His verdict? Mainly fine, barring what he insisted on terming a "mistake" - that even in early afternoon on a bright April day I was not wearing some sort of high-visibility waistcoat or jacket.
High vis is a vexed subject for cyclists. Probably only helmets and light jumping cause more arguments. Ultimately, of course, what you wear on your bike is personal choice. Full Lycra gimp garb? Office clothes? Nothing at all? Go right ahead. Nonetheless, the debate merits an airing, for two reasons.
Continue reading...Overfishing causes Pacific bluefin tuna numbers to drop 96%
The bluefin tuna, which has been endangered for several years and has the misfortune to be prized by Japanese sushi lovers, has suffered a catastrophic decline in stocks in the Northern Pacific Ocean, of more than 96%, according to research published on Wednesday.
Equally concerning is the fact that about 90% of specimens currently fished are young fish that have not yet reproduced.
Continue reading...What I learned the day a dying whale spared my life | Paul Watson
The greatest gift that I have ever received is also my great and enduring curse.
It was June 1975 and I was a crew member on the first Greenpeace campaign to protect the whales. It was off the coast of northern California, 60 miles offshore. Before us, spread across the waters like some invading foreign armada, was the Soviet whaling fleet.
Continue reading...Australia adds new colour to temperature maps as heat soars
• Australian project simulates effects of runaway climate change
• Deadly heatwaves will be more frequent in coming decades
Global warming is turning the volume of extreme weather up, Spinal-Tap-style, to 11. The temperature forecast for next Monday by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology is so unprecedented - over 52C - that it has had to add a new colour to the top of its scale, a suitably incandescent purple.
Australia's highest recorded temperature is 50.7C, set in January 1960 in South Australia. The record for the hottest average day across the nation was set on Monday, at 40.3C, exceeding a 40-year-old record. "What makes this event quite exceptional is how widespread and intense it's been," said Aaron Coutts-Smith, the weather bureau's climate services manager. "We have been breaking records across all states and territories in Australia over the course of the event so far." Wildfires are raging across New South Wales and Tasmania.
Continue reading...Chasing Ice movie reveals largest iceberg break-up ever filmed - video
Your memories of the 1952 great smog
I remember as a nine year old in 1959 living in South Ealing barely being able to see to catch the bus to school and my dad having to be guided home by a policeman with a torch – he was on our road at the time but had become completely disorientated. The policeman had a torch and used that to read the road name and house number.
Continue reading...How to buy a 'green' Christmas tree
Leo Hickman writes:
Continue reading...60 years since the great smog of London - in pictures
Continue reading...
Pitcairn Islands' underwater treasures revealed - in pictures
Norway's plan to kill wolves explodes myth of environmental virtue | George Monbiot
One of the biggest political shocks of the past decade has been the transformation of Canada. Under the influence of the tar barons of Alberta, it has mutated from a country dominated by liberal, pacific, outward-looking values to a thuggish petro-state, ripping up both international treaties and the fabric of its own nation.
Prepare to be shocked again. Another country, whose green and humanitarian principles were just as well-established as Canada's, is undergoing a similar transformation. Again, it is not the people of the nation who have changed – in both cases they remain, as far as I can tell, as delightful as ever – but the dominant political class and its destruction of both national values and international image.
Continue reading...World's most expensive coffee tainted by 'horrific' civet abuse
It's the world's most expensive coffee and is made from faeces, but connoisseur drinkers should feel most squeamish about the "horrific" abuse that mars its production process, animal welfare groups have claimed.
Kopi Luwak, or civet coffee, is created mainly in Indonesia from beans of coffee berries that are fed to Asian palm civets – small, cat-like creatures found in south-east Asia.
Continue reading...