Feed aggregator

Expert says claims that EVs will ‘end the weekend can be put to bed’ by new figures

• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

Australian electric vehicle drivers are on average driving further than people with petrol vehicles as infrastructure improves, new statistics show.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics for the first time looked at how electric vehicle drivers use their cars and found that in the 12 months to 30 June 2020 they had travelled 69 million km.

Continue reading...

Scientists have carefully collected spawn bundles by moonlight in a bid to help save the reef

It’s nearing 10pm, and Dr Kate Quigley is still waiting. Using red lights to minimise disruption to the animals’ behaviour, she is inspecting corals.

Quigley, who studies reef restoration at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, is looking for “little red dots all over the surface”. A pimply appearance is a hallmark sign that a coral is about to spawn, releasing sperm and eggs in bundles resembling small bubbles.

Continue reading...

Researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science are hoping to breed corals that are more resilient to extreme heat events. The researchers collected hundreds of coral samples from the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef that have survived three mass bleaching events since 2016. The samples have to be collected before they spawn which occurs only once a year, several days after a full moon in spring. They then hope to breed these samples with corals from the southern part of the reef which are less heat tolerant

► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube

• Great Barrier Reef’s future dealt blow as study finds only 2% escaped coral bleaching

Continue reading...

A voluntary measure to reduce shipping's black carbon emissions in the Arctic was adopted at the UN's International Maritime Organisation (IMO) negotiations on Friday, a move welcomed by green groups as a modest step while other climate decisions for the sector were deferred. 

The incoming German cabinet is laying out plans to compensate its citizens for higher energy prices, in a move designed to enhance the acceptability of carbon pricing on consumer-facing sectors while safeguarding social justice.

The UK ETS will face its first regulatory test at the start of December as the market’s Cost Containment Mechanism (CCM) will be triggered this month, though sources are fairly divided as to if and how the government will ultimately intervene.

Material Focus says tech superseded by purchases on Black Friday and beyond can be donated or recycled

Black Friday and pre-Christmas spending sprees will create an e-waste mountain as 5m unwanted electrical items are binned or put in storage in Britain, a campaign group has warned.

The end-of-November sales event triggers the commercial run-up to Christmas and is followed days later by the Cyber Monday e-commerce frenzy, with retailers offering cut-price deals on a range of goods from mobile phones to laptops and smart speakers.

Continue reading...

Beneath the public discord about BLM, the climate and feminism, there is surprising consensus about how the world should be

Today’s widely accepted narrative is that we live in historically divided times. Voters are routinely described as “polarised”, while analysts compete to identify the essential schism of the age, whether this is metropolitan versus traditionalist, people versus democracy or anywheres versus somewheres.

For a third year running, however, the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project supports a different interpretation: that extreme views are given greater visibility by social media, which in turn creates an especially dynamic climate of opinion – in that, for example, it can change quickly – but one whose underlying forces are defined more by cohesion than division. Released annually by the Guardian, the Globalism Project is an international survey and the largest of its kind on the public relationship with globalisation, produced by YouGov in partnership with academics at Cambridge University. Its findings have consistently challenged popular stereotypes of public opinion in this so-called polarised age.

Continue reading...

Scientists are combing Ireland’s west coast for seaweed to feed to farm animals after research showed it could stop them belching out so much climate-heating methane

• Photographs by Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

Continue reading...

EUAs gave up all of Thursday's gains in the opening minutes of Friday's session as traders reacted in line with sharply lower energy markets to reports of a new Covid-19 variant emerging in South Africa.

Offset standard manager Verra has disassociated itself from an offset-backed blockchain venture that has driven the retirement millions of its VCS units in recent weeks, but also said it would seek to work with market participants to find solutions.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including sparring polar bears, hungry hedgehogs and a green cat

Continue reading...

Review of safety studies shows vast majority do not meet international standards for scientific validity

Only two out of a group of 11 industry studies given to European regulators in support of the re-approval of the main ingredient in Roundup herbicide are scientifically “reliable”, according to a new analysis of corporate-backed studies on the chemical glyphosate.

Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used herbicide and is not only the main ingredient in Roundup herbicide but also in hundreds of other products. It is extensively used by farmers in growing common food crops.

Continue reading...

Prices in China’s carbon market barely budged over the past week, as there is still a lot of uncertainty even with just three weeks left for 2019 and 2020 compliance.

Forest fires in Australia are burning more land across more of the year than ever before, as climate-linked fire weather worsens. Garry Cook, Honorary Fellow, CSIRO Andrew Dowdy, Principal Research Scientist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology Juergen Knauer, Research fellow, CSIRO Mick Meyer, Post Retirement Fellow, CSIRO Pep Canadell, Chief research scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; and Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO Peter Briggs, Scientific Programmer and Data Analyst, CSIRO Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Small groups of countries can band together in Climate Action Teams (CATs) under the Paris Agreement’s bilateral trading mechanism to drive high-quality economy-wide emissions reductions in seller countries to help all participants meet their climate targets at lower cost, researchers said Friday.

Plan to ‘unlock basins’ for domestic and export criticised as ‘out of sync’ with global trends and climate action

• Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing

The Morrison government’s latest plan to spark a “gas-led recovery” from the Covid pandemic and bolster gas supplies has been panned as out of step with market trends and at odds with a net zero 2050 goal.

The national gas infrastructure plan, released on Friday, calls for the development of at least one major new gas basin before 2030 to meet projected domestic and export needs. Opening up new gas fields, though, will also require additional pipelines.

Continue reading...

The public consultation period for assessment for export accreditation will be open until COB 31 December 2021.

Morrison government's policy chaos and its massive taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels is undermining Queensland's efforts to shift to renewables.

The post Morrison chaos and fossil fuel funding is undermining Queensland’s efforts to go green appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.