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Cars under flood water in Bristol – video

The Guardian - Mon, 2016-11-21 22:54

Amateur footage shows cars under flood water in Bristol. Facebook user Bobbie Massiah posted the video on Monday morning saying it was of Whitchurch Lane in Hartcliffe. A large swath of south-west Britain is coping with flooding and high winds as another block of torrential rain swept into Britain on the heels of Storm Angus

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Beijing bans highly polluting cars during smog alerts

The Guardian - Mon, 2016-11-21 21:45

From next year, restrictions will be placed on older cars whenever air-quality warnings have been issued, say officials

Next year, Beijing will ban highly polluting old cars from being driven whenever air-quality alerts are issued in the city or neighbouring regions, according to its environmental protection bureau.

China has adopted various measures over the years to reduce the smog shrouding many of the country’s northern cities in winter, causing hazardous traffic conditions and disrupting daily life.

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Global energy futures: India under the spotlight

ABC Environment - Mon, 2016-11-21 21:20
Indian coal company Adani is investing heavily in solar as are all the power companies in India with the Energy Minister planning to stop importing coal into India by 2020. What does this mean for Adani's coal investments in Australia?
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Groups working with Republicans on climate are discouraged, but see a glimmer of hope | Dana Nuccitelli

The Guardian - Mon, 2016-11-21 21:00

The 2016 US election was a bad sign for climate policy, but galvanized grassroots organizations

Because America is entirely governed by two political parties, passage of legislation usually requires bipartisan support in US Congress. However, the Republican Party is the only major political party in the world that denies the need to tackle climate change. Therefore, for several years any hope of passing climate legislation hinged upon breaking through the near-universal opposition among Republican legislators. A number of groups have focused on doing just that.

In the wake of the 2016 US election results, I contacted these groups to assess their feelings about the prospects of US government action on climate change in the near future. The general sentiment was understandably one of discouraged pessimism, but each group identified glimmers of hope.

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Olive killer disease arrives on Mallorca

BBC - Mon, 2016-11-21 20:36
A disease posing a "very serious threat" to the EU's olive industry is recorded on the Spanish island of Mallorca for the first time.
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Theresa May wants post-Brexit UK at 'cutting edge'

BBC - Mon, 2016-11-21 18:26
The PM is to pledge an extra £2bn a year for scientific research and development projects in the UK.
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Kuwait: A Desert on Fire, by Sebastião Salgado

The Guardian - Mon, 2016-11-21 17:00

As Iraq’s oilfields burn as retreating Isis forces set them on fire, Sebastião Salgado has published a book of his photographs taken in 1991 documenting a similar conflagration as Saddam Hussein’s forces set alight oil wells in Kuwait

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No room for bikes: how one street shows the UK-wide failure over cycling

The Guardian - Mon, 2016-11-21 17:00

The fate of my small, south London road is a microcosm of the ways towns and cities are still planned around cars, not humans

This blog is sometimes criticised for focusing too much on events in London. At risk of seeming more parochial still, I’m about to write about my own London street. But stay with me: the failings in my part of SE5 contain lessons for the wider lack of safe cycling across the whole country.

Champion Hill, close to Camberwell in south-east London, is a classic rat run – a narrow and not-very-long residential street which has the misfortune to be on a shortcut between major routes, and is thus awash with traffic several times a day.

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UK government not funding natural flood prevention methods

The Guardian - Mon, 2016-11-21 16:00

Despite government support for measures such as planting trees to stop floods, no funds have yet been been allocated

Natural ways of preventing flooding such as planting trees have no government funding despite ministers repeatedly backing the idea, according to a freedom of information request by Friends of the Earth.

Almost a year since devastating floods hits swathes of northern Britain, environment secretary, Andrea Leadsom, and floods minister, Thérèse Coffey, have both recently supported the approach, which aims to slow the flow of water off hills and reduce peak levels.

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High on a Dorset heath, where wind rattles the heather

The Guardian - Mon, 2016-11-21 15:30

Hardown Hill, Dorset I skirt the old quarry workings, swamped in spring with bluebells and now swathed with rusty bracken

Old Bottom, as the Marshwood Vale was once called, has filled with autumn rain. Walking means slogging, ankle deep or more, through cold, claggy clay, navigating puddles of yellow water overhung with dripping trees. Time to escape the woods for higher, drier ground.

Hardown Hill is one of a circle of hills and forts ringing the vale. Steep sides of deciduous woodland and gaps of rough pasture run up to a flat top of heath where nightjars call in summer. The summit is open, unfenced common land, home to sand lizards and occasionally Dartford warblers. Villagers used to cut the heath for fuel. Gorse was particularly prized in bread ovens because it burned quick and hot before disintegrating into an insignificant pile of fine ash. In Dorset dialect, gorse was furze, pronounced “vurze”, just as fox was “varx”.

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Drones will feed the world : Analyst

ABC Environment - Mon, 2016-11-21 15:06
In China, the drone industry has expressed particular interest in how Unmanned Aerial Vehicles can be used to grow food and maintain crops.  
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Delivering strong environmental outcomes through better practice regulation

Department of the Environment - Mon, 2016-11-21 14:07
The Department administers a diverse range of legislation to protect the environment, support sustainable development, give effect to obligations under international conventions and treaties, and implement specific national priorities.
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Saving the pangolin: giant rats trained to sniff out world's most trafficked mammal

The Guardian - Mon, 2016-11-21 13:49

Rats’ agility and keen sense of smell will one day be used to reach parts of shipping containers that sniffer dogs cannot reach

The pangolin – the world’s most heavily trafficked mammal – might have a new champion: rats that will be trained to sniff out trafficked pangolin parts in shipments heading from Africa to Asia.

Ten to 15 African giant pouched rats are being reared in Tanzania to detect pungent pangolin remains as well as smuggled hardwood timber. They are just a few weeks old and most are still with their mothers.

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Eco Energy secures planning consent for second solar farm in Australia

RenewEconomy - Mon, 2016-11-21 13:01
Eco Energy World secures 2nd solar farm approval in Queensland; both projects likely to use "merchant" funding model.
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Know your NEM: Post-Trump rate spike making renewable projects more costly

RenewEconomy - Mon, 2016-11-21 12:49
Gas price jump pushing up electricity prices in Queensland, while post-Trump spike in bond rates will push up financing costs for renewable energy projects.
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Marrakech COP22: Climate deal emerges stronger from Trump shock, but plenty to do

RenewEconomy - Mon, 2016-11-21 12:44
The 2016 Marrakech Climate Summit finished strongly, despite the election of President Trump, with a multitude of commitments and actions.
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CIT students head to France to study renewable energy

RenewEconomy - Mon, 2016-11-21 12:40
Ten Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) students will travel to Paris in 2017 to study advances in renewable energy.
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Trump as president will be little different to Abbott (or Turnbull) as PM

RenewEconomy - Mon, 2016-11-21 12:26
Trump's position on clean energy and climate change is little different to that of Tony Abbott's, whose policies have been unchanged by Malcolm Turnbull. But Trump's success has unleashed a new push from the lunar right that will make any progress incredibly hard to achieve.
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Revive Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone: GCL-SI to Build PV Plant in Ukraine

RenewEconomy - Mon, 2016-11-21 12:05
The Ukrainian government now aims to give a new renewable life to the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
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Why won’t Australia ratify an international deal to cut mercury pollution?

RenewEconomy - Mon, 2016-11-21 12:05
Despite signing in 2013, Australia has still not ratified the UN’s Minamata Convention on Mercury.
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