Feed aggregator
Climate change to drive migration from island homes sooner than thought
Low-lying atolls around the world will be overtaken by sea-level rises within a few decades, according to a new study
Hundreds of thousands of people will be forced from their homes on low-lying islands in the next few decades by sea-level rises and the contamination of fresh drinking water sources, scientists have warned.
A study by researchers at the US Geological Survey (USGS), the Deltares Institute in the Netherlands and Hawaii University has found that many small islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans will be uninhabitable for humans by the middle of this century. That is much earlier than previously thought.
Continue reading...'Ground-breaking' galaxy collision detected
Gaia telescope's 'book of the heavens' takes shape
Swedish archaeologists reveal 5th Century massacre at Sandby borg
France says carbon prices must rise faster as some EU nations eye higher ambition coalition
EU govts rake in the cash as monthly carbon sales top €1 billion
Macron to US Congress: 'There is no Planet B'
An unusually late start to the season for USA's Tornado Alley
Energy exchange EEX’s European CO2 trading revenues jump as volumes soar
Galileo: UK plan to launch rival to EU sat-nav system
Senior Manager, Mapping and Earth Observation, Ecometrica – Edinburgh
EU Market: EUAs climb to 3-day high on stronger auction signals
China, EU launch second phase of emissions trading co-operation
Climate Crisis – Saving landscapes?
America's best scientists stood up to the Trump administration | John Abraham
Over 600 NAS members called out ‘the Trump Administration’s denigration of scientific expertise’
Anyone who has read this column over the past five years knows that I tend to be unfettered in my criticism of people who lie and distort climate science to further their political ideologies. At the same time, I believe that the majority of climate sceptics are not willfully wishing to damage this precious Earth that we call home. I believe that there are common areas we can all agree on to take meaningful action to protect the Earth’s environment and build a new energy future; even for people who do not understand climate change or climate science.
But with the election of Donald Trump and his ushering in people who are openly hostile to the planet and future generations, my position has been strained (to say the least). We have had more than a year to observe President Trump’s efforts to roll back Obama-era regulations on pollution from coal plants, weaken pollution standards for motor vehicles, become the only country in the world to reject the Paris climate accord, and gut our climate science budget so that we become blind to what is actually happening.
Hey millennials, don’t fall for Shell’s pop star PR | Graham Readfearn
Royal Dutch Shell wants to cut its own climate emissions in half by 2050 - a target wiped out by burning one month’s worth of their fossil fuels
If you’re a millennial, the global oil and gas company Shell will have been most pleased if you’d seen one their #makethefuture music videos.
Twice now Shell have lined up superstars including Jennifer Hudson, Pixie Lott and Yemi Alade to sing about solar panels, hydrogen cars, clean cooking stoves and lights powered by a bag of rocks and gravity.
Continue reading...UK needs 6,000 shale gas wells to fill 50% of imports, study says
Friends of the Earth says countryside would be industrialised with a new well fracked daily until 2035
More than 6,000 shale gas wells would be needed to replace half the UK’s gas imports over a 15-year period, according to a new report.
The nascent UK fracking industry has argued that growing reliance on gas from Norway and Qatar necessitates developing home-produced supplies in addition to North Sea output.
Continue reading...Foreign Office climate staff cut by 25% under Boris Johnson
Exclusive: The prime minister says the UK leads the world on climate action, but Foreign Office officials dedicated to the issue have plunged since 2016
The number of full-time officials dedicated to climate change in the Foreign Office has dropped by almost 25% in the two years since Boris Johnson became foreign secretary, according to data released under freedom of information (FoI) rules.
Johnson has also failed to mention climate change in any official speech since he took the office, in marked contrast to his two predecessors.
Continue reading...Country diary: a toad dressed to a-wooing go
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: Toads can control their skin tone and this soft yellowishness showed it was ready to ‘a-wooing go’
“How could a purse / squeeze under the rickety door and sit, / full of satisfaction, in a man’s house?” wrote the poet Norman MacCaig in Toad. This toad, a soft yellow-brown and ornamentally purse-like, had come through the back door somehow and was squatting defiantly on quarry tiles. It was seeking asylum from an extraordinarily brilliant morning, unfamiliar heat and ultraviolet light that the weather forecast said was moderate but to toadskin was extreme radiation. It did not seem full of satisfaction to me but then Bufo bufo’s narrowing eyes with horizontal pupils and that broad enigmatic smile may be mistaken for smugness.
The place in the toad’s head that myth says contains a jewel is hidden by an inscrutable mask that is somewhere between divine and reprobate. The bulging paratoid glands on its head, the warty skin excrescences that secrete toxins, and the sumo stance, all suggest repulsion but its soft yellowishness is the colour of fading daffs, with hints of celandine, primrose, agate and potting sand. Toads can control their skin tone and this was being dressed to “a-wooing go”.
Continue reading...