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How Brexit might create complications for the way food in the UK is labelled.

Without camera traps we would never be privy to two endangered species sparring in the remote Amazon rainforest.

As darkness descended over the Peruvian Amazon in 2006, my wife and I listened spellbound while our guide told us the grisly story of the jaguar and giant anteater.

Eyewitnesses, our guide insisted, had found the two foes dead together, embracing like lovers but in mutual destruction – the jaguar’s jaw still drooped around the anteater’s neck where it had pierced its prey’s artery and the anteater’s ten-centimeter-long claws still embedded in the big cat’s flanks. Later, after the spell – and liquor – wore off, I thought it was probably a tall tale, something to tell tourists after the sun sets over the world’s greatest jungle and you’ve all had a few too many. But an incredible new camera trap video proves I may have been wrong to doubt.

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High profile elders of the ALP calling for Australia to recognise the state of Palestine have been criticised for the timing of their remarks.

Blackwater Carr, Norfolk Once you are attuned to this avian tree propagation, it becomes a pleasure to find other instances

Although I am in my 50s I still take a child’s pleasure in climbing trees. This particular ascent, however, had purpose, because a hawthorn formerly trapped under a sallow thicket has been steadily freed by felling operations. One last large willow branch had to be severed before my overtopped bush could move into the sunlit uplands of the open glade that I have created around it.

There are four hawthorns and one small holly honoured in this fashion. They receive preferential treatment partly because they are rare on my patch, but also because I cherish the idea that they are bird sown. I like to imagine the scenario that explains their presence in a sallow jungle: the fruit-filled blackbird, perhaps, that returned night after night to roost and deposited the undigested hawthorn and holly seeds that it had eaten during the day. Out of its shower of creative manure there eventually arose my new bushes.

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A state by state guide on electricity prices.

The Princeton atomic physicist is no climate scientist – and he’s pushing the same old denier myths

William Happer is a physicist at Princeton University – one of those US academic institutions with brand recognition for academic excellence that travels the globe.

Happer is well known for his contrarian views (that’s the polite term) on human-caused climate change.

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ANU report shows that average electricity bills have increased less in renewables rich SA over last 10 years than in eastern coal states.

Frydenberg blames blackouts on wind and solar, and attributes no blame to network faults, storms, dud software or failing gas plants.

Queensland regulators suggest all battery storage devices be put inside separate enclosures, and not inside homes or garages. Installation costs could soar.

After an 11-year wait, Mount Isa Mines has released the official report into the lead contamination that has blighted the city for decades.

The report, commissioned by the mine’s owner, Glencore, and produced by researchers at the University of Queensland, says that household dust contaminated by airborne lead from the mining and smelting operations is the dominant source of the city’s exposure.

In some aspects this marks an important shift in the industry’s acceptance of the problem. Yet the report goes on to argue that Mount Isa residents are nevertheless responsible for keeping themselves, their houses and their children free from dust, thus putting the onus back on them to avoid exposure to the contamination.

A history of excuses

This is the latest iteration in the decade-long evolution of Mount Isa Mines’ arguments rebutting research that linked the contamination to its mining and smelting operations.

Back in 2007, when owned by Xstrata, Mount Isa Mines stated that the contamination was “naturally occurring”. We have previously termed this the “miner’s myth” – the idea that contamination surrounding a mine is a product of natural geology and weathering rather than the mining activity itself.

Before Mount Isa Mines was taken over by Glencore in 2013, the company admitted that Mount Isa was affected by “industrial mineralisation” (industry-speak for contamination from emissions), but also said that the contamination was partly due to natural sources in the city’s soils and rocks.

We and our colleagues have produced more than 20 studies documenting environmental contamination and its management in the Mount Isa region, dating back to 2005 when the Leichhardt River, which supplies drinking water to Mount Isa, was found to be contaminated with lead and other metals. Since then, we have detailed contamination in local sediments, water and soils, and used isotope fingerprinting to pinpoint the likely source; none of this research was mentioned in the new report.

Despite the welcome admission that the company is indeed contaminating Mount Isa, the report caveats this by saying that the risk of direct inhalation of lead emitted into the air is low. It states that exposure arises mainly when children are exposed to lead-contaminated surfaces in their homes – chiefly carpets. For Mount Isa families, these comments do not fully encapsulate the real challenges they face in protecting themselves and their families.

Passing the buck

The report offers the following advice to residents attempting to keep their exposure as low as possible:

• keep a “clean home environment”

• consider replacing carpets with timber or other hard floors, and clean them with phosphate-based agents

• wash childrens’ hands frequently and before meals, and encourage very young children not to suck non-food items

• wash all homegrown fruit and vegetables, and peel root vegetables, before cooking and/or eating.

The implied argument is essentially that, despite the contamination, if you do the right thing (such as keeping your house clean) there is no problem.

The obvious rebuttal to this is that if there were no industrial lead in the community, there would be no problem at all. The root cause of the issue is not the natural hand-to-mouth behaviours of children but the pervasive, persistent and permanent arsenic, cadmium and lead contamination that penetrates everything they touch: clothes, toys, food, floors and furnishings.

The rates of lead dust deposition are such that that people living closest to the smelters would have to wash their backyards and indoor surfaces several times a day to keep toxic dust levels within acceptable guidelines. Cleaning one’s house more than once a day, especially if working or looking after little children, is nearly impossible to maintain even over a few days, never mind a lifetime. While the advice to keep houses, hands and surfaces is not unreasonable in itself, the evidence suggests that it is little use in preventing lead exposure.

How serious is the exposure?

Mount Isa’s schoolchildren are performing well below the national average, according to standardised testing data from the first full year of school. Similar outcomes have been seen in Broken Hill, another of Australia’s major lead mining towns. Children in North Mount Isa, the area nearest the smelter, did worse than in other areas of the city.

Mount Isa’s children have an average blood lead level of about 35 parts per billion – about three times higher than normal. A 2015 study of children from Broken Hill and Port Pirie showed that a increase in blood lead from 10 to 100 parts per billion can reduce IQ by 13.5 points. Relevantly, low exposures cause proportionally more harm, which is why it is important for children to be protected from any lead contamination at all.

The report is clear that exposure happens as a result of contamination released into the air, which later settles as dust:

The major source of lead exposure is via ingestion in the community and is from air particulates (<250µm diameter) that are on the ground from deposition as fallout.

However, it goes on to say that the mine cannot be directly faulted for this, because the average rate of airborne emissions is within the guidelines outlined in its environmental permit. The report suggests that its modelled blood lead values do not match the actual values on children because they may be exposing themselves to extra lead by ingesting dirt, or through other sources such as lead-based paint, leaded petrol, or lead-acid batteries.

But this rationale fails to take into account the short-term spikes in emissions, which cause depositions that accumulate in soils and dusts, which in turn cause elevated blood lead exposures in children. The question could easily be answered by comparing the isotopic composition of lead from blood samples with that from the mine’s emissions. Disappointingly, the Glencore report did not undertake this critical analytical step to link environmental sources to actual exposures in children.

Another setback

Authorities have been aware of lead emissions from the Mount Isa smelter since the early 1930s. It was always a fanciful notion to suggest that emissions were not finding their way across the city and into homes, and that the contamination was somehow natural.

Intensive air monitoring in the community has continued for at least the past 40 years. Blood lead surveys and internal memos, along with environmental assessments from various government agencies, have provided significant prior knowledge of the nature, extent and cause of the problem. In 2010, Queensland’s chief medical officer Jeanette Young told The Australian newspaper:

I do know the cause; it is emissions being released from the mine. If you think where it is coming from, it is coming from emissions from the smelter that are going up in the air and they are depositing across the town fairly evenly.

Thus, in this sense, the latest study merely represents confirmation of what many people already knew.

Yet despite this overdue acknowledgement of the problem, the report implies that Glencore is not taking full ownership of the issue. The overriding message to Mount Isa’s residents is that it falls to them to keep themselves free from dangerous contamination.

In this sense, this is yet another setback in improving the living conditions for the community of Mount Isa, particularly young children who are the most vulnerable to the adverse and life-long effects of lead exposure.

Mark Patrick Taylor is affiliated with: Broken Hill Lead Reference Group. LEAD Group Inc. (Australia). NSW Government Lead Expert Working Group - Lead exposure management for suburbs around the former Boolaroo (NSW) Pasminco smelter site, Dec 2014–ongoing. Appointed by NSW Environment Minister to review NSW EPA’s management of contaminated sites, October 2015–ongoing. Macquarie’s VegeSafe project receives funding support via voluntary donations from the public and cash and in-kind support for a broader evaluation of the use and application of field portable XRFs OIympus Australia Pty Ltd and the National Measurement Institute, North Ryde, Sydney. In addition, MP Taylor has previously provided evidence-based expert report and advice for Slater and Gordon Lawyers in regard to their court action against Mount Isa Mines.

Chenyin Dong is funded by the international Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (iMQRES) and New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority scholarship (MQ9201600680).

Paul Harvey receives funding from a Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (MQRES).

Developers of solar tower and storage technology lays down challenge to proposed new "clean" coal plants, saying their technology wins on price, flexibility, fuel costs and emissions.

Malcolm Turnbull says technology ‘mature and cost-effective’ as Australian Renewable Energy Agency grant announced

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) has approved a $450,000 grant to EnergyAustralia to investigate a pumped hydro energy storage project off South Australia as the state’s energy mix continues to cause a political storm.

The grant will cover a feasibility study into a Spencer Gulf project that the company says has a capacity to produce about 100 megawatts (MW) of electricity with six-to-eight hours of storage.

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In the second part of the series on the crisis besetting the NEM in eastern Australia, Mike looks at the tightening balance of supply and demand.

EnergyAustralia, Arup Group and Melbourne Energy Institute brief govt on plans for pumped seawater energy storage plant in SA.

Francis echoes growing body of international law and standards on the right to ‘prior and informed consent’

In the 15th century papal bulls promoted and provided legal justification for the conquest and theft of indigenous peoples’ lands and resources worldwide - the consequences of which are still being felt today. The right to conquest in one such bull, the Romanus Pontifex, issued in the 1450s when Nicholas V was the Pope, was granted in perpetuity.

How times have changed. Last week, over 560 years later, Francis, the first Pope from Latin America, struck a rather different note - for indigenous peoples around the world, for land rights that mean something in practice, for better environmental stewardship. He said publicly that indigenous peoples have the right to “prior and informed consent.” In other words, nothing should happen on - or impact - their land, territories and resources unless they agree to it.

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The Andrews Labor Government has launched a new $2 million program to support the development of waste to energy technologies.

When it comes to the weather, research suggests people often trust the evidence of their own eyes rather than expert opinion

Why do so many people remain sceptical about climate change when the evidence for it seems so obvious? One recent study may offer an interesting clue, because American scientists stood the argument on its head and looked at places across the globe that will probably enjoy more pleasant weather with climate change.

For Britain, northern Europe and North America there will be more days of mild weather, defined as 18 to 30C, with low humidity and little rain – the sort of weather which by most people’s accounts would be most agreeable. Parts of southern England, for example, will get an extra 10 to 15 days of mild weather a year by the end of this century. It’s not entirely good news, because the mild days will tend to come in spring and autumn, while the summers will grow hotter and more humid.

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The federal Labor Party has sought to simplify its climate change policy. Any suggestion of expanding the Renewable Energy Target has been dropped. But there is debate over whether the new policy is actually any more straightforward as a result.

One thing Labor did confirm is its support for an emissions intensity scheme (EIS) as its central climate change policy for the electricity sector. This adds clarity to the position the party took to the 2016 election and could conceivably remove the need for a prescribed renewable energy target anyway.

An EIS effectively gives electricity generators a limit on how much carbon dioxide they can emit for each unit of electricity they produce. Power stations that exceed the baseline have to buy permits for the extra CO₂ they emit. Power stations with emissions intensities below the baseline create permits that they can sell.

An EIS increases the cost of producing electricity from emissions-intensive sources such as coal generation, while reducing the relative cost of less polluting energy sources such as renewables. The theory is that this cost differential will help to drive a switch from high-emission to low-emission sources of electricity.

The pros and cons of an EIS, compared with other forms of carbon pricing, have been debated for years. But two things are clear.

First, an EIS with bipartisan support would provide the stable carbon policy that the electricity sector needs. The sector would be able to invest with more confidence, thus contributing to security of supply into the future.

Second, an EIS would limit the upward pressure on electricity prices, for the time being at least.

These reasons explain why there was a brief groundswell of bipartisan support for an EIS in 2016, until the Turnbull government explicitly ruled it out in December.

Moving targets

Another consideration is whether, with the right policy, there will be any need for firm renewable energy targets. This may help to explain Labor’s decision to rule out enlarging the existing scheme or extending it beyond 2020.

If we had a clear policy to reduce emissions at lowest cost, whether in the form of an EIS or some other scheme, renewable energy would naturally increase to whatever level is most economically efficient under those policy settings. Whether this reaches 50% or any other level would be determined by the overall emissions-reduction target and the relative costs of various green energy technologies.

In this scenario, a separately mandated renewable energy target would be simply unnecessary and would probably just add costs with no extra environmental benefit. Note that this reasoning would apply to state-based renewable energy policies, which have become a political football amid South Australia’s recent tribulations over energy security.

An EIS is also “technology agnostic”: power companies would be free to pursue whatever technology makes the most economic sense to them. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull explicitly endorsed this idea earlier this month.

Finally, an EIS would integrate well with the National Electricity Market, a priority endorsed by the COAG Energy Council of federal, state and territory energy ministers. State and territory governments may find this an attractive, nationally consistent alternative that they could support.

Strengths and weaknesses

A 2016 Grattan Institute report found that an EIS could be a practical step on a pathway from the current policy mess towards a credible energy policy. Yet an EIS has its weaknesses, and some of Labor’s reported claims for such a scheme will be tested.

In the short term, electricity prices would indeed rise, although not as much as under a cap-and-trade carbon scheme. It is naive to expect that any emissions-reduction target (either the Coalition’s 26-28% or Labor’s 45%) can be met without higher electricity costs.

Another difficulty Labor will have to confront is that setting the initial emission intensity baseline and future reductions would be tricky. The verdict of the Finkel Review, which is assessing the security of the national electricity market under climate change policies, will also be crucial.

Despite media reports to the contrary, Chief Scientist Alan Finkel and his panel have not recommended an EIS. Their preliminary report drew on earlier reports noting the advantages of an EIS over an extended renewable energy target or regulated closure of fossil-fuelled power stations, but also the fact that cap-and-trade would be cheaper to implement.

Labor has this week moved towards a credible climate change policy, although it still has work to do and its 45% emissions-reduction target will still be criticised as too ambitious. Meanwhile, we’re unlikely to know the Coalition government’s full policy until after it completes the 2017 Climate Change Policy Review and receives the Finkel Review’s final report.

Australians can only hope that we are starting to see the beginnings of the common policy ground that investors and electricity consumers alike so urgently need.

Tony Wood holds shares in energy and resources companies through his superannuation fund.

Woolly mammoths | Transport investment | Baby boomers | Flat cakes | Weetabix

Can it be right to bring back the mammoth (Report, 17 February)? It disappeared at the beginning of this man-made age of extinction. For it to be returned towards its end, with declining populations of elephants and rhinos, is irony itself. It also highlights that technology is now so poorly controlled that the march of scientific ability will continue to outpace its ethics. Is a world of super-intelligent robots and their woolly mammoth pets really the direction to be going in?
Dr Colin Bannon
Crapstone, Devon

• Fun though it might be to see a woolly mammoth in the 21st century, I question the mammoth function in combating global warming. George Church says: “They keep the tundra from thawing by punching through snow and allowing cold air to come in,” and “In the summer they knock down trees and help the grass grow.” Couldn’t a bloke in a JCB do that? And a lot more cheaply, I imagine.
Francis Blake
London

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A super-slippery coating for bottles could make getting liquids out much easier, US scientists say.