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Ministers accused of ignoring scientists’ recommendations as UK fleets allowed to catch more cod, haddock and sole

British fishing fleets will be allowed to catch greater quantities of cod, haddock and sole next year, after Europe’s ministers approved a new fishing quota that will cheer fish and chip shops but has alarmed scientists concerned over dwindling stocks.

The European Union’s fisheries council reached an agreement in the early hours of Wednesday morning, in what may be one of the last such quota divisions in which the UK takes part if supporters of a hard Brexit have their way.

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Footprints made by early humans millions of years ago have been uncovered in Tanzania.

Diesel filters cost £1,000 to replace so many garages exploit legal loophole by removing filter letting cars pump out toxic particles

The rogue practice of removing vital pollution filters from the exhausts of diesel vehicles has suffered a blow with the Advertising Standards Agency for the first time banning an advert for the service.

However the number of filterless cars on UK roads, pumping out high levels of toxic particles, remains unknown and air pollution campaigners say the government must investigate and then crack down on the shady practice.

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Wenlock Edge, Shropshire I like these muddy colours in the landscape, but the buzzard sees them far more intensely

A buzzard perches on the high branch of a leafless tree. With its back to me, it looks out on the same scene, but do we see the same thing? I see through the trees to fields chemically enhanced with the vivid greens of new crops. The old landscape under this December sky is a brown study: a mood induced by hedges, ash keys, muddy paths, the woods bare and misty-headed with reddish and purple-brown buds. The subtlety of these colours has a deepening beauty as winter thickens across the land.

This buzzard is a harlequin of browns, greys and whites, and it has been suggested that because of this plumage, colour is relatively unimportant to these predators. I’m always impressed when I see buzzards soaring and they catch the light in the silvery feathers under their wings and their markings glow like bronze and polished wood. But this display is for the benefit of other buzzards, not for me.

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Application on ecological sustainability - call for public comments open from 15 December 2016 - 20 January 2017

Application on ecological sustainability - call for public comments open from 15 December 2016 - 20 January 2017

NSW and Queensland - which still own their networks - block reforms that could lower network costs. Meanwhile, Finkel sings praises of pumped hydro and household battery storage to COAG energy ministers.

The AEMC's latest report again takes the breath away for the depth of its ignorance. In the case of wind and solar, it is becoming increasingly obvious that it has no idea about technology costs.

Elecnor's 25MW Barcaldine Solar Farm in central-western Queensland is feeding electricity into the grid – two months ahead of schedule.

WA wave energy developer says its mWave technology is attracting strong interest in Europe, where the company has plans to roll out a series of commercial-scale wave farms, starting in Portugal.

The growth in global production of greenhouse gases has decelerated over the past few years, with 2015 seeing the first actual reduction, of 0.1% compared to 2014 levels.

President-elect Trump on rounds out a potential dream team of anti-environment cabinet members with the chief executive officer of ExxonMobil.

This week, Qantas announced that passengers will soon be able to fly non-stop between Perth and London – the first ever air service to link Australia and Europe directly. Seats on the new route will go on sale in April 2017, with flights starting in March 2018.

It’s a journey made possible by the technological advancements of long-haul aircraft – in this case, the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner.

The Dreamliner (with capacity to carry 236 passengers) will take 17 hours to complete the 14,498-kilometre journey. It’s the longest Qantas route and the third-longest passenger flight in the world.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce described the announcement as a watershed for travel, tourism and trade. But while the travel opportunities are indeed potentially game-changing, the environmental benefits are less so.

The non-stop footprint

Of course, non-stop flights are generally better for the environment than flights that stop en route. Flying a long-haul route non-stop produces less greenhouse gas than stopping along the way, largely because the aircraft can take a more direct route.

The additional fuel needed to carry the weight of extra fuel required for ultra long-haul flights does, however, contribute to the overall emissions of the flight (and may very well lead to an increased cost to passengers).

Fuel efficiency is crucial, because aviation fuel (kerosene) is the primary source of aviation emissions. Researchers have calculated that total aviation emissions in 2006 were 630 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. By 2050, those emissions are projected to be between 1 billion and 3.1 billion tonnes, depending on the growth in air traffic and the success of efforts to reduce emissions through fuel effiency, biofuels and offsetting.

A flight’s environmental impact grows exponentially whenever the aircraft is required to make a stop. During take-off, more fuel is consumed (and more emissions produced) than at any other stage of the flight. On short flights, take-off accounts for as much as 25% of total fuel consumption.

Fuel efficiency from Perth to London

So is the advent of super-range passenger aircraft the solution to the aviation emissions problem?

The rate of fuel consumption varies widely between aircraft models, ranges and manufacturers; fuel efficiency even varies between aircraft of the same model, depending on the condition, age and use of the aircraft and its engines.

Boeing estimates that its 787 family “uses 20-25% less fuel on a per passenger basis than the airplanes they replace”.

The 787-9 Dreamliner itself offers a range of efficiencies in terms of kilometres travelled and stops required, while carrying more passengers and cargo than its predecessor, the 787-8.

So, as noted above, the Perth-to-London non-stop route will generate fewer greenhouse emissions than the most direct existing routes, which stop in various Middle Eastern locations including Dubai and Doha.

But how much of an impact will this have on the reduction of aviation emissions? Not very much.

Short stuff

The availability of super-long routes does nothing to curb the ongoing expansion of short-haul aviation. For instance, roughly half of all flights within the European Union are shorter than 500km, while hundreds of short-haul routes are available in the United States. These routes typically fall a long way short of the most fuel-efficient flight length, which has been estimated at 4,300km – or three-quarters of the way from London to New York.

Bear in mind that air travel is the most carbon-intensive form of travel. Regardless of what the aviation industry achieves in terms of emission reductions, these will be overwhelmed by its predicted growth.

This growth will outweigh the improvements delivered even by dramatic measures to cut emissions. What’s more, those measures are a still long way off – and if you’ll pardon the pun, improving aviation’s environmental impact will be a long haul.

Rebecca Johnston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Report shows 4,143MW solar PV installed in US in Q3 2016, at rate of 1MW every 32 minutes. Q4 on track to beat record again.

The 20 megawatt plant in Barcaldine is one of first in the country to be funded by Australian Renewable Energy Agency

Queensland’s largest operating solar farm has plugged into the national electricity grid and is set to generate enough power for almost 10,000 households by the end of 2016.

The Barcaldine remote community solar farm, in the state’s central west outback, connected to the national electricity market on Wednesday, more than a month ahead of schedule.

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Habitat loss is the most insidious of all threats facing land-living wildlife, and protected areas like national parks are one of the best ways to combat the destruction. But in research published recently in Conversation Letters, we show that in some places the pace of protected areas isn’t keeping up with the losses.

We found that since 1992, an area of natural habitat two-thirds the size of Australia has been converted to human use (such as farms, logging or cities). Half of the world’s land area is now dominated by humans.

When we looked at specific habitats (or “ecoregions”), we found that in almost half of them, more habitat has been lost than has been protected. Of developed nations, Australia is performing the worst.

This week, 196 signatory nations of the Convention of Biological Diversity, including Australia, are meeting in Cancun, Mexico, to discuss their progress towards averting the current biodiversity crisis.

While topics will vary widely from dealing with climate change, invasive species and illegal wildlife trade, a chief issue will likely be one that has been central to the convention since its ratification at Rio in 1992: how best to deal with habitat loss.

The view from space

Human activity affects the planet on a scale so vast it can be easily seen from space. Whether it’s deforestation in the Amazon, urban development in Asia, or mining in the Arctic, humans have modified Earth’s land area dramatically.

For almost all wild species on Earth, once the places they live have been dramatically altered, they are unable to survive in the long term. The number of vertebrate species extinctions has been 53 times higher than normal since 1900, and the majority of them are associated with direct habitat loss.

The best tool we have at our disposal to combat habitat loss, alongside strict land regulation, is the creation of large, well-connected protected areas, especially in places that are likely to be at risk of future destruction.

When well managed and strategically placed, protected areas work at protecting biodiversity from destructive actives such as agriculture, mining and urbanisation.

In the two and a half decades since the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992, there has been a dramatic increase in protected areas. Now 15% of the land is placed under protection - an area greater than South and Central America combined.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that it may not be enough.

Half Earth

Using the latest update of the global human footprint, we discovered that while 75% of the world has a clear human footprint, more than 50% of the world’s land area has been significantly converted to human dominated land uses.

The degree of degradation varies across the major ecosystems. Some areas such as the tundra have been only slightly modified. Other ecosystems have been decimated: 90% of mangroves and sub-tropical forests have been converted to human uses.

Concerningly, since the convention was ratified in 1992, an extra 4.5 million square kilometres of land has been converted from natural habitat to human land uses. And much of this loss occurred in areas that already faced considerable losses in the past.

As a consequence, almost half of the world’s 800 ecoregions – those places that have distinct animal and plant communities – should be classified at very high risk, where 25 times more land has been converted than protected.

Forty-one of these ecoregions are in crisis, where humans converted more than 10% of the little remaining habitat over the past two decades and there is almost nothing left to protect.

41 of the world’s ecoregions are in crisis.

These crisis ecoregions are concentrated in Southeast Asia (Indonesia and Papua New Guinea), and Africa (Madagascar, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola). It’s crucial that we establish protected areas in these places, but conflict and corruption make them some of the hardest places for conservation to work.

Australia: world expert in land clearing

While crisis ecoregions are mostly confined to the developing world, arguably the most concerning outcome of our research is that in many developed countries, like the United States and Canada, the proportion of protected areas to habitat loss is slipping.

And Australia is the worst performing developed nation of them all. Habitat loss greatly outpaced protection in 20 of Australia’s most wildlife-rich ecoregions. The most threatened ecoregions now include savannas in the southeast and southwest of Australia, and southeast temperate forest ecosystems.

Our analysis shows massive habitat loss occurred in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia during the past two decades, driven by land clearing for pasture, agriculture and urbanisation.

Australia has extremely high land-clearing rates and is the only developed nation now containing a deforestation front.

Arguably, things will continue to get worse without land-clearing law reform, but this is challenging, as shown by the recent failure of Queensland’s vegetation law changes and the poor vegetation-offset reforms in New South Wales.

Time for global action

As nations meet in Mexico to discuss their progress towards the Convention of Biological Diversity’s 2020 strategic plan, it is now time for them to undertake a full, frank and honest assessment on how things are progressing.

This means recognising that the current situation, where nations only report on protected area expansion, clearly tells half the story – and it is jeopardising the chance for halting the biodiversity crisis.

Australia must take the lead. It is time for this nation – one of the most wildlife-rich in the developed world - to account fully for both conservation gains and losses, and as such formally report on how much habitat is being destroyed. This is the necessary first step to identify ways to mitigate these losses and prioritise conservation actions in those regions that are at risk.

At the same time, all nations must recognise that the integrity of habitat within existing protected areas must be maintained, especially in those areas that contain imperilled species. Allowing activities which cause habitat loss to occur in protected areas is a backwards step for conservation, and governments must enforce their own environmental policies to stop this.

A good example is Springvale Station in Queensland, where mining is being considered within a newly purchased protected area, clearly threatening its biodiversity.

We need to change how we report on, and deal with, habitat loss, otherwise the mission of the convention - to stop the global extinction crisis – will fail.

James Watson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is also the Director of Science and Research Initiative at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Eve McDonald-Madden receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Environment Science Program.

Richard Fuller receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Environment Science Program.

James Allan, Kendall Jones, and Moreno Di Marco do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

General Motors says first units handed over to customers in Fremont, California, where rival Tesla is scheduled to start producing budget Model 3 in 2017

General Motors has delivered its first Chevrolet Bolt electric cars to three customers in Fremont, California, home to rival electric automaker Tesla’s assembly plant.

This allows the Detroit automaker to claim first place in the race to deliver an electric car that can run for more than 200 miles on a charge and has a starting price below $40,000. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised its entry in this new segment, the Model 3, will go into production in July.

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Ecofys and Edge Environment team up, bringing ground-breaking metrics to Australian businesses

Scientists have had a remarkable close-up encounter with a gigantic underwater avalanche off the coast of California.

Nuclear schmoozing | Netherlands geography | Poultry confinement | Girls and toys | The rural elite

The “Orwellian” schmoozing of young people in schools along the proposed HS2 route (Report, 12 December) pales into insignificance alongside the efforts of the nuclear industry to ingratiate itself with the community around the Magnox nuclear power station at Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex. Some 20 or more years ago Girl Guides staged an enrolment ceremony while standing on the pile cap of the then active nuclear reactor.
Val Mainwood
Wivenhoe, Essex

• The inhabitants of Mata Hari’s home city would not be pleased to read that they live in “Friesland, Holland” (Mother, dancer, wife, spy, G2, 6 December). Friesland, one of the 12 provinces of the Netherlands, has its own language, literature and proud history. North and South Holland are merely two other provinces of the same country. My Frisian husband, having lived in London for over 40 years, recently acquired a second passport. He became a British citizen – not an English one. It’s pretty much the same difference.
Liz Barnes
London

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