Feed aggregator

Sewage spill monitors extend reach to cover all England

BBC - Sat, 2023-12-30 10:31
Overflows are only meant to spill sewage after heavy rain, but last year saw 1.75 million hours of discharges
Categories: Around The Web

Producers, financial players amass V24 carbon allowances across WCI and RGGI markets

Carbon Pulse - Sat, 2023-12-30 09:38
Regulated parties and speculators built up 2024 vintage net holdings of California Carbon Allowances (CCAs) and RGGI allowances (RGAs) into the last trading week of 2023, while the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) did not report Washington allowance (WCA) positions in data published Friday.
Categories: Around The Web

World will look back at 2023 as year ‘humanity exposed its inability to tackle climate crisis’, scientists warn

The Guardian - Sat, 2023-12-30 00:26

Disastrous events included flash flooding in Africa and wildfires in Europe and North America

The hottest year in recorded history casts doubts on humanity’s ability to deal with a climate crisis of its own making, senior scientists have said.

As historically high temperatures continued to be registered in many parts of the world in late December, the former Nasa scientist James Hansen told the Guardian that 2023 would be remembered as the moment when failures became apparent.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

‘Jewel of Britain’s nature crown’: Plan to restore rainforest welcomed by campaigners

The Guardian - Fri, 2023-12-29 18:00

Conservationists say government strategy to recover England’s degraded temperate rainforest is a good start but want a target to double the area by 2050

Conservationists have praised the launch of a new government strategy to revive the remaining fragments of the vast temperate rainforests that were once “one of the jewels of Britain’s nature crown”.

Temperate rainforest, also known as Atlantic woodland or Celtic rainforest, once covered most of western Britain and Ireland. The archipelago’s wet, mild conditions are ideal for lichens, mosses and liverworts. But centuries of destruction have meant that only small, isolated pockets remain.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

The week in wildlife – in pictures: airborne deer, cuddling macaques and Gaza gazelles

The Guardian - Fri, 2023-12-29 18:00

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Feeding frenzies and resurgent glowworms among UK wildlife highlights in 2023

The Guardian - Fri, 2023-12-29 16:00

Conservationists celebrated findings but warned that species and habitats are in overall decline in Britain

Spectacular feeding frenzies of Atlantic bluefin tuna, surging numbers of glowworms, and a record-breaking breeding season for pied flycatchers are among the British wildlife highlights of 2023.

But conservationists warned that overall wildlife continued to decline, with one in six species at risk of extinction – and that wildlife was being challenged in new ways by global heating, disease and other destructive human activities.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Everything politicians tell you about immigration is wrong. This is how it actually works | Hein de Haas

The Guardian - Fri, 2023-12-29 16:00

Escaping poverty, violence and the climate crisis are factors, but the main driver is rich societies demanding cheap labour

We seem to be living in times of unprecedented mass migration. Images of people from Africa crammed into unseaworthy boats desperately trying to cross the Mediterranean, asylum seekers crossing the Channel into Britain, and “caravans” of migrants trying to reach the Mexico-US border all seem to confirm fears that global migration is spinning out of control.

A toxic combination of poverty, inequality, violence, oppression, climate breakdown and population growth appear to be pushing growing numbers of people from Africa, Asia and Latin America to embark upon desperate journeys to reach the shores of the wealthy west.

Hein de Haas is professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, and the author of How Migration Really Works

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Cercarbono puts indicator species methodology out for consultation

Carbon Pulse - Fri, 2023-12-29 13:23
Colombia-based credit standard Cercarbono has released for public consultation a methodology that will allow project developers to earn Voluntary Biodiversity Credits (VBCs) for the protection of ecosystem indicator species.
Categories: Around The Web

South Australian shark attack: tributes flow for ‘talented and dearly loved’ teenage surfer

The Guardian - Fri, 2023-12-29 10:32

Khai Cowley, 15, was killed by a suspected great white shark off Ethel beach on the Yorke Peninsula

A teenage boy killed in a shark attack off the coast of South Australia has been remembered as a talented and dearly loved member of the surfing community.

The 15-year-old, identified by friends and a family member as Khai Cowley, was mauled by a suspected great white while surfing off the remote Ethel beach on the Yorke Peninsula west of Adelaide about 1.30pm on Thursday.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Chandrayaan, Aditya-L1, Gaganyaan: The year India reached the Moon - and aimed for the Sun

BBC - Fri, 2023-12-29 08:11
With Chandrayaan-3, Aditya-L1 and Gaganyaan, India's space agency Isro has had a spectacular year.
Categories: Around The Web

In search of the buff-breasted buttonquail – the one Australian bird that has never been photographed

The Guardian - Fri, 2023-12-29 06:58

Finding the elusive species in far north Queensland is a unique challenge for birders. But the search demands extraordinary enthusiasm

For 100 years, the night parrot was the undisputed mystery bird of Australian ornithology. Until the discovery and subsequent study of a tiny population in Queensland’s far west in 2013, two specimens found by the side of remote outback roads in 1990 and 2006, also in Queensland, were the only hard evidence of its continued existence.

With the parrot now present and accounted for, there remains one Australian bird that has never been photographed: the buff-breasted buttonquail.

Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

No climate for cricket: how global warming is putting the heat on NZ’s summer game

The Conversation - Fri, 2023-12-29 06:37
The climate crisis poses an existential threat to cricket. Governing bodies like New Zealand Cricket need to up their sustainability game. Chris McMillan, Professional Teaching Fellow in Sociology, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
Categories: Around The Web

'Ecology on steroids': how Australia's First Nations managed Australia's ecosystems

The Conversation - Fri, 2023-12-29 06:37
When people first came to Australia 65,000 years ago, the Earth was in an ice age. Then the seas rose, drought and floods came – and still people endured. Penny van Oosterzee, Adjunct Associate Professor James Cook University and University Fellow Charles Darwin University, James Cook University Barry Hunter, Acting CEO, North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance, Indigenous Knowledge Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
Categories: Around The Web

London Ulez averts more air pollution than that caused by capital’s airports, report shows

The Guardian - Fri, 2023-12-29 00:00

Air quality improvements 2019-2022 from lowering vehicle emissions came even before scheme’s expansion to whole of city

More toxic air pollution has been averted by London’s ultra-low emission zones than is produced by the capital’s airports or its river and rail transport combined, according to a new analysis of the effects of the Ulez.

The report showed that improvements in air quality between 2019 and 2022 from lowering motor vehicle pollution – even before the expansion of the Ulez throughout the capital since August – rivalled the potential savings from entirely cleaning up London’s aviation or industrial and commercial heat and power generation.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

This is how our 21st-century peasants’ revolt took on the royals over rewilding – and won | Joel Scott-Halkes

The Guardian - Thu, 2023-12-28 23:00

When we started out, we didn’t dare dream it would lead to this: expanded rainforest, a beaver release, and rewilding at Balmoral

Sid Rawle, the 1960s peace campaigner and infamous “King of the Hippies”, once remarked that if land ownership in Britain were to be divided equally, we would each get about an acre. Surprisingly, this thought experiment would just about hold true today.

The UK measures 60m acres in total and is home to around 67 million of us. There is something rather beguiling about such extreme egalitarianism – impractical though it might be. One person, one vote, one acre. But there’s also something about it that rather helps clarify the mind should you ever find yourself, as I have done recently, trying to reform the mind-bogglingly large amounts of land owned by the British royal family.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Recycling: Plans for electrical goods to be included in UK collections

BBC - Thu, 2023-12-28 11:58
UK households could put old toasters and hairdryers on the kerbside for pick-up under the proposals.
Categories: Around The Web

The fish that eats piranhas for breakfast

BBC - Thu, 2023-12-28 10:53
The paiche, one of the biggest freshwater fish, is a risk to native fish stocks in the Amazon.
Categories: Around The Web

World's tallest wooden wind turbine starts turning

BBC - Thu, 2023-12-28 10:52
Wood and glue is better for the environment than steel, says manufacturer, and could see taller turbines.
Categories: Around The Web

Retailers to pay for consumers’ e-waste recycling from 2026 under UK plans

The Guardian - Thu, 2023-12-28 10:01

Households will be able to drop off cables and other electrical waste in-store or have home collections, says Defra

British households will benefit from improved routes for recycling electronic goods from 2026, under government plans to have producers and retailers pay for household and in-store collections.

Consumers would be able to have electrical waste (e-waste) – from cables to toasters and power tools – collected from their homes or drop items off during a weekly shop, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said in a consultation published on Thursday. The ambition is for retailers, rather than the taxpayer, to pick up the tab for these new ways of disposing of defunct, often toxic products safely. The measures are due to come into force in two years’ time.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Zero onshore wind plans submitted in England since de facto ban was ‘lifted’

The Guardian - Thu, 2023-12-28 08:30

Exclusive: Developers still unwilling to put forward schemes despite change to planning rules in September

No new plans for onshore wind have been accepted in England since the government claimed it had “lifted” the de facto ban, new analysis reveals.

Renewable energy organisations warned at the time that this was likely. Despite the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, having changed planning rules introduced in 2015 by the then prime minister, David Cameron, to stop onshore wind projects being blocked by a single objection, they still face higher barriers than every other form of infrastructure, including waste incinerators.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Pages

Subscribe to Sustainable Engineering Society aggregator