Feed aggregator

Leak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate science

The Guardian - Wed, 2012-02-15 13:30
Libertarian thinktank keeps prominent sceptics on its payroll and relies on millions in funding from carbon industry, papers suggest

Heartland claims fraud after leak of climate documents

The inner workings of a libertarian thinktank working to discredit the established science on climate change have been exposed by a leak of confidential documents detailing its strategy and fundraising networks.

DeSmogBlog, which broke the story, said it had received the confidential documents from an "insider" at the Heartland Institute, which is based in Chicago. The blog monitors industry efforts to discredit climate science.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

The Himalayas and nearby peaks have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows

The Guardian - Thu, 2012-02-09 04:10
Meltwater from Asia's peaks is much less than previously estimated, but lead scientist says the loss of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern

Live Q&A: What does the Himalaya glacier study mean for climate change?
In pictures: the best images of the Earth from space

The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Penn State defies Facebook campaign calling for it to drop climate lecture | Leo Hickman

The Guardian - Sat, 2012-02-04 02:13
University cites its First Amendment commitment in supporting its climate scientist Michael Mann's right to give lecture

In an uncharacteristically angry post at the New York Times's Dot Earth blog, Andy Revkin has hit out at a "shameful attack on free speech". It relates to a Facebook campaign which is calling on Pennsylvania State University to "disinvite" Professor Michael E. Mann, the director of its Earth System Science Center, from giving a lecture next week entitled: "Confronting the Climate Change Challenge."

The Facebook campaign has been initiated by a seemingly conjoined group called the Common Sense Movement/Secure Energy for America Political Action Committee. Brad Johnson at ThinkProgress has investigated the people behind it and describes it as a "coal-industry astroturf group". Here's a video from the Common Sense Movement's "I Am Coal" campaign, which gives an insight into its worldview...

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Glacier thief arrested in Chile

The Guardian - Thu, 2012-02-02 09:25
Police hold man on suspicion of stealing five tonnes of ice from a glacier in Patagonia to sell as designer ice cubes for cocktails

In pictures: The world's melting glaciers

Climate change sceptics have acquired a new explanation for why glaciers are retreating: it's not global warming, it's theft.

Police in Chile have arrested a man on suspicion of stealing five tonnes of ice from the Jorge Montt glacier in the Patagonia region to sell as designer ice cubes in bars and restaurants.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Climate Skepticism - your chance to learn about effectively countering Climate misinformation!

Newsletters QLD - Thu, 2012-02-02 06:04
Climate Skepticism - your chance to learn about effectively countering Climate misinformation!
Categories: Newsletters QLD

China's largest freshwater lake dries up

The Guardian - Wed, 2012-02-01 00:04
Drought and new Three Gorges Dam blamed as fishers forced to seek other work and freight trade comes to a halt

For visitors expecting to see China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang is a desolate spectacle. Under normal circumstances it covers 3,500 sq km, but last month only 200 sq km were underwater. A dried-out plain stretches as far as the eye can see, leaving a pagoda perched on top of a hillock that is usually a little island. Wrapped in the mist characteristic of the lower reaches of the Yangtze river, the barges are moored close to the quayside beside a pitiful trickle of water. There is no work for the fisheries.

According to the state news agency Xinhua, the drought – the worst for 60 years – is due to the lack of rainfall in the area round Poyang and its tributaries. Poor weather conditions this year are partly responsible. But putting the blame on them overlooks the role played by the colossal Three Gorges reservoir, 500km upstream. The cause and effect is still not officially recognised, even if the government did admit last May that the planet's biggest dam had given rise to "problems that need to be solved very urgently".

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

World's giant trees are dying off rapidly, studies show

The Guardian - Thu, 2012-01-26 17:00
Ecological 'kings of the jungle' being toppled by forest fragmentation, severe drought and new pests and diseases

The biggest trees in the world, known as the true ecological kings of the jungle, are dying off rapidly as roads, farms and settlements fragment forests and they come under prolonged attack from severe droughts and new pests and diseases.

Long-term studies in Amazonia, Africa and central America show that while these botanical behemoths may have adapted successfully to centuries of storms, pests and short-term climatic extremes, they are counterintuitively more vulnerable than other trees to today's threats.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

What is the best way to draught-proof stripped wooden floors? | Caramel Quin

The Guardian - Fri, 2011-12-16 21:40
The small gaps between boards add up to the equivalent of a small window. No wonder your toes are feeling chilly

You wouldn't leave a window wide open if the heating were on. But if you have stripped floorboards, the chances are that you're doing the equivalent. Cold air naturally circulates below ground floor floorboards, and the small gaps between boards in an average-sized room add up to the equivalent of a small window. No wonder your toes are feeling chilly. According to the Energy Saving Trust, just filling gaps between floor and skirting boards will save around £20 – and 100kg of CO2 – annually, paying for itself in less than a year.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Seasonal Best Wishes from SSEE

Newsletters QLD - Fri, 2011-12-16 03:22
Seasonal Best Wishes from SSEE
Categories: Newsletters QLD

Livia Firth: the woman who turned the red carpet green

The Guardian - Sun, 2011-12-04 10:07
Standing in the spotlight alongside her movie star husband, Livia Firth rejects big labels to wear reclaimed fabrics. Now she's turning her hand to design

She is seen as the world's most glamorous champion of "eco style" and has been dubbed "the queen of the green carpet". Now Livia Firth is moving into design: last week she revealed she is working on a line for the online retailer Yoox's eco brand Yooxygen, in partnership with Reclaim To Wear, which helps designers recycle textile surplus and waste.

Upcycling – or remaking cast-off items into something different and better – is something of a Firth speciality. She first drew attention to Reclaim to Wear when she wore one of its 1950s strapless cocktail dresses in silver satin to the Venice film festival. For the Paris premiere of The King's Speech, starring her husband Colin Firth, she famously wore an outfit made of one of his old suits.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Q&A: 'Climategate'

The Guardian - Wed, 2011-11-23 03:08
In November 2009, over 1,000 private emails between climate change scientists were stolen and published online. The uproar that followed briefly shook the public's faith in global warming science, and prompted investigations that debunked sceptics' allegations that the mails showed the planet wasn't warming. Yet still the scientists have questions to answer

It is the controversy over a set of over 1,000 private emails and many other documents that were stolen or leaked from the University of East Anglia's (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in November 2009. All the emails involved CRU staff, principally the CRU head Phil Jones, but in correspondence with many of the world's leading climate scientists, including the main researcher behind the "hockey stick" graph, Michael Mann. CRU's speciality was reconstructing records of the Earth's past temperatures from thermometer data and "proxy" such as tree-ring measurements.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Energy and Emissions Case Study, Student Night Winners and much more

Newsletters QLD - Mon, 2011-11-14 00:22
Energy and Emissions Case Study, Student Night Winners and much more
Categories: Newsletters QLD

Getting to cycle the New York marathon | Matt Seaton

The Guardian - Tue, 2011-11-08 04:06
The chance to ride the course – as a bicycle escort for the wheelchair racers – proved an unforgettable experience

I was supposed to be running in this year's New York Marathon, but injury brought my training to a shuddering halt. To say I was disappointed to have to pull out (even if the many people in my position do get to defer their entry to next year) is typically-English understatement, so when the opportunity arose to ride the 26.2-mile runner's course on my bike on race day, I jumped at it.

I still had a smidgeon of envy for the runners, as New York dawned in perfect conditions, chilly but brilliant, on Sunday morning. But I couldn't be churlish about it for long: after all, how many people get to parade on their bike for the whole closed-road course, complete with cheering crowds?

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

India plans 'safer' nuclear plant powered by thorium

The Guardian - Wed, 2011-11-02 02:09
Use of relatively low-carbon, low-radioactivity thorium instead of uranium may be breakthrough in energy generation

India has announced plans for a prototype nuclear power plant that uses an innovative "safer" fuel.

Officials are currently selecting a site for the reactor, which would be the first of its kind, using thorium for the bulk of its fuel instead of uranium – the fuel for conventional reactors. They plan to have the plant up and running by the end of the decade.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

The six natural resources most drained by our 7 billion people

The Guardian - Mon, 2011-10-31 21:01
For how long can we realistically expect to have oil? And which dwindling element is essential to plant growth?

With 7 billion people on the planet – theoretically from today – there will be an inevitable increase in the demand on the world's natural resources. Here are six already under severe pressure from current rates of consumption:

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

SSEE Qld Student Award Night and Paul Hawken visit

Newsletters QLD - Fri, 2011-10-28 07:07
SSEE Qld Student Award Night and Paul Hawken visit
Categories: Newsletters QLD

White roofs are not a silver bullet for cooling planet, study finds

The Guardian - Thu, 2011-10-27 20:47
Plans to slow climate change by reflecting sunlight back into space could in fact raise temperatures, a new study concludes

Seemed like a cool idea: paint the world's roofs white to reflect more sunlight, and it could help cool down both cities and the planet. A new study, however, finds it's a lot more complicated – even as it dispels climate change deniers' claims that urban "heat islands" are a major cause of apparent temperature increases.

The land covered by urban areas more than doubled between 1992 and 2005, to about 0.128% of Earth's surface, Mark Z. Jacobson and John E. Ten Hoeve of Stanford University report in the Journal of Climate. Roofs and roads cover about half of that land, and help heat up urban areas by preventing evaporation of water and absorbing sunlight. Exactly how these urban heat islands affect global temperatures, however, has been unclear. But Jacobsen says some skeptics of climate science have argued that heat islands – and not the buildup of warming gases in the atmosphere – may be responsible for observed temperature increases, since some monitoring stations are near urban areas.

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

SSEE Qld events in October 2011

Newsletters QLD - Fri, 2011-10-21 07:47
SSEE Qld events in October 2011
Categories: Newsletters QLD

BBC Frozen Planet – in pictures

The Guardian - Wed, 2011-10-19 22:58
The BBC will show a major new nature documentary next week, which it describes as the ultimate portrait of Earth's polar regions: the last great wilderness on the planet Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

China angry over Burma's decision to suspend work on £2.3bn dam

The Guardian - Wed, 2011-10-05 04:46
Beijing threatens legal action as Burma halts dam because it is 'against the will of the people'

Burma's decision to suspend the country's biggest hydroelectric project has shocked and enraged China, the government's most influential backer on the international stage.

Senior officials in Beijing have castigated their south-east Asian ally and threatened legal action. It emerged that they were not consulted before President Thein Sien of Burma announced last Friday a halt to building the $3.6bn (£2.3bn) hydropower dam on the Irawaddy – known as the Myitsone project – because it was "against the will of the people".

Continue reading...
Categories: Around The Web

Pages

Subscribe to Sustainable Engineering Society aggregator