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Ancient whales were fearsome predators with razor-sharp teeth, fossil analysis shows
Tourists doubting value of trip to Great Barrier Reef, dive operator tells inquiry
‘Last-chance tourism’ spurs on other visitors but there has been lull in bookings after coral bleaching, senators told
Overseas tourists have begun to doubt the value of a trip to the ailing Great Barrier Reef and it is getting increasingly difficult to “show people what they expect to see”, a dive operator has told a federal Senate inquiry.
A Port Douglas operator, John Edmondson, said “last-chance tourism” was spurring on other visitors but there had been a “weird” lull in bookings this year after back-to-back mass bleaching events made dead coral an unavoidable sight on reef visits.
Continue reading...Devastating Himalayan floods are made worse by an international blame game
Devastating floods in Nepal have sparked regional tension, with Nepali politicians and media outlets claiming that Indian infrastructure along their shared border has left Nepal vulnerable.
In a visit last week to India, Nepal’s prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba released a joint statement with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi pledging to work together to combat future flood disasters. But relations between the two countries remain strained, and many in Nepal still resent India for a three-month blockade of supplies in the wake of the 2015 earthquakes.
Read more: Two years after the earthquake, why has Nepal failed to recover?
One source of this tension is simply the geography of the Himalayas, where a dam or road built in one country can cause inundation in its neighbour.
The result is an international blame game, with India, China and Nepal accusing each other of shortsighted and self-interested politics. Without region-wide organisations to effectively share information and coordinate disaster relief, many more people have suffered.
Tangled geographyFloods are almost annual events in the Himalayas. Huge rivers originating in the Himalayas pass through the densely settled Terai flats that span both India and Nepal, and these rivers swell enormously in the monsoon season.
A rough outline of the Himalayas.
But this year’s floods have been particularly devastating. In the past two months more than 1,200 people have been killed and 20 million others affected by floods in Nepal, India and Bangladesh.
These trans-border floods are a political as well as a logistical problem. In the case of the recent floods, Nepal’s Ministry of Home Affairs pointed to two large Indian dams in the Kosi and Gandaki rivers, as well as high roads, embankments and dykes built parallel to Nepal’s 1,751km border with India, arguing that this infrastructure obstructs the natural flow of water.
India, for its part, has blamed Nepal for creating floods in the past and – although disputed in scientific circles – many believe deforestation in Nepal contributes to water overflow into India.
The problem is that infrastructure in one country can have a serious impact on its neighbours, especially in monsoon season. At least a dozen people were injured last year in clashes over an Indian dam that the Kathmandu Post reported will inundate parts of Nepal when completed.
And the problems aren’t just caused by dams. Hydrologists and disaster experts in Nepal claim that recent floods have been worsened by significant illegal mining of the low Churia hills for boulders and sand, for use in the rapidly expanding construction sector in India.
India, China and NepalThe disputes aren’t limited to India and Nepal. India and China signed a deal in 2006 to share hydrological information on the huge rivers that run through both their territories, so as to cope better with annual flooding. But earlier this year India’s Ministry of External Affairs accused China of failing to share vital data, exacerbating floods in India’s northeast.
This is not an isolated incident. In 2013 a huge flood in northwestern India, called the Himalayan tsunami, killed around 6,000 people and affected millions more.
At that time, India officials claimed that they did not get information from Nepalese officials on heavy rainfall in Nepal’s hills, or on glacier conditions. Nepali officials, in turn, responded that China is in a better position to share information about climatic conditions on that part of the Himalayas. Studies conducted later concluded that efficient information sharing and early warnings would have reduced the resulting damage.
This problem becomes more urgent as the Himalayas come under pressure from climate change. Climate scientists have warned that “extreme floods” in the region are becoming more frequent, driven by less frequent but more intense rainfall.
It is now vital to think differently about how institutions handle these disasters. India and Nepal announced last week that they would establish a Joint Committee on Inundation and Flood Management, and a Joint Team of Experts to “enhance bilateral co-operation” in water management, which is a positive sign.
But the Himalayas urgently needs institutions with a region-wide perspective, rather that country-specific remits. These organisations can effeciently share information on weather patterns, take action to reduce overall impact of floods, and consult each other while developing infrastructures that could have trans-boundary consequences.
Human interference and myopic political action have intensified the impact of these floods. We now need every country in the region to accept shared responsibility and commit to helping those affected, regardless of their nationality.
Jagannath Adhikari 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.
Climate change and Harvey: your questions answered
At least 14 people have died and tens of thousands evacuated as Houston continues to be battered by catastrophic rainfall. Can we decode the disaster?
A tropical storm that is on course to break the US record for the heaviest rainfall from a tropical system. Meteorologists say the 120cm-mark set in 1978 could be surpassed on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Continue reading...Campaigners launch last-ditch appeal to stop fracking in Lancashire
Protesters hope appeal court will uphold council’s decision to reject planning consent for Cuadrilla, which was overturned by Sajid Javid
A last-ditch legal challenge to prevent fracking in Lancashire is being launched at the court of appeal.
The case brought by anti-fracking protesters, to be heard on Wednesday and Thursday, seeks to overturn planning consent that was granted to Cuadrilla by the communities secretary, Sajid Javid, last October.
Continue reading...Toxic cloud on Sussex coast may have come from ship, say sources
Haze that led to 150 people seeking treatment caused a pollution spike and ‘might have been caused by a ship venting’
Authorities investigating the cause of Sunday’s chemical cloud are working on the assumption that it came from a ship in the Channel after environmental monitoring sites picked up a localised spike in pollution levels.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is working with the Environment Agency to establish the source of the cloud, which left 150 people seeking medical treatment and caused the evacuation of Birling Gap beach in East Sussex.
Continue reading...Welcoming Haitian refugees to Canada isn’t about generosity but justice | Martin Lukacs
Canada has a hand in the misery Haitians are fleeing. Asylum should serve as reparations
The minders of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s brand are surely displeased. He’s spent two years cultivating an image of Canada’s refugee system as the political equivalent of airport hugs and teddy-bears. And now the pressure is on him to act like that were remotely the truth.
The image of the country as a welcome haven was pitched to win the support of millions of people in Canada who rightly feel two things: compassion for the plight of refugees and disgust for the antics of Donald Trump. But refugee rights advocates had warned what would come to pass: desperate people would take Trudeau at his word.
Continue reading...How Harvey – and climate change – could change American real estate
Floridians have long recognised the threat of climate change to their homes. Amid the latest disaster, home buyers may increasingly look to higher ground
If Florida gleaned anything from Hurricane Andrew, the intensely powerful storm that tore a deadly trail of destruction across Miami-Dade County almost exactly 25 years to the day that Hurricane Harvey barrelled into the Texas coastline, it was that living in areas exposed to the wrath of Mother Nature can come at a substantial cost.
At the time the most expensive natural disaster ever to hit the US, Andrew caused an estimated $15bn in insured losses in the state and changed the way insurance companies assessed their exposure to risk for weather-related events.
Continue reading...Smelly clue to bird navigation skills
Is hearing loss in farmed fish a price worth paying for aquaculture’s meteoric rise?
A study finds that accelerated growing conditions on some fish farms are causing hearing impairments in salmon. It’s a reminder that aquaculture’s own accelerated rise needs to be closely managed
To grasp the wide-ranging impacts of our industrial food systems, take a peek inside a salmon’s ear. That’s what marine biologist Tormey Reimer did when, in 2013 at the University of Melbourne, she began to investigate deformities that were developing on the structures that salmon use to hear.
Bony fish species have structures called otoliths in their ears, small crystals that they use to detect sound. Biologists have for decades relied on otoliths to age fish, using them like rings on a tree. But what Reimer saw was an altogether larger, lighter, and more transparent crystal called a vaterite, growing into the otolith and obstructing the fish’s ability to hear. “I did a bit of digging and found it was much more common in farmed salmon than wild,” she says. And, she began to suspect it had something to do with the accelerated growth rates in fish farms.
Continue reading...What's the story behind China's ivory ban?
This year, China’s government enacted a ban on ivory sales and started closing down carving workshops. How did such an astonishing U-turn come about?
For years Chinese government officials were followed around the world, at every meeting, by a single issue: the scores of dead elephants across Africa, and the international community that blamed China for this “ivory “holocaust”.
Even the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, could not escape lectures on poached elephants and the evils of China’s legal domestic ivory trade from foreign leaders. For years, China deflected the criticism with claims of a long cultural heritage and incremental policies, such as a ban on ivory carving imports two years ago.
Continue reading...Rule of law in China
Is the UK really menaced by reckless cyclists?
The anti-cycling backlash in the media in the aftermath of Charlie Alliston trial suggests roads and streets overrun by dangerous cyclists, but is this true?
When cycling reaches newspaper front pages it’s usually the sporting kind. The last couple of weeks have been an exception, with blanket coverage of the trial of Charlie Alliston, convicted last week over the death of Kim Briggs after he struck her on his bike.
This piece isn’t about the facts of this very tragic case. It’s about the aftermath, more specifically the repeated call in some part of the media for something to be done about what these articles believe is a particular problem of reckless and law-flouting cyclists.
Continue reading...Turnbull doesn’t need new baseload, he just needs some balls
WA could be solar exporter, but it needs a solar industry first
Swallows swirl in the joyous rhythms of late August
Claxton, Norfolk Lined up on the telephone wires, they stretch, preen and snooze, riding the tide swell of air
The view from my office includes a junction box where five telephone wires converge at the top of a pole. For several years, it has been a favourite gathering place for the season’s young swallows and they wreathe this banal technology in the joyous rhythms of their movements and sounds.
The immatures are separable by pale fringes to their wing feathers, but also by the downturned yellow gape-lines at the corners of their mouths, which give them a wonderfully comic clown-like glumness. It is as if all the swirl of these late-August days – the balletic fly-snatching, the sun-blessed leisure, the quiet feather care as they sit amid a pool of the adult swallows’ desultory song – were a source of strange ennui.
Continue reading...AGL hits pause on virtual power plant in technology “rethink”
New demand management plan could match “half a Hazelwood”
Koala takes a ride in a canoe to escape rising river – video
La Trobe University Bendigo student Kirra Coventry filmed her group of outdoor and environmental education classmates helping a koala that had become stranded by rapidly rising water in the Murray river. The students were learning to be river guides when they saw the koala on the edge of Ulupna Island. The students told associate lecturer Chris Townsend it was low in a tree and seemed to be trying to find dry land. They pushed an empty canoe out to it and it climbed aboard, took a seat, then disembarked once it reached shore, where it had a lengthy drink. Townsend said koalas, which are considered a vulnerable species in parts of Australia, were relocated to river islands like Ulupna in the late 1980s and there was now a healthy population there. ‘Koalas are very, very fussy about the trees they will feed in and live in,’ he said. ‘Obviously leading up to this it had found the perfect tree, but I think the floodwaters came up a little bit quickly and it didn’t have time to get down’
Continue reading...Hundreds register interest in Qld renewables + storage auction
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