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Why is hemp off the biofuel menu?
Why has hemp been ignored as a biofuel? Photograph: Corbis
The Royal Society, the European Commission and the UK government have all managed, in the last few days, to take the wind out of the sails of the biofuel industry, publishing reports that suggest biofuels could be causing more harm than good, the crops not being as environmentally friendly as first thought, with the Commons environmental audit committee calling for a moratorium on biofuel targets until more research can be done.
Continue reading...Developer trumped by fisherman in row over golf complex
· Man who stuck out hopes Trump has got message
In one corner, a world-famous property developer with serious dollars to spend and some of the most prestigious real estate in places such as New York, Chicago and Dubai. In the other, a rag tag of staunch Aberdonian conservationists and a salmon fisherman who has become a local celebrity by refusing to sell his unkempt nine hectares (23 acres) to make way for "the world's greatest golf course".
The billionaire is not used to losing, but he got a bloody nose yesterday. In a surprise decision, Donald Trump's plan to build a £1bn golf resort on a rare and vulnerable stretch of sand dunes on the coast north of Aberdeen was thrown out by councillors.
Continue reading...The Yangtze river dolphin
Yangtze river dolphin driven to extinction
The Yangtze river dolphin, until recently one of the most endangered species on the planet, has been declared officially extinct following an intensive survey of its natural habitat.
The freshwater marine mammal, which could grow to eight feet long and weigh up to a quarter of a tonne, is the first large vertebrate forced to extinction by human activity in 50 years, and only the fourth time an entire evolutionary line of mammals has vanished from the face of the Earth since the year 1500.
Continue reading...Sheryl Crow's view on toilet paper: one sheet a visit
Poll: what's your optimal sheet number?
"All I wanna do is have some fun," sang Sheryl Crow once, but it appears her desires have since changed. Now all she wants to do is limit the use of toilet paper to one sheet per visit.
The singer made her declaration in an article for the Huffington Post to help promote her Stop Global Warming College Tour, an 11-date tour explaining the perils of global warming to Americans. Accompanied by Laurie David, activist and wife of comedian Larry David, the pair have been criss-crossing the country in a biodiesel-powered bus spreading the word on the bathroom hygiene of the future.
Continue reading...Obituary: Jim Cronin
Jim Cronin, campaigner against the illegal trade in primates and founder of the animal sanctuary Monkey World, in Dorset, has died aged 55 of liver cancer. Working with primates has a long history of producing strong, even iconoclastic, personalities - from Jane Goodall to Diane Fosse and Karl Amman - and Cronin, an irascible, headstrong and passionate man, was no exception.
Born of Irish-Italian parents, he was brought up on the banks of the Hudson river in Yonkers, near New York. After graduating from St Denis school and Lincoln high school, he took odd jobs as a lift constructor and a removals man before, quite literally, falling into primatology. An accident while moving a grand piano left him with his leg in traction, and when he recovered he took a job looking after the primates at the Bronx zoo.
Continue reading...The Observer profile: Yvon Chouinard
'I've been a businessman for almost 50 years. It's as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer.' That's how Yvon Chouinard, entrepreneurial maverick and pioneer of environmental activism, began his business manual, Let My People Go Surfing, published last year. For a reluctant businessman, Chouinard, founder and owner of outdoor clothing company Patagonia, isn't doing badly. In fact, while little known in Britain, he is revered in America among progressive entrepreneurs. His company employs 1,300 people and last year had a turnover of $267m; its innovative clothing is known as the 'Gucci of the outdoors'.
He has been offered up to $500m for his company and has always refused to give it up. But you won't find the 68-year-old behind a desk in the California headquarters. He'd rather be surfing, climbing or fly-fishing. Next weekend, he is giving a keynote talk at the Fort William Mountain Festival, one of the world's leading celebrations of mountain culture, a homecoming of sorts because, in some ways, the eco-activist and entrepreneur owes Patagonia's success to Britain.
Continue reading...If you go down to the beach today ... you're bound to find something to steal
· BMW bikes among cargo lost from stricken ship
Jane and Mary huffed and puffed as they rolled the oak wine cask across the shingle towards the Sea Shanty car park. "Honestly, we just came for a walk and a chat", said Mary, a retired teacher, "but then we saw all this stuff here and the police told us we could help ourselves. So we did."
They were not the only ones.
Continue reading...Obituary: Heinz Sielmann
Sielmann's rapid rise to fame came when Peter Scott invited him to show his black and white footage of nesting woodpeckers on an early episode of his wildlife series, Look. Sielmann duly turned up for the live broadcast with minutes to spare. The film was shown, and he and Scott discussed its contents.
To everyone's amazement, immediately after the broadcast, the BBC switchboard was inundated with requests to see the film again. Indeed, it was repeated many times over the next few years. Fans included future Beatle Paul McCartney, who was so enthused by the series that he wrote to Scott asking for drawings of birds. Others loved it too. The programme's audience appreciation index matched that of the FA cup final.
Continue reading...George Monbiot on climate change and Big Tobacco
ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what's its strategy?
The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".
Continue reading...Alok Jha: Boiled alive
When the human body gets to 42C, it starts to cook. The heat causes the proteins in each cell to irreversibly change, like an egg white as it boils. Even before that, the brain shuts down because of a lack of blood coming from the overworked, overheated heart. Muscles stop working, the stomach cramps and the mind becomes delirious. Death is inevitable.
The gruesome effects of overheating have been largely forgotten as Europe swelters under record temperatures, from southern England's 36.5C to Bosnia's 41C. When weather forecasters predicted that the heat would get more intense across the continent today, most of us heaved a sigh at the thoughts of stuffy trains, sweaty buses, parched lawns and boiling offices. But perhaps we are being complacent.
Continue reading...Martin Wainwright on the great drought of 1976
I was the newest reporter on the London Evening Standard when the rain last stopped falling in the summer of 1976. I was sent out at short notice to suggest ways of coping with the terrible lack of water. It was slightly desperate and lickety-spit since I was only two weeks out of Bradford and didn't know my Hampstead from my Holborn. But the combined gods of journalism and the weather (usually equally fickle) beamed down and the terrifying editor at the time, Charles Wintour, put the results on the front page.
The cutting is as yellow now as the grass in the parks was then, but the hints I cobbled together then may be helpful as much of Britain faces up to a second blitz of hazy blue days and nights of drifting barbecue smells and murmurs from sleep-outs on neighbouring balconies.
Continue reading...Hurricane Wilma hits Florida
· Flooding in Key West
Huge waves and 125mph winds pounded Florida today as Hurricane Wilma swept across the state after earlier battering large parts of Cuba.
The storm - which has killed more than 20 people in the Caribbean and Mexico - hit Florida's south-west coast this morning, where there were reports of at least one fatality.
Continue reading...50m environmental refugees by end of decade, UN warns
· Natural disasters displace more people than wars
Rising sea levels, desertification and shrinking freshwater supplies will create up to 50 million environmental refugees by the end of the decade, experts warn today. Janos Bogardi, director of the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn, said creeping environmental deterioration already displaced up to 10 million people a year, and the situation would get worse.
"There are well-founded fears that the number of people fleeing untenable environmental conditions may grow exponentially as the world experiences the effects of climate change," Dr Bogardi said. "This new category of refugee needs to find a place in international agreements. We need to better anticipate support requirements, similar to those of people fleeing other unviable situations."
Continue reading...Body found in hunt for missing children
A body was today found in the search for two children who have been missing since storms battered Scotland's Western Isles on Tuesday night.
The bodies of the children's parents and grandfather were recovered by police yesterday. Police and coastguards resumed their search at first light this morning, and a family member later confirmed that another body had been found.
Continue reading...Thousands killed in Asian tsunami
More than 11,000 people in six countries were killed today when the most powerful earthquake in 40 years triggered huge tidal waves that hit coastlines across Asia. The death toll is almost certain to rise further as the full extent of the devastation emerges.
Tourists, fishermen, hotels, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, centred off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The countries affected were Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Malaysia and the Maldives.
Continue reading...Hurricane Ivan devastates Grenada
· 90% of homes damaged
· Convicts on the loose after jail wrecked
The most powerful hurricane to hit the Caribbean region in a decade has laid waste to the island of Grenada, it emerged today.
Hurricane Ivan devastated Grenada after pummelling Barbados and other islands and its winds and rains have been blamed for at least 15 fatalities.
Continue reading...Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
Continue reading...Joy Adamson murder: 24 years on
In an extraordinary prison cell interview, his first since he was jailed for Adamson's killing 22 years ago, Paul Nakware Ekai claimed that the naturalist and author, who awakened millions to the plight of Africa's big cats, was a 'very hot-tempered' boss, and that he killed her after she shot him for complaining about not being paid.
'When she blew her top she would draw a pistol. Sometimes she shot some of her workers,' Ekai said yesterday, speaking for the first time about a murder that shocked the world. 'She would shoot people who annoyed her and then pay for their treatment. After that, she would pay to hush up the matter.'
Continue reading...Portugal calls in Briton's fat water invention to halt fires
It may be what firefighters dream about. Water that does not run away down the nearest drain - but can swell and stick to what is burning, so extinguishing the fire.
But fat water, which glues itself to vertical surfaces like trees and buildings, keeping them wet, is not wishful thinking or science fiction, it is a great British invention.
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