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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".

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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".

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Scottish nuclear leak 'will never be completely cleaned up'

The Guardian - Wed, 2011-09-21 21:48
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has abandoned its aim to remove all traces of contamination from the north coast seabed

Radioactive contamination that leaked for more than two decades from the Dounreay nuclear plant on the north coast of Scotland will never be completely cleaned up, a Scottish government agency has admitted.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has decided to give up on its aim of returning the seabed near the plant to a "pristine condition". To do so, it said, could cause "more harm than good".

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Want to know more about the Carbon Tax? Come to the SSEE September techical session.

Newsletters QLD - Tue, 2011-09-20 05:04
Want to know more about the Carbon Tax? Come to the SSEE September techical session.
Categories: Newsletters QLD

SSEE 2011 International Conference - Don't miss out on Early Bird registration

Newsletters National - Fri, 2011-09-16 06:09
SSEE 2011 International Conference - Don't miss out on Early Bird registration
Categories: Newsletters National

West Bank villagers' daily battle with Israel over water

The Guardian - Thu, 2011-09-15 02:51
Al-Amniyr villagers in the West Bank face a catch-22: if they obey the law they cannot collect water. But if they fail to water the land, they lose it anyway

The South Hebron Hills, sweltering in 34C heat and in its second consecutive year of drought, is a landscape of brutal contrasts. There is enough water here to support lush greenhouses, big cattle sheds, even ornamental plants. It arrives in large, high-pressure lines. And there appears to be no limit to the bounty it can bring.

Cheek by jowl with the water towers and red roofs of the Israeli settlers in this area of the West Bank is a landscape of stone boulders, tents and caves. The Palestinian village of al-Amniyr looks from afar like a rubbish tip until you realise that the rubbish is people's dwellings, which have been destroyed in attacks targeting their water cisterns.

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Pollutionwatch: Riots caused air pollution peaks

The Guardian - Wed, 2011-09-14 08:05

One of London's longest running air pollution monitoring sites was at the heart of the rioting that began on Tottenham High Road on Saturday 6 August. The intensity of the fires meant that much of the smoke was lofted away from the immediate area; however, the monitoring site measured two hours of pollution that was around 10 times greater than average. Interestingly the air pollution was not just the small particles typical of smoke but it also contained many larger particles, presumably owing to dust from falling debris as fire damaged buildings began to crumble.

The fire at Reeves furniture store in West Croydon on the evening of Monday 8 August was shown live on news programmes. Flames leapt into the sky and could be clearly seen over 8kms away. Once again the heat from the fire lifted the smoke high. A gentle westerly wind carried smoke before it came to ground around 600 metres away in East Croydon at around 9pm. Here air pollution reaching around 20 times average levels was measured until early the following day. Although the fires caused large air pollution peaks the UK health guidelines, based on exposure averaged over the whole day, were not exceeded.

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