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Ecofys and Edge Environment team up, bringing ground-breaking metrics to Australian businesses

Scientists have had a remarkable close-up encounter with a gigantic underwater avalanche off the coast of California.

Nuclear schmoozing | Netherlands geography | Poultry confinement | Girls and toys | The rural elite

The “Orwellian” schmoozing of young people in schools along the proposed HS2 route (Report, 12 December) pales into insignificance alongside the efforts of the nuclear industry to ingratiate itself with the community around the Magnox nuclear power station at Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex. Some 20 or more years ago Girl Guides staged an enrolment ceremony while standing on the pile cap of the then active nuclear reactor.
Val Mainwood
Wivenhoe, Essex

• The inhabitants of Mata Hari’s home city would not be pleased to read that they live in “Friesland, Holland” (Mother, dancer, wife, spy, G2, 6 December). Friesland, one of the 12 provinces of the Netherlands, has its own language, literature and proud history. North and South Holland are merely two other provinces of the same country. My Frisian husband, having lived in London for over 40 years, recently acquired a second passport. He became a British citizen – not an English one. It’s pretty much the same difference.
Liz Barnes
London

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Giraffes' future is much less secure than many people had imagined. Craig Fraser/Shutterstock

Pardon the pun, but it’s time to stick our necks out for giraffes. We have mistakenly taken the world’s tallest mammal for granted, fretting far more about other beloved animals such as rhinos, elephants and great apes.

But now it seems that all is not well in giraffe-land, with reports emerging that they may be staring extinction in the face.

Why? For starters, thanks to modern molecular genetics, we have just realised that what we thought was one species of giraffe is in fact four, split into between seven and nine distinct subspecies. That’s a lot more biodiversity to worry about.

The current distribution of recognised giraffe species and subspecies. Narayanese at English Wikipedia

Even more disturbing is the fact that giraffe populations are collapsing. Where once they roamed widely across Africa’s savannas and woodlands, they now occupy less than half of the real estate they did a century ago.

Where they still persist, giraffe populations are increasingly sparse and fragmented. Their total numbers have fallen by 40% in just the past two decades, and they have disappeared entirely from seven African countries.

Among the most imperilled is the West African giraffe, a subspecies now found only in Niger. It dwindled to just 50 individuals in the 1990s, and was only saved by desperate last-ditch efforts from conservationists and the Niger government.

As a result of these sharp declines, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature recently changed giraffes’ overall conservation status from “Least Concern” to “Vulnerable”. In biological terms, that’s like a ship’s pilot suddenly bellowing “iceberg dead ahead!”

Tall order

Why are giraffes declining so abruptly? One reason is that they reproduce slowly, as might be expected of a big animal that formerly had to contend only with occasional attacks by lions, hyenas and tribal hunters, and as a result is not well adapted to our hostile modern world.

Giraffes today are being hit by much more than traditional enemies. According to the United Nations, Africa’s population of 1.1 billion people is growing so fast that it could quadruple this century. These extra people are using lots more land for farming, livestock and burgeoning cities.

Blocked by fences: a giraffe held in a small game reserve in South Africa. Bill Laurance

Beyond this, Africa has become a feeding ground for foreign corporations, especially big mining firms from China, Australia and elsewhere. To export bulk commodities such as iron, copper and aluminium ore, China in particular has gone on a frenzy of road, railway and port building.

Fuelled by a flood of foreign currency, Africa’s infrastructure is booming. A total of 33 “development corridors” – centred around ambitious highway and rail networks – have been proposed or are under active construction. Our research shows that these projects would total more than 53,000km in length, crisscrossing the continent and opening up vast expanses of remote, biologically rich ecosystems to new development pressures.

Proposed and ongoing ‘development corridors’ in sub-Saharan Africa, ranked by the relative conservation value of habitats likely to be affected by each corridor. Bill Laurance/Sean Sloan

Meanwhile, giraffes are struggling to cope with poachers armed with powerful automatic rifles rather than customary weapons such as spears. As shown in this poignant video, giraffes are commonly killed merely for their tails, which are valued as a status symbol and dowry gift by some African cultures.

Time to act

For a group of species about which we had been largely complacent, the sudden shift to “Vulnerable” status for giraffes is a red flag telling us it’s time for action.

Giraffes’ sweeping decline reflects a much wider trend in wildlife populations. A recent WWF report forecasts that we are on track to lose two-thirds of all individual birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish on Earth by 2020. Species in tropical nations are doing especially poorly.

What can we do? A critical first step is to help African nations develop their natural resources and economies in ways that don’t decimate nature. This is an urgent challenge that hinges on improving land-use planning, governance and protection of nature reserves and imperilled wildlife.

Woodland clearing for agriculture in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Jeremy Hance

We can also use emerging technologies to help us. For example, it is now possible to monitor illegal deforestation, road-building and other illicit activities virtually in real time, thanks to remarkable advances in satellites, drones, computing and crowdsourcing.

What’s more, affordable automatic cameras are being widely used to monitor the status of wildlife populations. These are particularly useful for giraffes, which have individual mottling patterns as distinctive as human fingerprints.

But all the technology in the world won’t save wildlife if we don’t address the fundamental drivers of Africa’s plight: its booming population and desperate needs for equitable social and sustainable development.

Ignoring these basic needs while tackling poaching and illegal road-building is akin to plugging the holes in a dam while ignoring the rising flood-waters that threaten to spill over its top.

We have to redouble our efforts, pushing for conservation and more sustainable societies all at once – plugging the holes while at the same time building the dam higher.

For the stately giraffe and the rest of Africa’s declining wildlife, it’s time for us to stand tall – or else wave goodbye.

Giraffes on the Serengeti Plain of Tanzania. Bill Laurance

Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthropic organisations. He is the director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University, and founder and director of ALERT--the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers.

Australia's average house size has more than doubled since 1950. Melbourne houses image from www.shutterstock.com

Australia’s houses are getting bigger, but usually not more sustainable. In our recent study, we looked at the energy use of Australian houses, including the energy required to build, maintain and power our homes.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that more energy goes into bigger houses. This is bad news not just for the environment, but also for our wallets. But these considerations are not always built into sustainability ratings.

So whether you’re building, buying, or just curious, what are the most important things to consider? And how much does house size affect total energy use?

Houses getting bigger

Over the past 60 years Australian homes have more than doubled in size, going from an average of around 100 square metres in 1950 to about 240 square metres today. This makes them the largest in the world, ahead of Canada and the United States.

At the same time, the average number of people living in each household has been declining. This means that the average floor area per person has skyrocketed from 30 square metres to around 87 square metres.

We know that larger houses require more heating and cooling and result in higher energy bills. They also need significantly more materials to build and maintain, and more energy to manufacture and replace these materials.

But how much more? That’s what we set out to find out.

Bigger houses, more resources

To systematically assess the relationship between house size and resource use, we analysed a typical new 6-star brick-veneer house in Melbourne’s climate.

We then modified the house size from 100 square metres to 392 square metres using 90 different size configurations (we’ve only shown four in the graphic below).

For each size, we measured both the energy embodied in the building materials and the energy required for replacing these over 50 years.

We also calculated the operational energy use over 50 years for two, three, four and five occupants. Finally, we accounted for energy losses across the energy supply chain.

Results show that larger houses use much more energy, but also that as size increases, the energy used in building and maintaining the house grows by more than the energy used to operate the house.

For instance, the energy embodied in a 392-square-metre house alone is larger than both the embodied and operational energy demands of a 100-square-metre house with three occupants, over 50 years. Logically, more occupants mean less energy per person, as the resources are shared.

The amount of additional resources needed for larger houses can be huge. Authors Own Benefits of smaller, better-designed dwellings

Smaller dwellings tread more lightly on the planet and on your pocket. Based on data from Rawlinsons, each additional square metre of brick-veneer house in Victoria costs on average an extra A$1,245 for construction.

Combined with the resulting heating, cooling and lighting energy bills over 50 years, the total cost per square metre exceeds A$1,988. Removing a 12-square-metre bedroom from your next house can therefore save around A$24,000 and avoid the use of huge quantities of resources.

You might be thinking that smaller dwellings mean lower-quality dwellings. That’s not the case.

Examples of small, well-designed dwellings are all around us. These can be designed for durability and low energy use, as in-fill in dense urban surroundings, favouring natural daylight and ventilation, in symbiosis with nature or as smart urban apartments.

It is important for developers and architects to provide homes that are better designed for comfort and the environment while still being affordable.

The benefits of smaller dwellings go beyond the household itself and have repercussions at the city scale. Small homes – perhaps a mix of small houses on small plots, together with some larger apartment buildings – can save valuable space that can be used for communal infrastructure.

This would have to be done considering walkability, access to amenities and other factors, but can lead to much more efficient neighbourhoods from an infrastructure and transport perspective. So what needs to happen?

How do rules need to change?

Current energy efficiency regulations don’t account for the energy embodied in building materials, and so fail to adequately capture house size.

Most energy efficiency regulations also only measure energy use per square metre. Using this metric, larger houses appear to be more efficient because energy use increases at a slower rate than house size.

The Australian 6-star standard does include house size when considering heating and cooling, but other certifications don’t. Under these other certifications, a larger house would therefore be easier to certify, considering everything else constant.

This is ironic since larger houses use significantly more resources, both for construction and operation. We need to revise current energy efficiency regulations to include embodied energy and other measures of energy if we are to reduce the total energy and broader resource demands associated with buildings.

While our research investigated the relationship between house size and life cycle energy use, it did not consider apartment units. With a growing number of apartment buildings being constructed in Australia, the next steps include investigating a range of apartment design factors and their environmental implications.

By deepening our understanding of how to design better dwellings, we will ultimately help reduce resource use. We’ve studied house size, but that is not the end of the story.

André Stephan receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Robert Crawford receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Scientists have used images taken by Cold War spy satellites to reveal the dramatic environmental changes occurring in the Himalayas.

Endurance swimmer Lewis Pugh employs ‘Speedo diplomacy’ to stop overfishing in Antarctic

A British man will plunge into sub-zero waters in the Antarctic on Tuesday to campaign for the creation of three huge marine parks to stop overfishing.

Lewis Pugh is credited with playing an important role in the agreement earlier this year to create the world’s largest marine protected area (MPA) and make fishing off limits in much of the Ross Sea, a bay in the Southern Ocean.

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The detection of ripples in space-time and the famous Schrödinger's Cat paradox feature in a list of 2016's physics breakthroughs.

Costly failures show ‘urgent attention’ needed to improve how oil giant manages crucial engineering data at plants

An internal report into how the oil giant BP monitors its refinery and chemical sites has revealed at least two near-miss accidents that could have caused deaths.

The report, leaked to Greenpeace, concludes that “urgent attention” is required to improve how BP manages crucial engineering data across the world and that the company lags behind its competitors including Shell, Chevron, Petronas and ConocoPhillips.

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Preparation is under way in China to bring in a ban on their domestic ivory trade, following a promise made with the US earlier this year

China is set to announce when it will close its legal ivory carving factories, 18 months after pledging to act.

Last year, the world’s largest market for both legal and illegal ivory said it would shut down commercial sales within the country. But did not set a timeline.

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The value of investment funds committed to selling off fossil fuel assets has jumped to $5.2tn, doubling in just over a year

Five years ago, the idea that investments in fossil fuel companies were morally or financially problematic was all but unheard of. But an argument started to take shape on US university campuses — that with more coal, oil and gas in existing reserves than can ever be burned while keeping climate change under control, it is ethical and economic madness to spend billions looking for more.

Fast forward to today and the argument has rocketed into mainstream financial thinking. It was revealed on Monday that investors worth more than $5tn have now committed to dump their fossil fuel stocks, and more than 80% of that is professional funds run for profit. Furthermore, this risk of a “carbon bubble” is now being taken seriously at the highest level, including by the Bank of England, World Bank and the G20’s financial stability board.

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Scientists say they have a clue that may enable them to find traces of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs in the very crater it made on impact.

The Minister is seeking input from consumers and industry on ways to improve our fuel quality to reduce noxious emissions, ensure engine operation and facilitate new engine technology.

A star was 'swallowed' after it passed too close to a black hole, say Queen's University astronomers.

Researchers find neonicotinoid insecticides harm ability of bees to vibrate flowers and shake out pollen to fertilise crops

The world’s most widely used insecticides harm the ability of bees to vibrate flowers and shake out the pollen to fertilise crops, according to preliminary results from a new study.

Some flowers, such as those of crops like tomatoes and potatoes, must be shaken to release pollen and bumblebees are particularly good at creating the buzz needed to do this. But the research shows that bumblebees exposed to realistic levels of a neonicotinoid pesticide fail to learn how to create the greatest buzz and collect less pollen as a result.

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Waltham Brooks, West Sussex I count at least four separate birds’ voices. They seem more eerie in the cold and dark

It feels less cold, but the grass is still hard, smooth and slippery underfoot. The channels and small pools of water are almost completely frozen over, their surfaces patterned like frosted glass where the water has thawed and frozen again. A grey mist is starting to rise from the ground. In the distance, the red sun is sinking behind the South Downs and the sky glows with ember streaks of orange and red.

From the reeds along the river’s edge, water rails are calling. Familiar but always unnerving, their grunts and cries – often compared to the squeals of piglets – are known as “sharming”. I count at least four separate birds’ voices. They seem more eerie in the cold and dark. As I walk along the river bank, a moorhen and three water rail fly, one by one, across the river to the other side and into cover. The squealing sounds become a cacophony.

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Report shows network of governments, funds, organisations, philanthropies and individuals representing $5.2trn in assets divesting from fossil fuel companies.

Modelling from government's preferred advisor actually shows that a high renewables target could deliver lower costs to consumers than an EIS. That's not what the public was told last week, but predictions that an EIS is cheaper were based on some ridiculous price assumptions.

Firefighters rescue a freezing 500lb (225kg) female moose in Canada, using axes to make a path through the ice on Saturday to help it reach the shore. Rescuers spent 90 minutes on the Shediac river in New Brunswick helping the animal which, after an initial fright, calmly watched them work. The animal mounted the bank and ran off.

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TrinaBEST announced today that it has signed an agreement to provide 1st shipment of 2MW/2MWh TrinaMega to EU.