Feed aggregator

Glen Torridon, Liathach, Highlands The path that worms up alongside the waterfalls is invisible until we’re on it

From Glen Torridon, Liathach looks impregnable, with little sign of a way upwards; the path that worms up alongside the waterfalls of the Allt an Doire Ghairbh is invisible until we’re on it. The vast bulwarks and bastions of rock rise into a ceiling of white cloud, their full extent obscured.

We climb unhurriedly, content to wait for the forecasted “cloud free Munros” to materialise.

Continue reading...

Another major generator penalised for illegal bidding practices in wholesale electricity market as regulator continues to crack down on activities that have inflated prices.

The US space agency will try to put a satellite in orbit around Jupiter to sense what lies beneath the giant planet's obscuring clouds.

How a Jumping Jack ant it finds it way back to the nest whilst walking backwards and carrying something large could have implications for driverless cars and other technology.

Australian CleanTech Index significantly outperformed wider market in FY 2015-16, capping off a “stellar three years” with returns of nearly 70 per cent for investors that have held the course.

2016 election sees one bunch of climate deniers turfed out, only to be replaced by another. But will the diminished Malcolm Turnbull still be beholden to his party's right-wing, Abbott-era climate and clean energy policies, or can he follow the UK's lead and find middle ground?

China has fitted the final piece on what is set to be the world's largest radio telescope, the size of 30 football fields and worth $180m (£135m).

Gas prices surge, and spot electricity prices remain high - undermining arguments that coal generators need to close before new renewables can be built.

Market Forces finds only two financing deals closed in first half of 2016 despite banks’ purported support for sector

Australia’s big four banks’ lending for Australian renewable energy projects has tumbled in the first half of 2016, despite all of them spruiking their continuing support for the sector.

Based on public announcements from the banks and their customers, the activist group Market Forces has found only two financing deals were closed this year in the Australian renewables sector.

Continue reading...

France greenlights raft of new tenders for solar energy, including a three-fold increase in installed PV capacity, eyeing 20GW by 2023.

Solar PV has trickled across the 40 GW threshold in Germany, while the UK now has 10 GW. But both markets are slowing down.

FSA identifies myths preventing people from freezing food, as households throw away 7 million tonnes of food a year

Consumer ignorance about how to freeze food safely is helping to fuel the annual 7-million-tonne household food waste mountain in the UK, the government’s food watchdog has said.

The Food Standards Agency, working with the government department Defra, is to launch an urgent review of current guidance given to the food industry on date marking for food, which could include giving consumers more detailed and easy-to-understand advice on freezing and food storage.

Continue reading...

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 8 July 1916

Surrey
Sun and rain, coming almost together, have extended the branches and enlarged the leaves in the great woods that spread over many acres beyond our commons. You are housed now in their recesses under dark green roofs through which the eye cannot penetrate; there is a mysterious shaking and rustling by the wind overhead, and this helps to strengthen or inspire the fantasies which in these dim solitudes are created by the mind. Big toadstools which were not there two days ago cluster round the trunk of a decaying beech; the long spindle legs of an insect crawling over the table-like top of one of them are as if they belonged to some new lesser inhabitant of the world, and when the gauze of his wings spreads out and they tremble ever so lightly, a curious process fills this cool enclosure with all kinds of living things.

The verge of the wood brings realities again. A pair of pigeons start up from near the orchard on the far side flying not angularly, like the rooks, but straight and true, going high over the taller elms, showing white and grey and pale purple, now distinct in each part, then all mingled as it were together; there is nothing else quite so beautiful under the sun as the plumage of the larger kind of birds when they are on the wing. In the corner of a near field, which is half of turnips and half of mangold in their now juicy leafage, a group of young birds, scuttering rather than flying, scramble toward the hedge – it is a covey of young partridges. Presently a cock pheasant comes out of the ditch chuckling; and above where he was whole bodies of small gnats play in the shade. They seem to mix, whole parties of hundreds of them, in confusion, and yet as you watch, all appear to assort together in their own groups again.

Continue reading...

Coal’s impact on the Great Barrier Reef by causing climate change is one of the reasons why environmentalists oppose the development of coal fields and exports in Queensland. But fossil fuels could have a more direct impact on the reef and the waters around it, through chemicals produced during their production and distribution.

When coal dust is released in the marine environment it can damage marine ecosystems. Coal contains a number of different chemicals, but it is polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are known carcinogens, that are of most concern.

Some components of coal PAHs cause biochemical changes in fish and can lead to cancer. The coal dust has a very slow degradation rate and will build up in the ecosystem from the continuous input.

Coal dust also absorbs chemicals in the coastal zone and transports things like pesticides and herbicides offshore. Oil spills are another source of PAHs in the marine environment.

It is currently impossible for Australia to assess the impact of these chemicals in marine sediments, because our sediment guidelines are out of date. They need to be updated to match the standards used elsewhere, such as in the United States.

Coal dust and Great Barrier Reef marine life

I have previously looked at how far these chemicals can travel from coal ports. I found they can be detected in suspended sediments all the way to the shelf break 200km offshore. (I also published a corrigendum to this paper to correct data errors and to explain how sediment guidelines need to be updated.)

I used the Australian and the US Environment Protection Authority (EPA) sediment quality guidelines to assess the concentration of PAHs in the sediments and suspended sediments on the Great Barrier Reef. The guidelines are meant to indicate “trigger values” for the concentration of possible toxins. If trigger values are reached then sources should be curtailed.

My study showed the concentrations were below toxic levels as then defined by the US guidelines. But it is impossible to know based on the Australian guidelines because these guidelines don’t target the PAHs contained in coal or oil. To explain why, we have to go into a bit of chemistry.

The composition of the PAHs can indicate the source from coal, oil or combustion processes.

The US guidelines use 34 key PAH groups (a total of about 290 individual compounds) and are currently the best available for assessing oil pollution incidents.

The Australian guidelines do not assess the PAHs that are the major contributor to PAHs in coal and oil. The Australian guidelines specify only 20 “parent” PAHs. These guidelines are more relevant to combustion products.

When is it toxic?

The Australian guidelines consider PAHs reach toxic levels at 10-50 milligrams per kilogram of sediment. But research suggests this is way too high.

Modern assessments of oil spills now rely on the PAH content of oils in addition to the total oil content.

PAHs make up about 1% of total oil content. If you applied these guidelines to an oil spill, the toxic level of 10mg PAH per kg of sediment would equal 1,000mg of oil per kg. This oil content would kill everything in marine sediments.

For example, I and a colleague published a detailed study of fiddler crabs after the West Falmouth oil spill. We determined that total oil concentrations of 100-200mg oil per kg of sediment were toxic to juvenile crabs. Concentrations of 1,000mg per kg were toxic to adults and/or caused a number of impacts before the crabs died.

As PAHs make up around 1% of most oils, this means that the trigger values should be 1mg PAH per kg (with a maximum of 5mg per kg). And this assessment must include the PAHs that are commonly found in oil and coal.

Commercial Australian labs don’t assess all these PAHs yet, but neither did the American labs until it became necessary for assessing major oil spills such as the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We should not wait for the next disaster to upgrade our capability.

Cleaning up coal ports

We also need the ports to reduce their inputs. Townsville port has reduced the dust emission from its powdered zinc and lead loadings.

The train cars are covered and one at a time enter a shed which is under negative pressure. The powder is dumped in a hopper, transported to the conveyors and loaded onto the ships with no or little dust escaping the process.

The cars are then rinsed before leaving the shed. Water is retained and filtered so no dust leaves the area.

Why can’t coal be handled the same way? Improvement in loading metal powders was brought on by public objections to the previous operations.

This would eliminate coal piles in the coastal zone which blow dust all over nearby cities such as Gladstone and leach into coastal creeks. We also need the Australian sediment quality guidelines for PAHs brought up to 21st-century standard.

Do we have to wait until we have another incident like the Montara platform explosion in the Timor Sea in 2010 before we update our guidelines and response times?

Kathryn Burns received funding from the Australian Institute of Marine Science for chemistry studies in the Great Barrier Reef lagoon 2008-2010, and retired in 2011.

A couple who have cared for woodland on their Devon farm for five years face a costly legal battle with national park planners. Here they explain why the country’s heritage is at stake

It is an idyllic spot. Sylvan slopes dip down to a babbling river fringed by alder and willow that winds through organic pasture where hens peck, sheep graze and bees hum.

The ethos is sound – to restore the woods to their ancient glory, to create a small, sustainable business producing timber and firewood, and to teach vanishing forestry skills to anyone keen to learn. They also try to have fun here at the Hillyfield woodland farm, near the village of Harbourneford in Devon, holding a “Woodland Olympics” with axe-hurling, wood-chopping relay races and logging with a horse rather than modern machinery.

Continue reading...

It’s the future: EVs are making a greener dream come true

“You lot [earth lovers] won’t be happy till there’s rose petals coming out the exhaust,” a car industry insider complained to me.

I’d settle for an electric vehicle. Not emission free (you have to factor in the source of the electricity), but a technology that can make a real dent in climate-change emissions. My next car needs to be an EV – and so does yours.

Continue reading...

The BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Beale finds out more about the development of new military technology, including whether a drone can be chemically "grown".

This lion's role on a farm in northern Russia will surprise you.

When the US space agency’s latest probe to Jupiter tries to enter into orbit around the planet on Tuesday, it will be relying on a British rocket engine.

At the Royal Norfolk Show, some producers were looking forward to a post-Brexit Britain, while others worried about workers for fruit fields and abbatoirs

As England’s largest agricultural jamboree, the Royal Norfolk Show normally functions as a shop window for the country’s farming prowess. But this year it also offered a glimpse of the problems facing a post-Brexit nation. In the showground, amid displays of fresh fruit, vegetables and prize-worthy bulls, the talk was of how farmers would find the workers to harvest their crops in a world cut off from Brussels and free movement of labour.

In the wake of the Leave vote, there was now a “serious question mark” over the fruit industry’s ability to staff harvest season, warned Laurence Olins, who chairs British Summer Fruits, the sector’s trade association.

Continue reading...