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Our evil planet kills countless humans every year – why bother to save it? | Colin Quinn
Earth has these ‘natural occurrences’ that devastate homes and villages. But are they really natural occurrences? Sounds more like outbursts of a maniac
If this planet exploded tomorrow I wouldn’t shed a tear.
Environmentalists say evil mankind is destroying a beautiful God-given place. Really? Mudslides, earthquakes and twisters kill millions (thousands) of people every year. Innocent planet? I judge by deeds not words. Yes, pollutants kill. But so do rockslides. If you talk to the average resident of a natural disaster location, they will be glad to tell you the planet has done as much evil as the average multinational in terms of lives taken in their local community.
Continue reading...Richey Fishing Company - Australian Salmon - Application 2015
Emoji lords to release 67 new symbols
Ecological Communities of National Environmental Significance data now available
Draft varied threat abatement plan for competition and land degradation by rabbits
Four species added to the list of threatened species under the EPBC Act
Reef Trust Tender - Burdekin - Expressions of interest
Sale of Commonwealth environmental water from the Goulburn catchment benefits Victorian irrigators and the environment
Campaigners try to halt Japan whale hunt in last-ditch legal fight
Australian environmental group asks court in Sydney to find Japanese whalers in contempt of a 2008 ruling banning fleet from the Southern Ocean
Environmental campaigners are launching a last-ditch legal attempt to prevent Japan from slaughtering whales in the Antarctic this winter, after Tokyo indicated it would ignore a ban on its “scientific” expeditions.
The Australian branch of Humane Society International (HSI) will on Wednesday ask the federal court in Sydney to find Kyodo Senpaku, the Japanese company that organises the hunts, in contempt of a 2008 ruling that banned the whaling fleet from hunting in an area of the Southern Ocean that Australia recognises as a whale sanctuary.
Continue reading...Palau protects marine wealth to pay for its future
The banning of fishing in a newly created Pacific marine sanctuary will help stocks recover and attract high-end tourist dollars as a replacement source of income
The recent decision by the Pacific island nation of Palau to end fishing in a California-sized swath of tuna-rich ocean comes at a time of record overfishing and will help the populations of bigeye and yellowfin to recover, scientists say.
Officials hope that the new reserve will boost sustainable tourism revenues as well as fish populations, as ordinary divers and even snorkelers will be able to experience the difference that protection measures can make.
Continue reading...How on Earth do planes fly?
Gates Foundation would be $1.9bn better off if it had divested from fossil fuels
Analysis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation health charity, and 13 other major funds, reveals moving investments out of coal, oil and gas and into green companies would have generated billions in higher returns
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would have had $1.9bn (£1.3bn) more to spend on its lifesaving health projects if it had divested from fossil fuels and instead invested in greener companies, according to a new analysis.
The Canadian research company Corporate Knights examined the stock holdings of 14 funds, worth a combined $1tn, and calculated how they would have performed if they had dumped shares in oil, coal and gas companies three years ago.
Continue reading...How can we Engineer a steady state economy?
Groundwater Purchase Tender in Queensland Upper Condamine Alluvium
Fireworks are fun – but the effects are not
The sparkles from fireworks last a few seconds but the air pollution can linger in our cities for hours.
Firework smoke is rich in tiny metal particles making it very different to normal urban air pollution. These metals are used to make firework colours in much the same way as Victorian scientists identified chemicals by burning them in a Bunsen flame; red from strontium or lithium, blue from copper and bright green or white from barium compounds.
Continue reading...The planet’s future is in the balance. But a transformation is already under way
As the world prepares for the UN Paris climate summit, the world is at a tipping point. But a political and scientific revolution could yet save it
We Homo sapiens got lucky. Very lucky. Back in the 1920s, when looking for a “safe” gas to use in refrigerators, chlorine was the element of choice in a new family of manmade chemical compounds – chlorofluorocarbons. In the 1970s, Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland discovered that while it was safe in our fridges, it was destroying the ozone layer, which is essential to protect all life on land.
Luck struck twice. Nasa scientists measuring ozone above Antarctica in the 1980s never saw the ozone hole in their data. Their computers were programmed to ignore any figures deemed “impossible”. Luckily, the British Antarctic Survey had no such technology and sounded the alarm. In 1987, nations signed the Montreal Protocol outlawing CFCs.
Continue reading...Launch of Tesco's frozen avocados could help reduce Britain's food waste
Tesco’s ‘fast-frozen’ de-stoned and peeled avocado packs could help to cut down on the 54,000 tonnes of stone fruit wasted in Britain each year, say experts
Too slow to ripen or too squidgy and brown inside, avocados often end up contributing to the UK’s food waste mountain. But Tesco believes it has the answer to our avocado woes: frozen ones, de-stoned, peeled and ripe when they thaw out.
On sale from this weekend, in what is believed to be a first for a UK supermarket, the frozen avocados will also be cheaper than the fresh fruit at £2.50 for nine halves.
Continue reading...Tories push for climate change action abroad but back fossil fuels at home
Foreign secretary Philip Hammond tells US free-marketeers that climate action boosts economies, while at home George Osborne undermines the green economy
Perhaps it’s being forced to think about global matters and the dangers they pose, but the UK’s foreign secretary Philip Hammond, like his Conservative predecessor, both understands the risks of climate change and the urgent need to act.
In a powerful speechthis week, he said: “Taking action to combat climate change is the right thing to do - the conservative thing to do.” Hammond had deliberately picked a tough crowd: the American Enterprise Institute, the free-marketeers who have for years have turned ExxonMobil and Koch dollars into climate change denial.
Continue reading...World’s largest ocean cleanup operation one step closer to launch
Real life trials of a groundbreaking array designed to clean up the vast plastic island in the Pacific are due to begin next year after successful tests of a prototype in the Netherlands
A crowdfunded 100km-long boom to clean up a vast expanse of plastic rubbish in the Pacific is one step closer to reality after successful tests of a scaled-down prototype in the Netherlands last week.
Further trials off the Dutch and Japanese coasts are now slated to begin in the new year. If they are successful, the world’s largest ever ocean cleanup operation will go live in 2020, using a gigantic V-shaped array, the like of which has never been seen before.
Continue reading...Collapsing Greenland glacier could raise sea levels by half a metre, say scientists
Huge Zachariae Isstrom glacier has begun to break up, starting a rapid retreat that could continue to raise sea levels for decades to come
A major glacier in Greenland that holds enough water to raise global sea levels by half a metre has begun to crumble into the North Atlantic Ocean, scientists say.
The huge Zachariae Isstrom glacier in northeast Greenland started to melt rapidly in 2012 and is now breaking up into large icebergs where the glacier meets the sea, monitoring has revealed.
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