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Sustainable shopping: your guilt-free guide to flowers this Valentine's Day
DNA story of when life first gave us lemons
Plastic waste 'building up' in Arctic
Plastic pollution reaching record levels in once pristine Arctic
Climate change is increasing flood risks in Europe | John Abraham
A new study finds strong agreement that flood risks in central and western Europe are rising due to global warming.
As humans continue to emit greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, the world continues to warm. We see that warming everywhere – in the atmosphere, in the oceans, with rising sea levels, and melting ice. But while we know conclusively that humans are causing the warming, an equally important question is, “so what?” Really, we want to know the consequences of warming so that we can make informed decisions about what to do about it. We really have only three choices: mitigate, adapt, or ignore and suffer the consequences.
A very new study was just published that helps answer this question of “so what?” The research was conducted by lead author Lorenzo Alfieri (European Commission – Joint Research Centre, Italy), Richard Betts (University of Exeter and Met Office, UK), and their colleagues.
Continue reading...World-first genetic analysis reveals Aussie white shark numbers
Scotland's red squirrel numbers stabilise
Tasmanian "rain man" awarded for recording over 50 years of weather data
Country diary: a peacock butterfly wakes into living room summer
Sandy, Bedfordshire: It should have been hibernating, but there it was, bashing its head against a cold window. Something had to be done
It is a curious fact that the most beautiful parts of a butterfly are also the least palatable. When I lifted a log from the woodpile, the eye of a peacock in an insect wing beneath looked back. It was a sail without a ship, a cover without a book. The wing was still fired with fresh colours, as lustrous as a birthday balloon and just as nutritious. The thick body that had been provisioned with sweetness to sit out the winter in darkness had gone.
The day before, another peacock, inadvertently transported indoors in the log basket, was hours away from cremation when it woke into living room summer. I did not see it fly up to the sunlit window but heard a loud thrumming from behind the blind. There it was, improbably animated out of season, bashing its head incessantly against a cold window. How could it understand that the golden orb beyond was a false god, offering only frost and ice?
Continue reading...Huge levels of antibiotic use in US farming revealed
Concerns raised over weakened regulations on imports in potential post-Brexit trade deals
Livestock raised for food in the US are dosed with five times as much antibiotic medicine as farm animals in the UK, new data has shown, raising questions about rules on meat imports under post-Brexit trade deals.
The difference in rates of dosage rises to at least nine times as much in the case of cattle raised for beef, and may be as high as 16 times the rate of dosage per cow in the UK. There is currently a ban on imports of American beef throughout Europe, owing mainly to the free use of growth hormones in the US.
Continue reading...Tesla turns to Model Y, as Model 3 slowly exits “production hell”
Australia rooftop solar boom continues with best January ever
OpenNEM: An open platform for National Electricity Market data
Tamil Nadu is India’s model for low-cost renewables
South Australia should aim for 100% renewables by 2025, not 50%
SolarReserve still falling short at flagship solar tower project
Musk says storage orders surge on success of Tesla big battery
Germany to set end date for coal power in 2019
Coal giant AGL cashes in on higher electricity prices
Fake nests fight real threat of extinction for the shy albatross – video
Tasmanian scientists are trialling a new tactic to help the shy albatross fight extinction: constructing artificial nests. Over one hundred specially built mudbrick and aerated concrete artificial nests were airlifted on to Bass Strait’s Albatross Island in July 2017 as a trial program. So far the results are looking promising with the breeding success of pairs on artificial nests 20% higher than those on natural nests. Conservationists hope the nests will boost the population of the threatened seabird, which is vulnerable to climate change.
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