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Black-winged stilts: Record year for UK breeding
Elephant seals 'recognise vocal rhythm'
US Republican asks Nasa if civilisation on Mars existed
Mexico launches pioneering scheme to insure its coral reef
Hotels and local government in Cancún will pay premiums, and insurance industry will pay out if the reef is damaged by storms
A stretch of coral reef off Mexico is the testing ground for a new idea that could protect fragile environments around the world: insurance.
The reef, off the coast of Cancún, is the first to be protected under an insurance scheme by which the premiums will be paid by local hotels and government, and money to pay for the repair of the reef will be released if a storm strikes.
Continue reading...Tensions rise at fracking site in UK after police and activists clashes
Scuffles and accusations of aggression increase at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas exploration site
Tensions at Britain’s most high-profile fracking site have risen following an increase in violent clashes between protesters, security guards and police. One demonstrator said she had been left unconscious following a “pretty brutal” scuffle with security officers on Wednesday, and another activist fell from his wheelchair, the same day, when police officers pulled him out of the way of a 40-tonne lorry.
Both protesters said they planned to report the incidents that had occurred – at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site, near Blackpool – to the Lancashire police.
Continue reading...Son of Cecil the lion killed by trophy hunter
Six-year-old Xanda was shot and killed by hunters when he roamed outside the protected area of the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe
A son of Cecil the lion has been killed by trophy hunters in Zimbabwe, meeting the same fate as his father whose death in 2015 caused a global outcry.
Xanda, who was six years old and believed to have fathered a number of cubs himself, was shot just outside the Hwange National Park, not far from where Cecil died.
Continue reading...Lawsuit aims to force EPA to crack down on air polluters in Texas
Environmental groups accuse agency of turning blind eye as Texas ‘renders useless’ pollution controls by issuing lax permits for oil and gas facilities
Campaign groups are suing the Environmental Protection Agency in a bid to force it to clamp down on industrial air pollution in Texas.
Related: Texas companies penalized in less than 3% of illegal air pollution cases – report
Continue reading...Poaching pushes pangolin closer to extinction
Scale of pangolin slaughter revealed – millions hunted in central Africa alone
Pangolins are the world’s most trafficked wild mammal and decimated Asian populations have sharply shifted the focus of exploitation to Africa
The true scale of the slaughter of pangolins in Africa has been revealed by new research showing that millions of the scaly mammals are being hunted and killed.
Pangolins were already known to be the world’s most trafficked wild mammal, with at least a million being traded in the last decade to supply the demand for its meat and scales in Asian markets. Populations of Asian pangolins have been decimated, leaving the creatures highly endangered and sharply shifting the focus of exploitation to Africa’s four species.
Continue reading...Building new coal-fired power stations should be market's decision, Turnbull says
PM says there is a role for government but ‘the goal should always be for investment decisions to be made by the market’
Malcolm Turnbull says it is better the market decides whether or not to build a new coal-fired power station in Australia rather than delivering that outcome through government intervention.
The prime minister was asked at an economic forum in Melbourne on Thursday whether the government would intervene to see new coal plants constructed, or whether it would leave that decision to the market.
Continue reading...Torrential rain batters north-east China again – video
A torrential rainstorm has battered Yongji county in China’s Jilin province for the second time in a matter of days. The local meteorological department issued a red alert before dawn as the downpour threatened to bring more flooding to an area where eight people died earlier in ther week
Continue reading...Wasteland: plastics campaign calls for grassroots action on pollution – video
In a film released by Surfers Against Sewage, narrated by the actor Imelda Staunton, the scale of the plastic waste that circulates on the currents of the world’s oceans is compared to a global nuclear security threat. The group is calling for people to adopt a five-point plan to reduce plastic pollution
Continue reading...Plastics campaign calls for grassroots action to cut pollution across the UK
Individuals, schools and businesses are urged to adopt a five point plan to help make their towns and cities free of single-use plastic
Communities across the UK are being urged to spread grass roots resistance to single-use plastic to reduce the millions of tonnes of it seeping into the oceans.
Local councils, schools and businesses will be targeted in the Plastic Free Coastlines campaign that aims to ape the movement to end the use of plastic bags.
Continue reading...Bees under the macro lens – in pictures
Summer’s here, and so are bees. These new macro images by Alejandro Santillana are being showcased in the Insects Unlocked project at the University of Texas at Austin
Continue reading...Asia's coal-fired power boom 'bankrolled by foreign governments and banks'
The vast majority of newly built stations in Indonesia relied on export credits agencies or development banks, says study by Market Forces
The much-discussed boom in coal-fired power in south-east Asia is being bankrolled by foreign governments and banks, with the vast majority of projects apparently too risky for the private sector.
Environmental analysts at activist group Market Forces examined 22 deals involving 13.1 gigawatts of coal-fired power in Indonesia and found that 91% of the projects had the backing of foreign governments through export credit agencies or development banks.
Continue reading...Hot dogs: rising heat makes it too hot for Africa’s wild dogs to hunt
The endangered wild dogs are well adapted to high temperatures but a warming world means pup survival is plummeting, study shows
Rising temperatures are making it too hot for African wild dogs to hunt and the number of their pups that survive is plummeting, according to a new study. The research is among the first to show a direct impact of increased heat on wildlife that appears well adapted to high temperatures.
There are only 7,000 African wild dogs left in the wild and they have lost 93% of their historic ranges to humans. Research earlier in July suggested that a “biological annihilation” of wildlife in recent decades means a sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history is already under way.
Continue reading...House of horrors: inside the US wildlife repository – photo essay
Photographer Matthew Staver and writer Oliver Milman visited the US National Wildlife Property Repository, where illegal wildlife products, from stuffed tigers to worked ivory, are stored and counted
If the US had a national house of horrors, it would probably be the federal government compound that lies on the fringes of Denver, Colorado, incongruously set within a wildlife reserve where bison languorously dawdle against a backdrop of the snow-crowned Rockies.
The National Wildlife Property Repository, operated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), is a warehouse of the macabre. It’s a Noah’s ark of protected deceased biodiversity that smugglers attempted to get into the US before being caught by FWS staff at airports and ports.
Continue reading...Chirrup and rattle of the courting grasshoppers
Wolsingham, Weardale The grasshoppers are singing, dragging the little pegs on their hind femurs across the edges of their long membranous wings
In the 40 years that I have followed this steep, stony, path leading down to Tunstall reservoir, one moorland edge bank of fescues, betony and bell heather has always been a reliable spot for grasshoppers. Facing south-west, sheltered from wind by a larch plantation it’s a perfect place to sit on a sunny afternoon and listen to their soundtrack of summer.
You would need more finely tuned ears than mine to distinguish all 13 of our grasshopper species by their songs, but here I have only ever found two; the meadow, Chorthippus parallelus, and the common green, Omocestus viridulus.
Continue reading...Open season for our notion-building pollies
Since the Finkel review was announced it has been open season for notion building in the energy space. While Malcolm has been spruiking Snowy 2.zero pumped hydro, Craig has been promising death by renewables, quite literally. Josh seems to be for just about everything, besides Labor state governments of course, and reckons we are on track to meet Paris commitments. Barnaby, true to form, is backing coal, and presumably thinks Paris will take care of itself, while Electricity Bill is keeping mum.
The one I like the best, but really hasn’t been nailed quite the way I thought it should, is Tony’s call for nuclear subs. Imagine, our first truly dispatchable power system, capable of delivering a few hundred megawatts just about anywhere you need it. “Float and plug” - just what we need to shore up our fragile energy system. A tour of dispatch last year including Tasmania from January through June, South Australia June through November, and then on to Queensland for the summer would have been a nice little money spinner for the Navy, worth around quarter of a billion dollars on the energy markets. And that doesn’t include offsets, such as the purported $44 million Tasmanian government spent on diesel gensets. Could it be our best notion yet for meeting Paris?
It goes without saying that our political masters don’t need much provocation to indulge in a bit of notion building. After all, it is what they do best.
But, in case you are wondering why this sudden release of energy, it might be useful to reflect on some recent analyses that paint a truly disturbing picture for our energy sector.
The first comes from the European Commission’s latest electricity market update, providing the comparison of wholesale electricity prices shown below.
International wholesale prices as adapted from Figure 33 in the European Commission’s Quarterly report on European electricity markets Q1 2017. Average prices for the 4th quarter of 2014, 3rd quarter 2015, and the first quarter of 2017, are referenced as a percentage of Australian prices.
Figure 33, Quarterly report on European electricity markets Q1 2017, https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/quarterly_report_on_european_electricity_markets_q1_2017.pdf
As recently as three years ago our electricity wholesale prices were low by any measure. In fact according to the EC’s analysis,
our market prices then briefly dipped below those in the US. Then, ours were just 20% of the Japanese price.
How times have changed.
According to the EC’s latest analysis our prices tracked pretty closely with the US until the second half of 2015. It seems things to start going awry just about when Josh was received the poison chalice as Minister for Energy and Resources.
Six quarters later and the EC now estimates that for Quarter 1 this year our prices were a staggering 400% higher than in the US.
This last quarter we even managed to top Japan, which is some achievement considering that across the quarter we exported some20 million tonnes of our thermal coal and over half a million tonnes of LNG to help them sure up a power system still reverberating from the shock waves of Fukushima. That’s about half as much thermal coal as used to power our system.
The second comes from BP’s latest Statistical Review of World Energy released in June, which provides national figures for all things related to energy production and consumption, including sector wide emissions.
According to BP’s latest figures, our energy sector produced about 409 million tonnes of CO2 in 2016. That amounts to 16.7 tonnes for every Australian. On a per capita basis, that puts our energy sector a touch above the next most emissions intensive economy in the developed world - the US at 16.5 tonnes. Even Canada, which has a resource based economy more comparable to our own, gets away with only 14.6 tonnes per person.
Trends in per-capita emissions for select countries (in tonnes per person), plotted as a function of GDP (in $US purchasing power parity terms). Emission data from BP’s Statisical review of World Energy. GDP and population data from IMF. Dots show 2009, in the wake of the GFC.
Worryingly, relative to 2005 levels our energy sector emissions are up about 10%, which stands in stark contrast to most other advanced economies, and especially the US, down 12% over the same interval.
National energy sector emissions for select advanced economies, relative to 2005 levels, using data from BP’s latest Statistical Review of World Energy released in June. Australia’s Paris commitment is to reduce national emissions to 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. Note that for Australia energy sector emissions (including transport and power) account for about 2/3 the total emissions.
So the notion that we are on track to meet Paris is, at best, notional.
To achieve such extraordinary wholesale price outcomes, one might imagine something remarkable had happened to our energy system since 2014. Our Coal-cons such as Craig Kelly would believe it is because our power system is groaning under the weight of renewable production.
But perhaps it the absence of renewables. Or maybe it is both, peskily masked in a cloak of invisibility. Check out the figure below, which shows our electricity production by key fuel group (coal, gas and renewables) over the period since our power prices have risen from the lowest to highest on the international pecking order.
Weekly average production of electricity by three main fuel group types (in gigawatts), dispatched on the National Electricity Market over the last five years. Data sourced from AEMO, using Dylan McConnell’s openNEM. RE (renewables) includes hydro, wind and large scale solar and biomass, but does not include rooftop PV which is not dipsatched onto the market.
Can you determine a trend that could account for anything? I’m damned if I can.
And that in itself is sure to be worry enough to keep it open season on notion building for a long time to come.
For those interested, some more detailed discussion of the crisis besetting the National Electricity Market (NEM) in eastern Australia can be found in my Anatomy of an Energy Crisis series, Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.
Queensland energy minister stands down amid email investigation
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