Feed aggregator

Donald Trump signed a number of executive orders Tuesday that will allow construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines to move forward. Both projects had been blocked by Barack Obama due in part to environmental concerns, but Trump hailed the thousands of construction jobs that he said would be created. He also signed an order ensuring the pipes themselves would be made within the US

• Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines to be revived by Trump administration

Continue reading...

The president's support for Keystone XL and Dakota Access proves he is a climate threat, critics say.

Scientists have created bacteria that thrive using an expanded "genetic alphabet".

Contrary to all evidence, the new US president will ignore climate change science and proceed with aggressive pro-oil and gas policies

If there were any lingering doubts over Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for shoving the US back into the smoggy embrace of fossil fuels, his decision to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines banishes them utterly.

Trump has thrown down the most provocative gauntlet possible to the environmental movement, which now sees its worst fears crystalizing within a few days of the inauguration. Those Trump Tower chats with Al Gore about climate change – and Ivanka Trump’s apparent concern over the issue – now vanish over the horizon. This will be an aggressively pro-oil and gas administration, even if that means boiling the planet.

Continue reading...

The Google-sponsored race to put a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon has just five teams left in the competition.

The excavation of a rare, intact Viking boat burial in western Scotland has been set out in detail for the first time.

At first glance the quiet town of Live Oak seems an unlikely venue for a stand against Big Energy. But in recent weeks it’s become a centre of opposition

A north Florida river that attracted the state’s first tourists a century before Walt Disney’s famous cartoon mouse is emerging at the centre of a fight against a contentious 515-mile natural gas pipeline that many are calling America’s next Standing Rock.

One section of the so-called Sabal Trail pipeline is being laid beneath the crystal waters of the Suwannee river, whose pure mineral springs were once fabled to cure anything from marital strife to gout.

Continue reading...

In our current “post-truth” climate, inoculation may provide the key to making facts matter again

It’s fitting that as Donald Trump continues to flirt with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, inoculation may provide the key to effectively debunking this sort of misinformation.

That’s the finding of a new study published in Global Challenges by Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz, Seth Rosenthal, and Edward Maibach. The paper tested what’s known as “inoculation theory,” explained in the video below by John Cook, who’s also published research on the subject. The video is a lecture from the Denial101x free online course, which itself is structured based on inoculation theory:

Continue reading...

Writer and professor, Ashley Dawson, argues in his new book that capitalism is behind our current mass extinction crisis. But installing universal guaranteed income in biodiversity hotspots may be one remedy.

Human nature isn’t driving mass extinction – as some have argued – but our acceptance of capitalism is, according to English Professor Ashley Dawson with the City University of New York.

In his recent, slim, eye-opening book, Extinction: A Radical History, Dawson lays out the case that our current global economic system is pushing the Earth ever closer to a mass extinction event – one not seen since a rogue comet ended the reign of the dinosaurs. But he also argues there are potential solutions, including giving a universal guaranteed income to populations living in or near biodiversity hotspots to counter poaching, deforestation, and other harmful activities.

Continue reading...

South Yorkshire Fire Brigade were called in to assist in giving a polar bear a dental check-up.

US President Donald Trump has withdrawn from the TPP, so what's the future for the world's largest trade deal?

A Rodrigues fruit bat has been born by C-section at San Diego Zoo.

Tyne Green, Hexham: Through binoculars, it feels as if I’m watching a wildlife documentary in this country park, minutes from town

The sun comes out as I near Tyne Green, saturating everything in olive-gold light; the trees on the bank, the arches under Hexham Bridge, the billowing plumes of steam from the chipboard factory. As I slow down, I become aware of Sunday morning sounds. Bells are being rung in the abbey on the hill. A women’s eight slices upriver with a rhythmical dipping of oars. Chattering mallards are grouped hopefully by the waterside steps. A double note from a train, traffic on the dual carriageway, the muffled flow of the weir.

Minutes from town, this linear park is busy with dog walkers, runners and golfers thwacking balls among undulating grassy tumps. On the river alongside, parallel lives are lived on the safety of the water or within its thick fringe of willows. A goosander scratches its cheek with an orange-red foot, before taking off, straight as an arrow to skim the surface. A cormorant holds its head up, watchful as a cobra. A shaggily white-chested heron stands motionless by a the calm of an inlet.

Continue reading...

Major retailer ERM becomes first to choose paying penalty price over investing in new wind and solar, taking advantage of extensive tax losses.

Total electricity usage in NSW increased by 7.5 per cent1 in January compared to the same period last year, driven largely by householders efforts to combat the extreme heatwave.

The Hangzhou-based company invested approximately 1.8 billion yuan ($262.6 million) in the project, which spans about 299.5 hectares.

Hearing Josh Frydenberg putting forward a call for coal that seems to echo the Abbott rhetoric of a few short years ago will do nothing for energy investment. It's surprising that the political instinct is so poor.

A closer look at the extraordinary price volatility that marked "sizzling Saturday" in Queensland and sent electricity prices soaring.

GIANT OTTER: Scientists have unearthed fossils of an intriguingly large otter as big as a wolf that frolicked in rivers and lakes in a lush, warm and humid wetlands region in south-western China about 6.2 million years ago.

“Wetlands for disaster risk reduction” is this year’s theme – get Wetlands Australia e-magazine and the latest wetlands fact sheet, enter a photo competition or make an origami frog.