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Consultation on Australia’s post-2020 greenhouse gas target
James Rebanks, Twitter’s favourite shepherd: ‘Sheep farming is another form of culture, just like Picasso or punk’
“Be careful,” says James Rebanks. “She’s only just had puppies, and she’s very protective of them. She might give you a nip.” The mother to whom a wide berth must be given is his sheepdog Floss, tucked in the corner of the living room in Rebanks’ farmhouse feeding her 10 pups. The dad, Tan, his other sheepdog, is studiously avoiding his huge new family. An absentee father after just four days. Call canine social services.
It’s 8.30am on an intermittently bright early spring day in the Lake District – “a bonny day”, Rebanks’ father-in-law, Ian, calls it later, when a sudden hailstorm subsides. Rebanks’ wife, Helen, is getting his two young daughters ready for school; three-year-old son Isaac is playing with his model sheep; Rebanks himself is preparing for his morning’s work: feeding his 450 sheep, most of which are pregnant with lambs. He’s taking me along for the ride. He is riding a quad bike; I’m in a small trailer filled with hay being pulled along behind. It is not a glamorous assignment.
Continue reading...Rockefeller family tried and failed to get ExxonMobil to accept climate change
Founding family of the US oil empire Exxon, begged the company to give up climate denial and reform their ways a decade ago – but attempts at engagement failed
Members of the Rockefeller family tried to get ExxonMobil to acknowledge the dangers of climate change a decade ago – but failed in their efforts to reform the oil giant.
In letters, lunch meetings, and shareholder resolutions, the descendants of John D Rockefeller, founder of the oil empire that eventually became Exxon, sought repeatedly to persuade the company to abandon climate denial and begin shifting their business towards clean energy.
Continue reading...Cat litter blamed for $240m radiation leak at New Mexico nuclear waste dump
Cat litter used to absorb liquids in a barrel of nuclear waste was the wrong type, sparking a chemical reaction and a subsequent radioactive leak
A radiation leak at an underground nuclear waste dump in New Mexico was caused by “chemically incompatible” contents, including cat litter, that reacted inside a barrel of waste causing it to rupture, scientists said on Thursday.
The US Energy Department report on last year’s radiation accident at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad showed that a drum of waste containing radioisotopes like plutonium was improperly packaged at the Los Alamos National Laboratory near Santa Fe before arriving for disposal.
Continue reading...UK's biggest plastic milk bottle recycler on brink of collapse
Chairman of Closed Loop Recycling admits company is nearing administration as it feels dual effects of oil price drop and supermarket price war
Britain’s biggest recycler of plastic milk bottles is facing possible collapse after being squeezed between a slump in global oil prices and a supermarket price war.
Closed Loop Recycling, based in Dagenham, could be forced to call in administrators within days because clients have cut back on buying recycled plastic.
Continue reading...RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch confirms many species still declining
Starlings and house sparrow numbers dwindling as survey reveals long-term downward trend despite overall boost to populations due to a warm winter and bumper harvests
The number of backyard researchers in the world’s biggest citizen science survey was up this year, but participants found populations of many bird species continued to decline.
More than 585,000 people took part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch. The survey took place over a January weekend, as it has for the past 36 years.
Continue reading...Emissions Reduction Fund: Safeguard Mechanism Consultation Paper
Emissions Reduction Fund: Safeguard Mechanism Consultation Paper
Oceanreef Aquaculture
Oceanreef Aquaculture
West Coast Rock Lobster Managed Fishery
Florida's unspeakable issue leaves climate change official tongue-tied
- Emergency chief says anything but phrase ‘banned’ by governor
- Fema to pull funding for states that refuse to address climate change
The latest victim of Florida governor Rick Scott’s unwritten ban on state officials using the words “climate change” is his own disaster preparedness lieutenant, who stumbled through verbal gymnastics to avoid using the scientific term in a newly surfaced video.
Continue reading...Review of the National Carbon Offset Standard
Review of the National Carbon Offset Standard
Review of the National Carbon Offset Standard
Australia's emissions projections 2014-15
Australia's emissions projections 2014-15
Syrian seedbank wins award for continuing work despite civil war
Syrian scientists who risked their lives preserving the region’s ancient farming heritage with nearly 150,000 seed samples are presented Gregor Mendel award in Berlin
The fields around Aleppo have sustained humanity for tens of thousands of years. Blood-torn now, they were among the first to produce wheat, barley and the crops that made this area part of the “fertile crescent” that Western civilisation sprang from.
There may be little sign of that left today, amid Syria’s bloody civil war, but the few remaining strands of the region’s farming heritage have been pulled together by a small group of scientists, whose achievement has just been recognised.
Continue reading...Amazon's trees removed nearly a third less carbon in last decade – study
Fall in amount of carbon absored by rainforest means even greater cuts to manmade emissions are needed to combat climate change, warn scientists
The amount of carbon the Amazon’s remaining trees removed from the atmosphere fell by almost a third last decade, leading scientists to warn that manmade carbon emissions would need to be cut more deeply to tackle climate change.
Trees in untouched areas of the forest have been dying off across the basin at an increasing rate, found the study, published in Nature on Wednesday. Meanwhile the tree growth produced by higher CO2 levels in recent decades levelled off.
Continue reading...Condition setting under assessment bilateral agreements
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