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Wildlife photographer of the year 2015 winners - in pictures
Canadian amateur photographer Don Gutoski has been named wildlife photographer of the year at London’s Natural History Museum for his image, Tale of two foxes. Here are the winning images in all categories
Continue reading...In 2050 there will be 9 billion people on earth. How to feed them
Have we reached ‘peak farmland’? Patrick Barkham digs into a new book about food and the future, while Chris Newell provides a graphic summary of the challenges ahead
’Tis the season of harvest festivals and farmers are celebrating another bumper crop. British farmers have this year twice smashed the record for the world’s highest-yielding wheat crop ever recorded, first in the Lincolnshire Wolds and then on a farm overlooking Holy Island in Northumberland.
Squeezing ever-higher yields from the same fields is one reason why the famous theories of Thomas Malthus, the cleric who predicted catastrophic famine and disease as population growth outstripped food production, haven’t come to pass. During the last 40 years of the 20th century, when the world’s population doubled from 3 to 6 billion, our annual production of grain rose even faster, nearly tripling over the same period.
Continue reading...Methane release from melting permafrost could trigger dangerous global warming | John Abraham
A policy briefing from the Woods Hole Research Center concludes that the IPCC doesn’t adequately account for a methane warming feedback
While most attention has been given to carbon dioxide, it isn’t the only greenhouse gas that scientists are worried about. Carbon dioxide is the most important human-emitted greenhouse gas, but methane has also increased in the atmosphere and it adds to our concerns.
While methane is not currently as important as carbon dioxide, it has a hidden danger. Molecule for molecule, methane traps more heat than carbon dioxide; approximately 30 times more, depending on the time frame under consideration. However, because methane is present in much smaller concentrations (compared to carbon dioxide), its aggregate effect is less.
Continue reading...Tetchy tweets suggest frayed tempers in UK energy department
Series of tweets from minister Andrea Leadsom accuse critics of lies, distortion and nonsense
Are those running the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) having a meltdown? The tweets sent by energy minister Andrea Leadsom certainly suggest tempers are running high: she accuses critics of lies, distortion and nonsense.
The ministerial seats at Decc must be getting hotter by the day. More than 1,000 jobs have gone in the solar power industry, with bosses blaming the government’s intention to slash solar subsidies by almost 90%. The statement by Leadsom’s predecessor, Greg Barker, that the evidence for cuts is “pretty poor” and will “kill the industry” can only have added to the heat. But should the response of a minister of state to such criticism be to let the red mist descend?
Continue reading...Great Barrier Reef Report Card 2014
Water Sensitive Urban Design seminar tomorrow, consumption workshop, and have YourSay
Shell and Exxon's €5bn problem: gas drilling that sets off earthquakes and wrecks homes
Groningen has been one of Europe’s richest gas fields for 30 years, and thousands of people say their homes have been damaged by the tremors that drilling sets off. Now a class action may finally bring them compensation – and force a rethink of European energy security
Five years ago, Annemarie Heite and her husband, Albert, bought their dream home; a traditional 19th-century farmhouse in Groningen province in the northern Netherlands. The couple planned to raise their two young daughters in this charming corner of the Dutch countryside. “Then, the living was still easy, and affordable,” Annemarie says, her tone bittersweet and nostalgic. Today, their house is scheduled for demolition.
Hundreds of earthquakes have wrecked the foundations of the Heites’ home and made it unsafe to live in. Annemarie’s biggest fear is the safety of her daughters. She points to a room. “This is where my children sleep,” she says, “and everyday I’m just picking up pieces of bricks and stuff from the ceiling.”
Continue reading...A special badger – with very special protectors
Edale, Derbyshire I could only stand and marvel: at the badger, but also at the dedication of those working on her behalf
Despite the whispering, our excitement was palpable. “There’s a white one,” one of the volunteers from the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust said. Not white, as it turned out, although in the half-light of a misty pre-dawn it seemed that way.
Standing closer, the badger appeared more gingery brown, the head’s usual contrast of humbug stripes almost absent. The eyes were a marmalade colour, pretty and rather gentle. This wasn’t an albino but an erythristic badger, lacking black pigment in its fur through a genetic mutation. Their distribution in Britain is patchy; there are more in north Shropshire, for example, but very few in Derbyshire; this was the first badger experts in the county had heard about.
Continue reading...Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez: ‘Our greed is destroying the planet’
The teenage activist and musician who made headlines about climate change when he addressed the UN in June talks about what inspires him
Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez’s long hair marked him out from the middle-aged bureaucrats in the room. So did his age. After all, few 15-year-olds get to address the UN in New York, let alone speak with eloquence and passion on climate change. The speech, delivered in June, went round the world. It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube, and secured him press coverage in everything from Rolling Stone to the Guardian.
For Xiuhtezcatl (pronounced, roughly, shooTEZcat), however, addressing the UN was business as usual, or close to it. For most of his young life he has been working in climate activism, mainly with his group, Earth Guardians, which uses music and speech to engage young people around the world, and has more than 400 regional groups globally.
Continue reading...Chinese 'ivory queen' charged with smuggling 706 elephant tusks
Yang Feng Glan, kingpin between east African poaching syndicates and Chinese buyers, accused in Tanzania of smuggling ivory worth £1.62m
A Chinese woman dubbed the “ivory queen” for her alleged leadership of one of Africa’s biggest ivory smuggling rings has been captured and charged.
Yang Feng Glan is accused of smuggling 706 elephant tusks worth £1.62m from Tanzania to the far east. The Elephant Action League, a US-based campaign group, described her as “the most important ivory trafficker ever arrested in the country”.
Continue reading...Shark tooth left in victim's foot after attack in Western Australia
Eli Zawadzki bitten by what experts believe was normally-placid grey nurse shark while was surfing near Mandurah on Wednesday afternoon
Shark experts have identified the shark responsible for biting a man near Mandurah, Western Australia, as the usually “very, very placid” grey nurse shark, based on a fragment of tooth pulled from the teenager’s foot.
Eli Zawadzki, an apprentice electrician from Mandurah, was bitten on the lower leg and foot while surfing off Pyramids Beach, about 70km south of Perth, at 5pm on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Anti-pollution cycling masks tested
With thousands dying a year from poor air quality, is a mask as good a safety precaution as a helmet?
Many British urban bike commuters opt to wear a helmet. Some also go for a hi-vis jacket. But considerably fewer use an anti-pollution mask, despite evidence that smog might be the biggest single danger you face on two wheels.
According to a study carried out by Kings College London (KCL), around 9,500 people die in London alone every year due to long-term exposure to air pollution, with most deaths due to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particulates known as PM2.5s.
BBC apologises for Radio 4 show that mocked climate science
Show did not make clear climate sceptics are a minority voice, broadcaster admits, in ‘an unfortunate lapse’ of editorial policy, reports Climate Home
The BBC has apologised for airing a half-hour radio show earlier this year in which a series of high-profile climate sceptics lined up to disparage the science behind global warming.
What’s the point of the Met Office, aired in August, did not make clear sceptics are a “minority voice, out of step with scientific consensus,” the corporation said in an email to climate scientist Andy Smedley.
Continue reading...Albatross Island: the remote outcrop where conservation counts – in pictures
Off the coast of Tasmania, Australia, lies a small island on which 10,000 rare shy albatross live. Their declining population is a concern for conservationists including Dr Rachael Alderman, who has spent the past week on the island monitoring the birds. Photographer Matthew Newton has visted the island on three occasions over the past 12 months, recording the spectacular sight of the colony and the conservationists at work
Continue reading...Invitation to comment on listing assessment for Hibbertia abyssa (Bandalup buttercup)
Wildlife thriving around Chernobyl nuclear plant despite radiation
High numbers of elk, deer, boar and wolves show long-term effect of world’s worst nuclear accident is less damaging than everyday human activity, say scientists
Wildlife is abundant around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, despite the presence of radiation released by the world’s most catastrophic nuclear explosion nearly three decades ago, researchers have found.
The number of elk, deer and wild boar within the Belarusian half of the Chernobyl exclusion zone today are around the same as those in four nearby uncontaminated nature reserves.
Continue reading...The sneezing monkey with an upturned face, and other other weird species
Hundreds of new(ish) species have been discovered in the eastern Himalayas in recent years, including the ‘walking’ fish and a tissue-wielding, snub-nosed primate
Name: The sneezing monkey.
Age: Depends what you mean.
Continue reading...Think dairy farming is benign? Our rivers tell a different story | George Monbiot
If a river was polluted by any other industry than farming, there’d be outrage. But we don’t want to know about the impact of our livestock
Eat less meat and fish, drink less milk. No request could be simpler, or more consequential. Nothing we do has greater potential for reducing our impacts on the living planet. Yet no request is more likely to elicit a baffled, hurt or furious response.
This point comes across with astonishing force in the film Cowspiracy. I would question some of the figures it uses, but its thesis – we just don’t want to talk about it – is undeniable. Leaders of the big US green groups either avoided the film makers like the plague or smiled and shook their heads when asked about livestock. State officials were struck dumb by the question.
Continue reading...England's shoppers say goodbye to free plastic bags
As England introduces a 5p charge for plastic bags, campaigners say the exemption for small shops should be ended
A 5p tax on plastic bags must be extended to all shops to prevent further damage to the environment, campaigners have warned.
Without the participation of smaller shops, and not just those employing more than 250 staff, the impact of the tax will be limited, they said.
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