Feed aggregator

The UK’s biggest ever oil spill in 1967 taught invaluable lessons about the response to disasters, toughened up shipping safety and stirred green activism

“I saw this huge ship sailing and I thought he’s in rather close, I hope he knows what he’s doing,” recalled Gladys Perkins of the day 50 years ago, when Britain experienced its worst ever environmental disaster.

The ship was the Torrey Canyon, one of the first generation of supertankers, and it was nearing the end of a journey from Kuwait to a refinery at Milford Haven in Wales. The BP-chartered vessel ran aground on a rock between the Isles of Scilly and Land’s End in Cornwall, splitting several of the tanks holding its vast cargo of crude oil.

Continue reading...

George Orwell wrote a shocking account of a colonial policeman who kills an elephant and is filled with self-loathing. But was this fiction – or a confession? An Orwell expert introduces the original story

British imperialism being a largely commercial concern, when Burma became a part of the empire in 1886 the exploitation of its forests accelerated. Since motorised transport was useless in such hilly terrain, the timber companies used elephants. These docile, intelligent creatures were worth their weight in gold, hauling logs, stacking them near streams, launching them on their way and sometimes even clearing log jams that the foresters could not shift.

In the 1920s a young would-be poet, an ex-Etonian named Eric Blair, arrived as a Burma Police recruit and was posted to several places, culminating in Moulmein. Here he was accused of killing a timber company elephant, the chief of police saying he was a disgrace to Eton. Blair resigned while back in England on leave, and published several books under his assumed name, George Orwell.

Continue reading...

The second man to set foot on the Moon, launches a virtual reality movie detailing his plan to get humans to Mars.

New Forest To some, fallen timber makes for an untidy forest. There was a time when the woodsmen would have cleared much of it away. Not now

We’re standing deep into the trees, looking through an oval porthole constructed from the boughs of a toppled oak. The sun is filtering through the still bare canopy to light up the story of this wood. As we look through the window, we are taken into its past, present and future.

The brown of autumn’s leaf drop mingles with the emerald-green of mosses. To one side, dark-green stems of butchers’ broom promise flashes of ripened scarlet berries in months to come. The stiletto blades of bluebells are just breaking free of the blanket of fallen leaves that has protected their bulbs through the winter months. Already they suggest a scene transformed, as yesterday’s base-brown becomes a wash of blue. Tall, erect trunks stand like sentinels in a painted backdrop, and mid-stage lies a tangle of branches, looking as though some huge beast has shed its antlers.

Continue reading...

 A resin absorbs carbon dioxide when dry, releasing it when wet.

The Arctic is a warming hotspot, showing the fastest warming of any area on Earth, way faster than predicted.

Corals as old as 100 years have been killed.  Bleaching occurred in 1998, 2004 and 2016. Bleaching events are increasing in frequency. Recovery periods for corals are becoming shorter.

A radio-tagged ringtail possum was caught and eaten by a radio tagged diamond python, and then scientists found out that the vulnerable eastern chestnut mouse actually likes a bit of a bushfire. Booderee National Park is full of surprises.

A supercharged week of announcements about energy storage projects mark a turning point in Australia's fractured energy debate.

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

Continue reading...

International Energy Agency report puts halt in emissions from energy down to growth in renewable power

Carbon dioxide emissions from energy have not increased for three years in a row even as the global economy grew, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.

Global emissions from the energy sector were 32.1bn tonnes in 2016, the same as the previous two years, while the economy grew 3.1%, the organisation said.

Continue reading...

Nesting bald eagles, Adélie penguins and a newly hatched Komodo dragon are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Continue reading...

Taronga Zoo's baby pygmy hippopotamus - the first born in seven years - has made its first public appearance.

Researchers in the US are working with dolphins in an effort to work out why closely related whale species in the wild strand themselves on land.

Science correspondent Rebecca Morelle describes her violent encounter with Europe's most active volcano.

A computerised system for injecting medicine without using needles has won an innovation award at the South by SouthWest Interactive technology conference in Austin, Texas.

A bird that watched its own reflection for hours becomes the subject of internet fun.

Hibbertia fumana, thought to have been extinct for 200 years, has been rediscovered in Sydney’s west

A newly rediscovered rare plant – thought to have become extinct almost 200 years ago – has sparked a legal action in Sydney’s west against a development that threatens the flower’s only known location.

About 370 specimens of Hibbertia fumana – a small flowering shrub endemic to Sydney – were found on the grounds of the proposed 83-hectare Simta Moorebank transport hub late last year.

Continue reading...

The nose of a shrimp, the spines of a seahorse, the claws of a crab: Jean Painlevé’s camera captured them all – and turned them into massive, monstrous, mysterious works that caused a sensation in the 1930s. Now the aquatic explorer, famed for his films of copulating seahorses and dancing snails, is receiving his first solo UK show, at Birmingham’s Ikon gallery

Continue reading...

Cromford, Derbyshire The towpath is popular with Derbyshire folk making their version of the passeggiata, often with dogs, and the water vole is easily spooked

William Jessop was a generous man, always ready to give a fellow engineer a leg up. Building the Cromford canal, in the Derbyshire Dales, he hired Benjamin Outram, the son of a local investor, as his assistant. Their great work terminates at Cromford Wharf, once a harbinger of the industrial revolution, now dozing in the evening sunshine, its crumbling stonework the colour of honey.

The northern section of the canal, five miles from the wharf to Ambergate, is a site of special scientific interest, noted for being a last redoubt for water voles, a change of use I doubt Jessop could have foreseen.

Continue reading...