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Work begins on £200m Attenborough polar ship
MIT nuclear fusion record marks latest step towards unlimited clean energy
Scientists create the highest plasma pressure ever recorded with the Alcator C-Mod reactor in a breakthrough for clean energy technology
A nuclear fusion world record has been set in the US, marking another step on the long road towards the unlocking of limitless clean energy.
A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created the highest plasma pressure ever recorded, using its Alcator C-Mod tokamak reactor. High pressures and extreme temperatures are vital in forcing atoms together to release huge amounts of energy.
Continue reading...Morally and legally, the UK government has failed us on air pollution | James Thornton
A lack of urgency and failure to tackle illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide is why ClientEarth is taking the UK government back to court this week
No less than 17 years have passed since new rules were approved in the UK to save thousands of lives by limiting deadly air pollution in our towns and cities.
Pollution is the “invisible killer” because, for the most part, it goes unseen. Its impact on human health and the planet is why those laws were necessary.
Continue reading...Global warming experiment turns up the heat in Puerto Rican forest
A pioneering research project is aiming to determine how forests in the Amazon, the Congo and elsewhere in the tropics will reacting to rising temperatures
Mid-morning in the Luquillo experimental forest in north-west Puerto Rico, and the thermometer already reads 26C. Tana Wood, an ecologist employed by the US Forest Service, pulls on a pair of heavy gloves for insulating against electrical shock.
Over two years, her team here has laid out hexagonal plots four metres across, each about the size of a backyard trampoline. Industrial-strength heaters suspended several metres above the ground from metal scaffolding on the perimeter of three plots will heat the soil and undergrowth to 4C above the forest’s ambient temperature.
Continue reading...Finance for deep-rooted prosperity is coming | Joseph Robertson
We’re entering a new age for the Earth’s climate and for the way we conceive of finance
“Macrocritical resilience” may be the most mystifying two-word phrase you need to know. Though you may never have heard these two words before, what they describe affects everything you live and strive for. Wonky as it sounds, it is a common sense idea: what generates value is more valuable than what we count in dollars. And yet, it is only in the last few years that we are truly beginning to understand that macrocritical indicators—elements of human experience that shape the health and viability of the overall economy—really do describe how and where value and capability come into being.
On Christmas Eve, 2013, the small island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines experienced the most intense rainfall in its history. 15 percent of gross domestic product was wiped out in just a few hours. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan caused $900 million worth of damage in Grenada—more than twice the nation’s GDP. One of the executive directors of the International Monetary Fund noted that when so much value can be lost so suddenly, “you no longer know what the value of a dollar is.”
Continue reading...Wolves once hunted these Helsfell slopes
Kendal, Lake District A skeleton unearthed by a Victorian archaeologist should give us clues as to when wolves last roamed the Lakeland fells
From my study window I watch jackdaws making their chattering sorties above the rooftops and over Kendal Fell. Across the road a footpath leads up the fell, less well known now as Helsfell, and on through two small areas of woodland. What I can’t see, and hadn’t known until recently, though I walk the area most days, is that deep in the far wood is a cave of significant archaeological importance.
In the 1880s an amateur archaeologist, John Beecham, spent five summers excavating it. He discovered the bones of bear, wild cat, polecat, wild boar and iron age oxen – Bos longifrons, the first domesticated cattle – and the complete skeleton of a wolf. All undated, the collection became dispersed, but the wolf still resides in Kendal Museum, which is having it restored with the help of Arts Council funding].
Continue reading...Historic climate deal reached on potent refrigerant gases
Federal resources minister hoorays Adani coal (and solar) jobs
Tesla and Panasonic to collaborate on PV cell and module production in Buffalo, New York
Australia takes centre stage on global green climate funds
Antarctic marine reserves deal within reach as Russia thaws environmental stance
After five years of failed negotiations, conservations are hopeful Russia is prepared to make a deal to protect the Ross Sea and East Antarctica
An international agreement to protect some of Antarctica’s unique and pristine marine ecosystems could be reached within a fortnight, with scientists and conversationists hopeful of a breakthrough after five years of failed negotiations.
Delegates from 24 nations and the European Union gathered in Hobart on Monday to commence two weeks of talks at the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
Continue reading...Know your NEM: D-day for Australia’s dirtiest power plant
Australian fisherman fends off great white shark with a broom – video
Dan Hoey, an angler from Port Fairy, a coastal town in Victoria, Australia, was out fishing with his brother and a client when he noticed a great white shark circling his boat. Video captured by Hoey’s chartered fishing business, Salty Dog Charters, shows him fending off the shark with a household broom
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