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Palau protects marine wealth to pay for its future

The Guardian - Tue, 2015-11-17 19:56

The banning of fishing in a newly created Pacific marine sanctuary will help stocks recover and attract high-end tourist dollars as a replacement source of income

The recent decision by the Pacific island nation of Palau to end fishing in a California-sized swath of tuna-rich ocean comes at a time of record overfishing and will help the populations of bigeye and yellowfin to recover, scientists say.

Officials hope that the new reserve will boost sustainable tourism revenues as well as fish populations, as ordinary divers and even snorkelers will be able to experience the difference that protection measures can make.

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How on Earth do planes fly?

ABC Science - Tue, 2015-11-17 11:51
GREAT MOMENTS IN SCIENCE: Seeing a plane get off the ground is an amazing sight! Dr Karl investigates the science of flying planes.

Gates Foundation would be $1.9bn better off if it had divested from fossil fuels

The Guardian - Mon, 2015-11-16 21:00

Analysis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation health charity, and 13 other major funds, reveals moving investments out of coal, oil and gas and into green companies would have generated billions in higher returns

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would have had $1.9bn (£1.3bn) more to spend on its lifesaving health projects if it had divested from fossil fuels and instead invested in greener companies, according to a new analysis.

The Canadian research company Corporate Knights examined the stock holdings of 14 funds, worth a combined $1tn, and calculated how they would have performed if they had dumped shares in oil, coal and gas companies three years ago.

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How can we Engineer a steady state economy?

Newsletters QLD - Mon, 2015-11-16 19:40
How can we Engineer a steady state economy?
Categories: Newsletters QLD

Groundwater Purchase Tender in Queensland Upper Condamine Alluvium

Department of the Environment - Mon, 2015-11-16 09:47
A competitive tender for groundwater purchasing will be conducted in Queensland’s Upper Condamine Alluvium, with a budget of up to $10 million. The tender will open at 9am AEDT on 30 November 2015 and will close at 5pm AEDT on 10 February 2016.
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Fireworks are fun – but the effects are not

The Guardian - Mon, 2015-11-16 07:29

The sparkles from fireworks last a few seconds but the air pollution can linger in our cities for hours.

Firework smoke is rich in tiny metal particles making it very different to normal urban air pollution. These metals are used to make firework colours in much the same way as Victorian scientists identified chemicals by burning them in a Bunsen flame; red from strontium or lithium, blue from copper and bright green or white from barium compounds.

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The planet’s future is in the balance. But a transformation is already under way

The Guardian - Sun, 2015-11-15 08:03

As the world prepares for the UN Paris climate summit, the world is at a tipping point. But a political and scientific revolution could yet save it

We Homo sapiens got lucky. Very lucky. Back in the 1920s, when looking for a “safe” gas to use in refrigerators, chlorine was the element of choice in a new family of manmade chemical compounds – chlorofluorocarbons. In the 1970s, Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland discovered that while it was safe in our fridges, it was destroying the ozone layer, which is essential to protect all life on land.

Luck struck twice. Nasa scientists measuring ozone above Antarctica in the 1980s never saw the ozone hole in their data. Their computers were programmed to ignore any figures deemed “impossible”. Luckily, the British Antarctic Survey had no such technology and sounded the alarm. In 1987, nations signed the Montreal Protocol outlawing CFCs.

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Launch of Tesco's frozen avocados could help reduce Britain's food waste

The Guardian - Sat, 2015-11-14 01:39

Tesco’s ‘fast-frozen’ de-stoned and peeled avocado packs could help to cut down on the 54,000 tonnes of stone fruit wasted in Britain each year, say experts

Too slow to ripen or too squidgy and brown inside, avocados often end up contributing to the UK’s food waste mountain. But Tesco believes it has the answer to our avocado woes: frozen ones, de-stoned, peeled and ripe when they thaw out.

On sale from this weekend, in what is believed to be a first for a UK supermarket, the frozen avocados will also be cheaper than the fresh fruit at £2.50 for nine halves.

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Tories push for climate change action abroad but back fossil fuels at home

The Guardian - Fri, 2015-11-13 22:59

Foreign secretary Philip Hammond tells US free-marketeers that climate action boosts economies, while at home George Osborne undermines the green economy

Perhaps it’s being forced to think about global matters and the dangers they pose, but the UK’s foreign secretary Philip Hammond, like his Conservative predecessor, both understands the risks of climate change and the urgent need to act.

In a powerful speechthis week, he said: “Taking action to combat climate change is the right thing to do - the conservative thing to do.” Hammond had deliberately picked a tough crowd: the American Enterprise Institute, the free-marketeers who have for years have turned ExxonMobil and Koch dollars into climate change denial.

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World’s largest ocean cleanup operation one step closer to launch

The Guardian - Fri, 2015-11-13 21:52

Real life trials of a groundbreaking array designed to clean up the vast plastic island in the Pacific are due to begin next year after successful tests of a prototype in the Netherlands

A crowdfunded 100km-long boom to clean up a vast expanse of plastic rubbish in the Pacific is one step closer to reality after successful tests of a scaled-down prototype in the Netherlands last week.

Further trials off the Dutch and Japanese coasts are now slated to begin in the new year. If they are successful, the world’s largest ever ocean cleanup operation will go live in 2020, using a gigantic V-shaped array, the like of which has never been seen before.

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Collapsing Greenland glacier could raise sea levels by half a metre, say scientists

The Guardian - Fri, 2015-11-13 05:00

Huge Zachariae Isstrom glacier has begun to break up, starting a rapid retreat that could continue to raise sea levels for decades to come

A major glacier in Greenland that holds enough water to raise global sea levels by half a metre has begun to crumble into the North Atlantic Ocean, scientists say.

The huge Zachariae Isstrom glacier in northeast Greenland started to melt rapidly in 2012 and is now breaking up into large icebergs where the glacier meets the sea, monitoring has revealed.

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Toothless Environment Agency is allowing the living world to be wrecked with impunity | George Monbiot

The Guardian - Thu, 2015-11-12 22:38

The farcical investigation of the pollution case I exposed in a Devon river highlights how budget cuts have left the agency incapable of enforcement

It could scarcely have been a starker case. The river I came across in Devon six weeks ago, and described in the Guardian, was so polluted that I could smell it from 50 metres away. Farm slurry pouring into the water, from a pipe that I traced back to a dairy farm, had wiped out almost all the life in the stretch of River Culm I explored.

All that now grew on the riverbed were long, feathery growths of sewage fungus. An expert on freshwater pollution I consulted told me that the extent of these growths showed the poisoning of the river was “chronic and severe”.

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Group test: children's bikes from Islabike, Frog, Hoy and Halfords

The Guardian - Thu, 2015-11-12 17:30

They’re cleverly designed for tiny riders. But our four- to six-year-old testers were also interested in doing skids and playing with toy traffic cones

Bike companies spend months finessing the details of their kids’ models – the scaled-down brake levers, mini cranks, a child-friendly low centre of gravity. And what are the children most impressed by? A set of toy plastic cones.

That, along with the apparently great significance of rear-wheel skids to the lives of six-year-olds, was among the lessons learned from a fun if exhausting morning trying out children’s bikes with a collection of fun-sized testers.

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Britain 'must abandon Churchillian rhetoric' in face of rising seas

The Guardian - Thu, 2015-11-12 17:01

National Trust says central and local governments should plan ahead for increasing coastal erosion rather than talk of ‘holding the line’

Britain must abandon “Churchillian rhetoric” and claims it can “hold the line” against rising seas, and instead plan ahead for increasing coastal erosion, according to the National Trust.

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UK becomes only G7 country to increase fossil fuel subsidies

The Guardian - Thu, 2015-11-12 16:30

Tory government is giving billions in ever increasing handouts to oil and gas majors at the same time as cutting support for clean energy, report reveals

The UK is alone among G7 nations in dramatically increasing its fossil fuel subsidies, despite an earlier pledge to phase them out, a new report has found.

The revelation will embarrass ministers who want to take a leading role at a crunch UN climate change summit in Paris in December, but who have been sharply cutting support for green energy at home.

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How many cells in a person?

ABC Science - Tue, 2015-11-10 09:28
GREAT MOMENTS IN SCIENCE: It's a surprisingly hard question to answer, but Dr Karl has tracked down a reasonable estimate of the number of cells in the human body.

Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline and hails US as leader on climate change

The Guardian - Sat, 2015-11-07 05:06

President ends years of political drama and hands environmentalists a big victory with decision to turn down proposal to build 1,700-mile pipeline through US

Barack Obama ended seven years of high-wire political drama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, saying the decision reflected America’s determination to be a global leader in the fight against climate change.

The move, less than four weeks before more than 190 countries gather in Paris to try to reach a global deal to reduce carbon pollution, reinforces Obama’s commitment to making climate change the domestic and international legacy of his second term in the White House – even in the face of Republican hostility.

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Conservation Management Zones of Australia dataset now available

Department of the Environment - Fri, 2015-11-06 15:43
Conservation Management Zones of Australia dataset now available as open data and web services
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Three species of bird retain current listing status on the list of threatened species under the EPBC Act after assessment

Department of the Environment - Fri, 2015-11-06 13:59
The Minister has agreed that Turnix melanogaster (black-breasted button-quail), Erythrotriorchis radiatus (red goshawk), Geophaps scripta scripta (squatter pigeon (southern)) that these species should retain their current listing status effective 27 October 2015.
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Purple-crowned fairy-wren (western) transferred categories on the list of threatened species under the EPBC Act

Department of the Environment - Fri, 2015-11-06 13:53
The Minister has approved the transfer of Malurus coronatus coronatus (purple-crowned fairy-wren (western)) from the Vulnerable category to the Endangered category effective 31 October 2015.
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