Feed aggregator

GREAT MOMENTS IN SCIENCE: Sometimes a major discovery - like finding evidence to support the theory of dark matter - just requires a bit of creative thinking over a curry, as Dr Karl explains.

Report finds air pollution inside and outside the home is costing £20bn a year as well as causing tens of thousands of deaths

Air pollution both inside and outside the home causes at least 40,000 deaths a year in the UK, according to new report, which estimates the cost of the damage at £20bn.

The major health impact of outdoor air pollution is relatively well known but the report, from the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, also highlights the less understood impact of indoor pollution, as well as the growing evidence of harm to children’s health and intelligence.

Continue reading...

Qld news - look out for the Climate Reality Series

The call for applications for funding through the Community Heritage and Icons Grants programme is now open. Applications close Tuesday 22 March 2016.

For just a few days each year, the water of Horsetail fall in Yosemite national park appears like lava, drawing crowds of onlookers and photographers

Hundreds of photographers have swarmed to Yosemite national park to catch a rare glimpse of a “firefall” – a phenomenon that makes it appear as if water has turned into lava, flowing from a volcano.

For about 10 days each February, sunlight illuminates Horsetail Fall in a way that looks like lava is tumbling down the rock face. The light show can prove elusive – local photographers said this is the first February in four years in which conditions have been ideal to capture the firefall.

Continue reading...

Fundraising campaign to help northern New South Wales family pay for Kathryn Sullivan’s funeral raises more than $3,000 in 24 hours

Australians have donated more than $3,000 to help pay funeral costs for a six-year-old girl who died after she was bitten by a brown snake.

Kathryn Sullivan was bitten by the snake on a Walgett property in northern New South Wales last week. She was airlifted to the Sydney Children’s hospital but her condition deteriorated and she was transferred back to Walgett hospital where she died on Saturday.

Continue reading...

Beachgoers in Argentina picked up and passed around an endangered Franciscana dolphin, which can be seen being plucked out of the water before being petted by beachgoers. Other images showed people taking selfies with the dolphin

Continue reading...

HUMAN BEHAVIOUR: When we act under orders to do something bad, we perceive a greater delay between our action and its consequences than when we act of our own free will, a new study suggests.

BIOCONTROL: Scientists have created a new strain of mosquito they say could help in the fight against viruses such as dengue and perhaps even Zika.

HUMAN RELATIONS: The genes of a Neanderthal that lived 100,000 years ago contain DNA from modern humans, indicating that humans left Africa and mated with Neanderthals much earlier than previously thought.

CONSERVATION SCIENCE: Ecotourism will only help save the orangutans if it generates enough income to replace that coming from logging, new research suggests.

CLIMATE SENSITIVITY: The plant life of Australia's outback does not respond to sudden increases in rainfall because it has "learned" that drought will soon follow, according to satellite-based maps tracking the impact of changing climatic conditions.

Harvard study shows 30% rise across the country since 2002 with peaks coinciding with shale oil and gas boom, reports Climate Central

There was a huge global spike in one of the most potent greenhouse gases driving climate change over the last decade, and the U.S. may be the biggest culprit, according a new Harvard University study.

The United States alone could be responsible for between 30-60% of the global growth in human-caused atmospheric methane emissions since 2002 because of a 30% spike in methane emissions across the country, the study says.

Continue reading...

EXOTIC ENVIRONMENT: Data from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the planet is surrounded by an atmosphere mostly made up of hydrogen and helium like a gas giant, such as Jupiter or Saturn.

COCKROACH EVOLUTION: Australian soil-burrowing cockroaches are adding weight to the idea that evolution is a much more predictable process than some believe.

Former deputy editor of National Geographic Brazil says a “humanitarian catastrophe” is taking place in Brazil’s Amazon

One of the perpetrators of arguably Brazil’s most internationally high-profile murders in recent years is currently walking around free. In 2013, amid much media coverage, Lindonjonson Silva Rocha was sentenced to 42 years prison for killing two nut collectors-turned-environmental activists in southern Pará, but then in November last year he escaped.

One man who knew both victims, “Zé Cláudio” Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo, is Felipe Milanez, a political ecologist at the Federal University of Recôncavo of Bahia, activist, film-maker, former deputy editor of National Geographic Brazil, and the editor of the recently-published book, Memórias Sertanistas: Cem Anos de Indigenismo no Brasil. Here I interview Milanez, via email, about Zé Cláudio and the Brazilian Amazon:

Continue reading...

US climate envoy says threats by Republican presidential candidates to withdraw from the global agreement would be ‘diplomatic black eye’

President Obama’s special envoy for climate change has warned Republican presidential hopefuls including Donald Trump and Ted Cruz that any attempt to scrap the Paris climate agreement would lead to a “diplomatic black eye” for the US.

Speaking to journalists in Brussels, Todd Stern also said that a recent supreme court decision to block Barack Obama’s clean power plan would not affect US climate pledges, or plans to formally sign up to the Paris agreement later this year.

Continue reading...

Developers have abandoned their original goal of building the world’s first zero-carbon city in the UAE desert. With completion originally scheduled for this year, just how much of the once-revolutionary vision has actually been realised?

Years from now passing travellers may marvel at the grandeur and the folly of the futuristic landscape on the edges of Abu Dhabi: the barely occupied office blocks, the deserted streets, the vast tracts of undeveloped land and – most of all – the abandoned dream of a zero-carbon city.

Masdar City, when it was first conceived a decade ago, was intended to revolutionise thinking about cities and the built environment.

Continue reading...

GREAT MOMENTS IN SCIENCE: Why are the Higgs field and dark energy so weak? Find the answer and you could earn yourself a Nobel Prize, says Dr Karl.

PRECIOUS PETAL: The discovery of a new species of ancient flower beautifully preserved in amber indicates that ancestors of today's daisies, mints and tomatoes flourished in Caribbean jungles up to 45 million years ago.