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DEVELOPING DOG SMARTS: Bandicoots on the island state of Tasmania fail to recognise dogs as a threat, despite co-existing with the domesticated predator for 200 years, a new study shows.

India and Nepal are concerned about flash floods due to a lack of information from China about the state of glacial lakes and rivers in Tibet.

If leaves can do it, why can't we? Leaf image from www.shutterstock.com

When we burn a fossil fuel – coal, oil or gas – it produces energy that we use, and byproducts such as water and carbon dioxide. It’s the CO₂ that’s proving to be a problem – humans have increased the amount of it in the atmosphere by about 40%, causing the planet to warm by around 1℃ so far. This means we must act quickly, given that the Paris Agreement aims to limit temperature increases to 1.5℃.

The desire for sustainable, low-carbon energy is driving a global boom in renewable energy. But alternative energy sources – particularly wind and solar – come with their own challenges.

What if, instead of burning ancient fossils fuels, we could put the ingredients back together to reassemble the fuel? If we could do so using sustainably sourced energy, we would have a clean, and potentially infinite, fuel supply.

It sounds mad, but actually scientists have made significant advances in recent years. And surprisingly, they are doing so by imitating plants.

Mimicking nature

The amount of solar energy striking the Earth is 5,000 times greater than human demand (around 100,000 terawatts versus 20 terawatts). One problem with solar energy is its reliability. Solar cells don’t produce energy at night or when the sun isn’t shining. This can be fixed by storing solar energy, with the help of several emerging storage technologies.

But we could also use the energy to produce other fuels, which we can burn later to provide a predictable and constant power supply. If we are using solar energy, this process forms a closed, sustainable cycle.

A large amount of research is being carried out in this area, known as artificial photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the process carried out by plants to store solar energy, indirectly creating fossil fuels, so the name reflects humanity’s attempts to mimic nature.

The electrical energy provided by solar cells can be used to split water and produce a fuel, hydrogen. When hydrogen is burned, water is formed and energy is released. Water is the only byproduct.

Researchers across the globe are working on this process, and recent developments have shown how to make it more efficient. My recent work has reached 22% efficiency, which is double the predicted values for the process to become viable.

The next step

But a gaseous fuel does present practical handling problems. So hydrogen is easier to store than electrical energy, but it’s not our ideal fuel.

Liquid fuels are preferable, because existing fuel pumps, cars and coal power stations would need only minor changes in order to use these carbon-based non-fossil fuels.

Taking inspiration from photosynthesis again, the next step is clear: combine hydrogen with carbon to produce artificial fossil fuels. Work to make this process efficient is already under way across the globe, with impressive results.

The efficiency isn’t as high as for hydrogen yet, but progress is impressive. Liquid fuels are being produced with the systems working more efficiently than plants.

This concept provides a supply of fuel that is limited only by the Sun. It does use carbon-based fuels, but is overall carbon-neutral. All of the carbon dioxide produced when burning the fuel will be used to produce fuel again, by collecting the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to react with hydrogen.

All of the water being split to make the hydrogen will be released as water vapour when the fuel is burned, and will eventually become rain.

Replacing fossil fuels

Existing technology cannot replace fossil fuels. This is an important point when considering necessary investment in solar panels or wind turbines. Replacement of existing energy supplies with an intermittent power source requires storage.

Humanity must be ready for fossil fuels to run out, and because the move away from fossil fuels must happen eventually, it would be wise to focus on researching the necessary technology to allow for a smooth transition so that society is ready.

Fossil fuels are finite, but solar energy is almost infinite, and typically things that are very abundant end up being very cheap.

So can this really work? Well, this process has been carried out for more than 3 billion years. There is literally nothing more extensively tested!

Shannon A. Bonke receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES).

We've filled our oceans with concrete. Sea wall image from www.shutterstock.com

Feng shui is the ancient Chinese philosophy of rearranging built structures in the environment to generate qi or “energy”. But it may have increasing relevance for when, where and how we build into our oceans.

This month 1,500 delegates from 80 countries gathered in Montpellier, on France’s Mediterranean coast, for EcoSummit 2016, to devise sustainable solutions on how to cross the boundaries of ecology and engineering. At the heart of these discussions was marine spatial planning, an important element in the harmony and balance, or feng shui, required in our oceans.

Fragmented seascapes

Globally, we have a long history of building into the sea, dating back to the first Roman seawalls and breakwalls. Down the road from the conference centre, the coastline is armoured with stone laid down in the 17th century during the reign of King Louis XIV.

Japan has been adding artificial reefs to enhance fish production since the 18th century. This practice continues today, ranging from opportunistic sinking of ships to specially constructed installations.

Modern construction has overcrowded our oceans with energy platforms, the most densely constructed of which are often located in the smallest water bodies. The result is a fragmented seascape that creates barriers to important ecological migrations and processes.

The pace of this marine development is rapid and global, but remains fairly unregulated in time and space. Imagine how you would feel in a house where all the furniture was placed in one room, or where the doors to your dining room were nailed shut?

This is occurring in our oceans, where developments may be concentrated in just one area and hard structures block or modify natural water movements. Like our houses, we need to “feng shui” our oceans to achieve a state of equilibrium between societal needs and the environment.

The future of our oceans isn’t set in concrete, but can be a balance between hard and soft engineering – as we heard from speakers from around the world.

Balancing yin and yang

Our oceans are becoming crowded. Marine spatial planning is the feng shui that can balance the needs of different ocean users – energy and aquaculture, for instance. But we need to make sure that the resources we receive from our oceans are matched by the efforts we invest in conservation and restoration.

Often the need to defend valuable commercial property from ocean forces overrides the ecological considerations, unbalancing the ocean’s yin and yang.

Some of the best examples of marine spatial planning for ecology are the networks of marine protected areas in many countries.

However, where conservation is not considered, developments remain relatively randomly spaced without thought for important principles of ecological connectivity. Marine feng shui is best supported by continuity and connectedness, principles that are crucial if our oceans are to continue delivering ecosystem services that we rely on, such as food provision.

Spatial planning relies on mapping to identify where and how the ocean is used in relation to natural resources and habitat. We now have the tools to do this at the large scale relevant to ecological processes.

At the most basic level, Google Earth provides a high-resolution picture of the built environment that can be translated for management. At a more advanced level, global observation platforms can generate information about the earth’s ecosystems with unparalleled detail. With these tools literally raining down information from above, we are now best placed to make important decisions to conserve the integrity of our oceans.

Offsetting our ocean footprint

We can look to principles already used in landscape ecology. In many parts of Asia, ecology is combining with the practical considerations for human habitation to create “healthy buildings” with natural temperature regulation, lighting and noise control. In fact, even strategies such as the Building with Nature program appear to have roots in feng shui.

With better planning and forethought about when, where and how we build into the ocean we can have more positive ecological outcomes. Encouraging multi-purpose developments, such as those increasingly used in aquaculture for economic benefits, could benefit ecosystems by constraining environmental impacts.

We can retrospectively feng shui built habitats with targeted conservation of threatened species, but also avoid building new structures in locations where they might impact on migrating birds, turtles or sea mammals. The spatial arrangement of structures might also be used to future-proof warming oceans and provide corridors of movement for ecological climate migrants.

Achieving all the necessary elements for good feng shui in our oceans will be difficult without investment in spatial planning and sustainable developments. Despite the global interconnectedness of our seascapes, their management is largely uncoordinated across territories and economic responsibilities remain uncertain.

What is clear is that our oceans are becoming a jigsaw of human-made structures, but with ecological forethought we have the potential to fit these pieces together for the greatest benefits.

Katherine Dafforn receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the Sydney Institute of Marine Science.

Mariana Mayer-Pinto is affiliated with the Sydney Institute for Marine Science

Nathan Waltham is affiliated with TropWATER (Centre for Tropical Water & Aquatic Ecosystem Research), James Cook University Australia. Dr Waltham receives funding from: Australian Government, Queensland Government, Industry, Natural Resources Management Groups, Local Government and external funding grant bodies.

AGL, GE and Tesla join 21 other companies in open letter calling for the $1.3bn planned cut to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to be dropped

Some of Australia’s best-known energy companies including AGL, GE and Tesla, have joined calls to halt plans to cut $1.3bn from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

The 24 companies signed an open letter to parliamentarians released by the Clean Energy Council.

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Professor Colin Green (Letters, 7 September) makes a classic first-world myopic error in believing that the rise in human population is mainly responsible for the impending ecological crisis. It is not numbers of people per se damaging the planet, but frenetic consumption in the wealthy world that lies behind anthropogenic climate change. You can curb family sizes in poor countries all you like – if you have the moral stomach for such gross colonialism and denial of essential human freedoms – but the ecological crisis will remain as long as we live the way we do in the rich world.

As Pope Francis puts it in his ecological teaching document, Laudato Si’: “To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimise the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalised, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption.”

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An 18-month study looking at how the weather affects chronic pain reveals some surprising preliminary results.

Ian McEwan and Andrew Motion among those opposed to University of East Anglia’s rugby and parking development on wild flower meadows

A university with an international reputation for environmental science has been criticised by alumni, including Ian McEwan and Andrew Motion, for seeking to build a car park and rugby pitch on wild flower meadows.

The University of East Anglia’s (UEA) plans have been branded “crude” and “thuggish” by McEwan, while Motion, the former poet laureate, said they were “scandalous” and “deeply destructive”.

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Huge tank in Oxfordshire replicates the power and shape of the waves and will lead to improved coastal defences, building design and response plans

The full and devastating power of tsunamis has been recreated in lab for the first time, revealing valuable secrets about the little-understood waves. The work will lead to vital improvements to sea defences, coastal buildings and evacuation plans, ultimately saving lives.

Five major tsunamis have struck coasts around the world since 2004, killing 300,000 people, and the risks are rising as coastal cities expand. But the terrible violence of the giant waves means any scientific instruments present are almost always destroyed. The result is little knowledge of the huge forces with which tsunamis hit coasts.

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Kenyan conservationist Paula Kahumbu leads a new generation of Africans who are taking control of their environmental future

In the cool and serene area of Karen, near Nairobi, in the offices of the conservation organisation she has built, Paula Kahumbu eats chicken and rice and talks about a revolution.

Related: Why the Guardian is spending a year reporting on the plight of elephants

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A seven-month solo journey from India to the UK in a solar and electric-powered tuk-tuk has been paused after the driver's passport was stolen near Paris.

Lack of access to safe water in the war-torn country is driving migration and disease and pollution, say hydrologists and humanitarian groups

War-torn Syria’s water supplies are deteriorating fast, triggering migration and disease and stoking a pollution crisis in neighbouring Lebanon, hydrologists and humanitarian groups have warned.

“Water security continues to deteriorate for many civilians [in Syria]. Evidence shows that control over power and water infrastructure is [being] used as a weapon of warring parties,” said Noosheen Mogadam, a policy adviser with the Norwegian Refugee Council based in Gaziantep on the Turkish-Syrian border.

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Junichiro Koizumi disputes current leader’s description of situation at stricken nuclear power plant as being under control

Japan’s former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi has labelled the country’s current leader, Shinzo Abe, a “liar” for telling the international community that the situation at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is under control.

Koizumi, who became one of Japan’s most popular postwar leaders during his 2001-06 premiership, has used his retirement from frontline politics to become a leading campaigner against nuclear restarts in Japan in defiance of Abe, a fellow conservative Liberal Democratic party (LDP) politician who was once regarded as his natural successor.

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Issue to be discussed in parliament after petition backed by leading conservationists gets more than 120,000 signatures

MPs will debate whether to ban driven grouse shooting after a petition created by a leading conservationist passed the threshold of more than 100,000 signatures.

Mark Avery, a campaigner and former head of the RSPB, launched the petition in March with backing from broadcasters Chris Packham and Bill Oddie, and the League Against Cruel Sports, calling for grouse shooting to be banned because he said it often leads to the illegal killing of birds of prey, which eat red grouse.

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The ocean conservation society last week completed its first-ever expedition to document the richness of habitats and threats to marine life in waters off the Netherlands, UK, Norway and Denmark. The results from the two-month, at-sea study will be used to strengthen marine protection in the region

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No issue better connects the environment to people’s lives than energy. In order to deliver clean, affordable electricity we need to change our undemocratic system of supply

We are on course for a climate catastrophe. 2016 is set to be the hottest year on record. Unless the Paris agreement’s target of limiting the rise in temperatures by 1.5C is met, heatwaves like that in 2003, which killed tens of thousands of people in Europe, will become the norm. And that is before considering rising sea levels and desertification that will sink cities, and kill and displace millions, or the fact that the Earth has already lost half its wildlife in the past 40 years.

The task for politicians is to propose real solutions to the single most important issue facing humanity. Too often, the environment is considered a matter for scientists, enthusiasts and activists. To increase public understanding and energise the political debate, we need more than facts – we need a programme that resonates with people’s everyday experiences, offering not just warnings but opportunities and improvement.

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Labour leader to announce plans to massively increase renewable energy and phase out coal power earlier than currently planned

A Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn would ban fracking, ditch all coal-fired power stations and massively increase renewable energy, his leadership campaign has announced.

In the clearest signal yet that the party intends to embrace an ambitious environmental agenda and break its traditional strong links to mining and fossil fuel extraction, the Labour leader has pledged to phase out all coal power stations by the “early 2020s” and invest heavily in energy-saving to avoid building many new power stations.

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ARENA believed to have proposed a compromise on its funding position, in an effort to continue its support of new technologies and critical research.

More than half the shortlisted large-scale solar projects expected to get funding from ARENA tender. A total of 12 projects, mostly with single axis tracking technology and costs as low as $100/MWh are expected to win grants, with solar module costs set to slump again next year.

Heritage Lottery Fund report warns of a continuing a decline in the condition of parks as austerity budget cuts squeeze council budgets

The UK’s hugely popular public parks face falling into decline and neglect as a result of budget cuts, a new report warns.

Park use is rising, with 57% of adults now visiting their park once a month or more, while 90% of families with children under five head to their local green space at least monthly, the State of UK Public Parks 2016 study reveals.

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