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How can we Engineer a steady state economy?
Groundwater Purchase Tender in Queensland Upper Condamine Alluvium
Fireworks are fun – but the effects are not
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.
Continue reading...The planet’s future is in the balance. But a transformation is already under way
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.
Continue reading...Launch of Tesco's frozen avocados could help reduce Britain's food waste
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.
Continue reading...Tories push for climate change action abroad but back fossil fuels at home
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.
Continue reading...World’s largest ocean cleanup operation one step closer to launch
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.
Continue reading...Collapsing Greenland glacier could raise sea levels by half a metre, say scientists
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.
Toothless Environment Agency is allowing the living world to be wrecked with impunity | George Monbiot
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”.
Continue reading...Group test: children's bikes from Islabike, Frog, Hoy and Halfords
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.
Continue reading...Britain 'must abandon Churchillian rhetoric' in face of rising seas
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.
UK becomes only G7 country to increase fossil fuel subsidies
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.
How many cells in a person?
Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline and hails US as leader on climate change
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.
Continue reading...Conservation Management Zones of Australia dataset now available
Three species of bird retain current listing status on the list of threatened species under the EPBC Act after assessment
Purple-crowned fairy-wren (western) transferred categories on the list of threatened species under the EPBC Act
Three birds added to the list of threatened species under the EPBC Act
Scientists warned the President about global warming 50 years ago today | Dana Nuccitelli
On 5 November 1965 climate scientists summarized the risks associated with rising carbon pollution in a report for Lyndon Baines Johnson
Fifty years ago today, as the American Association for the Advancement of Science highlighted, US president Lyndon Johnson’s science advisory committee sent him a report entitled Restoring the Quality of Our Environment. The introduction to the report noted:
Pollutants have altered on a global scale the carbon dioxide content of the air and the lead concentrations in ocean waters and human populations.
Continue reading...Chairs' Update 3 November 2015 | Commonwealth Marine Reserves Review
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