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Tesla’s pay-as-you-go supercharging: Good or bad for Tesla?
Tesla solar roof cheaper than regular roof, says Musk – electricity “a bonus”
Adani confirms plans to build up to 200MW solar farm in Qld
Squeaking echidna puggles born at Taronga zoo – video
Two short-beaked echidna puggles hit the scales for the first time at Taronga zoo in Sydney – the first born at the zoo for 29 years. The pair were two of three puggles all hatched within a short period from 16-30 August. The youngest was born to mother Pitpa, the last echidna born at Taronga
Continue reading...The Grind
Outcry over lack of cash for flood defences as storm hits south of UK
Environmental group Friends of the Earth reveals no funding earmarked for natural flood management despite ministerial pledge
The government has been accused of being “all talk and no action” on flood defences, as the first named storm of the season brought flooding and power cuts to the south of England.
Storm Angus saw gusts of up to 106mph recorded 23 miles off the coast of Margate, while gusts of 80mph hit Langdon Bay, also in Kent.
Continue reading...100 years ago: Rooks set about the acorns in an orderly way
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 25 November 1916
At sundown last night the western sky turned a deep and almost brilliant red, changing and softening in colour in its upward spread until the verge from south to north was like an immense but yellowing rainbow. Then frost came lightly; there was the merest sound of a crinkle in walking over the grass away from the oak wood. This morning the air was softer. On the broad marl and flint track which leads to the farmland there were dead brown mice, one here, another there, and so on to the number of six within the space of a few hundred yards; they had crept from among the withered leaves under the bramble bushes; it is one of the signs that winter is sharpening. No other animal or bird appeared to touch them. A jackdaw that had been hopping (it was more like a short and repeated flight) among a company of rooks cast his eye on one of the dead bodies, seemed as if about to strike or seize it with his beak, but, deciding not to, flitted back-towards the wood.
There the oaks overhang a wide ditch, and their limbs extend a good way over the meadow. Soon after sunrise the rooks came, not in parties as they would earlier in the year, but in a compact body perhaps 300 strong. The acorns have not by any means all been gathered, and they set about the business in almost as orderly a way as if they were a great gang of human workers sent for the purpose of clearing up the food which remained. They were so intent that it was possible to get tolerably near them. And though they worked so systematically, no one or even more birds seemed to be in command. Occasionally one, two, or more would trespass into the patch belonging to or claimed by others, and be at once driven out sharply by a combined rush, but for the most part order was established by general consent. They went as they came. A little later one saw them in a compact body flying east.
Continue reading...Mixed prospects for the WA uranium industry
Crowds gather to watch the pelican that flew in to Cornwall
The only wild pelican to be seen in Britain in modern times has been attracting birders to Cornwall all summer. But pelicans were here 2000 years ago. Might they return?
It flew in like a seaplane, scattering a flotilla of what looked like small boats as it landed on the waters of the estuary. I blinked, and an avian image displaced this aeronautical one: for it wasn’t an aircraft, but a bird.
A Dalmatian pelican (Pelicanus crispus), to be precise: named not because it has a black spotted plumage (it doesn’t), but after the region of south-east Europe from which it hails. Having landed, it floated serenely amongst the gulls and little egrets, which appeared tiny by comparison with this huge and rather ungainly bird.
Continue reading...Former Great Barrier Reef marine park head calls for ban on new coalmines
Graeme Kelleher’s call comes before Australian government’s deadline for reporting to Unesco’s world heritage committee
The former head of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has called for a ban on all new coalmines in Australia, saying the move is needed to protect the Great Barrier Reef from climate change.
“I love the reef and I have worked to preserve it since 1979; I will oppose anything that threatens to destroy it,” said Graeme Kelleher, who was the first chief executive of GBRMPA, a position he held for 16 years. “The Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven wonders of the world.”
Continue reading...SENG QLD September Newsletter - Emergency Climate Action
The eco guide to wet wipes
These flushable friends are highly convenient and proving to be more and more popular. But they play havoc with sewers and the environment
Is there anything more disgusting than a fatberg? These gargantuan mounds of debris block the intestines of civilisation (ie sewers). Fatberg season used to peak on Christmas Day, when people poured turkey fat down the drains in a mass festive clog. Now they’re an all-year hazard, thanks to the inexorable rise of the wet wipe.
There are wet wipes for every conceivable bathroom occasion: deodorising under-arms, removing eye make-up and, perhaps the biggest seller, toilet wipes. Apparently swathes of the population no longer find paper bearable. They’re hooked on single-use wipes that combine synthetic cellulosic fibre with plastic fibres, marketed as “flushable”.
Continue reading...Terri Irwin urges MPs to rule out crocodile cull after Katter suggests shooting safaris
Debate on cull reignited when NSW woman Cindy Waldron was killed by a crocodile north of Cairns
Australia Zoo’s Terri Irwin has called on all Queensland MPs to rule out a crocodile cull, saying people need to better understand how to co-exist with the apex predators.
The debate on a cull was reignited in May when a New South Wales woman, Cindy Waldron, 46, was taken by a croc at Thornton Beach, north of Cairns.
Continue reading...Leaked map reveals chronic mercury epidemic in Peru
People living upriver from gold-mining are the most contaminated, according to US-based scientists
Ask about the fish in restaurants in the centre of Puerto Maldonado, the biggest town in Peru’s south-east Amazon, and you’ll hear all kinds of things. Some people will shake their heads and say there isn’t any fish on the menu “because of the contamination” or “out of protocol”. Others might say there is fish available, before sometimes hastily clarifying that it comes from farms along the Inter-Oceanica Highway running to Brazil, or from the Pacific coast, or even, according to one chef, all the way from Vietnam.
Why such problems with the fish in this part of the Amazon? Answer: alluvial gold and the mercury required to extract it. The gold-rush in the 8.5m hectare Madre de Dios region began in the 1980s and, by 2012, miners had destroyed more than 50,000 hectares of forest, effectively dumping 100s of tons of mercury into the rivers while doing so. In May this year Peru’s outgoing government announced a pathetic 60-day “declaration of emergency”.
Continue reading...Why don’t we grieve for extinct species?
We have no rituals for coping with extinction, ecological destruction or environmental loss. And that’s a problem. Now, an impassioned group of artists and activists are trying to create them.
In early 2010, artist, activist and mother, Persephone Pearl, headed to the Bristol Museum. Like many concerned about the fate of the planet, she was in despair over the failed climate talks in Copenhagen that winter. She sat on a bench and looked at a stuffed animal behind glass: a thylacine. Before then, she’d never heard of the marsupial carnivore that went extinct in 1936.
“Here was this beautiful mysterious lost creature locked in a glass case,” she said. “It struck me suddenly as unbearably undignified. And I had this sudden vision of smashing the glass, lifting the body out, carrying the thylacine out into the fields, stroking its body, speaking to it, washing it with my tears, and burying it by a river so that it could return to the earth.”
Continue reading...Is there a plan B for elephants? The next step in saving them is even harder
Ending global legal markets is a great plan A, but that alone won’t stop elephant poaching or stem the illegal consumption of ivory
It appears inevitable now that almost all legal domestic ivory markets will be closed. This is the plan A of a large consortium of animal rights and welfare organisations aimed at stopping elephant poaching – informed by the belief that legal trade provides cover for illegal trade and stimulates demand.
Do away with legal trade, say the ban proponents, and demand will fall. Any elephant ivory seen for sale will be illegal, resulting in the dual benefits of making it easy for law enforcement to take action and for consumers to avoid buying an illegal product. And increasingly this is a majority position. In September International Union for the Conservation of Nature adopted a motion recommending the closing of domestic ivory markets globally. A few weeks later in October a similar proposal was adopted at the 17th Conference of the Parties of Cities, the international convention that regulates wildlife trade.
Continue reading...The Sarto Seta review: a frame pretty close to perfection
Weighing just 750g, the Italian-made frame is stiff in sprints and doesn’t twitch in corners – even during one of the toughest bike challenges around
The greatest compliment you can pay a suit is that you forget you’re wearing it. The fit is so good, the stitching so subtle and the fabric so well cut that it exists as a background reality; seamless tailoring that never distracts by being too lose or too tight. The Sarto Seta is that in a bike, and the sartorial comparison is totally appropriate.
Sarto, an Italian frame builder, has endeavoured to bring Saville Row to the cycling industry, building bespoke made-to-measure bicycles as exclusive and as sought after as classic British tailoring. The company was founded in 1950 by the Sarto family.
Continue reading...Smallscale farmers need the spotlight now: Africa Food Prize winner Kanayo Nwanze speaks out at COP22
The influential African figure champions smallscale agriculture in an increasingly insecure global climate
At vast global gatherings like the COP22 UN climate conference, which has just concluded in Marrakech, the seductive grandeur of the occasion frequently strips attention from the people, in faraway places, who climate change threatens the most.
But on Wednesday at the COP, during a panel discussion on how agriculture can support the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal for zero hunger, Kanayo F. Nwanze brought these forgotten people into the spotlight with an impassioned plea. To achieve food security in a changing climate, we need to focus on the world’s smallscale farmers—who are not only responsible for the bulk of food production in developing countries, but ironically face some of the worst threats to their own food security, Nwanze said. As the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an organisation that invests in smallscale agriculture in rural environments around the world, Nwanze’s work to highlight the importance of these farmers on the global agriculture scene won him the inaugural Africa Food Prize in 2016.
Continue reading...In a Lilliputian world of leaf litter
Holmsley Inclosure, New Forest Each silk button spangle gall has a minute larva inside. Looked at later under the microscope, they remind us of a scrumptious doughnut
We drop down the side of this woodland on a bright day buffeted by a cold wind. First planted in 1811 with scots pine and oak, its fences now enclose a wide variety of trees. We turn along the eastern edge to find the lower gate and, on entering, are plunged into a claustrophobic tangle of branches, before quickly coming to a narrow path close set with brambles on one side and hollies on the other. The recent rains have made the soil beneath the fallen leaves a muddy squelch, deeply incised with fresh bike tracks.
Getting our eyes in, we begin to see a host of small brown and greyish fungi tucked into the patchwork of sodden foliage and decaying leaf-fall. For us, most of them are “little brown jobbies”, as they are known to those without sufficient skill to identify them. We notice, too, some so much smaller that we are drawn into a Lilliputian world.
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