Feed aggregator

Transparent wood and cement generated by bacteria - New materials promise to change the way we build houses in the future.

Transparent wood and cement generated by bacteria - New materials promise to change the way we build houses in the future.

The history and future of Indigenous-environmentalist relations in Australia.

Airedale, West Yorkshire Far from being robust birds, these visitors from Scandinavia can suffer terribly when the temperature drops

The little grebes have changed into their smart off-season outfits – smoky-brown, with a dark cap worn low on the brow – and moved upriver, westward, to winter with us. The quickening of the current has brought a dipper down from the river’s higher reaches. In a hawthorn that overhangs the water, redwings gorge on the dull red fruit.

These aren’t the first redwings I’ve seen this season: since the turn of October they’ve been skipping through high overhead in threes and fours and fives, calling seep, seep. The warden, hunkered in the adjoining meadow on autumn “vismigging” (visible migrant) duty, pointed out to me their distinctively irregular wingbeats.

Continue reading...

What would happen if water became scarce? It's a prospect that keeps Sarah Wheeler awake at night

Activists and scientists at UN climate talks in Marrakech now fear a change in US policy

As news of Donald Trump’s victory reached Marrakech on Wednesday, the many thousands of diplomats, activists, youth and business groups gathered in the city for the UN’s annual climate conference were left in shock and disbelief that the US could elect a climate-change denier as president.

Some of the younger activists were in tears. “My heart is absolutely broken at the election of Trump,” said Becky Chung, a delegate for youth advocacy group SustainUS from California.

Continue reading...

Every day, tiny brightly coloured birds are offering a critique of our environmental management, if only we could understand what they were saying.

EU concerns are growing that some oil-rich nations that have not yet ratified the deal could now try and slow action on reducing emissions

Concerns are mounting that Donald Trump’s victory could embolden some fossil fuel-rich countries to try unpicking the historic Paris climate agreement, which came into force last week.

Saudi Arabia has tried to obstruct informal meetings at the UN climate summit in Marrakech this week, and worries are rife that states which have not yet ratified the agreement could seek to slow action on carbon emissions. Trump has called global warming a hoax and promised to withdraw the US from the Paris accord.

Continue reading...

Government divisions over approach to climate change plan are bridged, but targets will be reviewed in 2018 to consider their impact on industry

Germany’s coalition government has reached an agreement on a climate change action plan which involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95% by 2050, a spokesperson said on Friday.

The plan, which will require German industry to reduce its CO2 emission by a fifth by 2030, and Germany’s energy sector to reduce emissions by almost a half, will be reviewed in 2018 with a view to its impact on jobs and society.

Continue reading...

Donald Trump’s win could be catastrophic for the world’s climate, as well as international diplomacy, as American leadership is transformed

This November is likely to have profound implications for climate change – but not in the way that was anticipated just a week ago. The Paris climate deal came into force on 4 November but Tuesday’s election of Donald Trump as US president casts an ominous shadow over the agreement and the chances of avoiding dangerous global warming.

Trump is a highly erratic figure, so predicting his actions can be problematic. But we do know that he wants to withdraw the US from the Paris accord, which aims to keep the global temperature increase below a 2C threshold, that he believes climate change to be a “hoax” and that Barack Obama’s warning that global warming is a threat on a par with terrorism was “one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard in politics.”

Continue reading...

Italy’s hedgehog hospital, starlings in flight and a comical fox are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Continue reading...

Leading scientists warn the climate denier’s victory could mean ‘game over for the climate’ and any hope of warding off dangerous global warming

The ripples from a new American president are far-reaching, but never before has the arrival of a White House administration placed the livability of Earth at stake. Beyond his bluster and crude taunts, Donald Trump’s climate denialism could prove to be the lasting imprint of his unexpected presidency.

“A Trump presidency might be game over for the climate,” said Michael Mann, a prominent climate researcher. “It might make it impossible to stabilize planetary warming below dangerous levels.”

Continue reading...

Stunned. Shocked. Speechless. Devastated. Political tsunami. These were the key words rising to the surface of the babble of conversations that took place in the corridors of the climate negotiations in Marrakech on Wednesday 9 November – the day Donald Trump won the US presidency.

A climate denier, Trump has vowed to tear up the historic Paris Agreement along with the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which seeks to slash greenhouse emissions from power plants. He has also given the green light to renewed fossil fuel exploitation in the United States.

Oil and gas stocks unsurprisingly rose, and coal stocks soared, on his victory day. If implemented, Trump’s promises would make it impossible for the United States to reach its national pledge under the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions by 26-28% relative to 2005 by 2025.

At the moment, Trump’s previous declaration of climate change as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to undermine US industry looks particularly poignant.

His election is a dramatic turnaround from the years of constructive bilateral climate diplomacy by the Obama administration with China, which culminated in the joint US-China statement on climate change in November 2014. This joint announcement of the headline national action plans by the world’s two biggest emitters (together covering 40% of global emissions) injected significant momentum into the negotiations leading to the Paris Agreement in 2015.

But now the US elections have delivered not just a presidential victory against action on climate change, but made it much easier for Trump to deliver on his plans than it was for Obama. The Republican Party is now set to control all four branches of government: the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Presidency and soon the Supreme Court (once Trump nominates a new judge following the death of Justice Scalia, bringing the number of judges back to nine, with a conservative majority). This leaves only the media and civil society to speak up for a safe climate in the face of the national government’s agenda.

Turning back time

Seasoned negotiators and observers at Marrakech with long memories recalled the moment in 2001 when former president George W. Bush declared that the United States would withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, the predecessor to the Paris Agreement. This withdrawal cast a long shadow over the negotiations, which was finally lifted with the Obama administration’s re-engagement with climate change that made the Paris breakthrough possible.

Yet the world today is very different to what it was in 2001. The Paris Agreement is now in force after a speedy ratification, the US share of global emissions has declined, and renewable energy is now much cheaper. Many US states, cities and businesses will continue to work towards reducing emissions, and many Republican politicians have let go of their aversion to renewable energy in response to public and business pressure.

In short, much of America and the rest of the world will continue to build momentum under the Paris Agreement, despite the changing of the guard in Washington DC.

Given Trump’s record of policy flip-flopping, it also remains an open question as to how far he will actually go to undo the diplomatic climate legacy of the Obama administration. Much will depend on who takes over as Secretary of State, and how the State Department assesses the broader diplomatic consequences of withdrawing from the Paris treaty, particularly in terms of transatlantic relationships. European Council president Donald Tusk has already invited Trump to attend a US-EU summit. We might therefore see some easing of Trump’s hard anti-climate talk, much as his social rhetoric softened on election night. Trump the President may not be quite the same as Trump the candidate.

Moreover, under Article 28 of the Paris Agreement it will take a total of four years for any formal withdrawal by the United States to take effect. If the US were to turn its back on these legal niceties and abandon its obligations during this period, it would be widely regarded as a climate pariah state. In contrast, China will enjoy its rising status as a climate leader.

Meanwhile, after the initial pause to digest the shock of Trump’s victory, the negotiators at Marrakech have got back down to their business, which is to fill in the implementation details of the Paris Agreement.

Robyn Eckersley receives funding from the Australian Research Council to research a project called 'What makes a climate leader?'

Levels of pollution reached record highs this week across India. In Delhi the government declared the poor air quality an ‘emergency situation’

Continue reading...

British red squirrels are infected with strains of the bacterium that causes leprosy, according to a study.

From Hong Kong’s tiny subdivided flats to the migrant crisis, this year’s photography and sustainability award shortlist explores the theme of space from all perspectives

• The winners will be announced at an exhibition in London in May 2017. See last year’s winners here
  

Continue reading...

Rothamsted Research, a leading agricultural research institute, is attempting to make data from long-term experiments available to all scientists.

Read more about hypoxic blackwater, its causes and effects.

Langstone, Hampshire The newly attached, unfed, arachnids were red-brown and as tiny as sesame seeds, the fully engorged ones like glossy grey pearls

Hedgehogs that have had a hind leg amputation can struggle to groom themselves, so are more likely to harbour ectoparasites. I had noticed that Sweetpea, my resident hedgehog, had been flailing her shortened leg as she tried to scratch using her phantom limb. But it was still a shock to spot her emerging from her nest with one side of her body studded with ticks. They clustered in the folds of her right ear and along her right flank, where the coarse skirt of fur met the quill line.

Related: Specieswatch: Ixodes ricinus (tick)

Continue reading...

Congratulations to Charles Sturt University on receiving the award for Carbon Reduction at the 2016 Green Gown Awards Australia and ACTS Awards of Excellence last week in QLD. They have also been awarded the Climate Change Leadership Award and a joint winner of the Green Globe Climate Change and Leadership Award.