The Guardian
End of the world on the edge of Skye
Fiskavaig, Skye This huge island is a complication of landscapes, and on its west coast you walk the divide between them all
The lady had drawn a map to direct me to the beach: there it was, easy enough, but where a road continued off the edge she’d inscribed an arrow, and the words “end of the world”. Curious, I follow the road off her map, past ancient rusting crofts on to a ribbon of singletrack, to where it stops. A knoll stands beyond a sheep gate and I climb it.
What I see from its knotty top is a place of transition. Beneath the knoll the land stops, falling to a sort of lagoon of strange, rumpled headlands and islands like pieces flayed off the land to drift. It seems this coast doesn’t want to commit to the ocean: here the waters of Lochs Harport and Bracadale coalesce into a strange enclosure of the Minch. Beyond, only South Uist’s taper offers harbour from the Atlantic’s ferocious north water.
Continue reading...Country diary 50 years ago: A wild week in the Cairngorms
Originally published in the Guardian on 27 February 1967
THE CAIRNGORMS: It didn’t seem at all strange to discover a bedraggled reindeer sheltering from the storm just inside the entrance to the chair-lift the other day, for the wind was like a knife and the ski-runs like tilted ice-rinks. Of course, he might have merely come in for the company – you could see his fellows higher up the snowbound hillside – or he might have been hoping for a chance of something more succulent than the frozen heather roots these creatures seem to live on. But he wasn’t very friendly, responding to a cautious stroking by an angry swing of the head, so I left him standing disconsolate near the ticket office and looking as if he’d lost both Father Christmas and his sledge. I suppose they’re harmless enough although a notice farther down the mountain warns “Beware of Reindeer,” but doesn’t explain why. These were the only wild life we saw in the hills during a wild week, except for the ptarmigan in their white winter plumage hurrying through the snow, and once a handsome pheasant strutting across the track through the Rothiemurchus pines. Indeed, there were days, so fierce the winds, when these popular slopes were even deserted by the humans who normally at this time of year swarm like ants, and one day, especially, when I seemed quite alone in the mountains. Ski-ing that day was out of the question – you needed ice-axe and crampons just to get across the runs – and the wind so strong on the plateau it took you all your time to avoid being blown over the edge. But down by Loch Morlich in the late afternoon the wind suddenly dropped for half an hour, and there was the quiet splendour of purpling hills and a foreground of silvered loch with the birches and pines showing black against a golden sunset like a Chinese painting.
Continue reading...Australia's summer heat hints at worse to come
If the third warmest January on record occurred during a La Niña event, scientists are asking what El Niño has in store
Right now south-eastern Australia is having an unbearable summer. Temperatures in Sydney have regularly been in the upper 30s in recent weeks, while inland areas have had several days in the mid-40s.
January was the hottest month on record for Sydney since 1859, and the persistent warmth into February (with many places topping 35C day after day) may topple the New South Wales record of 50 hot days in a row.
Continue reading...How Prince Charles plans to sterilise the nation’s squirrels – with Nutella
More than 3.5m of the invasive rodents live in Britain, and their presence is harming the welfare of their native red cousins. Luckily, HRH has a cunning plan to reduce their numbers
Name: Grey squirrels.
Age: First introduced to the UK in the 1870s.
Continue reading...End UK tax incentives for diesel vehicles, ministers are urged
Campaigners write to chancellor to urge him to end tax breaks and bring in scheme to encourage switch to greener cars
Ministers are coming under growing pressure to remove tax incentives for diesel cars and offer compensation to motorists so they can swap to more environmentally friendly vehicles.
A group of medical professionals, environmental campaigners and lawyers has written to the chancellor ahead of the budget to demand a change to the vehicle excise duty that they say subsidises diesel cars.
Continue reading...The eco guide to greener salads
The salad shortage focused attention on the failures of our 24/7 dietary culture. But it also provides a chance to rethink the way we eat fresh fruit, veg and green leaves
I’m afraid the lettuce shortage was just the tip of the iceberg. We may have run low on salad leaves but, more worryingly, we were low on empathy for poor southern Spain where flash floods followed by snow wrecked the crop. Our relentless consumer-rights focus meant that the emphasis was clearly on “weather-related supply challenges”, supermarket speak for “My God, we are running out of salad!” Sustaining a dietary culture of 24/7 access to all fresh fruit and veg in all seasons was never going to be easy.
A packed salad uses at least 10 times more energy than a local lettuce
Continue reading...Scott Pruitt vows to slash climate and water pollution regulations at CPAC
Head of the EPA told the conservative audience they would be ‘justified’ in believing the environmental regulator should be completely disbanded
Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has vowed to roll back flagship regulations that tackle climate change and water pollution, telling a conservative audience in Maryland they would be “justified” in believing the environmental regulator should be completely disbanded.
The Trump appointee signalled that the president is set to start the work of dismantling climate and water rules as early as next week. Pruitt said the administration will “deal” with the Clean Power Plan, Barack Obama’s centrepiece policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the Waters of the United States rule, which gives the EPA wider latitude to reduce pollution of waterways.
Continue reading...Biologists say half of all species could be extinct by end of century
Scientists at Vatican conference are searching for a solution to the manmade ‘major extinction event’
One in five species on Earth now faces extinction, and that will rise to 50% by the end of the century unless urgent action is taken. That is the stark view of the world’s leading biologists, ecologists and economists who will gather on Monday to determine the social and economic changes needed to save the planet’s biosphere.
“The living fabric of the world is slipping through our fingers without our showing much sign of caring,” say the organisers of the Biological Extinction conference held at the Vatican this week.
Continue reading...Brexit brings new questions about investing down on the farm
Compared to most industries subject to the ups and downs of global markets, farming is a cottage industry. Where mining has a few operators dominating the scene, agriculture involves thousands of producers in each country.
That simple fact works against the high levels of investment agriculture minister Andrea Leadsom would like to see in the run-up to a hard Brexit.
Continue reading...Tracks in the snow where carnivores passed in the night
Achvaneran, Highlands The tracks went straight down the garden, through the fence and over the burn with one leap. It knew where it was going
The previous night’s snowfall had been just right for tracking: about 4cm at dusk, then no more until after light. So I was out early and picked up the first tracks under the beech tree at the bottom of the garden, a stoat. It had been quartering the ground, hunting, but did not make a kill until it reached the large pond. There the tracks suddenly veered; a leap sideways and a few specks of blood on the snow revealed where it had taken its prey, probably a mouse or vole.
Related: Daylight encounter hungry pine marten
Continue reading...Chris Grayling advises motorists to 'think hard' before buying diesel
Transport secretary recommends low-emission cars after it emerges that thousands of children breathing toxic air
Drivers should “think long and hard” before buying a diesel car and instead consider purchasing a low-emission vehicle, the transport secretary has said, as the government considers a strategy to tackle air pollution.
Chris Grayling’s intervention took place as the Guardian revealed that tens of thousands of London’s children were attending schools in areas with levels of toxic air in breach of EU legal limits. The minister also said the government had a legal duty to cut emissions of nitrogen oxide from diesel cars, which account for four in 10 vehicles on British roads, after a high court ruling in November ordered the authorities to reduce levels of the toxic fume in the “shortest possible time”.
Continue reading...We need a recipe to save the red squirrel | Brief letters
The easiest way to protect the red squirrel (Report, 24 February) is for us to eat the grey ones. The latter are too plentiful and should be easy to trap. Many of us have no problem eating rabbits, so the greys could be a cheap addition to our diet. The bird population would also benefit from a cull of these pests. So, Delia, could we please have a recipe for écureuil à la bourguignonne?
Donald Blow
Kirkcaldy, Fife
• John Harris (What’s the point in building a million new homes if they’re not fit to live in?, 22 February) writes honestly of the difficulties facing new home owners when the rush to build leads to corners being cut. We are also aware of houses being sold leasehold, some with onerous clauses which double ground rent every few years. Caveat emptor.
Brenda Banks
Teignmouth, Devon
The week in wildlife – in pictures
A jaguar killing an anteater, a green tree python and the winner of the underwater photographer of the year are among this week’s images from the natural world
Continue reading...Drastic cooling in North Atlantic beyond worst fears, scientists warn
Climatologists say Labrador Sea could cool within a decade before end of this century, leading to unprecedented disruption, reports Climate News Network
For thousands of years, parts of northwest Europe have enjoyed a climate about 5C warmer than many other regions on the same latitude. But new scientific analysis suggests that that could change much sooner and much faster than thought possible.
Climatologists who have looked again at the possibility of major climate change in and around the Atlantic Ocean, a persistent puzzle to researchers, now say there is an almost 50% chance that a key area of the North Atlantic could cool suddenly and rapidly, within the space of a decade, before the end of this century.
Continue reading...Welsh oak could be the first British winner of European Tree of the Year
Shortly before the close of voting the Brimmon oak, for which a bypass was relocated, is close behind a Polish oak and a Czech lime tree
It is old, squat, and bent a bypass. Now an ancient oak saved from being destroyed by a new road has become the first British tree with a cracking chance of winning the European Tree of the Year competition.
The Brimmon oak led the contest in the early stages, polling more than 10,000 votes. Three days before the end of the voting period, the Welsh tree was in third place, just behind the hot favourite, an oak tree from Poland, and a lime tree in the Czech Republic.
Continue reading...OMG measurements of Greenland give us a glimpse of future sea rise | John Abraham
The Oceans Melting Greenland project is taking important measurements to determine how fast sea levels will rise
If you meet a group of climate scientists, and ask them how much sea levels will rise by say the year 2100, you will get a wide range of answers. But, those with most expertise in sea level rise will tell you perhaps 1 meter (a little over three feet). Then, they will immediately say, “but there is a lot of uncertainty on this estimate.” It doesn’t mean they aren’t certain there will be sea level rise – that is guaranteed as we add more heat in the oceans. Here, uncertainty means it could be a lot more or a little less.
Why are scientists not certain about how much the sea level will rise? Because there are processes that are occurring that have the potential for causing huge sea level rise, but we’re uncertain about how fast they will occur. Specifically, two very large sheets of ice sit atop Greenland and Antarctica. If those sheets melt, sea levels will rise hundreds of feet.
Continue reading...Red squirrels: 5,000 volunteers sought to save species – and help kill invasive greys
Wildlife Trusts’ biggest-ever recruitment drive will see volunteers monitor populations, educate children – and bludgeon grey squirrels to death
An army of 5,000 volunteers is being sought to save the red squirrel from extinction by monitoring populations, educating children – and bludgeoning grey squirrels to death.
The Wildlife Trusts’ biggest-ever recruitment drive is focused on areas of northern England, north Wales and Northern Ireland where invasive grey squirrels first introduced by the Victorians are driving the retreating red squirrel population to extinction.
Continue reading...Australia's 'biggest ever' antivenom dose saves boy bitten by funnel web spider
NSW central coast schoolboy, aged 10, was given 12 vials of antivenom after he was bitten by a male spider hiding in a shoe
A 10-year-old NSW central coast boy is lucky to be alive after a deadly funnel web spider bite necessitated what is believed to be the largest dose of antivenom administered in Australian history.
Matthew Mitchell was rushed to Gosford hospital after he was bitten on the finger by the male funnel web, which was hiding inside a shoe, on Monday.
Continue reading...Great Barrier Reef could face another big coral bleaching event this year
New report to UN world heritage committee criticises Australia’s lack of planning in dealing with effects of climate change
The Great Barrier Reef faces an “elevated and imminent risk” of more widespread coral bleaching this year, the reef authority has warned the Queensland government.
An alert from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says more of the reef is showing built-up heat stress than this time last year, just before its worst-ever bleaching event killed off a quarter of all coral.
Continue reading...Energy positive: how Denmark's Samsø island switched to zero carbon
The small island’s energy makeover took less than a decade and was spurred on by local commitment, providing a template for how regional Australia could transition to renewables
Anyone doubting the potential of renewable energy need look no further than the Danish island of Samsø. The 4,000-inhabitant island nestled in the Kattegat Sea has been energy-positive for the past decade, producing more energy from wind and biomass than it consumes.
Samsø’s transformation from a carbon-dependent importer of oil and coal-fuelled electricity to a paragon of renewables started in 1998. That year, the island won a competition sponsored by the Danish ministry of environment and energy that was looking for a showcase community – one that could prove the country’s freshly announced Kyoto target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 21% was, in fact, achievable.
Continue reading...