The Guardian
Deadly desert: working in 60C heat – in pictures
Unforgiving temperatures of up to 60C (140F) beat down on these saltminers on a daily basis. The mines, situated in the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia, stretch across 38,000 sq miles and at their lowest point are more than 300ft below sea level. Joel Santos travelled to capture the area’s dry, brutal beauty
Continue reading...Fear of the light: why we need darkness | Amanda Petrusich
Every civilisation we know of has devised a system – scientific, religious, what have you – to make sense of the night sky. The mystery of what’s up there, where it came from, and what it means has been inherited and puzzled over for generations. Those questions may be the most human ones we have.
Due to pervasive light pollution – glare from excessive, misaimed and unshielded night lighting – 80% of Europe and North America no longer experiences real darkness. For anyone living near a major metropolis, a satellite image of the Milky Way seems abstract: we understand it to be a document of something true, but our understanding is purely theoretical. In 1994, after a predawn earthquake cut power to most of Los Angeles, the Griffith Observatory received phone calls from spooked residents asking about “the strange sky”. What those callers were seeing were stars.
Continue reading...Stung by a wasp while clearing poppies
Allendale, Northumberland There are a lot of wasps about this year – I know of at least six nests around the garden
The ladybird poppies, fire-engine red with jet black centres, had flopped in the rain, their flimsy petals scattered across the path. Cutting back the plants, it took me a moment to process what was happening. A flurry of insects was circling my head and arms from a disturbed wasps’ nest. I was shocked by the intensity of pain from a sting on the end of my nose. Swabs of vinegar helped neutralise its alkalinity, but my cheek quickly swelled.
There are a lot of wasps about this year. I know of at least six nests around the garden. The entrance to one is in a stone wall, another under the bargeboard of a shed. One was found when thistle-bashing in the field, a fourth when clipping a box hedge.
Continue reading...Why air conditioning is a vicious circle
Pumping heat from our cars and buildings into the outside world adds to climate change, increasing the need to stay cool
Air conditioning was a luxury in Britain 40 years ago, but the long hot summer of 1976 changed that. The scorching heat that summer lasted two months and most people sweated it out indoors with only open windows and electric fans for ventilation. After that, air conditioning no longer seemed so extravagant and its popularity soared.
Air conditioners consume huge amounts of energy, though, and that’s adding to climate change. The US uses as much electricity to keep buildings cool as the whole of Africa uses for all its electrical needs. That power largely comes from polluting power stations, adding to the warmer climate.
Continue reading...Fragile habitats, but sturdy Ikea flatpacks | Brief letters
George Monbiot is right: wholesale destruction of wildlife is obscene (The grouse shooters aim to kill, 16 August). Why no grousing, then, on the imminent destruction of the diverse habitats and endangered species, including many red list birds, on the west coast of Cumbria? Why no grouse about the collateral damage in obsessive pursuit of the “biggest nuclear development in Europe” at Moorside? The environmental destruction planned is on a scale the most bloodthirsty grouse hunter could only dream of.
Marianne Birkby
Radiation Free Lakeland, Milnthorpe, Cumbria
• This morning I entered my local Morrisons supermarket to be greeted by a large display, just inside the entrance, selling multipacks of filled chocolate bars. The sign above said “Back to School”. Selling high sugar goods is one thing, but encouraging the purchase for children is quite another (Report, 22 August). Shame on Morrisons.
Roger Frisby
Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire
Climate change will mean the end of national parks as we know them
As the National Parks Service turns 100 this week, we look at how receding ice, extreme heat and acidifying oceans are transforming America’s landscapes, and guardians of national parks face the herculean task of stopping it
After a century of shooing away hunters, tending to trails and helping visitors enjoy the wonder of the natural world, the guardians of America’s most treasured places have been handed an almost unimaginable new job – slowing the all-out assault climate change is waging against national parks across the nation.
As the National Parks Service (NPS) has charted the loss of glaciers, sea level rise and increase in wildfires spurred by rising temperatures in recent years, the scale of the threat to US heritage across the 412 national parks and monuments has become starkly apparent.
Continue reading...Historical documents reveal Arctic sea ice is disappearing at record speed | Dana Nuccitelli
Summer Arctic sea ice is at its lowest since records began over 125 years ago
Scientists have pieced together historical records to reconstruct Arctic sea ice extent over the past 125 years. The results are shown in the figure below. The red line, showing the extent at the end of the summer melt season, is the most critical:
Sluggy McSlugface no more: sea slug named for fly-in, fly-out mining workers
Multicoloured slug, a species of nudibranch, was discovered in 2000 off the Western Australian coast and will be officially named Moridilla fifo
A multicoloured sea slug discovered off the coast of Western Australia has been named for the state’s fly-in, fly-out mining workforce after a judging panel ruled that Sluggy McSlugface breached the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.
The slug, which is a species of nudibranch, was discovered in 2000 off the coast of Dampier, about 1,500km north of Perth, by the WA scientist Dr Nerida Wilson.
Continue reading...The power of water to drive a mill and break a bridge
Burneside, Cumbria I walked a narrow bank, the mill race on one side and a steep drop to the swirling Sprint on the other. And I thought of last December’s flood
Sprint Mill sits in a small wooded gorge below a cascade of sinuous waterfalls on the river Sprint. There has been a cloth manufacturing or processing mill on this site since at least the 1400s, all dependent on water power provided by the river. The current owners have restored the 19th-century mill with the help of a grant from Natural England; the front wall had developed a worrying bulge. When work began, they found that this three-storey building had been constructed without foundations.
The Dales Way weaves around the most recent mill race, hollowed out of the earth like a small canal and used until the mill closed in 1954. Ahead of me, long-tailed tits fidgeted, tails flicking up and down as they moved on, their ratcheting, rolling contact calls travelling on the breeze.
Continue reading...Fine days for harvesting: Country diary 50 years ago
Originally published in the Guardian on 26 August 1966
HAMPSHIRE: The wondrous fine days of last week have come just right for the harvesters. Although tractors with trolleys are not so picturesque as horses with wains, there remains a flavour of the sacred earth at harvest-time. The more especially in large fields with men and girls scattered at various jobs. And I have seen a young fellow, stripped to the waist, and as brown as a South Sea islander, with a girl beside him, her hair neatly plaited in pigtails, both holding on to a jolting bar, as they returned to the farm after work. The quality remains, in spite of the combustion engine. In many fields the straw is being trussed, and not wastefully burnt. Various uses are being found for it besides the bedding down of animals; in right conditions cabbages can be grown, also seed potatoes bedded and grown, with great saving of labour. If for no better use, it can be made into compost. The hot days have brought swarms of flying ants, fat, juicy, young queens, that birds relish. Starlings, that naturally have quick, gliding flight, learn to hover, not very well, but sufficiently slowly to snatch at the flying ants in midair. The starlings fly at a low level over fields and gardens, and, higher up, seagulls circle to taste the formic acid flavour. They remind me of the time when I have eaten honey-ants in West Australia that were dug up by aborigine girls. These were the only form of sweetmeats that the bush provided, and very good too. I was sorry to learn that the Scops owl had escaped, with but poor chance of survival I fear.
Continue reading...A collared pratincole pays a rare visit to Somerset
An exotic visitor, that should should have been sunning itself by the Mediterranean, attracts crowds of birdwatchers to the Ham Wall reserve
My birding friend Rob may have got married only the day before, but nothing stops him from looking regularly at his pager to check out the latest sightings of rare birds. Fortunately, he then took the trouble to text me the news: that a collared pratincole had turned up at the RSPB’s Ham Wall reserve, just down the road from my home.
It would have been rude not to pay this bird a visit, especially as it should have been sunning itself on some Mediterranean marsh, not flying around the Somerset Levels. I had never actually seen this species before in Britain, so I walked along the disused railway line that bisects the marshes with more than the usual spring in my step.
Continue reading...Listen to the sand eels on climate change | Letters
Michael Grange (Letters, 19 August) recommends “not asking the frogs first” before building tidal barrages on the Severn. But we are already being spoken to by the sand eels, mosquitoes, birds, butterflies and even the humble Highland saxifrage (Climate change threatens UK’s mountain plant life, 18 August) if only we would listen.
They are on the move already. The environmental effects of sea-level rise will dramatically alter the Severn estuary, and all its inhabitants, if we do little to deploy alternatives to fossil fuels now. Can the seriousness of the crisis justify the sacrifice of some present wetlands in order to avoid them being found far inland by our great grandchildren?
Professor Terry Gifford
Research Centre for Environmental Humanities, Bath Spa University
Radon from fracking will not be a threat | Letter from Prof Averil MacDonald
In his letter (11 August) Dr David Lowry raised the issue of radon and shale gas quoting studies in Pennsylvania and sought to reinforce his own views by quoting from a study undertaken by Public Health England in 2014. Let me quote the same study, which states, “caution is required when extrapolating experiences in other countries to the UK since the mode of operation, underlying geology and regulatory environment are likely to be different” and “the PHE position remains, therefore, that the shale gas extraction process poses a low risk to human health if properly run and regulated”.
Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas present throughout the UK at very low levels. PHE recognised that radon may be released to the environment from shale–gas activities, as is the case with existing natural gas supplies, but at concentrations that are not expected to result in significant additional radon exposure. PHE will be undertaking baseline outdoor and household radon monitoring in the Vale of Pickering in North Yorkshire in areas around Third Energy’s KM8 well near Kirby Misperton at three-monthly intervals. The first monitoring “measurements indicated that the radon concentration in the outdoor air around KM8 is close to the UK average”. There is no indication of elevated radon concentrations in Pickering, a radon affected area in close proximity of KM8. The analysis for the control site in Oxfordshire showed that the radon concentrations were similar to those for the Vale of Pickering.
Continue reading...National parks must be for people, plants, pumas - not Big Oil
Huge swathe of new “protected natural area” in Peru’s Amazon is included within an oil and gas concession run by Canadian company
The creation of the 1.3 million hectare Sierra del Divisor National Park in the western Amazon in November 2015 generated considerable elation and Peruvian and international media coverage. Logging, gold-mining, coca cultivation and narco-trafficking were highlighted by some media as ongoing threats to the new park, but why such failure to acknowledge what is possibly, in the long-term, the most serious threat of all?
The sorry, alarming fact is that approximately 40% of the park is superimposed by an oil and gas concession run by a Canadian-headquartered company, Pacific Exploration and Production. This is despite Peru’s 1997 Law of Protected Natural Areas stating “the extraction of natural resources is not permitted” in parks, while 2001 regulations on Protected Natural Areas state “the exploitation of natural resources is prohibited.” In addition, Peru’s 1993 Constitution “obliges” the government “to promote the conservation of biological diversity and protected natural areas.”
Continue reading...Calls to halt McArthur River mine operations over safety and remediation concerns
Report demands mining stop until it can be determined how and at what cost the operation can be made safe
The huge McArthur river mine must stop operations until a public commission of inquiry is set up and has examined whether it can be made safe and at what cost, according to an independent report being released on Monday.
Based on the limited public data on the mine, up to $1bn will need to be spent to safely remediate the site, according to Gavin Mudd from Monash University and the Mineral Policy Institute, who wrote the report.
Continue reading...If US national parks are to continue to thrive they must reflect the diversity of our population
As the National Park Service turns 100, a new campaign aims to make the country’s natural spaces more appealing to all Americans, regardless of race, over the next century. It’s vital they succeed
In the sweltering heat of a summer day, I walked along the visitor trails of Yosemite national park. I had just made the five-hour drive from my childhood home in Los Angeles to glimpse a vision of the future. There in the valley surrounded by high towers of stone, I watched as thousands of tourists from all over the world marvelled at the sheer granite walls of El Capitan, Washington Column and Half Dome. Like ancient cathedrals of divine architecture, these magnificent features stand as monuments to the notion that the natural heritage of our nation must be preserved for all time.
Throughout my life I have enjoyed spending time in the outdoors. Despite having grown up in the urban heart of LA, I frequently ventured into the wild places of California, from the slopes of the San Gabriel mountains to the summit of Mount Whitney. Though I was blessed, thanks to sacrifices of my parents, with a lifetime learning and playing in nature, on this occasion, as with many visits to the valley, I noticed that I was among the very few people of colour there. And though I felt no less welcome to enjoy the splendour of this magnificent place, I wondered how it might be possible to encourage tourism to Yosemite – and other national parks – that reflects the diverse population of the US as a whole.
Continue reading...‘Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’
Scientist Peter Wadhams believes the summer ice cover at the north pole is about to disappear, triggering even more rapid global warming
Peter Wadhams has spent his career in the Arctic, making more than 50 trips there, some in submarines under the polar ice. He is credited with being one of the first scientists to show that the thick icecap that once covered the Arctic ocean was beginning to thin and shrink. He was director of the Scott Polar Institute in Cambridge from 1987 to 1992 and professor of ocean physics at Cambridge since 2001. His book, A Farewell to Ice, tells the story of his unravelling of this alarming trend and describes what the consequences for our planet will be if Arctic ice continues to disappear at its current rate.
You have said on several occasions that summer Arctic sea ice would disappear by the middle of this decade. It hasn’t. Are you being alarmist?
No. There is a clear trend down to zero for summer cover. However, each year chance events can give a boost to ice cover or take some away. The overall trend is a very strong downward one, however. Most people expect this year will see a record low in the Arctic’s summer sea-ice cover. Next year or the year after that, I think it will be free of ice in summer and by that I mean the central Arctic will be ice-free. You will be able to cross over the north pole by ship. There will still be about a million square kilometres of ice in the Arctic in summer but it will be packed into various nooks and crannies along the Northwest Passage and along bits of the Canadian coastline. Ice-free means the central basin of the Arctic will be ice-free and I think that that is going to happen in summer 2017 or 2018.
The eco guide to air pollution
We call it ‘smog’ or ‘haze’ but it’s a real killer. There are ways to find out where it’s worst, and clean air campaigns which are well worth supporting
These days fresh air is hard to find, even in parks. Nearly a quarter of London’s green open spaces now breach laws on nitrogen dioxide pollution (the stuff that spews out of diesel exhausts).
When the air in the park is worse than at the side of the road, that’s a new low. If you’re a Londoner, type in your postcode at Asi Open Data to find the nearest park where NO2 emissions don’t exceed 40 micrograms per cubic metre.
Continue reading...Yellowstone fish deaths: 183 miles of river closed to halt spread of parasite
Ban on all fishing, rafting and other river activities in the US river will remain until fish stop dying, say officials
Closures on a 183-mile stretch of the Yellowstone river and hundreds of miles of other waterways could continue for months while biologists try to prevent the spread of a parasite believed to have killed tens of thousands of fish.
The closures will remain until the waterways improve and fish stop dying, according to officials from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The ban includes all fishing, rafting and other river activities.
Continue reading...If we’re serious about industrial strategy, renewables is a good place to start
Cancelling the planned new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point will be a huge victory for the offshore wind industry. The word from inside No 10 is not clear yet, but there are so many Tories, including the prime minister, unsettled by the prospect of the Chinese building a plant in Britain to an untested French design that the prospects of it going ahead appear slim.
As if to emphasise the continuing success of Britain’s elegant turbines in the sea, the government cleared the way for a new array off the Yorkshire coast earlier this week.
Continue reading...