The Guardian
May marks one more record hot month for the world
May was the fifth record warm month this year, upping the odds that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, reports Climate Central
The streak continues: May was record warm for the globe, according to NASA data released Monday.
It’s now even more likely that 2016 will be the hottest year ever recorded, despite the demise of one of the strongest El Niños on record.
Continue reading...Millions of animal 'trophies' exported across borders, figures show
At least 200,000 of the nearly 2m trophies collected from animal hunts were endangered species, according to report revealing the scale of the industry
Around 1.7m animal “trophies” have been exported across borders by hunters in the last decade, with at least 200,000 of them endangered species, according to a new report.
US hunters are by far the largest killers of trophy animals, including half of all the 11,000 lions shot in the last decade, the report found. The issue came to global attention in July 2015, after a US dentist paid more than $50,000 to kill a lion called Cecil, who was being tracked by conservation scientists.
Continue reading...Scotland beats climate emissions reductions target six years early
2020 target of 42% cut reached earlier than expected, but climate campaigners sceptical about government’s role
Scotland’s climate emissions have broken through a landmark reductions target six years early after a warm winter helped drive down energy use.
The Scottish climate change secretary, Roseanna Cunningham, said she was delighted that the country’s emissions had fallen by nearly 46% between 1990 and 2014, surpassing the government’s 2020 target of a 42% cut far earlier than expected.
Continue reading...Minister says UK government 'fully backs' microbeads ban
Environment minister George Eustice tells MPs’ committee that the government supports a ban on polluting plastic microbeads in cosmetics
The UK government now fully backs a legal ban on polluting plastic microbeads in cosmetics and toiletries, environment minister George Eustice said on Tuesday.
A ban across the EU could be passed as early as 2017, he said, to stop the tiny particles entering the seas and harming wildlife.
Continue reading...It's the economy that needs to be integrated into the environment - not the other way around | Andrew Simms
BP’s call for a ‘meaningful carbon price’ is the latest example of wrongly trying to apply economic theories and tools to the environment
BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy is a standard industry reference document. It’s a useful indicator of trends, if occasionally the victim of politics.
Continue reading...Pressure mounts over 'suppression' of UK fracking impacts report
Campaigners accuse the government of sitting on a potentially explosive report from its official advisers on the impact of fracking for shale gas
Pressure is growing on the UK government to release a report into the impacts of shale gas fracking, which campaigners have accused ministers of suppressing.
The Committee on Climate Change, which advises parliament on meeting the UK’s carbon targets, submitted the report in March. It covers the expected impact of exploiting the UK’s onshore oil and gas resources on nationally set greenhouse gas targets.
Continue reading...Hedgehogs continue to disappear from British gardens, wildlife survey shows
RSPB campaign urges gardeners to do one thing to help wildlife this summer after survey reveals rise and fall of familiar species
Gardeners are being urged to do more to help hedgehogs this summer after new figures showed that fewer people than ever are seeing the once-familiar species.
Results from the from the RSPB’s citizen science survey showed that only 25% of people see hedgehogs in their garden at least once a month, around three percentage points less than last year and than in 2014.
Continue reading...Revealed: first mammal species wiped out by human-induced climate change
Exclusive: scientists find no trace of the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that was the only mammal endemic to Great Barrier Reef
Human-caused climate change appears to have driven the Great Barrier Reef’s only endemic mammal species into the history books, with the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that lives on a tiny island in the eastern Torres Strait, being completely wiped-out from its only known location.
It is also the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-caused climate change.
Continue reading...How swifts survive a wet British June
Long-distance flights enable aerial hunters to feed their young whatever the weather
For Britain’s breeding birds – especially those migrants that spend only a short time here before heading back to their winter home in Africa – June is a crucial month.
Plentiful sunshine – June is usually the sunniest month of the year in England and Wales, thanks to the long hours of daylight – provide the vast amounts of insects and invertebrates that these birds require to feed their young.
Continue reading...Carbon dioxide levels in atmosphere forecast to shatter milestone
Scientists warn that global warming target will be overshot within two decades, as annual concentrations of CO2 set to pass 400 parts per million in 2016
Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will shatter the symbolic barrier of 400 parts per million (ppm) this year and will not fall below it our in our lifetimes, according to a new Met Office study.
Carbon dioxide measurements at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii are forecast to soar by a record 3.1ppm this year – up from an annual average of 2.1ppm – due in large part to the cyclical El Niño weather event in the Pacific, the paper says.
Continue reading...Legal ivory sale drove dramatic increase in elephant poaching, study shows
Research shows the legal sale in 2008 catastrophically backfired – but two African nations want to repeat the stockpile sell-off
A huge legal sale of ivory intended to cut elephant poaching instead catastrophically backfired by dramatically increasing elephant deaths, according to new research.
The revelation comes just months before a decision on whether to permit another legal sale and against a backdrop of more African elephants being killed for ivory than are being born. In 2015 alone, 20,000 elephants were illegally killed.
Continue reading...Scrap destructive Gwent Levels motorway plan, charities say
In open letter charities say environmental evidence should lead Welsh government to stop plan that would cut through wetland
Ten leading environmental charities have claimed a proposed section of motorway that would cut through wildlife-rich wetland represents “ecological destruction on an unprecedented scale”.
The charities have written an open letter to the Welsh government calling for it to scrap £1bn plans to build a 14-mile stretch of motorway through the Gwent Levels near Newport in south Wales.
Continue reading...Biggest US coal company funded dozens of groups questioning climate change
Analysis of Peabody Energy court documents show company backed trade groups, lobbyists and thinktanks dubbed ‘heart and soul of climate denial’
Peabody Energy, America’s biggest coalmining company, has funded at least two dozen groups that cast doubt on manmade climate change and oppose environment regulations, analysis by the Guardian reveals.
The funding spanned trade associations, corporate lobby groups, and industry front groups as well as conservative thinktanks and was exposed in court filings last month.
Continue reading...The Grand Oil Party: House Republicans denounce a carbon tax | Dana Nuccitelli
Lobbying from the petroleum industry may have convinced Republicans to denounce a carbon tax
On Friday, the US House of Representatives voted on a Resolution condemning a carbon tax. As The Hill reported:
Lawmakers passed, by a 237-163 vote, a GOP-backed resolution listing pitfalls from a tax on carbon dioxide emissions and concluding that such a policy “would be detrimental to American families and businesses, and is not in the best interest of the United States.”
Six Democrats voted with the GOP for the resolution. No Republicans dissented.
Continue reading...Air pollution linked to increased mental illness in children
New research is first to establish the link and builds on other evidence that children are particularly vulnerable to even low levels of pollution
A major new study has linked air pollution to increased mental illness in children, even at low levels of pollution.
The new research found that relatively small increases in air pollution were associated with a significant increase in treated psychiatric problems. It is the first study to establish the link but is consistent with a growing body of evidence that air pollution can affect mental and cognitive health and that children are particularly vulnerable to poor air quality.
Continue reading...Where have all our curlew gone?
The Stiperstones, Shropshire We might have been walking towards a future devoid of the riveting, other-worldly call of the curlew
A few Sundays ago, Mary Colwell-Hector and I were walking with a bunch of ornithologists and conservationists along the Stiperstones ridge. The scent of gorse drifted on warm air. Sunlight moved over the heather and farmland finding sheep, meadows and cattle. But our talk was more of what wasn’t there. We should have been seeing curlew, returned from the coast to breed here in the Shropshire-Powys borderlands.
The British Trust for Ornithology estimates that 68,000 breeding pairs remain in the UK – about 46% of the 1994 figure. “But where are they? They’re not here, and they’re not in Wales or Ireland,” said Mary, the former producer of Shared Planet, who is walking 500 miles through Ireland and England to highlight fears about the decline of these distinctive waders.
Continue reading...Coalition will protect Great Barrier Reef with $1bn fund, says PM
Amid a series of reports detailing the poor state of the reef, Malcolm Turnbull is promising improved water quality and clean energy for the region
Malcolm Turnbull has promised that a re-elected Coalition government will protect the Great Barrier Reef by tackling its two biggest challenges – climate change and water quality.
The prime minister will pledge to set up a new $1bn reef fund with $1bn – taken from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s $10bn special account – to invest in projects that will improve water quality, reduce emissions and provide clean energy in the reef catchment region.
Continue reading...Sea of glass: the underwater world of Leopold Blaschka
In the 1860s, when the Bohemian glassblower Leopold Blaschka began sculpting models of underwater creatures, the Industrial Revolution, population growth and climate change had yet to take their toll on marine biodiversity. Over three decades, using techniques that still baffle experts, Leopold and his son, Rudolf, handmade about 10,000 marine sculptures, each one rendered in minute detail: impossibly delicate anemones, livid orange cuttlefish – creatures at once alien and unnervingly lifelike.
In a world before scuba diving, underwater photography or ocean life surveys, the Blaschkas’ models proved an invaluable educational resource, with universities worldwide purchasing collections of glass specimens. One of the largest, with 570 models, belongs to Cornell University in the US, where until recently it was all but forgotten, stowed in a warehouse in a state of disrepair. As a young professor in the 1990s, Dr Drew Harvell began cataloguing the collection, discovering a “time capsule” of 19th-century marine biology. “There’s value in the entire collection,” she says. “It’s what you could see 150 years ago, frozen in time.”
Continue reading...The eco guide to population growth
Every hour 10,000 people are born. Fortunately a new crop of eco innovations will help tackle the pressures on our planet
The regularity with which I’m contacted by population worriers – people who think it’s pointless discussing green energy, climate change and ethical pensions when the elephant in the room is actually the new human in the room – is impressive. They say that the planet needs fewer people. End of.
The numbers are indeed eye catching. Today there are 7 billion humans alive (twice the number who were alive in 1965) – and each hour we add 10,000 more. By 2050, UN demographers predict, there will be at least 9 billion of us putting a strain on life-sustaining resources.
Continue reading...The eco guide to cargo ships
The shipping industry burns fossil fuels on a grand scale, and scarcely even tries to reduce its emissions
A seafaring adage goes: “If the winds are shifting, adjust your sails.” But even with the disturbing winds of climate change, the shipping industry, with its combustion of fossil fuels (accounting for 2.4% of global emissions), remains outside binding emissions-reduction agreements.
There have been some eco efforts, but the Carbon War Room points out that ship owners feel little need to green their fleets, as those hiring the vessels pay the fuel costs. When the price of bunker fuel (the sludgiest oil left over from refining) drops, as it has, eco resolve disappears.
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