The Guardian
Collapsing Greenland glacier could raise sea levels by half a metre, say scientists
Huge Zachariae Isstrom glacier has begun to break up, starting a rapid retreat that could continue to raise sea levels for decades to come
A major glacier in Greenland that holds enough water to raise global sea levels by half a metre has begun to crumble into the North Atlantic Ocean, scientists say.
The huge Zachariae Isstrom glacier in northeast Greenland started to melt rapidly in 2012 and is now breaking up into large icebergs where the glacier meets the sea, monitoring has revealed.
Toothless Environment Agency is allowing the living world to be wrecked with impunity | George Monbiot
The farcical investigation of the pollution case I exposed in a Devon river highlights how budget cuts have left the agency incapable of enforcement
It could scarcely have been a starker case. The river I came across in Devon six weeks ago, and described in the Guardian, was so polluted that I could smell it from 50 metres away. Farm slurry pouring into the water, from a pipe that I traced back to a dairy farm, had wiped out almost all the life in the stretch of River Culm I explored.
All that now grew on the riverbed were long, feathery growths of sewage fungus. An expert on freshwater pollution I consulted told me that the extent of these growths showed the poisoning of the river was “chronic and severe”.
Continue reading...Group test: children's bikes from Islabike, Frog, Hoy and Halfords
They’re cleverly designed for tiny riders. But our four- to six-year-old testers were also interested in doing skids and playing with toy traffic cones
Bike companies spend months finessing the details of their kids’ models – the scaled-down brake levers, mini cranks, a child-friendly low centre of gravity. And what are the children most impressed by? A set of toy plastic cones.
That, along with the apparently great significance of rear-wheel skids to the lives of six-year-olds, was among the lessons learned from a fun if exhausting morning trying out children’s bikes with a collection of fun-sized testers.
Continue reading...Britain 'must abandon Churchillian rhetoric' in face of rising seas
National Trust says central and local governments should plan ahead for increasing coastal erosion rather than talk of ‘holding the line’
Britain must abandon “Churchillian rhetoric” and claims it can “hold the line” against rising seas, and instead plan ahead for increasing coastal erosion, according to the National Trust.
UK becomes only G7 country to increase fossil fuel subsidies
Tory government is giving billions in ever increasing handouts to oil and gas majors at the same time as cutting support for clean energy, report reveals
The UK is alone among G7 nations in dramatically increasing its fossil fuel subsidies, despite an earlier pledge to phase them out, a new report has found.
The revelation will embarrass ministers who want to take a leading role at a crunch UN climate change summit in Paris in December, but who have been sharply cutting support for green energy at home.
Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline and hails US as leader on climate change
President ends years of political drama and hands environmentalists a big victory with decision to turn down proposal to build 1,700-mile pipeline through US
Barack Obama ended seven years of high-wire political drama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, saying the decision reflected America’s determination to be a global leader in the fight against climate change.
The move, less than four weeks before more than 190 countries gather in Paris to try to reach a global deal to reduce carbon pollution, reinforces Obama’s commitment to making climate change the domestic and international legacy of his second term in the White House – even in the face of Republican hostility.
Continue reading...Scientists warned the President about global warming 50 years ago today | Dana Nuccitelli
On 5 November 1965 climate scientists summarized the risks associated with rising carbon pollution in a report for Lyndon Baines Johnson
Fifty years ago today, as the American Association for the Advancement of Science highlighted, US president Lyndon Johnson’s science advisory committee sent him a report entitled Restoring the Quality of Our Environment. The introduction to the report noted:
Pollutants have altered on a global scale the carbon dioxide content of the air and the lead concentrations in ocean waters and human populations.
Continue reading...Half of world's rare antelope population died within weeks
Scientists are struggling to explain the mass die-off of at least 150,000 endangered saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan earlier this year
More than half of the world’s population of an endangered antelope died within two weeks earlier this year, in a phenomenon that scientists are unable to explain.
Related: Kazakhstan's mass antelope deaths mystify conservationists
Continue reading...Delhi's air pollution is causing a health crisis. So, what can be done?
The city’s toxic air has been linked to allergies, respiratory conditions, birth malformations and increasing incidence of cancers. But as a recent car-free experiment showed, action to cut pollution can be effective
For a few hours one morning two weeks ago, private cars were banned from driving into the heart of old Delhi. It was hard to tell at the messy road junction in front of the historic Red Fort and the shopping street of Chandni Chowk, though, which was still crammed with auto-rickshaws and buses barrelling along the roads with seemingly little regard for any traffic rules.
But Delhi’s so-called “car-free day” experiment was nevertheless a success: scientists monitoring the air here, routinely one of Delhi’s most polluted areas, found a dramatic 60% drop in the amount of dangerous pollutants – the tiniest particles that come out of traffic exhausts and which can exacerbate health problems such as asthma, heart disease and stroke – compared to the previous day.
Continue reading...With 90% of the UK’s ash trees about to be wiped out, could GM be the answer?
Genetically modified ash trees could replace the 80 million expected to die in the next 20 years from a deadly fungus, scientists have proposed.
The radical solution to the greatest woodland disaster of the last 50 years is being explored by research teams at London and Oxford universities with backing from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, science bodies and the Forestry Commission.
Continue reading...Flowers bloom in the Atacama desert – in pictures
The Atacama desert is experiencing a rare springtime bloom of flowers after El Niño brought the heaviest rainfall in two decades earlier this year. The desert is usually one of the driest places on Earth. Flowers normally bloom every five to seven years but this year’s showing has been one of the most spectacular
Continue reading...Water too warm for cod in US Gulf of Maine as stocks near collapse
Waters in the north-west Atlantic have warmed 99% faster than the rest of the world’s oceans in the past decade due to changes in the Gulf Stream and Pacific
A rapid warming of the Gulf of Maine off the eastern United States has made the water too warm for cod, pushing stocks towards collapse despite deep reductions in the number of fish caught, a US study has shown.
Related: Maine lobster and Cape cod under threat from rapidly warming seas
Continue reading...Neonicotinoids: new warning on pesticide harm to bees
Consensus builds among scientists though review of evidence also finds there is not enough data on whether pesticide causes population decline
There is a strong scientific consensus that bees are exposed to neonicotinoid pesticides in fields and suffer harm from the doses received, according to a new analysis of the all the scientific evidence to date.
But almost no data exists so far on whether this harm ultimately leads to falls in overall bee populations, the scientists found. They said one “gold standard” field study from Sweden had shown that the insecticides, the most widely used in the world, do significantly damage bumblebee populations. But it found no effect for honeybees, although the study design meant it could only rule out losses greater than 20%.
Continue reading...Extreme heatwaves could push Gulf climate beyond human endurance, study shows
Oil heartlands of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and Iran’s coast will experience higher temperatures and humidity than ever before on Earth if the world fails to cut carbon emissions
The Gulf in the Middle East, the heartland of the global oil industry, will suffer heatwaves beyond the limit of human survival if climate change is unchecked, according to a new scientific study.
The extreme heatwaves will affect Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and coastal cities in Iran as well as posing a deadly threat to millions of Hajj pilgrims in Saudi Arabia, when the religious festival falls in the summer. The study shows the extreme heatwaves, more intense than anything ever experienced on Earth, would kick in after 2070 and that the hottest days of today would by then be a near-daily occurrence.
Continue reading...Indonesia's forest fires threaten a third of world's wild orangutans
Fires have spread beyond plantations deep into primary forests and national parks, the last strongholds of the endangered apes
Raging Indonesian forest fires have advanced into dense forest on Borneo and now threaten one third of the world’s remaining wild orangutans, say conservationists.
Satellite photography shows that around 100,000 fires have burned in Indonesia’s carbon-rich peatlands since July. But instead of being mostly confined to farmland and plantations, as they are in most years, several thousand fires have now penetrated deep into primary forests and national parks, the strongholds of the remaining wild apes and other endangered animals.
Morocco poised to become a solar superpower with launch of desert mega-project
World’s largest concentrated solar power plant, powered by the Saharan sun, set to help renewables provide almost half the country’s energy by 2020
- Read this story in French
The Moroccan city of Ouarzazate is used to big productions. On the edge of the Sahara desert and the centre of the north African country’s “Ouallywood” film industry it has played host to big-budget location shots in Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, The Living Daylights and even Game of Thrones.
Now the trading city, nicknamed the “door of the desert”, is the centre for another blockbuster – a complex of four linked solar mega-plants that, alongside hydro and wind, will help provide nearly half of Morocco’s electricity from renewables by 2020 with, it is hoped, some spare to export to Europe. The project is a key plank in Morocco’s ambitions to use its untapped deserts to become a global solar superpower.
Continue reading...Cluster of 20 great white sharks spotted off coast of northern California
- Sharks, ranging from 15ft to 18ft, seen 100 yards offshore near Pacifica
- Two coast guard helicopters spotted the sharks from 500ft last week
Experts say a cluster of some 20 great white sharks was recently spotted by the US coast guard off the coast of northern California.
Related: Giant squid writ small: juvenile monsters of the deep captured off Japan
Continue reading...Giant squid writ small: juvenile monsters of the deep captured off Japan
Three young squid caught by marine biologists are the spitting image of their gigantic parents – if nearly 1,000lbs and 50ft smaller
Marine biologists have captured three young giant squid, Japanese researchers reported, in what would be the first confirmed catch of very young juveniles of the elusive creature.
The young squid, caught off south-western Japan, are replicas of their gigantic parents who live in the deep. Two were caught together; all three weighed less than 1lb and spanned 5-13ins. Adults can reach 50ft and 1,000lbs.
Continue reading...Yorkshire dales and Lake District to be extended
Announcement to create largest area of national park land in England welcomed by campaigners after two-year wait for decision
Two of England’s most celebrated national parks, the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, are being extended, the government has announced.
The Yorkshire Dales national park will expand by almost 24% and the Lake District national park by 3%, creating a large and almost continuous protected area in north-west England.
Continue reading...Spate of snake attacks strikes Melbourne's cats and dogs
Animal hospital reports sharp rise in bites from tiger and brown snakes as reptiles emerge from winter hibernation to exceptionally warm weather
The Victorian government has warned people to be aware of snake activity after a spate of recent incidents in which dogs and cats have been bitten by the reptiles.
Related: Thirsty snakes slither into Australian toilets as dry season bites
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