The Guardian
In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax creates jobs, grows the economy | Dana Nuccitelli
A new study from REMI finds that a revenue neutral carbon tax could create 2.8 million jobs, increase GDP by $1.3 trillion
A revenue-neutral carbon tax or fee is a proposed policy to address global warming that's become increasingly popular, particularly in the US. It's a simple concept – put a much needed price on carbon pollution, but return all the revenue that's generated to taxpayers (for example with a monthly refund) to offset rising energy costs. This approach appeals to political conservatives, because it's a free market solution that doesn't increase the size of government.
British Columbia (BC) launched a revenue-neutral carbon fee in 2008, with the tax offset through a matching reduction income taxes. So far it's been very successful, decreasing carbon pollution while the BC economy performed just as well as the rest of Canada's. The carbon tax has 64% support among BC voters.
Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown | Nafeez Ahmed
A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands."
Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD 'Minerva Research Initiative' partners with universities "to improve DoD's basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US."
Continue reading...Famous French bear Balou found dead in Pyrenees
One of France's celebrated and controversial brown bears, introduced from Slovenia, has been found dead in the Pyrenees.
Experts say the animal, aged just 11 – who boasted actors Gérard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant as "godparents" – appeared to have fallen.
Continue reading...Britain's abandoned whale hunting stations - in pictures
Between 1909 and 1965, the whaling station of Leith Harbour on South Georgia was one of the busiest whaling stations in the world, with more than 48,000 whales processed into oil for margarine, bone meal for fertiliser and other products. Last November, a film crew was granted access to the abandoned whaling stations, and a new BBC4 documentary shows the remains of whaling life, and the wildlife that is re-colonising Leith Harbour.
• Britain's Whale Hunters: The Untold Story is on BBC 4 on Monday 9th and 16th June, at 9pm.
Alpha-male bear facing castration as sexual dominance threatens population
The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong
An elderly brown bear in the Pyrenees is facing castration or segregation amid fears that his sexual dominance is threatening the species' survival in the region by limiting genetic diversity.
Pyros, one of the oldest of the 30 or so bears who roam the mountains between France and Spain, is the father, grandfather or great-grandfather of nearly all of the cubs born in the Pyrenees over the past two decades. There are four other males in the colony – only one of them is not related to Pyros – and none of them have fathered any offspring.
Continue reading...The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong
Like most children, Margaret Howe Lovatt grew up with stories of talking animals. "There was this book that my mother gave to me called Miss Kelly," she remembers with a twinkle in her eye. "It was a story about a cat who could talk and understand humans and it just stuck with me that maybe there is this possibility."
Unlike most children, Lovatt didn't leave these tales of talking animals behind her as she grew up. In her early 20s, living on the Caribbean island of St Thomas, they took on a new significance. During Christmas 1963, her brother-in-law mentioned a secret laboratory at the eastern end of the island where they were working with dolphins. She decided to pay the lab a visit early the following year. "I was curious," Lovatt recalls. "I drove out there, down a muddy hill, and at the bottom was a cliff with a big white building."
Continue reading...Europe's vultures under threat from drug that killed millions of birds in Asia
Wildlife groups have launched a Europe-wide campaign to outlaw a newly approved veterinary drug that has caused the deaths of tens of millions of vultures in Asia. They say that the decision to allow diclofenac to be used in Spain and Italy not only threatens to wipe out Europe's vultures but could harm other related species, including the golden eagle and the Spanish imperial eagle, one of the world's rarest raptors.
Diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory agent and painkiller, was introduced around the end of the 20th century in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh to treat sick cattle. But when the cattle's carcasses were eaten by vultures, the birds contracted a fatal kidney condition. Within a few years, vulture numbers had declined by a staggering 99.9% across south Asia. The worst-affected species included long-billed, slender-billed and oriental white-backed vultures. Dead cattle were left to rot without vultures to consume their flesh. Packs of feral dogs grew to fill the ecological gap. The risk of rabies also rose, said health experts. Now diclofenac has been approved for use in Italy and Spain.
Continue reading...The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up | Richard Tol
Consensus is irrelevant in science. There are plenty of examples in history where everyone agreed and everyone was wrong
Dana Nuccitelli writes that I “accidentally confirm the results of last year’s 97% global warming consensus study”. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I show that the 97% consensus claim does not stand up.
Continue reading...Arctic 30: Russia releases Greenpeace ship
Russian authorities have released the Arctic Sunrise, which was involved in a high-profile protest against Arctic oil drilling
The Greenpeace icebreaker confiscated by Russia after activists tried to board a Gazprom oil rig has been released. But it could take two months before the Arctic Sunrise leaves Murmansk harbour, according to the campaigning group.
The ship was boarded by the Russian coast guard and towed 500 miles from the Pechora Sea to the northern Russian port of Murmansk in September 2013. Thirty activists, including six Britons, were arrested and accused of hooliganism and piracy.
Scientists warn against China's plan to flatten over 700 mountains
Environmental consequences of removing hills to create more land for cities not considered, academics say in Nature paper
Scientists have criticised China's bulldozing of hundreds of mountains to provide more building land for cities.
In a paper published in journal Nature this week, three Chinese academics say plan to remove over 700 mountains and shovel debris into valleys to create 250 sq km of flat land has not been sufficiently considered “environmentally, technically or economically.”
Continue reading...Jamaica's rare wildlife – in pictures
The Portland Bight protected area is home to the iconic Jamaican iguana
and 20 other endangered species. Its fragile coastal ecosystem and
wildlife faces the risk of being lost for ever as Jamaica approves a
Chinese company to build a port. Photographs by Robin Moore
Whale killed by cruise ship near New York amid upsurge in cetacean strikes
• Sei whale carcass dragged into Hudson River
• Strike is third in north-east waters in recent weeks
A cruise ship heading for New York this month struck and killed a whale and dragged it into the Hudson River, part of a higher-than-usual rate of strikes along the eastern seaboard for this time of year, a federal agency said.
There were three whale strikes recently, including one in which a cruise ship hit a sei whale and did not discover it until it reached port, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
Continue reading...Fracking in Tunbridge Wells: 'Where is it going to stop?'
Residents in the Kent Weald react with mixture of fear and enthusiasm to news of shale oil reserves and plans to change the law to allowing fracking without clearance
Residents of Kent have reacted angrily to a government announcement that fracking companies will no longer need to ask permission before drilling beneath their homes.
In Tunbridge Wells, Sue Reddick, a local housekeeper, said she was shocked to learn the government was preparing to amend trespass laws to allow companies to operate beneath homes without first asking the owner’s permission.
Continue reading...Sloth baby surprises keepers at London zoo
A pair of sloths have speeded up their usual slow courtship to produce London zoo's first baby sloth – to the surprise of their keepers.
Keepers at London zoo were shocked to discover two-toed sloth Marilyn was pregnant as they were unaware she had mated with male partner Leander, who arrived from Germany in 2012 to be paired with her.
Continue reading...Meet the top 10 newly discovered species of 2014
• See a gallery of top 10 species here
A tree-living raccoon from the cloud forests of the Andes, a sea anenome that burrows into Antarctic glaciers and ultra-hardy bacteria that thrive in supposedly sterile clean rooms are all among the top 10 newly discovered species of 2014.
The list, as selected by an international panel of experts from the 18,000 new species revealed in the last 12 months, aims to highlight the undiscovered richness of life on Earth at a time when human activities are driving species extinct at a rate unprecedented since a giant meteorite strike wiped out the dinosaurs.
Continue reading...Return of the European bison
Europe's largest beast is to roam the forests of Romania after 200 years. Adam Vaughan witnesses the buzz as a herd of 17 is released in the Carpathian mountains
The crowd surges forward against the barrier, cameraphones are held aloft, children are hoisted on to shoulders. The celebrities, the first European bison about to set their hooves in this remote Romanian valley in the southern Carpathian mountains for two centuries, wait in the shadows of a huge trailer.
The forest, already home to bears and packs of wolves, is the final destination for 17 of Europe's largest land mammal, some of whom have been travelling hitched to lorries for five days from as far as Sweden. It will be their first time out of captivity.
Continue reading...Landmark sites in the US at risk from climate change – in pictures
From Statue of Liberty to Fort Monroe, a string of national monuments and heritage sites are becoming vulnerable to rising seas, floods and wildfires according to a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists
Continue reading...Leave seashells on the seashore or risk damaging ecosystem, says study
You might think twice next time you snag a seashell from the beach and drop it into your pocket: you might be altering the seaside environment.
In a study more than 30 years in the making, researchers have found that the removal of shells from beaches could damage ecosystems and endanger organisms that rely on shells for their survival.
Continue reading...Traces of cocaine in our tap water don't prove we have a problem
According to various headlines this weekend, we Brits use so much cocaine that traces of the drug have been found in our water supply. A study by the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) aimed at assessing the danger from pharmaceutical compounds in drinking water revealed that even after intensive purification treatment, minute quantities of benzoylecgonine – the metabolised form of cocaine – were found at four sites in Britain. So are we a nation of coke-heads? And does the presence of something related to a class-A drug in the water we drink actually matter?
The answer to the first question, says Sue Pennison of DWI, the independent body that ensures the water companies supply water fit to drink, is not clear. Benzoylecgonine, she notes, "is also an ingredient in a popular muscle-rub, and there's no way of telling which it came from".
Continue reading...Honeybees abandoning hives and dying due to insecticide use, research finds
The mysterious vanishing of honeybees from hives can be directly linked to insectcide use, according to new research from Harvard University. The scientists showed that exposure to two neonicotinoids, the world's most widely used class of insecticide, lead to half the colonies studied dying, while none of the untreated colonies saw their bees disappear.
"We demonstrated that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for triggering 'colony collapse disorder' in honeybee hives that were healthy prior to the arrival of winter," said Chensheng Lu, an expert on environmental exposure biology at Harvard School of Public Health and who led the work.
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