The Guardian
Giving up beef will reduce carbon footprint more than cars, says expert
Study shows red meat dwarfs others for environmental impact, using 28 times more land and 11 times water for pork or chicken
Beef’s environmental impact dwarfs that of other meat including chicken and pork, new research reveals, with one expert saying that eating less red meat would be a better way for people to cut carbon emissions than giving up their cars.
The heavy impact on the environment of meat production was known but the research shows a new scale and scope of damage, particularly for beef. The popular red meat requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions. When compared to staples like potatoes, wheat, and rice, the impact of beef per calorie is even more extreme, requiring 160 times more land and producing 11 times more greenhouse gases.
Continue reading...Cheetah smuggling driving wild population to extinction, report says
Rising demand for luxury pets in the Gulf states taking gruesome toll as two-thirds of snatched cubs are dying en route
The rising trade in cheetahs for luxury pets in the Middle East is helping to drive critical populations of the wild cats to extinction, according to new research. The report also reveals the gruesome toll of the trade, with up to two-thirds of the cheetah cubs being smuggled across the war-torn Horn of Africa dying en route. However, the nations at both ends of the trade have now agreed that urgent action is needed.
Cheetahs, famous as the world’s fastest land animal, have lost about 90% of their population over the last century as their huge ranges in Africa and Asia have been taken over by farmland. Fewer than 10,000 remain and numbers are falling. There is an ancient tradition of using trained cheetahs as royal hunting animals in Africa but, more recently, a growing demand for status-symbol pets in the Gulf states has further reduced populations.
Continue reading...Clear differences between organic and non-organic food, study finds
Organic food has more of the antioxidant compounds linked to better health than regular food, and lower levels of toxic metals and pesticides, according to the most comprehensive scientific analysis to date.
The international team behind the work suggests that switching to organic fruit and vegetables could give the same benefits as adding one or two portions of the recommended "five a day".
Continue reading...KiWi Power: the tech-savvy energy firm with a way out of Britain's power crisis
A small iron gate squeezed between a newsagent and printing shop off Carnaby Street in central London is not the obvious location for a business that could avert a British power crunch.
Step inside the cramped, white-painted offices of KiWi Power and it looks more like a tech startup than an energy business – as exemplified by the open shirt and beaded necklace sported by co-founder Ziko Abram.
Continue reading...Dark snow: from the Arctic to the Himalayas, the phenomenon that is accelerating glacier melting
When American geologist Ulyana Horodyskyj set up a mini weather station at 5,800m on Mount Himlung, on the Nepal-Tibet border, she looked east towards Everest and was shocked. The world's highest glacier, Khumbu, was turning visibly darker as particles of fine dust, blown by fierce winds, settled on the bright, fresh snow. "One-week-old snow was turning black and brown before my eyes," she said.
The problem was even worse on the nearby Ngozumpa glacier, which snakes down from Cho Oyu – the world's sixth highest mountain. There, Horodyskyj found that so much dust had been blown on to the surface that the ability of the ice to reflect sunlight, a process known as albedo, dropped 20% in a single month. The dust that was darkening the brilliant whiteness of the snow was heating up in the strong sun and melting the snow and ice, she said.
Continue reading...The long shadow of Chernobyl
A new book from National Geographic photographer Gerd Ludwig documents the worst nuclear disaster in history with sobering but stunning images. Ludwig visited Chernobyl nine times in 20 years to tell the stories of the lives of the victims, the exclusion zone and the abandoned city of
Pripyat. The book also contains an essay from former president Mikhail Gorbachev on how the accident changed the course of the world's history by accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union
Victor Gaydack is now in his 70s and lives in a Kiev suburb. In April 1986 he was a major in the Russian army, on duty when reactor four at Chernobyl exploded. He was one of tens of thousands of fit, young “liquidators” sent in from all over the Soviet Union to try to make safe the stricken reactor. Since the accident, Gaydack has suffered two heart attacks, and developed severe stomach cancer.
Continue reading...Kangaroo tail a 'third leg' that gives speed, not just balance, says study
Scientists have discovered a kangaroo's tail propels it forward with as much force as its front and hind legs combined
The role of kangaroos’ unusually large, muscular tails appears to have been definitely answered, with scientists discovering the tail propels kangaroos forward with as much force as its front and hind legs combined.
Researchers measured the force the tail exerts on the ground and found it is critical in getting kangaroos moving at slow speeds, to a greater degree than even its legs.
Continue reading...World's first fully recyclable paper cup to hit UK high streets
The world's first fully recyclable paper cup will soon make its debut on the UK high street, in a packaging breakthrough that could eventually divert millions of cups away from landfill.
More than 2.5bn cups are thrown away in the UK every year – enough to go round the world five and a half times. But few are recycled and nearly all end up in landfill, creating 25,000 tonnes of waste – enough to fill London's Royal Albert Hall.
Continue reading...Commonsense prevails as BBC upholds Today programme climate complaint | Bob Ward
BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit concludes interview with Lord Lawson and Professor Sir Brian Hoskins on climate change and floods broke guidelines on due accuracy
Hugh Muir reports on the leaked decision by the BBC to uphold a complaint about an interview on climate change with Lord Lawson on the Today programme on 13 February.
Justin Webb interviewed both Lawson and Prof Sir Brian Hoskins, chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, about the link between climate change and the winter floods this winter.
Continue reading...Greenpeace losses: leaked documents reveal extent of financial disarray
The handling of Greenpeace International’s £58m budget has been in disarray for years, with its financial team beset by personnel problems and a lack of rigorous processes, leading to errors, substandard work and a souring of relationships between its Amsterdam headquarters and offices around the world, documents leaked to the Guardian show.
Coming after it emerged that a staffer had lost £3m on the foreign exchange market by betting mistakenly on a weak euro, the documents show that the group’s financial department has faced a series of problems, and that its board is troubled by the lack of controls and lapses that allowed one person to lose so much money.
Continue reading...The open source revolution is coming and it will conquer the 1% - ex CIA spy | Nafeez Ahmed
Robert David Steele, former Marine, CIA case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence activity, is a man on a mission. But it's a mission that frightens the US intelligence establishment to its core.
With 18 years experience working across the US intelligence community, followed by 20 more years in commercial intelligence and training, Steele's exemplary career has spanned almost all areas of both the clandestine world.
Steele started off as a Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer. After four years on active duty, he joined the CIA for about a decade before co-founding the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, where he was deputy director. Widely recognised as the leader of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) paradigm, Steele went on to write the handbooks on OSINT for NATO, the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Special Operations Forces. In passing, he personally trained 7,500 officers from over 66 countries.
Continue reading...Indian officials order Coca-Cola plant to close for using too much water
Mehdiganj plant at centre of protests accused of extracting too much groundwater and releasing pollutants above limits
Authorities in northern India have ordered the closure of a Coca-Cola bottling plant at the centre of protests that it is extracting too much groundwater, an official said Wednesday.
An anti-pollution official said the Mehdiganj plant in Varanasi in the state of Uttar Pradesh had breached the conditions of its operating licence, prompting the order closure earler this month.
Continue reading...Fukushima operator struggles to build ice wall to contain radioactive water
The operator of Japan's battered Fukushima nuclear power plant has said it is having trouble with the early stages of an ice wall being built under broken reactors to contain radioactive water.
Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has begun digging the trenches for a huge network of pipes under the plant through which it intends to pass refrigerant.
Continue reading...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.
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