The Guardian
Grand Canyon tourists possibly exposed to radiation at museum, whistleblower says
Park safety director alleges buckets of uranium sat near exhibit for almost 20 years, but interior department says there’s no risk
For almost 20 years, workers and visiting school children at a Grand Canyon museum may have been unknowingly exposed to radiation from three buckets of uranium sitting next to a taxidermy exhibit, according to allegations from a National Park Service safety director.
The whistleblower says officials learned about the buckets last year and tried to hide the revelation, according to the Arizona Republic newspaper. Earlier this month, Elston “Swede” Stephenson emailed all park staff and brought the matter to the attention of the head of the interior department, which oversees the park service, and the agency’s internal watchdog.
Continue reading...World's largest bee, missing for 38 years, found in Indonesia
Biologists discover single female Wallace’s giant bee inside a termites’ nest in a tree
As long as an adult thumb, with jaws like a stag beetle and four times larger than a honeybee, Wallace’s giant bee is not exactly inconspicuous.
But after going missing, feared extinct, for 38 years, the world’s largest bee has been rediscovered on the Indonesian islands of the North Moluccas.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg tells EU: your climate targets need doubling
Swede, 16, says EU cannot just ‘wait for us to grow up and become the ones in charge’
The EU should double its climate change reduction targets to do its fair share in keeping the planet below a dangerous level of global warming, the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has told political and business leaders in Brussels.
Flanked by students from the Belgian and German school strike movements, the Swedish teenager said it was not enough to hope that young people were going to save the world.
Continue reading...MPs turn heat on ministers amid boiler installation slowdown
Critics warn of ‘chronic public health crisis’ as green initiative leaves homes in the cold
Campaigners and MPs have accused ministers of leaving vulnerable households in the cold, as figures show installations of insulation and boilers have sunk to their lowest levels since the government’s flagship energy efficiency scheme started six years ago.
Delays to legislation were blamed by fuel poverty campaigners for the fall, which coincided with households being hit by energy price increases.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg to politicians: 'we're fighting for everyone's future' – video
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, has told an EU conference: 'since our time is running out we have started to clean up your mess and we will not stop until we are done.'
In response to people who have criticised the school climate strike movement for promoting truancy, Thunberg said, 'they don't want to talk about it ... because they haven't done their homework, but we have'
Continue reading...Giant tortoise believed extinct for 100 years found in Galápagos
Adult female discovered 113 years after only other living Chelonoidis phantasticus was found
A living member of species of tortoise not seen in more than 110 years and feared to be extinct has been found in a remote part of the Galápagos island of Fernandina.
Related: Welcome home, Lonesome George: giant tortoise returns to Galapagos
Continue reading...Teachers to join climate protests to demand curriculum reform
On Friday demonstrators will protest against ‘negligent’ climate change education
Teachers will follow on the heels of striking students on Friday with a protest to demand the national curriculum be reformed to make the climate and ecological crisis an educational priority.
The Extinction Rebellion group will support the demonstration outside the Department for Education, which organisers describe as a “peaceful nonviolent protest that may involve civil disobedience”.
Continue reading...Gen X has survived its gloomy formative years. Now we will have to deal with climate change | Jason Wilson
The baby boomers gave us Trump and Brexit. Can my generation age more gracefully?
Generational politics is bullshit, but a Gen X guy would say that. I sometimes wonder, though, whether whatever is distinctive in my generation’s experience (and haunting our minds) might have something to offer the future.
After a brief flurry of interest in the 1990s, think pieces on my demographic quickly waned. There were never that many of us; the meat in the sandwich was and is meagre.
Continue reading...Ban gas boilers in new homes by 2025, says Committee on Climate Change
Government advisers suggest homes are heated using low-carbon energy instead
Gas hobs or boilers should be banned from being installed in new homes within the next six years, government advisers have recommended.
A report by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says that from 2025 at the latest, no new homes should be connected to the gas grid – with super-efficient houses and flats heated using low-carbon energy instead.
Continue reading...Mexican activist shot dead before vote on pipeline he opposed
Environmental campaigners say Samir Flores Soberanes’s murder is a ‘political crime’
A Mexican environmental activist has been murdered before a referendum on a controversial thermal-electric plant and pipeline that he opposed.
Samir Flores Soberanes, an indigenous Náhuatl, was killed in his home during the early hours of Wednesday in the town of Amilcingo in Morelos state, 80 miles south of Mexico City. He was a human rights activist, producer for a community radio station and long-time opponent of the Proyecto Integral Morelos (the integral project for Morelos) – which includes the plant and pipeline.
Continue reading...Weatherwatch: harbingers of climate change are aflutter
Seeing butterflies on a warm February day gave a disturbing preview of future winters
In a world where climate change makes every season unpredictable, we have perhaps got used to unseasonal warm spells. But if I cast my mind back to the middle of February 1998, I can still recall my surprise at the unusually mild weather.
I was filming at a west London gravel pit with Bill Oddie, and during the course of the day we saw four different species of butterfly on the wing. They were the quartet that habitually overwinter as adults – comma, peacock, small tortoiseshell and brimstone – each emerging on a mild spring day to feed on nectar.
Continue reading...White House climate change panel to include man who touted emissions
William Happer, a physicist who has suggested higher levels of carbon dioxide are beneficial, would be on committee
The White House is planning to assess how climate change impacts national security and will involve a prominent doubter of the scientific consensus that manmade warming is putting the US at risk.
Related: US coastal businesses hit by everyday impact of climate change, study shows
Continue reading...'Belongs in a museum': Greta Thunberg condemns politician against school strike
Swedish student responds to NSW education minister’s threat to punish students who participate in school climate strike
The Swedish teenager whose lone protest against climate change spurred a global youth movement has told an Australian state education minister his words “belong in a museum” after he warned students against attending an upcoming protest.
The New South Wales education minister, Rob Stokes, appeared on Sky News earlier this week, warning students and teachers against attending rallies planned across Australia for Friday 15 March, as part of the school climate strike movement.
Continue reading...Virgin births: is there something fishy about Mary the stickleback’s little miracles?
Name: Mary the virgin stickleback.
Age: Between one and two years old.
Continue reading...European farms could grow green and still be able to feed population
Research shows loss in yields could be offset by reorienting diets away from grain-fed meat
Europe would still be able to feed its growing population even if it switched entirely to environmentally friendly approaches such as organic farming, according to a scientific paper.
A week after research revealed a steep decline in global insect populations that has been linked to the use of pesticides, the study from European thinktank IDDRI claims such chemicals can be phased out and greenhouse gas emissions radically reduced in Europe through agroecological farming, while still producing enough nutritious food for an increasing population.
Continue reading...Great Barrier Reef authority gives green light to dump dredging sludge
A million tonnes of spoil to be disposed of in marine park – prompting calls for a ban on all offshore dumping
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has approved the dumping of more than 1m tonnes of dredge spoil near the reef, using a loophole in federal laws that were supposed to protect the marine park.
The Greens senator Larissa Waters has called for the permit – which allows maintenance dredging to be carried out over 10 years at Mackay’s Hay Point port and the sludge to be dumped within the marine park’s boundaries – to be revoked.
Continue reading...Spectacled flying fox declared endangered after Queensland heatwave wipeout
Up to 20,000 animals died late last year; decision is one of several made by Melissa Price after criticism over inaction
The federal government has upgraded the threatened status of a flying fox after almost a third of its population was wiped out in Queensland’s recent heatwave.
The environment minister, Melissa Price, said the spectacled flying fox would be listed nationally as endangered, up from vulnerable, to “reflect heightened concerns for its future”.
Continue reading...Tossed and found: tiny sculptures of cast-off NY trash – in pictures
Since the mid 1990s, Yuji Agematsu has used debris from New York’s streets to create a series of dioramas inside the cellophane sleeves of cigarette packets. The pieces below are from a year of his work entitled zip: 01.01.17 . . . 12.31.17
Continue reading...Majority of European firms have no CO2 reduction targets
Only one in three firms have climate goals set to go beyond 2025, report finds
Most European companies have no target for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions even though 80% see climate change as a business risk, a survey has found.
Among those that have set climate goals, only one in three stretch beyond 2025, according to the annual Carbon Disclosure Project report.
Continue reading...Not all plastic need go up in smoke – archive, 19 February1976
19 February 1976: There is a well-established industry that can recycle the plastic we throw away
The preponderance of plastics that we use – around three-quarters – are of the thermoplastic type, which by definition soften when heated and can be reworked. Nearly all plastics material commonly found in domestic waste or litter, moreover, is of this kind. So the basic premise for recycling exists.
Modern society, of course, is a prodigious producer of waste. It was recently reckoned that to produce five million tonnes of plastics a year West Germany produced scrap in the processing plants of 275,000 tonnes, and 100,000 tonnes more in manufacture. About one million tonnes of plastics, (consumer goods and packaging) ended up as refuse, or litter. Germany uses about 2½ times the amount of plastics that we do.
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