The Guardian
Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax | Dana Nuccitelli
Like opposing civil rights and gay marriage, climate denial will drive voters away from the GOP
The Republican Party is rotting away. The problem is that GOP policies just aren’t popular. Most Americans unsurprisingly oppose climate denial, tax cuts for the wealthy, and putting children (including toddlers) in concentration camps, for example.
The Republican Party has thus far managed to continue winning elections by creating “a coalition between racists and plutocrats,” as Paul Krugman put it. The party’s economic policies are aimed at benefitting wealthy individuals and corporations, but that’s a slim segment of the American electorate. The plutocrats can fund political campaigns, but to capture enough votes to win elections, the GOP has resorted to identity politics. Research has consistently shown that Trump won because of racial resentment among white voters.
Continue reading...Oxford and Cambridge could become the UK's first true cycling cities
Both cities are seeking ways to transport expanding populations without impacting their historic centres, yet the simplest solution is staring them in the face
Sometimes politics really does overlook the obvious, and there’s a fine example just now in those two great centres of clear thinking and clogged traffic, Oxford and Cambridge. Here is the problem. The country wants, and badly needs, to build on these cities’ success in tech, bioscience and other industries: 129,000 new jobs and 135,000 new homes are planned in and around them over the next decade or so. But first you have to plan how to transport all the new people, and none of the usual answers works.
Even if new roadbuilding were an answer in any city, it can’t be in these two. Their historic centres are inviolable, their electorates implacable. Gone, thank God, are the days when plans could be drawn up for a new highway through Christ Church Meadow. More buses? Both cities’ centres are already choked with them. Metros? Vastly expensive and disruptive, years to build, and couldn’t hope to serve most of the journeys people will need to make.
Continue reading...The treasure hunters on a deadly quest for an eccentric's $2m bounty
Four people have died seeking a bounty hidden in the Rockies, with only a riddle as a guide. As the casualties mount, the millionaire who buried the treasure insists it’s not a hoax
Sacha Johnston was inching along a dirt road in a narrow canyon in northern New Mexico. “Just guide me,” Johnston said to her search partner, Cory Napier, who directed Johnston and her white Toyota 4Runner. “This road can be brutal.”
The pair had come to this starkly beautiful place, at the base of the Sangre De Cristo mountains, to hunt for a treasure rumored to be worth upwards of $2m.
Continue reading...Tent spiders weave a spectacular display – video
The intricately-woven webs of a mass colony of tent spiders create an eye-catching display in a nature reserve at Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia. Australian Museum arachnologist Graham Milledge told the ABC the webs were built over wet grassland and low-lying vegetation. 'At the top of the cone in the web is where the spider has its little retreat, that's where it sits waiting for prey and often there's a lot of detritus and leaves there to camouflage the spider'
Country diary 1918: the invading water soldier
2 July 1918 The plant may be rare, but where it does occur it will choke up a small pond of shallow stream
The water soldier, even in the Fens, is a rare plant, and though at one time it occurred in scattered localities in Lancashire and Cheshire, it has vanished from nearly all its old stations. Most of the year the plant is submerged, but at the time of flowering it rises, a clump of stiff, aloe-like leaves, above the surface of the water. Where it does occur it is often plentiful, and will choke up a small pond or shallow stream, and this was the condition in which I found it, or rather was shown it by a local botanist, not many miles from Manchester. The pond, it is true, was small, but very little water was visible, so densely were the leaf-clumps crowded together. From the centre of many of the prickly-leaved rosettes rose the delicate white flowers. Locally, from its serrated leaves, it is called the water pine; but water aloe is an even more descriptive title. Griddon, who, by the way, does not mention this particular locality, states that it used to grow in the “Infirmary Pond,” so we may certainly reckon any water soldiers that appear in our local pits as old inhabitants.
Related: The stranglers: the five plants threatening Britain's waterways
Continue reading...Country diary: swanning around the river bank
Otley, Wharfedale: A pair of mute swans build their riverside nest in an exposed spot, untroubled by their urban neighbours
The distance to the end of my garden from the back of my “new” house (I moved in eight months ago) is about the length of a cricket pitch. Beyond it there is a lush line of trees and an intractable tangle of bramble, bindweed and balsam, which drops steeply down to the banks of the River Wharfe.
Along this stretch of the Wharfe there is a corridor in which trees, weeds and animals have free rein, a sort of riparian republic buffered from the human world. Living within the breathing space of the river is fantastically noisy and eventful, like being in a Yorkshire jungle. Swifts scream above the trees, scything through clouds of midges and mosquitoes; kingfishers and grey wagtails flash their colours in the green; beetles clatter against the bright windows at night; the screeches of little owls often pierce my dreams.
Continue reading...The politics of quitting plastic: is it only a lifestyle option for the lucky few? | Stephanie Convery
Reducing plastics when shopping for food, toiletries and travel products should be easy – so why is it so difficult?
A few months ago, my partner and I went snorkelling off the coast of Indonesia. We dove off tiny deserted islands and swam in the deep with giant manta rays, but what I remember most vividly about that trip was not the stunning coral or dazzling array of colourful, curious fish; it was the sheer amount of garbage in the water.
Shopping bags, plastic cups, toothpaste tubes, orange peel, all manner of human debris followed the currents; waves and waves of junk pooling in the shallow waters. In these parts of the reef, the water was cloudy and full of so much microscopic debris that it stung the skin. I remember watching a majestic giant turtle swim through the gloom as my head bumped against an old Coke bottle bobbing on the surface of the water.
Continue reading...Dry weather boosts UK's most endangered butterfly
High brown fritillary population rises due to harsh winter and sunny spring
The combination of a harsh winter and sunny May and June has given the population of the UK’s most endangered butterfly, the high brown fritillary, a welcome boost.
Volunteers have been counting rare butterflies in a wooded valley on the Devon coast, which has been the focus of a project to encourage species such as the high brown fritillary.
Continue reading...Starwatch: Hercules visible in summer trip through south-west
Find orange Arcturus and blue-white Vega in the night sky and they will point the way
Track the constellation Hercules as it wheels highs across the summer sky. Although not bright, it has a distinctive shape and can be easily picked out with a little effort.
Continue reading...I’m terrified of flying insects – could a twerking bee cure me?
The campaign to save our bees is something we can all get behind, so I decided to face my fears at an urban apiary
You know what really makes a summer? Being besieged by flying insectoid life forms with venomous stingers. As a child, I discovered a wasps’ nest in the shed while trying to retrieve a lawnmower and it didn’t end well. Now a grown man, I’m terrified of anything airborne. The list of things that have triggered freak-outs includes flies, butterflies, poplar fluff and falling leaves, as well as the hair on my own neck. So, I am uncomfortable to be at Black Bee Honey, an apiary in Woodford, east London. I’m here to face my fears by putting my face next to things I’m afraid of: insects with wings and stings.
The company’s co-founder, Chris Barnes, is swinging a smoker around like a Russian Orthodox priest, attempting to pacify the bees, or me. He explains that bees sting only to defend their hive, that stinging a human will kill them, that these bees have been bred to be docile. The thing is, he is wearing a full protective suit, as is everyone else around. “That sounds great,” I say. “But can I wear what you’re wearing? And you mentioned gloves. Where are they?”
Continue reading...Urban wildlife
Many ostensibly rural creatures are thriving in our towns and cities, while adapting to survive
Last week, researchers revealed that bumblebees fare better in urban rather than agricultural environments. City colonies produced more males and reached a larger size, had more food stores and survived longer. They concluded that urban environments provide longer-lived, more varied flowers than intensively farmed agricultural areas.
Continue reading...Think you know how to recycle? Take the quiz
What goes in the blue bin, what goes in the yellow bin, and what do you do with pizza boxes?
Recycling should be straightforward: paper goes in the blue bin; plastics, glass and metal in the yellow bin; dead plants in the green bin and everything else in the red bin – right?
Except it’s not always quite that easy. What do you do with mixed packaging? How do you deal with neighbours doing the wrong thing? And what to do with pizza boxes?
Continue reading...The dirty little secret behind 'clean energy' wood pellets
US communities near pellet mills complain of fumes while experts say burning wood is a ‘disaster’ for climate change
It is touted as a smart way for Europe to reach its renewable energy goals. But try telling Lisa Sanchez thousands of miles away in America that burning wood chips is a form of clean energy.
The bucolic charm of her rural home in the Piney Woods forest region of east Texas is undercut by the big German Pellets manufacturing plant just beyond the bottom of her garden. The German-owned plant is capable of producing 578,000 tons of wood pellets a year, which are destined to cross the Atlantic to satisfy a vibrant market for the product there.
Continue reading...Country diary: fretting at the bird ledges devoid of guillemots
Castlemartin, Pembroke: I thought about the brutal annihilation of its larger cousin the great auk. But I was worrying needlessly
Ten feet below the top of Mowing Word is a hollowed-out bedding-plane that stretches the whole length of this magnificent limestone cliff. Decades of nesting auks have whitewashed the rock, making their breeding site obvious even from a distance. Though it’s one of the best locations for sea-cliff ascents in Britain, voluntary bans negotiated years ago between naturalists and climbers have generally been scrupulously observed during the razorbill and guillemot breeding seasons. The critical period is during incubation, which generally takes place in June, is short, and concludes with the fledgling guillemot, accompanied by its father, flailing off the ledge to bounce and belly-flop its way to the water below.
Continue reading...First great white shark in decades spotted near Spain's Balearic Islands
Five-metre shark seen in area’s first confirmed sighting since fisherman caught one in 1976
A great white shark has been spotted near Spain’s Balearic Islands for the first time in at least 30 years.
Conservation workers saw the five-metre predator as it swam across Cabrera archipelago national park on Thursday morning.
Continue reading...Intermittent approach to renewable energy | Letters
Intermittency – in one word, the main problem facing many (not all) forms of renewable energy; in the UK, principally wind and solar, and now tidal (Hinkley Point C got the go-ahead despite its cost. So why not Swansea Bay? 27 June). So far, electricity from these renewable sources has been in modest amounts, and intermittency has been dealt with (I simplify, but only slightly) by backing-off gas-fired combined cycle (CCGT) plant which, together with nuclear, forms the backbone of the UK electricity generating system. When the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, CCGT plant is there to take the strain.
But this simple strategy fails if wind, solar, and now tidal presume to take over this backbone role. Smart metering (affecting consumers’ usage patterns) and international power exchanges can help, but the main action has to come from energy storage and regeneration plant, involving a new infrastructure to supplement hugely the existing pumped storage capability. This is bound to have serious cost implications, and until this is openly acknowledged, direct comparison of projected MWh costs from any intermittent renewable source with corresponding MWh costs from non-intermittent new nuclear generation is fundamentally invalid, and likely to be badly misleading.
Jim Waterton
Glasgow
Tackling bad driving will encourage cyclists – but more money is needed
It’s time for the Treasury to allocate significant funding so the nation can reap the huge benefits of more people cycling
The government has announced £1m of funding to help police forces across the UK crack down on close passing of cyclists by drivers, and to improve driving instructor training around cycling safety.
Although the sum is small beer indeed in transport terms, split between two projects, poor driver behaviour is a key reason people are discouraged from cycling in the UK. If we can start to tackle the culture of poor driving, including at source with driving instructors, we could eliminate a major reason more people don’t cycle – but it needs more money.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Flying pink flamingos, Hebridean red deer and a Sumatran tiger are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Climate change has turned Peru's glacial lake into a deadly flood timebomb
Lake Palcacocha is swollen with water from melting ice caps in the Cordillera Blanca mountains. Below, 50,000 people live directly in the flood path
Nestled beneath the imposing white peaks of two glaciers in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, the aquamarine Lake Palcacocha is as calm as a millpond. But despite its placid appearance it has become a deadly threat to tens of thousands people living beneath it as a result of global warming.
A handful of residents of Huaraz, the city below the lake, can recall its destructive power. In 1941 a chunk of ice broke away from the glacier in an earthquake, tumbling into the lake. The impact caused a flood wave which sent an avalanche of mud and boulders cascading down the mountain, killing about 1,800 people when it reached the city.
Continue reading...Britain's biggest butterfly threatened by rising seas
New charity warns Britain’s largest butterfly could be lost within four decades as rising seas turn its habitat into saltmarsh
Britain’s biggest butterfly, the swallowtail, could become extinct within four decades because of rising sea levels, a new charity has warned.
New inland habitat needs to be created for the swallowtail because rising seas are predicted to turn much of its current home, the Norfolk Broads, into saltmarshes later this century.
Continue reading...