The Guardian
Scientists race to explore Antarctic marine life revealed by giant iceberg
British Antarctic Survey is trying to reach a newly revealed ecosystem that had been hidden for 120,000 years below the Larsen C ice shelf
A team of international scientists is due to set off for the world’s biggest iceberg on Wednesday, fighting huge waves and the encroaching Antarctic winter, in a mission aiming to answer fundamental questions about the impact of climate change in the polar regions.
The scientists, led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), are trying to reach a newly revealed ecosystem that had been hidden for 120,000 years below the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula.
Continue reading...It's time football started to take cycling seriously | Robin Ireland
Few clubs cater for fans who choose to cycle to the ground, but simple changes could help reduce traffic jams and pollution on match days
I am a football fan and I am a cyclist. These identities do not need to be mutually exclusive – so why is it often such a challenge to go to the game by bike?
I support Norwich City and I live in Liverpool, which is the first hurdle. Liverpool is 238 miles away from Norwich, and the direct train takes more than five hours. Because of this, I have pretty much given up on home games.
Continue reading...Problem-solving could be key to grey squirrels' success, study finds
Research in UK shows invasive species bests native red squirrels in complex tasks
The ability to solve problems may explain why grey squirrels are thriving at the expense of native red ones in the UK, research suggests.
Wild greys and reds were presented with an easy task (opening a transparent lid) and a difficult version (a more complex process of pushing and pulling levers) to get hazelnuts.
Continue reading...Country diary: a kind of heaven in avian form
Shapwick, Somerset: Hundreds of thousands of starlings reduced by distance and number to something like smoke
In any other place a great white egret passing overhead would have commanded all our attention. The national breeding total for this species was just seven pairs in 2017. Here, however, at dusk it was an incidental detail, a stately white shape rowing quietly through the binoculars’ orbit, as we focused on something far more captivating.
Continue reading...Faster reproduction could hold key to saving critically endangered frog
Researchers believe introducing frogs to lower elevation areas would help them reach sexual maturity earlier
Researchers are hoping to increase the population of one of Australia’s most endangered frogs by helping them reach sexual maturity earlier.
The number of wild northern corroboree frogs, which are only found in cold, mountainous areas of the ACT and New South Wales, has been in sharp decline, mostly due to chytrid fungus. The fungus causes an infectious disease that is killing frogs around the world. There are only 20 of the small black and yellow striped frogs left living in the wild in the ACT and fewer than 1,000 in NSW.
'Much work needed' to make digital economy environmentally sustainable
MPs cast doubt on whether energy efficiency gains can keep offsetting rising power demand
A cross-party group of MPs has raised doubts over whether the growing energy demand from digital technology and the proliferation of internet-connected gadgets can continue to be offset by energy efficiency improvements.
More efficient smartphones, networking gear and data centres have so far largely staved off increased power demand from the internet and computing – which now accounts for about 6% of global electricity use.
Continue reading...A less timid version of Justin Trudeau won’t cut it. The NDP must be bolder | Martin Lukacs
To challenge the Liberals, Jagmeet Singh will have to overthrow Canada’s neoliberal consensus
At the New Democratic Party’s convention this weekend in Ottawa, their new leader Jagmeet Singh declared “the time to be timid was over.” For a party whose shambling meekness in the last election let Justin Trudeau claim the mantle of progressive champion, such a shift could not come sooner.
That an opportunity exists to capitalize on enormous hunger for change is apparent. Trudeau harnessed it for his route to power, only to betray it in office. The environmental Adonis transformed into an oil barons’ salesman. An electoral reform promise was broken with a shrug. Instead of a peace offensive, we’ve gotten a military spending spree; instead of novel social programs, novelty socks.
Continue reading...'Fantasy documents': recovery plans failing Australia's endangered species
Expired, unfinished or undeveloped: conservationists call for more transparency and accountability in species management systems
Less than 40% of Australia’s nationally-listed threatened species have recovery plans in place to secure their long-term survival.
And close to 10% of listed threatened species are identified as requiring plans to manage their protection but the documents are either unfinished or haven’t been developed, according to data published by the environment and energy department.
Continue reading...World’s most controversial fruit depends on giant bats for pollination
While we debate whether the durian is the best or worst food on the planet, it turns out this wonderful oddity requires healthy populations of flying fox for survival
Durian. Depending on whom you talk to it’s either the most beloved or the most despised fruit on the planet. It suffers no moderation, no wishy-washiness. It is the king of fruits or the worst thing you’ve ever tasted. Due to its potent odour – delicate and sweet to its advocates and sewage-like to its detractors – durian has been banned from airplanes, subways, and hotels (though punishments appear light if non-existent). But a recent study in Ecology and Evolution finds there may be no durians at all without bats: big, threatened bats. The scientists found that flying foxes – bats in the Pteropus and Acerodon genus and the largest in the world – are likely vital pollinators for the polarising durian.
“We already knew that flying foxes feed on durian flowers, but there was this unsubstantiated belief, even among some researchers, that flying foxes just destroyed the flowers,” said Sheema Abdul Aziz, the lead researcher on the project that was done as part of her PhD at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in France. “It doesn’t help that a durian flower only blooms for one night, then falls off the tree naturally, regardless of whether it’s been pollinated or not. When people see all the flowers on the ground in the morning, they think it’s the bats.”
Continue reading...Climate change spells turbulent times ahead for air travel
From rising temperatures preventing take-off to rising seas flooding runways, aviation needs to adapt to changes already grounding flights around the world
Phoenix gets hot. But not usually as hot as last June, when the mercury at the airport one day soared above 48C. That exceeded the maximum operating temperature for several aircraft ready for take-off. They didn’t fly. More than 50 flights were cancelled or rerouted.
Thanks to climate change, soon 48C may not seem so unusual. Welcome to the precarious future of aviation in a changing climate. As the world warms and weather becomes more extreme, aircraft designers, airport planners and pilots must all respond, both in the air and on the ground. With about 100,000 flights worldwide carrying eight million passengers every day, this is a big deal.
Continue reading...Fracking row: Treasury 'showing shambolic conflict of interest'
Director of Third Energy, which wants to frack in North Yorkshire, is Conservative donor
Campaigners have accused the Treasury of allowing the appearance of a conflict of interest over its examination of an energy company at the forefront of fracking in the UK.
Third Energy’s financial health is being looked at by a Treasury body, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), whose findings will inform whether the government gives the firm a green light.
Continue reading...Pollen data shows humans reversed natural global cooling | John Abraham
Current temperatures are hotter than at any time in the history of human civilization
In order to understand today’s global warming, we need to understand how Earth’s temperatures varied in the past. How does the rapid warming we see now compare with past natural climate changes? Also, how long have humans been having an impact on the climate? These are some questions that can be answered through paleoclimate studies. Paleoclimate research uses natural measurements of the Earth’s temperature. Clever scientists are able to estimate how warm or cold the Earth was far back in time, way before we had thermometers.
Readers of this column are probably familiar with some of these paleoclimate techniques that may use ice cores or tree rings to infer temperature variations. A different method that uses plant distribution was a technique used in a very recent study published in Nature. That technique used pollen distribution to get an understanding of where plant species thrived in the past. Those distributions gave them insights about the temperatures. On the surface, it’s pretty straightforward. Tropical plants differ in major ways from plants that live in, say, the tundra. In fact, plants that thrive where I live (Northern USA) differ from plants that populate landscapes further south.
Continue reading...Born by torchlight: living without power in Benin – in pictures
For 300 people in the Beninese village of Kokahoue, life without electricity is a daily reality, forcing midwives to deliver babies using lamps and torches. French photographer Pascal Maitre, winner of London Business School’s annual photography awards, has documented the problem in a stunning series of images, while entries from other contestants explore how communities have improvised to deal with issues ranging from poaching to deforestation
Continue reading...Country diary: literary tourists follow Sylvia Townsend Warner's path
East Chaldon, Dorset: Her diary records a happy morning when she and her lover, the poet Valentine Ackland, lay on top of a barrow listening to the wind
A row of round barrows stud a Dorset ridge – five of them, although tumbled gaps suggest there once were more. From the old chalk trackway, trails lead through shaggy grass to the top of each. To the north, charcoal and dun in the wintry light, stretches a broad swathe of heathland; to the south, gentle green hills enclose the village of East Chaldon.
In the 1930s, the walk up to this bronze age site was a favourite with Sylvia Townsend Warner, her long career as a writer already launched. Her diary records a happy morning when she and her lover, the poet Valentine Ackland, lay on top of one of the barrows listening to the wind and discussing torpedoes. Today, there’s no hint of things military, only a fly-past by two ravens whose cries sound more conversational than martial.
Continue reading...Don’t feed the fatberg! What a slice of oily sewage says about modern life
A chunk of the monster Whitechapel fatberg is now a superstar museum exhibit. It shines a horrifying light on our throwaway age – but will it stop people clogging up the sewers with the grease from their Sunday lunch?
The fatberg that went on display this month at the Museum of London is proving something of a sensation. Visitor numbers have more than doubled; there is a palpable air of half-term excitement when I visit; and the fatberg fudge – modelled to look like the rough-hewn fatberg brick, with little raisins to represent flies (or something worse) – has sold out. The museum has hit on an unlikely goldmine.
Unsurprisingly, curator Vyki Sparkes is looking pretty pleased with herself, and is already talking about a world tour for her prized object – a slice of the giant Whitechapel fatberg discovered last year. There is just one problem: no one knows if it will survive. It is already changing colour as it continues to dry out, and Sparkes is worried that it may start to disintegrate. It is due to be on show at the museum until July. Best come early to avoid disappointment. But, for now, it is an undoubted triumph, raising the question “what is art” – can hardened sewage in a glass case have aesthetic value? – and confronting us with the environmental destructiveness of our throwaway age.
Continue reading...The village that took on the frackers
It’s early February and the mood at the anti-fracking camp in the embattled village of Kirby Misperton, North Yorkshire, is one of cautious optimism. The camp, a collection of makeshift wooden buildings in a muddy field outside town, has been running since December 2016, but it’s only in the last five months that demonstrations against the fracking company Third Energy have flared up, leading to an extraordinary police presence around the village, more than 80 arrests and – just a couple of weeks ago – an apparent victory for the protesters.
I’m in the company of Observer photographer Gary Calton, who has been documenting events here for six months. Calton, who lives eight miles away, has pictures of protesters boarding lorries, lying down at the gates to the site and facing off against battalions of police. He has also captured more intimate moments, the protesters running through drills, chatting, sleeping and – a key activity on the freezing day I visit – simply keeping warm as they wait for the next chapter in the fracking saga to unfold.
Continue reading...Should we give up half of the Earth to wildlife?
Populations of all kinds of wildlife are declining at alarming speed. One radical solution is to make 50% of the planet a nature reserve
The orangutan is one of our planet’s most distinctive and intelligent creatures. It has been observed using primitive tools, such as the branch of a tree, to hunt food, and is capable of complex social behaviour. Orangutans also played a special role in humanity’s own intellectual history when, in the 19th century, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, co-developers of the theory of natural selection, used observations of them to hone their ideas about evolution.
But humanity has not repaid orangutans with kindness. The numbers of these distinctive, red-maned primates are now plummeting thanks to our destruction of their habitats and illegal hunting of the species. Last week, an international study revealed that its population in Borneo, the animal’s last main stronghold, now stands at between 70,000 and 100,000, less than half of what it was in 1995. “I expected to see a fairly steep decline, but I did not anticipate it would be this large,” said one of the study’s co-authors, Serge Wich of Liverpool John Moores University.
Continue reading...No record of some threatened species in area government says it's protecting them
Experts say growling grass frog and southern brown bandicoot not likely to be found at Endeavour Fern Gully
Experts have cast doubt on government claims the Coalition is funding a conservation project in Victoria’s Endeavour Fern Gully to benefit threatened species – because the listed species are unlikely to occur in the area.
Endeavour Fern Gully is a 27-hectare (65 acre) rainforest property on the Mornington Peninsula. The environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, says the government had funded a broad Green Army project that “improves habitat through weed control and promotes greater conservation awareness of native vegetation in remnant bushland at Endeavour Fern Gully”.
Continue reading...Want to monitor air pollution? Test a pigeon
Feral pigeons are exposed to the same environmental factors as humans, so help explore the affect of contaminants, say researchers
Pigeons might be seen as the scourge of cities, but researchers say they could help us explore both the levels and impacts of a host of toxins in the air, from lead to pesticides.
Scientists say feral pigeons are a valuable way of probing contaminants in environment, since they are exposed to the same air, water, food and other factors as humans, and don’t venture far from home.
Continue reading...For and against students getting the crops in | Letters
In the agricultural sector there is a shortfall of 4,300 jobs with a tiny proportion of the population working on farms. Yet Aileen Hammond (Letters, 15 February) demands that 2.28 million students in higher education descend on to the farms of this country every summer and winter. I’m afraid a few second homes she wants to be made available isn’t going to be quite enough to house these students.
I spent my vacations from university volunteering, getting work experience, writing dissertations – all of which has allowed me to contribute to the common good. There are also lots of other important and meaningful seasonal jobs that depend on the student vacation workforce. Forced labour of students on to farms would play havoc with these sectors and merely shift the labour problem elsewhere.
Continue reading...