The Guardian
Off-peak charging vital for electric car power supply, experts say
UK energy system can cope with rise of battery-powered vehicles if 4-6pm slot avoided, says report
The UK energy system will be able to cope with the extra demand caused by the uptake of millions of electric cars, provided drivers shift their charging to off-peak times, according to new research.
The number of battery-powered cars on Britain’s roads will grow from around 120,000 today to 10m by 2035 and pass the 17m mark five years later, predicted Aurora Energy Research.
Continue reading...Satellite Eye on Earth: November and December 2017 - in pictures
Winter solstice, night lights and interesting islands are among the images captured by Nasa and the ESA last month
Dust blowing out of the Copper River valley on Alaska’s south coast. The dust plume was likely comprised of fine-grained loess, which was formed as glacial ice moved over the area and ground the underlying rock into a powder. Dust storms in southern Alaska generally occur in late autumn, when river levels are relatively low, snow has not yet fallen, and the layers of dried, loess-rich mud are exposed to the wind. The Copper River - named for ore deposits found upstream - drains an area of more than 24,000 square miles (62,000 square kilometres) and is, by volume of discharge, the 10th largest river in the United States. Its delta forms one of the largest and most productive wetlands on the Pacific Coast of North America.
Continue reading...Woolworths to stop selling pesticide linked to global bee decline
Australian grocery giant will join Bunnings to withdraw Yates Confidor from sale
Woolworths in Australia has joined a growing list of companies to stop supplying a controversial pesticide linked to global declines in bee populations.
On Tuesday the grocery giant announced it would join Bunnings in pulling Yates Confidor, a class of pesticide which some international studies have found damage the survival of honeybee colonies.
Continue reading...Minerals Council steps up coal advocacy despite BHP call for neutrality
MCA publicises report asking governments to commit similar resources to carbon capture and storage as to renewables
The Minerals Council of Australia has stepped up its advocacy for coal power in spite of its biggest member, BHP, saying it will leave the group unless it shifts its stance to become technology-neutral.
On Tuesday the MCA publicised a report by the Coal Industry Advisory Board that called for governments to commit similar resources to carbon capture and storage as they do to renewable energy.
Continue reading...Country diary: clear skies where lead mines once spewed out fumes
Allendale chimneys, Northumberland: The flue lines from the smelter in the valley can still be seen, bulging like veins across the frosty peatland
High above Allendale on this frost-sparkling January day, two stone chimneys reach up into a clear blue sky. Built in the 19th century, they exhaled fumes from horizontal flues that ran from a lead smelter more than two miles below on the valley floor. The flue lines can still be seen, bulging like veins across the fields. In places they have collapsed, revealing arched interiors where lead and silver would condense to be intermittently scraped off and recovered.
The Allen valley is far less populated now than it was in the busy lead mining days. From this high point on Dryburn Moor I look out across a quiet dale parcelled up by drystone walls, farmhouses sheltered by Scots pine woods and a drove road that curves over the hillside. There’s a far horizon of uplands and ridges and, in the distance, beyond the long trough of the Tyne Valley, is the white-crested wave of Cheviot. Snow lies on Cold Fell to the west and bleaches the level summit of Cross Fell in Cumbria. It’s an exhilarating near-360-degree view.
Pioneering female becomes first wolf in Belgium in a century
Researchers have tracked Naya from eastern Germany into the Netherlands and now Belgium
The first recorded wolf on Belgian soil for at least 100 years has made her bloody mark.
Farmers in north-east Flanders have been put on high alert after evidence emerged that Naya, a female originally from eastern Germany that has been making a pioneering trek across Europe, had killed two sheep and injured a third near the Belgian town of Meerhout.
Continue reading...Fears for future of UK onshore wind power despite record growth
2.6GW of capacity built in 2017 before subsidies ban industry says will make generation dearer
A record amount of onshore wind power was built in the UK last year, but government policy has been stalling the sector and risked increasing energy bills for consumers, the industry has warned.
Turbines capable of generating 2.6GW were installed across Britain in 2017 as developers rushed to meet the government deadline for securing subsidies. The previous record was 1.3GW in 2013.
Continue reading...Switching to electric cars is key to fixing America's 'critically insufficient' climate policies | Dana Nuccitelli
Nearly 60% of US carbon pollution comes from power and transportation, and power is already decarbonizing fast
In order to meet its share of the carbon pollution cuts needed to achieve the 2°C Paris international climate target, America’s policies are rated as “critically insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker. The Trump Administration has taken every possible step to undo the Obama Administration’s climate policies, including announcing that America will be the only world country to withdraw from the Paris agreement, and trying to repeal the Clean Power Plan.
In 2020, the next American president will have to make up the lost ground and come up with a plan to rapidly accelerate the country’s transition away from fossil fuels. Currently, transportation and power generation each account for about 30% of US greenhouse gas emissions, so those sectors represent the prime targets for pollution cuts.
Country diary 1918: winter wandering in Ayrshire
21 January 1918 Just before dawn the landscape was the chillest pale grey; it seemed pure white, with a dash of pure black
Wandering in Ayrshire just now is cold work, and one reads with a mixture of pride and envy of the warmer weather in the south. Pride because of one’s endurance of nipped fingers and senseless feet and burning windpipe for pleasure in the glorious brisk feeling, the dry squeak of the clean hard snow under one’s feet; for delight in watching the children sliding and sleighing, the exquisite lights of dawn and sunset on the snow.
Related: Walking in the winter woods: Country diary 100 years ago
Continue reading...Country diary: lowest land in Britain is unsettling in the gloom
Holme Fen, Cambridgeshire: The trunks tangle back from both sides of the track, like wiry hair, their bark papery. Packed dense, this makes the forest look grey and odd
Britain’s highest highpoint is Ben Nevis. The lowest highpoint, if you like, is in what was Huntingdonshire: Boring Field, an old county top, at 81m above sea level. But hereabouts too is a mountain’s true inverse: the lowest lowpoint. The road to Holme Fen protrudes, like a fat plank thrown over a bog. You could fall off it if you’re distracted. I am, first by the red kites: they’re everywhere here, black wraiths cruising on dog-leg wings. I count nine within a kilometre. Then two herons, side by side at the side of the road and unbothered by it, those stripe-masked faces like strange little highwaymen.
It’s early, and the morning is feebly painted in winter colours: black fields full of rain, brown water, grey sky. It should be light by now but it isn’t. I turn on to the fen track and suddenly there’s red: the lights of a railway crossing, then the train blurring noisily beyond it. Beyond that, in a thicket of woodland, is the lowest land in Great Britain.
Continue reading...Great Barrier Reef to get $60m rescue package from government
Malcolm Turnbull announces $36.6m will be spent on ‘supporting farmers stopping runoff’ to improve water quality
Malcolm Turnbull has announced a $60m rescue package for the Great Barrier Reef which includes research on developing “resilient” coral, and paying farmers to pollute less.
The package, to be spent over 18 months, will also include an increased number of reef officers and vessels targeting crown of thorns starfish outbreaks.
Continue reading...Search restarts for area willing to host highly radioactive UK waste
Right geology and local consent are key in consultation due to be launched this week
The government is expected this week to begin a nationwide search for a community willing to host an underground nuclear waste dump to store highly radioactive material for thousands of years.
Britain has been trying for years to secure a site with the right geology and local communities which would volunteer to host a £12bn geological disposal facility (GDF), as a long-term solution for the most dangerous waste from nuclear power stations.
Continue reading...Trump administration could be sued over pesticide threat to orca and salmon
- Fishing industry and environmentalists mull lawsuits
- EPA tried to delay report detailing chemicals’ harm to wildlife
Commercial fishermen and environmental groups could file lawsuits against the Trump administration, if it fails to follow a recommendation by one of its own agencies to protect salmon, sturgeon, orca and other endangered species in the Pacific north-west.
Related: Common pesticide can make migrating birds lose their way, research shows
Continue reading...Class war in the American west: the rich landowners blocking access to public lands
Private landowners present a rising threat to the millions of acres set aside for public use by blocking access to public lands
The Diamond Bar X is a postcard-perfect slice of Montana solitude. A former cattle ranch that’s been parceled up into sprawling home sites, it sits not far outside Augusta, a cowboy town beneath Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, where the Great Plains crash into majestic snow-peaked mountains to dramatic effect.
The area is prime habitat for elk and grizzlies, people are few, and its residents have easy access to countless miles of trails and streams on the adjacent public lands.
Continue reading...Australia's biodiversity strategy a global embarrassment, green groups say
Extinction prevention plan branded ‘deeply inadequate’ after environment department publishes paper without targets
The federal government’s latest strategy to protect Australian plants and animals facing extinction has been branded “deeply inadequate” and “a global embarrassment” by environment groups.
The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that a new 13-page document had quietly replaced the old 100-page biodiversity conservation strategy just before Christmas on the Department of Environment’s website.
Continue reading...On the Amazon’s lawless frontier, murder mystery divides the locals and loggers
The Ka’apor tribe fight a daily battle in Brazil’s Maranhão state to protect their forests
Sairá Ka’apor patrolled one of the most murderous frontiers in the world, a remote and largely lawless region of the Brazilian Amazon where his indigenous community has fought for generations to protect their forest land.
Armed with clubs, bows and arrows, GPS trackers and crude guns, he and fellow members of Ka’apor Forest Guard drove off – and sometimes attacked – loggers who intruded into their territory, the 530,000-hectare Alto Turiaçu Indigenous Land, which is roughly three times the area of Greater London and contains about half of the Amazon forest left in Brazil’s northern Maranhão state. That vigilante role came to an end last April when Sairá was stabbed to death in Betel, a logging town close to Ka’apor territory.
Continue reading...Britain risks losing green protections after Brexit
A coalition of leading environmental groups says there is a “significant risk” that British environmental protections will be reduced after Brexit, despite the government’s positive rhetoric.
Greener UK, which represents 13 campaign groups including WWF, National Trust, RSPB, Friends of the Earth, Green Alliance and the Wildlife Trusts, says there are “serious concerns” that the government will not cooperate with the European Union after Brexit on environmental issues which need international agreement. Although the environment secretary, Michael Gove, has made several recent announcements, such as the 5p levy on plastic bottles, Greener UK believes there may be a “lack of willpower to ensure high standards across the UK”.
Continue reading...Gloucestershire is building a big bonfire of waste. To last for eternity
Marooned on the flatlands between the Severn river and the Cotswolds escarpment, Stonehouse in Gloucestershire isn’t the sort of place to make the news. But, of late, outrage has been the dominant emotion here as construction traffic has brought what was a country village to a standstill. Blue plastic barriers proliferate, mobile traffic lights are set down apparently at random and workers clad in hi-vis saunter about with the swagger of the new sheriff in town.
While the slow crawl of traffic to and from the M5 is frustrating, it is the cause of the blockage that is more troubling. Stonehouse is being dug up to lay a cable to service the giant waste monster being built next to junction 12 of the M5, an edifice that its opponents warned would grow to four times the size of nearby Gloucester cathedral, a glorious testament to the grand folly of another age.
Continue reading...Millions spent on Great Barrier Reef projects against expert advice
One $2.2m experiment involves giant fans to cool water down, despite government’s own advisers highlighting risks
Millions of dollars of commonwealth money is being handed to tourism-linked groups for Great Barrier Reef protection, despite official advice recommending against the projects, or repeatedly finding them to be failing.
The contracts include millions of dollars for tourism operators to cull out-of-control coral-eating crown of thorns starfish. Funds continue to be distributed, despite researchers employed to evaluate the program repeatedly finding it to have failed, and potentially having made the problem worse.
Continue reading...Vancouver aquarium won't keep whales or dolphins captive after public outcry
Canada aquarium has announced it will end the practice of keeping cetaceans in captivity, after pressure from the public
For years the Vancouver aquarium fended off pressure from animal right activists, local government and residents, arguing instead that whales and dolphins were central to its mission. But this week the tourist attraction gave in to public pressure, and announced that it would end the practice of keeping cetaceans in captivity.
“It had become a local hot topic, to the point where it was just hijacking everything else,” said John Nightingale, the aquarium’s president.
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