The Guardian
Exotic pet owners of Beijing – in pictures
A dramatic rise in owning exotic pets in China is fuelling global demand for threatened species. The growing trade in alligators, snakes, monkeys, crocodiles and spiders is directly linked to species loss in some of the world’s most threatened ecosystems
Continue reading...Barn owls don't lose their hearing with age, scientists find
Findings leave researchers hopeful that understanding hearing preservation in birds could lead to new treatment possibilities for deaf humans
If ageing humans had ears like those of barn owls they would never need hearing aids, scientists have shown.
The birds, whose sensitivity to sound helps them locate prey, suffer no hearing loss as they get older. Like other birds – but unlike mammals, including humans – they are able to regenerate cells in their inner ears.
Continue reading...'River lorries' float us back on the tide of history
Cotehele Quay, Tamar Valley Songs and shanties celebrate Cornwall’s fishers and farmers and raise funds to restore the barge Shamrock
Tide floods between mud banks and wind-blown purple reed flowers as the audience carry chairs into Shamrock’s shed. Earlier, high water washed debris across the quay and into the gig club’s yard, and the possibility of more rain precludes the outdoor venue of tonight’s concert by the Polperro Fishermen’s Choir.
Inside the lofty slate-roofed building, beneath block and tackle sorted as stay, main and mizzen, we are entertained with songs and shanties; money raised will go towards repairs and maintenance of Shamrock, a renovated Tamar sailing barge.
Continue reading...We must act now to counter ash dieback | Letters
It’s not just in North America where ash trees face extinction (Report, 15 September). It’s now five years since ash dieback was first confirmed in the UK. The disease has now been recorded at more than 1,300 locations and is expected to kill many thousands of trees. The spread of emerald ash borer is already a growing concern in Europe. But positive steps are being taken. Planting more trees now, using a greater diversity of tree species, will help bolster the landscape against future losses. The Woodland Trust aims to plant 64 million trees over the next decade. The public can also help scientists detect the arrival of new pests. Observatree is a project by conservation bodies that has trained more than 200 volunteers UK-wide to do just that.
Austin Brady
Director of conservation, Woodland Trust
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Continue reading...Duncan Huggett obituary
My friend and colleague Duncan Huggett, who has died aged 52 of a brain tumour, kept his love of the natural world to the fore in his work with the RSPB, the Environment Agency and the Marine Conservation Society.
At the Environment Agency he was the man people turned to when flood risk management ran into conflict with conservation, and his work there was fundamental in establishing a solid scientific base for future investments in natural flood management.
Continue reading...Poorest London children face health risks from toxic air, poverty and obesity
Schools in capital worst affected by air pollution are in most socially deprived areas with high levels of obesity, finds study
Tens of thousands of the poorest children in London are facing a cocktail of health risks including air pollution, obesity and poverty that will leave them with lifelong health problems, according to a new report.
The study found that schools in the capital worst affected by the UK’s air pollution crisis were also disproportionately poor, with high levels of obesity.
Continue reading...Can we turn the Whitechapel fatberg into biodiesel?
The human-waste bomb recently found clogging up a London sewer has an unlikely admirer – a Scottish renewable energy company
For a 130-tonne mass of grease, bound as hard as concrete by thousands of tampons, wipes and used tissues, the Whitechapel fatberg is in surprisingly high demand.
Last week, the Museum of London announced it wants to display a chunk of the human-waste bomb, recently unearthed in east London, as a way “to raise questions about how we live today”. Now, a Scottish biodiesel company is taking a piece to turn into fuel.
Continue reading...Spider and bee battle offers a moral dilemma
Claxton, Norfolk Though I admire – and fear – spiders, I love bumblebees. To see this one so enmeshed required an effort of will not to intervene
I saw them as I went to the bin. In the web of a female garden cross spider, a worker common carder bee hung upside down. The two were plainly engaged in combat and I crouched to observe the drama more closely.
Yet there were more emotions at play in this encounter than mere curiosity. For although I admire spiders, I absolutely love bumblebees. To see this insect so enmeshed and at risk of being eaten required an effort of my will not to intervene. In his gloriously funny 1950 book The Spider, John Crompton admitted that he freed bees from webs without further ado.
Continue reading...10 national monuments at risk under Trump's administration
The US interior secretary has identified a total of 10 national monuments to reshape or repurpose in order to allow for logging, mining and grazing
A total of 10 US national monuments are in the Trump administration’s sights to be either resized or repurposed, in order to allow activities such as mining, logging and grazing within their borders. Environmental groups have vowed legal action to stymie any alterations to the protected areas. Here are the 10 national monuments identified for change by Ryan Zinke, the secretary of the interior.
Related: The Trump administration's national monuments 'review' is a sham | Brian Calvert
Continue reading...More national monuments should be opened for exploitation, Zinke says
In leaked memo, Trump interior secretary recommends 10 protected areas be modified to allow for ‘traditional uses’ such as mining, logging and hunting
The Trump administration faces a fresh legal battle from environmental groups after the interior department recommended that 10 national monuments be resized or opened up to mining, logging and other industrial purposes.
Related: The Trump administration's national monuments 'review' is a sham | Brian Calvert
Continue reading...Nuclear must be part of the low-carbon mix | Letters
Re David Lowry’s criticisms of nuclear energy (Letters, 17 September), it is true that nuclear plants stop generating temporarily for maintenance and repair, but the same is true for most other forms of electricity generation. However, on average these outages represent a much smaller quantity of lost generation compared to the day-to-day intermittency of wind or solar. Nuclear plants spend a high proportion of the time generating at their maximum capacity.
On emissions, some proponents of both nuclear and renewables do fall into the habit of referring to their technologies as “zero-carbon”, even though there are some greenhouse gas emissions produced with all forms of generation. But there is remarkable academic agreement that the emissions from nuclear, wind, solar and many other non-fossil generation sources are similarly low per unit of electricity generated and these emissions are tiny fractions of those associated with burning coal and gas. We desperately need to cut emissions in our electricity mix to as low as possible.
Continue reading...How to win the battle against ‘sanitary’ waste | Letters
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the record-breaking fatberg was discovered during a week of coordinated nationwide beach clean-ups, run by volunteers (Monster fatberg found inside London sewer, 13 September). Fatbergs like the “monster” found in Whitechapel could easily be avoided, but it’s time for an honest discussion about the causes. It’s not just cooking oil but a range of other items that we flush down our loos.
Tampons are widely believed to be flushable but swell up in sewers, combining with oil to create impenetrable blockages. Blocked sewers overflow into rivers, leading to the oceans, hence the huge clean-ups needed every year to rid our beaches of so-called sanitary waste. We can’t address this until we’re prepared to use the word “tampon” in discussing the problem. Five of the major UK water companies give out free FabLittleBag disposal bags to householders as a crucial preventative measure. We hope Thames Water will join them to save millions in costly repairs – which is passed on in our water bills – as well as to prevent the horrific aquatic pollution.
Martha Silcott
CEO, FabLittleBag
Ministers launch taskforce to help boost green business investment
Green Finance Taskforce, which will be led by investors and leading figures from the City, will find ways to aid the UK’s shift to a low-carbon economy
A new group led by investors and leading figures from the City of London has been brought together by the government to draw up measures to encourage “green finance” in the UK.
The Green Finance Taskforce will have six months to come up with proposals on how to increase investment in the low-carbon economy and will work with banks and other financial institutions. Chaired by Sir Roger Gifford, former lord mayor of London, the taskforce will look at measures to make the UK’s planned investments in infrastructure, for instance on energy and transport, more environmentally sustainable.
Continue reading...Trump adviser tells UN the US is not looking to stay in Paris climate deal
Gary Cohn confirmed the US intends to withdraw from the agreement without a renegotiation, but declined to provide details
President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser said at the United Nations on Monday the US has not changed its plans to withdraw from the Paris climate pact without a renegotiation favorable to Washington, a step for which there is little appetite in the international community.
Related: Top Trump officials signal US could stay in Paris climate agreement
Continue reading...Ambitious 1.5C Paris climate target is still possible, new analysis shows
Goal to limit warming to 1.5C to avoid the worst impacts of climate change was seen as unreachable, but updated research suggests it could be met if strong action is taken
The highly ambitious aim of limiting global warming to less than 1.5C remains in reach, a new scientific analysis shows.
The 1.5C target was set as an aspiration by the global Paris climate change deal in 2015 to limit the damage wreaked by extreme weather and sea level rise.
Continue reading...Octlantis: the underwater city built by octopuses
If animals are our other, there is nothing quite so other as the octopus. It is the alien with whom we share our planet, a coeval evolutionary life form whose slithery slipperiness and more than the requisite number of limbs (each of which contains its own “brain”) symbolise the dark mystery and fear of the deep.
Now comes news that octopuses have been building their own cities down there. In a story straight out of James Cameron’s The Abyss, scientists have discovered that the wonderfully named “gloomy octopus”, octopus tetricus, are not the loners we once thought them to be.
Continue reading...Women of childbearing age around world suffering toxic levels of mercury
Study finds excessive levels of the metal, which can seriously harm unborn children, in women from Alaska to Indonesia, due to gold mining, industrial pollution and fish-rich diets
Women of childbearing age from around the world have been found to have high levels of mercury, a potent neurotoxin which can seriously harm unborn children.
The new study, the largest to date, covered 25 of the countries with the highest risk and found excessive levels of the toxic metal in women from Alaska to Chile and Indonesia to Kenya. Women in the Pacific islands were the most pervasively contaminated. This results from their reliance on eating fish, which concentrate the mercury pollution found across the world’s oceans and much of which originates from coal burning.
Continue reading...We need to make democracy work in the fight to save the planet | AC Grayling
For centuries, humans have championed the democratic political system. But can it facilitate the radical change needed to stop the potentially annihilating effects of climate change?
Although individual action to protect the environment – consuming less, recycling more, reducing one’s carbon footprint – might be a contribution if enough people did it, the battle to minimise human-induced climate change has to be a worldwide endeavour among cooperating states. The outcome of the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference was one of the most optimistic and encouraging steps hitherto achieved in that battle – that is, until Donald Trump said he intended to withdraw the US, the biggest climate polluter in history, from the agreement. The Paris agreement and President Trump’s decision illustrate the two ends of the spectrum of effort and concern. Our planet cannot be protected from a warming atmosphere – with melting ice caps, rising sea levels, droughts, floods, famines and migrations of desperate populations – without vigorous joint effort by the world’s states.
Continue reading...Scientific models saved lives from Harvey and Irma. They can from climate change too | Dana Nuccitelli
Climate models have an even better track record than the weather models that saved lives in Texas and Florida
The impacts of hurricanes Harvey and Irma were blunted because we saw them coming. Weather models accurately predicted the hurricane paths and anticipated their extreme intensities days in advance. This allowed millions of Floridians to evacuate the state, sparing countless lives.
Some contrarians have tried to downplay the rising costs of landfalling hurricanes by claiming they’re only more expensive because there are now more people living along the coasts with more expensive stuff vulnerable to hurricane damages. However, those arguments fail to account for our ability to predict hurricane tracks earlier and more accurately by using better and better scientific models. We’re able to prepare for hurricanes much better today than in the past because we have more warning.
Continue reading...Scotland’s Sphinx snow patch is in its throes – in pictures
The Sphinx is the closest Britain comes to having a glacier. It has disappeared just six times in the last 300 years, but this year it is almost gone. Murdo MacLeod joins snow expert Iain Cameron to study the state of Scotland’s permanent snow
“It’s a very sorry sight,” says Iain Cameron. It is late August and we are standing in front of Scotland’s very own Sphinx. It never had claws, paws, nor a mysterious countenance, but if it once had they would have melted away, just as the rest is about to do. “Grim,” says Cameron with gravel in his tone. “It’s pretty much in its death throes.”
Continue reading...