The Guardian
Is hearing loss in farmed fish a price worth paying for aquaculture’s meteoric rise?
A study finds that accelerated growing conditions on some fish farms are causing hearing impairments in salmon. It’s a reminder that aquaculture’s own accelerated rise needs to be closely managed
To grasp the wide-ranging impacts of our industrial food systems, take a peek inside a salmon’s ear. That’s what marine biologist Tormey Reimer did when, in 2013 at the University of Melbourne, she began to investigate deformities that were developing on the structures that salmon use to hear.
Bony fish species have structures called otoliths in their ears, small crystals that they use to detect sound. Biologists have for decades relied on otoliths to age fish, using them like rings on a tree. But what Reimer saw was an altogether larger, lighter, and more transparent crystal called a vaterite, growing into the otolith and obstructing the fish’s ability to hear. “I did a bit of digging and found it was much more common in farmed salmon than wild,” she says. And, she began to suspect it had something to do with the accelerated growth rates in fish farms.
Continue reading...What's the story behind China's ivory ban?
This year, China’s government enacted a ban on ivory sales and started closing down carving workshops. How did such an astonishing U-turn come about?
For years Chinese government officials were followed around the world, at every meeting, by a single issue: the scores of dead elephants across Africa, and the international community that blamed China for this “ivory “holocaust”.
Even the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, could not escape lectures on poached elephants and the evils of China’s legal domestic ivory trade from foreign leaders. For years, China deflected the criticism with claims of a long cultural heritage and incremental policies, such as a ban on ivory carving imports two years ago.
Continue reading...Is the UK really menaced by reckless cyclists?
The anti-cycling backlash in the media in the aftermath of Charlie Alliston trial suggests roads and streets overrun by dangerous cyclists, but is this true?
When cycling reaches newspaper front pages it’s usually the sporting kind. The last couple of weeks have been an exception, with blanket coverage of the trial of Charlie Alliston, convicted last week over the death of Kim Briggs after he struck her on his bike.
This piece isn’t about the facts of this very tragic case. It’s about the aftermath, more specifically the repeated call in some part of the media for something to be done about what these articles believe is a particular problem of reckless and law-flouting cyclists.
Continue reading...Swallows swirl in the joyous rhythms of late August
Claxton, Norfolk Lined up on the telephone wires, they stretch, preen and snooze, riding the tide swell of air
The view from my office includes a junction box where five telephone wires converge at the top of a pole. For several years, it has been a favourite gathering place for the season’s young swallows and they wreathe this banal technology in the joyous rhythms of their movements and sounds.
The immatures are separable by pale fringes to their wing feathers, but also by the downturned yellow gape-lines at the corners of their mouths, which give them a wonderfully comic clown-like glumness. It is as if all the swirl of these late-August days – the balletic fly-snatching, the sun-blessed leisure, the quiet feather care as they sit amid a pool of the adult swallows’ desultory song – were a source of strange ennui.
Continue reading...Koala takes a ride in a canoe to escape rising river – video
La Trobe University Bendigo student Kirra Coventry filmed her group of outdoor and environmental education classmates helping a koala that had become stranded by rapidly rising water in the Murray river. The students were learning to be river guides when they saw the koala on the edge of Ulupna Island. The students told associate lecturer Chris Townsend it was low in a tree and seemed to be trying to find dry land. They pushed an empty canoe out to it and it climbed aboard, took a seat, then disembarked once it reached shore, where it had a lengthy drink. Townsend said koalas, which are considered a vulnerable species in parts of Australia, were relocated to river islands like Ulupna in the late 1980s and there was now a healthy population there. ‘Koalas are very, very fussy about the trees they will feed in and live in,’ he said. ‘Obviously leading up to this it had found the perfect tree, but I think the floodwaters came up a little bit quickly and it didn’t have time to get down’
Continue reading...Sea Shepherd says it will abandon pursuit of Japanese whalers
Captain Paul Watson accuses ‘hostile governments’ in the US, Australia and New Zealand of being in league with Tokyo
The anti-whaling vessel Sea Shepherd will not contest the Southern Ocean against Japanese whalers this season, Captain Paul Watson has announced, accusing “hostile governments” in the US, Australia and New Zealand of acting “in league with Japan” against the protest vessel.
Sea Shepherd has been obstructing Japanese whaling vessels in the Southern Ocean each year since 2005, but Watson said the cost of sending vessels south, Japan’s increased use of military technology to track them, and new anti-terrorism laws passed specifically to thwart Sea Shepherd’s activities made physically tracking the ships impossible.
Continue reading...Electricity demand in southern Europe to soar with air con, say climate scientists
Study predicts power consumption to rise with hotter temperatures, increasing need for renewable sources, while northern Europe’s demand may fall
Demand for electricity is set to soar in southern Europe as climate change takes hold, research has revealed, with the effect likely to be down to a boom in the use of air conditioning.
By contrast, electricity demand is expected to drop in northern countries, leading to an increasingly polarised pattern across the continent – a situation, the researchers say, that bolsters the case for greater integration of electricity supplies across Europe, particularly given the shift to renewable energies.
Continue reading...Kenya brings in world's toughest plastic bag ban: four years jail or $40,000 fine
Producing, selling and using plastic bags becomes illegal as officials say they want to target manufacturers and sellers first
Kenyans producing, selling or even using plastic bags will risk imprisonment of up to four years or fines of $40,000 (£31,000) from Monday, as the world’s toughest law aimed at reducing plastic pollution came into effect.
The east African nation joins more than 40 other countries that have banned, partly banned or taxed single use plastic bags, including China, France, Rwanda, and Italy.
Continue reading...30,000 people to be housed in shelters after Houston flooding – video
30,000 people are expected to need emergency shelter after tropical storm Harvey caused ‘landmark’ flooding in Houston, Texas. Brock Long, administrator of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), held a press conference on Monday alongside the acting secretary of homeland security and the director of the National Weather Service, who said the city would experience more heavy rainfall in the coming days
Continue reading...Maasai cricketers and lion cubs with piñatas: today's unmissable photos
A selection of the day’s best images, including kite-flying in Moscow, a sea of red umbrellas in China and a Valentine’s Day group wedding in China
Continue reading...Chemical ‘haze’ prompts evacuation on East Sussex coastline – video report
Birling Gap, a popular tourist spot close to Eastbourne, was evacuated on Sunday after a ‘chemical haze’ descended on the area. People complained of breathing difficulties and irritation in their eyes and throats, and over 100 people were treated at the local hospital overnight. The cause of the incident is still unknown
Continue reading...Study: Katharine Hayhoe is successfully convincing doubtful evangelicals about climate change | Dana Nuccitelli
A new study finds that a lecture from evangelical climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe successfully educates evangelical college students, validating the “trusted sources” approach
Approximately one-quarter of Americans identify as evangelical Christians, and that group also tends to be more resistant to the reality of human-caused global warming. As a new paper by Brian Webb and Doug Hayhoe notes:
a 2008 study found that just 44% of evangelicals believed global warming to be caused mostly by human activities, compared to 64% of nonevangelicals (Smith and Leiserowitz, 2013) while, a 2011 survey found that only 27% of white evangelicals believed there to be a scientific consensus on climate change, compared to 40% of the American public (Public Religion Research Institute, 2011).
Continue reading...Bike helmets by Grayson Perry, Stephen Jones and more – in pictures
An exhibition of cycling helmets designed by artists will be on show at London bike shop and cafe Look Mum No Hands! from 1 September. Helmets will be auctioned online to raise money for the brain injury charity Headway
Continue reading...Tropical storm Harvey: 'There's water up to your shoulder'– video
The storm has hurled record rainfall at Houston, forcing thousands to flee their homes and testing flood-control systems to their limits. Parts of the city area saw more than 22in (55cm) of rain in a 24-hour period to Sunday evening; too much for the bayous to handle, too much for roads to remain passable and threatening to overwhelm emergency teams
Continue reading...An idyllic spot under siege by the A1
Wothorpe-on-the-Hill, Cambridgeshire The air is awash with noise, a roar that wavers only slightly, and never below uncomfortable
The road climbs and thins with each turn. Where it reaches a little fist of cottages it doesn’t stop but instead, strangely, has its way blocked from waist height up by low branches. A dead road, leading to the old reservoir. I walk a footpath bordered by stone walls, then over a stile and here it is, a sweep of miniature country. A rumpled slope, trees fat with summer, a little pond catching the sky. August dew sits on everything, and early sun lights every drop to a shimmer. I see rabbits, molehills, every bush twitching with life.
I live less than a mile from here and would come to this meadow more, but for one thing. The air is awash with it, a roar that wavers only slightly, and never below uncomfortable. It’s rush hour now, so maybe this is as bad as it gets. But it never goes away.
Continue reading...The scent of privet: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 31 August 1917
When the heavy showers had passed, the sun burst out from behind drifting clouds, and studded the dripping hedges with diamonds. For ten yards or more privet, in full flower broke the monotony of thorn and bramble, and here fifteen or twenty red admiral butterflies fanned their gorgeous wings as they sipped the sweets. The air was heavy with the scent of privet. Golden–rod, a blaze beneath the hedge, attracted other red admirals, and amongst them were small tortoiseshells and a few peacocks. True to its name, the wall butterfly was more plentiful where rugged stone walls replaced the hedgerows, but it abounded alike in all the lanes and on the rocky outcrops, covered with ragwort, scabious, and eyebright, which are so noticeable a feature of North Wales.
Privet, by the way, is troubling one of my correspondents. He finds his hedge attacked by small white grubs, which shelter in the curled and shrivelled leaves. I do not find my privets badly damaged, though a few shoots have been attacked. It is the caterpillar of one of the small leaf-mining moths, for the grubs in their earlier stages, at any rate, feed within the two layers of leaf-skin. I can only advise that he cuts off the damaged shoots and burns them so as to diminish the numbers of the moths.
Continue reading...Renewable energy generates enough power to run 70% of Australian homes
Renewable Energy Index shows sector will generate power to run 90% of homes once wind and solar projects being built in 2016-17 are completed
Australia’s renewable energy sector is within striking distance of matching national household power consumption, cranking out enough electricity to run 70% of homes last financial year, new figures show.
The first Australian Renewable Energy Index, produced by Green Energy Markets, finds the sector will generate enough power to run 90% of homes once wind and solar projects under construction in 2016-17 are completed.
Continue reading...Houston faces ‘historic’ flooding from Hurricane Harvey – video
Houston, Texas, is facing rising floodwaters after intense rainfall from Hurricane Harvey. More than 60cm (2ft) of rain has fallen on the city in 24 hours and the already ‘catastrophic’ flooding is expected to worsen as the bad weather lingers for several days. People in some communities have been advised to climb to their roofs to escape the rising waters
Continue reading...Snow-go: why Ben Nevis is frost-free for the first time in 11 years
Ain’t no mountain dry enough? Ben Nevis may well have grown by a metre last year but now it is also nude from basecamp up for the first time in 11 years.
You would expect snow under foot atop the summit’s stone cairn at the lofty height of 1,345m, not a blunt, barren crown. So what on earth happened to the formerly covered peak?
Continue reading...How to offset Trump's climate science ignorance – plant 10bn trees
An ambitious tree-planting campaign aims to counteract the CO2 released by Donald Trump’s climate policies
A campaign to plant enough trees to offset Donald Trump’s climate policies is under way. Organisers hope to plant 10bn trees by 24 December 2017, with the last one being a Christmas tree planted in front of the White House.
The organisers of Trump Forest are asking people to donate trees to make up for the 650m tonnes of CO2 that will be released into the atmosphere by 2025 if the president’s plans to backtrack on US climate commitments go ahead.
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