The Guardian
Farmers deliver stark warning over access to EU seasonal workers
NFU president says food will ‘rot in the fields’ unless government guarantees access to workforce
Farmers have warned that food will “rot in the fields” and Britain will be unable to produce what it eats if the government cannot guarantee that growers will continue to have access to tens of thousands of EU workers after Brexit.
Meurig Raymond, president of the National Farmers’ Union, told the body’s annual conference in Birmingham that farmers and food processors, particularly in horticulture and poultry, were already having difficulty recruiting.
Giant anteater and jaguar in rare battle – camera-trap video
Camera -trap footage shows a giant anteater going toe-to-toe with a jaguar in the Gurupi Biological Reserve in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. The video was filmed by the Brazilian National Research Centre for Carnivore Conservation in September 2016 as part of a survey on jaguars
Continue reading...Our technology can clean up air pollution hotspots | Letter
Professor Lewis’s analysis of ways to tackle air pollution (10 ways to beat air pollution: how effective are they?, theguardian.com, 15 February) is disappointingly dismissive of technology that can work in bus shelters or other pollution hotspots. While these solutions can’t clean an entire atmosphere, there are places where they can make a huge difference and it would be shortsighted to sweep them aside.
Tests at King’s College London have independently verified that our technology can clean the air of dangerous and pervasive nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter in pollution hotspots. It can reduce exposure to pollution in bus shelters, tube stations, and potentially hospitals or schools, by up to 80%. The mixing of the atmosphere does not therefore “completely outweigh the benefits” as Professor Lewis claims.
Continue reading...Heathrow protest by climate activists causes delays on M4
Campaigners chain themselves to a vehicle, blocking motorway tunnel leading to airport and causing lengthy delays
Climate activists protesting against Heathrow’s planned third runway caused lengthy delays on the M4 by blocking a tunnel leading to the airport.
Campaigners for Rising Up used three cars to close the tunnel leading from the motorway to Heathrow Terminals 1, 2 and 3 at about 8.25am on Tuesday. Three protesters chained themselves to one of the vehicles, which had a banner reading: “No new runways”.
Continue reading...‘Insane’ camera trap video captures rare battle in the Amazon
Without camera traps we would never be privy to two endangered species sparring in the remote Amazon rainforest.
As darkness descended over the Peruvian Amazon in 2006, my wife and I listened spellbound while our guide told us the grisly story of the jaguar and giant anteater.
Eyewitnesses, our guide insisted, had found the two foes dead together, embracing like lovers but in mutual destruction – the jaguar’s jaw still drooped around the anteater’s neck where it had pierced its prey’s artery and the anteater’s ten-centimeter-long claws still embedded in the big cat’s flanks. Later, after the spell – and liquor – wore off, I thought it was probably a tall tale, something to tell tourists after the sun sets over the world’s greatest jungle and you’ve all had a few too many. But an incredible new camera trap video proves I may have been wrong to doubt.
Continue reading...Glimpse of a landscape fashioned by birds
Blackwater Carr, Norfolk Once you are attuned to this avian tree propagation, it becomes a pleasure to find other instances
Although I am in my 50s I still take a child’s pleasure in climbing trees. This particular ascent, however, had purpose, because a hawthorn formerly trapped under a sallow thicket has been steadily freed by felling operations. One last large willow branch had to be severed before my overtopped bush could move into the sunlit uplands of the open glade that I have created around it.
There are four hawthorns and one small holly honoured in this fashion. They receive preferential treatment partly because they are rare on my patch, but also because I cherish the idea that they are bird sown. I like to imagine the scenario that explains their presence in a sallow jungle: the fruit-filled blackbird, perhaps, that returned night after night to roost and deposited the undigested hawthorn and holly seeds that it had eaten during the day. Out of its shower of creative manure there eventually arose my new bushes.
Trump's potential science adviser William Happer: hanging around with conspiracy theorists | Graham Readfearn
The Princeton atomic physicist is no climate scientist – and he’s pushing the same old denier myths
William Happer is a physicist at Princeton University – one of those US academic institutions with brand recognition for academic excellence that travels the globe.
Happer is well known for his contrarian views (that’s the polite term) on human-caused climate change.
Continue reading...Arena to give EnergyAustralia grant to investigate pumped hydro storage project
Malcolm Turnbull says technology ‘mature and cost-effective’ as Australian Renewable Energy Agency grant announced
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) has approved a $450,000 grant to EnergyAustralia to investigate a pumped hydro energy storage project off South Australia as the state’s energy mix continues to cause a political storm.
The grant will cover a feasibility study into a Spencer Gulf project that the company says has a capacity to produce about 100 megawatts (MW) of electricity with six-to-eight hours of storage.
Continue reading...Pope says indigenous people must have final say about their land
Francis echoes growing body of international law and standards on the right to ‘prior and informed consent’
In the 15th century papal bulls promoted and provided legal justification for the conquest and theft of indigenous peoples’ lands and resources worldwide - the consequences of which are still being felt today. The right to conquest in one such bull, the Romanus Pontifex, issued in the 1450s when Nicholas V was the Pope, was granted in perpetuity.
How times have changed. Last week, over 560 years later, Francis, the first Pope from Latin America, struck a rather different note - for indigenous peoples around the world, for land rights that mean something in practice, for better environmental stewardship. He said publicly that indigenous peoples have the right to “prior and informed consent.” In other words, nothing should happen on - or impact - their land, territories and resources unless they agree to it.
Continue reading...Do mild days fuel climate change scepticism?
When it comes to the weather, research suggests people often trust the evidence of their own eyes rather than expert opinion
Why do so many people remain sceptical about climate change when the evidence for it seems so obvious? One recent study may offer an interesting clue, because American scientists stood the argument on its head and looked at places across the globe that will probably enjoy more pleasant weather with climate change.
For Britain, northern Europe and North America there will be more days of mild weather, defined as 18 to 30C, with low humidity and little rain – the sort of weather which by most people’s accounts would be most agreeable. Parts of southern England, for example, will get an extra 10 to 15 days of mild weather a year by the end of this century. It’s not entirely good news, because the mild days will tend to come in spring and autumn, while the summers will grow hotter and more humid.
Continue reading...A world safe for robots and mammoths | Letters
Can it be right to bring back the mammoth (Report, 17 February)? It disappeared at the beginning of this man-made age of extinction. For it to be returned towards its end, with declining populations of elephants and rhinos, is irony itself. It also highlights that technology is now so poorly controlled that the march of scientific ability will continue to outpace its ethics. Is a world of super-intelligent robots and their woolly mammoth pets really the direction to be going in?
Dr Colin Bannon
Crapstone, Devon
• Fun though it might be to see a woolly mammoth in the 21st century, I question the mammoth function in combating global warming. George Church says: “They keep the tundra from thawing by punching through snow and allowing cold air to come in,” and “In the summer they knock down trees and help the grass grow.” Couldn’t a bloke in a JCB do that? And a lot more cheaply, I imagine.
Francis Blake
London
Fish under threat from ocean oxygen depletion, finds study
Oxygen levels in oceans have fallen 2% in 50 years due to climate change, affecting marine habitat and large fish such as tuna and sharks
The depletion of oxygen in our oceans threatens future fish stocks and risks altering the habitat and behaviour of marine life, scientists have warned, after a new study found oceanic oxygen levels had fallen by 2% in 50 years.
The study, carried out at Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Germany, was the most comprehensive of the subject to date. The fall in oxygen levels has been attributed to global warming and the authors warn that if it continues unchecked, the amount of oxygen lost could reach up to 7% by 2100. Very few marine organisms are able to adapt to low levels of oxygen.
Continue reading...Expect to see more emergencies like Oroville Dam in a hotter world | Dana Nuccitelli
Scientists predicted decades ago that climate change would add stress to water management systems like Oroville Dam
The evacuation of nearly 200,000 people near Oroville Dam is the kind of event that makes climate change personal. A co-worker of mine was forced out of his home for several days by the emergency evacuation, and another friend was visiting Lake Oroville and happened to leave 15 minutes before the evacuation order was issued.
Like many extreme events, the Oroville emergency is a combination of natural weather likely intensified by climate change. California regularly sees “atmospheric rivers” that deluge the state with rainfall, but in a hotter world, scientists anticipate that they’ll be amplified by an increase in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.
Continue reading...Close encounter with a hare – a rare sight in the West Country
West Dartmoor To have chanced across this night-roamer, lolloping calmly across the muddy lane, was a rare privilege indeed.
Hemmed in on either side by tall hedgerows, this narrow Dartmoor lane skirts the flank of higher ground and scores a deep furrow between fields so that after dark you feel you are tunnelling through the terrain, headlights tracing a leaden seam of asphalt. There is little traffic here to trouble nocturnal wildlife. Over the years I have come across badgers, heads striped like road markings, furtive-looking foxes and occasionally a barn owl, achingly white in the full beams.
This winter’s night, an unexpected wanderer took shape among the blanched fishbone stems of dead weeds, as if created by the action of light on darkness. Long ears held high, hindquarters arched over rangy rear legs, large eyes that brought me to a halt. A hare!
Continue reading...Thaw livens up the hedge-frequenters: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 20 February 1917
On Saturday a grey crow was perched on the topmost rotten branch of an oak beside the river, and was as communicative as usual. Perhaps it enjoyed watching the ice sheets floating past and hearing them scrunch as they piled together at the bend. Yesterday there were three paddling on the sloppy ice of the mere, still talking as they cleaned up the various bird remains. I thought the note was always repeated three times in quick succession, but as often as not four caws follow one another rapidly after each pause of a few seconds’ duration. The grey crow’s call is shriller than the carrion’s but deeper than the rook’s.
The thaw livened up the thrushes and starlings and started the dunnocks afresh: everywhere these little hedge-frequenters are shuffling their wings and trilling vigorously. The blackbirds, silent since last summer, immediately tuned up; I heard my first on Saturday, and to-day many are in excellent mellow voice. Herring gulls have not yet left the mere; they have been about for several weeks, for the first appeared long before the waters were ice-bound; they raised a joyous chorus yesterday, their full, clear calls sounding quite vernal. Like the crows, they consorted with the living blackheads and fed upon the dead ones. Near the bank a three-foot eel was embedded in the ice, and crow or gull had got through a weak spot, and reached a few inches of the fish, picking it to the bone.
Continue reading...In search of Tanzania's bee-eaters
In the Selous Game Reserve you can see seven different bee-eaters. Each one sports impossibly beautiful colours
Bee-eaters are the supermodels of the bird world: slim, glamorous – and hopelessly out of reach for us mere mortals. But in the Selous Game Reserve, in southern Tanzania, you can see seven different species of bee-eater hawking for insects under sun-filled skies. Each one sports impossibly beautiful colours, outcompeting even the half-a-dozen species of kingfisher we saw here. On a game drive from Selous Impala Camp, in the heart of Africa’s largest wildlife reserve, we went in search of the “magnificent seven”.
The two commonest species, white-fronted and white-throated, may have similar names, but they are very different in appearance. The white-throated is, by bee-eater standards, almost austere: a plain, foliage green body topped with a black-and-white head.
Continue reading...Images of new bleaching on Great Barrier Reef heighten fears of coral death
Exclusive: Coral bleaching found near Palm Island as unusually warm waters are expected off eastern Australia, with areas hit in last year’s event in mortal danger
The embattled Great Barrier Reef could face yet more severe coral bleaching in the coming month, with areas badly hit by last year’s event at risk of death.
Images taken by local divers last week and shared exclusively with the Guardian by the Australian Marine Conservation Society show newly bleached corals discovered near Palm Island.
Continue reading...How to win the war on air pollution | Letters
Damian Carrington is half right (The war against air pollution has begun – and it will be fought in cities, 13 February) in that cities bear a terrible burden from air pollution and municipal action is critical to address it. However, city governments cannot succeed alone. Much of urban pollution stems from outside city limits and significant progress will only be achieved with policies that also require national, regional and even international commitment.
A significant part of city air pollution drifts in from regional sources like wood-burning rural households, coal-fired power plants, industries and the open burning of agricultural waste and rubbish. Commuters driving in from car-centric suburbs and transport between cities contribute to urban congestion and pollution too, stymying smart city initiatives like investments in public transportation and safer streets for walking and cycling.
Continue reading...Organic food sales soar as shoppers put quality before price
Demand for organic food is at its highest for more than a decade, according to major retailers.
That’s good news for an industry that was hit hard by the economic downturn but now seems to be returning to rude health as more shoppers say organic food is worth paying the premium for. This week the Soil Association will release its annual report on the state of the organic food market, which is expected to show that it has grown for the fourth consecutive year.
Continue reading...Fears of ‘dirty meat’ entering food chain after 25% of abattoirs fail tests
One in four slaughterhouses are failing to take basic hygiene precautions to stop contaminated meat reaching high street butchers and supermarkets.
An analysis of government audits carried out at more than 300 abattoirs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland identified major hygiene failings in more than a quarter of the meat plants. The failings could expose consumers to serious food poisoning illnesses such as E coli, salmonella or campylobacter.
Continue reading...