Feed aggregator

Exclusive: Plans for a network of hydropower plants in three countries would cause ‘chain reaction’ for endangered species, report warns

Nearly one in 10 of Europe’s fish species will be pushed to the brink of extinction by a constellation of hydropower plants planned in the western Balkans, new research has found.

Eleven endemic species would be wiped out, seven more would be critically endangered, four types of sturgeon would be devastated and the number of endangered species would double to 24, according to the University of Graz report.

Continue reading...

Two new island fish farms given the go-ahead in spite of Scottish parliamentary report warning of possible environmental impacts

Two new salmon farms are to be built off the Scottish island of Skye after receiving permission from the Highland council, despite opposition from residents over the possible environmental impacts and a lack of guarantees the farms will remain organic.

The two sites on the north-east of the island are among the first to be approved since MSPs warned that the continued expansion of the industry could cause “irrecoverable damage” to the environment.

Continue reading...

A Beijing-based trader with China Carbon Futures left the company on Wednesday to take up the position of CEO of the Tianjin Climate Exchange.

Authorities grant whalers a quota to hunt the endangered fin whale this summer after a two-year pause

Icelandic fishermen will resume their hunt for the endangered fin whale this year after a two-year pause and have set a target of 191 kills for the season.

An apparent loosening of Japanese regulations on Icelandic exports had made the resumption of the hunting commercially viable again, the country’s only fin whaling company, Hvalur, announced.

Continue reading...

At twice the size of a regulation basketball court, the enormous replica will be used to work out an ambitious water-diversion plan

Scientists working to stop rising seawater damaging the fragile ecosystems of the Louisiana coastline have unveiled a massive new weapon: an enormous replica of the lower Mississippi delta.

At some 10,800 sq ft, the model is more than twice the size of a regulation basketball court. Housed at Louisiana State University’s center for river studies, the “Lower Mississippi River Physical Model” will help experts work out how best to enact a state plan to fight coastal erosion.

Continue reading...

Unchecked global warming threatens our oceans

Can we clean up plastic pollution?

The world's oceans are under threat from plastic pollution and climate change.

As climate scientists predicted, glaciers are vanishing due to rapidly warming temperatures.

With global warming, we can make predictions and then take measurements to test those predictions. One prediction (a pretty obvious one) is that a warmer world will have less snow and ice. In particular, areas that have year-round ice and snow will start to melt.

Alpine glaciers are large bodies of ice that can be formed high in mountains, typically in bowls called cirques. The ice slowly flows downwards, pulled by gravity, and is renewed in their upper regions. A sort of balance can occur where the loss of ice by melting or flowing at the bottom is equal to the gain of snow and ice by precipitation.

Continue reading...

A group of major Australia's business groups and other organisations on Wednesday urged state leaders to not ditch the proposed National Energy Guarantee (NEG) at a crunch meeting later this week.

Some 79% of seafood range is sustainable, according to survey which shows supermarkets are selling more ‘blue label’ products than ever

The discount grocer Aldi has been named the best British high street supermarket for sustainable fish, according to a new league table.

Some 79% of the seafood range stocked by the fast-growing German discounter is certified sustainable, the annual survey from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) found. This year’s results also show that supermarkets are selling more sustainable seafood than ever before – a 60% rise over the last two years.

Continue reading...

How do you solve a problem like dusty solar panels? Two SA entrepreneurs and a tractor company have created a solution.

Until now, the international shipping industry has been excluded from the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol, despite its major contribution to global emissions. Beatriz Garcia, Lecturer, Western Sydney University Jolene Lin, Director, Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Law, National University of Singapore Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The new partnership is aimed at developing and implementing Archer’s graphite and graphene materials for use in energy storage system applications, targeting lithium-ion batteries and potentially generating technologies and patents that have commercial applications in reliable energy.

Alan Jones says Craig Kelly should be energy minister. In effect, he already is, because the Coalition's woeful policy is a craven attempt to pacify the right wing. Despite the NEG, or maybe because of it, a bipartisan approach to energy and climate is as elusive as ever.

Kaveh Madani had been seen as symbol of Rouhani government’s attempt to reverse brain drain

A top Iranian environmental scientist wooed by Hassan Rouhani’s administration to return home from the UK has left Iran amid a crackdown on environmentalists and pressure from hardliners.

Kaveh Madani had been persuaded to leave his position at Imperial College London last year to serve as the deputy head of Iran’s environment department.

Continue reading...

UK’s largest coffee shop chain has pledged to recycle up to 500m cups a year by 2020 – a fifth of the total used in the country

The UK’s largest coffee chain is to become the first to commit to recycling the same volume of takeaway cups used by its customers every year in a bid to stop hundreds of millions needlessly ending up in landfill.

Costa Coffee has pledged to recycle up to 500m coffee cups a year by 2020 – the equivalent of its entire annual use of takeaway cups and one-fifth of the total 2.5bn takeaway coffee cups used in the UK each year.

Continue reading...

The Coalition has been an inexhaustible source of confident declarations that renewable energy faced serious, immediate limitations in scale and cost. Let's fact-check that.

Malcolm Turnbull's weak climate policy is not going unnoticed at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.

The Indonesian national park boasts some of the world’s best dive sites and spectacular marine life, but illegal fishing and unsustainable tourism is threatening its Unesco status

It was the unusual thrashing on the water that caught their attention. As those onboard the dive boat in Indonesia’s Komodo national park drew closer, it became clear it was a green turtle entangled in rubbish and thick fishing net.

The divers managed to lift it out of the water, cut the blue bind from its shell and then set the turtle free, but dive operator Ed Statham says it is just one of the increasing and alarming signs the Unesco heritage site is fast being destroyed.

Continue reading...