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Coalition back-bench’s crazy last gasp attempt to save coal

RenewEconomy - Tue, 2018-04-03 12:18
Monash Forum pushes for new coal fired generators, as it seeks to confirm role of National Energy Guarantee as do nothing policy. Monash Forum is said to represent more than half of Coalition backbench, which is about the same that reject climate science.
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Invitation to comment on listing assessment for Philotheca sporadica (Kogan waxflower) - 2018

Department of the Environment - Tue, 2018-04-03 11:18
The public consultation period will be open until 18 May 2018.
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Invitation to comment on listing assessment for Philotheca sporadica (Kogan waxflower) - 2018

Department of the Environment - Tue, 2018-04-03 11:18
The public consultation period will be open until 18 May 2018.
Categories: Around The Web

'Send in the drones' to protect soil

BBC - Tue, 2018-04-03 09:37
Drones should be used to locate and penalise farmers who let soil run off their fields, a report will say.
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Dinosaur tracks on Skye 'globally important'

BBC - Tue, 2018-04-03 09:19
Researchers find that the footprints belonged to sauropods and therapods from the Middle Jurassic period.
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UK to tighten laws on 'abhorrent' ivory trade

The Guardian - Tue, 2018-04-03 09:01

Defra consultation on proposals received more than 70,000 responses, 88% in favour

A UK ban on ivory sales, which the government claims will be the toughest in Europe and one of the strictest in the world, is to be introduced after the proposals were overwhelmingly backed in a public consultation.

The ban makes exemptions only for musical instruments containing a small percentage of ivory, some antiques, and museum objects.

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The quiet e-bike revolution

RenewEconomy - Tue, 2018-04-03 08:45
While EVs dominate the headlines, a quiet revolution has been taking place and the fastest growing segment in the transport world now is e-bikes, or electric bicycles.
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EPA announces easing of car and truck emissions standards

The Guardian - Tue, 2018-04-03 08:41

Agency says Barack Obama’s timeline set standards ‘too high’ in move that could lead to legal showdown with California

US environmental regulators announced on Monday they would ease emissions standards for cars and trucks, saying that a timeline put in place by Barack Obama was not appropriate and set standards “too high”.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it had completed a review that would affect vehicles for model years 2022-25 but it did not provide details on new standards, which it said would be forthcoming. Current regulations from the EPA require the fleet of new vehicles to get 36 miles per gallon in real-world driving by 2025. That’s about 10 miles per gallon over the existing standard.

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Australian cleantech stocks outperform market in latest month, quarter

RenewEconomy - Tue, 2018-04-03 08:39
Australian CleanTech Index again outperformed the ASX200 for the month of March and the third quarter of the 2018 fiscal year.
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That’s not a solar farm. This is a solar farm!

RenewEconomy - Tue, 2018-04-03 07:18
Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund and Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank plan 200GW of solar projects by 2030 to replace heavily subsidised petroleum power.
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Weatherwatch: storms can unlock pollution timebombs of landfill

The Guardian - Tue, 2018-04-03 06:30

Coastal rubbish dumps dotted around Britain are at risk of erosion and nobody knows what exactly is inside them

Britain’s coasts were battered in this winter’s storms. The Royal North Devon Golf Club, England’s oldest golf course, had a sizeable chunk of its eighth hole washed away during Storm Eleanor in January. Less well publicised were fears of flooding at a nearby landfill site, which was last used in 1995 and contains hospital waste and other toxic material.

Related: Pollution risk from over 1,000 old UK landfill sites due to coastal erosion

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Underwater melting of Antarctic ice far greater than thought, study finds

The Guardian - Tue, 2018-04-03 02:18

The base of the ice around the south pole shrank by 1,463 square kilometres between 2010 and 2016

Hidden underwater melt-off in the Antarctic is doubling every 20 years and could soon overtake Greenland to become the biggest source of sea-level rise, according to the first complete underwater map of the world’s largest body of ice.

Warming waters have caused the base of ice near the ocean floor around the south pole to shrink by 1,463 square kilometres – an area the size of Greater London – between 2010 and 2016, according to the new study published in Nature Geoscience.

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Swansea tidal lagoon project faces job cuts and downsizing

The Guardian - Mon, 2018-04-02 22:10

Government funding delay for £1.3bn scheme may force firm to lay off staff within weeks

The £1.3bn Swansea tidal lagoon faces a major blow as the company behind the scheme braces for significant job cuts if UK and Welsh government talks on the project fail to yield a breakthrough.

Tidal Lagoon Power has waited for 15 months since an independent review backed the scheme as a “no regrets” source of clean and reliable energy.

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On climate change, zero-sum thinking doesn't work | Joseph Robertson

The Guardian - Mon, 2018-04-02 20:00

There are win-win solutions to this problem.

Democracy is not a zero-sum game. Behaving as if it is degrades democratic process and our personal political sovereignty.

A zero-sum game is a contest for control of finite resources. Whatever one gains, another must lose. When two or more candidates compete for a single public office, only one can win, so many people view politics as bloodsport, applying “winner takes all” thinking to everything political. But elected officials are not conquerors; they are sworn servants to all their constituents.

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Country diary 1918: cold winds fail to check spring flowers

The Guardian - Mon, 2018-04-02 14:30

2 April 1918 Close at hand rise a group of single upright stalks, each topped by a small green knob, the inconspicuous flowers of the moschatel or adoxa

The golden kingcups light up the stagnant ditch which through the winter has been filmed with a yellowish scum. Their roots are deep in the ancient leaf-mould and decomposing twigs and branches, a rich, black ooze; this forcing-bed has sent up a thick cushion of leaves stretching from bank to bank, and now that the handsome flowers are out the ditch is transformed. On the steep bank below the now green
hedge the silver stitchwort is out; beside it is a bed of the trefoil leaves of the wood-sorrel, so acceptable in a salad, pleasantly acid; and amongst them the delicate lilac-veined flowers.

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Country diary: a dissonant overlay of realities

The Guardian - Mon, 2018-04-02 14:30

Valley of Desolation, Wharfedale, Yorkshire Dales: The snow revives innocence, but it’s from this winter’s dramatic destabilisation of the polar vortex and a reminder of climate change

Spring is held in a sort of suspense. The sun’s growing confidence brings hope, but the blizzards are back again, shutting out the light, clogging the floor of Strid Wood with snow, smothering the first leaves of dog’s mercury and ramsons. Around this date in previous years I have heard drumming snipe on the moors or found breeding frogs in the ponds around here, but there will be few such mood-lifting discoveries today.

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Tiangong-1: Defunct China space lab comes down over South Pacific

BBC - Mon, 2018-04-02 12:22
China's defunct Tiangong-1 space lab mostly burnt up on re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.
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Saving the Bell's turtle and farmers get the 'keep fit' message

ABC Environment - Mon, 2018-04-02 11:30
A dog helps save an endangered turtle; farmers get the keep fit message; a calf and a camel make friends on the Nullabor; and bullocky Craig Lockwood yokes up his team.
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Mission to demonstrate space junk tech

BBC - Mon, 2018-04-02 10:12
A European, UK-led project aims to showcase how space debris could be removed from orbit.
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Dumping pesticides, using ducks instead

BBC - Mon, 2018-04-02 09:06
Bernard Poujol believes ducks are the future for rice farms, but he hasn't quite perfected his technique.
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