Environment news

• May we have fresh air to breathe – please

  06-03-2016 22:30
  
  The 1952 London smog taught us that air pollution caused people to die in the days and weeks that followed a short period of very high pollution. If we could only prevent smog episodes then it was thought that the air would be safe. A study in the 1990s changed this view. Thousands of people living in six US cities were tracked over 14 years. Having allowed for smoking and other factors, people lived shorter lives in the most polluted cities, showing, for the first time, that the particle pollut
  
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• Warming Arctic being exploited by trawlers

  06-03-2016 19:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  Ice melt in the Arctic Ocean is opening up previously untouched areas to industrial fishing fleets using ecologically risky bottom trawling methods, writes Joe Sandler Clarke. Ecosystems supporting walruses, polar bears, puffins and other sea birds could be stripped bare.Bottom trawling is widely considered to be the among most destructive fishing techniques, with vast nets catching fish as they are dragged along the sea bed.Using official data and ship tracking systems, researchers found that l
  
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• The Green Investment Bank must be allowed to stay green | Letter from Mary Creagh MP

  06-03-2016 19:28
  
  To meet the climate change targets agreed at Paris, billions of pounds of green investment will be needed to upgrade the UK’s energy and transport infrastructure. The Green Investment Bank has so far done a sterling job of attracting capital to low-carbon infrastructure projects in the UK that might otherwise have struggled to find funding. The privatisation of the GIB (Report, 3 March) could move its focus away from novel and riskier low-carbon projects in favour of easier, more commercia
  
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• Ed Miliband calls for law to make CO2 emissions target legally binding

  06-03-2016 19:28
  
  Ex-Labour leader assembles group of MPs and NGOs to demand UK legislation on net zero emissions agreed at Paris climate talksEd Miliband has assembled a group of cross-party MPs and campaigners to demand parliament enacts a law to to make the carbon emissions target agreed at the Paris climate talks legally binding.The former Labour leader – alongside Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, Green MP Caroline Lucas and two Conservative MPs – has called for legislation that would signific
  
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• UK must aim for zero emissions at home too | Letter from Ed Miliband, Tim Farron, Caroline Lucas and others

  06-03-2016 19:23
  
  We believe that the Paris agreement represents a historic opportunity for the world to tackle dangerous climate change. But that opportunity will only be realised if we follow up the good intentions of Paris with delivery in every country of the world. Paris was significant because it set out the ambition to keep global warming well below 2C, and ideally to 1.5C of warming, and it accepted that the world must get to net zero emissions in the second half of the century, in accordance with our sci
  
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• France's oldest nuclear plant to close this year: minister

  06-03-2016 18:46
  
  France is to close down its oldest nuclear power plant, at the centre of a row with neighbouring Germany and Switzerland, by the end of this year, a green minister said Sunday.
  
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• VIDEO: Filming 'world's deepest' under-ice dive

  06-03-2016 16:49 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Russian explorers claim they have set a new record for the world's deepest under-ice dive.
  
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• Decision to end funding of local environmental record centres attacked

  06-03-2016 16:35
  
  Centres, which rely on thousands of volunteers and described as ‘eyes and ears’ of natural world, told contract ending earlyConservationists have criticised the decision to withdraw funding from a network of tens of thousands of local wildlife volunteers who collect data on the health of a variety of species and act as the “eyes and ears” of the government’s nature watchdog.Local environmental record centres (Lercs), which collect and collate records of everything f
  
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• The innovators: portable solar panels that can be unrolled like a carpet

  06-03-2016 14:44
  
  John Hingley has developed a ‘micro-grid’ in a metal box that can be used for disaster relief, mining, and even festivals
  Talk is not cheap in the mountains of Nepal. Getting a mobile phone charged can cost $5 in areas where there is no electricity and backpackers have to rely on diesel generators used by locals to power up.John Hingley had a solution stuffed in his rucksack: a thin and lightweight portable solar panel that unfolded and could generate enough energy to power his phone
  
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• Pictures of the day: 6th March 2016

  06-03-2016 14:33
  
  Spitfire's 80th birthday, German Beard Competition and J.K. Rowling
  
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• Water utilities serving American cities use tests that downplay contamination

  06-03-2016 13:30
  
  Guardian analysis reveals millions of customers were asked to used testing method condemned by the EPA which may flush out detectable lead contentWater utilities in some of the largest cities in the US that collectively serve some 12 million people have used tests that downplay the amount of lead contamination found in drinking water for more than a decade, a Guardian analysis of testing protocols reveals.
  In the tests, utilities ask customers who sample their home’s water for lead to remo
  
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• Iran says court sentences billionaire to death in graft case

  06-03-2016 12:30
  A court in Iran has sentenced to death Iranian businessman Babak Zanjani and two accomplices for embezzlement, the judiciary said on Sunday, in a case widely watched due to the billionaire's prominent role in helping the government evade oil sanctions. The Islamic court convicted the defendants of "spreading corruption on earth", a capital offence, and ordered them to repay funds embezzled from, among others, state-run National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohsen
  
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• Ruddy twilight spreads across the horizon: Country diary 100 years ago

  06-03-2016 11:30
  
  Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 11 March 1916The sun went down a huge ball almost blood-red in colour, and so vast that half the heaven in the west seemed to be covered. As it sank, all that remained of this ruddy twilight spread away more to the north, then extended along the whole of that part of the horizon in more shades of purple and half-translucent grey than one is able to describe. From end to end the sky was as if it was being warmed over a thousand dying fires. But t
  
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• The deadly secret of Ben Nevis's man-made cairns

  06-03-2016 08:00
  
  Joe Shute joins a guide on the treacherous path to the mist-shrouded summit where man-made cairns are being blamed for walkers' disappearances and death
  
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• The eco guide to running out | Lucy Siegle

  06-03-2016 07:00
  
  Copper and lithium are running out – and yes, this will affect you. But there are things we can all do…It’s hard to imagine running out of loo roll, never mind the rare minerals that power our economy and appliances. But depletion looms as we speed through the Earth’s resources and climate change alters the rules.We’re reaching, or have surpassed, the peak availability of copper, lithium (essential for the electric vehicle revolution), phosphate, anchovies, artisan
  
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• China to launch mixed ownership pilot programmes in oil, gas, rail sectors

  06-03-2016 04:13
  China plans to launch several mixed ownership pilot programmes in the oil, natural gas and rail sectors as it deepens reforms of state-owned enterprises, the country's top economic planner said on Sunday. As China restructures its state-owned companies, it will also moderately increase investment in infrastructure and public services, Xu Shaoshi, head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), told reporters at a briefing in Beijing. In September last year, China issued guidance o
  
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• Brazil top judges back graft probe despite concern over Lula's detention

  06-03-2016 01:53
  By Reese Ewing SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Senior judges in Brazil voiced concern on Saturday over the detention of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, even as they threw their support behind the sweeping corruption investigation that threatens to topple his embattled successor. Lula's three hours of questioning in police custody on Friday was the highest profile development in the two-year-old probe focussed on state oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras). The detention of the 70-year-ol
  
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