Environment news

• Energy sector faces struggle to find the female engineers of the future

  28-01-2017 17:00
  
  The woman in charge of UK’s largest power station admits they must do more to change attitudesWhile the lack of female chief executives in the UK is a problem, the lack of female engineers is an even bigger concern, as Dorothy Thompson, chief executive of Drax group, knows only too well. The head of the UK’s largest power station is grappling with the question of how to attract more women into the energy sector.Thompson says the six places available on the Drax apprenticeship scheme
  
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• ‘You can't live in a museum’: the battle for Greenland's uranium

  28-01-2017 11:00
  
  A tiny town in southern Greenland is fighting for its future. Behind it sits one of the world’s largest deposits of uranium. Should a controversial mine get the green light?It is a beautiful morning on the southern tip of Greenland; the sun is high in a cloudless sky, but there is a tang of cold in the air. A crowd of Spanish tourists in red parkas has gathered at the small jetty in Narsaq, to watch boatmen who have just returned from hunting a minke whale in the open sea. From the shoreli
  
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• Fighting food waste with an app… and a measuring spoon

  28-01-2017 07:59
  
  In a year-long experiment, families in Swadlincote tried to cut food waste by 50% – and attempt to save hundreds of poundsLisa Edwards is busy unpacking shopping for the following day’s dinosaur-themed birthday party for her toddler Max, but is happy to show Guardian Money into her kitchen and explain – short of actually rifling through her bin – how she and her family have reduced their food waste by more than three quarters over the past year, saving £1,000.&ldquo
  
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• New mercury threat to oceans from climate change

  28-01-2017 06:34 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Rising temperatures could boost mercury levels in fish by up to seven times the current rates, say Swedish researchers.
  
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• Driven to distraction by wildlife

  28-01-2017 06:30
  
  Strathnairn, Highlands Looking at siskins so close is a delight. I can never decide if their plumage is yellow-green or lime-greenMy study is separate from the house, in the 0.4 hectare garden, and I find there are three main distractions when I try to write there during daylight. (Though not the Toad’s Hole engraving by the door, which so intrigues visitors – it’s a family joke, dating back to a time when I used to work away a lot and write home signing myself “Toad&rdqu
  
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• Toshiba chair ready to resign over Westinghouse writedowns: Nikkei

  28-01-2017 04:12
  Toshiba Corp Chairman Shigenori Shiga is ready to step down to take responsibility for the huge writedowns looming over the Japanese group's U.S. nuclear power unit Westinghouse Electric Co LLC, the Nikkei business daily reported. Shiga was chairman of Westinghouse when the unit booked charges of $930 million in fiscal 2012 and $390 million in fiscal 2013, which Toshiba failed to flag at the time in violation of the Tokyo bourse's disclosure rules. The Japanese conglomerate's nomination committe
  
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• France's wild hamsters being turned into 'crazed cannibals' by diet of corn

  28-01-2017 03:07
  
  Starving rodents in north-eastern France are suffering from vitamin deficiencies that prompt them to eat their own youngA diet of corn is turning wild hamsters in north-eastern France into deranged cannibals that devour their offspring, researchers have reported.
  “There’s clearly an imbalance,” Gerard Baumgart, President of the Research Centre for Environmental Protection in Alsace, and an expert on the European hamster, said on Friday. “Our hamster habitat is collapsing,
  
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• Los Angeles freeway claims 3rd mountain lion in 2 months

  28-01-2017 02:20
  
  LOS ANGELES (AP) — A vehicle struck and killed an orphaned mountain lion on the same stretch of Los Angeles-area freeway where her mother and one of her two siblings died separately in December, wildlife authorities said Friday.
  
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• Seeds offer clue to domesticated plants' larger size

  28-01-2017 02:08 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The seeds of domesticated plants could offer clues as to why cultivated crops are larger than their wild cousins, a study suggests.
  
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• Campaigners demand answers after leak closes part of North Sea oil well

  28-01-2017 01:01
  
  The well, which is owned by Total, was the subject of a £1m fine after another leak in 2012Questions need to be asked about safety and protection of the environment, campaigners have said, after a leak in a North Sea well being drilled by the oil and gas firm Total.The company may be forced to temporarily abandon part of the well owing to a gas leak beneath the seabed, which has restricted access to the wellhead at its Elgin B platform. Continue reading...
  
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