Environment news

• Country diary 50 years ago: A wild week in the Cairngorms

  26-02-2017 23:30
  
  Originally published in the Guardian on 27 February 1967THE CAIRNGORMS: It didn’t seem at all strange to discover a bedraggled reindeer sheltering from the storm just inside the entrance to the chair-lift the other day, for the wind was like a knife and the ski-runs like tilted ice-rinks. Of course, he might have merely come in for the company – you could see his fellows higher up the snowbound hillside – or he might have been hoping for a chance of something more succulent tha
  
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• Is there anything good about that spider in the corner of my room? | Lizzy Lowe

  26-02-2017 22:54
  
  Is it true climate change is making spiders bigger? Why do spiders give us the creeps? We get a spider expert to answer questions about our eight-legged friendsIt’s true that some spiders respond positively to the changes that we make to the environment. Warming temperatures in particular are likely to benefit the growth and development of spiders. We may also see larger spiders in areas like cities where there is lots of food for them, just like you see fat pigeons living off food waste.
  
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• Australia's summer heat hints at worse to come

  26-02-2017 22:30
  
  If the third warmest January on record occurred during a La Niña event, scientists are asking what El Niño has in storeRight now south-eastern Australia is having an unbearable summer. Temperatures in Sydney have regularly been in the upper 30s in recent weeks, while inland areas have had several days in the mid-40s. January was the hottest month on record for Sydney since 1859, and the persistent warmth into February (with many places topping 35C day after day) may topple the New
  
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• How Prince Charles plans to sterilise the nation’s squirrels – with Nutella

  26-02-2017 18:30
  
  More than 3.5m of the invasive rodents live in Britain, and their presence is harming the welfare of their native red cousins. Luckily, HRH has a cunning plan to reduce their numbersName: Grey squirrels.Age: First introduced to the UK in the 1870s. Continue reading...
  
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• End UK tax incentives for diesel vehicles, ministers are urged

  26-02-2017 16:26
  
  Campaigners write to chancellor to urge him to end tax breaks and bring in scheme to encourage switch to greener carsMinisters are coming under growing pressure to remove tax incentives for diesel cars and offer compensation to motorists so they can swap to more environmentally friendly vehicles.A group of medical professionals, environmental campaigners and lawyers has written to the chancellor ahead of the budget to demand a change to the vehicle excise duty that they say subsidises diesel car
  
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• How drones are helping design the solar power plants of the future

  26-02-2017 15:00
  
  A cottage industry is growing around new technology for solar power developers to design, build and operate solar farms to help compete with fossil fuel power
  At the edge of a plot of muddy farmland, a few miles down the road from the University of California at Davis, an engineer takes a few quick steps across crop rows and lets go of a three-foot drone. Within seconds, the device – which weighs less than 2lbs and carries a powerful camera – ascends hundreds of feet into the cold, c
  
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• Taliban leader urges Afghans to plant more trees

  26-02-2017 12:46 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Hibatullah Akhundzada says more trees are needed "for the beautification of Earth".
  
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• UK robotics research gets £17.3m pledge

  26-02-2017 08:42 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The new funding will be made available for robotics research carried out by British universities.
  
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• Windfarms aren’t the real reason energy bills are rising. Blame the free market

  26-02-2017 08:00
  
  Complaints about ‘green crap’ have been a convenient excuse for governments unable or unwilling to intervene and cap suppliers’ pricesLast week, photographs of wind turbines were once again juxtaposed with headlines about rising energy prices. The cause on this occasion was no less pre-eminent a body than a Lords committee, comprising former chancellor Norman Lamont and other heavyweight peers.“To reduce carbon emissions, governments have subsidised renewables, passing on
  
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• The eco guide to greener salads

  26-02-2017 07:00
  
  The salad shortage focused attention on the failures of our 24/7 dietary culture. But it also provides a chance to rethink the way we eat fresh fruit, veg and green leavesI’m afraid the lettuce shortage was just the tip of the iceberg. We may have run low on salad leaves but, more worryingly, we were low on empathy for poor southern Spain where flash floods followed by snow wrecked the crop. Our relentless consumer-rights focus meant that the emphasis was clearly on “weather-related
  
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• From the Observer archive: this week in 1929 | From the Observer archive

  26-02-2017 01:05
  
  Fuel and the future – how coal can compete with oil There have been reports of late of increased activity in the coal trade. Those qualified to judge have rightly warned the public against facile optimism. The Continental orders are the result of the abnormal weather. They are not a sign that the old trade is coming back. It will never come back, because the conditions which created it have ceased to exist.But the last few days have also brought two items of news really suggestive of a tur
  
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