Environment news

• Check out the fussy falcons of Nottingham | Brief letters

  16-05-2017 20:36 via theguardian.com
  
  Electoral register and young people | Typefaces | Nottingham’s peregrines | Names for grandparents | 35mm film canistersWarnings about young people dropping off the electoral register were issued a long time ago (Report, 15 May). The next government needs to take swift action and automatically register 16-year-olds when they receive their national insurance number. Policies were set out last year by the all-party parliamentary party in its report on the Missing Millions and have cross-part
  
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• Snail's DNA secrets unlocked in fight against river disease

  16-05-2017 19:18 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Scientists have decoded the genome of a snail involved in the spread of a deadly parasitic disease.
  
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• Billionaire Bloomberg to fund $5m public health projects in 40 cities worldwide

  16-05-2017 14:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Exclusive: Melbourne, Accra and Ulaanbaatar among cities to benefit from funding pledged by former New York mayor to tackle issues from air pollution to obesityMichael Bloomberg, the billionaire bête noire of both the sugar industry and the tobacco industry, famously fought for a ban on the sale of large-sized colas and other sweet drinks when he was mayor of New York and lost. Although that is not how he sees it.“We actually won that battle,” he says. “I have always thou
  
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• Google DeepMind patient app legality questioned

  16-05-2017 12:58 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A leaked letter throws doubt on the legal basis for sharing 1.6 million patient records with DeepMind.
  
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• UK faces sharp rise in wind storms and higher bills as world warms

  16-05-2017 12:03 via theguardian.com
  
  Data models show UK to be at mercy of fiercer winds and insurers call for action to reinforce buildingsThe UK is set to reap the whirlwind of climate change with the huge damage caused by wind storms expected to increase sharply, according to new analysis.
  Even the minimum global warming now expected – just 1.5C – is projected to raise the cost of windstorm destruction by more than a third in parts of the country. If climate change heats the world even further, broken roofs and damag
  
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• NY Times’ Stephens can’t see the elephant in the room on climate change | Dana Nuccitelli

  16-05-2017 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Hint: the elephant is the obstructionist political party’s symbolThere was tremendous outcry when the New York Times hired opinion columnist Bret Stephens, who has a long history of making misinformed comments about climate change. Stephens didn’t assuage those fears when he devoted his first column to punching hippies, absurdly suggesting that our lack of progress on climate policy is a result of greens being too mean to climate deniers.Stephens lamentably stayed on the subject of c
  
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• Toxic timebomb: why we must fight back against the world's plague of plastic | Jennifer Lavers and Alexander Bond

  16-05-2017 10:44 via theguardian.com
  
  We must reduce our dependence on plastics, especially single-use items, and seek out alternative materials• 38 million pieces of plastic waste found on uninhabited South Pacific islandIt’s everywhere. From the Mariana Trench to the floor of the Arctic Ocean, on tropical beaches and polar coasts. It’s in wildlife, seafood, sea salt and even on the surface of Mars. The world is blighted by plastic. Up to 12m tonnes of the stuff enters the world’s oceans every year (that&rsqu
  
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• It’s bananas to chuck out perfectly good fruit | Michele Hanson

  16-05-2017 10:34 via theguardian.com
  
  Instead of rejecting millions of marked bananas every week we should be mashing them, baking them or using them to answer life’s big questionsRidiculous news. Britons throw away 1.4m edible bananas every day, apparently because they have small black, brown or green marks on the skin. Yes, even a bit of green. What have people learned at school? Anything about the natural world, cookery or nutrition? No? Well, a banana is not just a useful sticky-up thing for sex-education classes and to em
  
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• Armyworms: The hungry caterpillar threatening a global food crisis

  16-05-2017 10:14 via theguardian.com
  
  A plague of armyworms is marching across Africa, devastating crops, and claiming new territory at an alarming rate
  Speaking Darwinistically, the planet should have no truck with the spodoptera genus, commonly known as armyworms. Fat, slow over the ground and unspeakably terrible looking, they should never have evolved into anything more than an etymological pilot project. In some variants, their heads resemble human brains that have been caramelized with a blowtorch. Mandibles, jammed into the b
  
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• 38m pieces of plastic found on uninhabited Henderson Island – video report

  16-05-2017 10:03 via theguardian.com
  
  Henderson Island in the South Pacific Ocean is believed to be one of the world’s worst polluted places. Australian scientists say they found its beaches littered with about 38m pieces of plastic during an investigation in 2015. The island is in the path of the South Pacific Gyre, an ocean current known for its accumulation of plastic debris38 million pieces of plastic waste found on uninhabited South Pacific island
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• Remote island has 'world's worst' plastic rubbish density

  16-05-2017 09:54 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The uninhabited Pacific island is littered with 37.7 million pieces of plastic debris, scientists say.
  
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• 10 years of Ciwem Environmental Photographer of the Year – in pictures

  16-05-2017 08:03 via theguardian.com
  
  The Charted Institute for Waste and Environmental Management (Ciwem) Photographer of the Year competition was set up 10 years ago to chronicle human impact on the natural environment. The 2017 competition launches this week and judges include Stephen Fry, Ben Fogle and Steve BackshallContinue reading...
  
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• Why meat eaters should think much more about soil | John Sauven

  16-05-2017 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  If over-grazing continues to cause soil degradation, we won’t be able to feed people in the future. The answer? Eat grass-fed sustainable meat – or none at allWe often forget we ourselves are animals. Perhaps this is what makes it easier to eat them, wear them and experiment on them. Some of the more hardcore carnivores will loudly claim that the taste of a bacon sandwich is worth committing any cruelty for, but most of us eat meat while averting our gaze from its source.Of course, w
  
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• Chinese appetite for totoaba fish bladder may kill off rare vaquita

  16-05-2017 07:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Only 30 vaquita are left in Gulf of Mexico as pirate fishermen net them when fishing for highly valued totoaba mawsThe world’s rarest marine mammal is on the verge of extinction due to the continuing illegal demand in China for a valuable fish organ, an undercover investigation has revealed.There are no more than 30 vaquita – a five-foot porpoise – left in the northern Gulf of Mexico today and they could be extinct within months, conservationists have warned. The population has
  
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• Chinese appetite for totoaba fish bladder kills off rare porpoise

  16-05-2017 07:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Only 30 vaquita are left in Gulf of Mexico as pirate fishermen net them when fishing for highly valued totoaba mawsThe world’s rarest marine mammal is on the verge of extinction due to the continuing illegal demand in China for a valuable fish organ, an undercover investigation has revealed.There are no more than 30 vaquita – a five-foot porpoise – left in the northern Gulf of California today and they could be extinct within months, conservationists have warned. The population
  
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• Will Iran's next president care enough to put the environment first?

  16-05-2017 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Water shortages and air pollution concern voters, but candidates fear weakening their campaign if they don’t focus on the economy Four years ago one of the candidates in Iran’s presidential election made himself popular by promising to save Lake Urmia, one of the world’s largest saltwater lakes that was on the cusp of disappearing. Now, President Hassan Rouhani proudly recounts that promise, citing Urmia’s current state as an environmental success story made possible by p
  
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• Down with the bilberry bees

  16-05-2017 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Buxton, Derbyshire They look like animate furry fruit bonbons. The queens hatch late and their preferred food is bilberry and heatherAfter the most rainless spring that I can recall, the vegetation on the moor tops is frazzled to an August tinder. The full sweep of folded slopes look grey rather than the usual heathery brown, and even the deepest gullies are dry bottomed and crunchy underfoot. Yet the strong north-easterlies have kept the entire season freeze-dried, and there are almost no swall
  
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• Large-scale solar industry takes off as 12 new plants secure finance

  16-05-2017 04:28 via theguardian.com
  
  Support from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency has helped put large-scale solar on a solid footing despite cuts to its own fundingAustralia’s large-scale solar industry now appears to be on solid ground, with all 12 plants recently awarded grant funding by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency reaching “financial close” this month.That means they are fully financed and have locked in engineering, construction and grid connection agreements, as well as council and environm
  
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• Sesame project opens in Jordan

  16-05-2017 04:08 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Meet the scientist behind one of the biggest science projects in the Middle East.
  
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• Turning goats into water: A solution for the desert

  16-05-2017 03:06 via bbc.co.uk
  
  How an entrepreneur is bringing water to the deserts of Pakistan by using goats as currency.
  
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• Rare Mexican porpoise faces 'imminent extinction'

  16-05-2017 03:01 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A fishing ban extension is said to be the best hope for the world's most endangered marine species.
  
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• Inmarsat rides SpaceX Falcon into orbit

  16-05-2017 01:57 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The London-based satellite operator puts up a fourth spacecraft in its global broadband network.
  
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• 'Narco-deforestation': cocaine trade destroying swaths of Central America

  16-05-2017 01:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Drug trade’s efforts to launder profits by creating agricultural land results in loss of millions of acres, researchers sayCocaine traffickers attempting to launder their profits are responsible for the disappearance of millions of acres of tropical forest across large swaths of Central America, according to a report.The study, published on Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that drug trafficking was responsible for up to 30% of annual deforestation in Nicaragua,
  
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• Drug money destroying swaths of forest in Central America – study

  16-05-2017 01:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Cocaine traffickers’ efforts to launder profits by creating agricultural land results in loss of millions of acres, researchers sayCocaine traffickers attempting to launder their profits are responsible for the disappearance of millions of acres of tropical forest across large swaths of Central America, according to a report.The study, published on Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that drug trafficking was responsible for up to 30% of annual deforestation in Nic
  
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