Environment news

• Terrorists' moral judgment probed in psychology test

  26-05-2017 20:27 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Researchers say their study identifies "cognitive factors" that might lie behind brutal acts.
  
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• Let’s keep our water safe and free to drink | Letters

  26-05-2017 19:44 via theguardian.com
  
  Kierra Box, Maureen Wood and Margaret Cliff on protecting a precious resourceThis weekend Brits will flock to our beaches. Thanks to EU pressure, visitors to more than 95% of our bathing beaches can paddle safe in the knowledge that nothing nasty lurks beneath the waves – a massive improvement since 1987, when it was judged safe to enter the water at just 55% of our favourite swimming spots. However, the European Environment Agency is right to raise a red flag (UK bathing water ranks next
  
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• Solar power breaks UK records thanks to sunny weather

  26-05-2017 17:09 via theguardian.com
  
  Thousands of photovoltaic panels across the UK generate 8.7GW, smashing previous high of 8.48GW earlier this monthSolar power has broken new records in the UK by providing nearly a quarter of the country’s electricity needs, thanks to sunny skies and relatively low summer demand.National Grid said the thousands of photovoltaic panels on rooftops and in fields across the UK were generating 8.7GW, or 24.3% of demand at 1pm on Friday, smashing the previous high of 8.48GW earlier this month. C
  
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• The Ice by Laline Paull review – allegory in the Arctic

  26-05-2017 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Human intrigue is mixed with climate change in this tale by the author of The Bees“Where is the fiction about climate change?” Amitav Ghosh asked in these pages last year. It’s a good question: glance at most publishers’ catalogues and you would never know that humanity was facing the greatest challenge of its existence. Laline Paull’s two novels to date have brought humanity and narrative to the changes already under way on Earth – and unlike most environment
  
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• Diesel cars, soggy salad and why whales became so large – green news roundup

  26-05-2017 15:45 via theguardian.com
  
  The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox Continue reading...
  
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• Britain's great explorations now online

  26-05-2017 14:16 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The Royal Geographical Society is releasing films of its scientific explorations from the early 20th Century.
  
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• Extremely polluting Nissan and Renault diesel cars still on sale, data reveals

  26-05-2017 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Cars that emit up to 18 times the official NOx limit in real-world conditions are still being sold, 20 months after the emissions scandal broke and amid an ongoing air pollution crisisDiesel cars that emit up to 18 times the official limit for toxic pollution when taken on to the road are still being sold, 20 months after the emissions scandal erupted and amid an ongoing air pollution crisis.In real world conditions, the Nissan Qashqai produces 18 times more nitrogen oxides than the official lab
  
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• We must stop seabird numbers falling off a cliff. After all, we’re to blame | Adam Nicolson

  26-05-2017 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Just as science is understanding the extraordinary lives of puffins and shearwaters, we are destroying them. And climate change may finish what we startedAbout 70,000 tonnes of seabird are now afloat or on the wing off the shores of the British Isles. This biomass – roughly the same as Salisbury Cathedral – is made up entirely of thinking, fishing, hunting, flirting, fighting, flying, diving and feathered beauty: 8 million breeders, several million more adolescents and, by the end of
  
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• Skippers and kings in the chalk rubble reserve

  26-05-2017 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Bloody Oaks Quarry, Rutland Sitting on a salad burnet flower head is a dingy skipper, then I find the royal blue chalk milkwortThis tiny nature reserve, a long thin quarry, is no bigger than two football pitches, yet it is an essential home for many types of plants and animals. The colourful name apparently dates back to the Wars of the Roses and a 1470 battle between the Yorkist King Edward IV and the Lancastrian Welles family. The king opened by beheading Lord Welles, then launched a volley of
  
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• Can fish skin help treat burns?

  26-05-2017 06:08 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Doctors in Brazil are experimenting with a new treatment for burns by using fish skin.
  
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• Adani Carmichael mine to get six-year holiday on royalties, report says

  26-05-2017 05:08 via theguardian.com
  
  Activist groups warn that swathes of farmland are at risk since the holiday would cover the Galilee basin and two other undeveloped mining regionsThe Adani Carmichael project will reportedly receive a reduced royalty “holiday” offer from the Queensland government under a policy that activists say would subsidise other vast new coal projects that imperil swathes of farmland.The state treasurer, Curtis Pitt, declined on Friday to confirm a report by the Australian that the Palaszczuk g
  
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• Public lands offer the best place for recreation. Speak up and protect them | Land Tawney

  26-05-2017 00:27 via theguardian.com
  
  Land Tawney, president of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, explains why the fight for national monuments is a battle sportsmen and women must winSigned into law by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the Antiquities Act has been used by 16 presidents – eight Republicans and eight Democrats – to safeguard millions of acres of exceptional public lands and waters, including outstanding fish and wildlife habitat that provides some of the best hiking, camping, floating, hunting and fishing in the
  
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