Environment news

• Homeland Security To Waive Environmental Rules On Border Wall Projects

  01-08-2017 23:50 via feedproxy.google.com
  The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that it will use its authority to bypass environmental laws and other regulations to "ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads" near the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego."The sector remains an area of high illegal entry for which there is an immediate need to improve current infrastructure and construct additional border barriers and roads," the agency said in a statement. "To begin to meet the need for ad
  
  Read more

• Chemical weathering could alleviate some climate change effects

  01-08-2017 22:24 via feedproxy.google.com
  There could be some good news on the horizon as scientists try to understand the effects and processes related to climate change.
  
  Read more

• The wider effects of ending farm subsidies | Letters

  01-08-2017 20:23
  Huw Jones charts the impact on farming of cuts in support and Michael McLoughlin looks at the causes of suicide among Indian farmersPolly Toynbee (The Tories are split over farming. It’s hard not to gloat, 1 August) raises important issues. Subsidies were intended to lower food prices and increase discretionary income for manufactured products. The subsidy fills the gap between production costs and farm-gate prices, which were lowered by imports and by allowing food-chain “efficienci
  
  Read more

• A brief history of bearded cricketers | Letters

  01-08-2017 20:13
  Energy prices | Moeen Ali | Prudish chemists | Gay chants | LiberalismIt is disappointing to see such a large price rise from British Gas (Report, 1 August), but let’s not slam these suppliers for being greedy. They’re inefficient and outmoded – and it’s customers who pay the price. Energy doesn’t have to be this expensive, as proven by the dozens of newer suppliers with lower costs and better service. The only way to fix the broken energy market and the stranglehol
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• More than 1,000 people killed in India as human and wildlife habitats collide

  01-08-2017 18:38
  Elephant and tiger territories are shrinking as India’s growing population encroaches on wild spaces causing an increase in fatalitiesA deadly conflict is under way between India’s growing population and its wildlife confined to ever-shrinking forests and grasslands. Data shows that about one person has been killed on average every day for the past three years by roaming tigers or rampaging elephants. Statistics released this week by India’s environment ministry reveal that 1,1
  
  Read more

• The car has a chokehold on Britain. It’s time to free ourselves | George Monbiot

  01-08-2017 17:48
  Our insanely inefficient transport system is in thrall to the metal god. Electric vehicles are not the answerWe tell ourselves that we cherish efficiency. Yet we have created a transport system whose design principle is profligacy. Metal carriages (that increase in size every year), each carrying one or two people, travel in parallel to the same places. Lorries shifting identical goods in opposite directions pass each other on 2,000-mile journeys. Competing parcel companies ply the same routes,
  
  Read more

• No wonder farmers fear the Brexit wolf in sheep’s clothing | Polly Toynbee

  01-08-2017 17:47
  Most farmers voted leave. Now they are beginning to dread the withdrawal of EU subsidy – and see their traditional protectors in the Tory party as enemies• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnistHome from chasing lost sheep on a beautiful sunlit evening on Exmoor, Robin Milton contemplates the future for his thousand ewes. He is the eighth generation farming this green patch of England, 1,200 feet up, sodden with 80 inches of rain a year on land good for nothing much else. His income is
  
  Read more

• Did the first flower look like this?

  01-08-2017 17:18 via bbc.co.uk
  All living flowers ultimately derive from a single ancestor that lived about 140 million years ago, a study suggests.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Kids, cash, and snacks: What motivates a healthier food choice?

  01-08-2017 17:11 via feedproxy.google.com
  What determines how children decide to spend their cash on snacks? A new study shows that children’s experience with money and their liking of brands influenced purchase decisions – and that for some children, higher prices for unhealthy snacks might motivate healthier choices. The study is published in the journal Appetite.
  
  Read more

• Astronomers find that the sun's core rotates four times faster than its surface

  01-08-2017 17:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  The sun's core rotates nearly four times faster than the sun's surface, according to new findings by an international team of astronomers. Scientists had assumed the core was rotating like a merry-go-round at about the same speed as the surface.
  
  Read more

• Research Team Predicts Multi-Year U.S. Drought and Fire Conditions

  01-08-2017 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  The next mega-droughts and subsequent active wildfire seasons for the western U.S. might be predictable a full year in advance, extending well beyond the current seasonal forecast and helping segments of the economy related to agriculture, water management and forestry.
  
  Read more

• Adorable alpine animal acclimates behavior to a changing climate

  01-08-2017 16:50 via feedproxy.google.com
  As climate change brings new pressures to bear on wildlife, species must “move, adapt, acclimate, or die.” Erik Beever and colleagues review the literature on acclimation through behavioral flexibility, identifying patterns in examples from invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and fishes, in the cover article for the August issue of the Ecological Society of America’s (ESA) journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The authors focus on the American
  
  Read more

• Over 1,000 people killed in India as human and wildlife habitats collide

  01-08-2017 16:02
  Elephant and tiger territories are shrinking as India’s growing population encroaches on wild spaces causing an increase in fatalitiesA deadly conflict is under way between India’s growing population and its wildlife confined to ever-shrinking forests and grasslands. Data shows that about one person has been killed on average every day for the past three years by roaming tigers or rampaging elephants. Statistics released this week by India’s environment ministry reveal that 1,1
  
  Read more

• Utilities companies won't let you sell your own solar power. Why not?

  01-08-2017 16:00
  The electric utility sector is broken – but the transformation we need will be virtually impossible so long as a handful of wealthy elites are calling the shotsA new report from the US-based Energy and Policy Institute last week found that investor-owned utilities have known about climate change for nearly 50 years – and done everything in their power to stop governments from doing anything about it.From their commitment to toxic fuels to their corrosive influence on our democracy to
  
  Read more

• Grown-up gannets find favourite fishing grounds

  01-08-2017 15:10 via feedproxy.google.com
  Like humans, some birds can spend years learning and exploring before developing more settled habits.A study of northern gannets has shown adults return to the same patch of sea over and over again to find food.
  
  Read more

• Fear May Play a Role in Animal Extinction, Study Reveals

  01-08-2017 15:10 via feedproxy.google.com
  Fear alone may be enough to cause vulnerable species to go extinct, according to a new University of Guelph study.Prof. Ryan Norris has discovered that the mere smell of a predator affects the reproductive success of fruit flies.
  
  Read more

• Meat industry blamed for largest-ever 'dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico

  01-08-2017 13:19
  A new report shows toxins from companies like Tyson Foods are pouring into waterways in the gulf and surrounds, causing marine life to leave or dieThe global meat industry, already implicated in driving global warming and deforestation, has now been blamed for fueling what is expected to be the worst “dead zone” on record in the Gulf of Mexico.
  Toxins from manure and fertiliser pouring into waterways are exacerbating huge, harmful algal blooms that create oxygen-deprived stretches of
  
  Read more

• Wildlife on your doorstep: share your August photos

  01-08-2017 12:30
  Whether basking in sunshine in the northern hemisphere or fighting cooler temperatures in the south, we’d like to see the wildlife you discoverWherever you are in the world and however professional or amateur your photography set up, we would like to see your images of the wildlife living near you. Related: Otters, geese and grebes: your photos as the Wetland Trust turns 70Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Tornado creates amazing Dorset water spout

  01-08-2017 12:21 via bbc.co.uk
  A number of people across Weymouth reported seeing the phenomena earlier.
  
  Read more

• Underground magma triggered Earth’s worst mass extinction with greenhouse gases | Howard Lee

  01-08-2017 12:00
  There are parallels between today’s and past greenhouse gas-driven climate changes
  Coincidence doesn’t prove causality, as they say, but when the same two things happen together over and over again through the vast span of geological time, there must be a causal link. Of some 18 major and minor mass extinctions since the dawn of complex life, most happened at the same time as a rare, epic volcanic phenomenon called a Large Igneous Province (LIP). Many of those extinctions were also a
  
  Read more

• Man and dog pulled from car submerged in Colorado floods – video

  01-08-2017 11:40
  Emergency services rescue a man and his dog stuck in a car submerged in flood waters in Colorado on Sunday. Rescuers use a crane to move the man and his pet to safety. The car was parked off a road in Fremont County when the water hitContinue reading...
  
  Read more

• Man and dog pulled from car caught in Colorado floods – video

  01-08-2017 11:40
  Emergency services rescue a man and his dog stuck in a car caught in flood waters in Colorado on Sunday. Rescuers use a crane to move the man and his pet to safety. The car was parked off a road in Fremont County when the water hitContinue reading...
  
  Read more

• We'll never tackle climate change if academics keep the focus on consensus | Warren Pearce

  01-08-2017 09:00
  Media and political attention is being wasted on boosting the public’s notion of scientific consensus, crowding out more important discussion and action In a democracy, we hope that science helps to inform the public about its problems. In the case of climate change, believe it or not, the evidence suggests this is going relatively well. Climate science is a vast, sprawling field of knowledge that has achieved great success in occupying the public consciousness. According to Yale Universit
  
  Read more

• Lessons from the fast lane: does this study prove car-pooling works?

  01-08-2017 08:15
  When Jakarta ditched its controversial ‘three-in-one’ car-sharing rule many in the city expected the traffic to get better. It didn’t. A Harvard and MIT study analysed before-and-after Google traffic data to find out what happenedDriving in Jakarta at rush hour is something of a nightmare. The city’s 9.6 million population swells each work day with an additional 3.5 million people travelling in from outskirts, mostly by car or bus. Driving 25 miles from the suburb Bogor t
  
  Read more

• Wild tigers of Bhutan – in pictures

  01-08-2017 07:30
  Rare images of wild tigers in Bhutan captured by camera traps set up in a high altitude wildlife corridor verify that tigers and other animals are using stretches of land that connect protected areas. Photojournalist and filmmaker Emmanuel Rondeau undertook a three month expedition, supported by WWF and the Bhutanese government, to document tigers. His work reveals corridors are lifelines to otherwise isolated populations of tigers and other wildlife, and are critical to their genetic diversity,
  
  Read more

• Flowers work their healing magic on the old station platforms

  01-08-2017 06:30
  Millers Dale, Derbyshire A galaxy of tiny purple globes sway where once the milk churns waited for the night train to LondonThe old railway station in this part of Derbyshire’s Wye valley presents an astonishing happenstance of mixed colour. There is the Van Gogh yellow of the ragwort and the dark mullein spikes. There are the blended lilacs of field scabious and the rose shades from wild marjoram and over most of the area towers a canopy of greater and black knapweed flowers creating a ga
  
  Read more

• Post-Brexit Britain should phase out tariffs on food, says thinktank

  01-08-2017 01:01
  Policy Exchange says EU agricultural policy should be replaced by system that makes imported meat cheaper for consumersBritain should abandon tariffs on American and Argentinian meat products after Brexit to bring consumer food prices down, according to a leading rightwing thinktank.Policy Exchange said the UK should phase out tariffs on agricultural products, saying they raise prices and complicate trade deals, although critics say that would pave the way for hormone-treated beef or chlorine-wa
  
  Read more

• Niagara Falls: Smelly black water shocks visitors

  01-08-2017 00:46 via bbc.co.uk
  The local water board apologises for "causing alarm" with discharge from sewage tank maintenance.
  
  Read more

Follow @UK_Environment on Twitter!