Environment news

• Monkey Species Not Seen Alive for 80 Years Rediscovered in the Amazon

  14-08-2017 22:10 via feedproxy.google.com
  Scientists have rediscovered a species of monkey in the Brazilian Amazon not seen alive since 1936, according to reporting by Mongabay.The species, the bald-faced Vanzolini saki, was first discovered along the Rio Eiru more than 80 years ago by Alfonzo Olalla, an Ecuadorian naturalist. But scientists had found no other living evidence of the monkey since then. Earlier this year, a team of seven primatologists, led by Laura Marsh of the Global Conservation Institute, began a three-month expe
  
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• NASA's Sees a Tightly Wound Typhoon Banyan

  14-08-2017 21:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  Satellite imagery from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite showed powerful storms tightly would around Typhoon Banyan's center as it moved through the Pacific Ocean.On Aug. 14 at 02:06 UTC (Aug. 13 at 10:06 p.m. EDT) the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible look at Banyan. The visible image showed a tight concentration of strong thunderstorms around the center of circulation, but no eye was visible. However, microwave
  
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• Drone tech offers new ways to manage climate change

  14-08-2017 21:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  An innovation providing key clues to how humans might manage forests and cities to cool the planet is taking flight. Cornell researchers are using drone technology to more accurately measure surface reflectivity on the landscape, a technological advance that could offer a new way to manage climate change.“When making predictions about climate change, it’s critical that scientists understand how much energy the earth is absorbing and retaining,” said Charlotte Levy, a doctoral c
  
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• Student's idea leads to Antarctic volcano discovery

  14-08-2017 21:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  An Edinburgh student has helped identify what may be the largest volcanic region on Earth.
  
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• Study Links Major Floods in North America and Europe to Multi-Decade Ocean Patterns

  14-08-2017 20:48 via feedproxy.google.com
  The number of major floods in natural rivers across Europe and North America has not increased overall during the past 80 years, a recent study has concluded. Instead researchers found that the occurrence of major flooding in North America and Europe often varies with North Atlantic Ocean temperature patterns.
  
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• Prehistoric marine worm caught prey with spines deployed from head

  14-08-2017 20:48 via feedproxy.google.com
  A team of scientists has identified a small marine predator that once patrolled the ocean floor and grabbed its prey with 50 spines deployed from its head.Named Capinatator praetermissus, this ancient creature is roughly 10 centimetres long and represents a new species within the group of animals known as chaetognaths – small, swimming marine carnivores also known as arrow worms.
  
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• Ozone Treaty Taking a Bite Out of Us Greenhouse Gas Emissions

  14-08-2017 20:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  The Montreal Protocol, the international treaty adopted to restore Earth’s protective ozone layer in 1989, has significantly reduced emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals from the United States. In a twist, a new study shows the 30-year old treaty has had a major side benefit of reducing climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S.That’s because the ozone-depleting substances controlled by the treaty are also potent greenhouse gases, with heat-trapping abilities up to 10,
  
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• Australian coal-power pollution would be illegal in US, Europe and China – report

  14-08-2017 20:00
  Environmental Justice Australia report says Australian coal-fired power plants regularly exceed lax limits imposed on themAustralian coal-fired power stations produce levels of toxic air pollution that would be illegal in the US, Europe and China, and regularly exceed even the lax limits imposed on them with few or no consequences, according to an investigation by Environmental Justice Australia.The report reveals evidence that operators of coal power plants in Australia have been gaming the sys
  
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• Australian coal-power allowable pollution would be illegal in US, Europe and China – report

  14-08-2017 20:00
  Environmental Justice Australia report says Australian coal-fired power plants regularly exceed lax limits imposed on themAustralian coal-fired power stations are allowed to produce levels of toxic air pollution that would be illegal in the US, Europe and China, and may exceed even the lax limits imposed on them with few or no consequences, according to an investigation by Environmental Justice Australia.The report reveals evidence that operators of coal power plants in Australia have been gamin
  
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• Shell and Exxon face censure over claim gas was 'cleanest fossil fuel'

  14-08-2017 18:14
  Dutch advertising watchdog’s ruling prompts company to change line to ‘least polluting fossil fuel’ as campaigners welcome action over ‘misleading’ ad The Dutch advertising watchdog will on Tuesday censure Shell and Exxon for claiming that natural gas was “the cleanest of all fossil fuels” in an advert earlier this year.It will be the second time this summer that the Netherlands advertising standards board has ruled against the fossil fuels industry, aft
  
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• Pesticides could wipe out bumblebee populations, study shows

  14-08-2017 17:16
  Neonicotinoid drastically cuts egg-laying by queens, affecting their ability to start new colonies and increasing chances of local extinction, say scientists A controversial pesticide can potentially wipe out common bumblebee populations by preventing the formation of new colonies, research has shown.The neonicotinoid chemical thiamethoxam dramatically reduces egg-laying by queen bumblebees, say scientists.Continue reading...
  
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• Tagus river at risk of drying up completely

  14-08-2017 16:39
  Climate change, dams and diversion bring Iberian peninsula’s longest river, on which millions depend, to brink of collapseThe Tagus river, the longest in the Iberian peninsula, is in danger of drying up completely as Spain once again finds itself in the grip of drought.Miguel Ángel Sánchez, spokesman of the Platform in Defence of the Tagus, says “the river has collapsed through a combination of climate change, water transfer and the waste Madrid produces.”Continue
  
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• Is the world really better than ever? – podcast

  14-08-2017 14:12
  The headlines have never been worse. But an increasingly influential group of thinkers insists that humankind has never had it so good – and only our pessimism is holding us back • Read the text version hereSubscribe via Audioboom, iTunes, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Acast & Sticher and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter Continue reading...
  
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• Italy official defends killing rare bear after man mauled

  14-08-2017 13:55 via bbc.co.uk
  A rare female brown bear had to be shot in the Italian Alps as it threatened humans, a governor says.
  
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• Poison once flowed in America's waters. With Trump, it might again | Peter Gleick

  14-08-2017 12:00
  Over the past four decades, a huge amount of effort has gone into cleaning America’s heavily polluted waters. Is all of that progress about to be undone?Peter Gleick is a member of the US National Academy of Science and the president-emeritus of Pacific InstituteAs a scientist working for decades on national and global water and climate challenges, I must speak out against what I see as an assault on America’s water resources. I grew up in New York in the 1960s hearing about massive
  
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• Great climate science communication from Yale Climate Connections | John Abraham

  14-08-2017 12:00
  Stellar work by group led by Anthony Leiserowitz on putting climate change research into public domain is empowering citizens and institutionsThis is an unabashed endorsement of an important group. I have no affiliation with them or conflict of interest. They are great, period.The ability to convey complex climate science to a wide-ranging audience is a golden attribute, something very few can achieve. This characteristic makes the Yale Climate Connections group unique. Continue reading...
  
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• Put identity politics aside. The left’s priority has to be saving the planet | Matthew Todd

  14-08-2017 11:00
  You expect to find climate change denial on the right. But from the left too, there is a strange silence about the single most pressing issue facing humanitySomeone writes a memo about his views on gender difference and it kicks off. Apparently women are in tears, too traumatised to go to work. A baker refuses to ice a wedding cake for two guys and my Twitter feed practically bursts into flames. “HOW CAN THIS BE HAPPENING?!”But mention the climate crisis, something that is smashing t
  
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• Bats set up home inside dinosaur at Devon theme park

  14-08-2017 10:15 via bbc.co.uk
  The lesser horseshoe bats moved in to the belly of a triceratops at the Wildlife and Dinosaur Park.
  
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• Cassini skims Saturn's atmosphere

  14-08-2017 09:34 via bbc.co.uk
  Cassini is on its final five full orbits of Saturn, getting close enough to directly "taste" its gases.
  
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• Port Augusta solar thermal plant to power South Australian government

  14-08-2017 09:07
  Jay Weatherill’s government says 150 megawatt plant will be biggest of its kind in the world and create about 700 jobsA proposed solar thermal power plant in South Australia’s mid-north has been contracted to supply all the state government’s power needs.Work on the $650m SolarReserve facility will start in 2018, creating 650 construction jobs and 50 ongoing positions. Continue reading...
  
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• 'We are jobless because of fish poisoning': Vietnamese fishermen battle for justice

  14-08-2017 08:00
  A year after Vietnam’s worst environmental disaster, lives remain ruined while the government cracks down on protesters seeking compensation“We used to eat the meat of the pig, but now all we have to eat is the skin” – the Vietnamese saying neatly encapsulates the predicament facing the country’s fishermen, says Nguyen Viet Thieu.“Before the marine disaster happened, I could earn up to 15m Vietnamese dongs [£500],” reflects Nguyen. “But after
  
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• Movie star otters and pipe-smoking bears: the fabulous animal films of David Cobham

  14-08-2017 07:00
  The man who filmed Tarka the Otter has a new creature to save. David Cobham talks about the soaring life and tragic death of a hen harrier named after Bet Lynch – and relives his tussle with a runaway bearFlap, flap, flap, flap – glide. There’s a moment reading Bowland Beth when suddenly you’re airborne, flying above dark moorland, fixing a bird’s eye on the human-dominated world below. That’s exactly David Cobham’s intention – because his new book
  
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• Spare a thought for the curlew's sinister, self-effacing cousin

  14-08-2017 06:30
  Rye Harbour, East Sussex The omens are bad for the whimbrel, a summer visitor that has all but disappeared from the estuaryOnly a few years ago, they used to stage whimbrel walks at Rye Harbour nature reserve. In late summer, these birds, which look like small dark curlew, would stream from estuary to estuary in their thousands, on their way from breeding grounds on Orkney and Shetland to winter on the west African coast. Now, you’re lucky to see a single one out on the salt marshes amid t
  
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• Cassini to skim Saturn's atmosphere

  14-08-2017 02:16 via bbc.co.uk
  Cassini is on its final five full orbits of Saturn, getting close enough to directly "taste" its gases.
  
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• Factory farming in Asia creating global health risks, report warns

  14-08-2017 01:01
  Growth of intensive units has potential to increase antibiotic resistance and could result in spread of bird flu beyond regionThe use of antibiotics in factory farms in Asia is set to more than double in just over a decade, with potentially damaging effects on antibiotic resistance around the world.Factory farming of poultry in Asia is also increasing the threat of bird flu spreading beyond the region, with more deadly strains taking hold, according to a new report from a network of financial in
  
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