Environment news

• 'World's oldest wine' found in 8,000-year-old jars in Georgia

  13-11-2017 23:47 via bbc.co.uk
  Pottery found near Tbilisi shows wine-making was taking place 8,000 years ago, scientists say.
  
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• Labour vows to factor climate change risk into economic forecasts

  13-11-2017 23:29 via theguardian.com
  Shadow chancellor John McDonnell to say ‘overwhelming challenge of climate change’ must be addressed from very centre of governmentThe risk posed by climate change would be factored into projections from the government’s independent economic forecaster under a future Labour government, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, will announce on Tuesday.
  McDonnell will highlight the human and economic costs of manmade climate change, calling it the “greatest single public chal
  
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• 'Tobacco at a cancer summit': Trump coal push savaged at climate conference

  13-11-2017 22:40 via theguardian.com
  The US administration’s attempt to portray fossil fuels as vital to reducing poverty and saving US jobs is ridiculed in BonnThe Trump team was heckled and interrupted by a protest song at the UN’s climate change summit in Bonn on Monday after using its only official appearance to say fossil fuels were vital to reducing poverty around the world and to saving jobs in the US.While Donald Trump’s special adviser on energy and environment, David Banks, said cutting emissions was a U
  
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• After years of nearly flat growth, global fossil fuel emissions are inching up, according to report by Stanford-led group

  13-11-2017 22:26 via feedproxy.google.com
  Policymakers at this week’s international climate negotiations in Germany meet amid sobering news that gives their work new urgency. After three years of flat growth, global fossil fuel emissions are rising again, according to a series of reports from the Global Carbon Project, a group chaired by Stanford scientist Rob Jackson.
  
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• Why tolerate Tarmac-geddon in the countryside? | Patrick Barkham

  13-11-2017 19:51 via theguardian.com
  The Arundel bypass shows the folly of our car-crazed culture. Are we prepared to sacrifice the natural wealth of a national park to shave 10 minutes off a journey?Like most motorists passing the West Sussex town of Arundel, I spent some time last week in a jam at Crossbush, one of the most bizarre road junctions ever. A child could design a better way of moving traffic into the single-carriageway A27.I then spent several hours in the countryside that grown-ups hope will alleviate this jam.
  
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• 15,000 Scientists in 184 Countries Warn About Negative Global Environmental Trends

  13-11-2017 18:36 via feedproxy.google.com
  Human well-being will be severely jeopardized by negative trends in some types of environmental harm, such as a changing climate, deforestation, loss of access to fresh water, species extinctions and human population growth, scientists warn in today’s issue of BioScience, an international journal.
  
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• Pro-Brexit British billionaire buys Swiss football club Lausanne

  13-11-2017 18:35 via theguardian.com
  Jim Ratcliffe, founder of chemicals and fracking giant Ineos, recently tried to get government subsidies to build successor to Land Rover DefenderIneos, the petrochemicals company founded by billionaire Brexit backer Jim Ratcliffe, has announced plans to buy a Swiss football club, the latest in a spree of seemingly unconnected acquisitions.The privately owned firm said it was buying FC Lausanne-Sport, which plays in Switzerland’s top football league, to build on existing links it had forge
  
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• Team Finds First Wild Alligator Snapping Turtle in Illinois Since 1984

  13-11-2017 17:48 via feedproxy.google.com
  Researchers report the first sighting in 30 years of a wild alligator snapping turtle in Illinois. The discovery may be a sign of hope for this state-endangered species, or the animal could be the last of its kind to have survived in Illinois without human intervention, the researchers say.
  
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• Learning from Photosynthesis

  13-11-2017 17:43 via feedproxy.google.com
  The green sulfur bacterium makes its home in the chilly waters of the Black Sea. To eek out its lonely existence, this life form scavenges energy from the feeble sunlight available to it at a depth of over 250 feet.
  
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• Urban Trees are Growing Faster Worldwide

  13-11-2017 17:23 via feedproxy.google.com
  Trees in metropolitan areas have been growing faster than trees in rural areas worldwide since the 1960s. This has been confirmed for the first time by a study on the impact of the urban heat island effect on tree growth headed by the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The analysis conducted by the international research team also shows that the growth of urban trees has already been exposed to changing climatic conditions for a long period of time, which is only just beginning to happen for
  
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• Antarctica's warm underbelly revealed

  13-11-2017 15:08 via bbc.co.uk
  Scientists make the most detailed map yet of the heat rising under the ice sheet from rocks below.
  
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• Street lamp charging network to power EVs in central London

  13-11-2017 14:45
  Electric vehicle (EV) charging facilities which draw on 100% renewable energy from street lamp posts are set to be placed on the streets of Kensington and Chelsea, creating the largest network of its kind in central London.
  
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• York University research shows insecticide-laden seeds can disorient migrating songbirds

  13-11-2017 14:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  Songbirds exposed to widely used insecticides during migration pit stops on farmland could lose significant body weight and become disoriented, research by York University and the University of Saskatchewan (U. of S.) has found.The researchers exposed white-crowned sparrows on spring migration to realistic doses of two different insecticides – imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid, and chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate – to see the effects on migratory activity, orientation and body mass.
  
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• Designing the climate observing system of the future

  13-11-2017 14:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  A targeted expansion of climate observing systems could help scientists answer knotty questions about climate while delivering trillions of dollars in benefits, according to a new paper published today in the online journal Earth’s Future. Better observations would provide decision makers information they need to protect public health and the economy in the coming decades, the scientists say.Venkatachalam Ramaswamy, director of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, said that
  
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• Pricing mechanisms needed to secure renewable energy acceleration, report finds

  13-11-2017 14:00
  Falling costs in renewable energy technologies has put the UK on course to meet its 2030 renewables development objective, but a higher carbon price market is needed to spur acceleration, a new report from global IT consultancy Capgemini has found.
  
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• New investor partnership scores corporates on physical climate risk exposure

  13-11-2017 12:22
  Deutsche Asset Management (DAM) has formed a new partnership with a US-based advisory to develop a first-of-its-kind climate risk service that calculates the physical climate risks of investor portfolios.
  
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• On climate and global leadership, it's America Last until 2020 | Dana Nuccitelli

  13-11-2017 12:00 via theguardian.com
  America is deeply divided, but climate-denying Republicans are losing their grip on power
  Five months ago, Trump quickly cemented his legacy as the country’s worst-ever president by inexplicably starting the process to withdraw from the Paris climate accords. With even war-torn Syria now signing the agreement, the leadership of every world country has announced its intent to tackle the existential threat posed by human-caused climate change, except the United States.It's the US vs. the res
  
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• Share your photos and stories of how you are avoiding plastic

  13-11-2017 11:32 via theguardian.com
  With a growing number of UK food and drink outlets ditching drinking straws and plastic bottles, we’d like to hear your tips for reducing plastic consumption
  Pret A Manger announced in October the installation of taps dispensing free filtered water in some of its stores in an attempt to reduce the company’s use of plastic.A growing number of food and drink outlets are taking action to ditch plastic amid deepening concern about its effect on the environment, with drinking straws and b
  
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• Defra to launch consultation on independent body for environmental standards

  13-11-2017 11:08
  Environment Secretary Michael Gove has confirmed that an independent body to hold the Government to account over environmental standards after the UK has left the European Union will be established following a consultation early next year.
  
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• From the Everglades to Kilimanjaro, climate change is destroying world wonders

  13-11-2017 10:47 via theguardian.com
  Number of natural world heritage sites at serious risk from global warming has doubled in three years, says the IUCN, including the Great Barrier Reef and spectacular karst caves in EuropeFrom the Everglades in the US to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, climate change is destroying the many of the greatest wonders of the natural world.
  A new report on Monday from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reveals that the number of natural world heritage sites being damaged an
  
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• Venus and Jupiter conjunction: Sky-watchers witness dawn display

  13-11-2017 09:52 via bbc.co.uk
  Enthusiasts across the UK share their photos of the two brightest planets appearing together.
  
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• Fossil fuel burning set to hit record high in 2017, scientists warn

  13-11-2017 09:30 via theguardian.com
  The rise would end three years of flat carbon emissions – a ‘huge leap backward’ say some scientists, while others say the longer term trend is more hopefulThe burning of fossil fuels around the world is set to hit a record high in 2017, climate scientists have warned, following three years of flat growth that raised hopes that a peak in global emissions had been reached.
  The expected jump in the carbon emissions that drive global warming is a “giant leap backwards for hu
  
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• First CO2 rise in four years puts pressure on Paris targets

  13-11-2017 09:30 via bbc.co.uk
  Uptick in coal use in China sees global CO2 emissions projected to rise after years of little or no growth.
  
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• Why my council pension fund is divesting £1.2bn from fossil fuels

  13-11-2017 08:23 via theguardian.com
  Local authorities invest £16bn in fossil fuel companies. In Southwark, we will no longer do this Data released on 9 November shows that the UK’s local authorities invest more than £16bn into companies that extract oil, gas and coal. Collectively, the country’s local government pension funds have nearly £3,000 invested in fossil fuels for every pension fund member. Southwark has decided we will no longer do this.In December 2016, Southwark council pension fund made a
  
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• Country diary: starlings dot the lighthouse roof like currants on a bun

  13-11-2017 06:30 via theguardian.com
  St Mary’s Island, Northumberland Children with fluorescent nets peer into plastic buckets; their cries of excitement echoed by the piping of seabirds Heading south on the coastal path, we leave Old Hartley village, drawn magnetically by St Mary’s Island with its tall white lighthouse. The sea is a muted grey, with two vast container ships at rest near its meeting with a paler sky. The footpath skirts a tufty hillock where a kestrel hovers over rough grass, fenced off from the path by
  
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• Medibank drops fossil-fuel investments worth tens of millions of dollars

  13-11-2017 02:26 via theguardian.com
  Australia’s largest private health insurer says it ‘acknowledges the science of climate change and the impacts on human health’Australia’s largest private health insurer, Medibank, will shed tens of millions of dollars in fossil-fuel investments because of the effects of climate change on human health.In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange before its annual general meeting in Melbourne on Monday, its chair, Elizabeth Alexander, said the company would move to low-
  
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