Experts have recorded no seismic activity from Cumbre Vieja volcano since Monday night
A volcano that has been spewing lava in the Canary Islands for almost three months has quietened but scientists warned the lull did not necessarily mean the eruption was over.
Experts recorded no seismic activity from the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma island since Monday night, the Canary Islands’ volcanology institute tweeted.
Continue reading...Call comes after ambitious early draft of EU energy performance in buildings directive ran into opposition
The EU executive is under pressure to ratchet up green energy standards for buildings, as it prepares a further batch of legislation to tackle the climate emergency.
The European Commission is expected to propose mandatory energy efficiency upgrades for buildings in the EU in legislative proposals published on Wednesday, but MEPs and Green NGOs fear they will not be strict enough.
Continue reading...Ryad Alsous, whose story helped inspire the bestselling book, says life is sweet caring for his hives in Huddersfield
In 2013, Syrian beekeeper Ryad Alsous drank his last cup of mint tea on the balcony of his flat in Damascus. He was about to leave the city where he had spent his whole life and move to Britain. Eight years later, he is again drinking mint tea made in the same flask but this time in Huddersfield. The flask is the only item he still has from his home in Syria. He is talking about the moment he left. “It was very difficult. And also full of hope,” he says.
His block of flats had been bombed twice, and explosions in the eastern part of the city were happening daily. On the day he left, a loud bang nearby caused the doves perched on his balcony to briefly flutter into the air. He had been feeding the birds for years and realised they would have no one to look after them once he left.
Continue reading...Australian Conservation Foundation report found that climate change was not mentioned for 178 out of 334 critically endangered species and habitats
Conservation documents for more than half of Australia’s critically endangered species and habitats fail to mention climate change according to new analysis that argues there is a significant “climate gap” in the management of Australia’s threatened wildlife.
The report was commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and prepared by the Australian National University’s GreenLaw project, which is led by students in the ANU’s law faculty.
Continue reading...She started a youth strike in Uganda – then just kept going. She discusses climate justice, reparations, imperialism and why the global north must take responsibility
In February 2020, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Vanessa Nakate had her point made for her in the most vivid and “frustrating and heartbreaking” way. The Ugandan climate crisis activist, who turned 25 last month, had gone to Switzerland to introduce some perspective to its cosy consensus. “One of the things that I wanted to emphasise was the importance of listening to activists and people from the most affected areas,” she says. “How can we have climate justice if the people who are suffering the worst impacts of the climate crisis are not being listened to, not being platformed, not being amplified and are left out of the conversation? It’s not possible.”
To this end, she appeared at a press conference with Greta Thunberg and three other white, European youth climate strikers. When the Associated Press published a photo of the meeting, it cropped out Nakate. It was, she said at the time, her first encounter with direct and blatant racism – and only reinforced her point and made her campaign more urgent. AP later expressed “regret” for its “error in judgment”.
Continue reading...His career took Roff Smith, 63, to more than 100 countries. But he started to feel jaded. Exploring his local area by bike led to a whole new approach to his pictures
Roff Smith’s photographs show a solitary cyclist – Smith himself – in a painterly landscape. His wheels appear to turn briskly, but really the bike moves as slowly as it can without a wobble. As a writer and photographer for National Geographic magazine, Smith, 63, visited more than 100 countries, but now he has squeezed the brakes and shrunk his world. His photographs are all taken within a 10-mile radius of his home, and yet travel has never felt so rich to him as it does now.
Before the pandemic, he had already begun to feel jaded: air travel made “the world everywhere look the same”.
Continue reading...Record-breaking number of vessels being built or on order worldwide, despite environmental concerns
In an era of environmental awareness and conspicuous displays of sustainability, you might not expect a rise in the number of people with the means and appetite for a £50m floating fortress of solitude.
But, in part because of the coronavirus crisis, the superyacht industry is booming – and the number of vessels under construction or on order worldwide has hit a new record. According to figures revealed in the latest edition of Boat International’s Global Order Book, more than 1,200 superyachts are slated to be built – a rise of 25% on last year.
Continue reading...Oilwells set alight by Iraqi forces in 1991 were put out within months, but insidious pollution still mars the desert
For 10 months in Kuwait, everything was upside down. Daytime was full of darkness from the thick smoke, and nights were bright from the distant glow of burning oilwells.
When Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the occupation of Kuwait in August 1990 in an attempt to gain control of the lucrative oil supply of the Middle East and pay off a huge debt accrued from Kuwait, he was fairly quickly forced into retreat by a US coalition which began an intensive bombing campaign.
Continue reading...Firm says project off Shetland cannot proceed on originally planned timescale and it will assess next steps
Work on the Cambo oilfield off Shetland is being paused, its developers have said, plunging the future of oil exploration in the area into doubt.
Shell, which had been planning to develop the field with the private equity-backed fossil fuel explorer Siccar Point Energy, pulled out of the project last week after fierce opposition to it from environmental activists.
Continue reading...Japanese researchers use bird antibodies to detect virus under ultraviolet light
Japanese researchers have developed masks that use ostrich antibodies to detect Covid-19 by glowing under ultraviolet light.
The discovery, by Yasuhiro Tsukamoto and his team at Kyoto Prefectural University in western Japan, could provide for low-cost testing of the virus at home.
Continue reading...Bans failed to stop farmers torching fields each year but a new spray that turns stalks into fertiliser helps the soil and the air
Every autumn, Anil Kalyan, from Kutail village in India’s northern state of Haryana, would join tens of thousands of other paddy farmers to set fire to the leftover stalks after the rice harvest to clear the field for planting wheat.
But this year, Kalyan opted for change. He signed his land up for a trial being held in Haryana and neighbouring Punjab as an alternative to the environmentally hazardous stubble burning that is commonplace across India and a major cause of Delhi’s notorious smog.
Continue reading...Termed “neopelagic communities”, these colonies are thriving in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and going where the current flows
Masses of ocean plastic are providing artificial habitat for otherwise coastal species, according to a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal, Nature Communications.
The study’s authors observed floating water bottles, old toothbrushes and matted fishing nets. The possibility exists that species may be evolving to better adapt to life on plastic.
Continue reading...Study finds natural regrowth yields better results than human plantings and offers hope for climate recovery
Tropical forests can bounce back with surprising rapidity, a new study published today suggests.
An international group of researchers has found that tropical forests have the potential to almost fully regrow if they are left untouched by humans for about 20 years. This is due to a multidimensional mechanism whereby old forest flora and fauna help a new generation of forest grow – a natural process known as “secondary succession”.
Continue reading...Scientists working on the Search For The Lost Fishes project have spotted the freshwater Batman River loach, which has not been seen since 1974
A freshwater fish that scientists thought was extinct has been found in south-east Turkey, after an absence of nearly 50 years.
“I’ve been researching this area for 12 years and this fish was always on my wishlist,” said Dr Cüneyt Kaya, associate professor at Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University. “It’s taken a long time. When I saw the distinctive bands on the fish, I felt so happy. It was a perfect moment.”
Continue reading...As the sea claims more of the west African shoreline, those left homeless by floods are losing hope that the government will act
Waves have taken the landscape John Afedzie knew so well. “The waters came closer in the last few months, but now they have destroyed parts of schools and homes. The waves have taken the whole of the village. One needs to use a boat to commute now because of the rising sea levels,” he says.
Afedzie lives in Keta, one of Ghana’s coastal towns, where a month ago high tide brought seawater flooding into 1,027 houses, according to the government, leaving him among about 3,000 people made homeless overnight.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson ‘sorry to lose’ spokesperson for climate summit who was seen in footage joking about party during lockdown
Allegra Stratton has stepped down as the government’s spokesperson for the Cop26 climate summit after footage emerged of her joking about a party at Downing Street during the peak of lockdown rules in December last year.
Boris Johnson told a coronavirus press briefing on Wednesday that Stratton had been an “outstanding spokeswoman … I am very sorry to lose her”. But he added: “I take responsibility for everything that happens in this government and I have throughout the pandemic.”
Continue reading...‘He had been used for logging on the Andaman Islands. When I found him, he was 60, living in retirement – and loving his swims’
I lived at sea for 10 years. I co-owned and ran a global kiteboarding expedition business. We’d sail around the world on a 60-foot catamaran, following the trade winds, kiteboarding, surfing and paragliding in remote locations. One night, I watched a Hollywood movie called The Fall, which had a section where an elephant was swimming in tropical blue water. I didn’t know if it was real or a fake Hollywood thing. But I thought: “Man, if that does exist, I’d love to photograph it.”
I searched the internet and found the elephant from the film was living in the Andaman Islands, an Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal. When we sailed into the capital, Port Blair, a few months later in 2010, I decided to hop off and try to find this elephant. I found Rajan on Havelock (now Swaraj) Island and spent two weeks with him, learning about his incredible story.
Continue reading...After demonstrations see police use teargas and the death of one man, work begins to clear waste in Sfax after decision to move site
Work has begun to clear 30,000 tonnes of household rubbish from the streets of Tunisia’s “second city” of Sfax after the government backed down in a long-running dispute over a landfill site.
Residents and activists in Agareb, where the current dump is located, said the site, opened in 2008 near the El Gonna national park, was a risk to human health. In recent weeks, unrest in the region has escalated, with access to the site blocked and police using teargas against demonstrators from the town. One man, Abderrazek Lacheb, has allegedly died after being caught up in the demonstrations, although the police have denied his death was due to teargas.
Continue reading...Vibrant soundscape shows Indonesian reef devastated by blast fishing is returning to health
From whoops to purrs, snaps to grunts, and foghorns to laughs, a cacophony of bizarre fish songs have shown that a coral reef in Indonesia has returned rapidly to health.
Many of the noises had never been recorded before and the fish making these calls remain mysterious, despite the use of underwater speakers to try to “talk” to some.
Continue reading...In 1479 beetles were put on trial for ‘creeping secretly in the earth’
If you hold a Christmas beetle – small, brown, mechanical – in the palm of your hand, it moves as though under a spell. The spell commands it to keep walking, to burrow its surprisingly strong legs endlessly forwards, like the end of the year growing steadily nearer and just as steadily receding.
In Europe, Christmas beetles are called “cockchafers”. In the year 1478, they appeared in a French court to stand trial on the charge of having been sent by witches to destroy the laity’s crops (and jeopardise the church’s tithes).
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