Nine-seater plane should take to skies on Thursday and produce no carbon emissions
The world’s largest all-electric aircraft is about to take to the skies for the first time.
The Cessna Caravan, retrofitted with an electric engine, is expected to fly for 20-30 minutes over Washington State in the US on Thursday.
Continue reading...Shrimpers have a long and proud cultural tradition in the US – one that is now under threat from all sides
Captain Wynn Gale – a fifth-generation Georgia shrimper – is on the side of the road on an April morning, selling shrimp at the same street corner where his dad sold shrimp.
“How’s the pandemic treating you?” I ask.
Continue reading...With world’s attention on Covid-19, warnings that lack of measures to contain pandemic could lead to culling of record number of pigs
The African swine fever (ASF) pandemic will be even worse this year than in 2019, say experts, warning that the spread of the highly contagious virus, which is fatal to pigs, is unrelenting.
With world attention on the human viral pandemic of Covid-19, concern is growing that countries are not focusing enough on halting the spread of ASF through better biosecurity practices, cooperation on intensive vaccine development, or transparency regarding outbreaks.
Continue reading...Exclusively compiled data from the Hadley Centre’s supercomputer shows alarming climate trajectory
The human fingerprint on the climate is now unmistakable and will become increasingly evident over the coming decades, the UK Met Office has confirmed after 30 years of pioneering study.
Since the 1990s, global temperatures have warmed by half a degree, Arctic sea ice has shrunk by almost 2 million km2, sea-levels have risen by about 10cm and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 60 parts per million (17%), according to figures exclusively compiled for the Guardian to mark the 30th anniversary of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for climate science and services.
Continue reading...While colour of body changes little, legs are more translucent to help amphibians to blend in
The mystery of why glass frogs have see-through skin has been solved, scientists say: the unusual feature is a type of camouflage.
Glass frogs are found in tropical Central and South America, and get their name from their skin.
Continue reading...Carmaker must pay compensation to motorist who bought minivan fitted with emissions-cheating software
Volkswagen has lost a landmark legal battle in Germany’s highest civil court over compensation for the buyer of a secondhand minivan fitted with emissions-cheating software.
The world’s largest carmaker must take back the plantiff’s manipulated car and pay him €28,257.74 (£25,325), in a case that will lead to the company paying compensation to 60,000 German VW owners.
Continue reading...Bushfires and Covid-19 highlight connection between human health and natural world, states letter by almost 200 doctors and scientists
Leading health professionals, including a Nobel laureate and a former Australian of the Year, say the government must put human health “front and centre” in a new generation of environment laws in the aftermath of the Covid-19 and bushfire crises.
The Nobel prize-winning immunologist Peter Doherty and the epidemiologist and former Australian of the Year Fiona Stanley are among 180 professionals who have warned the government that Australia’s “failing” environmental laws will fuel further public health crises.
Continue reading...The Morrison government commission has promoted gas as a key way to boost the economy after the coronavirus crisis
The head of the Morrison government commission tasked with coming up with plans to revitalise the economy after the coronavirus crisis, Nev Power, is to step aside from his position as deputy chairman of a gas company over conflict of interest concerns.
“Because of the perceptions of conflict of interest he has stepped back from participating in board meetings and will not participate in the decisions of the board” of Strike Energy, a spokesman for the National Covid-19 Coordination Commission said on Friday evening.
Continue reading...Ban on use of subcontractors and fines of €30,000 for slaughterhouses breaching new labour regulations a ‘historic moment’, say campaigners
The German government has announced a series of reforms of the meat industry, including a ban on the use of subcontractors and fines of €30,000 (£26,000) for companies breaching labour regulations, as slaughterhouses have emerged as coronavirus hotspots.
A number of meat plants across the country have temporarily closed after hundreds of workers tested positive for Covid-19 in recent weeks.
Continue reading...High court rejects challenge after ministers overruled climate objections of planning officials
The UK government’s approval of a large new gas-fired power plant has been ruled legal by the high court. A legal challenge was brought after ministers overruled climate change objections from planning authorities.
The plant, which is being developed by Drax in North Yorkshire, would be the biggest gas power station in Europe, and could account for 75% of the UK’s power sector emissions when fully operational, according to lawyers for ClientEarth, which brought the judicial review.
Continue reading...Fridays for Future to publish letter urging reform of common agricultural policy ahead of European commission meeting
The EU’s farming sector needs radical reform, and the common agricultural policy (CAP) must be rewritten if the climate crisis is to be tackled, a group of young climate activists will urge.
Fridays for Future, founded by teenagers in the wake of Greta Thunberg’s school strikes, will confront the European commission’s vice-president, Frans Timmermans, online to call for new plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, and replace subsidies based on the amount of land farmed with payments for farmers supplying public goods, such as clean water, clean air and lower carbon emissions.
Continue reading...Particles may outnumber zooplankton, which underpin marine life and regulate climate
The abundance of microplastic pollution in the oceans is likely to have been vastly underestimated, according to research that suggests there are at least double the number of particles as previously thought.
Scientists trawled waters off the coasts of the UK and US and found many more particles using nets with a fine mesh size than when using coarser ones usually used to filter microplastics. The addition of these smaller particles to global estimates of surface microplastics increases the range from between 5tn and 50tn particles to 12tn-125tn particles, the scientists say.
Continue reading...Antarctica is turning green due to the climate crisis and the phenomenon is potentially offering sustenance to other species, according to the first large-scale algae map of the peninsular by University of Cambridge scientists.
The map identifies 1,679 separate blooms of green snow algae, which together cover an area of 1.9 sq km, equating to a carbon sink of about 479 tonnes a year. This is equivalent to the emissions of about 875,000 petrol car journeys in the UK, though in global terms it is too small to make much of a difference to the planet’s carbon budget
Continue reading...Catastrophic flooding could potentially release toxic pollution from site contaminated by Dow Chemical
Catastrophic flooding triggered by dam failures in Michigan could potentially release toxic pollution from a site contaminated by the industrial giant Dow Chemical.
Dow’s facility in Midland, Michigan, where the company is headquartered along the Tittabawassee River, manufactured chlorine-based products beginning in the early 1900s. The company discharged dioxins, chemical compounds which can cause reproductive harm and cancer, into the river.
Continue reading...Rapidly rising water overwhelmed dams and forced the evacuation of about 10,000 people in central Michigan, where flooding struck communities along rain-swollen waterways and the governor said downtown could be 'under approximately nine feet of water' by Wednesday
Continue reading...Researchers map ‘beginning of new ecosystem’ as algae bloom across surface of melting snow
Scientists have created the first large-scale map of microscopic algae on the Antarctic peninsula as they bloom across the surface of the melting snow, tinting the surface green and potentially creating a source of nutrition for other species.
The British team behind the research believe these blooms will expand their range in the future because global heating is creating more of the slushy conditions they need to thrive.
Continue reading...Concern that new strategy, which also includes protecting primeval forests, ‘lacks tools’
The European commission will launch a sweeping effort to tackle the global biodiversity crisis on Wednesday, including a call for 3 billion trees to be planted in the EU by 2030 and a plan to better protect the continent’s last primeval forests.
The draft policy document, published online by an environmental NGO, admits that to date in the EU, “protection has been incomplete, restoration has been small-scale, and the implementation and enforcement of legislation has been insufficient”.
Continue reading...Closure of meat plants due to coronavirus means ‘depopulation’ of hens and pigs with methods experts say are inhumane, despite unprecedented demand at food banks
More than 10 million hens are estimated to have been culled due to Covid-19 related slaughterhouse shutdowns. The majority will have been smothered by a water-based foam, similar to fire-fighting foam, a method that animal welfare groups are calling “inhumane”.
The pork industry has warned that more than 10 million pigs could be culled by September for the same reason. The techniques used to cull pigs include gassing, shooting, anaesthetic overdose, or “blunt force trauma”.
Continue reading...A Billy bookcase is made every three seconds. But with a third of people admitting to throwing away furniture that they could have sold or donated, does the cheap furniture boom have a heavy environmental price?
Jo Jackson remembers the day when it was clear that nothing was going to be the same for a while. It was mid-March and Made.com, an online purveyor of millennial-friendly furniture, had big plans for growth in the year of its 10th anniversary.
Continue reading...Climate breakdown means conditions that wrought devastation across Great Plains could return to region
The agricultural conditions known as a “dust bowl”, which helped propel mass migration among drought-stricken farmers in the US during the great depression of the 1930s, are now more than twice as likely to reoccur in the region, because of climate breakdown, new research has found.
Dust bowl conditions in the 1930s wrought devastation across the US agricultural heartlands of the Great Plains, which run through the middle of the continental US stretching from Montana to Texas. The conditions are caused by a combination of heatwaves, drought and farming practices, replacing the native prairie vegetation.
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