Around The Web

Plan for fund combining taxpayers’ cash and private investment significantly behind schedule, it has emerged

A £400m government plan to build electric car charging points looks likely to be significantly delayed, in a blow to car manufacturers and efforts to tackle air pollution in UK cities.

The Treasury pledged last year to support the switch to zero-emission vehicles with a £400m fund for charging infrastructure. Half of the money was to come from the taxpayer, with the rest matched by the private sector, according to an announcement in the autumn budget.

Continue reading...

The share of German carbon allowances bought by big emitters rose for a second straight month in March, with operators taking more than half of the 17.44 million sold.

We want to hear from those who have seen tree felling along tracks and what they think its affect may be on the environment and wildlife

One witness called tree cutting along a track near him as “total mass destruction” as it was revealed that Network Rail launched a secretive felling operation putting millions of trees at risk.

Ray Walton, who saw hundreds of trees being chopped down along the length of track between Christchurch and Bournemouth said: “These trees were mature 30-foot-high trees which have been there for 50 years in some cases and never caused a problem. This went far beyond reasonable management of the trees.”

Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts

More than 42,000 deer are killed in collisions on the UK’s roads every year, according to the AA. But where? I’ve never seen a deer near a road.

Simon Harrison

Continue reading...

British and American scientists will assess the stability of one of Antarctica's biggest ice streams.

The Republican Party values polluter wealth over public health

Like Donald Trump and the rest of his administration, Scott Pruitt has been caught up in so many scandals that it becomes impossible to focus on any single act of corruption. It’s difficult to focus on the damage Pruitt is doing to the environment and public health when seemingly every day there’s a new scandal related to his illegal $43,000 phone booth, or use of Safe Water Drinking Act funds to give two staffers a total of $85,000 in raises (and lying about it), or his sweetheart deal on a condo rental from a lobbyist’s wife (and lying about having met with that lobbyist), or wasting taxpayer funds on first class air travel and military jets, and a nearly $3m per year security detail, and bulletproof car seat covers, and a bulletproof desk, and so on.

Number of federal investigations into Scott Pruitt has now risen to 11. Reps. Beyer & Lieu say EPA inspector general will take up an inquiry into the $50-a-night condo rental from the wife of an energy lobbyist.

Continue reading...

British and US scientists are to examine the melting Thwaites glacier responsible for 4% rise in sea levels

British and US scientists are to collaborate on a £20m project to examine the Thwaites glacier in west Antarctica, a major glacier that drains an area about the size of the UK.

Continue reading...

As sea levels rise, it is likely that storm surges, cyclones and floods will become more frequent, and more extreme. But how likely is that? And what can be done to prevent the damage?

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator last week issued over 850,000 carbon credits, some three times more than average, while an analyst on Monday predicted the domestic offset market could reach 62 million tonnes of CO2e per year by 2030.

New Zealand carbon allowances on Monday closed just 5 cents below their all-time high as last week’s Productivity Commission report was seen bullish by some major market participants.

The Climate Change Authority, an independent advisory body to the government, has recommended Australia should establish a new offset type for land-based carbon cuts that also provide additional benefits for the agriculture sector.

Lab-grown meat and food-tech startups in the US are showing that applying science to what we eat can save the world and make money

“If you make food that tastes really good, you win,” says Josh Tetrick, with a smile. And winning is crucial, he says, with his company Just in the vanguard of a new sector with an ambitious mission: to use cutting-edge technologies to create food that will take down the meat and dairy industries.

The scope is huge: growing meat in labs, producing creamy scrambled “eggs” from mung beans, or making fish that has never swum in water, or cow’s milk brewed from yeast. The drive is to lessen the colossal environmental damage wrought by industrial farming, from its vast carbon emissions to water pollution and disease.

Continue reading...

What caused the demise of the Dwarf Emu in Australia?

The Australian Academy of Science and its New Zealand counterpart, the Royal Society Te Apārangi, are launching a 10-year plan to study and name unknown species, warning that a sound understanding of biodiversity is critical in the face of a global extinction crisis. Broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has gotten behind the study, saying, 'We cannot understand the natural world without the taxonomic system.'  He adds, 'I depend on the work of these scientists'

Continue reading...

Annual BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine study reports six in 10 people have not seen a hedgehog in their garden this year

Sightings of hedgehogs in gardens have fallen again, with almost six in 10 people saying they have not seen one at all this year, a survey has found.

Related: Apocalypse hedgehog: the fight to save Britain's favourite mammal

Continue reading...

Female trapdoor spider known as Number 16 was sedentary and stayed close to her burrow

• Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noon

The world’s oldest known spider has died at the ripe old age of 43 after being monitored for years during a long-term population study in Australia, researchers say.

The trapdoor matriarch comfortably outlived the previous record holder, a 28-year-old tarantula found in Mexico, according to a study published on Monday in the Pacific Conservation Biology Journal.

Continue reading...

Endangered bandicoots have been found in the outskirts of Melbourne. Euan Ritchie, Associate Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University Sarah Maclagan, PhD candidate, Centre for Integrative Ecology, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Stanley residents fail to stop farmer mining groundwater that is sold on as bottled springwater

• Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noon

Residents from a tiny Victorian town have been ordered to pay $90,000 in legal costs after they launched a failed bid to prevent a farmer from extracting and selling groundwater as bottled springwater to a subsidiary of the Japanese beverage giant Asahi.

The supreme court of Victoria made the costs ruling last week, four months after a residents association in the town of Stanley, which has a population of 400, was denied leave to appeal previous decisions allowing the water extraction.

Continue reading...

Armathwaite, Eden Valley: Their fingertips white with climbing chalk, they are surmounting overhangs and traversing blank-looking walls

John Buchan’s hero Richard Hannay crosses my mind as I reach an impasse while walking along the banks of the Eden to Armathwaite crags. A flight of steps descends into Sandy Bay, created from fine-grained sand churned up from the riverbed each flood. Only, while Buchan’s 39 steps descend to sands between white chalk cliffs in Kent, Armathwaite’s stairs are sandwiched between red sandstone precipices. Also, Hannay’s adversaries were international spies; mine are old age and a dodgy hip.

Continue reading...

Modelling for Reliability Panel says risk of supply shortfalls in NSW after Liddell closure is one millionth of one per cent - "so small, they are generally not visible on the chart". So much for the government scare campaign about blackouts.