Feed aggregator

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Drone footage captures great white stalking Matt Wilkinson off Ballina in northern NSW

Drone footage has captured professional surfer Matt Wilkinson’s narrow escape from a 1.5m great white shark off the coast of Ballina in northern New South Wales.

The world championship tour surfer was paddling on his board near Sharpes Beach on Wednesday when a shark swam quickly up behind him.

Continue reading...

As unprecedented wildfires rage across the Golden State, Californians have been bearing the brunt.

LONGi founder and president Li Zhenguo speaks at the opening ceremony of the year’s most influential international climate change event.

The post Longi represents solar at Climate Week 2020, pledges 100% renewable production by 2028 appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Air temperatures hit all-time highs for month and Arctic sea ice level was ‘particularly low’

The world this year experienced its hottest September on record, scientists have reported.

Surface air temperatures last month were 0.05C warmer than in September 2019, making it the hottest September on record globally, experts from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

Continue reading...

EU carbon prices could soar to average €50 over the next decade and end Phase 4 of the ETS above €80 if abatement technology – particularly in the heavy industrials sector – doesn’t accelerate and governments and companies don’t ramp up their climate action.

Chile is aiming to implement an overhaul to its flat $5/tonne carbon tax in 2023 that will alter the coverage threshold for emitters and allow companies to utilise offsets against an undetermined portion of their GHG output, a government official said Wednesday.

Switzerland’s carbon credit procurement agency Klik has launched a third call for proposals from developers hoping to sell emission units to the country under the Paris Agreement’s Article 6.

There are worries that satellite mega-constellations could interfere with the Square Kilometre Array.

EUAs surged more than 4% to a two-week high early Wednesday on news the European Parliament backed a stronger-than-expected 2030 climate target, but they gave back all those gains over the course of the day on profit-taking, a weak auction result, and Brexit uncertainty, traders said.

California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) credits this week remained within the tight range that has persisted over the past three months, as oil majors and biofuel companies made new announcements to produce renewable natural gas (RNG) and expand existing renewable diesel (RD) production capacity.

California Carbon Offset (CCO) prices are hitting record high discounts amid an influx of supply and a lack of buyers ahead of the state's Nov. 1 interim ETS compliance deadline, market participants and developers said.

Agriculture is the dominant cause for the increasing N₂O concentrations. Emissions must be reduced if we hope to stabilise Earth's climate. Pep Canadell, Chief research scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; and Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO Eric Davidson, Director, Appalachian Laboratory and Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore Glen Peters, Research Director, Center for International Climate and Environment Research - Oslo Hanqin Tian, Director, International Center for Climate and Global Change Research, Auburn University Michael Prather, Distinguished Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine Paul Krummel, Research Group Leader, CSIRO Rob Jackson, Professor, Department of Earth System Science, and Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Stanford University Rona Thompson, Senior scientist, Norwegian Institute for Air Research Wilfried Winiwarter, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Study calls for more rights for indigenous reserves as rising gold price attracts more miners

A new report has exposed the scale and impact of mining on indigenous reserves in Amazon countries as gold prices soared during the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 20% of indigenous lands are overlapped by mining concessions and illegal mining, it found, covering 450,000 sq km (174,000 sq miles) – and 31% of Amazon indigenous reserves are affected.

The report, released on Wednesday by the World Resources Institute, said indigenous people should be given more legal rights to manage and use their lands, and called for better environmental safeguards. As pressure mounts over the issue, a leading Brazilian thinktank has called for regulations tracing gold sold by financial institutions.

Continue reading...

To strengthen its multicultural team of professional auditors, Verifavia is recruiting data analysts for its Paris and/or Chandigarh offices. Note that applications for part-time home-based positions are also accepted.

To strengthen its multicultural team of professional auditors, Verifavia is recruiting aviation auditors for its Paris and/or Chandigarh offices. Successful candidates will join our international auditing team to perform legal verification audits for airlines and business jet operators worldwide.

The EU proposes fitting all new cars with technology that makes it harder to exceed the speed limit.

Rising emissions of nitrous oxide – a key greenhouse gas – from farming are putting world on track to exceed 2C heating

The spread of intensive farming is threatening to blow the world’s chances of meeting the Paris agreement on the climate crisis, as the increasing use of artificial fertiliser and growing populations of livestock are raising the concentration of a key greenhouse gas to levels far beyond those seen naturally.

Nitrous oxide is given off by the overuse of artificial fertilisers, and by organic sources such as animal manure, and has a heating effect 300 times that of carbon dioxide. Levels of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are now 20% higher than in pre-industrial times, with most of that increase coming from farming.

Continue reading...

Norway’s government plans to increase its climate spending to cover the ballooning cost of compensating heavy industry for indirect EU ETS costs, while campaigners flagged that the country is on course to need to buy a significant number of carbon units from non-ETS sectors.

The meteor shower reaches its peak this week, and will be visible in UK skies, weather permitting.