The Guardian
Borneo bay cat photographed in heavily logged region
One of the world's most elusive wild cats has been captured on camera in a heavily logged area of Borneo rainforest together with four other endangered species, suggesting that some wildlife can survive in highly disturbed forests.
The Bornean bay cat (Pardofelis badia) has been recorded on camera traps on just a handful of occasions to date and was only photographed in the wild for the first time in southern Sarawak in 2003. The cat, extremely secretive and similar in size to a large domestic cat with a long tail and either a reddish or grey coat, had been classified as extinct until new images taken in Malaysian Borneo in 2009 and 2010 gave fresh hope for its survival.
Continue reading...Fears for Scottish salmon farming after China production targets missed
• Concern that new strict eco standards may be compromised
The Scottish salmon farming industry is struggling to meet a controversial target to rapidly increase production to help feed China's growing appetite for fresh and smoked salmon.
The Guardian has established that Scottish salmon producers have fallen way behind their goal of increasing production by 60,000 tonnes, or 50%, by 2020 to help meet surging demand for the fish from China's middle classes. Scottish ministers now admit that hitting the target is a "challenge".
Continue reading...Country diary: Fishbourne Reedbeds, West Sussex: The water vole's grand designs
At the head of the Fishbourne Channel there is a hinterland of reedbeds and briny watercourses. There is no sea wall here, just a gradual merging of elements as land meets sea. Few plants can survive the daily exposure to salt water that occurs when the tide is in, so the reedbeds are dominated by dense stands of common reed that form an impenetrable two-metre high grey-green wall on either side of the boardwalk.
In the spring, the reedbeds reverberated with a cacophony of bird song and the begging calls of hungry chicks. Now they are eerily quiet, just the whisper of the breeze blowing through the reeds and the distant screech of gulls. Many of the breeding birds have migrated but reed buntings are resident all year round and I eventually catch a glimpse of a male's jet-black head, with its white moustache and collar, as it clings to a tasselled flower spike.
Continue reading...Killer whales experience menopause – just like humans
Just like humans, killer whales experience menopause – and the rare evolutionary trait improves their offspring's chances of survival, according to experts.
Killer whales are one of only three species able to continue living long after they have stopped reproducing. This allows mothers to spend the rest of their life looking after their offspring.
Continue reading...Climate change: a survivors' guide
Britain is expected to get more extremes of heat and rainfall, so prepare for more severe floods, longer droughts and more powerful storms. No one knows quite what the effect over time will be of a slowing Gulf stream, or the melting of arctic sea ice, but climate scientists confidently expect temperatures to rise up to 4C by 2100. That could mean big shifts in rainfall patterns and a more unpredictable climate. So clear your drains, fix your roof and move to Wales – or at least to somewhere with good water supply. The worst that could happen? Your grandchildren will inherit inexorably rising temperatures that render much of the Earth uninhabitable. Their problem? Yes, but yours, too.
Continue reading...Global warming: why is IPCC report so certain about the influence of humans? | Dana Nuccitelli
The fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states with 95 percent confidence that humans are the main cause of the current global warming. Many media outlets have reported that this is an increase from the 90 percent certainty in the fourth IPCC report, but actually the change is much more significant than that. In fact, if you look closely, the IPCC says that humans have most likely caused all of the global warming over the past 60 years.
Continue reading...Russian military storm Greenpeace Arctic oil protest ship
Armed Russian military have stormed a Greenpeace ship protesting against oil exploitation in remote Arctic waters.
Continue reading...Tidal energy scheme off northern Scotland gets go-ahead
Six vast underwater turbines are to be lowered into the tidal currents of the Pentland firth in the first phase of one of the largest tidal energy schemes in Europe.
Permission to install the six squat machines, which look like underwater propellers, has been granted by Scottish ministers as a demonstration project to prove they work, with more than 50 of the machines eventually due to be installed on the seabed off Caithness.
Continue reading...The 5 stages of climate denial are on display ahead of the IPCC report | Dana Nuccitelli
The fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is due out on September 27th, and is expected to reaffirm with growing confidence that humans are driving global warming and climate change. In anticipation of the widespread news coverage of this esteemed report, climate contrarians appear to be in damage control mode, trying to build up skeptical spin in media climate stories. Just in the past week we've seen:
Continue reading...Naomi Klein: 'Big green groups are more damaging than climate deniers'
Canadian author Naomi Klein is so well known for her blade-sharp commentary that it's easy to forget that she is, above all, a first-rate reporter. I got a glimpse into her priorities as I was working on this interview. Klein told me she was worried that some of the things she had said would make it hard for her to land an interview with a president of the one of the Big Green groups (read below and you'll see why). She was more interested in nabbing the story than being the story; her reporting trumped any opinion-making.
Such focus is a hallmark of Klein's career. She doesn't do much of the chattering class's news cycle blathering. She works steadily, carefully, quietly. It can be surprising to remember that Klein's immense global influence rests on a relatively small body of work; she has published three books, one of which is an anthology of magazine pieces.
Continue reading...'Walking shark' discovered in Indonesia
A species of shark that uses its fins to "walk" along the bottom of the ocean floor has been discovered off the coast of Indonesia. The shark, Hemiscyllium halmahera, uses its fins to wiggle along the seabed and forage for small fish and crustaceans, scientists from Conservation International said on Friday.
The shark, which has wide horizontal stripes, grows to a maximum length of just 30in and is harmless to humans.
Continue reading...Syria intervention plans fuelled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concerns | Nafeez Ahmed
On 21 August, hundreds - perhaps over a thousand - people were killed in a chemical weapon attack in Ghouta, Damascus, prompting the US, UK, Israel and France to raise the spectre of military strikes against Bashir al Assad's forces.
The latest episode is merely one more horrific event in a conflict that has increasingly taken on genocidal characteristics. The case for action at first glance is indisputable. The UN now confirms a death toll over 100,000 people, the vast majority of whom have been killed by Assad's troops. An estimated 4.5 million people have been displaced from their homes. International observers have overwhelmingly confirmed Assad's complicity in the preponderance of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Syrian people. The illegitimacy of his regime, and the legitimacy of the uprising, is clear.
Continue reading...A Texan tragedy: ample oil, no water
Beverly McGuire saw the warning signs before the town well went dry: sand in the toilet bowl, the sputter of air in the tap, a pump working overtime to no effect. But it still did not prepare her for the night last month when she turned on the tap and discovered the tiny town where she had made her home for 35 years was out of water.
Continue reading...'Fatberg' the size of a bus clogs London sewer - video
Fatberg ahead! How London was saved from a 15-tonne ball of grease
A sewage worker has become an unlikely hero after taking three weeks to defeat a toxic 15-tonne ball of congealed fat the size of a bus that came close to turning parts of the London borough of Kingston upon Thames into a cesspit.
Continue reading...Starved polar bear perished due to record sea-ice melt, says expert
A starved polar bear found found dead in Svalbard as "little more than skin and bones" perished due to a lack of sea ice on which to hunt seals, according to a renowned polar bear expert.
Climate change has reduced sea ice in the Arctic to record lows in the last year and Dr Ian Stirling, who has studied the bears for almost 40 years and examined the animal, said the lack of ice forced the bear into ranging far and wide in an ultimately unsuccessful search for food.
Continue reading...The polar bear who died of climate change - big picture
• Starved polar bear perished due to record sea-ice melt, says expert Continue reading...
Children given lifelong ban on talking about fracking
• The anti-fracking activist barred from 312.5 sq miles of Pennsylvania
Two young children in Pennsylvania were banned from talking about fracking for the rest of their lives under a gag order imposed under a settlement reached by their parents with a leading oil and gas company.
The sweeping gag order was imposed under a $750,000 settlement between the Hallowich family and Range Resources Corp, a leading oil and gas driller. It provoked outrage on Monday among environmental campaigners and free speech advocates.
Continue reading...Seven facts you need to know about the Arctic methane timebomb | Nafeez Ahmed
Debate over the plausibility of a catastrophic release of methane in coming decades due to thawing Arctic permafrost has escalated after a new Nature paper warned that exactly this scenario could trigger costs equivalent to the annual GDP of the global economy.
Scientists of different persuasions remain fundamentally divided over whether such a scenario is even plausible. Carolyn Rupple of the US Geological Survey (USGS) Gas Hydrates Project told NBC News the scenario is "nearly impossible." Ed Dlugokencky, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) said there has been "no detectable change in Arctic methane emissions over the past two decades." NASA's Gavin Schmidt said that ice core records from previously warm Arctic periods show no indication of such a scenario having ever occurred. Methane hydrate expert Prof David Archer reiterated that "the mechanisms for release operate on time scales of centuries and longer." These arguments were finally distilled in a lengthy, seemingly compelling essay posted on Skeptical Science last Thursday, concluding with utter finality:
Continue reading...Revealed: how UK water companies are polluting Britain's rivers and beaches
The most persistent and frequent polluters of England's rivers and beaches are the nation's 10 biggest water companies, an Observer investigation has revealed.
The companies, which are responsible for treating waste water and delivering clean supplies, have been punished for more than 1,000 incidents in the past nine years, but fined a total of only £3.5m.
Continue reading...