The Guardian
Honeybees abandoning hives and dying due to insecticide use, research finds
The mysterious vanishing of honeybees from hives can be directly linked to insectcide use, according to new research from Harvard University. The scientists showed that exposure to two neonicotinoids, the world's most widely used class of insecticide, lead to half the colonies studied dying, while none of the untreated colonies saw their bees disappear.
"We demonstrated that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for triggering 'colony collapse disorder' in honeybee hives that were healthy prior to the arrival of winter," said Chensheng Lu, an expert on environmental exposure biology at Harvard School of Public Health and who led the work.
Continue reading...Behind the rise of Boko Haram - ecological disaster, oil crisis, spy games | Nafeez Ahmed
The kidnapping of over 200 Nigerian school girls, and the massacre of as many as 300 civilians in the town of Gamboru Ngala, by the militant al-Qaeda affiliated group, Boko Haram, has shocked the world.
But while condemnations have rightly been forthcoming from a whole range of senior figures from celebrities to government officials, less attention has been paid to the roots of the crisis.
Continue reading...The goblin shark: a rare glimpse of something truly hideous
Name: The goblin shark.
Age: You'd have to ask it.
Continue reading...Invasion of albino snakes threatens Gran Canaria wildlife
Invasive species experts will gather in Gran Canaria this week to offer their advice on how best to control an albino variety of a popular pet snake whose population has exploded across the island in recent years, decimating local bird and lizard species.
Originally brought to the island as pets, the albino California king snakes were set loose or escaped decades ago, said Ramón Gallo, a biologist who is spearheading the effort to control the population through a project called LIFE+Lampropeltis.
Continue reading...Chris Packham: Why I'm fighting to stop the slaughter of Malta's wild birds
When it comes to life and death I'm probably more stoic than most. But last week I cried in front of more than 20,000 viewers on YouTube. Like all our team, I was close to exhaustion – we'd been on four hours sleep a night for days. I was also clearly depressed by the daily slaughter we had been witness to and the relentless attrition that had been mounting with every dead bird I'd seen blasted from the Maltese skies. But in truth from the moment I reached into the cardboard box that held a shot Montagu's harrier and gently felt its badly broken wing, as soon as I saw the blood of this beautiful and rare raptor on my fingers and looked at the defiance and confusion in its brilliant yellow eyes, it was a predictable reaction.
I like birds, and this was a very special bird. That morning I had been out with a team of observers from BirdLife Malta, patrolling the dry fields of this tiny island where about 10,000 hunters wander and wait to shoot at turtle doves and quail. It's their highly controversial spring hunting season, the only such in the European Union, of which Malta has been a member since 2004.
Continue reading...Chris Packham: Malta is a bird hell
The BBC presenter talks of confrontations with hunters and police while making films to highlight the cruelty of the annual bird shoot
When Chris Packham announced he was heading to Malta to report on the island's annual spring bird shoot as if he was a war correspondent covering a conflict, even his admirers probably thought he was guilty of hyperbole.
But after a week in which the naturalist has detained by police for five hours, shoved to the ground by gunmen and witnessed the illegal killing of dozens of endangered birds, his mission to raise awareness of the annual slaughter of migratory birds has been more like a battle than he imagined.
Continue reading...B31: huge Antarctic iceberg headed for open ocean
Iceberg that calved from the Pine Island glacier last year is headed for the open ocean, scientists say
An enormous iceberg half the size of Greater London that broke off an Antarctic glacier last year is headed for the open ocean, scientists said on Wednesday.
B31, which calved from Pine Island glacier last November, is large enough at 33km long and 20km wide to lead Nasa to monitor its movements via satellite. It is up to 500 metres thick.
Continue reading...Jackfruit heralded as 'miracle' food crop
• Climate change 'already affecting food supply' – UN
• Teff poised to become next big super grain
It's big and bumpy with a gooey interior and a powerful smell of decay – but it could help keep millions of people from hunger.
Researchers say jackfruit – a large ungainly fruit grown across south and south-east Asia – could be a replacement for wheat, corn and other staple crops under threat from climate change.
Continue reading...MPs warn of invasion by non-native plant and animal species
The government must introduce new legal powers to tackle plant and animal species that are invading Britain at a rate never seen before, a committee of MPs has warned.
Species such as Japanese knotweed, the North American signal crayfish, killer shrimp and zebra mussels not only have an impact on biodiversity by supplanting native species, but affect human health and the economy, according to a report from the environmental audit committee.
Continue reading...IPCC report: the scientists have done their bit, now it is up to us | Leo Hickman
So, there we have it. The seven-year task undertaken by hundreds of the world's leading scientists, who sifted through thousands of the latest peer-reviewed studies examining the causes, impacts and mitigation options of climate change, is over.
The last of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change's (IPCC) three "working group" reports was published yesterday in Berlin and the take-home message was crystal clear: "The high-speed mitigation train needs to leave the station very soon and all of global society needs to get on board," said the chair, Rajendra Pachauri.
Continue reading...'Like a demon in a medieval book': is this how the marsupial lion killed prey?
We knew this powerful carnivorous mammal ate kangaroos, but I now think we can speculate on how it caught them too
I've been thinking – as one does – about marsupial lions. Of all the species that became extinct after people first arrived in Australia, between 40 and 50,000 years ago, this is the one that intrigues me most.
Even more, that is, than the spiny anteater the size of a pig; a relative of the wombat the size of a rhinoceros; a marsupial tapir as big as a horse; a ten-foot kangaroo; a horned tortoise eight feet long and a monitor lizard bigger than the Nile crocodile. The lost Australian megafauna looks like a science fiction film directed by an acid casualty.
Continue reading...Fisherman must pay £50,000 after being caught fishing illegally off Wales
A fisherman has been ordered to pay fines and costs totalling £50,000 after he was caught dredging for scallops in a conservation area protected because it is a precious habitat for marine animals including dolphins.
Mark Powell, the skipper of The Golden Fleece II, was spotted by a Royal Navy patrol dredging for scallops in a special area of conservation off the coast of Wales.
Continue reading...Jane Goodall blames 'chaotic note taking' for plagiarism controversy
Leading primatologist Jane Goodall has blamed a "hectic work schedule" and her "chaotic method of note taking" for a plagarism controversy surrounding her reissued book.
Speaking ahead of the publication of a revised edition of Seeds of Hope, first published in August 2013, Goodall, said she had learned lessons following reports in the Washington Post last year that at least 12 sections of the book were lifted from other websites including Wikipedia.
Continue reading...'We expect catastrophe' – Manila, the megacity on the climate frontline
Joshua Alvarez and his family fear for their lives when the monsoon rains come. Last August their two-bedroom flat in Manila was flooded when severe tropical storm Trami dumped 15 inches of rain (380mm) in a few hours and the local reservoir overflowed. They fled to a flyover with thousands of others as five large areas of the capital were inundated with muddy waters up to three metres deep and a state of calamity was declared in three Philippine provinces.
In 2012, typhoon Haikui battered the megacity of 12 million people for eight days, but when tropical storm Ondoy hit Manila in 2009 and a month's worth of rain fell in a few hours, the city came close to catastrophe. Nearly 80% was flooded, 246 people died and hundreds of thousands had to be evacuated.
Continue reading...James Lovelock: environmentalism has become a religion
Scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis says environment movement does not pay enough attention to facts and he was too certain in the past about rising temperatures
Environmentalism has "become a religion" and does not pay enough attention to facts, according to James Lovelock.
The 94 year-old scientist, famous for his Gaia hypothesis that Earth is a self-regulating, single organism, also said that he had been too certain about the rate of global warming in his past book, that "it’s just as silly to be a [climate] denier as it is to be a believer” and that fracking and nuclear power should power the UK, not renewable sources such as windfarms.
Continue reading...Iraq invasion was about oil | Nafeez Ahmed
Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq War - yet to this day, few media reflections on the conflict accurately explore the extent to which opening up Persian Gulf energy resources to the world economy was a prime driver behind the Anglo-American invasion.
The overwhelming narrative has been one of incompetence and failure in an otherwise noble, if ill-conceived and badly managed endeavour to free Iraqis from tyranny. To be sure, the conduct of the war was indeed replete with incompetence at a colossal scale - but this doesn't erase the very real mendacity of the cold, strategic logic that motivated the war's US and British planners in the first place.
Continue reading...Does Paris have worse air pollution than Beijing?
On Friday, levels of pollution in Paris were higher than in many of the world’s most notoriously polluted cities. With your help, Karl Mathiesen, investigates how the City of Light became the City of Smog.
Join the debate. Post your views in the comments below, email karl.mathiesen.freelance@guardian.co.uk or tweet @karlmathiesen
6.32pm GMT
Why is there so much attention in UK media to Paris air quality, and not our own? @guardianeco @GeorgeMonbiot @DefraGovUK @MayorofLondon
When I go to eastern China, I expect air pollution, but Paris? Was not expecting to see hazy orange skies and feel the particulates.
@KarlMathiesen Check out the UKs high level of air pollution last Friday. Yet no mention in weather reports or news pic.twitter.com/jvWGKsUhmV
6.32pm GMT
Since it adopted ecologist anti-car policies, Paris tend to be more and more polluted. Cars are losing spaces of circulation for the profit of other transports and stay stuck in endless jams with their motor running, which make pollution worse. One more proof of how ideology is hell.
Dirty diesel needs to be banned in cities like London and Paris. It kills thousands every year.
Some very modern diesels engines are not too bad but most over 5 years old are positively dangerous.
I get the feeling Paris is the victim of its own success in this case, since the roads network to get into and out of town is so brilliant that I really enjoy driving there - albeit only during the holidays.
The problem is that the system is so well designed, with loads of great underground parking provision that everyone drives in.
Continue reading...Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'? | Nafeez Ahmed
A new study partly-sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."
Continue reading...Animals see power lines as glowing, flashing bands, research reveals
Power lines are seen as glowing and flashing bands across the sky by many animals, research has revealed.
The work suggests that the pylons and wires that stretch across many landscapes are having a worldwide impact on wildlife.
Continue reading...Richard Branson tells climate deniers to 'get out of the way'
Virgin Group chairman and founder, Sir Richard Branson, has said businesses should "stand up" to climate change deniers and they should "get out of our way".
Branson said he was "enormously impressed" with Apple's chief executive for telling climate change sceptics to ditch shares in the technology company.
Continue reading...