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Category: Environment

Burning forests for energy isn’t ‘renewable’ — now the EU must admit it

Burning forests for energy isn’t ‘renewable’ — now the EU must admit it

Greta Thunberg et al write: Next week the future of many of the world’s forests will be decided when members of the European parliament vote on a revised EU renewable energy directive. If the parliament fails to change the EU’s discredited and harmful renewables policy, European citizens’ tax money will continue to pay for forests around the globe to literally go up in smoke every day. Europe’s directly elected representatives now have to choose: they can either save the EU’s…

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The most damaging farm products? Organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb

The most damaging farm products? Organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb

George Monbiot writes: Perhaps the most important of all environmental issues is land use. Every hectare of land we use for extractive industries is a hectare that can’t support wild forests, savannahs, wetlands, natural grasslands and other crucial ecosystems. And farming swallows far more land than any other human activity. What are the world’s most damaging farm products? You might be amazed by the answer: organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb. I realise this is a shocking claim. Of all the…

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Major sea-level rise caused by melting of Greenland ice cap is ‘now inevitable’

Major sea-level rise caused by melting of Greenland ice cap is ‘now inevitable’

The Guardian reports: Major sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now inevitable, scientists have found, even if the fossil fuel burning that is driving the climate crisis were to end overnight. The research shows the global heating to date will cause an absolute minimum sea-level rise of 27cm (10.6in) from Greenland alone as 110tn tonnes of ice melt. With continued carbon emissions, the melting of other ice caps and thermal expansion of the ocean, a…

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The environmental cost of the war in Ukraine

The environmental cost of the war in Ukraine

Fred Pearce writes: What happens to the environment when a large, industrialized country is consumed by war? Ukraine is finding out. While concern about human lives remains paramount, Russia’s war on that country’s environment matters. The fate of Ukraine after the conflict is over is likely to depend on the survival of its natural resources as well as on its human-made infrastructure – on its forests, rivers, and wildlife, as well as its roads, power plants, and cities. Some 30…

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The legacy of James Lovelock

The legacy of James Lovelock

John Gribbin writes: Jim Lovelock (never ‘James’) is remembered as the father of the Gaia hypothesis: the idea that Earth is a self-regulating living organism. Few accepted his argument that this should be elevated to the status of a theory, even though it generated predictions about environmental changes that were borne out by subsequent observations. As a heuristic model, however, Gaia profoundly influenced thinking about the environment and how we interact with it, giving rise to the field of Earth-system…

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Desertification in an Iraqi bread basket

Desertification in an Iraqi bread basket

Tessa Fox reports: Palm branches whip back as Hussein Ibrahim walks through his densely planted land in Al Fao, the very last village in Iraq’s south as it reaches the Persian Gulf. Affectionately known as Abu Yusuf in reference to his eldest son, Ibrahim explains that farming is his culture. “I’ve inherited this land from my grandfather and even the father of my grandfather had it. We were all farmers; we were born to be farmers,” says the father of…

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Scientists warn of dire effects as Mediterranean heats up

Scientists warn of dire effects as Mediterranean heats up

The Associated Press reports: While vacationers might enjoy the Mediterranean Sea’s summer warmth, climate scientists are warning of dire consequences for its marine life as it burns up in a series of severe heat waves. From Barcelona to Tel Aviv, scientists say they are witnessing exceptional temperature hikes ranging from 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) to 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) above the norm for this time of year. Water temperatures have regularly exceeded 30 C (86 F) on some…

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Meet the teenager who helped push Florida toward cleaner energy

Meet the teenager who helped push Florida toward cleaner energy

NPR reports: For most of his 15 years, Levi Draheim led a beachy life on a barrier island on Florida’s east coast, swimming, surfing and sailing in the nearshore waves. He dreamed of someday becoming a marine biologist. But Levi’s world is changing. Warming temperatures led to widespread Sargassum seaweed and harmful algae blooms in the Atlantic Ocean and 156-mile Indian River Lagoon, which together encircle the island. The seaweed and algae blooms have left beaches stinking with rotting seaweed…

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Undersea internet cables can detect earthquakes — and may soon warn of tsunamis

Undersea internet cables can detect earthquakes — and may soon warn of tsunamis

Jeffrey Marlow writes: Somewhere beneath the Adriatic Sea, a rogue block of the African tectonic plate is burrowing under southern Europe, stretching Italy eastward by a few millimetres each year. On October 26, 2016, the stress triggered an earthquake in the Apennine Mountains, one in a series of quakes which toppled buildings in Italian towns. On the day of the tremor, Giuseppe Marra, a principal research scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England, was running an experiment that…

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Caring about the unborn should mean caring about the future of our planet

Caring about the unborn should mean caring about the future of our planet

William MacAskill writes: Humanity, today, is in its adolescence. Most of a teenager’s life is still ahead of them, and their decisions can have lifelong effects. Similarly, most of humanity’s life lies ahead – an estimated 118 billion people have already lived, but vastly more people, perhaps thousands or even millions of times that number, are yet to be born. And some of the decisions we make this century will impact the entire course of humanity’s future. Contemporary society does…

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We are moving into an era defined by homesickness

We are moving into an era defined by homesickness

Madeline Ostrander writes: From above, an open-cut coal mine looks like some geological aberration, a sort of man-made desert, a recent volcanic eruption, or a kind of terra forming. When the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht first gazed at a series of such mines while driving through his home region in southeast Australia, he stopped and got out of his car, overcome “at the desolation of this once beautiful place,” he wrote in his book, Earth Emotions. As a scholar, Albrecht…

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Sustainable cities made from mud

Sustainable cities made from mud

BBC Future Planet reports: In Yemen’s ancient walled city of Sana’a mud skyscrapers soar high into the sky. The towering structures are built entirely out of rammed earth and decorated with striking geometric patterns. The earthen buildings blend into the nearby ochre-coloured mountains. Sana’a’s mud architecture is so unique that the city has been recognised as a Unesco World Heritage site. “As an outstanding example of a homogeneous architectural ensemble reflecting the spatial characteristics of the early years of Islam,…

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American Scar: The environmental tragedy of the border wall

American Scar: The environmental tragedy of the border wall

  Murat Oztaskin writes: In a remote and rugged expanse of southern Arizona, between the vast stretches of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, a straight line runs. It cuts through mountaintops, across the foothills and valleys. At one time, the line was conceptual: the border between one country and another, a geopolitical abstraction real mainly to those who ached to cross it and to others who wished to prevent that. Now, in the past few years, much of it has…

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CDC finds notorious weed killer tied to cancer in over 80% of urine samples collected in the U.S.

CDC finds notorious weed killer tied to cancer in over 80% of urine samples collected in the U.S.

The New Lede reports: In fresh evidence of the pervasive nature of pesticides, more than 80 percent of urine samples drawn from children and adults participating in a US health study contained a weedkilling chemical linked to cancer and other health problems. The report by a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that out of 2,310 urine samples collected, 1,885 were laced with detectable traces of glyphosate, the active ingredient in herbicides sold around the…

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Pollen and heat — a looming challenge for global agriculture

Pollen and heat — a looming challenge for global agriculture

Carolyn Beans writes: Last June, Aaron Flansburg felt the temperature spike and knew what that meant for his canola crop. A fifth-generation grower in Washington state, Flansburg times his canola planting to bloom in the cool weeks of early summer. But last year, his fields were hit with 108-degree Fahrenheit heat just as flowers opened. “That is virtually unheard of for our area to have a temperature like that in June,” he says. Yellow blooms sweltered, reproduction stalled, and many…

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Explosion of life on Earth linked to heavy metal act at planet’s center

Explosion of life on Earth linked to heavy metal act at planet’s center

The Observer reports: At the centre of the Earth, a giant sphere of solid iron is slowly swelling. This is the inner core and scientists have recently uncovered intriguing evidence that suggests its birth half a billion years ago may have played a key role in the evolution of life on Earth. At that time, our planet’s magnetic field was faltering – and that would have had critical consequences, they argue. Normally this field protects life on the surface by…

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