Wallaby David Pocock and author Richard Flanagan among 61 signatories to open letter calling for the future of coal to be on the agenda at Paris climate talks
Sixty-one prominent Australians, from Wallaby David Pocock to the Anglican bishop of Canberra George Browning, have signed an open letter calling on world leaders to discuss a ban on new coalmines and coalmine expansions at the United Nations climate change meeting in Paris in December.
The signatories are backing a call by the president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, and other leaders of Pacific Island nations in the recent Suva Declaration on climate change from the Pacific Island Development Forum.
Peruvians should be better prepared for a phenomenon which they know well, since it all started on their coasts, says local historian Lizardo Seiner in an interview with El Comercio
Ever since the Spanish landed in Peru in the fifteenth century the magnitude of each El Niño event has increased, according to Lizardo Seiner Lizarraga. The northern coasts are especially in danger, said the history lecturer at the university of Lima, and specialist in the social and environmental history of risk.
Lizarraga’s scientific research begins in 1925, one of the three worst years hit by the weather pattern. 1983 is classed as the worst, but the phenomenon goes back way back. As he said in the following historical extract from one of his articles, “The El Niño phenomenon in Peru: reflections in history”:
Recent research conducted by Trucost and revealed by the Green Electronics Council has suggested that there is a significant economic opportunity at stake for the creation of circular economy processes in the electronics sector. In the recovery and recycling of precious metals alone, the research estimated that there’s the potential to gain $10 billion in value through cost savings and natural capital benefits.
Trucost’s data looked at specific opportunities, for example, their analysis on the reuse of gold suggests that there currently exists a bottom line benefit of almost $100 million, compared against the $14.6 million benefit gained from current recovery levels.
There are a number of previous research initiatives that have highlighted a significant economic opportunity in implementing circular economy principles in the electronics sector. A lot of electronics equipment is produced using high-value materials, the lifespan of which is not maximised because they become inseparable from the product that they are contained within.
In general, the electronics sector performs relatively well compared against other industries. The cost to natural resources for electronics products is estimated at $39 million per every billion dollars in revenue, while the average in other sectors can be as much as $200 million.
Trucost’s research reaffirms general research, which shows that even sectors with an established recycling industry still have the opportunity to capture greater economic value by improving material and energy flows.
Ford Motor Company is aiming to develop new adhesive innovations modelled on the natural adhesion of geckos. Better adhesive solutions could represent a crucial step in making the disassembly and consequent reuse and recycling of Ford’s products and materials possible at a larger scale, opening up significant economic opportunities for the company in the process.
The toe pads of the gecko allow them to stick to surfaces without using liquids or creating surface tension, and can be easily released leaving nothing behind. Now, engineers are imagining how this insight could be put to use if replicated in Ford’s products, as a replacement for the glues usually used to adhere foams to plastics and metals.
Biomimicry, a design approach where design solutions are developed by mimicking nature, has been adopted by the company to help provide a range of business innovations. This certainly isn’t the first time biomimicry has been used in this way. For example, the Japanese Bullet Train was designed with inspiration from the kingfisher and medical needles have been improved through the study of mosquitoes.
The investigation into the gecko and potential adhesives is part of a wider adoption of the biomimetic approach among Ford’s design teams. The company recently held a workshop, where close to 200 designers and researchers took part in a session on how to apply biomimicry to their field of work.
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 28 October 1915
We have had cold winds and heavy rains here for the last day or two, and the dim mist that hangs along the hill summits suggests that more rain is still to come. Next time the sun shines it will gaze out upon a landscape that has perceptibly bronzed and mellowed. The poplars have now only the thinnest scattering of trembling golden leaves, yet it is strange to notice how few leaves suffice to give an effect of leafiness; indeed the compromise between form and colour in a tree seems never more effective than when nineteen out of every twenty leaves are down. The elms are still fully clothed, and are carrying to unusual length this year their habit of adopting autumn colour branch by branch. Fifty at least are in sight where I sit writing, and each displays two or three golden sheaves, some in the upper and some in the lower branches, while the bulk of the tree retains its deep dark summer green. As usual, chestnuts have been among the first trees to succumb completely, those that stand in the river valley being now bare.
For those with vivid imaginations the white markings on the black back of a noble false widow spider (Steatoda nobilis) can look like a skull and crossbones, or in other cases just a skull. Perhaps it is a warning that the spider has a nasty bite. The poison will not be fatal, however, rather on a par with being stung by a wasp and or a bee.
The species is one of six similar spider varieties found in Britain, but is not native, having arrived in 1879 in a bunch of bananas from Madeira. After more than a century of being confined to the far southwest it is now spreading northwards as the climate warms. Noble false widows tend to live in houses, round the back of washing machines being a favourite, presumably because of the warmth.
Cutting subsidies in renewables is shortsighted and counterproductive. These industries are Britain’s future and must receive full government backing
Last week there was dismay as the future of Britain’s nuclear sector was subcontracted to France and China. Now, as the impact of the cuts in subsidies for green energy hits home, the country’s future as a leader in renewable technologies risks going the same way as the nuclear expertise that used to be world-beating. Along with it could go its admired position as an effective voice in the climate-change negotiations. In Bonn last week, as diplomats met for the final round of pre-Paris talks, there was bewilderment at the abrupt change in direction. Suddenly the UK, so recently at the forefront of negotiations within the EU, driving through ambitious targets for carbon reduction, looks like a country that isn’t taking climate change seriously.
The government says it just wants to keep energy bills down, and it is true that there is a case for tackling them. It is also true that the subsidies for solar favour wealthier homes, those with suitable roof space to fit solar panels; it would be fairer to spend more on making homes warmer. All the same, the impact on bills of the complex support structure that provides a stable price framework for the new technologies required to green the energy supply and incentivise providers has been greatly exaggerated. By the government’s own estimates, the planned cut in solar subsidies by an industry-destroying 87% will save the average household 50p a year. Meanwhile, energy costs have been blamed for the crisis in the British steel industry too. Yet it is dumping, and Treasury reluctance to challenge EU rules on state support for energy-intensive industries, that has done the real harm to workers in towns like Redcar and Scunthorpe.
Property that burned had regulatory troubles and lax oversight since the 1970s
Investigators taking closer look at federal and local records
The operator of a closed radioactive waste dump that caught fire in southern Nevada last weekend was troubled over the years by leaky shipments and oversight so lax that employees took contaminated tools and building materials home, according to state and federal records.
A soundless 40-second video turned over by the firm, US Ecology, to state officials showed bursts of white smoke and dirt flying from several explosions on 18 October from the dump in the brown desert, about 110 miles north-west of Las Vegas.
Opposition leader welcomes PM’s decision to attend UN talks in Paris but says, ‘I wish he was taking policies other than Tony Abbott’s discredited Direct Action’
Labor has welcomed the announcement that Malcolm Turnbull will attend climate change talks in Paris this year but says the government is selling Australia short by taking global warming “sceptic” policies to the key meeting.
