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Smaller, cheaper cars built for narrow city streets are becoming more stylish – but require careful design decisions
The winding backstreets of London, Paris and Rome are a large part of their charm. But they are also a problem for electric carmakers. For a long time, squeezing big batteries into smaller, cheaper cars to fit European streets was too much of a problem, so manufacturers focused on bloated SUVs instead.
But that is finally changing. Battery technology has improved and Europe’s carmakers havecut manufacturing costs enough that they can now sell cars that might have a chance of fitting down a medieval lane or two.
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Exclusive: European Commission planning to rewrite key law to allow water-intensive mines in regions suffering from drought
The European Commission plans to rewrite the EU’s flagship water protection law to speed up the development of critical minerals mines, despite many being located in drying and water-stressed regions, analysis has found.
Mining is a water-intensive industry, requiring large volumes of water for ore processing, dust suppression, waste management and mine dewatering. While modern projects recycle water, they still require significant amounts, and in water-stressed regions those demands can add to pressure on already stretched rivers, aquifers and water supplies.
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The reconstruction of the vaquita, whose numbers barely reach double figures in the wild, is designed to help research and conservation efforts
Scientists have created a digital reconstruction of the world’s most endangered marine mammal, preserving its anatomy in three dimensions to aid research and conservation efforts as the species teeters on the brink of extinction.
The project digitised the skeleton of a female vaquita, a small porpoise found only in Mexico’s northern Gulf of California, using a combination of medical imaging, ultra-high-resolution micro CT scans and photography.
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Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd: This living sculpture, planted in the 1970s ‘for the 21st century’, is fading fast. But heartbreak is not the only response
Ten years ago when I visited the Ash Dome, it was an elegant, twisting circle of beautiful trees. Ten years ago, ash dieback had not yet reached this corner of Wales. Returning now to this secret location, I steeled myself for heartbreak. And there it was.
Today, the Ash Dome, a living sculpture by the renowned artist David Nash, is an elephant’s graveyard. Pale, twisted limbs encircle a heap of dead branches. On a few trunks, new shoots spring innocently upwards, but most are ailing, their bark white and flaky as dead skin.
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Apart from effort to electrify, there were geopolitical tensions around climate science and the 1.5C goal at pre-Cop31 climate talks
Electrifying the world – with electric vehicles, electric heating and cooling, and modernised heavy industry – could be the next biggest step towards phasing out fossil fuels, replacing the 80% of global energy that still comes from hydrocarbons. As using electrical energy is much more efficient than combustion, the move would save billions of dollars for consumers and businesses – global energy demand could be halved, according to one estimate.
For decades, electrification has been a nerdish backwater of global climate action. But in the last two weeks, at preparatory talks in Bonn before the forthcoming UN Cop31 climate summit, the subject finally took centre stage.
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Experts cast doubt on conclusion of government-funded study of factory emitting forever chemicals near Blackpool
Questions have been raised about the conclusions drawn by a government-funded study into kidney cancer rates near a factory linked to forever chemicals near Blackpool.
Pfoa, a known carcinogenic forever chemical that was banned globally in 2020, was emitted from the AGC Chemicals Europe plant in Thornton-Cleveleys, near Blackpool, between the 1950s and 2012. An estimated 49 tonnes of Pfoa were emitted during that period. The factory, which AGC Chemicals Europe bought in 1999, stopped using Pfoa in 2012.
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Move to dismantle $368m sea observatory initiative faced opposition from experts and lawmakers
The Donald Trump administration has reversed its decision to dismantle a $368m deep-sea observation system following an outcry from lawmakers and ocean experts.
On Thursday, the National Science Foundation announced that it would halt plans to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative, stating: “effective immediately, [it] will not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays and will continue operations including planned maintenance”.
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UN’s Word Food Programme and agriculture agency issue joint appeal for funds to avert global hunger crisis before it happens
Adugna Woyessa was a little boy the first time drought tore his country apart. As harvests failed in rain-starved regions of Ethiopia in the early 1970s, and his school turned a classroom into a grain store for farmers to send aid, he had no idea that scientists were beginning to connect the force parching its fields with cyclical shifts in trade winds that had long supercharged violent weather from South America to Australia.
The now notorious El Niño – Spanish for “little boy” – was named by fishers in the Pacific in the 1800s, but it was not until the 1970s that scientists understood its global nature and began to piece together the historical impact of the natural weather pattern characterised by hot years and brutal extremes.
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Warming ocean temperatures mean sharks are spending more time in high-population areas, yet shark net data shows no significant changes in numbers
Rob Harcourt is heading back from a “beautiful surf” at Bondi on a warm and sunny winter’s morning in Sydney.
But for him and many of his surfing mates, the compelling pull of the city’s world famous surf breaks has been neutered by tragedy, fear and uncertainty.
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Lanchester Wines in north-east England uses heat from a disused coalmine to maintain wine temperatures and with 23,000 flooded mines in the UK, there’s huge potential for more businesses and homes to follow its lead
Shove them in a fridge, stash them in a cellar – this is how most people store their favourite bottles of wine. But if you have warehouses full of thousands of vintages, you have to think a little differently.
For the last eight winters, Lanchester Wines has used heat from a disused coalmine to maintain ideal storage temperatures at its facilities in the north-east of England, helping to prevent freezing or spoilage.
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pub. Verso, London, New York, 2012
pub. Random House, 2006
