GOFUNDME LINK 'HELP DONKEYS, CATS AND OTHER ANIMALS ON HVAR ISLAND'
Four-year study warns destabilised marine food webs could jeopardise food security by 2050
Warming seas around the UK and the wider north-east Atlantic could destabilise marine food webs, weaken ocean health and jeopardise food security by 2050, according to a four-year study.
Scientists who projected the impact of climate breakdown on four key groups of marine life crucial to maintaining ocean ecosystems in the region said their results challenged assumptions that in middle latitudes, such as the UK, marine biodiversity was likely to increase across the board.
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With parts of region served by company in severe drought still, regulators give it six weeks to come up with action plan
Repeated failures by South West Water to tackle leaks are putting customers at higher risks of losing water supplies as parts of the region remain in severe drought, regulators have said.
In a warning to the privatised company that serves 1.8 million people across the south-west of England, the regulators said it had been failing to meet targets to reduce leaks and repair burst pipes for seven years.
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A stricken container ship shed tonnes of tiny pellets called nurdles on the west coast. Five years on, locals are counting the cost to marine life and livelihoods
On the beach in Pamunugama, on Sri Lanka’s west coast, women in uniform work under the scorching sun. They sift through rubbish washed ashore, searching among the usual litter for something much smaller: tiny plastic pellets.
Five years ago, in May 2021, this same beach was swamped with pellets as smoke rose over the Indian Ocean.
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Events that deliver about half of global rainfall are getting shorter but more intense, with wide-ranging implications
The world’s wettest rainstorms produce about half of the global annual rainfall. Now a study shows that these intense downpours have become shorter in duration and fewer in number, compressing the same amount of rain into quicker and more extreme events, with implications for flood and drought risk.
Chiyuan Miao and colleagues from Beijing Normal University in China analysed daily measurements between 1980 and 2022 from more than 19,000 rain gauges around the world. They found that an average of about half of the world’s rainfall fell during about nine multi-day storms, delivered over a cumulative time of about 28 days.
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We were promised a panacea for the climate crisis and a way to save our food system. So why is nobody firing up the chicken vats? I went to find out
On 5 August 2013, a man and a woman ate a burger. Not just any burger: a world-historic burger, made from cattle cells grown in a laboratory by Mark Post, a professor of vascular physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The burger had taken two years to produce and cost €250,000 (about £210,000 at the time), money furnished by the Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Now it was being tasted in public for the first time at Riverside Studios in London, at an event attended by 200 members of the press and livestreamed to thousands.
To make this particular burger, Post had extracted stem cells from the shoulder muscle of a living cow, then cultivated them in plastic containers filled with a nutrient-rich supplement called foetal bovine serum, which is derived from cow foetuses. The cells eventually became 20,000 strands of tissue, which in turn became a single 140g patty. Post believed that beef produced this way had the potential to dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and slow the climate crisis. Raising cattle for consumption requires massive amounts of land and water – and massive amounts of feed grown at a high environmental cost. He projected that global demand for meat would soon outstrip our ability to produce it the old-fashioned way, at which point our food systems would become unsustainable. But that didn’t have to mean a mass recalibration of our consumption habits or a global shift away from red meat. Post and his team had found another way.
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Liverpool: Their summer flowers provide the name and the fame, but this species is arguably at its best now
Beech mast crunches underfoot, and the occasional conker catches the sunlight, tiny beacons leading me to Camp Hill, south Liverpool, with its distant views over the Mersey estuary. Goldfinches erupt from desiccated knapweed, and a flock of pink-footed geese fly overhead. For once, the birds are not my goal, but a tree: the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera).
Every autumn, the Camp Hill tulip tree flaunts its flamboyant presence: the Lady Gaga of the parkland. Named because its flowers resemble a tulip flower, and its leaves a tulip silhouette, few can resist its tulle lace canopy of butter-gold leaves. The luminescence is enhanced by the sheen of its leaf cuticles, and the fissured trunk adds yet more sensory impact. Yet this year there is a strangeness: instead of the golden monotone you would expect of this moment, there is a messy mix of different shades. Might the summer drought have disrupted the pigment battle between anthocyanins and carotenoids?
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Ministers urged to go further than proposed cut to 110 decibels to ease acute stress on birds and other animals
Campaigners are calling on the UK government to protect the welfare of wild animals by cutting the maximum noise level of fireworks sold to the public from 120 to 90 decibels.
The Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW) has said lowering the limit to 90dB – which is about one-eighth of the loudness of 120dB – would help to protect millions of wild animals from acute stress by reducing the area over which a firework disturbs surrounding wildlife.
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The BLVD is home to 250 enterprises, from banks, tattoo shops and restaurants to museums and a performing arts centre
Passing through the Mojave desert on State Route 14, going by landscapes Hollywood uses to represent alien planets, a driver might not expect to find a walkable, tree-lined boulevard.
But there are nine beautiful, leafy blocks on West Lancaster Boulevard, a piece of what used to be Highway 14. They were redeveloped as part of a mixed-use urban streetscape in the city of Lancaster, California in 2010.
The BLVD, as it’s been rebranded, is home to 250 public and private enterprises, from banks, tattoo shops and restaurants to museums, a performing arts centre and a public library. City Hall is just a block south.
The city invested $11.5m (£8.5m) to transform a busy thoroughfare into an inviting public space. The three lanes in the centre of the former five-lane road were replaced by a series of tree-lined ramblas – Spanish for “avenue” and “watercourse,” because dry stream beds served as streets in early cities.
The redesign was planned and funded by the city of redevelopment agency. Within four years of completion, it had generated more than $270m in economic output, attracted $130m in investment, created hundreds of jobs and prompted the building or renovation of hundreds of housing units, according to the city.
The revitalisation has also created more intangible benefits, residents say.. The city centre the feels like a gathering space, they said — somewhere where they can feel like part of a community.
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors
This week, from 2023: A year ago, Germany’s vice-chancellor was one of the country’s best-liked public figures. Then came the tabloid-driven backlash. Now he has to win the argument all over again
By Philip Oltermann. Read by Sam Peter Jackson
Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/longreadpod
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With globe-spanning artists – including Charlotte Church doing angry electropop – the Flow project is hoping to make an impact at this month’s Cop31
Amid tense and long-winded negotiations, and with the future of the planet at stake, emotions can often run high at Cop climate summits. But last year, when the annual conference arrived in Brazil, one UN official was unexpectedly moved to tears by five women singing about the power of water.
“She gave me a massive hug after the event and said, ‘We need to bring music into Cop,’” says Nikita Llerena, the project manager for Flow, a music collective that’s hoping to bring art to the centre of the climate movement. What started as a handful of musicians meeting over Zoom last year has grown into a full-length album that unites female artists from around the world, including Charlotte Church, Maxine Peake and Nadine Shah. This month, members of the collective will return for Cop31, in Turkey, where they have been promoted to a slot at Global Cultural Action’s opening event.
Continue reading...The number of deaths linked to cocaine use in England and Wales has nearly quadrupled in a decade.
The aim is to detect hard-to-diagnose abdominal cancers, including liver, ovarian and pancreatic cancer, much sooner.
Concerns from staff, parents, carers or the child themselves will trigger an immediate escalation of care.
Saskia Reeves-Priestley didn't know she had a Vitamin D deficiency until she suddenly collapsed at work.
Chomping on vegtable skins, seeds and stalks could give us vital fibre, say food scientists.
Doctors are finding vitamin D deficiency is increasingly widespread in the UK, especially in young people. But the symptoms are difficult to spot and can be missed.
It will cause huge disruption in some parts of England and Wales, say GP leaders.
Senior doctors to stage 48-hour walkout, beginning on 25 November, in dispute over pay and pensions.
Some creators are claiming they can spot "ferritin face". Doctors aren't so sure.
Videos in which people claim to spot the signs of low iron have attracted millions of views online.
Deep in the mountains of Palawan, Conservation International scientists are capturing what few people ever see: the secret lives of the Philippines’ rarest species.
At Maido — the Lima restaurant recently crowned the best in the world — one of the star dishes is paiche, a giant prehistoric river fish.Its journey to the table begins on a small family farm deep in Peru’s Amazon.
“Jane Goodall forever changed how people think about, interact with and care for the natural world,” said Daniela Raik, interim CEO of Conservation International.
Conservation International’s Neil Vora was selected for TIME’s Next 100 list — alongside other rising leaders reshaping culture, science and society.
Climate change is happening. And it’s placing the world’s reefs in peril. What can be done?
After decades of negotiation, the high seas treaty is finally reality. The historic agreement will pave the way to protect international waters which face numerous threats.
The Amazon rainforest, known for lush green canopies and an abundance of freshwater, is drying out — and deforestation is largely to blame.
The ocean is engine of all life on Earth, but human-driven climate change is pushing it past its limits. Here are five ways the ocean keeps our climate in check — and what can be done to help.
In a grueling and delicate dance, a team led by Conservation International removes a massive undersea killer.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. These pictures might be worth even more. An initiative featuring the work of some of the world’s best nature photographers raises money for environmental conservation.