Glyphosate: EU draft Motion, March 2016

Draft Motion for a Resolution prepared for the EU Parliamentary Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, March 2016

Nalazite se ovdje: Home zanimljivosti Opasni otrovi! Glyphosate: EU draft Motion, March 2016

Novosti: Ekologija.hr

  • Met Office says this warning will likely cause ‘adverse’ health effects with travel and power generation also possibly affected

    The Guardian’s environment editor, Fiona Harvey, has written a useful explainer about the UK public services that are struggling in the extreme weather. You can read it in full here:

    There’s only one solution in the end to the drought now declared across most of England and that’s rain, says Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading.

    An important consequence of drought is that very dry soils can become less able to absorb rainfall when it does arrive. This can increase surface runoff and can even contribute to localised flash flooding, particularly if rain falls intensely over a short period.

    The current situation highlights the need to improve long-term resilience to both drought and flood risk as climate variability increases, and shows one more damaging impact of the burning of fossil fuels.

    Continue reading...

  • Tenacious and confounding, the horseshoe crab pre-dates dinosaurs and has copper-based blood vital to vaccine safety

    They pre-date dinosaurs, eat food using their legs and contain blue blood that we use to keep us healthy. Horseshoe crabs are the supreme, if offbeat, survivors of the invertebrate world.

    Often called “living fossils” for visually obvious reasons – horseshoe crabs resemble a sort of prehistoric helmet (their Japanese name translates as “helmet crab”) – these animals have barely changed appearance along a lineage that stretches back 445m years.

    It’s invertebrate of the year again! From 3-12 August, every day we will profile one of the thousands of amazing invertebrates that our readers have nominated. And then, when you’ve heard about all of them, we’ll open the voting so you can choose your favourites. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with thoughts and ideas: email us at [email protected] with Invertebrate in the subject line.

    Continue reading...

  • The wild capture and release of a female big cat into a nature reserve is the first step towards reintroducing a population that hasn’t been seen for 70 years

    On 31 July, “Umit” – which means hope in Kazakh – was released into a nature reserve on the edge of Lake Balkhash after more than a decade of careful planning to return the caspian tiger to the region. With this release, Kazakhstan became the first country to restore its tiger range after they had been thought extinct, with the last reliable sighting in the country recorded more than 70 years ago.

    Umit – a wild-caught female tiger transported from the Russian far east – will be joined by more big cats in the coming years, with plans to establish a self-sustaining population of about 50. A wild-caught male flown from Russia is still being monitored by authorities and will be released when he is judged fit to survive alone. Two wild tiger cubs are also being reared on the reserve in special enclosures, with as little human contact as possible, and are likely to be released into the marshlands next year, to feast on boar, deer and kulans, a type of wild donkey.

    Continue reading...

  • Last week reporters Jillian Ambrose and Damian Carrington published a piece which revealed that biggest oil firms made $93bn in profits in three months amid the war in Iran and the climate crisis. They’re online now to to discuss their story and any other questions you might have

    Ask a question: log in or sign uphere


    BDurutti1936asks: How much extra tax will the UK treasury collect from the higher oil and gas prices caused by the Iran war?

    Jill:

    In the first weeks of the conflict, some predicted that the government’s taxes on North Sea oil and gas would yield a £20bn tax windfall for the Treasury if surging oil and gas prices remained high over the whole year. This is because the government’s windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas, known as the Energy Profits Levy, imposes an effective headline tax rate on North Sea profits of 78%, and the Treasury collects VAT from petrol and diesel sales too.

    But prices have not climbed by as much as first feared. So what can we reasonably expect? Before the war, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that oil and gas revenues would raise £2.7bn in the 2025/26 financial year. It also suggests that for every $10 increase to the benchmark oil price, the Exchequer can expect an extra £900m in revenue. Meanwhile, every 1p increase in the price of gas hands the Treasury an extra £55m.

    This is a great question, with many answers. But the top two are: profits and grids.

    Renewable energy projects may generate low-cost electricity but they are still expensive to build, and costs have climbed in recent years in line with inflation. In return for the high upfront costs, investors can expect long-term returns via steady subsidies. Major oil companies - which are used to ‘boom and bust’ market volatility - argue that these earnings have not been able to compete with the potential returns they can make from a fossil fuel project. If they intend to keep making the returns their shareholders expect, then they need to be quite picky about which renewable energy projects they choose.

    Continue reading...

  • Amid world pressure from heatwaves and fertiliser shortages, billionaire’s business has invested in circular farming and biomethane

    There is a distinctive smell of cow manure in the air at the Duke of Westminster’s dairy farm near Chester. It is a world away from the collection of grand West End properties controlled by the duke that form the backbone of his near £10bn fortune, a decade on from becoming Britain’s youngest billionaire.

    As part of his 349-year-old Grosvenor empire, Lea Manor Farm on the duke’s Eaton Estate in north-west England has fared better than most dairy farms in recent years.

    Continue reading...

  • Devons Road estate residents describe months-long ordeal of not being able to wash, clean or cook for much of the day

    Christmas Day in east London. Beatrice Asante empties a bag of potatoes into her kitchen sink and turns on the tap. Nothing. She turns it off and on again. Still nothing. What now?

    Asante rushes out to the only shop that is open, the local Nisa convenience store. She buys several big plastic bottles of water. Enough, she thinks, to make dinner and to last until the taps start running again.

    Continue reading...

  • Stoney Middleton, Derbyshire:The tradition of well dressing is strong in the Peaks, and this year, I found one featuring a certain 100-year-old naturalist

    I could already hear the noises of appreciation as I walked up the lane towards St Martin’s church. “Oh yes,” I heard a woman say. “That’s lovely.” Turning before the lych gate, I spotted a small knot of people standing in front of a small and apparently ancient stone basin on which rested the white frame of this year’s well dressing.

    The tradition of well dressing, strong in the Peak District, gives thanks for a community’s supply of safe water and is currently celebrated in more than a dozen villages across Derbyshire and Staffordshire. Given how the drought has left pastures surrounding Stoney Middleton brown and exhausted, this annual event seems more pertinent than ever.

    Continue reading...

  • Volunteers are on the lookout for sick birds as outbreak shatters ‘fairytale belief’ that disease would not reach Australia

    Bird enthusiast Jean Turner hoped avian flu would never arrive at her doorstep.

    At her home on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, bossy fairy wrens chirp at her from the deck, grey currawongs clumsily fall into her bird bath, and fluffy, hooded plover chicks emerge from speckled eggs in front of her binoculars.

    Continue reading...

  • Conservationists have created a ‘coastal corridor’ of ocean-based projects designed to preserve and nourish vulnerable marine life

    From disappearing manatees to bleached coral reefs, gender-changing turtles and oyster beds destroyed by hurricanes, no other state’s marine life faces the magnitude of climate-related challenges that Florida’s does.

    Now, wildlife authorities are attempting to bring some cohesion to tackling the diverse slate of issues by borrowing from a playbook that has already proved successful on land.

    Continue reading...

  • Extreme conditions in Washington and Oregon have fueled fast-moving fires, leaving the region draped in toxic plumes – and the danger isn’t over

    Piles of twisted metal and ashen debris line the cul-de-sacs where the tranquil suburbs of Spokane, Washington, once stood.

    The scale of devastation from a historic wildfire season in the Pacific north-west has come into sharper focus as firefighters wrangle a trio of blazes that consumed at least 846 structures on the eastern side of the state.

    Continue reading...

Novosti: Cybermed.hr

Novosti: Biologija.com