Toyota Wheels out New Hydrogen Fuel Cell Freight Truck

01.08.2018

The new zero emission vehicles are able to cover a 300-mile range on a full tank of the gas.

Toyota has unveiled a new hydrogen fuel cell electric freight truck able to cover a 300-mile range on a full tank.
The new vehicle, codenamed Beta, expands the capabilities of Toyota’s port operations (drayage) test vehicle it has been trialling at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles since last April.

The original Alpha model, which has a range of 200 miles, has already logged more than 10,000 miles in testing, emitting nothing other than water vapour.
Beta will enter service in the autumn, increasing the ports’ zero emission trucking capacity and further reducing the environmental impact of the haulage operations.

More than 16,000 pollution-emitting trucks service the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, a number that is expected to double by 2030.
More than 43,000 drayage trucks are working across similar facilities in the US, sending significant amounts of carcinogens, diesel particulates and other substances into the atmosphere.

Craig Scott, Senior Manager for Toyota’s North American Electrified Vehicle and Technologies Office, said: “Our goal with the first truck was to see if it could be accomplished and we did that.
“This time we’re looking at commercial viability. We want to help make a significant difference when it comes to the air quality not only in the Los Angeles area but across the US and around the globe.”

Source: enegrylivenews

World’s Largest King Penguin Colony Collapses by almost 90% in Space of 35 years

01.08.2018

Number of pairs has fallen from 500,000 in the 1980s, to just 60,000 by 2017.

The world’s largest colony of king penguins has collapsed by almost 90 per cent over the last 35 years, new research indicates.

Aerial and satellite images of the colony living on the remote subantarctic island of Île aux Cochons, in the southern Indian Ocean, suggests the number of penguins has fallen from around 500,000 pairs in the 1980s, to just 60,000 pairs in photographs taken in 2015 and 2017.
Until now, it was regarded as the second-largest colony of penguins in the world, after one on Zavodovski Island in the South Sandwich Islands, where the slopes of an active volcano are home to around two million chinstrap penguins.

Scientists have not yet identified why the population of king penguins on Île aux Cochons has shrunk so dramatically, but they noted that it is not possible for the birds have migrated elsewhere, as there are no other islands suitable for them to inhabit within striking distance.

In a paper published in the journal Antarctic Science, the authors say “possible causes were explored but no plausible explanation for such an unprecedented decrease in penguin populations was found”.
Satellite imagery shows the extent of the penguins’ breeding area, on bare flat ground, has also reduced significantly as vegetation has recolonised the stony ground.
Though they remain unsure of the cause, the team has suggested several possible hypothesis for the “massive decline”.

The first relates to the Indian Ocean Dipole, a weather phenomenon which affects ocean temperatures, local atmosphere and rainfall. In 1997 a particularly strong event may have sent fish and squid further south, affecting the foraging capacities of the penguins, leading to poor breeding performance from which the colony has struggled to recover.

The Dipole is closely associated with El Niño events, which have been amplified by global warming.
Another theory is that the decline may have been spurred by a partial relocation of the colony from a large group on one part of the island, to a smaller, beach-based colony, first observed in 1995.
Though the paper notes that the size of this newer population – 17,000 pairs – accounts only for a fraction of the original colony.

Third, feral cats and house mice, known to be present on the Île aux Cochons, may have changed their behaviour and may have begun to attack penguin chicks. This behavioural change has been observed in the past, where mice and cats were recorded beginning to target albatross chicks.
The fourth hypothesis is that diseases or parasites which affect various species of seabirds could have hit the colony, reducing breeding success, the survival of adults and population growth rates.

However, the paper says that the extent of the collapse would be unprecedented if it were the result of disease outbreak.
The last human visit to the island was back in 1982, and the team is now planning to return to study the causes for the decline.

Source: independent

The Startup Making Shirts out of Cow Poo

01.08.2018

Cow waste is a global environmental issue. Jalila Essaïdi and Dutch farmers are tackling the problem by transforming manure into materials.

Would you buy a shirt that has been through the back end of a cow? This could be a future fabric choice according to one Dutch startup, which is extracting cellulose from cowpats to make “manure couture”.

Jalila Essaïdi believes that a non-vegan future will involve recycling cow manure into cellulose fibre, bioplastics, chemical concentrates and pure water – and being less squeamish about it, too.
“Like a lasagne of manure, you need to make something out of it,” she says. “We see manure as a waste material, something disgusting and smelly. But oil [used to make fibre] isn’t clean and beautiful at the beginning. You really have to show people the hidden beauty if you transform this cellulose.”
It is just one of a range of innovations seeking new materials for old applications, as the world tries to wean itself off dirty habits like plastics and hydrocarbons and embrace new technologies.

Biocouture has in fact been around for several years but faces problems of scalability.
Essaïdi, who is working with 15 farmers in Eindhoven to create an industrial-scale manure refinery this year, has already won awards for her innovation including $200,000 from the Chivas Venture and an H&M Foundation Global Change award.
“The process is chemical and mechanical,” she explains, having run trials to create a fashion show in 2016. “When you collect manure, it’s a combination of urine and cow poop, 80% water. We separate the dry and wet fraction. The wet fraction is fermented and we [extract] solvents to transform the cellulose, which is nothing other than the grass and corn the cows eat.

“What makes our process better than the normal textile industry Croftmethod is that we don’t need high pressure, as the cow stomach is the first step in making the fibre softer. It’s also more energy efficient.”

Cow waste is an international environmental issue: in New Zealand, an estimated 60% of waterways are unsafe for swimming due to runoff from dairy farms full of algae-promoting nitrates, phosphates and bacteria. The EU has limits on manure used as fertiliser, to reduce water pollution, but in dairy lands like the Netherlands, there are regular reports of organised “manure fraud”.
The Dutch government’s environmental agency estimates 30%-40% of the country’s 76bn annual kilos of manure enters a black market of illegal waste, secretly traded or spread on the land at night to avoid fines for overproduction.

Kim Roetert, public affairs spokeswoman for the ZLTO farmers’ association, believes manure is an inevitable side-effect of animal farming but too much is a real problem. “Just seeing it as a waste product shows limited vision, though,” she says. “Manure has a lot of value, not just in making the ground fertile, but also, as Mestic is doing, making textiles, paper and bioplastic … or bio-energy. There would be no reason for farmers to commit manure fraud if it were no longer a waste product.”

H&M Foundation, established by the clothing retailer H&M, reckons we will have to get used to such unusual source materials. “The world is already consuming the equivalent of approximately 1.6 planet’s worth of resources every year, and there is an urgent opportunity to shift to a model where valuable materials are recovered,” says communications manager Malin Björne. “Fashionista or not, we are all going to have to get used to sometimes unconventional materials as we cannot rely on cotton, for example.”
H&M won’t comment on whether it would produce clothes with Mestic, but other manufacturers have told Essaïdi that they would consider using the cost-efficient fabric – but would not declare it explicitly on clothing labels.
Some academics believe cellulose taken from dung has even more high-tech potential thanks to the quadruple-bellied digestion power of a cow.

Prof Alexander Bismarck, head of the polymer group at the University of Vienna, is working on creating ultra-thin nanocellulose, for instance – although he had to start with elephant dung because none of his students would initially work with cowpats.

“The beauty with an animal is that it’s collecting low-grade biomass, processing it for you, regurgitating, [then] acid and enzymes attack the cellulose and it comes out in the back in quite fine fibres,” he explains. “You expend much less energy in grinding down this cellulose to nanofibers. If you can make thinner paper for printed circuit boards, so your computer or iPhone is lighter, I don’t think the public will mind if the product came out of the back end of an animal.”

The key question with manure couture, though, is whether the fabric smells. When the Dutch television channel RTL Nieuws took Mestic on to the streets, some people – after sniffing it – said they wouldn’t mind putting it on.
Some are more sceptical. Jan Willem van der Schans of Wageningen University, a sustainable livestock farming expert, believes even such innovations are not enough. “This will not solve the beef and dairy problem [of] gastric methane emissions,” he says. “It makes a ‘dead end’ technology less bad, so one could argue that it extends the lifetime of a wrong production system.”
And what about the farmer? Hans Huijbers, chair of the farmers’ associaiton ZLTO which is working with Mestic, wouldn’t mind wearing it. “If I’ve been busy in my cowshed, then I’m already coated in manure!”

Source: theguardian

Nuclear Waste Could Be Stored under National Parks, say MPs

31.07.2018

They believe the safe disposal of nuclear waste is more important than environmental concerns.

Radioactive nuclear waste could be stored in vaults and tunnels located deep underground in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs) in the UK.

MPs on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee have backed government proposals for a Geological Disposal Infrastructure (GDI), made up of multiple layers of materials such as steel, rock and clay to provide protection and secure waste at least 200 metres underground.

The GDI would store higher activity radioactive waste that cannot be deposited at existing surface facilities on a permanent basis.

The government had set out a draft National Policy Statement (NPI) in January detailing its approach on a permanent solution for the disposal of the UK’s radioactive waste.

The BEIS Committee states: “We decided against adding an exclusionary criterion for national parks and AONBs as in our view, it is right for safety matters to prevail over environmental concerns in this case.

“Although we agree that major developments should not be allowed in designated areas except under exceptional circumstances, we believe that existing planning legislation and the NPS contain sufficient safeguards against intrusive developments and environmental damage in national parts and AONBs.”

However, the Committee adds while it supports the government’s decision to keep the community consent process, it recommends clarifying the hierarchy between development consent orders and community consent in the NPS “in a way that is accessible to a lay audience so as to promote engagement by prospective communities”.

The document states: “We find the link between the NPS and the Industrial Strategy to be spurious and the emphasis on socioeconomic benefits to the host community insufficient. In order to be consistent with the Industrial Strategy, the government should ensure that the NPS places stronger requirements on the developer to establish robust local skills partnerships with the host community and to rely on local employment and sourcing opportunities.”

Responses

The Campaign to Protect Rural England said it hopes the government will look again at “how inappropriate” geological disposal facilities would be in designated landscapes.

It added: “We know that where such major development takes place, we destroy beautiful landscapes and ruin our opportunity to pass on a beautiful piece of countryside to the next generation.”

Caroline Lucas, Co-Leader of the Green Party said the though of burying nuclear waste in national parks was “outrageous” and suggested the future is in “clean, renewables energy like wind and solar” rather than nuclear power.

Kate Blagojevic, Head of Energy at Greenpeace UK added: “As we have cleaner, safer and cheaper alternatives available, it’s mystifying why the UK, alone amongst major western nations, insists on propping up this obsolete 20^th century technology.”

Source: energylivenews

Carbon Emissions Could Throw Europe back to Tropical Climate last Seen 50 Million Years ago

31.07.2018

Temperatures seen during recent heatwave likely to become norm by end of century, according to comparison with ancient conditions.

Spiralling carbon dioxide emissions could give parts of Europe the kind of tropical climate that it has not experienced for millions of years.
Under these conditions, temperatures comparable to those seen during the recent heatwave are likely to become the norm by the end of the century.

Researchers from the University of Bristol investigated conditions found on Earth during the early Paleogene, a period 56-48 million years ago.
During this time in the planet’s history, carbon dioxide levels were around the same as those predicted for the end of the century because of the massive quantities of greenhouse gases that humans are pumping into the atmosphere.
As a result, the era is of great interest to climate scientists seeking to understand the impact of such high carbon dioxide levels.

Analysis of ancient peat fossils allowed the scientists to estimate temperatures 50 million years ago.
“We know that the early Paleogene was characterised by a greenhouse climate with elevated carbon dioxide levels,” said Dr David Naafs, an earth scientist at the University of Bristol. “Most of the existing estimates of temperatures from this period are from the ocean, not the land – what this study attempts to answer is exactly how warm it got on land during this period.”

The scientists found that annual land temperatures in Western Europe and New Zealand were between 23C and 29C – higher than first thought.
This is up to 15C higher than current average temperatures in these regions.
If the same conditions emerge in coming years it could have serious repercussions.

Professor Rich Pancost, one of the study’s co-authors said: “Our work adds to the evidence for a very hot climate under potential end-of-century carbon dioxide levels. Importantly, we also study how the Earth system responded to that warmth. For example, this and other hot time periods were associated with evidence for arid conditions and extreme rainfall events.”
Their results were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The recent heatwave that struck Europe was associated with wildfire across the region, and caused major disruption to agriculture and wildlife.
Experts in the UK warned that hundreds of people were likely to die as a result of the elevated temperatures, and a report by the Environmental Audit Committee warned that heat-related deaths will likely triple by the middle of the century.
Climate scientists found that the heatwave was made more than twice as likely by human-induced climate change.
The scientists behind the new research said there is also a need to investigate how ancient temperature increases affected the tropics, and whether temperatures in excess of 40C turned them into “ecological dead zones”.

Source: independent

Cheap Material Could Radically Improve Battery Charging Speed

31.07.2018

Discovery could accelerate adoption of electric cars and solar energy, as well as helping to recharge your smartphone in minutes.

A newly identified group of materials could help recharge batteries faster, raising the possibility of smartphones that charge fully in minutes and accelerating the adoption of major clean technologies like electric cars and solar energy, say researchers.
The speed at which a battery can be charged depends partly upon the rate at which positively charged particles, called lithium ions, can move towards a negatively charged electrode where they are then stored. A limiting factor in making “super” batteries that charge rapidly is the speed at which these lithium ions migrate, usually through ceramic materials.
One potential solution is to make everything much smaller, by making batteries with nanoparticles. But nanoparticles are expensive and tricky to make and so scientists have been searching for alternative materials to circumvent this problem.

Now, researchers at the University of Cambridge have identified a group of materials called niobium tungsten oxides through which lithium ions can move at astonishingly high rates, meaning much faster charging batteries.
“Niobium tungsten oxides are fundamentally different,” said Kent Griffith, first author on the study published in the journal Nature. First discovered in 1965, these materials have a rigid, open structure and have larger particle sizes than many other materials commonly used in batteries.

To measure the movement of the lithium ions through these unusual materials, the researchers used a technology similar to that found in an MRI scanner. They found that the lithium ions were moving through their test materials hundreds of times faster than they would through typical ceramic electrode materials.

Another advantage of these alternative materials is that they are cheap and straightforward to make. “These oxides are easy to make and don’t require additional chemicals or solvents,” said Griffith.

Electric cars and grid-scale storage for solar power are two environmentally friendly technologies that could be revolutionised by better batteries.

Clare Grey, professor of materials chemistry at the University of Cambridge and senior author on the paper, said the next step will be to optimise the use of this material in a full battery, which can be cycled for the time and length needed for electric vehicles. “For example, electric buses where you may want to charge the bus very fast at the bus stop,” she added.

“The discovery is very exciting in terms of what it does for battery performance,” said Dan Brett, professor of electrochemical engineering at University College London, who was not involved in the work. “The really clever thing about the work is the insight into the mechanism and ability to measure how fast the lithium ions travel through the material.”
Brett added: “This technique will also allow these materials to be further optimised, so we can look forward to future improvements in [battery] power, energy and lifetime.”

Source: theguardian

‘Unlike Many Other Air Pollutants, Ammonia Emissions Have Increased since 2013’

30.07.2018

The Environment Agency says farmers must take the lead by changing their land management practices

Unlike many other air pollutants, emissions of ammonia have increased since 2013.
That’s the verdict from the Environment Agency, which says this rise is having a damaging effect on wildlife and habitats as ammonia deposits continue to acidify soils, pollute natural areas and saturate rivers and lakes.
These effects reduce biodiversity in sensitive habitats creating a knock-on effect for wildflower species, aquatic and insect life – the organisation believes as many as 95% of England’s nitrogen-sensitive habitats are affected by ammonia deposits.

Around 88% of the UK’s ammonia emissions come from the agricultural sector’s activities, which include fertiliser use, slurry storage and the intensive production of livestock.
The Environment Agency says farmers must take action by changing land management practices and using nitrogen more efficiently.

Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency, said: “Urgent action is needed if we are going to tackle the hidden blight of ammonia emissions. These emissions are having a detrimental impact on the environment, precious habitats and wildlife.
“As custodians of the land, farmers must take the lead by changing their land management practices.”

Source: energylivenews

UK Theme Parks to Offer Half-Price Entry in Exchange for Used Plastic Bottles

30.07.2018

Legoland and Thorpe Park among the attractions that have joined Coca-Cola in a trial offering instant incentives for recycling

Visitors to some of the UK’s most popular tourist attractions are to be offered half-price entry in exchange for used plastic drinks bottles, as part of a trial starting on Wednesday which gives instant incentives for recycling.

In a tie-up between theme park operator Merlin and drinks giant Coca-Cola, a series of so-called “reverse vending machines” will be installed outside the entrances of Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventures and Legoland.

In a bid to boost flagging recycling rates and tackle plastic litter, the machines will reward users depositing any 500ml plastic bottle with half-price discount vouchers which can be redeemed at all 30 Merlin attractions in the UK.

The initiative – which will run until mid-October – follows research by Coca-Cola which reveals that 64% of Britons would recycle more if they were rewarded instantly for their actions.

At present, just 43% of the 13bn plastic bottles sold each year in the UK are recycled, and 700,000 are littered every day. Pressure is growing on the government, retailers and consumers to increase rates of plastic bottle recycling and cut marine pollution. In March, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, announced plans to launch a mandatory deposit system for bottles and cans in the UK, although details are still being worked out.

Conventional deposit return schemes – in operation in 38 countries – typically involve an upfront deposit which is refunded to consumers who return their bottles and cans. Fees vary depending on the size of the bottle or can and many increasingly use new “reverse vending machines” to automate the return.

“We want to reward people for doing the right thing by recycling their bottles and hope to encourage some people who wouldn’t otherwise have done so,” said Jon Woods, general manager of Coca-Cola UK & Ireland. “All of our bottles can be recycled and we want to get as many of them back as possible so they can be turned into new bottles and not end up as litter.”

Meanwhile, the Co-op – the first UK retailer to launch a deposit return scheme trial with reverse vending machines – is reporting positive feedback from thousands of visitors to major summer music festivals, with high take-up rates and reduced littering. Through a link-up with organiser Festival Republic, the machines have been used at Co-op pop-up stores at Download and Latitude, with Reading and Leeds festivals to follow at the end of August. Users receive a voucher to spend, while the collected bottles go on to be recycled to create bottles for the Co-op’s own-brand water.

Frozen food giant Iceland and supermarket chain Morrisons have also launched small-scale trials of reverse vending machines.

Source: theguardian

Almost all World’s Oceans Damaged by Human Impact, Study Finds

30.07.2018

The remaining wilderness areas, mostly in the remote Pacific and at the poles, need urgent protection from fishing and pollution, scientists say.

Just 13% of the world’s oceans remain untouched by the damaging impacts of humanity, the first systematic analysis has revealed. Outside the remotest areas of the Pacific and the poles, virtually no ocean is left harbouring naturally high levels of marine wildlife.
Huge fishing fleets, global shipping and pollution running off the land are combining with climate change to degrade the oceans, the researchers found. Furthermore, just 5% of the remaining ocean wilderness is within existing marine protection areas.

“We were astonished by just how little marine wilderness remains,” says Kendall Jones, at the University of Queensland, Australia, and the Wildlife Conservation Society, who led the new research. “The ocean is immense, covering over 70% of our planet, but we’ve managed to significantly impact almost all of this vast ecosystem.”
Jones said the last remnants of wilderness show how vibrant ocean life was before human activity came to dominate the planet. “They act as time machines,” he said. “They are home to unparalleled levels of marine biodiversity and some of the last places on Earth you find large populations of apex predators like sharks.”
Much of the wilderness is in the high seas, beyond the protected areas that nations can create. The scientists said a high seas conservation treaty is urgently needed, with negotiations beginning in September under the UN Law of the Sea convention. They also said the $4bn a year in government subsidies spent on high seas fishing must be cut. “Most fishing on the high seas would actually be unprofitable if it weren’t for big subsidies,” Jones said.
The new work joins recent studies in highlighting the threat to oceans. Scientists warned in January that the oceans are suffocating, with huge dead zones quadrupling since 1950, and in February, new maps revealed half of world’s oceans are now industrially fished. “Oceans are under threat now as never before in human history,” said Sir David Attenborough at the conclusion of the BBC series Blue Planet 2 in December.

The new research, published in the journal Current Biology, classified areas of ocean as wilderness if they were in the lowest 10% of human impacts, either from one source, such as bottom trawling, or a combination of them all.
As most are on the high seas, very few are protected. “This means the vast majority of marine wilderness could be lost at any time, as improvements in technology allow us to fish deeper and ship farther than ever before,” Jones said.

Climate change is causing growing damage and Jones said Arctic wilderness areas protected by ice cover in the 1970s had now been lost after the ice melted and fishing boats were able to access them. It is increasingly a global problem, he said: “In future, as climate change gets worse, I think you can definitely say pretty much everywhere in the ocean is going to come under increasing level of threat.”

There are some bright spots, such as the remote corals in the British Indian Ocean Territory around Diego Garcia, from which islanders were controversially removed in the 1960s. In the Antarctic, major fishing companies now back the creation of the world’s biggest marine sanctuary.

The new study aimed to include the maximum area of likely wilderness, said Ward Appeltans, at the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission run by Unesco: “So the claim that only 13% of ocean wilderness remains is all the more striking.” He said the research focused on the ocean floor, and did not include impacts on the water column above it, and backed calls for a global ocean conservation treaty.
Jones said: “Beyond just valuing nature for nature’s sake, having these large intact seascapes that function in a way that they always have done is really important for the Earth. They maintain the ecological processes that are how the climate and Earth system function – [without them] you can start seeing big knock-on effects with drastic and unforeseen consequences.”

Source: theguardian

London Ranked Best City in World for EV Infrastructure

28.07.2018

London councils are set to install another 2,630 charging points in the next financial year

London is the best city in the world for electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure.
That’s according to a new study from online home rental company Spotahome, which ranked a range of cities out of 10.
It awarded London the highest index score of 10, followed by Amsterdam scoring 9.63 and Rotterdam at 8.73.
As of July 2018, the UK had 162,000 plug-in cars, with London councils set to deliver another 2,630 charging points in the next financial year and the report said it was working hard to deliver a modern and environmentally sustainable capital city of the future.

Other UK cities are lagging behind – Manchester is currently ranked in 18th place with a low score of 1.76, Edinburgh is in 31st at 1.1 and Leeds is in 35th place after scoring only 0.88.
Oslo ranked 6th despite Norway having more EV sales per capita than any other country in the world.

At the bottom of the rankings were major cities such as Cape Town, Cairo, Sao Paulo and Seoul, which all scored 0.
Melissa Lyras, Brand and Communications Manager at Spotahome, said: “If more cities invest in EV infrastructure they will help to facilitate growth in the market, improve air quality and the ultimately, the health and wellbeing of the people living there.
“London is a great example of a city succeeding in those goals, alongside other European countries who dominate the top ten.”

Source: energylivenews

Extreme Global Weather Is ‘the Face of Climate Change’ Says Leading Scientist

28.07.2018

Exclusive: Prof Michael Mann declares the impacts of global warming are now ‘playing out in real-time’

The extreme heatwaves and wildfires wreaking havoc around the globe are “the face of climate change,” one of the world’s leading climate scientists has declared, with the impacts of now “playing out in real time.”
Climate change has long been predicted to increase extreme weather incidents, and scientists are now confident these predictions are coming true. Scientists say the global warming has contributed to the scorching temperatures that have baked the UK and northern Europe for weeks.
The hot spell was made more than twice as likely by climate change, a new analysis found, demonstrating an “unambiguous” link.

Extreme weather has struck across Europe, from the Arctic Circle to Greece, and across the world, from North America to Japan. “This is the face of climate change,” said Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University, and one the world’s most eminent climate scientists. “We literally would not have seen these extremes in the absence of climate change.”
“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” he told the Guardian. “We are seeing them play out in real time and what is happening this summer is a perfect example of that.”
“We are seeing our predictions come true,” he said. “As a scientist that is reassuring, but as a citizen of planet Earth, it is very distressing to see that as it means we have not taken the necessary action.”

The rapid scientific assessment of the northern European heatwave was done by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and also colleagues in the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium. “We can see the fingerprints of climate change on local extremes,” he said.
The current heatwave has been caused by an extraordinary stalling of the jet stream wind, which usually funnels cool Atlantic weather over the continent. This has left hot, dry air in place for two months – far longer than usual. The stalling of the northern hemisphere jet stream is being increasingly firmly linked to global warming, in particular to the rapid heating of the Arctic and resulting loss of sea ice.

Prof Mann said that asking if climate change “causes” specific events is the wrong question: “The relevant question is: ‘Is climate change impacting these events and making them more extreme?’, and we can say with great confidence that it is.”

Mann points out that the link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer is a statistical one, which does not prove every cancer was caused by smoking, but epidemiologists know that smoking greatly increases the risk. “That is enough to say that, for all practical purposes, there is a causal connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer and it is the same with climate change,” Mann said.

Other senior scientists agree the link is clear. Serious climate change is “unfolding before our eyes”, said Prof Rowan Sutton, at the University of Reading. “No one should be in the slightest surprised that we are seeing very serious heatwaves and associated impacts in many parts of the world.”

It is not too late to make the significant cuts needed in greenhouse gas emissions, said Mann, because the impacts progressively worsen as global warming increases.
“It is not going off a cliff, it is like walking out into a minefield,” he said. “So the argument it is too late to do something would be like saying: ‘I’m just going to keep walking’. That would be absurd – you reverse course and get off that minefield as quick as you can. It is really a question of how bad it is going to get.”

Source: theguardian

A New Study Reveals that Urban Green Spaces May Be an Antidote to Depression

27.07.2018

green-2662561_960_720 — Photo-illustration: Pixabay

A recent study shows that symptoms of depression can be reduced for people who have access to green spaces. Researchers in Philadelphia transformed vacant lots in the city into green spaces and found that adults living near these newly planted areas reported decreased feelings of depression, with the biggest impact occurring in low-income neighborhoods.

Researchers at University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine teamed up with members of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to transform and observe 541 randomly selected vacant lots in Philadelphia. Eugenia South, assistant professor and co-author of the study, said Philadelphia’s littered lots were an ideal environment to set-up their groundwork. “There’s probably 40,000 of them in the city” she told NPR, “but they’re concentrated in certain sections of the city, and those areas tend to be in poorer neighborhoods.” According to the study, lower socioeconomic conditions have already been proven to distress mental health states.

The researchers separated the lots into three groups: a control group of lots where nothing was altered, a set of lots that was cleaned up of litter, and a group of lots where everything, including existing vegetation, was removed and replanted with new trees and grass.

“We found a significant reduction in the amount of people who were feeling depressed” South said. Her team used a psychological distress scale to ask people how they felt, including senses of hopelessness, restlessness and worthlessness, as well as measuring heart rates, a leading indicator of stress, of residents walking past the lots. Low-income neighborhoods showed as high as a 27.5 percent reduction in depression rates. South said, “In the areas that had been greened, I found that people had reduced heart rates when they walked past those spaces.”

While previous research has cross-studied the beneficial effects of green spaces on mental health, experts, such as Professor Rachel Morello-Frosch from the University of California, Berkeley, are regarding this experiment as “innovative.” Morello-Frosch said that previous studies were observational in nature and failed to provide concrete statistical results as this study has offered. Morello-Frosch, who was not involved with the analysis, said, “To my knowledge, this is the first intervention to test — like you would in a drug trial — by randomly alleviating a treatment to see what you see.”

Parallel research has identified indicators of crime-reduction and increased community interaction, showing that green spaces are a low-cost answer to improving many facets of a community’s well-being, now including mental health.

Source: Inhabitat

Greek Wildfires: Dry Winter and Strong Winds Led to Tinderbox Conditions

27.07.2018

greece-1899001_960_720 — Photo-illustration: Pixabay

An unusually dry winter, with less than average rainfall interspersed with localised flooding in some areas, is emerging as a major contributing factor to the wildfires that are ravaging the mainland of Greece.

Lack of the expected steady rainfall in the winter months meant groundwater sources failed to recharge and left vegetation unable to recover fully from the high temperatures of the 2017 summer. As a result, when temperatures topping 40C hit some areas during this summer’s heatwave and drought, the conditions were already in place for wildfires to take hold.

Strong winds then fanned the flames and spread the fires widely before stretched fire-fighting teams could gain control. The fact that the fires took hold on land close to densely inhabited and resort areas was largely a matter of chance, but one that led to a death toll of more than 70 people and wrought devastation on homes.

These are widely regarded as the short-term causes of the fires, but experts are also concerned that the conditions experienced in Greece in the last two years are likely to be replicated more often in future, owing to the changing climate.

Nikos Charalambides, executive director of Greenpeace Greece, said: “As the death toll rises and the full size of the disaster is still to be recorded, it would be premature to attribute these [fires] to either climate change or the failures of the fire prevention and fire-fighting mechanisms.”

However, he said the contributing factors included drought, strong winds and unusually high temperatures, all of which are likely to be aggravated by climate change.

The current heatwave across Europe and much of the northern hemisphere could be seen as “a foretaste of what weather extremes we are threatened by as the climate crisis progresses”, said Charalambides.

Growing more trees and managing forests properly would help to make the land more resilient to droughts, heatwaves and fires, he added. Forests also act as a cooling factor on the local climate and support a range of biodiversity.

Charalambides also called for a greater focus on the prevention of fires in Greece in place of a traditional focus on boosting firefighting capacity. Alongside this, there should be more emphasis on drawing up plans for evacuation in the case of disaster, particularly in areas where pine forests are near to human habitation.

Rachel Kennerley, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “The immediate priority must be to tackle the terrible fires, and to support the people whose homes, lives and livelihoods have been put at risk or devastated.”

But she said the longer-term impacts must also be taken into account when the immediate danger has passed: “Extreme heatwaves are predicted to become more frequent as climate change takes hold, meaning drier forests and countryside, and a greater risk of fire. Politicians must wake up to the extreme weather battering the planet and take tough and urgent steps to slash the climate-wrecking pollution being pumped into our atmosphere.”

Ray Rasker of Headwaters Economics, an expert on wildfires and the built environment in California, said buildings in high-risk areas could be made more resistant to fires in future, often through relatively simple measures. He cited nonflammable roofing material and siding for houses, not using wooden decks, installing fine mesh screens on roof vents, and planting fire-resistant vegetation close to houses.

He also warned that in the aftermath of large fires there is often a temptation to waive or loosen high building standards in order to rebuild as quickly as possible, which he said would be a mistake.

The short-term Met Office forecast for Greece is for temperatures from around 26C to around 30C, with some localised thunderstorms and a small amount of rainfall in a few areas.

Source: Guardian

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