Environment
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BBC News - Coral reefs heading for fishing and climate crisis
23 February 2011 Last updated at 14:37 GMT By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News Healthy coral reefs provide a living for about 275 million people, with many more dependent on them
Delegates will consider adopting new set of targets for 2020 that aim to tackle biodiversity loss The UN biodiversity convention meeting has opened with warnings that the ongoing loss of nature is hurting human societies as well as the natural world. Much hope is being pinned on economic analyses showing the loss of species and ecosystems is costing the global economy trillions of dollars each year. Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), described the meeting in Nagoya, Japan, as a "defining moment" in the history of mankind. "[Buddhist scholar] Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki said 'the problem of nature is the problem of human life'. Today, unfortunately, human life is a problem for nature," he told delegates in his opening speech.
BBC News - 'Ten years' to solve nature crisis, UN meeting hears
Baby clownfish face a "wall of mouths" when they first arrive at the reef Clownfish, the spectacular tropical species featured in the movie Finding Nemo, appear to lose their hearing in water slightly more acidic than normal. "Avoiding coral reefs during the day is very typical behaviour of fish in open water," said research leader Steve Simpson from the School of Biological Sciences at the UK's Bristol University.
BBC News - Acid oceans turn 'Finding Nemo' fish deaf
Renewable Energy
Wind power in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
UK installed wind power capacity 1990–2011 (operational) At the beginning of March 2012, the installed capacity of wind power in the United Kingdom was 6,580 megawatts (MW), with 333 operational wind farms and 3,506 wind turbines in the UK. [ 1 ] The UK is ranked as the world’s eighth largest producer of wind power . 723 MW of new wind power capacity was brought online during 2011, a 40% decrease on 2010. 2012 is expected to be a significant year for the offshore wind industry with potentially 5 farms becoming operational with over 1,300 MW of generating capability. [ 2 ] Through the Renewables Obligation , British electricity suppliers are now required by law to provide a proportion of their sales from renewable sources such as wind power or pay a penalty fee.
Severn Barrage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Barrage locations considered over the years. The most westward locations around Ilfracombe and The Gower are not shown. Black indicates lines of most interest, with associated peak power generation at that location.
The UK has scrapped plans for a £30 billion Severn tidal project, claiming it would be 'very costly to deliver and very challenging to attract the necessary investment from the private sector alone'. Although the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) and others had been in favour of the scheme other groups, particularly the RSPB, had opposed the expected loss of a protected wetland habitat. In recent months it became clear the project faced economic rather than environmental challenges with experts telling the Ecologist recently that the scheme had become 'ludicrously expensive '.
Severn tidal barrage axed as nuclear power plants proposed - News - The Ecologist
The ebb and flow of the tides can be used to turn a turbine , or it can be used to push air through a pipe, which then turns a turbine . Large lock gates, like the ones used on canals, allow ships to pass. If one was built across the Severn Estuary, the tides at Weston-super-Mare would not go out nearly as far - there'd be water to play in for most of the time. But the Severn Estuary carries sewage and other wastes from many places (e.g.
Energy Resources: Tidal power
Pump Carbon Dioxide Underground - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News - FOXNews.com
A team of researchers representing government, industry and academia has launched a test project in which carbon dioxide produced by a natural gas processing plant is being disposed of by injecting it far beneath the ground. Officials announced Thursday that the test is under way at a site in Otsego County's Charlton Township, about 10 miles east of Gaylord in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula. The experiments are part of an effort led by the U.S. Department of Energy to better understand the potential — and demonstrate the technologies available — for deep-underground storage of carbon dioxide to prevent the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere.Breathingearth - CO2, birth & death rates by country, simulated real-time
The Breathing Earth simulation Welcome to Breathing Earth . This real-time simulation displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates. Please remember that this is just a simulation.
Survey to probe Arctic ice melt | Arctic Focus
An eminent UK engineer is suggesting building cloud-whitening towers in the Faroe Islands as a "technical fix" for warming across the Arctic. Scientists told UK MPs this week that the possibility of a major methane release triggered by melting Arctic …
Comparative analyses reveal that human pathogens increase towards the equator and that the relationship is linked to climate - this has important implications for global biodiversity, public health and environmental epidemiology. Vanina Guernier 1 , 2 * , Michael E. Hochberg 3 , 4 , Jean-François Guégan 1 1 Génétique et Évolution des Maladies Infectieuses, Montpellier, France, 2 Unité Expertise et Spatialisation des Connaissances en Environnement, Montpellier, France, 3 Équipe Génétique et Environnement, Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution de Montpellier, Université Montpellier II, Montpellier, France, 4 National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America Identifying the factors underlying the origin and maintenance of the latitudinal diversity gradient is a central problem in ecology, but no consensus has emerged on which processes might generate this broad pattern.