Environment

We find ourselves in an era of technological splendour and moral confusion, a time when we can summon miracles with a swipe yet remain puzzlingly blind to the mounting catastrophes at our door. It’s 2025, and the brightest minds on Earth—those once poised to cure pandemics or pioneer clean energy—are now fixated on perfecting gambling apps, AI-generated pornography, and a new wave of virtual girlfriends designed to flatter, console, and distract. As glaciers recede and storms grow fiercer, these digital creations thrive in server farms powered by fossil fuels, data centres humming day and night as the real world smoulders in the background. Yet the greatest showpiece of our current obsession might just be the Stargate Project, a colossal, half-trillion-pound initiative ...

A report in arsTECHNICA two days ago suggests Scotland’s offshore wind farms have massive potential to become our most economical and most efficient form of electricity generation in the coming years. Hywind, 25km off Peterhead is the world’s first commercial floating offshore wind farm. It started sending electricity to the grid last October and had a 65% capacity over the last 3 months. Theoretically at 100% the farm would be sending 30Mw per minute though a range from 40 to 60% is more realistic. The cost of wind power generally continues to fall dramatically as the cost of nuclear soars by around 35%. See: Scottish electricity generation from renewables costs to fall to a quarter of nuclear costs by 2040 The survival of offshore farms ...

U.N. Chief Calls for New Push to Rid the World of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. News Feb. 26, 2018, BY TOM MILES GENEVA (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for a new global effort to get rid of nuclear weapons, drawing a cautious response from envoys of atomic-armed powers at odds for decades over nuclear disarmament. Speaking to the Conference on Disarmament at the U.N. complex in Geneva, Guterres said many states still wrongly thought that nuclear weapons made the world safer. “There is great and justified anxiety around the world about the threat of nuclear war,” he said. “Countries persist in clinging to the fallacious idea that nuclear arms make the world safer … At the global level, we must ...

Easy copy paste to email addresses : administration@attorneygeneral.gov.lk pm@pmoffice.gov.lk secpm@pmoffice.gov.lk meegasmulla@yahoo.com “The World Is Watching. Release Ganga into Protective Custody Now” #TempleElephant  You can follow more from the Animal Welfare by just clicking HERE

Want a simple and yet effective way to oppose Trump’s environmental policies?  Now you can donate to “Trump Forest,” an effort to completely offset the effects of Trump’s disastrous climate policies – including his dismantling of the Clean Power Plan – by planting 1 billion trees worldwide.  Yes, that’s 1 billion trees or the absorption of 650 million tons of CO2 (the amount that Trump’s completely dropping the ball on U.S. climate policies is expected to produce).  In short, it’s an effort to undo the effects of Trump’s poor climate decisions and get us back into the fold of international climate action “bigly.” Well, just kidding – a little bit.  It’s more of a symbolic effort to show opposition to Trump’s ...

Imagine a world where every country has not only complied with the Paris climate agreement but has moved away from fossil fuels entirely. How would such a change affect global politics? The 20th century was dominated by coal, oil and natural gas, but a shift to zero-emission energy generation and transport means a new set of elements will become key. Solar energy, for instance, still primarily uses silicon technology, for which the major raw material is the rock quartzite. Lithium represents the key limiting resource for most batteries – while rare earth metals, in particular, “lanthanides” such as neodymium, are required for the magnets in wind turbine generators. Copper is the conductor of choice for wind power, being used in the ...

GDF Watch (accessed) 19th Feb 2018, The Local Government Association’s special interest group on radioactivewaste, NuLeAF, explain why the UK’s Local Authorities support geological disposal, and set out their expectations of Government policy. Guided by a government White Paper published in 2014, the Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) will be the repository for the UK’s higher-level radioactive waste. It will involve the construction of a highly-engineered facility many hundreds of metres below the surface and spreading out over several kilometres. Once all the waste has been placed in the site it will be permanently sealed. Given the nature of the material being disposed of, and the scale of the repository, this is clearly a huge technical challenge. However an even greater challenge is political. The Government is clear – the GDF will ...

India Test Fires Second Nuclear Capable Ballistic Missile in a Week, The nuclear capable Prithvi-II missile was test fired on February 7. The Diplomat, By Franz-Stefan GadyFebruary 09, 2018  For the second time in just a week, India’s Strategic Forces Command (SFC) has test launched a short-range nuclear capable ballistic missile as part of its annual training cycle to test the combat readiness of the Indian Army’s missile forces. The Prithvi-II tactical surface-to-surface short-range ballistic missile was test fired from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) on Dr. Abdul Kalam Island in the Bay of Bengal off the coast of Odisha on February 7, according to defense sources speaking to local media……… The February 7 missile test follows the test firing of an Agni-I short-range nuclear capable ballistic missile on February 6. According ...

I saw this one at the weekend and showed it to a friend in England who is a bit of an environment info hub and even he was a little shocked by the extent of it. In my house, I’m sure like many of your own, we make a real effort to try to recycle as much as we can and make a real effort to reduce our carbon footprint. It’s maybe not much, and I accept we have cars, one is a smart with virtually zero omissions and the other sits parked most of the week. We’re not great, but we try to do what we can and again like many we do get annoyed with packaging, rubbish being dumped, and ...

The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), Africa’s conservation leader, is proud to announce the transfer of the Medike Nature Reserve in Limpopo, into the EWT’s name, as its first ever land purchase. Medike comprises some 1,400 ha of priority and unique mountain habitat in the Soutpansberg Mountains, and was bought through the generosity of the Roberts Family Trust in Australia. This is the first step in a long-term project to realise the dream of establishing the Soutpansberg Protected Area (SPA), which will ultimately span in excess of 23,000 ha and will connect the existing Happy Rest Nature Reserve in the east and Luvhondo Private Nature Reserve in the west. This special place is South Africa’s most northern mountain range, and is home ...