General Awareness

ENVIRONMENT - December 2018

Dec 2018

Nov 26, 2019

Coal: Is This the Beginning of the End?

The fuel that powered the industrial revolution may be in decline at last.
2019 looks set to see the largest fall in electricity production from coal on record.
The reduction is estimated to be more than the power generated from coal in Germany, Spain and the UK combined.
It is projected to drop by 3% - which is a fall of 300 terawatt hours.
The record drop raises the prospect of a slowing of global CO2 emissions growth in 2019.
But the authors warn that, even with this decline, coal use and emissions remain far higher than the level required to keep the global temperature rise below 2C.

Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Again Break Records

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that the increase in CO2 was just above the average rise recorded over the last decade.
Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases once again reached new highs in 2018.
Levels of other warming gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, have also surged by above average amounts.
Since 1990 there's been an increase of 43% in the warming effect on the climate of long lived greenhouse gases.
The WMO report looks at concentrations of warming gases in the atmosphere rather than just emissions.

Nov 25, 2019

1st In- Vitro Gives Hope for Endangered Puerto Rican Toad

A critically endangered Puerto Rican toad was for the first time born via in vitro fertilisation as US scientists attempt to save it from extinction.
Olaf - named in honour of the frozen semen he came from - is the first of more than 300 Puerto Rican crested toads that hatched after the first attempt failed, Diane Barber, ectotherms curator at the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas.
Barber was part of a team that travelled to the southwest town of Guayanilla in 2018 to collect semen from six male Puerto Rican crested toads that were later released back into the wild. The scientists were careful to select bigger toads that had what are called "nuptial pads" on their thumbs, which indicate sexual maturity and help them grab on to females.
The team, which included scientists with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Puerto Rico's Department of Natural Resources, among others, preserved the semen in liquid nitrogen as they transported it to the Fort Worth Zoo, where a couple of female toads injected with hormones awaited.
The Puerto Rican crested toad was thought extinct until the 1960s and was then rediscovered in the early 1980s.

Sumatra Rhino is Extinct in Malaysia

The Sumatran rhinoceros has become extinct in Malaysia, after the last of the species in the country succumbed to cancer.
The Sumatran rhino, the smallest of five rhinoceros species, once roamed across Asia as far as India, but its numbers have shrunk drastically due to deforestation and poaching.
The WWF conservation group estimates that there are only about 80 left, mostly living in the wild in Sumatra and Borneo in Indonesia.

Nov 24, 2019

Oxford Names 'Climate Emergency' Its 2019 Word Of The Year

Oxford Dictionaries has named "climate emergency" as its 2019 Word of the Year, choosing it from an all-environmental shortlist that also included "climate action," "climate denial," "eco-anxiety," "extinction" and "flight shame."
The Word of the Year citation is intended to highlight "a word or expression shown through usage evidence to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year, and have a lasting potential as a term of cultural significance." Recent winners have included "toxic," "youthquake," "post-truth" and "vape."

Nov 19, 2019

New Hope For Trees Affected By Ash Dieback

Scientists say there is new hope in the fight against a disease that is devastating ash trees.
A study has identified the genes that give trees resistance to ash dieback, which arrived in the UK in 2012 and has now spread to almost every part of the country.
The discovery suggests that trees could now be bred that are unaffected by the epidemic.
The research is published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Nov 18, 2019

Newly Discovered Eel Sets a Jolting Record For Animal Voltage

Electric eels are fish with organs that can generate an electric charge. Scientists thought all electric eels belonged to one species. But a new study has found there are three. And one of the new species unleashes the highest voltage of any known animal.
Electric eels use strong zaps to defend themselves and take down prey. They also send out weaker pulses to sense hidden prey and communicate with each other.
One of the newly found species has been named Electrophorus voltai. It can deliver a shocking 860 volts.
That's way higher than the 650 volts recorded for eels — back when they were all called E. electricus.

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