27th February-UK approves world's biggest off-shore wind farm

Plans for up to 400 turbines located 80 miles off the Yorkshire coast have been given consent by the UK government in what would be the country’s biggest source of renewable energy.

The Dogger Bank Creyke Beck project, double the size of the London Array, the UK’s current largest offshore wind-farm located in the outer Thames Estuary, is the furthest ever attempted offshore globally (131km from the UK coast), will stretch over 500 square kilometres, and has the potential to treble in size to 1,200 turbines if further trenches are also constructed.

Estimates put its cost at between £6billion and £8billion, and it is expected to supply 2.5 per cent (2.4 gigawatts) of the UK’s energy demand – enough for two million homes. It will consist of two separate 1.2GW offshore wind farms, will be the UK’s biggest renewable energy generator, and the second largest power generator overall (behind the 3.9GW Drax coal-fired station in North Yorkshire). Construction and operation is expected to generate more than £1.5billion for the UK economy, and create 4,750 new direct and indirect jobs within the Yorkshire and Humberside region.

Dogger Bank has long been mooted as a prime location for offshore wind-farming, due both to the relative ease of laying foundations and construction of the turbines in its shallow seabed and the high wind speeds that are common in the area. Perhaps surprisingly given these optimum conditions, this is the first instance where exploitation of the area has been considered.

The approval has been given much support from environmentalists. Nick Medic, director of offshore renewables at RenewableUK, the wind industry association, called the project a major step forward in the UK’s push for green energy, stating ‘Dogger Bank demonstrates the sheer potential of offshore technology to turn out vast ocean and wind resources into green energy. It is a project that pushes the offshore engineering envelope – demonstrating how far this technology has evolved in the ten short years since the first major offshore wind farm was installed.’

Despite the positivity around the project, the actual construction could still be years away. The project’s consortium, Forewind, has yet to make a final investment decision, and, while achieving planning permission may encourage a positive decision, falling oil price and the uncertainty caused by a general election may complicate matters. The Forewind consortium comprises the UK’s SSE, Germany’s RWE, and Norway’s Statoil and Statkraft. It has already spent £60million on surveys on the area, according to sources in The Guardian.

‘Achieving consent for what is currently the world’s largest offshore wind project in development is a major achievement and will help confirm the UK’s position as the world leader in the industry,’ said Tarald Gjerde, general manager for Forewind, in response to the government’s decision.

As part of the consent process, a final six-week-long judiciary review period is now underway, allowing, under the terms of the Aarhus Convention, anyone directly affected by the project in some way to challenge this decision. A decision on the second part of the Forewind development plan for Dogger Bank, with this station of a similar size and located further north near Teeside, is anticipated around August 2015.

The RSPB has already announced its misgivings over the plans, stating that, though fundamentally it agrees with developing and implementing renewable energy power sources, it is ‘concerned about the combination of pressures on North Sea bird life at present, and in particular impacts on the gannets and kittiwakes of Flamborough Head and Bempton Cliffs Special Protection Area and Sites of Special Scientific Interest due to the combined collision risk resulting from a number of wind-farms (both consented and proposed) in this area.’

Its spokesman also stated that the organisation ‘disagrees with the methods used to measure the risk from the Creyke Beck project and these other offshore windfarms [planned for the area],’ and that ‘these concerns will be front of mind when the RSPB examines the plans and considers the implications [of these recently approved projects].’ It is expected that other environmental groups will also be closely scrutinising these proposals in the near future.

This is in contrast to the opinion of governmental advisory body, Natural England, who has stated that, though it initially identified potential impacts from the proposed wind farm on several sea-bird populations and sandbank habitats, it has worked ‘with the developer to address these concerns through the carrying out of scientific surveys and assessments’ and, based on that, ‘[concludes] that the project will not have a significant impact on any protected species or habitat.’

THE WINDS OF CHANGE?

Government support and assistance for this project is part of an increasing drive by Britain to reach its target goals of generating 15 per cent of energy supply from renewable sources by 2020, set by the European Union, and cutting carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, set by the Climate Change Act 2008.

It is widely believed that the UK has the necessary reserves of wind, wave and tidal power to meet this. The government estimates that offshore wind alone could meet Britain’s current demand for electricity ten times over and so has committed £14.5billion of investment into the industry since 2010.

Despite this, the United Kingdom has a rather chequered past when it comes to offshore wind sites, since its first came into operation near Blyth in 2000. It currently has around 1,200 offshore wind turbines, wind a total generating capacity of about 4GW.

The country’s current largest, the London Array, was also the largest offshore wind farm in the world when it was constructed. However, it was plagued with difficulties almost immediately post-government approval in 2006. Costs spiralled way beyond even the most pessimistic predictions, Shell, one of the key investors, pulled out as a result, and there was a real fear that the project would never be completed. The wind-farm was eventually opened in 2013, generating enough energy for 470,000 homes.

However, further complications have arisen within plans for a second phase, which would have seen a further 166 turbines installed to an increased generating capacity to 1,000MW, but was beset with further problems as concerns were raised by the RSPB about the dangers it would present to the local population of red-throated divers.

27th February-Arctic Ambassador advised for UK

The United Kingdom must appoint an ambassador for the Arctic region, or it risks becoming an irrelevance in decisions over the polar area’s future, a House of Lords report has concluded.

The report, ‘Responding to a Changing Arctic’, states that without a specific Arctic representative, the UK is in danger of being ‘outmanoeuvred’ in the region by countries that do have them, leaving it powerless both in promoting its own interests in the Arctic (in sectors such as fossil fuel extraction and new shipping routes) and in decisions about conserving the region.

It criticises the UK’s recent attempts at engagement with the region as being too hesitant and cautious, stating: ‘the UK’s approach needs to be more strategic, better coordinated and more self-confident and proactive, or the UK risks being outmanoeuvred by other states with less experience in the Arctic.’

‘The Arctic is changing in front of our eyes. That change is momentous and unprecedented,’ declared Lord Teverson, chairman of the House of Lords Arctic Committee. ‘It will bring both difficulties and opportunities and it is vital that the UK takes this challenge seriously and is able to respond to it.’

Competitor nations such as France and Japan have already appointed Arctic ambassadors and in May 2015, US Secretary of State John Kerry will take chair of the Arctic Council, which co-ordinates policy in the region, for a two-year term, in what is expected to be a focused tackling on halting climate change and protecting the region, in line with recent US environmental policy. The UK, it is argued, needs to stamp its authority on the region now to avoid being marginalised in future.

‘The degree to which climate change in the Arctic will create other economic opportunities – such as shorter shipping routes – is not yet clear, but the UK must position itself as a premier partner in the Arctic so it can respond to these changes effectively,’ the report stressed.

While the report paid tribute to the UK’s ‘long and successful’ history of engagement with the Arctic – making a valuable contribution to the science – it stated that now the UK government needed to ‘substantially increase’ funding for British Arctic science due to the ‘momentous and unprecedented’ change that is afflicting the region.

The report highlights two key areas where the UK’s interest in the region’s

immediate future must lie – fishing and fossil fuel extraction.

It calls for a moratorium on fishing in the high seas area of the central Arctic Ocean, at least until a recognised management regime for the area is established, to avoid the ‘alarming prospect of uncontrolled fishing in international waters’ as melting ice causes fish to migrate to previously inaccessible areas. The report recommends that the UK government plays an active role in fishing policy in the region.

In terms of fossil fuel extraction, it states that although the Arctic offers huge potential through its mammoth reserves of oil and gas, international standards on where drilling can be undertaken in relation to sea ice must be seriously considered, as extracting these resources can be difficult, costly and fraught with potential for environmental damage. It also advises that oil firms should reconsider their plans for operations with the region.

The report states that the current drop in oil price should be seen as an opportunity to investigate whether fossil fuels can be safely extracted from the region, but it wishes to highlight ‘the alarming prospect of additional global warming arising from the release of methane from the Arctic seabed and melting permafrost, and other disturbing feedback loops.’

The report also argued that the UK needed to take a more proactive interest in the Arctic now, as recent events have raised worries about the unpredictably of Russia’s foreign policy, so there is no certainty that peaceful cooperation in the region will continue indefinitely.

‘Every effort should be made to insulate Arctic cooperation from geopolitical tensions arising in other parts of the world because there is a global interest in protecting this unusually vulnerable environment,’ it asserted.

A spokesman for the UK Government went on record to say that it ‘[welcomes] the useful and timely report into the changes in the Arctic and the implications for the UK’ and that it is ‘carefully considering the findings and recommendations made by the committee and will formally respond in due course.’

26th February-Controversial oil pipeline vetoed by Obama

In what has been seen as a key victory for environmentalists, President Obama has vetoed a controversial Canada-to-USA oil pipeline, citing issues related to ‘security, safety and [the] environment’.

The Keystone XL Pipeline, which was first applied for in 2008, would expand an already existing oil pipeline that currently runs from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada to the US Midwest, all the way to Port Arthur, Texas (a journey of around 1,179 miles). This would double the current capacity to 292 million barrels-worth of heavy petroleum per year.

The project first provoked serious environmental scrutiny due to its initial routing over the top of the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, which supports much of the surrounding countryside. Detractors of the project argue that this could lead to a serious environmental and human catastrophe occurring if the pipeline were to run into difficulties and leak. Although the project was subsequently rerouted to move the pipes further from the aquifer, the decision has since been reversed by Dave Heineman, the Republican governor who controls the region, placing the pipeline back on its original course.

President Obama seemingly agreed with the critics of the pipeline issuing a statement announcing the veto: ‘The presidential power to veto legislation is one I take seriously. But I also take seriously my responsibility to the American people. And because this act of Congress conflicts with established executive branch procedures and cuts short consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest – including our security, safety and environment – it has earned my veto.’

ENVIRONMENTAL WAR

Environmental issues have formed a major part of the argument against these proposed plans. Obama has consistently maintained throughout his presidency that he will not approve the project if research prior to its construction found it to ‘significantly exacerbate’ carbon-dioxide emissions.

Environmental campaigners have turned this project from a low-key infrastructure development into a national issue – using it almost as a ‘litmus paper test’ for Barrack Obama’s promises to tackle climate change pro-actively. The Obama administration has previously vowed to cut US greenhouse gas emissions 26–28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025 as part of a concerted effort to combat global warming.

Today’s decision has been seen as an important milestone in the fight against climate change – one estimate from Maximillion Auffhammer purports that not approving the pipeline could leave as many as one billion barrels of Canadian tar sands oil in the ground by 2030.

‘This veto tells the world that our nation takes seriously the crisis of global warming, and that we will not support legislation that would let a Canadian oil company ship some of the dirtiest oil on the planet across the United States,’ stated Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, a vehement critic of the plans. ‘Climate change is real, it is caused by human activity and it is already causing devastating problems. Our job now is to aggressively transform our energy system away from fossil fuels into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.’

Most environmentalists see this desire to expand Canada’s tar sands industry as a dangerous one – coming at a time when they argue the world should be focusing on leaving much of its existing fossil fuels underground and focus more on implementing cleaner, renewable energy sources in order to avoid drastic climate change.

‘Hopefully the ongoing legislative charade has strengthened his commitment to do the right thing,’ said Bill McKibben, a founder of the group 350.org, which has led the campaign to urge Mr. Obama to reject the pipeline.

MUDDY ARGUMENTS

So far, the information regarding the overall impacts of the project have felt somewhat confused. The majority of energy policy experts are of the opinion that the project will have minimal impact environmentally or on jobs. A 2014, eleven-page State Department analysis, for instance, concluded that the project would have minimal impact upon the US’ contribution to climate change – the tar sands are almost certain to be developed in future regardless of the building of this pipeline, and so ultimately the method of transportation is likely to have negligible impact on carbon dioxide emissions.

This is the main basis, seemingly, of the arguments for supporters of the project. Most argue that the pipeline is preferable to using rail, the typical method of transportation currently used, which has suffered a number of high-profile crashes and derailments with extremely damaging effects in the past few years. Rail is also a much more expensive method or transportation.

This is disputed by those against the pipeline that argue that there are key logistical features that limit the growth of rail in Western Canada, while there is likely to be

increased regulations on train safety given the high-profile crashes that have seemingly plagued the oil transportation method over the past few years – potentially making it an uneconomically viable option.

Moreover, the pipeline’s supporters insist it will have economic benefits (the project is forecast to have a value of contributing around $3.4billion to the US economy) and increase US energy security by increasing its energy supply from a friendly neighbour.

Over the past decade, the Canadian government has worked in partnership with oil companies to extract oil from the region’s tar sands, but it is finding it increasingly difficult to ship all that oil to refineries that would be able to convert it into usable fuel. It was hoped that this pipeline would reduce that pressure, and so the Canadian Government has vehemently supported this project. There are fears amongst the project’s supporters that this veto will thus strain relations between the two nations.

Opponents to the project, however, argue that the economic benefits are negligible when considered in the long term and will contribute, environmentally, to ecological destruction and climate change. They cite the findings of the EPA and the State Department, which have both asserted that the methods of extracting oil in this manner adds to greenhouse gases (the State Department claims that ‘oil extracted from the Canadian oil sands produced about 17 per cent more carbon pollution than conventionally extracted oil’).

Indeed some forecasts are so bad that they present the proposal as a pivotal moment in the Earth's history – NASA scientist James Hansen warned that burning every last drop of oil in the vast oil sands would mean ‘game over’ for the fight against climate change.

There has also been some debate over the economic benefits that this pipeline will really have – with the projected number of jobs created by this proposal fluctuating wildly depending on the source. The US State Department estimated that the project would create 42,000 jobs over its two-year construction, Obama, in July 2014, stated just a third of that number would be created in reality, with a mere 50–100 employees needed once the project was running. Meanwhile, the companies proposing the pipeline project argued that it would created up to 50,000 jobs in the construction industry alone.

NOTHING MORE THAN A PIPE DREAM?

By rejecting the legislation through veto, the President has not cancelled the project

outright – rather he has overturned the decision of the senate (which voted 62 to 36 in favour of constructing the pipeline) to approve the motion to give himself the right to make a final judgement when or if he sees fit, although most on both sides expect this is a prelude to full rejection of the plan.

Not that those in support of the project have given up hope. TransCanada, the company proposing the pipeline,said it ‘remains fully committed’ to its construction, and the Canadian government said that, despite this setback, it believes that construction is not a matter of if, but when. US Republicans have also already announced their intentions to attempt to push through these plans, utilising public opinion (which stood at 66 per cent in favour according to one 2013 poll) later in 2015 as part of larger bills upon which there is likely to be more public pressure on the President not to reject.

25th February-Coral reefs face bleaching events on a global scale

Increasingly warm ocean temperatures are leading to coral bleaching on a global scale for only the third time in recorded history, and for the first time not during an El Niño period.

A new report, released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has warned that the severe levels of coral bleaching witnessed in 2014 are likely to continue, or even to worsen, across 2015. Increasingly warm temperatures in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans are continuing to rise – according to the NOAA’s newly updated forecast in its Coral Reef Watch, a weekly analysis that forecasts the potential for coral bleaching up to four months in advance.

‘The new outlook gives us greater confidence in what it shows for future coral bleaching and it comes at an important time,’ said Mark Eakin, NOAA Coral Reef Watch coordinator. ‘The outlook shows a pattern over the next four months that is similar to what we saw during global coral bleaching events in 1998 and 2010. We’re really concerned that 2015 may bring the third global coral bleaching event.’

The latest forecast shows that the greatest threat for coral bleaching through May 2015 is in the western South Pacific and Indian Oceans.

In the Pacific, thermal stress has already reached levels that cause bleaching in the nations of Nauru, Kiribati, and the Solomon Islands, and is expected to spread to Tuvalu, Samoa, and American Samoa in the next few months. In the Indian Ocean, thermal stress may reach levels that cause bleaching around Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, and parts of Indonesia and western Australia.

The map shows a significant chance that almost all of the southern hemisphere’s coral reefs will experience some level of stress. There has already been some evidence of bleaching in the shallow reefs of American Samoa, according to NOAA scientists, and some predictions that there will be some in the northern hemisphere too as the seasons change – although the models are not able to accurately predict that far.

Under normal circumstances, the analysis would have shown no bleaching as the world is currently not under an El Niño event – a natural phenomenon that raises ocean temperatures. That those temperatures have risen implies that the warming oceans have been caused by climate change. Eakin, speaking to The Guardian, warned that ‘the amount of heat that has been absorbed in the oceans and the warming that has gone on has resulted in the oceans being primed to reach levels that can cause coral bleaching even without big El Niño events’.

UNC professor John Bruno, speaking to CBS News, echoed these sentiments and expressed concern for the future if coral bleaching events started to be seen on a more regular basis: ‘All those places that have recovered will be right back where they were. The concern with global warming is that if we start seeing bleaching events every three years or every five years we won’t start to see any recovery.’

‘Climate change and its impacts, which can include bleaching, are some of the most pressing global threats to coral reef ecosystems today,’ said Jennifer Koss, acting program manager for NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program. ‘This suite of products is vital to help scientists, coral reef managers, and decision makers in the U.S. and around the globe prepare for bleaching events.’

‘In the coming months we will be watching to see if the model predicts conditions that can cause bleaching in Southeast Asia and the Coral Triangle region around mid-2015,’ said Eakin. The results will be used as an indicator to see how reliable the new system is and where it can be improved upon.

This new forecasting tool could be of vital importance in the struggle to combat coral bleaching events. The increasing accuracy of the four-month prediction can give reef managers time to prepare for the event as best they can – utilizing early measures and assessing how best to protect the reefs under their jurisdiction.

However, there is some evidence that the situation may not be as steadfastly bleak as they appear in this report, with some coral reefs showing that they had not suffered from any particularly atypical events in the recent past.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Parks Authority (GBRMPA), for instance, stated in its recent report analysing the reef’s condition that it had seen no major coral bleaching events over the summer, and although it had witnessed some El Niño-esque conditions in late 2014, January 2015 had seen levels return to normal. According to its own prediction, there will be ‘little significant change [expected to those levels] over the coming summer months’.

The Director of Reefs for the GBRMPA has also previously stated his opposition to clear-cut statements of doom when it comes to considering coral bleaching, stating that prognostication is premature as he just ‘doesn’t think we know [enough] at this stage’ to have a definitive answer either way.

WHAT IS CORAL BLEACHING?

Coral bleaching occurs when corals are stressed by alterations to their living conditions – temperature, light, nutrients, etc. – and so then expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissues, causing them to ‘bleach’ by turning white or pale. While not always fatal, bleaching makes coral far less likely to survive as, without the algae, the coral loses its major food source and is more susceptible to disease.

Not all coral bleaching events occur due to warming water. In January 2010, the water temperature in Florida Keys dropped 12.06 degrees Fahrenheit lower than usual, causing a coral bleaching event that resulted in some coral dying. Scientists are currently attempting to ascertain whether higher or lower fluctuations in temperature have a greater effect on the coral.

Coral bleaching can have detrimental effects both in environmental terms (it supports more species than any other marine environment – including 4,000 fish species – many of whom would struggle to adapt to other environments) and economic terms (coral has an estimated global monetary worth of £240billion, and sustains many coastal communities that rely on it for their survival, such as through tourism, diving and fishing).

20th February-Drug-resistant malaria hits Asia

Malaria that has developed total resistance to the anti-malarial drug Artemisinin has been identified over a far larger area than previously known – putting millions of lives at risk.

The Lancet Infectious Diseases Journal reports that the resistant strain, which has already been detected in Burma, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia and is on the verge of entering India, would likely pose a serious hazard to the chance of global control and eradication – especially if the drug-resistance spreads to or emerges independently in Africa.

‘Myanmar is considered the front line in the battle against artemisinin resistance as it forms a gateway for resistance to spread to the rest of the world,’ said Charles Woodrow of the Mahidol-Oxford tropical medicine research unit, who led the study at Oxford University.

Blood samples from 940 infected malaria patients at 55 malaria treatment centres across Burma showed that 371 (or 39 per cent) of those had mutations known as K13 (the ‘kelch gene’), which is a known signal of artemisinin drug resistance. Prevalence of the resistant parasites was more than 20 per cent in seven of the ten administrative regions of Myanmar areas.

In Homalin, Sagaing Region, only 15 miles from the Indian border, 47 per cent of those tested carried the mutations.

While no evidence of the resistance actually reaching India has been discovered, the team reports that there is little data available to make what it would consider to be an informed judgement.

As such, the report suggests that appropriate therapeutic regimens should be tested urgently and implemented comprehensively if this resistance is going to be stopped spreading to other regions. As part of a combination treatment, there is a chance that the other, slower-acting partner drug will initially keep the treatment effective in the short-term, but Dr Woodrow states that resistance to that drug is bound to develop over time, and so a more practical longer-term solution must be found.

Talking to the BBC, he stated: ‘If this were to spread into India, malaria will continue to affect rural populations there, but there may not be an immediate effect on cure-rate. But beyond the short term, there is very likely to be a problem, and there are very few [other] drugs on the table.’

Phillippe Guerin, director of the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network, has described these findingsof the pace at which this resistance is spreading as ‘alarming’, while Professor Mike Turner, the head of infection and immunobiology at the Wellcome Trust medical charity, has told the BBC that he believes ‘we are facing the imminent threat of resistance spreading into India, [putting] thousands of lives at risk’.

However, some hope has been offered within the report – thanks to scientific advances made in genetic analysis, researchers tracking artemisinin antimalarials are ‘in the unusual position of having molecular markers for resistance before resistance has spread globally. The more we understand about the current situation, the better prepared we are to adapt and implement strategies to overcome the spread of further drug resistance’.

This presents an opportunity like never before to best contain and hopefully prevent the outbreak of resistance spreading to other regions.

This is not the first time that malaria has gained a resistance to the drugs used to treat it. Chloroquine, the original cure, is estimated to have saved hundreds of millions of lives before 1957, when a resistant strain was discovered on the Cambodia–Thailand border and subsequently spread around the globe, reaching Africa in 1974. This development of resistance is believed to have caused millions of deaths.

That treatment was replaced by sulphadoxine/pyrimethamine (SP), but resistance to SP subsequently emerged in the late 1980s in western Cambodia before, again, eventually spreading to Africa. SP was then replaced by the current Artemisinin Combination Treatment (ACT). There had been hopes that this would be the treatment that would eventually allow for the total eradication of deaths from malaria, but there are now significant fears that it may be about to be rendered redundant – leading to potentially terrible consequences.

FIGHTING MALARIA

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease transmitted via the infected host biting a recipient. It affects humans and other mammals, sourcing itself in the liver, multiplying and infecting red blood cells. While curable, it can be fatal if left untreated. An estimated 198 million malaria infections occur worldwide each year, while malaria deaths have halved since 2000 to about 584,000 a year. That progress is likely to be under serious threat following this development, and all the work of combating the disease in the past 15 years could be about to be quickly undone.

About 90 per cent of fatalities related to malaria are located in the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa where cultural and economic reasons mean that treatment is often not widely enough or even completely unavailable. It is estimated that malaria wipes £7.75billion from the African economy a year in lost economic productivity, foreign investment, tourism and trade, and subsequently slows Africa’s economic growth by up to 1.3 per cent a year. As such, further widespread outbreaks as a result of this resistance are likely to have increasingly detrimental effects on these regions.

19th February-The Stressful Life of a Bee

Environmental stress causing young bees to mature too fast could be one of the major factors behind the disastrous decline of bee populations around the globe.

A new report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, states bees are having to start foraging earlier than the typical two to three-weeks-old, as older workers are being killed off by disease, lack of food, parasitic attacks, pesticides and other factors.

Using tiny radio tracking devices on thousands of bees, scientists have found that these early-starters completed fewer foraging flights on average, and were more likely to die on their first sortie as they had not gained vital experience in the safety of the nest.

The scientists used data from the bee tracking to model the impact on honey bee colonies in a computer simulation – finding that stress leading to chronic forager death among older bees led to a change of behaviour within the hive – with an increasingly younger foraging force becoming the standard, which in turn led to poorer performance and more rapid deaths – dramatically accelerating colony decline.

Lead researcher Dr Clint Perry, from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London, stated: ‘If [this] increased death rate continues for too long, or the hive isn’t big enough to withstand it in the short term, this natural response could upset the societal balance of the colony and have catastrophic consequences.’

He added: ‘Our results suggest that tracking when bees begin to forage may be a good indicator of the overall health of the hive. Our work sheds light on the reasons behind colony collapse and could help in the search for ways of preventing colony collapse.’

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a major threat to bee colonies – it has caused a 30 per cent average annual loss to honeybees in North America alone over the last decade – and ultimately to crop pollination. The main feature of the disorder is the complete disappearance of worker bees, which leaves the hive largely empty of adult bees. Its cause is still unknown, but scientists suggest that it may be the result of several factors interacting with one another.

Access the full report here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/04/1422089112

18th February-Unprecedented Super-Drought to hit USA

America is facing ‘super-droughts’ on a scale that hasn’t been seen in a millennium.

A study published in the journal Science Advances, is the first to scientifically establish that climate change exacerbates the threat of drought, estimating there is up to a 50 per cent risk of ‘megadrought’ hitting the southwest of the US this century as a direct result of climate change – in comparison to 15 per cent without it.

The American Southwest and Central Plains, along with California will be worst hit, and will potentially dry out as a consequence of increasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere in an unprecedented fundamental climate shift in the past 1,000 years.

A megadrought is defined as a prolonged drought that lasts two decades or longer, They have occurred intermittently over the past few decades and are expected to become a far more common occurrence in the near-future across the world, as climate change continues, global population increases and water gets ever more scarce. The consequences are expected to be wide-ranging – from detrimental effects on the world’s economy, to risking food supply, to increasing conflicts as the battle for increasingly scarce resources intensifies.

Professor William Park, speaking to The Independent, warns ‘many of the already drought-prone parts of the planet will see mega-droughts during this century that are far worse than anything those regions have seen in the past several thousand years at least.’

Scientists have compared earlier droughts in the 12th and 13th Century – the ‘Medieval Climate Anomaly’ (MCA) megadrought, the driest ones hitting North America on record – with climate simulations for the upcoming decades. Worrying conclusions were reached. After 2050, the Southwest and Central Plains will likely be hit by a drought epoch worse than any seen for the past millennium (including the MCA), and is projected to hit even in moderate future emissions scenarios.

‘These mega-droughts during the 1100s and 1200s persisted for 20, 30, 40, 50 years at a time, and they were droughts that no-one in the history of the United States has ever experienced,’ said Dr Ben Cook from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, talking to the BBC.

‘The droughts that people do know about, like the1930s dustbowl or the 1950s drought or even the ongoing drought in California and the Southwest today – these are all naturally occurring droughts that are expected to last only a few years or

perhaps a decade. Imagine instead the current California drought going on for another 20 years.’

The cause of this drying was assigned to two factors: reduced precipitation and increased evaporation, both of which were driven by rising temperatures, leading to more parched soils and creating major added stress on both natural ecosystems and agriculture.

This also comes at a time when human populations in the region, and their associated water resources demands, have been increasing rapidly, and that isn’t expected to slow in the foreseeable future.

Moreover, recent years have witnessed the widespread depletion of non-renewable groundwater reservoirs in the area, which have historically mitigated the impacts of the naturally occurring droughts, further increasing water pressure in the area.

The research took reconstructions of past climate conditions based on tree ring data – with the rings narrower in drier years – and compared these with 17 state-of-the-art general circulation models. The use of the palaeo-information, Dr Cook theorised, allowed the full extent of the natural variability that exists in the climate system to be captured, making the model more reliable.

‘In both the Southwest and Central Plains, we’re talking about levels of risk of 80 per cent of a 35-year-long drought by the end of the century, if climate change goes unmitigated,’ said the study’s co-author Dr Toby Ault from Cornell University. ‘And that’s a really important point – we’re not necessarily locked into these high levels of mega-drought risk if we take actions to slow the effects of rising greenhouse gases on global temperatures.’

However, Dr Ault did offer some hope for future redemption – that while it was a challenge, it is one that modern America could possibly rise to: ‘The records we have of past mega-droughts are based on tree-ring width estimates [which] means the events weren’t so bad as to kill off all the trees. I am optimistic that we can cope with the threat of mega-drought in the future because it doesn't mean no water – it just means significantly less water than we’re used to having from the 20th century.’

17th February-Australia Faces Extinction Calamity

One in ten of Australia’s indigenous mammal species has become extinct in the past 200 years, according to a new survey of Australia’s native mammals.

The report, conducted by scientists at Charles Darwin University in Australia and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has concluded that no other country has suffered such an extraordinary rate of land mammal extinction over this time period, with the results far worse than anticipated.

Since European colonisation in 1788, 11 per cent of 273 native land mammals have become extinct, 21 per cent are threatened and 15 per cent are near threatened, leading conservationists to proclaim it as an ‘extinction calamity’.

The decline has been attributed to predation by non-native species such as the feral cat and red fox, which were introduced from Europe and are now estimated at between 15 and 23 million in number on the continent, as well as the effects of using large-scale fires as a method of managing land.

Conservation biologist John Woinarski, who led the research, spoke to Australian SBS news and urged people to take heed, stating ‘A further 56 Australian land mammals are now threatened, indicating that this extremely high rate of biodiversity loss is likely to continue unless substantial changes are made. The extent of the problem has been largely unappreciated until recently because much of the loss involves small, nocturnal, shy species with [little] public profile – few Australians know of these species, let alone have seen them, so their loss has been largely unappreciated by the community.’

Methods for reversing this decline are currently being considered – with practical measures including setting up land mammal ‘arks’ by boosting biosecurity on lands off the mainland, which have fewer feral cats and foxes. Similar methods were used in the relocation of Tasmanian devils to Maria Island, also done to protect the species from introduced predators.

More careful use of fire and control measures to wipe out foxes and feral cats are also being mooted, although careful consideration is being given at ways to avoid the risk of some native species being affected by these measures.

While doubtless a step in the right direction, Woinarski warns that these measures will mean little without increased public awareness and consideration in the way they live on the land. ‘We can learn more about these species. One of the problems is that most Australians don’t know what a bilby, or a dalgyte is.’

13th February-Expats' Ecu-Adore!

A 2014 study, The World Through Expat Eyes, has found Ecuador to be the country with the most content expat population.

The report, produced by InterNations– an international network for people living and working abroad, analysed responses from nearly 14,000 expats living in 61 countries as part of a desire to discover their reasons for relocating, their happiness once the relocation has been completed, and how they find life abroad. Expats were asked to judge their adopted nation on different issues across a number of categories – personal finance, family life, ease of settling, their work life abroad, and quality of life – and ranked each nation accordingly.

Perhaps surprisingly, Ecuador emerged as the overall winner – coming top in the personal finance and personal happiness categories and scoring highly when considering ease of settling into their new life by expats. 91 per cent of expats reported that they were satisfied with their life in Ecuador, with 42 per cent of planning to reside there ‘possibly forever’.

The sole negative to an expat’s life in Ecuador was seemingly that 37 per cent felt that it would be very difficult to live in the country without speaking Spanish, although that drawback is tempered somewhat when 30 per cent of the same respondees describe learning the language as ‘very easy’.

One reason why Ecuador could rank so highly is that most of the expats who move there do not do so for work purposes, with Ecuador having a higher percentage of retirees (39 per cent) and older people (the average age of expats in Ecuador is 52.8 compared to the global average of 39.5) amongst their expats, suggesting that those moving to Ecuador are financially secure before arriving, leaving them free to enjoy the country’s pleasures unfettered by economic concerns.

Ranked second on the list, Luxembourg was mainly carried there through its high ranking concerning aspects of an expat’s working life, with 89 per cent of respondents satisfied with their lot – despite Luxembourg coming a lowly 50th out of the 61 nations in terms of how happy expats are with their personal life. Perhaps because of this, only 28 per cent of respondents envisaged themselves staying in the country for ‘the long run’.

This is in contrast with third-placed Mexico, where almost half (44 per cent) of expats interviewed felt that they would like to permanently settle in the country because of the ease of settling in and quality of life they achieve, despite concerns over job security and workplace issues.

Of the bottom three countries, Greece scored very low due to their current economic woes – coming last in categories concerning how happy expats were with their financial situation and sufficiency of their household income, their career prospects and job security.

Saudi Arabia seemingly suffers from a lack of leisure activities (54 per cent of participants dissatisfied with what is accessible to them), thus scoring low in the Quality of Life index and coming 60th out of the 61 nations.

Kuwait, meanwhile, comes firmly last with the majority of expats finding it near impossible to settle there – a mere five per cent feel completely at home there, and only seven per cent find it very easy to befriend locals.

This inability of Kuwait’s expats to make local friends is seemingly endemic within the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s expat communities responding in kind. One theory behind this is that it may simply be due to the considerable number of expats that reside in these nations with expats in other Middle Eastern countries often settling in expat-only neighbourhoods and attending expat events, clubs and associations – an ‘Expat Bubble’ or ‘Costa del Sol Syndrome’ if you will.

This is illustrated best by the percentage of respondents who stated the majority of their friends were other expats: 71 per cent in Qatar, 54 per cent in Saudi Arabia and 70 per cent in Kuwait.

THE BRITS ABROAD

• The top three countries that British expats export themselves to are Germany, France and Spain (each receiving six per cent of the British outgoing population)• British respondents are far more likely to call the climate in their foreign host country ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ (63 per cent) than expats in general (46 per cent)• Britons are more likely than any other nationality to want to stay abroad ‘possibly forever’. 42 per cent of British expats responded saying that, the next highest being the Americans at 36 per cent, and the average for all nationalities 26 per cent• 18 per cent of Britons have lived in five or more foreign countries, compared to a 12 per cent general average• British expats are half as likely to speak a given foreign language fluently than expats in general, with 37 per cent asserting they can speak their local language fairly well or fluently. The lack of linguistic variety in English expats isn’t seemingly a major issue – only 34 per cent of British respondents agreed that not speaking the local language made it harder to live in their host countries, and are more likely to make friends with locals than the average• One in five British expats makes over $150,000 USD (compared to one in eight for all nationalities)

EXPATS LIVING IN BRITAIN

• 86 per cent of expats in Britain are happy with their lives in Britain• 68 per cent of expats living in Britain are female – far higher than the 53 per cent global average• The top three nationalities residing in Britain are Germans (ten per cent), Americans (nine per cent) and French (six per cent)• 90 per cent of expats speak positively about British transport systems – far higher than the global average of 20 per cent• Only one per cent of expats consider Britain to be unsafe, or politically unstable• 70 per cent of expats feel at home in British culture – exceeding the global average of 63 per cent – and only 12 per cent find it challenging to get used to the local culture

GLOBAL CONCLUSIONS

• 53 per cent of global expats are female• The average age of an expat is 39.5 years• 26 per cent of expats expect to stay in their new country ‘possibly forever’, with 24 per cent seeing themselves there for more than three years• The country with the greatest number of expats is Germany, with the USA in second and the UAE in third• The vast majority of expats (87 per cent) had attained a university degree – with only one per cent of respondents having no formal qualifications at all• The primary motivation for expats moving abroad was related to work – 29 per cent moving because they’d either found a job themselves (16 per cent) or because they were sent by their employer (13 per cent)

21st January-Controversy Over Zimbabwe's Elephant Sale

Sixty-two elephant calves are set to be exported from Zimbabwe to countries across the world, the country’s authorities have confirmed, causing outrage amongst conservationists.

Each elephant calf is expected to be sold for up to $60,000 (£39,400), with Geoffreys Matipano, the director for conservation at the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authorities, quoted by Bloomberg as saying that the money would go towards funding running costs at Hwange National Park (where many of the calves where sourced).

Zimbabwe’s tourism minister, Walter Mzembi, has defended the plan, citing it as a solution to the country’s current ‘over-population’ of elephants, and accusing dissenters of jealousy over the deal. The exact number of elephants residing in Zimbabwe is disputed, with recent aerial surveys recording a population of 58,000, whereas the government’s official statistics place that number nearer the 70,000 mark.

The calves, allegedly between two-and-a-half and five years old, are still at an age where separation from their mothers is known to be both physically and psychologically damaging. One calf is already known to have died during this ordeal, with another subsequently sourced as its replacement.

While trade in elephants is not illegal in Zimbabwe under the CITES agreement to protect wildlife – it merely has to be properly regulated – there have been widespread protests over the plan, with conservationists fearing that even if they survive the journey, the animal’s quality of life will be severely diminished. A petition has also been set up calling on the Zimbabwean government to put an immediate stop to the plan.

While the government has remained silent over the exact purchasers of each animal, it has confirmed that the animals will be shipped to the United Arab Emirates, France and China. ‘You can’t take these animals out of Africa and send them to these inhumane areas where they’ve got no good track records,’ Johnny Rodrigues, of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF) stated.

ZCTF has previous success in this field – in 2012 it managed to return five Zimbabwean elephants marked for export to China and returned them to the wild. Of the four trades it was unable to stop, the organisation claims that only one of those elephants remains alive.

21st January-Prestigious UN Climate Award Open For Applications

The UN Climate Change secretariat today opened calls for submissions for the 2015 Momentum for Change Awards, a scheme that rewards currently successful climate action in a number of designated key fields, as part of wider efforts to stimulate efforts to tackle climate change.

Applications are expected from a wide range of key players, such as organisations, cities, industries and governments, and it is hoped that the winning initiatives, called ‘Lighthouse Activities’, will prove inspirational – lighting the way ahead by highlighting ‘some of the most innovative, scalable and replicable examples’ of combating climate change. The key fields are: action by and for the urban poor, action that fosters women’s leadership, action that unlocks climate finance and action that uses ICT-enabled solutions.

‘This is a critical year for the future of our planet,’ said Nick Nuttall, UNFCCC Spokesperson and Head of Communications and Outreach. ‘Showcasing the great leadership of people around the world taking action on climate change can inspire national governments to be more ambitious in their own policies and actions, so that together the world can secure a new, universal climate change agreement in Paris later this year.’

The winning Lighthouse Activities will be chosen by the Momentum for Change Advisory Panel, an international group of senior experts from various fields. Last years winners included: building climate-friendly homes in Sub-Saharan Africa, building micro-finance institutions in Latin America and empowering women with green jobs and low-carbon technologies in remote rural Indonesian communities.

Applications for the 2015 Momentum for Change Awards are being accepted until 24 April, and the winning activities will be announced in November 2015 before being celebrated in a series of special events throughout December at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris.

20th January-Ape Granted Basic Rights

A high-level Argentine criminal appeals court has granted an ape the same basic rights as her human captors, setting a precedent for future challenges regarding animals in captivity.

Sandra, a 29-year-old female orangutan – born in captivity and a 20-year resident in Buenos Aires Zoo – has been granted the right to life, liberty and freedom from harm within Argentina. She is now expected to be transferred to a sanctuary or another suitable home.

The case started when The Association of Professional Lawyers for Animal Rights in Argentina (Afada) filed a habeas corpus petition in November 2014 on Sandra’s behalf. While initially unsuccessful, the appeals court overturned the original decision.

‘This opens the way not only for other Great Apes, but also for other sentient beings which are unfairly and arbitrarily deprived of their liberty,’ Paul Buompadre, Afada’s lawyer, was quoted as saying in La Nacion.

Buenos Aires zoo did not take up its right to seek an appeal within ten working days, but its head of biology, Adrian Sestelo, told La Nacion that the judgement was unjust, and a result of mistakenly ‘[humanizing] animal behaviour’.

The level of rights afforded to captive animals has proven a contentious issue in the past few years. In 2014, San Francisco City Council granted cetaceans the ‘right to be free and ‘unrestricted in their natural environment’, but similar cases have proven unsuccessful.

A 2011 lawsuit filed by PETA against SeaWorld’s treatment of five of its wild-captured orcas was dismissed by a San Diego court, and a US court rejected a similar habeus corpus bid regarding a New York state-owned chimpanzee, ruling against it being classed as a ‘person’ in January 2015.