At 11.40pm local time on the cold, moonless night of 14 April 1912, the crow’s nest lookouts on board the RMS Titanic sighted a large iceberg only 500m ahead. Despite quick action, the iceberg still struck…
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Environment – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 4101 - 4125 of 4510 articles
What to do about invasive species, which are having a growing and generally detrimental effect on Europe’s environment and economies, is the subject of discussion in both the European Parliament and UK…
The number of endangered bird species is rising and even with our best intentions, there isn’t enough money to save them all – so how do we decide which species we should let go? A new approach has been…
Change at the British coastline is a reality we have always lived with. A thousand years ago, King Canute showed his courtiers how absurd it was to seek to command the waves. Later, others built sea walls…
The UK is one of only a handful of countries that has put in place legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, relative to 1990 levels. How the country intends to go about…
Wind power is now big business in the US, and it is getting bigger. Last year, the US wind industry added 1,087MW of new wind power capacity, about the same as is currently installed in Austria, and by…
It’s getting hot in the city, and our overheated cities are only going to get hotter still as more people pile in and development and energy use intensifies. But planting away the problem could be a surprisingly…
Everest climbing season is underway. For a few weeks each spring, the weather improves just enough to give climbers a chance of scaling the world’s tallest mountain. As increasing numbers flock to Everest…
The Saharan dust that clogged air and dirtied cars recently may seem like a nuisance, but in fact contains some essential nutrients – if, that is, you’re phytoplankton. The dust and sand blown from Africa…
The idea that tiny amounts of antidepressants present in our rivers and estuaries may be affecting aquatic life is generally met with surprise, sometimes scepticism, or even a degree of humour. The public…
The phrase “Natural History” is linked in most people’s minds today with places that use the phrase: the various Natural History Museums, or television programmes narrated so evocatively by renowned naturalist…
Most have heard of the Battle of Waterloo, but who has heard of the volcano called Tambora? No school textbook I’ve seen mentions that only two months before Napoleon’s final defeat in Belgium on June…
This month marks the re-opening of the controversial trophy hunt for at-risk grizzly bears in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Scrutiny of this hunt was ramped up last year with new evidence that…
Aerosols are microscopic liquid or solid particles suspended in the atmosphere. They can originate from natural sources (pine forests, for example), but centuries of burning wood and fossil fuels means…
The global growth in demand for food is outstripping supply and by the middle of the century there will be about a third more mouths on the planet to feed. The world’s middle class is expected to rise…
They key phrase spoken in BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on the findings of the latest IPCC climate change report was “it’s about people now”. It’s a statement likely to carry great weight with a body of…
The IPCC has re-iterated its concern that climate change is a serious threat to human safety and security in its latest series of reports. And while energy, transport, water, tourism and health are highlighted…
Being perched off the northwest edge of Europe means that people in the UK are not often reminded of the vast Sahara desert situated only a few thousand miles to the south. This great desert is located…
Although aviation emissions contribute only 3-5% of the total impact on the planet’s climate, this is steadily growing and is a surprisingly intractable problem to solve. As prosperity around the world…
How much does climate change cost? What will be the impact on our wallets? The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group II has concluded that global warming…
It might seem strange to some that dust from the Sahara is falling on their cars in England. Stranger still, that Saharan sand is mixing with general air pollution from both continental Europe and the…
We all know we have a crisis of housing supply and affordability. Over the past four years we have built on average 110,000 homes a year in England, less than the 150,000 homes built 110 years ago in 1904…
The IPCC’s latest climate change report has made it clear that global temperature rises will be the cause of more extreme weather events around the world. Indeed, weather disasters increasingly provoke…
Biofuels have come under scrutiny in the latest IPCC report, which outlines some of the emergent risks associated with their production. In principle, biofuels seem to be an ideal solution to reducing…
We find ourselves in an era of what we might call creative self-destruction. We’re destroying ourselves – it’s as simple as that. Economic growth and exploiting nature’s resources have long gone hand-in-hand…