Natural sinks of forests and peat were key to Finland’s ambitious target to be carbon neutral by 2035. But now, the land has started emitting more greenhouse gases than it stores
Read more: Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing?
Tiina Sanila-Aikio cannot remember a summer this warm. The months of midnight sun around Inari, in Finnish Lapland, have been hot and dry. Conifer needles on the branch-tips are orange when they should be a deep green. The moss on the forest floor, usually swollen with water, has withered.
“I have spoken with many old reindeer herders who have never experienced the heat that we’ve had this summer. The sun keeps shining and it never rains,” says Sanila-Aikio, former president of the Finnish Sami parliament.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/14/2024 - 23:00
10/14/2024 - 18:01
Energy crisis panel warns country is ‘dangerously unprepared’ and must shift away from gas quickly
Britain is at risk of experiencing a repeat of the sharp increase in energy costs which has fuelled the continuing cost of living crisis because it relies too heavily on gas, according to an expert panel of industry leaders.
The Energy Crisis Commission has warned that the UK is still “dangerously underprepared” for another crisis because it continues to rely on gas for its power plants and home heating.
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10/14/2024 - 17:36
A US study estimates the total climate pollution from LNG was 33% greater than that from coal over a 20-year period. This should have major ramifications for emissions policy
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The claim that Australian gas exports are “clean” and needed to drive the transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions has become an article of faith for significant parts of the country’s industry, media and political classes – often repeated, only occasionally challenged.
It has buttressed a massive expansion of the liquified natural gas (LNG) industry in the north of the continent over the past decade, with major new developments in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
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10/14/2024 - 10:28
Poorly maintained and uninsured vessels transporting up to 70% of country’s seaborne oil, says report
Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers is expanding, according to research, transporting up to 70% of the country’s seaborne oil despite western efforts to curb Moscow’s wartime energy revenues.
The volume of Russian oil being transported by poorly maintained and underinsured tankers has almost doubled in a year to 4.1m barrels a day by June, according to a report published on Monday by the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE).
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10/14/2024 - 09:00
We’ve all been there. We’ve all felt like a badly made-up, odd-limbed, irritable floor-dwelling mess
As you contemplate the wonders of evolution, and how a creature can be born with something weird and new, and that thing can either help it get ahead or not hurt its chances, and it can then reproduce and make another one like it, spare a thought for the red-lipped batfish.
A real animal, it has the kind of mouth that, as a kid, you may have made from Babybel cheese wax, to go with your red wax fake nails. It has a beard of white whiskers. It has fins that bend backwards, like a person’s arms at yoga when they are about to do upward dog. Before your eyes, it sprouts a new limb from its nostril. Its nose – technically a snout – is long, at the top of its head, and hook-shaped. It cannot swim, only crawl. Its crawl is more like a waddle.
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10/14/2024 - 08:18
Stellantis chief says company is nearing decision on Ellesmere Port and Luton amid row over EV quotas
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The owner of the Vauxhall, Citroën and Peugeot brands has said a decision will be made on the future of its UK plants “in the next few weeks”, amid a row over government electric vehicle quotas.
Carlos Tavares, the outgoing chief executive of Stellantis, has said the company is nearing a decision on the future of Ellesmere Port and Luton.
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10/14/2024 - 02:49
Peter Malinauskas says South Australia’s renewable energy credentials make it a logical host for UN’s annual climate summit
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South Australia has launched a bid to host a major UN climate conference in 2026 in Adelaide, with the premier, Peter Malinauskas, declaring it would draw more than 30,000 people and could be worth $500m to the state.
Australia is vying with Turkey to host the year-ending climate summit known as Cop31, with a decision expected next month at this year’s conference in Azerbaijan. The Albanese government’s existing bid is that it would co-host the event with Pacific nations.
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10/14/2024 - 02:00
The sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating
It begins each day at nightfall. As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton, crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface to feed on microscopic algae, returning to the depths at sunrise. The waste from this frenzy – Earth’s largest migration of creatures – sinks to the ocean floor, removing millions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year.
This activity is one of thousands of natural processes that regulate the Earth’s climate. Together, the planet’s oceans, forests, soils and other natural carbon sinks absorb about half of all human emissions.
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10/14/2024 - 01:00
The mid-Atlantic archipelago of nine islands, the tips of drowned volcanoes, is a remarkable place for marine mammals. The clear, deep waters provide the perfect habitat for cetaceans, and 28 species of whale and dolphin have been documented there. The Dutch scientist and photographer Jeroen Hoekendijk spent a week in September capturing the diversity of Azorean wildlife
Photographs by Jeroen Hoekendijk
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10/14/2024 - 01:00
New climate network will teach trainee doctors more about heatstroke, dengue and malaria and role of global warming in health
Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria will become a bigger part of the curriculum at medical schools across Europe in the face of the climate crisis.
Future doctors will also have more training on how to recognise and treat heatstroke, and be expected to take the climate impact of treatments such as inhalers for asthma into account, medical school leaders said, announcing the formation of the European Network on Climate & Health Education (Enche).
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