The death of a young woman falling from the famous – and ever more popular – Half Dome in Yosemite ignites debate
In 1974, Scott Crollard, a teen on a church youth group trip, casually climbed cables to help reach the lofty summit of Half Dome, whose name describes a unique rock formation in California from which you can see the Yosemite Valley some 5,000ft below.
“I remember sitting on the edge of the lip of Half Dome with my buddy and just gazing over the edge. And when he got off, he kind of nudged me, and I darn near fell off the thing just because we were so nonchalant about it,” said Collard, now a 65-year-old retired emergency room physician in St Louis who again ascended Half Dome in 2017 with more appreciation for its magnitude.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/18/2024 - 05:00
08/17/2024 - 15:00
Cattle at a Queensland feedlot were fed red seaweed for 200 days in one of the longest trials of the additive – but experts say it’s not farm-ready
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It takes a tasty treat to lure a cow’s head into the narrow channel of a solar-powered contraption mounted to the back of a trailer.
Once inside, and munching away at the sweet pellet, sensors measure the potency of the animal’s methane-laden burps. By the water trough, another device calculates the cow’s weight, and over the fence tubs of feed on scales record how much it eats.
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08/17/2024 - 12:00
Travel companies are reporting a surge of interest in people wanting to get away from light pollution and into nature
For the campers at the Dark Skies site near the Cambrian mountains in Wales, the blackness of the pitches is an important draw.
“When people come, they are blown away by the night sky,” said Tanya Jordan, who owns the site and holiday cottages nearby. “We get people who know about it and come for that reason.”
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08/17/2024 - 10:15
Convicted of non-violent offences in Insulate Britain action, Dr Diana Warner is second GP to have licence suspended, which a medical tribunal ruled could damage patient trust
A retired GP has become the second doctor to have their medical licence suspended after being convicted of non-violent offences during peaceful climate protests.
Dr Diana Warner, who worked as a GP for 35 years in surgeries around Bristol, was imprisoned for a total of six weeks for twice breaching private anti-protest injunctions banning people from blocking traffic on the M25 in 2021 and 2022. She was also jailed for six weeks for gluing her hand to the dock during her plea hearing at a magistrates court in east London in 2022.
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08/17/2024 - 01:00
Exclusive: Most popular routes can be reached quickly by train, as government mulls expansion proposal
More than half of the journeys taken from London City airport last year can be reached in six hours or less by train, data reveals.
The Labour government is preparing to make the final call on the airport’s application to significantly increase its passenger numbers. The airport wants to increase capacity from 6.5 million to 9 million passengers a year by putting on more weekend and early morning flights.
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08/16/2024 - 12:00
When canec, Hawaii’s building material, is damaged, it can release toxic dust like asbestos – requiring special cleanup
When fire engulfed Lahaina last year, some of the older structures that burned contained canec, a historic Hawaiian-made building material made of solid sugarcane waste and potentially harmful inorganic arsenic.
To date, the US army corps of engineers (USACE) has hauled off an estimated 14,000 tons of ash suspected of arsenic contamination from the drywall-like material once manufactured in Hilo.
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08/16/2024 - 11:15
Barely audible to human ears, healthy soils produce a cacophony of sounds in many forms -- a bit like an underground rave concert of bubble pops and clicks. Special recordings made by ecologists show this chaotic mixture of soundscapes can be a measure of the diversity of tiny living animals in the soil, which create sounds as they move and interact with their environment.
08/16/2024 - 11:00
Group finds elusive deep sea fish that has washed up in California only 20 times since 1901
A group of people kayaking and snorkeling off the San Diego coast made an unusual discovery when they came across an oarfish, a rarely seen deep sea fish that has washed up in California only 20 times in over a century.
The 12ft-long silvery fish was found floating dead in the water last weekend. The group, along with marine experts, helped bring the creature ashore for study.
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08/16/2024 - 10:00
Dr Adi Paterson’s statements are apparently at odds with the group’s official position, which says nuclear is needed to tackle the climate crisis
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The chair of a leading Australian nuclear advocacy group has called concerns that carbon dioxide emissions are driving a climate crisis an “irrational fear of a trace gas which is plant food” and has rejected links between worsening extreme weather and global heating.
Several statements from Dr Adi Paterson, reviewed by the Guardian, appear at odds with statements from the group he chairs, Nuclear for Australia, which is hosting a petition saying nuclear is needed to tackle an “energy and climate crisis”.
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08/16/2024 - 10:00
While the intention behind buying preloved is often rooted in sustainability, I’m uncomfortable enabling our culture’s shopping addiction
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I once fancied myself a savvy secondhand shopper, diving into thrift stores and online marketplaces with a sense of purpose. Armed with the goal of being eco-friendly, I was determined to give preloved clothes a new lease on life. It seemed like a win-win: unique pieces and a reduced environmental footprint. But after a few years of this pursuit, I faced an inconvenient truth: secondhand shopping wasn’t working for me.
First, let’s talk about the wardrobe explosion. My closet became a museum of mismatched pieces, each with a quirky backstory but collectively forming a chaotic narrative. The dream of a curated wardrobe quickly turned into clutter. Many of the clothes I bought were impulse buys, driven by the thrill of a bargain or the admirable notion of repurposing something old.
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