Air pollution in London passes levels in Beijing... and wood burners are making problem worse

Air pollution in London passed levels in Beijing this week, figures have shown, with popular wood burning stoves blamed for exacerbating the problem.

On Monday London mayor Sadiq Khan issued the highest air pollution alert in London for the first time, and said on Tuesday that the capital's 'filthy air' is now a 'health crisis.'

Readings at 3pm on Monday showed that air at locations in the capital were worse than in notoriously smoggy Beijing, hitting a peak 197 micrograms per cubic metre for particulate matter on the Air Quality Index. Pollution in the Chinese city only reached 190, which is still deemed 'unhealthy.'

Although nitrogen dioxide levels in London rose higher than China in 2014, it is believed to be the first time particulate readings have exceeded those in the far east.

Experts at King's College London said the recent spell of unhealthy pollution was the worst since April 2011 in the capital and was being caused by cold, calm and settled conditions combined with 'traffic pollution and air pollution from wood burning.'

Temperatures have fallen below zero overnight over the last few days, meaning householders are burning more fuel to keep warm.

"This was the largest contribution from wood burning measured during the winter so far," said a spokesman for King's College.

More than a million homes in Britain now have a wood burning stove with 175,000 new ones installed every year.

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Inbreeding threatens Marlborough kiwi population once thought to be thriving

A population of kiwi once thought to be thriving in Marlborough is being threatened by inbreeding.

Dr Helen Taylor, an expert in kiwi genetics and inbreeding, analysed a population of the little spotted kiwi on Long Island, and found poor hatching success compared to a Wellington population.

Taylor's research found nearly two-thirds of the 50-strong population were direct offspring of the Queen Charlotte Sound island's founding pair.

She said they expected to find more birds of second, third, and fourth generations.
"The overabundance of first-generation birds suggests that the damaging genetic effects of inbreeding are strongly affecting hatching, survival and possibly reproduction of the subsequent generations," she said.

The University of Otago study conducted autopsies of unhatched eggs, finding many had malformed embryos, or none at all.


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Record the world did not need

In a powerful testament to the warming of the planet, two leading US science agencies jointly declared 2016 the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set last year - which itself had topped a mark set in 2014.

The pronouncement comes just before US President-elect Donald Trump, who has tweeted that global warming is a hoax, takes office after a campaign in which he threatened to pull the US out of an international agreement to fight climate change.

Trump has since said he has an open mind about the Paris climate accord, even as he has nominated to various Cabinet posts a slate of men who have raised questions about the extent to which human activity is responsible for rising temperatures around the world.

Scientists have been far less guarded, noting the striking reality that global temperatures have set a record three years in a row.

"We don't expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear," said Gavin Schmidt, who directs Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, in a statement accompanying the government temperature report.
 
Nasa announced the record jointly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Last year's warmth was manifested across the planet, from the warm tropical ocean waters off the coast of northeastern Australia that contribute to the widespread death of coral in the Great Barrier Reef, to the Arctic, where melting sea ice hit regular monthly record lows and overall temperatures were the highest on record, at least from January through September of 2016.

In a catalogue of some of the extremes the planet witnessed during the year, the Noaa noted the megafire that engulfed Fort McMurray, in Alberta, Canada, at the beginning of May, a conflagration that came relatively early in the year for bushfires.

That event was consistent with a warming climate, as well as with the role of El Nino, although scientists are reluctant to formally say that climate change has played a role in an individual event without conducting extensive analysis.

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Insects imported to wage war on giant invasive reed

Two insects common around the Mediterranean will soon be chewing their way through a big problem in Northland.

The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has approved an application by Northland Regional Council (NRC) to introduce a wasp and a scale insect to New Zealand to control the giant reed, Arundo donax.

The reed, sometimes known as elephant grass or bamboo grass, is mainly found in Northland but could potentially establish throughout New Zealand.

It grows up to eight metres tall and inhabits streamsides, estuaries, disturbed lowland and coastal forest margins, river systems, and gullies.

Giant reed smothers, shades out and displaces all other plant species and can block streams and drains, causing flooding.

It expands via a strong rhizome network which generates large colonies of plants, growing prolifically and harming the biodiversity of insect and plant life.

The plant, which is native to eastern and southern Asia and possibly parts of North Africa, has displaced endemic and endangered species in the United States, Mexico and Canary Islands.

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Death of Tilikum highlights how captivity is no place for dolphins and whales

With the death of orca Tilikum, Professor Philip Hoare, of the University of Southampton, argues the case for the end of whale and dolphin captivity.

On January 6, a 36-year-old bull killer whale named Tilikum died in Florida, "surrounded by trainers, care staff and veterinarians", according to the solemn, obituary-style announcement published by his owner.

Tilikum was, in fact, a celebrity. A star performer among the orca (as killer whales are known) at Orlando's famous SeaWorld theme park, he was also the world-renowned subject of an award-winning documentary, Blackfish, which has been credited with the dramatic decline in the fortune of such venues.

The film, which has been seen worldwide, showed the orca to be a highly intelligent and emotionally sensitive creature, condemned to a desperate existence in captivity with ultimately far-reaching tragic consequences. For Tilikum was also a real killer, implicated in the vicious deaths of three individuals.

As a boy growing up in the 60s and 70s, I was obsessed with cetaceans, the group of mammals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. Orca in particular fascinated me, with their glossy black and white markings, so sleek and streamlined.

They had a magical quality, invested with power, grace and beauty and yet capable of great violence, tearing their prey - salmon, tuna, seals and even other whales - apart with their large teeth. I saw them as supreme emperors of the sea.

Once, my two younger sisters and I persuaded our parents to take us to Windsor Safari Park where, at last, I could see orca and dolphins up close. There, in a concrete tank, barely bigger than a municipal swimming pool, a trio of dolphins went through their paces, jumping through hoops and balancing balls on their noses. Their reward? A dead fish from a bucket.

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Sea Shepherd photographs Japanese whalers in Australian Whale Sanctuary with dead whale

Sea Shepherd claims to have found a Japanese ship in the Australian Whale Sanctuary with a dead minke whale on its flensing deck.

The Nisshin Maru whaler factory ship was spotted by the helicopter of Sea Shepherd's MY Steve Irwin as the crew allegedly scrambled to hide the slaughtered whale with a tarp, while the fleet's harpoons were also quickly covered.

"The whale killers from the Nisshin Maru were caught red-handed slaughtering whales in the Australian Whale Sanctuary," Ocean Warrior Captain Adam Meyerson said on Sunday.

"The Steve Irwin has shut down their illegal operations and caught them trying to hide the evidence."
It is the first documented kill since the International Court of Justice ruled against Japan's whaling operations in the Antarctic in 2014.

It comes after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Australia on an official state visit.

Jeff Hansen, Managing Director of Sea Shepherd Australia said, "The lack of action by the Turnbull government while whales are being killed in Australian waters just a day after Japan's Prime Minister was on a state visit in Australia shows that the government has no spine when it comes to protecting the wishes of Australians to defend the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary."

 

 

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Antarctica to lose enormous piece of ice - what happens next?

Last week, British scientists announced a disturbing finding - a crack in the Larsen C ice shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula had dramatically accelerated its spread, increasing 18km in length in the space of a month.

This means the floating ice shelf, which is nearly as big as Scotland and the fourth largest of its kind in Antarctica, is poised to break off a piece nearly 5180sq km in size, or over 10 per cent of its total area. An ice island the size of a small US state would then be afloat in the Southern Ocean.

That's dramatic enough, but there is uncertainty in the science world about what would happen next.
On the one hand, the researchers with Project Midas, who announced the growth of the rift, have published research suggesting that, in their words, it "presents a considerable risk to the stability of the Larsen C Ice Shelf".

If they're right, it's hard to understate how big a deal it is - Antarctica has lost ice shelves before, but not one so enormous. Not only would a loss of Larsen C change the map of the Earth itself; the shelf holds back glaciers capable of contributing about 10cm of global sea level rise over time.

The rift is now largely following the second, and worse scenario from their research, said glaciologist Daniela Jansen of the Alfred Wegner Institute in Germany - if it is correct. "This calving will be a test for our calving front stability criterion," she said by email.

However, other analyses have suggested that most of the ice that would be lost is so-called "passive ice" that does not play a key role in holding the glaciers behind the shelf in place. And some scientists have expressed scepticism about whether what's happening at Larsen C is "cause for alarm".

Time, ultimately, will show who is right. But in the meantime we can sketch, a little, the kinds of things that scientists are thinking about as they watch all of this unfold.

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