By Damian Carrington8 January 2014 (theguardian.com) – The UK faces a food security catastrophe because of its very low numbers of honeybee colonies, which provide an essential service in pollinating many crops, scientists warned on Wednesday. New research reveals that honeybees provide just a quarter of the pollination needed in the UK, the second lowest […]
By Damian Carrington 30 January 2014 (theguardian.com) – “You are looking at retreat,” says Prof Colin Thorne, a flooding expert at the University of Nottingham. “It is the only sensible policy – it makes no sense to defend the indefensible.” This assessment of how the UK will have to adapt to its increasing flood risk […]
10 January 2014 (The Independent) – In 2003 Operation Tiberius found that men suspected of being Britain’s most notorious criminals had compromised multiple agencies, including HM Revenue & Customs, the Crown Prosecution Service, the City of London Police and the Prison Service, as well as pillars of the criminal justice system including juries and the […]
6 January 2014 (Surfer Today) – The “Black Swell” is hitting UK, Ireland, and Portugal. Huge waves have been spotted, as the storm passes through the Azores Islands and heads to Continental Europe. The black fetch is wide, fast and furious. The swell charts don’t lie. The eye of the storm is larger than the […]
By PATRICK COUNIHAN4 January 2014 (IrishCentral) – The latest storms to hit Ireland will cost the economy almost half a billion dollars – with more on the way over the weekend. Record tides and devastating flood and gales lashed the country on Friday with Ireland’s weather forecast service warning of a repeat on Sunday. Experts […]
By Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent 17 December 2013 (The Guardian) – The government has been accused of putting “anti-European ideology” before the needs of the most deprived people in society after Britain rejected help from a European Union fund to help subsidise the costs of food banks. David Cameron, who was heavily criticised […]
By John Vidal18 December 2013 (theguardian.com) – 2013 was the seventh warmest year on record and saw one of the strongest cyclones, some of the longest heatwaves and the most topsy-turvy weather experienced in decades. Nowhere is thought to have witnessed faster change than Nikkaluokta, a small Lapland village above the Arctic circle in northern […]
By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle8 Dec 2013 OSLO (Reuters) – A thaw of Arctic ice and snow is linked to worsening summer heatwaves and downpours thousands of miles south in Europe, the United States and other areas, underlying the scale of the threat posed by global warming, scientists said on Sunday. Their report, which was […]
By Craig Brown20 October 2013 (The Scotsman) – Rising sea levels are threatening the existence of Orkney’s famous Stone Age village of Skara Brae, according to an official report. A draft management plan for the protection of the World Heritage site describes coastal erosion as “a threat to the long-term survival” of the subterranean village. […]
By Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent 17 October 2013 (theguardian.com) – The number of wild birds in the UK is still falling, despite efforts to protect them by changing farming practices. Conservationists have urged the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, to use the money newly available from the EU’s common agricultural policy to step up protection measures. […]
