Blog Archive

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

The Sydney Morning Herald environmental news page

Dear Readers,


I have just added The Sydney Morning Herald's environmental news page to the list of sources in the left-hand column:


http://www.smh.com.au/environment


I was pretty surprised to find such a good source in Australia.


Kudos to the SMH!


Tenney

Have a look at today's articles:


Latest green news

Wilcox

Bad vibrations: assassin bugs trap spiders in web of deceit

Nicky Phillips A spider's greatest weapon, its web, is being used against it.

Be prepared for bad bushfires, says emergency service

Aaron Cook Heavy rains and rampant vegetation growth have set the scene for dangerous grass fires if there are only a few consecutive days of hot, dry weather this summer, said the NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons.

Plague fears grow as locusts take to the wing in the north-west

Debra Jopson A locust plague predicted to be the worst in 30 years has come one step closer after a senior pest ranger spotted them on the wing in north-western NSW.

Green win signals shift in mine approvals

Pat Durman and Sharyn Cullis
Ben Cubby BHP Billiton has shelved plans for a vast new coal mine under a conservation area south of Sydney, after a scathing review by the state's Planning Assessment Commission found that society would be better off if the coal remained in the ground.

Refusal to limit marine parks final straw for Shooters

Anne Davies The love-in between the Shooters and Fishers Party and Labor has ended abruptly after the government said it would not back a moratorium on marine national parks.

Burke fails to calm troubled water users

Lenore Taylor Reform of water use in the Murray-Darling Basin is again uncertain as the opposition and irrigator groups reject claims by the Water Minister, Tony Burke, that ''new'' legal advice proves he can give economic concerns equal weighting with the environment.

Farmers call for Murray-Darling plan to be thrown out

Debra Jopson More than 70 elected leaders of the state's peak farming body have called on the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to ditch its draft plan aimed at rescuing the rivers and to recalculate the irrigation water cuts it says are needed in every valley.

Solar rate cut to stop costs going through the roof

Brian Robins and Ben Cubby The state government has reined in its popular solar panel scheme, saying it would otherwise have cost a crippling $4 billion, or more than twice the original estimates.

Decrease in tariff dims appeal of panel investment

Aaron Cook Eight shiny new solar panels were just installed on her parents' Bradbury house, but Nadya Ovchinnikov says investing in a solar energy system is no longer such a bright idea.

Vanishing point fast approaching for thousands of endangered species

A fifth of all vertebrates face extinction unless action is taken, writes Jonathan Watts.

Greens accuse gas industry of hiding real effect of carbon emissions

Emissions
Tim Lester National Bureau Chief 7:30pm The Greens have accused Australia's gas industry of 'cooking the books' to hide a huge carbon emissions problem.

Ban on children buying pets

4:26pm Children under the age of 18 will no longer be able to buy pets without their parents' permission in Victoria if the Brumby government is re-elected.

NSW to slash 'costly' solar feed-in tariff

solar panels
4:08pm NSW is slashing the gross feed-in tariff for its solar bonus scheme because it is costing too much.

'Dinosaur' fish found in Brekky Creek

Lungfish in Breakfast Creek
Tony Moore 2:23pm A rare Queensland lungfish has been spotted in a central Brisbane waterway for the first time in 13 years.

MPs divided on educational value of An Inconvenient Truth

Unspecified
Georgina Robinson 12:39pm Federal MPs are split over whether the climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth should be shown to Australian school students.

ACT moves to ban plastic bags

plastic bag
12:03pm The ACT government has moved to ban plastic bags within a year.

Fifth of vertebrates face extinction

A zookeeper brushes the back of a baird's tapir, an endangered species, inside her enclosure at the Preservation and Research Centre in Yokohama.
12:08pm About a fifth of the world's vertebrates are threatened with extinction, a major review has found, highlighting the plight of nature that is the focus of global environment talks under way in Japan.

Wivenhoe lungfish woes point to what could have been

Dr Anne Kemp, from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Marine Science, shows bruising suffered by a lung fish which went over Wivenhoe Dam.
Tony Moore 11:40pm Wivenhoe Dam's dwindling lungfish stock was an example of what would have happened to the vulnerable species had the controversial Traveston Crossing Dam gone ahead.

Bank slashes value of share in Hazelwood

Adam Morton and Danny John Doubts have been cast over the value of one of Australia's 'dirtiest' power stations after the Commonwealth Bank announced it had written off its share.

Islanders lead world on personal carbon test scheme

Deborah Smith NORFOLK ISLAND will introduce the world's first trial of a personal carbon trading scheme.

Outback power answer a whole lot of hot air

Ben Cubby AN EXPERIMENTAL solar power plant at Newcastle will be the biggest of its type in the world, with a field of hundreds of mirrors ''creating electricity out of sunshine and air''.

Carbon labelling comes to the supermarket

Ben Cubby AUSTRALIA'S first formal system of carbon labelling will be introduced today - and it has already revealed that olive oil imported from overseas has a similar carbon footprint to oil made from olives grown here.

Architects hit grass ceiling in quest to tame urban jungle

Raphael Garcia
Kelsey Munro LIVING roofs help cool cities, capture stormwater run-off, insulate buildings and reduce their carbon footprint. They also dampen noise and provide green habitats for birds - and people - in the concrete jungle.

Fears over increase in modified wheat tests

Kelsey Munro A GREENPEACE report warns that genetically modified wheat could soon be widely grown in Australia for use in staples such as bread and cereals.

Farmers demand halt to all new mining

Debra Jopson THE state's farmers have called for all new mining and coal seam gas developments in NSW to be suspended until there is a strategic plan which protects food security and agricultural land.

Basin plan gets bogged down in legal wrangling

Lenore Taylor A LEADING constitutional lawyer says the government is misinterpreting ''new'' legal advice that has been seized on by the Water Minister, Tony Burke, to reassure angry farmers he can give social and economic factors equal weighting with environmental imperatives when formulating a new water plan for the Murray-Darling Basin.

More questions than answers this time

maley
Jacqueline Maley HALFWAY through question time the Speaker wondered aloud if there was ''something in the water''. Harry Jenkins was not talking about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Nor was he alone in his query.

Environment our big concern, poll shows

Australians consider the state of the environment a more important issue than immigration, public transport or unemployment, a new poll reveals.

Animal rights activists jailed

A judge sent five British animal rights activists to prison on Monday for waging what he called a campaign of intimidation, violence and terror against companies linked to an animal testing lab.

Carbon plan for Sydney

Ben Cubby Sydney's central business district and inner city would effectively become ''carbon neutral'' under ambitious plans to build a network of trigeneration power plants under key buildings.

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