Can a battery factory ever be fully green?
Jul 26, 2016 06:11 am UTC| Technology Nature
Like Henry Ford before him, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk is taking a new approach to car making. Where Ford focused on manufacturing a car that the mass market could afford, Musk is keen to build a vehicle that the...
How a single word sparked a four-year saga of climate fact-checking and blog backlash
Jul 10, 2016 21:06 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
In May 2012, my colleagues and I had a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate, showing that temperatures recorded in Australasia since 1950 were warmer than at any time in the past 1,000...
Learning to live with wildfires: how communities can become 'fire-adapted'
Jul 10, 2016 20:47 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
In recent years wildfire seasons in the western United States have become so intense that many of us who make our home in dry, fire-prone areas are grappling with how to live with fire. When I moved to a small town in...
A marine heatwave has wiped out a swathe of WA's undersea kelp forest
Jul 10, 2016 19:59 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
Kelp forests along some 100km of Western Australias coast have been wiped out, and many more areas damaged, by a marine heatwave that struck the area in 2011. The heatwave, which featured ocean temperatures more than 2℃...
How the UK can still lead on climate change – even after Brexit
Jul 04, 2016 19:25 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
In the wake of the Brexit earthquake, experts are sifting through the rubble, assessing the damage, and checking the stability of remaining structures. Advocates of ambitious climate policy have been particularly active....
After Paris, UK's latest 'carbon budget' just isn't ambitious enough
Jul 04, 2016 18:51 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature Law
A major new climate policy was announced by the UK government on June 30, almost unnoticed in the Brexit aftermath. The medias focus on Westminster backstabbing meant the countrys latest carbon budget, widely heralded as...
Humans now drive evolution on Earth, both creating and destroying species
Jul 04, 2016 18:47 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
When scientists examine the impact of humans on the planet, the focus is mainly on the extinction of species. But increasingly researchers are looking at the idea that humans, through animal domestication, relocation and...
Johannesburg in a time of darkness: Ivan Vladislavić’s new memoir reminds us of the city’s fragility
Economist Chris Richardson on an ‘ugly’ inflation result and the coming budget
Why Germany ditched nuclear before coal – and why it won’t go back
Labour can afford to be far more ambitious with its economic policies – voters are on board
Sudan: civil war stretches into a second year with no end in sight