Law firm ClientEarth says it will seek urgent court action because of the risk to people’s lives from dangerous emissionsUK environment ministers will be taken to court within weeks to make them speed up plans to reduce dangerous urban air pollution.

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire In the season of snipe, six stand together, winged probes the colour of the winter marshesThe snipe are not skulking, they’re invisible. Six stand together in the rushes beside Venus Pool, six winged probes the colour of winter marshes, so extraordinarily beautiful they cannot be seen except for their eye glints.When Henry David Thoreau looked back on his time of solitude at Walden Pond he confessed: “For many years I was the self-appointed inspector of … rainstorms and I did my duty faithfully.” Snipe are inspectors of rainstorms, rain and the journeys of rain through the land. This is the season of snipe, the glorious utopia of resurgent flood meadow they have dreamed of. Continue reading...

An unpleasant house guest has been discovered at an Adelaide home – a highly venomous eastern brown snake. After seeing the snake’s head appear from under her refrigerator, a justifiably shaken Moana resident contacted Snake Catchers Adelaide. An extra surprise came later – the snake went on to lay more than a dozen eggs. Continue reading...

Highly venomous eastern brown snake discovered peering out from under refrigerator in suburban Adelaide is captured, then goes on to lay 15 eggsAn Adelaide woman got the fright of her life when she went to get a drink from the fridge and discovered a brown snake peering out from underneath.The venomous eastern brown snake had a surprise in store for the homeowners – it was heavily pregnant and later laid 15 eggs. Continue reading...

Do you yearn for the soft, instant light of the incandescent bulb? Edison’s invention could be back – in an even more efficient form than energy-saving fluorescentsAs a metaphor, the “lightbulb moment” doesn’t work so well now that we have to wait five minutes for a low-energy bulb to get going. But a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have had a bit of a lightbulb moment. The fondly remembered, but extremely inefficient, old-fashioned tungsten bulb could soon be modified to reuse its wasted energy. This would make it even more efficient than the new types of energy-saving LED and compact fluorescent bulbs to which we’ve switched in recent years.Almost all the energy used by old filament bulbs is converted to heat, with only around 5% given off as light. In their paper, poetically entitled “resurrection of the incandescent source”, the MIT team describe how infrared radiation, which would otherwise be wasted, can be reflected and reabsorbed through a structure of up to 300 layers around the filament, using nanotechnology. “It is not so much the material you make the surrounding structure from, it is how you arrange the material to create the optical filtering property that will recycle infrared light and let the visible light through,” said Ognjen Ilic, from MIT’s research laboratory of electronics. This research could lead, one day, to the introduction of a high-tech lightbulb with an old-world glow. Continue reading...

Police confirm handful of arrests after demonstrators lock themselves in tunnels to frustrate attempt to take over site in UptonAn eviction battle has begun at the UK’s longest running anti-fracking camp, which protesters have fortified with tunnels, tree houses and a moat.Dozens of police officers and bailiffs arrived at the camp on Duttons Lane, Upton, Cheshire, on Tuesday morning, more than two months after the high court ordered protesters to leave the site so that drilling could begin. Continue reading...

Insurance company, which sent out almost 200 claims advisers and adjustors, says about 90% of first damage assessment visits have been completedDirect Line, one of Britain’s biggest insurers, will take a hit of up to £140m from the three storms that flooded parts of Britain in recent weeks.The company put the total cost of clients’ claims in its home and commercial divisions at between £110m and £140m. This was less than analysts had feared, and the company’s shares rose 2% to 369.6p. Continue reading...

The fuss over Sir Philip Dilley’s Caribbean holiday and subsequent resignation let the government off the hook over its failings on flood defencesSo Sir Philip Dilley is going to spend more time with his family, in whichever home he feels most comfortable. After misleading the public over his whereabouts over Christmas, as the north of England was awash with floods, he resigned as chair of the Environment Agency on Monday.As the rain fell on Boxing day, he said he was at home with his family. Then, having been tracked down to Barbados, he clarified that he was “at home with his family, who are from Barbados”. Now it appears his wife is actually from Jamaica, 1,200 miles away. Continue reading...

Some previous studies claiming that the climate is insensitive to carbon pollution missed a key factorClimate sensitivity – the amount of global surface warming we’ll see as a result of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels – has become contrarians’ favorite basis to argue against cutting carbon pollution. If the Earth’s climate is relatively insensitive to rising carbon levels, then it’s somewhat less urgent that we stop burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. However, a new NASA study indicates that’s not the case.

Affluent Chinese have developed an unhealthy appetite for dried swim bladders, known as ‘aquatic cocaine’, which has put two Mexican marine species more at risk. There are fewer than 100 vaquitas (the world’s smallest porpoise) left and no one knows how many totoaba, but their numbers are dwindling even further as their swim bladders, also known as a maw, can fetch up to more than $4,000. The swim bladders are mostly bought by wealthy Chinese as ‘collection items or gifts’ and financial investments. Vision: www.vaquita.tv Continue reading...

From the use of antibiotics in farming to China’s environmental tipping point – a look at the issues that could define the next ten yearsChina’s heavy pollution has been well documented. Last year, Beijing issued two “red alerts” for pollution, the highest level warning which calls for emergency measures such as closing schools and restricting car use. Poor air quality is also having a significant knock-on effect on the country’s tourist trade. Continue reading...

Thomas Vijayan’s image of grey langurs was the overwhelming favourite among the almost 20,000 nature photography lovers that voted in the Wildlife photographer of the year people’s choice award. This year’s vote showcased 25 images, preselected by the jury from more than 42,000 submissions from almost 100 countries. Vijayan’s image will be showcased in London’s Natural History museum Wildlife photographer of the year exhibition until 10 April Continue reading...

BusinessGreen: LSE study predicts modest carbon tax of £20 a tonne would increase consumer prices by just 0.9%, while driving emission cutsA “modest” uniform carbon tax of £20 a tonne would have a negligible impact on consumer prices, according to a new study that attempts to make the case for wider adoption of carbon pricing policies.The study from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at London School of Economics and Political Science argues that applying the tax to all fuels would increase UK consumer prices by up to just 0.9 per cent, assuming all costs were passed along supply chains fully. Continue reading...

Daniel Alongi accused of scamming more than half a million dollars by claiming non-existent purchases and analysis over seven yearsA senior scientist at Australia’s key research body on the Great Barrier Reef is alleged to have fabricated research expenses worth more than half a million dollars and has been arrested on fraud charges, the Australian federal police say.Daniel Alongi, 59, is accused of duping the taxpayer-funded Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims) into paying him $556,508 for non-existent purchases of “radioisotopes” and laboratory analysis of reef sediment over seven years. Continue reading...

Matthias Müller said the company’s credibility needed to be fixed as he announced a $900m plan to build a new SUV at VW’s Tennessee factoryVolkswagen chief executive Matthias Müller has apologized for cheating diesel car emissions tests on his first official US visit since the scandal broke in September.