Five men have completed the first transatlantic crossing in a motorboat purely powered by the sun.
The solar-powered catamaran arrived in Miami after setting off from the Spanish port of Chipiona, near Seville, last December.
The 14-metre-long vessel with a solar panelled roof can keep up a speed of 10 kilometres per hour around the clock, thanks to on-board batteries.
read more »By Rob Taylor
AUSTRALIA, slowly emerging from its worst drought in a century, will suffer killer heatwaves, bushfires and floods as global warming intensifies, a draft report by international climate scientists said today.
Already the world’s driest inhabited continent, Australia’s outback interior will see temperatures rise by up to 6.7C by 2080, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said.
Portugal has opened one of the biggest solar panel plants in the world.
More than 8000 homes were today enjoying the benefits of the 52,000 panels covering spread over 60ha in the Alentejo region of southern Portugal, one of the sunniest spots in Europe.
The panels can generate 11 megawatts of electricity.
read more »A piece of the Antarctic ice sheet three-quarters the size of NSW is thinning, possibly due to global warming, and a windchange could cause the world’s oceans to rise significantly.
“Surprisingly rapid changes” were occurring in the Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea Embayment, which faces the southern Pacific Ocean, polar ice experts said today.
But more study was needed to know how fast it was melting and how much it could cause the sea level to rise, they said.
read more »An international anti-nuclear campaigner visiting Canberra this week has warned Australia about the impact of the waste produced by uranium mining.
The advice comes ahead of next month’s national Labor Party conference, where the ALP will consider lifting its ban on new mines.
Kevin Kamps, from the United States-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service, says the waste produced by uranium mines in the US has had a great impact on the community.
read more »Zane Alcorn
“Nuclear fools’ day” protests will mark Palm Sunday — April 1. The protests are in response to the most significant push for expanded uranium mining in Australia since the Hawke Labor government’s 1983 decision to defy public opinion and allow uranium mining to continue at Rio Tinto’s Ranger mine in the Northern Territory, and to be developed at Australia’s two other largest uranium deposits — BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam (Roxby Downs) mine in South Australia, opened in 1988, and Rio Tinto’s Beverley mine (also in SA) in 2001.
All three mines are located on Indigenous land and are opposed by the land’s traditional owners.
read more »In the first of a series of reports, BBC World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle analyses the state of food production and consumption across the globe.
The island of Ghoramara is gradually disappearing
The tiny Indian island of Ghoramara, in the delta where the River Ganges meets the Bay of Bengal, is a symbol of the crisis the world is facing as it struggles to feed a growing population.
It is a tiny place – just a few kilometres across – and it is getting tinier.
read more »CANE toads are evolving so quickly they could be on Sydney’s doorstep within a few years, scientists warned yesterday.
It was previously thought the cane toad’s Australian invasion would be limited to climates similar to those of its original habitat, Central and South America.
However, work by an international team of researchers, including Rick Shine from the University of Sydney, suggests the toad, introduced into Australia in the 1930s, is rapidly adapting to a wider range of climates.
read more »THE world’s leading economist on climate change, Nicholas Stern, has issued a challenge to Australia to cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 percent by 2020, and 90 percent by 2050.
Sir Nicholas warned that Australia faced a bleak future of increasing droughts, storms, sea level rises and the collapse of the Great Barrier Reef if the planet kept warming.
“You should be going, as a rich country, for 60 percent to 90 percent reductions by 2050,” Sir Nicholas told the Sydney Morning Herald.
read more »Hundreds of Australians have reported bizarre behaviour, including one case of jumping off a high-rise balcony, after taking the popular sleeping pill Stilnox.
A national medical hotline for adverse drug reactions has been swamped with more than 400 calls from people taking the controversial prescription medication.
Callers have reported unusual behaviour such as smoking, driving, painting, cooking and stabbing themselves while they were asleep.
read more »MANY of the world’s climate zones will vanish entirely by 2100, or be replaced by new, previously unseen ones, if global warming continues as expected, a US study predicts.
Rising temperatures will force existing climate zones toward higher latitudes and higher elevations, squeezing out climates at the colder extremes, and leaving room for unfamiliar climes around the equator, the study predicted today.
The sweeping climatic changes will likely affect huge swaths of land from the Indonesian rainforest to the Peruvian Andes, including many known hotspots of diversity, disrupting local ecological systems and populations.
read more »Marine researchers at Queenscliff in Victoria have found that climate change could be one of the biggest long-term threats to the state’s rock lobster industry.
A study on the industry has found the method of fishing – using lobster pots – has minimal effect on the environment or other fish species.
But Department of Primary Industries spokesman Greg Jenkins says rock lobsters are sensitive to environmental changes, especially in the larval stage.
read more »Frog Watch says last night’s toad bust in Darwin’s northern suburbs uncovered what it says is the biggest cane toad ever to be caught in the Northern Territory.
The pest was found at Lee Point along with 38 smaller toads.
Frog Watch organiser Graeme Sawyer says the monster toad is the size of a small dog, measuring more than 20 centimetres in length and weighing more than 860 grams.
read more »GLOBAL drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline faces a court case today for misleading advertising after two 14-year-olds from New Zealand found its popular blackcurrant drink Ribena contained almost no vitamin C.
High school students Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo tested the children’s drink against advertising claims that “the blackcurrants in Ribena have four times the vitamin C of oranges” in 2004.
Instead, the two found the syrup-based drink contained almost no trace of vitamin C, and one commercial orange juice brand contained almost four times more than Ribena.
read more »LABOR MP Peter Garrett will head a Rockin’ For Rights concert following a protest march against the federal Government’s industrial relations laws in Sydney next month.
Aussie bands including Youth Group, The Screaming Jets, Something for Kate, You Am I and the Hoodoo Gurus will perform at the event staged by Unions NSW.
The protest rally from Hyde Park to the Sydney Cricket Ground will be held on April 22.
read more »GEORGE BUSH is under siege from a resurgent Democratic Party. The President’s firing of eight US attorneys has developed into a political controversy that may force him to sack his close friend, the Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales.
More crucially, the Democrats are determined to fulfil what they see as the mandate they were given in the midterm congressional elections: to end US involvement in Iraq and bring home the troops.
read more »by Greg Palast
Four years ago this week, the tanks rolled for what President Bush originally called, “Operation Iraqi Liberation” — O.I.L.
read more »Defence Minister Brendan Nelson says any extra troops Australia sends to Afghanistan will be special forces soldiers.
Dr Nelson says it is likely more soldiers will be deployed to Oruzgan province and the Government is close to making a final decision.
The Minister will travel to Canada early next month to hold talks with his British counterpart, the US Defence Secretary and defence ministers from other countries with troops in southern Afghanistan.
read more »More than 5.5 million people are short of drinking water because of an acute drought in south-western China, state media reports.
Low rainfall in the province of Sichuan has forced officials to deliver clean water to the worst-hit areas.
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