Quakes, Pollution and Flaming Fauces : The UK media on shale gas.

by Andrew Montford, September 27, 2018 in GWPFbriefing34


The briefing, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, focuses on the output of the BBC and the Guardian, and outlines many examples of biased coverage.

However, it wasn’t always this way, as author Andrew Montford explains:

“When shale gas first came on the scene, coverage was very positive: gas was seen as a low-carbon alternative to coal. It was only when it looked as though it would price renewables out of the market that the scare stories and bias began”.

Large stretches of coral reefs can be rehabilitated

by University of California – Davis, September 27, 2018 in ScienceDaily


For the study, published this week in the journal Restoration Ecology, researchers installed 11,000 small, hexagonal structures called “spiders” across 5 acres of reef in the center of Indonesia’s Coral Triangle. Coral diversity is the highest on Earth in that region but is threatened by human activity, including overfishing, pollution and climate change.

Between 2013 and 2015, researchers attached coral fragments to the structures, which also stabilized rubble and allowed for water to flow through freely.

A CORAL SUCCESS STORY

Live coral cover on the structures increased from less than 10 percent to more than 60 percent. This was more than what was reported for reefs in many other areas of the Coral Triangle, at a cost of about $25 per square meter.

Plate tectonics may have been active on Earth since the very beginning

by University of Tennessee at Knoxville, September 26, 2018 in ScienceDaily


A new study suggests that plate tectonics — a scientific theory that divides the earth into large chunks of crust that move slowly over hot viscous mantle rock — could have been active from the planet’s very beginning. The new findings defy previous beliefs that tectonic plates were developed over the course of billions of years.

The paper, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, has important implications in the fields of geochemistry and geophysics. For example, a better understanding of plate tectonics could help predict whether planets beyond our solar system could be hospitable to life.

“Plate tectonics set up the conditions for life,” said Nick Dygert, assistant professor of petrology and geochemistry in UT’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and coauthor of the study. “The more we know about ancient plate tectonics, the better we can understand how Earth got to be the way it is now.”