Stranded whale rescued from Chile beach

A blue whale has been rescued after getting stranded on a beach in the port city of Iquique in northern Chile, South America.

Fishermen and beach-goers, along with the police and the navy, helped get the 20-metre-long mammal safely back out to deeper water.

The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal belonging to the baleen whales (Mysticeti). At 30 metres (98 ft) in length and 180 tonnes (200 short tons) or more in weight, it is the largest extant animal and is the heaviest known to have existed.

Long and slender, the blue whale's body can be various shades of bluish-grey dorsally and somewhat lighter underneath.There are at least three distinct subspecies: B. m. musculus of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, B. m. intermedia of theSouthern Ocean and B. m. brevicauda (also known as the pygmy blue whale) found in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean. B. m. indica, found in the Indian Ocean, may be another subspecies. As with other baleen whales, its diet consists almost exclusively of small crustaceans known as krill.

Blue whales were abundant in nearly all the oceans on Earth until the beginning of the twentieth century. For over a century, they were hunted almost to extinction by whalers until protected by the international community in 1966. A 2002 report estimated there were 5,000 to 12,000 blue whales worldwide, in at least five groups. More recent research into the Pygmy subspecies suggests this may be an overestimate.^[16] Before whaling, the largest population was in the Antarctic, numbering approximately 239,000 (range 202,000 to 311,000).There remain only much smaller (around 2,000) concentrations in each of the eastern North Pacific, Antarctic, and Indian Ocean groups. There are two more groups in the North Atlantic, and at least two in the Southern Hemisphere. As of 2014, the Californian blue whale population has rebounded to nearly its pre-hunting population.

in Wikipedia

Zoo in effort to save beautiful rare Indonesian magpie

Rare bird experts at a zoo in Cheshire have started a project that they hope will save one of the world's most endangered birds.

The Javan green Magpie, Cissa thalassina from Indonesia has been poached almost to extinction.

    Now, four pairs of the birds have been brought to the UK in the hope that they will breed.Andrew Owen, who looks after the birds at Chester Zoo, hopes the project will stop these types of birds from dying out.

There is thought to be fewer than 100 of the Javan green magpie left in the world, putting the inquisitive bird with distinctive green plumage, black eye feathers and a pink beak on the critically endangered list.

The zoo is hoping to boost survival rates by developing the first captive breeding programme outside of Indonesia, where a passion for keeping caged birds has seen numbers in the wild decimated. As the birds become rarer, their value increases, leaving many species on the brink of disappearing altogether.

The zoo's curator of birds, Andrew Owen, explains: "We really are fighting against time to save the incredibly rare Javan green magpie from extinction. Sadly, there is evidence that the species is fast disappearing in the wild as they have fallen victim to the pet trade and an ever shrinking habitat.

"In fact, they have only been found once in the last 10 years in the wild by ornithologists. By bringing twelve of the birds to the UK, we are hoping our new conservation breeding programme will begin to address the desperate plight of this species and ensure a protected population for the future.

"We've been working with the Cikananga Conservation Breeding Centre in Java for five years and our mission to track down the birds with the beautiful green plumage has included trawling markets and interviewing traders.

"Over time we have managed to rescue a handful of birds and set up a breeding centre and, together, we have been successful in breeding the birds on their country of origin. However, so prized are they in Java, the breeding centre has suffered from a number of break-ins - the magpies being a prime target given their beauty and increasing value on the pet trade."

Press Association

How is El Nino affecting countries around the world?

Powerful hurricanes in Mexico, drought in Ethiopia, flash-floods and mudslides in southern California - all have been attributed to the El Nino weather phenomenon.

Occurring every few years, the current El Nino is one of the strongest recorded and could contribute to making 2015 the hottest year on record.

But what is El Nino?

BBC News Science/Environment

The secrets revealed by coastal erosion

Erosion is problem on large parts of the UK coastline.

Now a scheme in Scotland, which gets the public logging at risk sites, is set to be expanded into England during 2016.

Archaeologist Tom Dawson, from the University of St Andrews, has been talking to BBC Weather World's Nick Miller about what Scotland's Coastal Heritage at Risk Project is trying to. 

(BBC News-Science/ Environment)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Giving Endangered African Penguins a Second Chance at Life

This short video produced by IFAW shows the plight facing endangered African Penguins due to overfishing, pollution, and climate change. But there is hope as IFAW is working with the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) in Capetown, South Africa to rescue, rehabilitate, and release African penguins back to the wild. 

To learn more, visit www.ifaw.org.

The number of African penguins in South Africa and Namibia has dramatically fallen in the past ten years.

The penguins pair for life and have their chicks - but the number of pairs has dropped from over 30,000 in 2004 to just over 3,000 in 2014.

Nicky Stander, a Penguin Conservationist says: ''There used to be over a million penguins in the 1930's but now the population is down by around 98 per cent.''

Experts say it's because the sardines and anchovies they eat are disappearing.

They believe it's because of over-fishing and the sea getting warmer. (CBBC Newsround)

COP21: Climate deal 'final draft' reached in Paris

 Organisers of the climate talks in Paris say a final draft text has been reached after nearly two weeks of intensive negotiations.

The main goal is to keep the rise of global temperatures under 2C

An official in the office of French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told the AFP news agency the draft would be presented to ministers at 10:30 GMT.

No details of the proposed agreement have been released so far. The tentative deal was reached nearly 16 hours after the talks had been scheduled to close.

"We have a text to present," the official said, adding that the draft would be now translated into the UN's six official languages.

Analysts say that this is not a done deal - it will only be finally adopted if there are no objections raised at Saturday morning's ministerial meeting, and even this is unlikely to come before afternoon in the French capital.Mr Fabius, who has presided over the talks, had said earlier that the "conditions were never better" for a strong and ambitious agreement.

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COP21 Live: Final push for climate deal

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Significant progress had been reported on a range of issues, with evidence of real compromise between the parties, the BBC's environment correspondent Matt McGrath in Paris reported earlier.

He added that countries supported a goal of keeping global temperature rises to 2C but agreed to make their best efforts to keep it to 1.5C. However, the language on cutting emissions in the long term was criticised for significantly watering down ambition. 

     Eager delegates leaf through an earlier draft text

 A "No plan B" slogan was displayed at the Eiffel Tower as part of the COP21 forum

The question of different demands on different countries, depending on their wealth and level of development - called "differentiation" at the talks - was said to be the root cause of the difficulties.
Another major difficulty was transparency - richer countries want a single system of measuring, reporting and verifying the commitments countries make as part of this agreement.
It is said to be crucial to the US, which wants to ensure that China is subject to the same sort of oversight as it is. China and India are not keen on this type of oversight.

From BBC News

COP21: Final push for climate deal amid 'optimism'

Negotiators at the Paris summit aim to wrap up a global agreement to curb climate change on Saturday - a day later than expected.

Messages on climate change outside Le Bourget in Paris where talks are taking place

"We are nearly there. I'm optimistic," said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is chairing the summit.

Efforts to forge a deal faltered on Friday, forcing the talks to overrun.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the negotiations were the "most complicated, most difficult, but, most important for humanity".

Mr Fabius told reporters in Paris that he would present a new version of the draft text on Saturday morning at 0800 GMT, which he was "sure" would be approved and "a big step forward for humanity as a whole".

"We are almost at the end of the road and I am optimistic," he added.

Live updates on COP21

The summit is entering a final push to try to secure a global agreement that would stake out a long-term strategy for dealing with climate change. However, there are still some unresolved issues.

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What are the sticking points?

• Climate finance: How do countries pay for efforts to reduce, stop and cope with the effects of climate change?
• Differentiation: Related to the finance problem is how do we "differentiate" between developed countries, who can afford to donate money, and developing countries who need support? Richer nations want emerging economies to take on more of the burden of cutting emissions, and providing finance to the very poor nations hit by the impacts of higher temperatures.
• Overall goal: What is the overall target? Should nations try to limit global rises in temperature to 2C or 1.5C or by "well below 2C" - above what they were in pre-industrial times? The global average temperature has already risen by roughly 1C.

READ the whole article

Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care.

Living within planetary boundaries is the most promising strategy for ensuring a healthy future. Human prosperity need not cost the earth. Living sustainably is about doing more and better with less. It is about knowing that rising rates of natural resource use and the environmental impacts that occur are not a necessary by-product of economic growth. Directed by Leonardo Dalessandri

India to ban old trucks and buses to curb pollution

India will ban trucks and buses more than 15 years old to curb record pollution levels, the government says.

Sometimes we have good news too!

Commercial trucks account for more than half of vehicle emissions in India

India's capital, Delhi, is experiencing hazardous levels of pollution due to diesel emissions, construction dirt and the burning of crop stubble in farms around the city.

Air pollution causes more than 600,000 premature deaths in India each year.

India has 13 of the world's 20 most polluted cities, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported last year.

The ban will come into effect in April and will be announced in more detail in the next two weeks.

It will include commercial trucks, which account for more than half of India's vehicle emissions.

"It [air pollution] will get worse every year unless we do something," road transport and highways secretary Vijay Chhibber told Reuters.

However, other measures will have to be implemented if India wants to significantly change emissions, experts say.

"Taxes on cars and parking charges should be raised to curtail usage, and public transport should be expanded," said Vivek Chattopadhyay, a pollution expert at the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi.

New car sales are soaring in India, with 1,400 extra cars taking to the capital's streets every day.

Last week India said it would require vehicles to abide by stricter emissions standards by 2019, three years ahead of the previous deadline.

Earlier this month, on the night of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, air pollution in Delhi reached 40 times the limit recommended by the WHO.

From BBC News

COP21: What does ocean acidification look like?

Marine scientists are concerned that changes in the chemistry of the world's seas will have severe consequences for marine wildlife and ecosystems.

Jason Hall-Spencer, professor of Marine Biology at Plymouth University, shows BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath the potential impact through two experiments at London's Aquarium.

Produced by Marcus Thompson (BBC)

COP21: Vanuatu voices from disappearing islands

Vanuatu is on the front line in the climate change debate, with rising sea levels putting the very future of the low-lying archipelago in jeopardy.

Islanders hope some sort of deal can be reached at the climate change conference Paris to make sure that whatever happens, their home will be as well prepared as possible.

They raised their concerns with the BBC's Matthew Price. (BBC Science/Environment)

COP21: Rhone Glacier drone footage shows ice retreat

Diplomats and climate experts are to meet in Paris for the UN Conference on Climate Change, aiming to secure a new global deal that would limit emissions of carbon dioxide.

For many of us the impact of climate change can often seem distant and difficult to visualise - but that is far from the case in Switzerland.

There, a temperature rise of 2C in the last 150 years has led to a rapid acceleration in the melting of the country's glaciers.

If greenhouse emissions continue to rise according to current trends, all of the large masses of ice in the Swiss Alps will have almost vanished by the end of the century, scientists warn.

BBC video journalist Howard Johnson travelled to the Rhone Glacier, which has receded by 30m in the last year alone.

He met glacier expert Dr David Volken who set out the evidence for the ice sheet's retreat - and why the world should sit up and pay attention.

The basic facts about climate change?

Special report: Climate change

Paris climate summit: Major oil producers back 'effective' deal

COP 21: Why does Paris climate change conference matter?

Primates need protecting scientists warn

Scientists have called for governments to do more to protect primates.

It's unknown how many Red ruffed lemurs are left in the wild.

It's after warning that more than half the world's primate population is facing extinction.

A new list of the world's 25 most endangered primates has been published.

The population has been decreasing for a number of reasons.

Including the burning and clearing of tropical forests.

As well as being hunted for food or for use in traditional medicine in Asia .

There are more 700 different types of primates in the world.

The Philippine tarsier and the Lavasoa Mountains dwarf lemur from Madagascar have been added to the list for the first time.

The hope is to convince governments across the world to look at ways of better protecting habitats and the animals.

From CBBC Newsround

One of the world's last northern white rhinos dies in the US

An extremely rare northern white rhino has died in the US, leaving only three others in the world.

Nola was one of four northern white rhinos left in the world.

The 41-year-old rhino, Nola, died after surgery to her hip at San Diego Zoo.

Nola's death means that there are only three other northern white rhinos in the world.

They live in Kenya and are kept closely guarded.

Nola had surgery on 13 November but her health got worse.

Poachers have been blamed for the devastating drop in northern white rhino numbers.

They kill many rhinos to get their horns, which are worth a lot of money in some cultures.

However, there is hope that there may be more northern white rhinos born in the future.

San Diego Zoo has recently brought in six southern white rhinos, hoping to use them as mothers to new northern white rhino calves.
Zoo researchers are still working out if it's possible, but they say they're hopeful that a northern white rhino calf could be born within 10 to 15 years.
From CBBC Newsround

Endangered pygmy hippo born at zoo

A rare baby pygmy hippo has been born at Bristol Zoo.

It is now three weeks old and has been enjoying splashing around in the water with its parents.

Pygmy hippos are an endangered species, with fewer than 2,000 left in the wild, as they face threats from hunting and people destroying the forests they live in.

Pygmy hippos only grow to be around 80cm tall, which is half the height of their cousin the Hippopotamus.

Lynsey Bugg, assistant curator of mammals at the zoo, said: "The calf is looking very strong and it certainly feeds well."

The role of zoos in keeping these species alive is very important. In fact, without their work and preserverance many species would no longer have any elements to represent them and therefore the world would be poorer and less balanced.

From CBBC Newsround

Canada: Smartphone app tracks moose population

Wildlife managers in western Canada are getting a helping hand when it comes to tracking the moose population, thanks to a new smartphone app.

The moose population has seen a decline across North America in recent years but environment officials aren't sure why

The MyMoose app shares real time data of where and how frequently the creatures have been spotted across the province of British Columbia, the Globe and Mail website reports. The information is uploaded mainly by hunters - but it isn't intended to encourage hunting. Instead, its main aim is to help environmental officials monitor the moose population in the province, which has seen a steep decline in some areas."Currently we've got 350 members contributing data and we have almost 1,000 surveys submitted," says the app's creator, Sean Simmons. He describes MyMoose users as "committed" to helping collect the information. "What they say is: 'Assure me that what I'm doing is going to be helpful'," he tells the site.

The app, which launched in August, shows the general location of moose sightings, but limits the audience for more detailed GPS data to only wildlife biologists, so that animals won't be at increased risk of being hunted. "This is our first experiment to see what sort of data we can actually generate," says Mr Simmons.

In 2014 the provincial government began investigating why parts of British Columbia have seen moose numbers fall by up to 70% in recent years, a pattern repeated elsewhere in North America. It launched a five-year study which includes the tracking of more than 200 moose using radio collars.

From BBC News-from-elsewhere

Earth's underground water quantified

The total amount of groundwater on the planet, held in rock and soil below our feet, is estimated to be 23 million cubic km.

If this volume is hard to visualise, imagine the Earth's entire land surface covered in a layer some 180m deep.

The new calculation comes from a Canadian-led team and is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Significantly, little of this water - just 6% - is the kind of bankable resource that is most useful to people.

That small fraction is referred to as "modern" groundwater: it is extractable because it is near the surface, and can be used to supplement above-ground resources in rivers and lakes.

"It's the groundwater that is the most quickly renewed - on the scale of human lifetimes," explained study leader Tom Gleeson from the University of Victoria.

"And yet this modern groundwater is also the most sensitive to climate change and to human contamination. So, it's a vital resource that we need to manage better."

Finite resource

To quantify just how much water is stored in the top 2km of the Earth's surface, Dr Gleeson's team had to combine large data sets with an element of modelling.

They included information on the permeability of rocks and soil, on their porosity, and all that is known about water table gradients, which tell you about inputs from precipitation.

Key to determining the age of all this stored water is a collection of thousands of tritium measurements.

Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen that spiked in the atmosphere 50 years ago as a result of thermonuclear bomb tests.

It can therefore be used as a tracer for all the rain that has made its way underground ever since.

The map above shows the distribution of this modern groundwater around the globe.

Dark blue shows where it is very quickly renewed. Light blue shows the older groundwater, which is mostly stagnant and non-renewable.

"Old water is highly variable," Dr Gleeson told BBC News.

"Some places it is quite deep, in some places not. In many places, it can be poor quality.

"It can be more saline even than ocean water and it can have lots of dissolved metals and other chemicals that would need to be treated before it could be used for drinking or agriculture."

This puts further emphasis on the modern reserves and the need to manage them in a sustainable way. The study underlines just how unevenly they are spread around the globe.

The next step, Dr Gleeson said, was to try to work out just how fast some water stores were being depleted.

Also writing in Nature Geoscience, Ying Fan, from Rutgers University, US, commented that "this global view of groundwater will, hopefully, raise awareness that our youngest groundwater resources - those that are the most sensitive to anthropogenic and natural environmental changes - are finite".

Modern groundwater is part of the great hydrological cycle on Earth

From BBC News-Science/Environment

Society 'to be hit by climate change'

Human societies will soon start to experience adverse effects from manmade climate change, a prominent economist has warned.

Prof Richard Tol predicts the downsides of warming will outweigh the advantages with a global warming of 1.1C - which has nearly been reached already.

Prof Tol is regarded by many campaigners as a climate "sceptic".

He has previously highlighted the positive effects of CO2 in fertilising crops and forests.

His work is widely cited by climate contrarians.

"Most people would argue that slight warming is probably beneficial for human welfare on net, if you measure it in dollars, but more pronounced warming is probably a net negative," Prof Tol told the BBC Radio 4 series Changing Climate.

Asked whether societies were at the point where the benefits start to be outweighed by consequences, he replied: "Yes. In academic circles, this is actually an uncontroversial finding."

But it is controversial for climate contrarians, who often cite Professor Tol's work to suggest that we shouldn't worry about warming.

Managing ecosystems

Matt Ridley, the influential Conservative science writer, said he believed the world would probably benefit from a temperature rise of up to 2C.

"I think we probably will see 1.5 degrees of warming. The point is most people think 2C is when it turns catastrophic. That's not right. The literature is very clear; 2C is when we start to get harm. Up until then we get benefit," he said.

"We've got a greening in all ecosystems as a result of CO2. We've got about 11% more green vegetation on the planet than 30 years ago, much of which is down to the CO2 fertilisation effect."

On fertilisation Matt Ridley refers to unpublished work by Professor Ranga Myneni from Boston University.

But he told BBC News Lord Ridley had accurately quoted his research on the impacts of current CO2 levels, but was unduly complacent about future warming.

"I am worried about how this work is being interpreted, by Lord Ridley. In my opinion, [CO2 fertilisation] benefit of greening is not worth the price of all the negative changes," he said.

Richard Tol from Sussex University believes discussion over the impacts of a 2C temperature rise is largely irrelevant as the world is likely to warm by between 3-5C, because politicians at the forthcoming Paris climate summit won't be willing or able to make the scale of cuts needed to keep temperature rises under 2C.

He says a rise of 4C would be undesirable but manageable for Europe and all nations rich enough to cope with the costs of adaptation. The best way of combating climate change, he told BBC News, was to maximise economic growth.

Warming feedback

Tim Lenton, professor of Earth systems science from Exeter University, told us this was a highly optimistic prognosis under a 4C rise.

"The land surface of central Europe would be quite a lot more than 4C warmer on average, changing potentially the pattern of seasonality over Europe.

"We would have lost the summer Arctic sea-ice, [and] would have sea-ice cover radically thinned in winters.

"We're seeing already that appears to have some connection to changes in the pattern of weather and weather extremes and the changes in the distribution of rivers and river flows.

"We might then speculate about how intense Mediterranean drying might drive... movements of people. It would be a very different Europe."

Johan Rockstrom, director of the Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, warns that the further we go above 2C, the more we risk triggering irreversible effects.

"What takes us to 6C is not carbon emissions, it is biosphere response. Will we be able to maintain the natural carbon sinks in the permafrost, in the rainforests, in the boreal forests, in the wetlands and in the coastal regions? Because that's where the big stores are.

"We emit nine gigatons of carbon per year from our burning of fossil fuels, but there's a 100 gigatons lying just under the Siberia tundra. You have many-fold larger stores of carbon in the topsoil of tropical soils, or under the ice in the Arctic.

"If we don't manage the living ecosystems well enough they could start biting us from behind."

From BBC News-Science/ Environment