I now love German eBay. My lockdown treat - the history of life and landscape. I’ll tweet some details from this wonderful collection of palaeoart. Where to begin? 🌎🦕🌋
Forget PowerPoint and zoom - this is the future....
The Precambrian saw the emergence of complex multicellular organisms. It is now an informal term that encompasses all of #EarthHistory from our planet’s formation to the Cambrian Period – some 4.6 billion years and about 88% of geological time.
The Cambrian Period, first proposed by Adam Sedgwick, saw a great explosion of weird and wonderful complex life forms - the preservation of even soft body parts can be remarkably good despite their great age. Trilobites appear in the Early Cambrian #EarthHistory 🌏 🏴
The Silurian saw plants and animals emerge on land. Marine biodiversity recovered after the end Ordovician mass extinction. Huge coral reefs developed and fish evolved jaws. Very high CO2. Supercontinent Gondwana dominated the SH. No Ordovician on my chart! #EarthHistory 🌎🐟
The Devonian saw Earth’s first forests as lycophytes, horsetails and ferns grew to large sizes. The first ammonites appeared in the oceans and cartilaginous fish such as sharks and rays were abundant by the late Devonian. Lots of tectonic activity and Pangaea began to form 🌎
I really need to finish this thread! 🌍
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“That this House condemns the mismanagement and underinvestment which led to untreated sewage being discharged into English waterways for more than 3.6 million hours in 2023; notes that water companies in England have incurred debts of more than £64 billion and paid out £78 billion in dividends since they were privatised debt-free in 1989…” edm.parliament.uk/early-day-moti…
“… further notes that water companies paid out £1.4 billion in dividends in 2022, even as 11 of them were fined in the same year for missing performance targets; objects to Ofwat's proposal to allow water companies to increase bills by an average of 21% despite overwhelming evidence of mismanagement…”
“… recognises that climate change is making flooding and droughts more frequent and more severe, necessitating changes to the way water systems are managed in order to build resilience; believes that private for-profit ownership is not an appropriate model for water, as an essential utility where no meaningful competition is possible…”
Watchdog executives @Ofwat and @EnvAgency had cosy dinner with water company bosses at private London club to discuss how to quell public anger over bill rises and sewage spills reveals @horton_official @guardian theguardian.com/environment/20…
The water quality campaigner and former Undertones frontman @Feargal_Sharkey said the private dinner was outrageous and an example of “regulatory capture”. He said: “In my view here we have a clear case of regulatory capture – industry and regulators, both of which are currently under enormous amounts of public scrutiny and criticism, acting in tandem trying to avoid anything remotely looking like transparency and/or accountability. This is pretty damned outrageous.” He also called for the chairs to resign.
@Feargal_Sharkey Campaigners have said the private meeting is an outrageous example of “regulatory capture” as Ofwat and the Environment Agency are supposed to hold water companies to account, RATHER THAN HELP WITH THEIR PUBLIC RELATIONS! @horton_official
Before Brexit the UK was signed up to the water framework directive requiring EU nations to ensure their waters achieved “good” chemical & ecological status by 2027. @DefraGovUK & @EnvAgency have shifted this target to 2063! We must fight this in 2023. amp.theguardian.com/environment/20…
“Not one English waterway, including rivers, lakes, estuaries & coastal waters is in good ecological & chemical health at present, with pollution from water treatment plants & agriculture the key sources of the damage.” @sandralaville
England’s rivers will continue to deteriorate unless the Environment Agency stops “shutting down” the public’s calls about pollution, according to an ex-employee who worked at the agency for three decades @phoeb0theguardian.com/environment/20…
Officers are told to ignore calls from the public and told not to look at possible incidents if the caller thinks they are lower impact, meaning they fall into so-called category 3 or 4. This has left staff “demoralised”
Once a river is damaged, it becomes harder to have a major incident on it. “You can only kill so many fish. Once you’ve already killed them, the chances of getting a significant incident are much reduced…”
This is Wilson Brook flowing through Hyde Park before joining the River Tame to the east of Manchester. It is frequently grossly polluted. Incidents are reported to the @EnvAgencyNW by local MPs & angling groups but nothing happens. This is death by a thousand cuts @DefraGovUK
Could you investigate @EnvAgencyNW? This tributary flows into the River Tame - a river blighted by sewage pollution with a major microplastics problem. The good people of Tameside deserve better. River corridors are the only accessible green spaces for many people in this region.
Are you ignoring all river pollution reporting? @EnvAgencyNW
Any response would be appreciated. This is hugely demoralising for those who work hard to care for their local river environments. @phoeb0
BREAKING: Another extinct ice age beast exhumed from the permafrost. Exceptionally well-preserved carcass of a juvenile woolly rhinoceros discovered in Yakutia. Its internal organs and stomach contents await investigation. Photos by Valery Plotnikov. siberiantimes.com/other/others/n…
“The juvenile rhino with thick hazel-coloured hair and the horn, found next to the carcass, was discovered in the middle of August in permafrost deposits by river Tirekhtyakh in the Abyisky ulus (district) of the Republic of Sakha.”
“It is the best preserved to date juvenile woolly rhino ever found in Yakutia, with a lot of its internal organs - including its teeth, part of the intestines, a lump of fat and tissues - kept intact for thousands of years in permafrost.” #IceAgeExtinction