Tuesday, 9 October 2018

News in brief - Tuesday 9th October

Changes to fracking rules
Fracking used to be halted if it triggered minor earthquakes (below 1 on the Richter Scale); a new ruling has stated that a higher threshold (up to 2 on the Richter Scale) could be used in order to allow further explorations in new areas

Ecosia to buy ancient forest
The environmentally friendly search engine 'Ecosia' has offered to buy a stretch of the 12,000 year old Hambach forest in Germany in order to protect it from coal surface mining; the not-for-profit tech company has so far planted 40 million trees using money it has made from its search engine revenue

Robotic bees
Scientists in the Netherlands have created a bee-like drone that could carry out the same role of pollinating; this could be critical as bees are dying out due to modern farming methods and climate change