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Researchers find that economic, emissions and population trends point to very small chance Earth will avoid warming more than 2C by century’s end

There is only a 5% chance that the Earth will avoid warming by at least 2C come the end of the century, according to new research that paints a sobering picture of the international effort to stem dangerous climate change.

Related: Bill Nye: 'You can shoot the messenger but climate is still changing'

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2017 is behind only El Niño-amplified 2016.

With the first six months of 2017 in the books, average global surface temperatures so far this year are 0.94°C above the 1950–1980 average, according to NASA. That makes 2017 the second-hottest first six calendar months on record, behind only 2016.

That’s remarkable because 2017 hasn’t had the warming influence of an El Niño event. El Niños bring warm ocean water to the surface, temporarily causing average global surface temperatures to rise. 2016 – including the first six months of the year – was influenced by one of the strongest El Niño events on record.

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Death rates of hares native to Highlands are not monitored and animals are widely persecuted for sport, OneKind says

Unregulated culling of Scotland’s mountain hares should be banned and the species protected, according to a report that says shooting the animals for sport is inhumane and uncontrolled.

Landowners can shoot the hares without a licence from August to February and claim culls are necessary to protect game, especially red grouse, from disease.

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The conservation sector is dominated by white faces, and for many people it looks a bit like colonialism. It’s time for new voices to take up the fight

In a few days it will be the 18th anniversary of the death of Michael Werikhe, the enigmatic African conservationist. You don’t hear or read much of him these days.

Nicknamed “the Rhino Man” because his work and campaigns focused on the critically endangered black rhino, Werikhe’s main campaign tactic of choice was walking to raise awareness. His first walk, starting on Christmas Day 1982, took him from Mombasa to the Kenyan capital Nairobi – a distance of 484 kilometres – and lasted for 27 days. He later walked in East Africa, Europe and North America to raise awareness and money, raising nearly $1m and covering nearly 5,000km.

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Cycling can be a huge part of the fight to tackle city air pollution. Tim Burns of Sustrans explains how their Active Travel Toolbox can help us get there

The government’s air quality plan may make our air more breathable in the long run but it fails to tackle some of the biggest issues facing cities and towns in the UK, and more people on bikes are a huge part of the answer.

At the heart of the plan is a move to ban all new diesel and petrol vans and cars from 2040, alongside a range of measures to support the electric car market and retrofit existing vehicles. It remains to be seen if the plan will be an effective measure to improve air quality, but it is almost guaranteed that this will be another missed opportunity to think about how we move about and live in cities and towns.

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The river was once biologically dead but seals are back and a population survey will help guard against threats from disease and dredging

“It’s a good news story,” says zoologist Anna-Christina Cucknell, as she watches seals glide smoothly through the water, their dark eyes watchful as their heads swivel like periscopes. “In the 1950s, the Thames was declared biologically dead. But the seals are coming back.”

Cucknell will lead a land, air and sea survey of the seals in the greater Thames estuary which begins on Monday, including the harbour seals she is watching in the mouth of the river Stour, a short boat trip from Ramsgate marina.

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The Arctic is melting, the Antarctic slowly cracking up. Even 1.5℃ of warming will mean serious problems for Australia, and that target has probably already been blown. I think it’s really important, therefore that we talk about… meetings.

Yeah, I know. As the humorist Dave Barry has quipped, “meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organisations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate,” while Oscar Wilde had little doubt that they were a waste of time. But bear with me on this.

Pretty much any article on climate change ends with an exhortation that governments and corporations must behave differently, and that social movements must force them to do so. But as the former coal executive turned climate author Ian Dunlop recently asked: “What is to be done if our leaders are incapable of rising to the task?”

Social movements have traditionally been a laboratory, a pathfinder for new ways of doing things. Recycling, for instance, sprang from citizens’ efforts. But how can social movements exert pressure and set an example to be followed, if they do not grow in size and skill? And how are they to grow in size and skill if they do not retain more of the people who come to meetings, rallies and marches?

To me, that is the key question that often goes unanswered in the regular parade of “what is to be done” articles. The growth of social movements in response to crisis is taken as a given, or a trifling matter. But surely if the past ten years of climate politics have shown us anything it is that there is no linear relationship between scientists’ alarm and the number of people who are willing and able get involved in creating political pressure.

Which brings us to meetings.

Organisers of events may not realise it, but it’s quite a big deal for someone to make time to go to a meeting, especially one in the evening. We have children to look after (well, not me), as well as jobs, commitments, interests, hobbies. Besides, walking into a room full of strangers can sometimes be intimidating.

And yet so many of the meetings I have been to in Australia and the UK are intensely alienating to a newcomer. You turn up and are often ignored while people who know each other cluster in groups. You are usually invited to sit in rows (although circles are not automatically better). The speaker speaks (often overrunning) and then the question-and-answer session is dominated by confident and/or doctrinaire people who typically give speeches rather than ask questions, so as to show off how informed they already are.

The energy gradually leaks out of the room, and at the end the new faces drift out, most likely never to be seen again. They have become what I call “ego-fodder” for the organisers and dominant types. Rather than being true participants, they are extras in the background. These are meetings where you don’t meet anyone.

From cannon-fodder to ego-fodder.

This is the standard “information deficit model” style of meeting. It is a tragic waste of potential, and the question organisers have to ask themselves is – if our current methods of movement-building are fit for purpose, where is the resulting movement? We seem capable of mobilising people for two or three years, and then becoming demobilised either by success or, more recently, by failure.

What is to be done?

It doesn’t have to be this way. But to change, we need to invent some new rituals, new “institutions” (which is what academics call the rules – formal and informal – by which society reproduces itself).

For one thing, organisers could think about how they will welcome new people (without being too culty). Are name badges good or bad? Could you have your most personable old hand standing under a sign saying “Unsure what’s going on? New? Talk to me if you like.”

Perhaps the chair could invite people to turn to the person next to them, say hello, and spend two minutes finding out why they came to the meeting. Could you find funny ways of keeping the speaker to time (like the “clap clinic” – see below).

The clap clinic: if the evening’s guest speaker reaches the end of their time slot but won’t stop, just start loudly applauding anyway. Hudson and Roberts, Author provided Questioning the Q&A

“Wonderful presentation from our guest speaker. Now, any questions?” says the chair of the meeting, usually about 15 minutes later than they should have. Up shoot some hands. Those who’ve been to more than one or two meetings know what to expect next: prepared “questions” that are thinly-or-not-at-all-disguised speeches and hectoring points. These “questions” are asked by the usual suspects, who are typically male.

As the clock runs out (and people drift out), a few female hands tentatively go up. Their owners have realised that their question – the one they’d told themselves wasn’t up to scratch – is actually better than what’s gone before. But alas, it’s too late; only one or two get asked, and dealt with too quickly. The meeting finishes, and with it the opportunity for something different.

Instead we could have the chair say something like this:

Right. Let’s all turn to someone nearby you – ideally someone you don’t know. Introduce yourself and exchange impressions of the speech. If you have a question you are wondering whether to ask, find out if the other person thinks it’s a good ‘un. With their help, refine it, hone it and – please – for everyone’s sake, make it shorter. Women especially, your questions are just as good and welcome as men’s. You have two minutes…_

Measuring success is crucial. The current metric seems to be how many people came, how happy was the invited guest speaker about how long they got to talk for, rather than how many connections were facilitated, how many people were inspired to lend a shoulder to the grindstone. In my opinion we need to be able to treat this as a marathon, not a sprint.

That means keeping people engaged, not for a week or a month or a march, but in the long term. That means groups of people that grow, learn, organise and win, are aware of the skills and knowledge and relationships of individual members, and have habits in place to help each of those people to learn skills, share knowledge, and grow relationships.

In the next column I’ll explore how we might get to know each other’s strengths, weaknesses and hopes for the future, and do what academics call “asset mapping” without destroying everyone’s will to live.

For now, readers: What are your positive and negative experiences of attending meetings? What has “worked” to involve you in the activities of a group? What has kept you involved? What un-recruited you?

Venetians regularly protest against the huge cruise ships docking in the city, but mass tourism is not the only problem they bring – the toxic air they pump out is harmful to locals and visitors alike

If you’re heading to Venice on holiday this summer, don’t forget to pack your pollution mask. Worrying about toxic air might seem strange in a city with few roads and cars, but Venice’s air carries hidden risks.

Every day five or six of the world’s largest cruise ships chug into the heart of the ancient city, which hosts the Mediterranean’s largest cruise terminal. These ships advertise luxurious restaurants, vast swimming pools and exotic entertainment – but keep quiet about the hidden fumes they pump into the city’s air.

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Giant kelp can grow up to 60cm a day, given the right conditions. Joe Belanger/shutterstock.com

This is an edited extract from Sunlight and Seaweed: An Argument for How to Feed, Power and Clean Up the World by Tim Flannery, published by Text Publishing.

Bren Smith, an ex-industrial trawler man, operates a farm in Long Island Sound, near New Haven, Connecticut. Fish are not the focus of his new enterprise, but rather kelp and high-value shellfish. The seaweed and mussels grow on floating ropes, from which hang baskets filled with scallops and oysters. The technology allows for the production of about 40 tonnes of kelp and a million bivalves per hectare per year.

The kelp draw in so much carbon dioxide that they help de-acidify the water, providing an ideal environment for shell growth. The CO₂ is taken out of the water in much the same way that a land plant takes CO₂ out of the air. But because CO₂ has an acidifying effect on seawater, as the kelp absorb the CO₂ the water becomes less acid. And the kelp itself has some value as a feedstock in agriculture and various industrial purposes.

After starting his farm in 2011, Smith lost 90% of his crop twice – when the region was hit by hurricanes Irene and Sandy – but he persisted, and now runs a profitable business.

His team at 3D Ocean Farming believe so strongly in the environmental and economic benefits of their model that, in order to help others establish similar operations, they have established a not-for-profit called Green Wave. Green Wave’s vision is to create clusters of kelp-and-shellfish farms utilising the entire water column, which are strategically located near seafood transporting or consumption hubs.

Read more: Seaweed could hold the key to cutting methane emissions from cow burps

The general concepts embodied by 3D Ocean Farming have long been practised in China, where over 500 square kilometres of seaweed farms exist in the Yellow Sea. The seaweed farms buffer the ocean’s growing acidity and provide ideal conditions for the cultivation of a variety of shellfish. Despite the huge expansion in aquaculture, and the experiences gained in the United States and China of integrating kelp into sustainable marine farms, this farming methodology is still at an early stage of development.

Yet it seems inevitable that a new generation of ocean farming will build on the experiences gained in these enterprises to develop a method of aquaculture with the potential not only to feed humanity, but to play a large role in solving one of our most dire issues – climate change.

Globally, around 12 million tonnes of seaweed is grown and harvested annually, about three-quarters of which comes from China. The current market value of the global crop is between US$5 billion and US$5.6 billion, of which US$5 billion comes from sale for human consumption. Production, however, is expanding very rapidly.

Seaweeds can grow very fast – at rates more than 30 times those of land-based plants. Because they de-acidify seawater, making it easier for anything with a shell to grow, they are also the key to shellfish production. And by drawing CO₂ out of the ocean waters (thereby allowing the oceans to absorb more CO₂ from the atmosphere) they help fight climate change.

The stupendous potential of seaweed farming as a tool to combat climate change was outlined in 2012 by the University of the South Pacific’s Dr Antoine De Ramon N’Yeurt and his team. Their analysis reveals that if 9% of the ocean were to be covered in seaweed farms, the farmed seaweed could produce 12 gigatonnes per year of biodigested methane which could be burned as a substitute for natural gas. The seaweed growth involved would capture 19 gigatonnes of CO₂. A further 34 gigatonnes per year of CO₂ could be taken from the atmosphere if the methane is burned to generate electricity and the CO₂ generated captured and stored. This, they say:

…could produce sufficient biomethane to replace all of today’s needs in fossil-fuel energy, while removing 53 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year from the atmosphere… This amount of biomass could also increase sustainable fish production to potentially provide 200 kilograms per year, per person, for 10 billion people. Additional benefits are reduction in ocean acidification and increased ocean primary productivity and biodiversity.

Nine per cent of the world’s oceans is not a small area. It is equivalent to about four and a half times the area of Australia. But even at smaller scales, kelp farming has the potential to substantially lower atmospheric CO₂, and this realisation has had an energising impact on the research and commercial development of sustainable aquaculture. But kelp farming is not solely about reducing CO₂. In fact, it is being driven, from a commercial perspective, by sustainable production of high-quality protein.

A haven for fish. Daniel Poloha/shutterstock.com

What might a kelp farming facility of the future look like? Dr Brian von Hertzen of the Climate Foundation has outlined one vision: a frame structure, most likely composed of a carbon polymer, up to a square kilometre in extent and sunk far enough below the surface (about 25 metres) to avoid being a shipping hazard. Planted with kelp, the frame would be interspersed with containers for shellfish and other kinds of fish as well. There would be no netting, but a kind of free-range aquaculture based on providing habitat to keep fish on location. Robotic removal of encrusting organisms would probably also be part of the facility. The marine permaculture would be designed to clip the bottom of the waves during heavy seas. Below it, a pipe reaching down to 200–500 metres would bring cool, nutrient-rich water to the frame, where it would be reticulated over the growing kelp.

Von Herzen’s objective is to create what he calls “permaculture arrays” – marine permaculture at a scale that will have an impact on the climate by growing kelp and bringing cooler ocean water to the surface. His vision also entails providing habitat for fish, generating food, feedstocks for animals, fertiliser and biofuels. He also hopes to help exploited fish populations rebound and to create jobs. “Given the transformative effect that marine permaculture can have on the ocean, there is much reason for hope that permaculture arrays can play a major part in globally balancing carbon,” he says.

The addition of a floating platform supporting solar panels, facilities such as accommodation (if the farms are not fully automated), refrigeration and processing equipment tethered to the floating framework would enhance the efficiency and viability of the permaculture arrays, as well as a dock for ships carrying produce to market.

Given its phenomenal growth rate, the kelp could be cut on a 90-day rotation basis. It’s possible that the only processing required would be the cutting of the kelp from the buoyancy devices and the disposal of the fronds overboard to sink. Once in the ocean depths, the carbon the kelp contains is essentially out of circulation and cannot return to the atmosphere.

The deep waters of the central Pacific are exceptionally still. A friend who explores mid-ocean ridges in a submersible once told me about filleting a fish for dinner, then discovering the filleted remains the next morning, four kilometres down and directly below his ship. So it’s likely that the seaweed fronds would sink, at least initially, though gases from decomposition may later cause some to rise if they are not consumed quickly. Alternatively, the seaweed could be converted to biochar to produce energy and the char pelletised and discarded overboard. Char, having a mineralised carbon structure, is likely to last well on the seafloor. Likewise, shells and any encrusting organisms could be sunk as a carbon store.

Once at the bottom of the sea three or more kilometres below, it’s likely that raw kelp, and possibly even to some extent biochar, would be utilised as a food source by bottom-dwelling bacteria and larger organisms such as sea cucumbers. Provided that the decomposing material did not float, this would not matter, because once sunk below about one kilometre from the surface, the carbon in these materials would effectively be removed from the atmosphere for at least 1,000 years. If present in large volumes, however, decomposing matter may reduce oxygen levels in the surrounding seawater.

Large volumes of kelp already reach the ocean floor. Storms in the North Atlantic may deliver enormous volumes of kelp – by some estimates as much as 7 gigatonnes at a time – to the 1.8km-deep ocean floor off the Bahamian Shelf.

Submarine canyons may also convey large volumes at a more regular rate to the deep ocean floor. The Carmel Canyon, off California, for example, exports large volumes of giant kelp to the ocean depths, and 660 major submarine canyons have been documented worldwide, suggesting that canyons play a significant role in marine carbon transport.

These natural instances of large-scale sequestration of kelp in the deep ocean offer splendid opportunities to investigate the fate of kelp, and the carbon it contains, in the ocean. They should prepare us well in anticipating any negative or indeed positive impacts on the ocean deep of offshore kelp farming.

Only entrepreneurs with vision and deep pockets could make such mid-ocean kelp farming a reality. But of course where there are great rewards, there are also considerable risks. One obstacle potential entrepreneurs need not fear, however, is bureaucratic red tape, for much of the mid-oceans remain a global commons. If a global carbon price is ever introduced, the exercise of disposing of the carbon captured by the kelp would transform that part of the business from a small cost to a profit generator. Even without a carbon price, the opportunity to supply huge volumes of high-quality seafood at the same time as making a substantial impact on the climate crisis are considerable incentives for investment in seaweed farming.

Tim Flannery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Epping Forest, Essex The deep carpet of moss hides a watery void, and the sparkling sundews are busy trapping insects

The Lodge Road bog is a pool of tranquillity at the centre of the commuter-traffic hum. Both my mobile phone and walkie-talkie radio signals have died, and only a few darting dragonflies break the stillness. Sponging up the sunlight, the bog glistens, a curve of brilliant green amid the deep summer gloom cast by surrounding beeches.

On the outer orbit of London, the survival of this fragile place, the most important habitat of its kind in Essex, seems astounding. Carbon-dating reveals that the first layer of vegetation was laid down here more than 4,000 years ago. Ponded back by a Neolithic trackway, or just some natural lip of gravel, the area was deepened by road building for the various incarnations of nearby Copped Hall since the middle ages.

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Report says fundamental failure to deliver national, coordinated, stable energy and climate policy a major factor in pushing up electricity prices.

Two Australian-made renewables grid integration and stabilisation technologies have won government grants: Clean Technology Partners' e-cube; and NOJA Power's smart "switchgear."

Wind output in South Australia was heavily constrained again over the weekend because not enough gas generators were online.

Australia is in danger of missing the iPhone moment in electric vehicles. The country known as land of burning climate and energy policies has left a market hungry for EVs without any affordable products.

A lot of wind and solar projects are getting approved, but no so many with PPAs and finance. Meanwhile, as the company reporting season starts, a showdown looms over energy policy and the CET.

The Murray-Darling basin covers more than 1 million sq km in south-eastern Australia. In response to the severe droughts of the early 2000s, the Murray-Darling basin plan was signed to secure its long-term ecological health. So far, it has not been successful and serious allegations surrounding compliance have further put the basin at risk

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People are excited about batteries are forgetting one important issue: the raw materials needed to build this technology – where they come from and their environmental cost.

$4.5 billion project by American Electric Power (AEP) and wind developer Invenergy, will be largest in US and help key states wean off coal.

Rangers in Malawi take on the mammoth task of moving hundreds of elephants to safer national parks.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 3 August 1917

A caterpillar sent to me for identification had been place in a cardboard box surrounded by corrugated paper, and marked, “Do not crush”; nevertheless, the post office had done its best, and when I unwrapped the paper no caterpillar was visible in the smashed box. I was puzzled by its absence until I noticed a hard lump on the corrugated paper; the lava, released from the box, had employed its leisure by spinning a cocoon in which to pupate. The normal cocoon of the puss moth, the species which had been sent, is placed on the trunk of a willow or poplar, and the caterpillar mixes with its sticky and quickly hardening silk particles of wood and bark, so that the finished abode looks exactly like its surroundings; the present cocoon looks like a swelling of the paper. Here was a case for the advocates of protective resemblance, correct enough in a way, yet simply caused unconsciously by the caterpillar making use of materials at hand; many similar phenomena can be explained in the same way.

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