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Berkeley Lab study shows greater potential than many other recent assessments.

Stopping the thermal coal juggernaut in time is one of the keys to keeping the world to its Paris targets.

Big growth in EV adoption will create complexity for grid operators and other electricity market stakeholders.

An endangered eastern black rhino has been born at Blank Park zoo in Des Moines, Iowa. The combined captive and wild population of black rhinos is less than 1,000, making the birth very significant. The calf was standing and walking within an hour of its birth and attempted to feed within two hours, both signs of a healthy baby rhino

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The latest Great Barrier Reef Report Card details positive news and identifies areas where more effort is needed, it also assesses the reported results of Reef Water Quality Protection Plan actions up to June 2015.

New Zealand utility Vector using Tesla Powerpack for major push into Australia battery storage market, targeting off-grid and business customer markets.

Echidnas may not seem the most active of animals. Waddling around, they spend much of their time dozing and hiding. But in research published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology, we show that echidnas dig huge amounts of soil, and play a crucial role in Australia’s ecosystems.

By attaching miniature GPSs and accelerometers to echidnas in Western Australia, we found that these mammals move on average 200 cubic metres of soil each year. For the 12 echidnas we studied, this is the equivalent of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Attaching tiny tracking devices to echidnas is harder than it sounds. Zoology gets small

Short-beaked echidnas are one of few surviving species of monotreme; unique mammals that reproduce by laying eggs. As well as a strange anatomy, they have an unusually low body temperature and metabolism.

We were interested in how the echidna’s unusual limbs influenced their walking and digging, and how this in turn was related to patterns of activity and their potential ecosystem impact.

So we attached tiny custom-made accelerometers to the spines of wild echidnas at Dryandra Woodland, in Western Australia. We also attached GPS units to monitor their location, and radio-transmitters so we could find them again.

The miniaturisation of electronic devices has changed the way we study wildlife. We can get details about wild animals’ behaviour in their natural habitat that we couldn’t previously. This is now revealing more information not only about the biology of these species, but the roles they play in ecosystems.

Echidna fitted with an accelerometer and GPS unit, and a radio-tracking transmitter Christine Cooper

The accelerometers were about the size of a wrist-watch, hand-soldered with a microscope and tiny soldering iron. These let us determine exactly when and for how long echidnas were resting, walking and digging.

Our biggest challenge was getting to the echidnas again so we could remove their tracking devices. Echidnas spend much of their time sheltering in inaccessible caves, rocky crevices and hollow logs and are mostly active at night, especially during summer. We studied echidnas during the hot West Australian summer, when temperatures rose to 45℃, and during spring when it was 25℃ cooler.

Tracking an echidna to a rock cave at Dryandra Woodland William Parkinson Walk like an echidna

Our data revealed that echidnas take shorter and slower strides compared with similar-sized mammals. Unlike most other mammals, they take more strides rather than increasing the length of their strides to walk faster. This reflects the anatomy of the limbs, which are adapted to digging rather than rapid movement and as a consequence, echidnas cannot walk very fast, with a maximum speed of 2.3 kilometres per hour, and have a characteristic waddling gait.

But their covering of sharp spines offers good protection from predators. Indeed you don’t need to be able to run quickly if nothing can eat you. This armour of spines and the echidna’s ability to dig rapidly into the ground or roll into a tight, spikey ball is one reason that echidnas have not suffered the same dramatic decrease of many other Australian mammals.

Echidnas are also not as vulnerable to the ravages of introduced predators that are often the final straw for native mammals already threatened by increasing aridity, land clearing, altered fire regimes and competition with introduced herbivores.

Removing the accelerometer and GPS from an echidna to download the data and re-charge the batteries. Kellie McMaster

When echidnas were active, they spent most of the time digging and looking for food. Compared to many other animals, echidnas have longer activity times, presumably due to the time required to find their food of ants and termites; echidnas eat about 40,000 individual ants and termites a day.

Echidnas spend a similar amount of time foraging in both spring and summer, but during spring they move more slowly and are more likely to ramble, at a leisurely 1 kilometre per hour, from their rest sites to foraging areas. But in summer, they sprint at their top speed directly to and from feeding sites, presumably to minimise activity during hot weather.

The importance of digging

The considerable time that echidnas spend digging and the area over which they dig means that they act as important “bioturbators”. They turn over the soil which reduces compaction, improves soil mixing and water penetration, incorporates leaf litter and other organic matter into the soil, and reduces run-off and erosion.

Therefore, bioturbators such as echidnas are “ecosystem engineers”. They play a crucial role in the environment as their digging can make for better soils, and in turn influence plant growth and species diversity.

Echidna digging for termites, Dryandra Woodland Christine Cooper

Echidnas are particularly important ecosystem engineers in Australian landscapes, as many of the other native mammals that once performed this function are rare or have become extinct, and so are no longer doing this essential role. Echidnas have one of the widest distributions of any native Australian mammal.

Their persistence in almost all Australian habitats means that their extensive digging is a critical component of maintaining ecosystem function throughout the Australian continent.

Christine Cooper receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Christofer Clemente received funding from Australian Research Council, DECRA fellowship.

The eggs of a mosquito capable of transmitting tropical diseases, including the Zika virus, are found for the first time in the UK.

As scientists become more gloomy about keeping global warming below the allegedly “safe” limit of 2℃, the issue is disappearing from the US presidential debates. There was a brief mention in the second debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton debate, with climate change treated as an “afterthought”.

Trump has previously (in 2012) suggested that climate change “was created by and for the Chinese”. Clinton has put forward a detailed climate and energy plan.

Even former Vice President Al Gore joining Clinton on at a campaign rally in Florida didn’t particularly help.

So why has climate change gone AWOL?

Early days

It’s an odd phenomenon, because awareness of the threat of climate change goes back more than half a century, well before its sudden arrival on public policy agendas in 1988.

While John F. Kennedy (president 1961-63) had been aware of environmental problems generally (he’d read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring), it was his successor Lyndon Johnson (1963-69) who made the first presidential statement about climate change. The words were written for him by pioneering climate scientist Roger Revelle.

“Tricky” Dick Nixon (1969-74) received a warning on the topic from Democratic senator Daniel Moynihan in September 1969.

A Nixon bureaucrat replied:

The more I get into this, the more I find two classes of doom-sayers, with, of course, the silent majority in between… One group says we will turn into snow-tripping mastodons because of the atmospheric dust and the other says we will have to grow gills to survive the increased ocean level due to the temperature rise.

Nixon created the US Environmental Protection Authority in an age when conservatism meant conserving things, or at least paying lip service to the concept, but climate change was still a very niche concern.

Ronald Reagan’s (1981-89) hostility to all matters environmental is infamous, with attempts to abolish both the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, but with the credibility of atmospheric scientists high thanks to their discovery of the ozone hole, moves towards a climate agreement could not be completely resisted.

1988 and beyond

A combination of growing scientific alarm about the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a long hot summer in 1988 made climate change an election issue. On the campaign trail, then-Vice President George H. W. Bush announced in his presidential compaign:

Those who think we’re powerless to do anything about the “greenhouse effect” are forgetting about the “White House effect”. As President, I intend to do something about it… In my first year in office, I will convene a global conference on the environment at the White House… We will talk about global warming… And we will act.

They didn’t get on with it, of course, with Bush, then president (1989-93), insisting that targets and timetables for emissions reductions were removed from the proposed climate treaty to be agreed at the Rio Earth Summit, before he would agree to attend. The targets were replaced, and with the younger Bill Clinton making climate an issue, Bush felt it sensible to go to the summit.

It was 2000 before presidential candidates debated the issue. George W. Bush (2000-09) said:

I think it’s an issue that we need to take very seriously. But I don’t think we know the solution to global warming yet. And I don’t think we’ve got all the facts before we make decisions. I tell you one thing I’m not going to do is I’m not going to let the United States carry the burden for cleaning up the world’s air. Like the Kyoto Treaty would have done. China and India were exempted from that treaty. I think we need to be more even-handed.

In 2004 Democrat candidate John Kerry landed a blow on Bush at a debate:

The Clear Skies bill that he just talked about, it’s one of those Orwellian names you pull out of the sky… Here they’re leaving the skies and the environment behind. If they just left the Clean Air Act all alone the way it is today, no change, the air would be cleaner than it is if you pass the Clear Skies act. We’re going backwards.

The peak year for climate concern was 2008, with climate rating a mention in all three presidential debates.

Obama framed climate change as an energy independence issue, arguing that:

…we’ve got to walk the walk and not just talk the talk when it comes to energy independence, because this is probably going to be just as vital for our economy and the pain that people are feeling at the pump – and you know, winter’s coming and home heating oil – as it is our national security and the issue of climate change that’s so important.

Despite a petition with 160,000 signatures, the debate moderators for the 2012 debate did not put the issue on the agenda.

The Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, was accused of recanting early climate change positions arguing:

My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO₂ emissions is not the right course for us.

As Governor of Massachusetts he had “spent considerable time hammering out a sweeping climate change plan to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions”.

Why the silence?

I would argue that there are two reasons for the silence in the debates. One is simply down to the politicisation around the issue. As shown above, as recently as 2008 Republican candidates could admit that climate change was happening.

In 2012 only one contender, Jon Huntsman, was willing to do so, and he soon dropped out, with his views dramatically unpopular among Republican voters.

What happened? In two words: Tea Party. The emergence of the hyper-conservative Tea Party Republican faction was the culmination of a longer-term trend of what two American academics call “anti-reflexivity”.

For example, Marco Rubio, from Florida – a state that is already being hit by climate impacts – cannot take a position on it.

The second reason is more gloomy, because it is more intractable. Those who have denied climate change for so very long will find it very costly – both politically and psychologically – to reverse their position and admit that they have been wrong. Climate change denial has become a cultural position, as academics like Andrew Hoffman have noted.

Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide accumulates, and the impacts pile up.

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

As Theresa May prepares for airport expansion decision, memo emerges in which former PM was told he did not ‘have an answer’ on pollution concerns

David Cameron’s No 10 policy chief warned him a year ago that he was “exposed on Heathrow” because the government did not have an answer to its impact on air quality, an internal Downing Street note has revealed.

The memo was written by Camilla Cavendish, a former Downing Street adviser, who was scathing about the first draft of a government air quality plan from the department of the then environment secretary, Liz Truss.

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Michael Marks (Letters, 17 October) said that the plastic bag charge needs to be followed by one for plastic bottles in order to cut the huge number not recycled. We lived for six years in the Netherlands, where people are much more oriented towards recycling. Plastic drinks bottles had a tax on them which was refunded when they were returned to the store. This was on soft drinks as well as alcohol bottles.

Related: Crazy paving: Rotterdam to consider trialling plastic roads

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Voles appear to have been roasted for food by Neolithic people living on Orkney 5,000 years ago, archaeological evidence shows.

The European Space Agency is still waiting for confirmation that its Schiaparelli probe has landed on Mars.

Choosing the best possible future means considering radical scenarios that align energy use and industry with climate action

The good news - according to the World Energy Council (WEC) - is that, per person, our energy demand is set to peak before 2030. Of course, there will be more of us around by then too, so that total demand will only slow, rather than level out. A heady whiff of technological optimism accompanies the explanation that this will happen because of “unprecedented efficiencies created by new technologies and more stringent energy policies”.

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Researchers and campaigners suspect pollution killed the rare Titicaca water frogs that are endemic to the famous lake and derive their nickname from their wrinkly skin

Scientists are investigating the mysterious deaths of at least 10,000 endangered frogs, in a river which leads into South America’s most famous lake on Peru’s border with Bolivia.

The dead Titicaca water frogs were found along a 50km (30 mile) stretch of the Coata river, a tributary which flows into the 8,372 sq km Lake Titicaca, according to Peru’s wildlife and forestry service Serfor.

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Group of health bodies says tackling climate change and air pollution linked to coal would improve health and reduce NHS costs

Groups representing Britain’s 600,000 doctors and health professionals say it is “imperative” to phase out coal rapidly to improve health and reduce NHS costs.

The doctors and nurses say tackling outdoor air pollution from traffic and power stations would cut climate emissions, reduce air pollution, and deliver a powerful boost to the nation’s health.

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A newly calved iceberg, an ice avalanche in Tibet and urban growth in Nairobi were among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last month

This striking image shows the Caspian Sea, with shallow waters surrounding the Tyuleniy archipelago revealing dark green vegetation on the sea floor. Ocean scientist Norman Kuring of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center found a puzzling feature in the image – lines crisscrossing the sea bottom. What caused those lines? Similar lines show up in the world’s oceans because of trawling. But the scientific literature and a January satellite image suggest that a majority of the marks in the images were gouged by ice. In January, blocks of ice stand at the leading end of many lines, most notably in the north-east corner of the image. By April, ice has melted and only the scour marks persist.

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Anti-climate groups like GWPF try to leech credibility from serious scientific organizations like the Royal Society

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is an anti-climate policy advocacy group in the UK that often releases misleading scientific “reports.” The group also hosts annual lectures, and this year, they booked a room at the Royal Society. Many members of the Royal Society expressed concern that the GWPF would exploit the organization’s credibility, and asked that the event be cancelled.

The Royal Society’s governing council met and decided to allow the event to proceed, for fear that cancellation would give it “an unwarranted higher profile.” As a spokesperson for the Royal Society told DeSmog UK:

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Cave art from the Ice Age has helped solve the origins of Europe's largest land mammal - the modern European bison.

Climate Home: Rampal coal plant poses a ‘serious threat’ to a key ecosystem for Bengal tigers and must be cancelled, says the UN world heritage body

The UN’s world heritage body has made an urgent intervention to stop the construction of a coal power station in Bangladesh.

Unesco said the plant could damage the world heritage-listed Sundarbans mangrove forest, which houses up to 450 Bengal tigers.

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