Feed aggregator

The US national weather service detected at least one tornado as severe storms struck southern Indiana. Video footage taken by Salem's fire department shows gusts of wind and lightning hitting the city, with wind speeds reaching 90mph. Storms across eastern US have caused damage to homes and triggered power cuts. More widespread rain and thunderstorms are expected

• Storms in US north-east leave two dead and lead to thousands of flight cancellations

Continue reading...

Experts say larger-than-normal hole could cause further warming of Southern Ocean and heighten damaging effects of 2022 Tonga volcano eruption

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

The hole in the ozone layer has begun to form early this year, prompting warnings that a larger-than-average hole may further warm the Southern Ocean while the level of Antarctic sea ice is at a record low.

Satellite data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts suggests the hole has already begun to form over Antarctica.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Reef experts say an El Niño climate pattern could take hold this summer, raising the risk of another mass bleaching event further

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

A recovery in the number of corals growing on the Great Barrier Reef over recent years has paused, with government scientists blaming bleaching, disease and attacks by starfish.

Results from the latest annual surveys of more than 100 individual reefs show a small drop in coral cover over the northern and central parts of the reef over the past year.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Victim, 50, in critical condition as eight shark attacks have been recorded off the waters of New York in the past year

A 50-year-old woman was bit by a shark on Monday evening off New York’s Rockaway beach and is in critical condition after only the latest in a series of attacks.

The attack – or “encounter”, as authorities prefer to call it – was reported at about 5.49pm, according to the New York police department.

Continue reading...

The Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon monument – home to several Native tribes – will be protected from uranium mining

Joe Biden will designate a “nearly 1m acres” expanse around the Grand Canyon as a new national monument, protecting the region from future uranium mining.

The designation, which Biden is expected to announce on Tuesday comes after years-long lobbying by tribal leaders and local environmentalists to block mining projects that they say would damage the Colorado River watershed and important cultural sites.

Continue reading...

Retirement of carbon credits from voluntary standards will hit a record high this year if past trends hold, according to forecast from an advisory group that also noted that the surplus of available credits will continue to build.

Three major corporations have partnered to reduce methane emissions from rice cultivation in India, aiming to cover around 25,000 hectares of land from this year.

European carbon prices gravitated back towards a key technical and psychological level on Tuesday morning, after having dipped below that marker in late trading on Monday, underlining the market's relative lack of liquidity and direction while traders awaited publication of updated position data.

There’s filth in the water, and inhumanity in the air. Greed and nationalism have destroyed a great British pleasure

This ought to be a new golden age for the British seaside, since we have somehow managed to recreate the conditions of its last golden age, the late 1940s, and nobody can afford to go abroad. Take a plane almost anywhere, and you’re flying closer to a climate crisis and will find it hard not to ruminate on your own contribution to it. Take a boat and you’ll spend most of your holiday in Dover. These are the ideal circumstances in which to rediscover the beauty of, say, Weymouth or Scarborough.

But you have to wonder how charming it would be to go to a Dorset beach when the area is mainly in the news because of the Bibby Stockholm, the giant refugee barge that has just taken delivery of its first residents. Even if you couldn’t see it from your beach hut – it is modestly moored in a non-beauty spot – you couldn’t help but wonder what life is like on this cramped seaborne accommodation, where the walls are bare, the hours untenanted and the TVs have no plugs. Is it at all like a cruise? Or is it more like a prison hulk? Sure, we all live in the shadow of inhumanity, but it’s difficult to imagine a mini-break there.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

Study using specialised camera footage finds methane leaking or being deliberately vented from gas infrastructure across the country.

The post Methane pollution “pouring out” of Australian gas infrastructure, study finds appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australia is lagging behind on regulation to control methane emissions from the fossil fuel sector, according to a report released Tuesday, as a conservation group has released footage that appears to show methane leaks across dozens of oil and gas facilities across the country.

Infrared videos show gas leaking or being vented from more than 100 places across 35 fossil fuel sites in Queensland and New South Wales, according to an investigation by environmental organisations. The Australian Conservation Foundation commissioned the US-based Clean Air Task Force, a global nonprofit, to use new technology to monitor if methane was leaking from coalmines and gas facilities owned by energy giants Santos and Origin and pipeline company Jemena. The organisations said the videos were recorded over a four-week period in which they visited 80 sites to take a snapshot of Australia’s fossil fuel infrastructure. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the global heating impact of CO2 over a 20 year period when released into the atmosphere

• Climate-heating gas released from dozens of Australian fossil fuel sites, environmental group claims

Continue reading...

Cosmetics firm L’Oreal has partnered with the Plastic Credit Exchange (PCX) to offset its entire annual plastic footprint in the Philippines, starting from this year.

South Korea should draw up regulations for its emissions trading scheme that support progress towards reaching its 2030 renewable energy target, according to an analysis recently released by a state-run think tank.

He should stand firm against the headbangers in his party, eject them if necessary, but he won’t. They speak, he listens

The imagery is unfortunate. Our prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was apparently spotted in a gym at 7am in Santa Monica, California – where his family owns a £5.5m penthouse in a building with its own pet spa – pedalling away at an indoor SoulCycle session to Taylor Swift music. Pedalling like fury and going nowhere.

Back in Blighty, staycationers may or may not brave the sea where, to Britain’s international shame, 57 world triathlon athletes in Sunderland have just fallen sick after competing in swimming events in our filthy, sewage-tainted waters. On holiday in East Sussex, I watched the Conservatives lose power last week to Liberal Democrats in a county council byelection that tipped this deep blue county’s council into a position of no overall control. They lost the Eastbourne ward of Meads, where the politics professor Tim Bale lives. “Wide implications here,” he says. “Tory since time began, it’s Eastbourne’s richest suburb, average age 60.” Rishi Sunak’s anti-green gesturing cut no ice here.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

Living your life in air-conditioned comfort can actually put you more at risk from heat. Here’s why the age-old tradition of a midday nap could help. Simon Quilty, Purple House Medical Advisor. Honorary ANU., Australian National University Aparna Lal, Research Fellow, Australian National University Norman Frank Jupurrurla, Warumungu Elder and Director of the Julalikari Council Aboriginal Corporation, Tennant Creek, Indigenous Knowledge Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

UK-based CreditNature has released its ecosystem integrity-based framework that has been designed to underpin the issuances of nature credits and other financial instruments.

The results of the Nature inFocus photography awards were announced at the Nature inFocus festival held at Jayamahal Palace in Bengaluru, India, on Monday 31 July. The awards honour photographers documenting unique natural history moments and critical conservation issues, and generate an impressive catalogue of imaginative and artistic images every year

Continue reading...

Temperatures in excess of 40C are expected to hit much of the Iberian peninsula this week.

A deal with Suntech, Powin and Rept Battero to establish PV and battery production lines in Indonesia will bolster Vena's plans to export solar to Singapore.

The post Massive new solar and battery project lays down challenge to Sun Cable export plans appeared first on RenewEconomy.