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An annular eclipse delivered a memorable spectacle across several African countries, as the moon's movement creates a "ring of fire" in the sky.

An explosion takes place on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the aerospace company SpaceX was readying a rocket for launch.

New European ruling bans any new orders on GU10 spotlights and PAR30 floodlights, which can waste up to 10 times more energy than LEDs

Energy-gobbling halogen spotlights will be phased out across Europe from Thursday, in a boost for super-efficient LEDs ahead of a wider halogen bulb ban in 2018.

Directional halogen bulbs already in stores can still be sold after today but no new retailer orders will be possible for the spotlights, which can waste up to 10 times more energy than LEDs.

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One of the world's rarest stick insects successfully breeds at Bristol Zoo - the first time the species has done so outside Australia.

The US president was in Honolulu on Wednesday to tell an audience of Pacific island leaders that ‘No nation … is immune from a changing climate.’ Last week Obama created the world’s largest marine reserve by quadrupling in size the biodiverse Papahānaumokuākea national monument. He will visit Midway Atoll, part of the protected area, on Thursday

• Obama makes climate change personal with call for action in home state Hawaii

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US president delivers two major speeches on climate change, on in Nevada, pleading with politicians to act in the interest of future generations

Barack Obama has issued perhaps his most personal plea yet to overcome the existential threat posed by climate change.

The US president gave two major speeches on climate change in the space of a day, one in Nevada and another in Hawaii, after Air Force One managed to safely dodge two hurricanes lurking in the Pacific.

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Thousands of models are 30% worse on average when measuring miles per gallon in real-world conditions, according to comprehensive new data

Just two cars deliver their advertised fuel economy when on the road, with the thousands of other models 30% worse on average in the real world, according to comprehensive new data.

Some cars, such as the Fiat 500 and Ford Fiesta, gave barely half the mileage advertised.

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Though Kenya’s elephant population is stable and poaching is relatively under control, across Africa savannah elephants are increasingly under threat

Saving Africa’s elephants: ‘Can you imagine them no longer existing?’

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Some of the world’s biggest buyers have stopped trading with Korindo after the emergence of footage claiming to show illegal burning in Papua province

A Korean palm oil company has been dropped by buyers after footage emerged that allegedly shows the illegal burning of vast tracts of tropical forest on lands it holds concessions for in Indonesia.

Some of the world’s biggest palm oil trading producers including Wilmar, Musim Mas and IOI have stopped using palm oil sourced from Korindo, much of which is destined to meet European demand.

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Our father, Martin George, who has died aged 86, championed the conservation of the Norfolk Broads. He was one of the last great naturalists of his generation.

His achievements were many and varied, those around him recalling his enthusiasm and energy as new sites and species were found. He put several initiatives in place, including the Hoveton Great Broad nature trail, which he designed and implemented. He led the Nature Conservancy’s ground-breaking 1965 report on Broadland, which alerted the public and government to its ecological challenges, and played significant roles in the subsequent establishment of the Broads Authority and launch of the Broads grazing marsh conservation scheme, the forerunner of national agri-environment payments to farmers.

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Mike Scadd loves the waters of Louisiana more than anything in the world. A vote for Clinton would help protect them. But there’s something more important to him and others than clean water: pride in his people

Sometimes you have to go a long, long way to discover truths that are distinctly close to home. Over the last five years, I’ve done just that – left my home in liberal Berkeley, California, and traveled to the bayous of Tea Party Louisiana to find another America that, as Donald Trump’s presidential bid has made all too clear, couldn’t be closer to home for us all. From those travels, let me offer a kind of real-life parable about a man I came to admire who sums up many of the contradictions of our distinctly Trumpian world.

So come along with me now, as I turn right on Gumbo Street, left on Jambalaya, pass Sauce Piquant Lane, and scattering a cluster of feral cats, park on Crawfish Street, opposite a yellow wooden home by the edge of waters issuing into Bayou Corne, Louisiana. The street is deserted, lawns are high, and branches of satsuma and grapefruit trees hang low with unpicked fruit. Walking toward me along his driveway is Mike Schaff, a tall, powerfully built, balding man in an orange and red striped T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. He’s wearing tan-rimmed glasses and giving a friendly wave.

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Though Arctic sea ice started the summer at record lows, it is unlikely to set a new record annual minimum, reports Climate Central

As the sun begins its seasonal descent in the Arctic sky and temperatures drop, the summer melt of sea ice is slowing down. In the next few weeks, the span of the Arctic Ocean covered by ice will reach its annual low.

But despite beginning the summer at unprecedentedly low levels, this year’s minimum won’t break the stunning record of 2012, experts say, thanks to cloudy weather that slowed the rate of melt. 

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Greens motion also calls on government to rule out publicly funding any of the mine’s associated infrastructure

The government is under increasing pressure to rule out public funding for Adani’s Carmichael coalmine, after the Senate passed a Greens motion calling on the Coalition to rule out financing the mine or any associated infrastructure.

The government did not oppose the motion, so it was carried without a formal count on Thursday.

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Across Africa, poaching is on the rise. Progress is being made here and there, but the battle to save the largest animals on the Earth is far from being won

In the Samburu National Reserve in northern Kenya, when the fierce heat of the sun has softened into a gentle evening glow, David Daballen and I climb into a jeep to find some elephants.

As we drive through the savannah, Daballen, a conservationist at Save the Elephants, points out family groups and individuals within them. “These are the Butterflies, this group is Storms, here are the Spices,” he says. We have been looking out for Cinnamon, the Spices’ matriarch, and suddenly there she is: around 50 years old, huge and tuskless, having been born without any precious ivory. Close to her is Habiba, who was orphaned along with seven siblings when poachers killed their mother in 2011. The orphans were adopted by Cinnamon and the rest of the Spices.

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‘Ethical ivory’ from the extinct animal is in high demand as elephants fall out of favour in China. Photographer Amos Chapple followed the tuskers in the Russian wilderness searching to uncover the lucrative remains

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A collection of zoological wonders from August 2016, featuring a head-bopping sea-lion called Ronan, long-lived sharks and lobsters that bag up their poo

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Majority of the Salvation Army’s sites, third of Quaker meeting houses, and 2,000 churches belonging to 16 Catholic dioceses switch to renewable energy

More than 3,500 churches across Britain have moved their electricity supply to renewables, or are planning to do so, according to data released on Thursday.

Those switching away from fossil fuels include the majority of the Salvation Army’s sites, about a third of Quaker meeting houses, and about 2,000 churches belonging to 16 Catholic dioceses which are running entirely on renewable energy.

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Overfishing can teach us valuable lessons about ecosystem resilience. Andreas Altenberger/Shutterstock.com

As we head into the Anthropocene epoch, the era in which humankind has become the prevailing influence on our planet, we often stand accused of inadvertently running “global experiments” through our effects on wildlife, food chains, landscapes and the climate.

But what if these experiments are exactly the kind of science we need?

Of course, we’re not suggesting we deliberately trash the planet in the name of science. But if these phenomena are happening anyway, the least we can do is learn something along the way. That’s what experiments are for, right?

With science budgets shrivelling, the apparent alternative is to channel funding into ever smaller, shorter and cheaper experiments. But good luck recreating the complex tapestry of life in a coral reef, say, when all you have is a 10-cubic-metre tank.

Our research, published in the journal Ecosystems, argues that one of the only feasible solutions to the current intellectual and financial crisis lies in “large-scale, unreplicated natural experiments”, or LUNEs. These “off-the-shelf”, expansive experiments have inadvertently been created by humanity and nature.

Think tsunamis, deep earthquakes, oil spills, shark finning, alien invasions (yellow crazy ants, not Martians), and the construction of the Suez Canal.

Together, these rare but powerful manipulations of the environment can be tapped by scientists to test important hypotheses about how the world works.

Letting nature and human activity do the “dirty work” when it comes to experimental design has its advantages: it’s cheap, it’s realistic, and in many cases it’s the only ethical or logical way to study a particular question. In cases of human activity, it also allows us to understand the ecosystem response to these “interventions”.

There is also a growing consensus that no matter how many small-scale or theoretical studies we churn out, things often play out alarmingly differently when we examine ecological processes at large scales.

For example, you might be forgiven for thinking that an invasion of poisonous cane toads would be bad news for the snakes that eat them (and that’s what most studies have suggested). But a recent large-scale analysis found not just that many snake species were unperturbed by invasive toads, but that some lucky groups even increased in abundance.

Why else should we give LUNEs a chance? For statistical reasons, they are a particularly powerful tool when they operate across an ecological gradient, potentially allowing us, for example, to identify “tipping points” within ecosystem function.

In addition, gradual accumulations of LUNEs can ultimately power meta-analyses that can be used to draft robust “rules of thumb” about how ecological processes work.

For example, you might think that marine protected areas (MPAs) are a no-brainer when it comes to generating environmental and economic benefits. But this has been surprisingly difficult to prove scientifically. However, a 2014 meta-analysis of 87 MPAs showed conclusively that they help fish grow bigger and more abundant, particularly when these marine reserves are old, large, well-enforced, and have no-take fishing rules.

Deliberate oil spills?!

But LUNEs constitute a Faustian bargain, damaging the natural world in return for more knowledge. That also means they’re generally impossible to replicate, because it’s hard to run the experiment for a second time, even if you were mad enough to want to.

The US government is unlikely to green-light a second Deepwater Horizon oil spill, earthquakes are unpredictable and different each time, and we’re (hopefully) unlikely to experience another Big Bang any time in our near future.

An important question LUNEs raise is whether the conventional scientific need for experimental replication surpasses the urgent need to understand humanity’s effects on the planet.

We argue that the “conceptual” replications LUNEs offer are far more valuable than exact, controlled scientific replications, which when carried out on small scales can be highly misleading anyway.

Here’s an example. Water quality declined in many North American rivers and lakes in the 1960s, turning them green with nutrient-driven algal blooms. Small-scale experiments pointed the finger at nitrogen and carbon, but when researcher David Schindler began deliberately injecting whole lakes in western Ontario with different nutrients, he realised that phosphorus was the crucial factor.

His research didn’t use traditional scientific replication. But the results were eventually enough to persuade the Canadian government and several US states to ban phosphorus, which is now recognised as the major culprit.

In other cases, LUNEs have not overturned scientific consensus, but have proved crucial in highlighting the seriousness of the issues. There was 20 years' worth of evidence from small-scale lab experiments and modelling studies about the dangers of chlorofluorocarbons used as refrigerants and aerosol propellants. But the world only moved to ban them after the discovery that these chemicals had punched a large hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.

Together, these examples suggest that LUNEs and other large-scale studies can play a crucial role in galvanising the policy changes that avert environmental crises.

Homo sapiens derives from the Latin sapientia, meaning “wisdom”. But our ongoing failure to use our planet’s resources sustainably suggests that we are still a long way from living up to our name.

Fast-tracking LUNES and other large-scale studies, and placing value on their findings, may help us develop the far-sightedness we’ll need to survive the Anthropocene epoch.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Alinta Energy says distributed geothermal could provide heating and cooling needs for new housing estates, and combined with solar need not be connected to grid.

MPs warn that the uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles is too low to meet national climate change targets

The government is falling behind on its commitments to switch a proportion of Britain’s car fleet to electric vehicles, an influential committee of MPs said on Thursday.

Take-up of electric vehicles has been slower than hoped in the UK, but the technology is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transport, and tackling the air pollution produced by the increased number of diesel cars on the road.

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