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S.A. gets 60 proposals for batteries, bioenergy, pumped hydro, thermal, compressed air and flywheel technologies in response to its tender for next-gen renewables and storage.

A short film shot by  Heath Patterson captures photographer Vaughan Brookfield and Tom Lynch's journey to a New Zealand glacier equipped with hundreds of kilograms of gear and a light projector. Their plan was to project images on to the rapidly receding Tasman Glacier. Brookfield says: 'We want to remind people of the effects humans are having on the environment' 

 

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AAP/David Mariuz

This time last year, Australia was getting over a media storm about renewables, energy policy and climate change. The media storm was caused by a physical storm: a mid-latitude cyclone that hit South Australia on September 29 and set in train a series of events that is still playing itself out.

The events include:

• an extraordinary attack on renewables by federal government ministers;

• a steadfast pushback by the South Australian government to continue its renewables roll-out;

• the offer of tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to build the largest battery storage facility in the world in South Australia and;

• the Finkel Review.

In one sense, the Finkel Review was a response to the government’s concerns about “energy security”. But it also managed to successfully respond to the way energy policy had become a political plaything, as exemplified by the attacks on South Australia.

New research on the media coverage that framed the energy debate that has ensued over the past year reveals some interesting turning points in how Australia’s media report on climate change.

While extreme weather events are the best time to communicate climate change – the additional energy people are adding to the climate is on full display – the South Australian event was used to attack renewables rather than the carbonisation of the atmosphere. Federal MPs hijacked people’s need to understand the reason for the blackout “by simply swapping climate change with renewables”.

However, the research shows that, ironically, MPs who invited us to “look over here” at the recalcitrant renewables – and not at climate-change-fuelled super-storms – managed to make climate change reappear.

The study searched for all Australian newspaper articles that mentioned either a storm or a cyclone in relation to South Australia that had been published in the ten days either side of the event. This returned 591 articles. Most of the relevant articles were published after the storm, with warnings of the cyclone beforehand.

Some of the standout findings include:

• 51% of articles were about the power outage and 38% were about renewables, but 12% of all articles connected these two.

• 20% of articles focused on the event being politicised by politicians.

• 9% of articles raised climate change as a force in the event and the blackouts.

• 10% of articles blamed the blackouts on renewables.

• Of all of the articles linking power outages to renewables 46% were published in News Corp and 14% were published in Fairfax.

• Narratives that typically substituted any possibility of a link to climate change, included the “unstoppable power of nature” (18%), failure of planning (5.25%), and triumph of humanity (5.6%).

Only 9% of articles discussed climate change. Of these, 73% presented climate change positively, 21% were neutral, and 6% negative. But, for the most part, climate change was linked to the conversation around renewables: there was a 74% overlap. 36% of articles discussing climate change linked it to the intensification of extreme weather events.

There was also a strong correlation between the positive and negative discussion of climate change and the ownership of newspapers.

The starkest contrast was between the two largest Australian newspaper groups. Of all the sampled articles that mentioned climate change, News Corp was the only group to has a negative stance on climate change (at 50% of articles), but still with 38% positive. Fairfax was 90% positive and 10% neutral about climate change.

Positive/negative stance of articles covering climate change by percentage.

Given that more than half of all articles discussed power outages, the cyclone in a sense competed with renewables as a news item. Both have a bearing on power supply and distribution. But, ironically, it was renewables that put climate change on the news agenda – not the cyclone.

Of the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% “negative” and blaming them for the power outages.

In this way, the negative frame that politicians put on renewable energy may have sparked debate that was used to highlight the positives of renewable energy and what’s driving it: reduced emissions.

But perhaps the most interesting finding is the backlash by news media against MPs’ attempts to politicise renewables.

19.63% of all articles in the sample had called out (mainly federal) MPs for politicising the issue and using South Australians’ misfortune as a political opportunity. This in turn was related to the fact that, of all the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% supporting MPs’ attempts to blame them for the power outages.

In this way, while many MPs had put renewables on the agenda by denigrating them, most journalists were eager to cover the positive side of renewables.

Nevertheless, the way MPs sought to dominate the news agenda over the storm did take away from discussion of climate science and the causes of the cyclone. Less than 4% of articles referred to extreme weather intensifying as a trend.

This is problematic. It means that, with a few exceptions, Australia’s climate scientists are not able to engage with the public in key periods after extreme weather events.

When MPs, with co-ordinated media campaigns, enjoy monopoly holdings in the attention economy of news cycles, science communication and the stories of climate that could be told are often relegated to other media.

With thanks to Tahnee Burgess for research assistance on this article.

Disclosure

David Holmes received funding from Monash University to conduct this research.

It’s been a bit of a free-for-all up till now, but the regulatory regime seems to be developing in a way that should benefit consumers and renewables in the long run.

Almost two thirds of mussels in the sea around Kent are contaminated with plastic particles, research has shown.

Buddy Platform and Edge Electrons have agreed to integrate PowerSave into the Buddy Ohm product suite; delivering PowerSave customers a Buddy Ohm dashboard.

British scientists played a key role in developing radar, which has helped deliver safer skies.

With pressure to boost recycling and cut costs, landfill waste in England is collected less frequently – with six councils collecting it once in three weeks

More than three quarters of English councils now pick up household rubbish which cannot be recycled or composted just once a fortnight, a survey reveals.

With councils under pressure to boost recycling and cut costs, some have gone further, with six local authorities picking up residual household waste only once every three weeks.

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Storage capacity could triple by 2030 if current renewable energy capacity doubles, with battery prices potentially driven down by 66% from current levels.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 13 October 1917

Surrey, October 11
This morning was chill. Wild duck were on a broad stretch of backwater which has come from the river overflow in the low marsh; they floated like toy birds in the early haze. After a while they flew, skimming the ripples closely enough to make scattered particles shimmer in the rising sun, their green-grey and chestnut plumage throwing out a show of different colours in the flight. They settled among the tall reeds along the river bank, with lapwing playing overhead, then came out to rest for a long time on the water again. Mist was still white along the hedgerow, frosting haws and the now crimson “winter pears” on wild rose bushes, which are rich in yellow leaf. Up in the spinney a greenfinch went from bough to bough of a thorn, high and low, his feathers now dull in shade, now almost the colour of young lime leaves where the sun struck through. Alighting on a branch, the sound of a long, sweet note satisfied the ear, then, as his wings just opened, a faint twitter was hardly heard. Flying off a little, he always came back to the spreading thorn again.

Related: How to access the Guardian and Observer digital archive

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It is no surprise the mayor of London wants to ban wood burning: even new stoves are much more polluting than the exhaust of a heavy goods vehicle

Browse through the home style magazines in your newsagent’s or watch Channel 4’s Grand Designs and you will see beautifully decorated living rooms complete with a roaring fire. Wood burning has become very fashionable and, let’s face it, a log fire is cosy.

Natural gas central heating largely banished solid fuel and brought huge improvements in our urban air. For two decades the UK’s official energy statistics said that home wood burning was too small to be quantified, but under the radar it has been making a return. A 2016 government survey found that 7.5% of UK homes burned wood making up 30% of UK particle emissions. In London, one home in 12 burns wood, but this accounts for more than a quarter of the particle pollution produced in the capital. It is no surprise that the mayor of London, Sadiq Kahn, has called for powers to address this problem.

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Birds reproduce only on three remote islands in Bass Straight and are listed as ‘vulnerable’ with just 1,500 breeding pairs remaining

The Tasmanian shy albatross has embraced the idea of settling down in an artificial, specially constructed nest, according to scientists who are trying to boost the population of the endangered seabird.

A trial of the nests was announced in June to help the breeding success of the endangered species, which biologists believe are vulnerable to the environmental effects of climate change.

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The black market’s insatiable demand for ivory has turned poachers’ attention away from well-protected elephants to more vulnerable hippos

It seems almost incomprehensible that the desire for an ivory ornament or piece of jewellery justifies the slaughter of a majestic elephant, but as their populations continue to crash, the ever-hungry black market has become creative in order to satisfy its greed. Now, ivory hunters are setting their sights on everything from arctic narwhals to fossil mammoths. But one unexpected victim of this barbaric practice is the humble hippopotamus. A new study says that a rise in demand for hippos’ teeth is threatening the mammal with extinction.

In many ways, it takes a lot of effort to kill an elephant. They are legally well protected in most countries where they range and international regulations are clear. Also, smuggling large tusks internationally is highly conspicuous. Hippos offer a cheaper and, in many ways, “easier” ivory option. The simple truth is that they are not high on the priority list of the international conservation community. Find a group of wild-living African elephants and, often, they will either be tracked with radio collars or will be the focus of long-term conservation research, intensive ecotourism or determined law-enforcement efforts. Not so with hippos. Unlike their famous savannah cousins, they don’t come with a protective human entourage, meaning poachers can take their time. Additionally, they are not protected especially well at either a national or international level.

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A competition, now in its 43rd year, dedicated to showcasing the beautiful and bizarre as seen under a light microscope attracted over 2,000 entries from 88 countries. Here’s a selection of the winning and commended images from the 2017 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition

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It’s time the responsibility for recycling was laid firmly at the door of the packaging manufacturers

Litter brings out an urge in me to ban everything. Under my regime, straws would be outlawed. Plastic drinks bottles – only 57% of which find their way into recycling – would be verboten. But top of the list of banned items would be wacky recycling surveys.

The latest, from Business Waste, highlights the craziest eco blunders found in the nation’s recycling bins. The list includes a car door, 1,000 Greenpeace badges (oh, the irony!) and a full Christmas dinner including plates, tablecloth, crackers and pudding.

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Teams from around the world are competing on solar cars in an epic transcontinental race.

Of the millions of eggs laid by the endangered olive ridley sea turtles on one Costa Rican beach, few survive both predators and poachers. But how could allowing local villagers to harvest the eggs be a solution?

Dawn on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast and the dark figure of a man at the water’s edge gradually becomes distinct under a pinkening sky. I switch off my torch. Jairo Quiros Rosales and I are the only people to be seen on this broad black beach, the volcanic sands of which stretch north for several miles. Jairo is beckoning, so I hurry down to him, scanning the beach and murky shoreline. As the light grows, I make out the funereal vultures flecking the distance, and assorted mutts appear from the gloom to sniff the night from the sands.

And then I see them: about 100 metres further up the beach, like strange, regularly humped stones, hundreds of olive ridley sea turtles are making their way from the ocean on to the beach to lay their eggs. This is the arribada. It means “the arrival” in Spanish, and I have been waiting more than a month to see it.

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• Measures expected soon are part of promise to revive coal industry
• Ex-EPA chief: ‘This administration has no intention of following the law’

The Trump administration is moving to roll back the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s attempt to slow global warming, seeking to ease restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Related: Walruses face 'death sentence' as Trump administration fails to list them as endangered

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A conservation project in Papua New Guinea could help secure the future for Britain's biggest butterfly.

RSPB Minsmere has about 200 red deer, one of the largest wild herds outside Scotland.