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By declaring all sources of oil and gas in limestone and sandstone as ‘conventional’, writes Kathryn McWhirter, the government and oil companies are hoping the controversy over fracking will go away

The threat that you refer to (National parks land faces new oil threat, campaigners warn, 16 March) actually looms over a great swathe of south-east England, not just national parks. And the plethora of promised wells will not be “conventional” as your article states – at least not in the scientifically accepted meaning of the word. A new, political definition of “conventional” was inserted into national minerals planning guidance in March 2014 by the then Department of Energy and Climate Change. It declared “conventional” all sources of oil and gas in limestone and sandstone. This is not true. Both limestone and sandstone, geologically speaking, can be conventional or unconventional. The scientific divide between the two pivots on permeability – how freely oil or gas can flow through the rocks. And, deep within the shale under the Weald, the thin, muddy limestone layers that are currently the target of oil companies have low permeability. They are unconventional.

It is convenient for the oil industry to be able to claim its drilling to be conventional. To the public, media and planners it makes oil wells seem a more minor issue. But the industry’s plans are major. Precisely because of the low permeability of the target rocks (now muddy limestone, soon no doubt the surrounding shale), there will be a need for a great many wells. You can extract oil only by getting up close to each bit of “unconventional” rock, and dissolving it with acid or cracking it open. Stephen Sanderson, CEO of UK Oil and Gas, said of his plans for Surrey and Sussex: “This type of oil deposit very much depends on being able to drill your wells almost back to back.”

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Such extreme weather events are now happening four times more than in 1980, according to a European science paper

Global floods and extreme rainfall events have surged by more than 50% this decade, and are now occurring at a rate four times higher than in 1980, according to a new report.

Other extreme climatological events such as storms, droughts and heatwaves have increased by more than a third this decade and are being recorded twice as frequently as in 1980, the paper by the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (Easac) says.

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In wake of Guardian Australia report, Penny Sharpe says regional forest agreements must include climate change as a consideration

NSW Labor has demanded that climate change be on the table as part of a full scientific assessment of the state’s regional forest agreements (RFAs), which are set to expire over the next two years.

Penny Sharpe, opposition environment spokeswoman, said NSW Labor would not sign off on proposed extensions because the government “knows the science underpinning the RFAs is out of date and incomplete”.

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Authors of report on bird declines say intensive farming and pesticides could turn Europe’s farmland into a desert that ultimately imperils all humans

The “catastrophic” decline in French farmland birds signals a wider biodiversity crisis in Europe which ultimately imperils all humans, leading scientists have told the Guardian.

A dramatic fall in farmland birds such as skylarks, whitethroats and ortolan bunting in France was revealed by two studies this week, with the spread of neonicotinoid pesticides – and decimation of insect life – coming under particular scrutiny.

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We want to hear from people around the world switching things off and getting involved in Earth Hour 2018

Global organisers of Earth Hour, a grass roots movement for the environment asking people to switch off electricity for an hour on 24 March, say they hope to energise millions of people and that “every action counts”.

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Environmental Defenders Office to urge Palaszczuk government to amend proposed laws

The Queensland Environmental Defenders Office says proposed new land-clearing laws in the state leave significant loopholes that would allow broadscale clearing to continue unchecked.

The group will on Thursday lodge a submission urging the Palaszczuk government to amend its proposed vegetation management laws.

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California judge William Alsup put out a list of questions for a climate change ‘tutorial’ in a global warming case

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New cane toad traps that carefully imitate mating males successfully target breeding females. Males, meanwhile, will turn up for anything that sounds remotely like a toad. Lin Schwarzkopf, Professor in Zoology, James Cook University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Neoen begins work on new Tesla big battery and 194MW wind farm that will provide 100% renewables to biggest glass-house in Australia.

The ACT electricity network owner, Evoenergy, has conducted the largest and most comprehensive demand management (DM) trials in Australia.

NSW pricing regulator flags a cut to state's solar feed-in tariff, linked to fall in wholesale power prices rooftop solar helped deliver.

New premier Steve Marshall is feeling the heat for placing the future of Tesla's battery plans in doubt.. Maybe now he will go the whole hog and target nearly 100,000 homes with storage.

Victoria government backed plan to convert disused Bendigo mineshafts into pumped hydro energy storage will undergo full feasibility studies.

Can Australia reach 50% renewables without compromising grid stability? The experts – and even the major energy stakeholders of business and industry – all say yes. We're just waiting on the right policy.

The Santos project would be exempt from complete fire bans and allowed to flare gas, even in catastrophic fire weather

Firefighters with decades of experience working around the bushfire-prone Pilliga forest say Santos’s controversial Narrabri gas project will create an unacceptable fire risk to workers at the site, as well as to surrounding properties.

Those firefighters, who have also opposed the project on other environmental grounds, say fires in the area can be so fast and ferocious that in some weather conditions the project site would need to be evacuated, since if a fire did start there would likely not be enough time to evacuate workers.

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Sundrop Farms and Nectar Farms have turned to wind, solar and battery storage to underpin their push for controlled "vertical farms".

The public is being asked to report damage to garden plants from visiting wild deer.

But there are opportunities to cash in on the "ocean economy", a major report for the UK government says.

There are calls for strong action, including criminal prosecution, following a fatal accident involving an Uber self-driving car

The Assistant Minister has approved the inclusion of Coastal Swamp Oak Forest of New South Wales and South East Queensland in the Endangered category on the list of threatened ecological communities, under the Environment Protection and...