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‘Almost unprecedented’ event attributed to warm temperatures and winds, with some areas more than 20C (36F) warmer than usual

Both the Arctic and Antarctic experienced record lows in sea ice extent in November, with scientists astonished to see Arctic ice actually retreating at a time when the region enters the cold darkness of winter.

Related: The fate of Arctic sea ice – Science Weekly podcast

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It's yet another closed door for Australia's climate policy, with the government killing off any prospect of a carbon price for the electricity sector—the country's biggest greenhouse polluter.

Tougher emissions standards for new cars could cost an extra $2500--but consumers would receive a quick payback in three years with cheaper fuel costs, says ClimateWorks Australia.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos form long-term pair bonds, perhaps explaining their emotional intelligence. Ian Sanderson/Flickr, CC BY-NC

July on the Northern Tableland, near Armidale in New South Wales, is usually the beginning of the breeding season and field observations start early.

I sat and watched in freezing temperatures. The sun was just rising above the horizon of this 1000m-high plateau when through binoculars I saw a young lone magpie, walking gingerly, literally tip-toeing, occasionally interrupted by little bouts of running and, unusually, heading straight for its territorial boundary.

In the last stretch to the border, the bird edged along a row of pine trees, staying low, and kept looking over its shoulder, especially when crossing the neighbour’s border. Shortly afterwards, a female was seen in his company.

Later, the male backtracked and, when far enough into his own territory, started foraging rather aimlessly as if nothing had happened.

The magpie who snuck over the border. Gisela Kaplan

What had I witnessed? Did this young male magpie understand that he was breaking several important magpie social rules and could face punishment for this transgression if caught? Did he have a sense of morality?

Science has traditionally shunned the idea of emotions in animals, not just for fear of anthropomorphism or over-interpretation, but also because there is a very long cultural history that played out a divide between mind and body and reason and emotions.

Reason, thinking and making judgements were stubbornly thought to be outside the capacity of animals. For a long time it was not believed that animals were even capable of feeling pain, let alone complex emotions. We now know that is far from the truth.

Birds with feelings

Pet owners have always known that their pets can be affectionate, sulky, jealous, sad, excited and deliberately naughty, as well as doing extraordinary things for their owners. The animals we know best in this regard are obviously dogs and cats.

Charles Darwin was the first to discuss emotions in animals in the mid-19th century. A century later, Niko Tinbergen addressed the vexing question of emotions.

Following on from Darwin, he identified “four Fs” as part of survival: fight, flee, fornicate and feed. These translate into basic feelings of fear, hunger and sexual drive – now called motivational states.

Tawny frogmouths are monogamous. cskk/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

But there is a lot more to bird emotions. Dangerous and horrible experiences are usually remembered. Memory helps survival. Modern urban birds have been shown to remember faces of people considered dangerous and threatening.

We now know that the bird brain is lateralised (each side of the brain controls a different set of functions) as in humans and other vertebrates. The right hemisphere expresses intense emotions (such as fear and attack). The left hemisphere has routine, considered responses and may inhibit some of the strong responses of the right hemisphere.

So birds are more similar to humans than had ever been thought, but with an important difference: birds are generally not aggressive without cause. Technically, aggression is an emotion that is dysfunctional, has no purpose and often even harms the individual displaying it.

Birds can certainly get very angry – and the owner of a galah or corella would be well advised not to get near this bird when the head feathers are raised — but birds can be joyful and playful, can get depressed and, as studies have shown, a neglectful or bare environment can even make them pessimistic.

Birds may feel for others (have empathy) and even console them, may have a sense of justice, may show deep affection for their partner and grieve for their loss. I witnessed the mate of a fatally injured tawny frogmouth not moving from the spot next to its dead partner for three days, and then dying on the fourth.

Social smarts

Australian native birds have an unusually high percentage of pair-bonding (over 90% of species) and the highest concentrations of cooperative species (relatives or siblings helping at the nest) anywhere in the world. Cockatoos bonding for life often have intense close partnerships, which are nurtured by constant grooming and attention to each other’s needs.

Such intense cohabitation of individuals, often for many years (how about 60 years of “marriage” in sulphur-crested cockatoos?), may also create frictions and dissatisfactions that require solutions to keep the pair or group together.

For instance, the lazy helper at the nest who only pretends to help in feeding, as happens among white-winged choughs, may get scolded by an adult. A group of apostlebirds building a mud nest together, transporting mud to the nest in relays, may spot an individual that is not pulling its weight.

I have witnessed on several occasions near Copeton Dam (in Inverell, NSW) apostlebirds become so outraged that they approach the individual with heightened calling and may even peck it until the intimidated individual falls back into line and does its share.

Empathy, altruism and consoling the injured or vanquished have all been observed in birds, thought to be the ultimate in consideration for another individual’s state of mind.

For instance, there are observations of dusky wood-swallows (belonging to the same family of birds as butcherbirds and magpies) in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt hassling a restless flycatcher with a larva in his beak, perched on a branch. One wood-swallow flew above the flycatcher, while the other simultaneously flew directly at it, snatched the larva from its beak while it was distracted by the other bird hovering overhead, and took it away. So who got the prize?

If all behaviour in animals is selfish, then the one who caught it should have gulped it down, but it did not. It gave it to the bird that had distracted the flycatcher. Perhaps the two birds reversed roles in the next, similar, situation. But it still meant overcoming the temptation to eat.

A noisy miner, one of the cooperative honeyeaters, I had hand-raised grew up over several weeks in the company of very young ridgeback pups near the edge of a nature reserve in a NSW coastal area.

One pup was sleeping on the porch in the sun and I was some distance away. I was alerted by the alarm calls of the noisy miner and turned around to see it swooping right down to a lace monitor’s head – doing so over and over again. I ran as quickly as I could, by now also shouting once the risk to the pup was more than apparent.

When the monitor spotted me, it turned and fled. The noisy minor had risked its life to save the pup. At no other occasion did the bird attempt to swoop a lace monitor. Its response was very specific to this situation.

And, as I have been asked often, could birds have a sense of humour? Perhaps.

Our galah, Philip, deeply affectionate (and jealous!) had learned the names of all our dogs and was such a good mimic of our voices that he could easily and effectively call the dogs to attention.

Imagine the picture: a bird less than a foot tall, standing on the floor and calling four massive Rhodesian ridgebacks to attention. Then, when he got them all in line in front of him, he walked away, swaying his head and even making little chuckling sounds.

The degree to which emotions and complex feelings for others were developed may well depend on social organisation. It may be that birds with long-term social bonds show more complex behaviour and brains than those whose associations are only fleeting.

What they get out of it is perhaps not debatable — more joy, more grief, but also a greater degree of safety and usually a longer life. There are clear benefits of sticking together in a difficult and fickle continent.

Gisela is speaking at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery on Tuesday, December 6, and Wednesday, December 7.

Professor Gisela Kaplan received funding from the ARC and bequests from private benefactors She is at the School of Science and Technology at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW and there are no conflicts of interests or personal benefits derived from writing this article.

Shark nets are being trialled at five locations in northern New South Wales in response to a recent spate of shark attacks in this area.

The goal of these nets is to reduce the number of encounters of sharks with humans. The nets may do this by catching large sharks, and possibly by changing the way sharks visit these beaches.

There has been some doubt as to the effectiveness of shark nets in reducing attacks, so it’s important we continue to evaluate their role in bather protection.

But unfortunately it’s not as straightforward as it sounds, and it could take years to find out whether the nets will truly work.

Rare events

Shark attacks are very rare. According to the Australian Shark Attack File, 51 unprovoked attacks by white sharks have been recorded in NSW since 2006, 19 of them along the north coast (between Byron Bay and Evans Head).

There have undoubtedly been spikes in attacks over the last decade, especially in northern NSW, but the number of attacks has varied a lot between years and locations.

The problem is that when events (like shark encounters) are both rare and variable, it is very difficult to spot when there has been a genuine increase. And, crucially for the shark net trial, it is also difficult to tell whether policies are reducing them.

In the area of NSW where the shark nets will be trialled, between Broken Head and Evans Head, white shark attacks have ranged from zero to six per year in recent years. One way of getting an idea about how many attacks might occur in the future is to fit a statistical distribution to these data, and use this to predict the frequency at which attacks will occur (assuming the attack rate doesn’t change much).

In a hypothetical scenario in which the trialled shark nets are a success and reduce the attack rate by white sharks in the area by (say) 75%, our statistical distribution tells us that almost all years will have zero or one attack (see the red line below).

However, if the nets do nothing and the attack rate stays the same, we would still expect most years to have zero or one attack (the pink line below). This shows that it will be very difficult to know in the short term if the shark nets truly are reducing the risk of attack. This graph shows how difficult it can be to identify a reduction in risk, even by a large amount.

Even if there are zero attacks at a netted beach next year, that doesn’t necessarily tell us the net has worked, because statistically we would expect zero attacks in most years anyway. By the same token, if someone is bitten by a shark at one of the netted beaches, it doesn’t mean the nets aren’t effective. They may be greatly reducing the risk, just not eliminating it completely.

Because these encounters are so rare and variable, it will probably take years (rather than the six months planned for the trial) before there is enough evidence to show whether the nets have reduced attacks.

How and why

We also know very little about which factors influence encounters with large sharks. Without this information it is even harder to recognise whether the nets bring a decline in shark encounters.

In the above example, I used the recent history of attacks as the only guide to the future, but this is the most basic approach to exploring trends and assumes that recent history is a reliable indicator of the near future. A great way to improve this approach is to look for factors that can help explain why attacks vary between years – in essence basing our analysis on ecology rather than purely statistics.

The environment will almost certainly change the chance of a shark encounter. Factors like ocean temperature may have a big influence in determining when large sharks swim close to shore. The more of this “biological” information we have, the better we can account for variation in the number of shark attacks, and thus the better we will get at assessing whether policies like shark nets are working.

As described above, a six-month trial is not really long enough to learn anything meaningful about whether nets reduce shark attacks. It will provide other useful information, though, such as the likely impact on marine life. So we might find out whether the nets harm sharks, turtles, dolphins etc, but not whether they are making people any safer.

I am not suggesting that the trial won’t be useful – evaluating the impact on marine life is essential for assessing the costs of the nets. But what I am saying is that we need to avoid jumping to conclusions about whether they are “reducing the rate of unprovoked interactions with potentially dangerous sharks”. It will be years before we can attempt to answer that question.

In the meantime, there is much to be gained by increasing our understanding of how the environment influences shark distributions, by linking locations of tagged or caught sharks with the kinds of environments they inhabit. This will remove some of the guesswork in the “where and when” of shark attacks, and hopefully contribute to a more scientific approach to bather protection.

James Smith receives funding from the Australian Research Council to research coastal environments, including fish habitats and artificial reefs.

Progressive thinktank wants to know whether company will pay full coal royalties, full company tax rate and create jobs it claims

The progressive thinktank the Australia Institute is stepping up its campaign against the controversial Adani Carmichael mine proposal, publishing an open letter to Malcolm Turnbull questioning the project.

The questions being posed via a full-page advertisement in the Australian Financial Review on Wednesday include whether the Adani mine, if it proceeds, will pay full coal royalties to the Queensland government, or whether the project has been granted a royalty holiday.

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Donald Trump's plan to erect a huge sea wall at his Irish golf course have been withdrawn in the light of stiff opposition.

Alice Bell is right that we need to talk about climate change (Opinion, 6 December). However, when we do, people often say there is no point in cutting one’s own emissions (by not flying, for example) because hardly anyone else is; and they say there is no point in the UK doing anything, because other countries aren’t. Sadly, people in other countries are probably using the same arguments and so, in a self-fulfilling way, it could be argued that they are all correct. Certainly there is no evidence that nations or individuals are actually going to make the changes needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions adequately, whatever pledges may have been made at international conferences.

Clearly, we need a new approach: to invest in a combination of carbon scrubbing, geoengineering, third-way solutions, forest protection and reforestation. These can be funded by an international financial transactions tax, and they don’t involve lifestyle changes people won’t accept. We need to start now.
Richard Mountford
Hildenborough, Kent

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Glasgow Prestwick Airport signs an agreement with Houston Spaceport as it continues its bid to become the UK's first launch site.

A project is underway to record the underwater behaviour of Britain's grey seals.

Internet giant says renewable energy is increasingly lowest cost option and it will not rule out investing in nuclear power

Google’s data centres and the offices for its 60,000 staff will be powered entirely by renewable energy from next year, in what the company has called a “landmark moment”.

The internet giant is already the world’s biggest corporate buyer of renewable electricity, last year buying 44% of its power from wind and solar farms. Now it will be 100%, and an executive said it would not rule out investing in nuclear power in the future, too.

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A collection of zoological wonders from November 2016, featuring mobbing hyenas, speeding bats and crab power

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As global temperatures rise, extreme downpours will increase putting huge strains on infrastructure and agriculture, finds climate study

When the skies open up and deluge an area, the results can be catastrophic, with roads washed out and homes destroyed by the resulting flash floods. Such extreme downpours are already occurring more often across the US, but a new study finds that as global temperatures rise, storms could dump considerably more rain and skyrocket in frequency.

The study, in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that storms that now occur about once a season could happen five times a season by the century’s end, a 400% increase.

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Firefighters recover two cars from a sinkhole in Texas. An off-duty sheriff’s deputy died and two other people were hurt when two vehicles plunged into the water-filled sinkhole in San Antonio on Sunday. It appeared after a sewer line ruptured during heavy rain

• One dead after Texas sinkhole swallows two cars
  

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Stories of unusual insect activity are swarming across Australia, but is there any evidence to back up the reports?

England fells more trees than it plants and government must keep to its targets to evade deforestation, say forestry groups

Every year Brazil, Congo and other developing countries are lambasted by environmentalists and western politicians for deforestation at a time when trees are needed to counter climate change and prevent flooding.

Now two prestigious organisations are warning that England may have tipped into deforestation, with more trees being cut down than planted for the first time in possibly 40 years.

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Conspiracy websites and hyperpartisan media outlets are building huge online audiences who want to hear climate change is a hoax

Back in December 2015, Donald Trump gave a 30-minute live interview to the website Infowars.com and its combustible leader, Alex Jones.

“Your reputation is amazing and I will not let you down,” said Trump, who, at the time, was leading in most polls for the Republican presidential nomination.

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Claxton, Norfolk They rose and fell, swaying as if one organism were breathing slowly, and as they approached they never made sound

I saw the goose skein as a tentative line in a southern blue sky and, since it was arrowed straight towards me, I rested arms and binoculars on a gate to ease the muscle ache.

One, two minutes must have passed as the skein slowly grew, before it occurred to me that large birds in flight never rush. The wing beats are steady, solemn, self-reliant. I remember once in eastern Turkey watching a line of flamingos like this. There is an almost identical length of neck and leg fore and aft of those pink flamingo wings and, such was their lack of progress, it was a good five minutes before I could even work out in which direction they flew.

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BHP Billiton electricity supply agreement with existing NSW gas generator could open the path for the much touted solar tower and molten salt storage project.

Report finds Australia's shift to renewables, in line with its climate targets, would require significant inter-regional transmission upgrades, including a second link between Victoria and Tasmania by 2025.