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As sea levels rise, it is likely that storm surges, cyclones and floods will become more frequent, and more extreme. But how likely is that? And what can be done to prevent the damage?

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator last week issued over 850,000 carbon credits, some three times more than average, while an analyst on Monday predicted the domestic offset market could reach 62 million tonnes of CO2e per year by 2030.

New Zealand carbon allowances on Monday closed just 5 cents below their all-time high as last week’s Productivity Commission report was seen bullish by some major market participants.

The Climate Change Authority, an independent advisory body to the government, has recommended Australia should establish a new offset type for land-based carbon cuts that also provide additional benefits for the agriculture sector.

Lab-grown meat and food-tech startups in the US are showing that applying science to what we eat can save the world and make money

“If you make food that tastes really good, you win,” says Josh Tetrick, with a smile. And winning is crucial, he says, with his company Just in the vanguard of a new sector with an ambitious mission: to use cutting-edge technologies to create food that will take down the meat and dairy industries.

The scope is huge: growing meat in labs, producing creamy scrambled “eggs” from mung beans, or making fish that has never swum in water, or cow’s milk brewed from yeast. The drive is to lessen the colossal environmental damage wrought by industrial farming, from its vast carbon emissions to water pollution and disease.

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What caused the demise of the Dwarf Emu in Australia?

The Australian Academy of Science and its New Zealand counterpart, the Royal Society Te Apārangi, are launching a 10-year plan to study and name unknown species, warning that a sound understanding of biodiversity is critical in the face of a global extinction crisis. Broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has gotten behind the study, saying, 'We cannot understand the natural world without the taxonomic system.'  He adds, 'I depend on the work of these scientists'

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Annual BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine study reports six in 10 people have not seen a hedgehog in their garden this year

Sightings of hedgehogs in gardens have fallen again, with almost six in 10 people saying they have not seen one at all this year, a survey has found.

Related: Apocalypse hedgehog: the fight to save Britain's favourite mammal

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Female trapdoor spider known as Number 16 was sedentary and stayed close to her burrow

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The world’s oldest known spider has died at the ripe old age of 43 after being monitored for years during a long-term population study in Australia, researchers say.

The trapdoor matriarch comfortably outlived the previous record holder, a 28-year-old tarantula found in Mexico, according to a study published on Monday in the Pacific Conservation Biology Journal.

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Endangered bandicoots have been found in the outskirts of Melbourne. Euan Ritchie, Associate Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University Sarah Maclagan, PhD candidate, Centre for Integrative Ecology, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Stanley residents fail to stop farmer mining groundwater that is sold on as bottled springwater

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Residents from a tiny Victorian town have been ordered to pay $90,000 in legal costs after they launched a failed bid to prevent a farmer from extracting and selling groundwater as bottled springwater to a subsidiary of the Japanese beverage giant Asahi.

The supreme court of Victoria made the costs ruling last week, four months after a residents association in the town of Stanley, which has a population of 400, was denied leave to appeal previous decisions allowing the water extraction.

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Armathwaite, Eden Valley: Their fingertips white with climbing chalk, they are surmounting overhangs and traversing blank-looking walls

John Buchan’s hero Richard Hannay crosses my mind as I reach an impasse while walking along the banks of the Eden to Armathwaite crags. A flight of steps descends into Sandy Bay, created from fine-grained sand churned up from the riverbed each flood. Only, while Buchan’s 39 steps descend to sands between white chalk cliffs in Kent, Armathwaite’s stairs are sandwiched between red sandstone precipices. Also, Hannay’s adversaries were international spies; mine are old age and a dodgy hip.

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Modelling for Reliability Panel says risk of supply shortfalls in NSW after Liddell closure is one millionth of one per cent - "so small, they are generally not visible on the chart". So much for the government scare campaign about blackouts.

Two new solar farms begin full production in NSW, and with nearly 2GW of new large scale solar to be added across the country before summer, and the boom in rooftop continuing, the lowest prices may now occur at midday rather than midnight.

The 11MW Dunblane solar farm in Queensland is far from the biggest solar farm in the country, but is setting some important new benchmarks on construction and financing.

It's budget week in Victoria, and there’s a simple question to be asked: if there’s so much renewable energy ready to go, then why not go bigger?

US technology that can harvest drinking water from the air using solar power to be trialled around Australia, with backing from ARENA.

CEFC makes $5m equity investment in Zen Ecosystems, to go towards the further development and deployment of its smart thermostat products.

Saving a vulnerable species that's not cute and cuddly; go bush with landcare volunteers; meet the 'apple island wife' blogger; and join Roly Lennox on his last delivery run.