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The hunt for a cancer cure should be treated with as much urgency as the Ebola outbreak, says US Vice-President Joe Biden.

Report recommends breeding the endangered species – which is the world’s smallest porpoise – in captivity, but some experts disagree

Mexican authorities should consider trapping some of the few remaining vaquita marina porpoises in order to attempt breeding the endangered species in captivity or semi-captivity, conservationists have recommended.

Related: Mexico urged to act and save world's smallest porpoise – the little sea cow

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Fire significantly added to our ability to change the world. Fire image from www.shutterstock.com

Over the past year, carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels in the atmosphere have risen faster than any period in the past 55 million years. That’s the finding of my study published in Global Change Biology.

From April 2015 to April 2016, CO₂ levels rose by 4.6 parts per million (ppm), reaching a level of 407.42ppm at Mauna Loa observatory, Hawaii. This rate has increased in the past 200 years and forms a unique spike, reflecting accelerating global warming reinforced by the recent El Niño.

CO₂ levels above 400ppm have not been observed in the Earth’s climate record since the Pliocene, 5.3-2.6 million years ago, when sea level was about 25 metres higher than at present.

While climate change has gained scientific attention in the past 50 years, and political action in the last 25, humans have been altering the atmosphere much longer than that.

About 7,000 years ago, the development of agriculture, burning and land clearing is believed to have led to a small rise in CO₂ in the atmosphere (around 20-25ppm). Methane also rose by a small amount from 5,000 years ago.

These small rises didn’t lead to increasing temperatures, because the overall temperature trend until the 18th century was cooling.

Humans have since increased CO₂ from 280ppm before the Industrial Revolution to over 400ppm. Together these global changes, driven by our use of energy, have led scientists to define a new geological age, the Anthropocene.

A new age

Although not yet officially recognised, the Anthropocene is widely considered to have begun in the 18th century with the release of greenhouse gases (CO₂, methane and nitrogen oxides), land clearing, chemical pollution and other human activities. These changes have accelerated since the 1950s.

Some think the Anthropocene began much earlier, linked to the first rise in greenhouse gases around 7,000 years ago. In evolutionary terms, it can be suggested the blueprint for anthropogenic global warming originated earlier still with the harnessing of fire.

The only natural parallel with the speed of climate changes over the last few decades is during mass extinctions, when the pace of change exceeds the ability of species to adapt. Mass extinctions in the past have been triggered by large-scale volcanic events or asteroid impacts.

This time it’s us causing the changes. The unique ability of an organism to trigger a mass extinction has a possible precedent in the history of Earth.

As US palaeontologist Peter Ward explains in Under Green Sky (2008), the Permian-Triassic mass extinction (about 251 million years ago) was, at least in part, caused by toxic gas released by purple-green algae from the oceans.

Fire and ice

What has made humans so effective at causing environmental change? There are two essential factors.

First, with the exception of humans, no species has ever been able to harness combustion in order to magnify its energy output. Humans mastered fire at least 1 million years ago, and possibly earlier.

Fire has allowed us to cook. Consequently, we were able to increase our protein consumption, hunt, protect ourselves from cold and wild animals, move into inhospitable climate, clear the land, smelt metals and construct machines.

Fire vastly increased the amount of energy available for people to use. Human respiration dissipates 2–10 calories per minute, a camp fire covering one square metre releases approximately three to four orders of magnitude more, and the output of a 1,000 megawatt-hour power plant expends yet higher orders of magnitude than the energy produced by human respiration.

Second, humans have been blessed by a relatively stable climate over the past 7,000 years, although mean global variations of less than 1℃ were sufficient to cause serious disruption to agriculture and a decline to collapse of civilisations.

Ice core evidence for the concentration of greenhouse gases and atmospheric temperatures during the last 740,000 years suggests highly unstable and often extreme climates during the ice ages (glacial) and during abrupt cooling phases (called “stadials”) during warmer (interglacial) periods, preventing the development of farming.

A stable climate developed around 7,000 years ago. This allowed large-scale Neolithic production of extra food and thereby the emergence of villages, towns and later cities. This opened the way for Homo sapiens to expand its population and trigger energy output by huge amounts.

Thus, despite their high intelligence, humans were largely restricted to hunting and gathering until they mastered fire and then until the climate stabilised enough to allow farming.

The future

Since the onset of the industrial age, humans have released more than 600 billion tonnes of carbon, pushing mean global temperatures up by around 1°C globally, or 1.5°C on the continents.

Allowing for the cooling effects of sulphur aerosols (which reflect sunlight), the rise in temperatures is closer to 2°C, a mean global temperature similar to the Pliocene (2.6 - 5.3 million years ago). More recently the rise of atmospheric CO₂ accelerated, to rates higher than 3ppm per year during 2012-2016.

While we know a lot about what may happen in a warming world, widely agreed projections of future temperatures do not include the possibility of abrupt climate tipping point events.

Following the peak of previous warm periods, the Atlantic Mid-Ocean Circulation (AMOC) has repeatedly collapsed due to the melting Greenland ice sheet and flow of cold meltwater into the ocean, triggering much colder temperatures, followed by further warming. Examples are the cold Younger Dryas (12,900-11,700 years ago) and the collapse of the North American ice sheet about 8,200 years ago.

A future AMOC collapse may be signified by a growing cold region southeast of Greenland in the North Atlantic. An AMOC collapse will trigger a sharp decline in temperatures in the North Atlantic region for a limited but unspecified period. With high atmospheric CO₂ levels, such a collapse would be followed by renewed warming.

Recent history inexorably links human civilisation to the Earth’s climate. Given its mastery of fire and nuclear fission, humanity would need to be both wise and in control if it is to avert the energy released from these sources from threatening nature and its own future.

This article is based on Climate, Fire and Human Evolution (2016) by Andrew Glikson.

Andrew Glikson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

British Lung Foundation research finds those in poorer areas up to twice as affected as those in rich boroughs

People living in some of London’s most deprived areas have up to twice as much chance of dying from life-threatening lung conditions – from cancer to asthma – as those in the richest areas, new research has shown.

The research, by the British Lung Foundation charity, prompted the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to call for urgent measures to improve air quality and reduce pollution in the capital.

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Vote Leave campaign head mocks partly-EU funded conservation project to revive numbers of little terns as ‘aphrodisiacs for birds’

For Brexit campaigners trawling for examples of apparently badly spent EU cash to hold up for public opprobrium, a project that involves leaving plaster models of birds on beaches may have seemed easy to mock.

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Proposal for temporary licence extension for chemical used in weedkiller, to study concerns over cancer risks, fails to get sufficient majority in voting

EU nations have refused to back a limited extension of the pesticide glyphosate’s use, threatening withdrawal of Monsanto’s Roundup and other weedkillers from shelves if no decision is reached by the end of the month.

Contradictory findings on the carcinogenic risks of the chemical have thrust it into the centre of a dispute among EU and US politicians, regulators and researchers.

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Companies say offshore wind will generate electricity as cheaply as fossil fuels within a decade if properly supported

A group of offshore wind companies have pledged that the technology will generate electricity as cheaply as fossil fuels in Europe within a decade – but only if policymakers across the EU take the steps needed to ensure such growth as a matter of urgency.

The pledge(pdf) and the challenge to ministers are designed to reposition offshore wind as having a strong future in the EU. The European commission has tended to emphasise gas as the priority source of energy security.

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Two whale sharks destined for an ocean theme park in China were rescued after an 18-month investigation by Wildlife Conservation Society, covered by investigative photojournalist Paul Hilton. The operation, supported by Indonesia’s marine police, revealed where the protected species were being illegally caught and kept in sea pens by a major supplier of large marine megafauna to the international wildlife trade

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Solving the problem of climate change will require daring actions

The climate system is a unifying ethical field that extends from the physical to the metaphysical and connects your actions to my well-being, and vice-versa, no matter how remote your life is from mine. The Golden Rule we have always treated as an abstract moral recommendation is now visibly playing out its logic in the physical world.

This period in history must be about useful innovations that rescue Earth systems from collapse and dignify human beings everywhere. We must dare to imagine, explore, and remake the limits of our experience, together.

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Helen Pidd chooses her favourite bike clobber for 2016 after extensive testing in Mallorca ... and Manchester

Hurray! Summer is finally here and with it comes the best ever choice of women’s cycling gear. I’ve been testing a load of kit for the past few months in my native Manchester, plus sneaking off to Mallorca with my club to test the wicking properties of various jerseys and seeing which chamois offer best protection to my delicate bits. Here are my favourites:

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University lecturer Doreen Collyer named as victim of second fatal shark attack in Western Australian waters within five days as authorities seek to kill animal

The second shark victim in West Australian waters within five days has been named as university lecturer Doreen Collyer, as authorities try to catch and shoot the animal believed responsible.

Collyer, a lecturer with the school of nursing and midwifery at Perth’s Edith Cowan University, was hailed as a much-loved and respected colleague, mentor and teacher.

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MUNGO MAN: A new look at ancient bones with the latest DNA technology has confirmed Indigenous Australians as the continent's first people, say researchers.

Australia’s east coast is recovering from a weekend of wild winds, waves and flooding, caused by a weather pattern known as an East Coast Low. Tragically, several people have died in flooding.

Parts of New South Wales have received more than 400mm of rain since Friday morning. Some places such as Canberra and Forster recorded their wettest June day on record. Waves have also caused severe coastal erosion and damaged property.

East Coast Lows are a type of low-pressure system or cyclone that occur on the Australian east coast. They are not uncommon, with about seven to eight lows a year causing widespread rainfall along the east coast, particularly during late autumn and winter. An East Coast Low in April last year caused similar damage.

But whenever they happen they raise the question: did climate change play a role?

Good news?

Climate models suggest that the cyclones that move through the global mid-latitudes, around 30° to 50°S, are moving south. This is contributing to long-term declines in winter rainfall in southwestern Australia and parts of southeast Australia.

These models also suggest that the atmospheric conditions that help East Coast Lows form could decline by between 25% and 40% by the end of the century.

In recent work, my colleagues and I looked even more closely at how climate change will affect individual East Coast Lows.

Our results also found East Coast Lows are expected to become less frequent during the cool months May-October, which is when they currently happen most often.

But there is no clear picture of what will happen during the warm season. Some models even suggest East Coast Lows may become more frequent in the warmer months.

And increases are most likely for lows right next to the east coast – just the ones that have the biggest impacts where people live.

This chart shows how the frequency of East Coast Lows could change by 2080 across May-October (left) and November-April (right). Red indicates fewer storms, while blue indicates more. Crosses show high agreement between climate models. What about the big ones?

The results in the studies I talked about above are for all low-pressure systems near the coast – about 22 per year, on average.

But it’s the really severe ones that people want to know about, like the current event, or the storm that grounded tanker Pasha Bulker in Newcastle in June 2007.

These storms are much rarer, which makes it harder to figure out what will happen in the future. Most of the models we looked at had no significant change projected in the intensity of the most severe East Coast Low each year.

Warming oceans provide more moisture, so intense rainfall is expected to increase by about 7% for each degree of global warming. East Coast Lows are no different – even during the winter, when East Coast Lows are expected to become less frequent, the frequency of East Coast Lows with heavy rain is likely to increase.

Finally, even though there may be fewer East Coast Lows, they are occurring in an environment with higher sea levels. This means that many more properties are vulnerable to storm surges and the impact of a given storm surge is that much worse.

Was it climate change?

While the frequency of cool-season East Coast Lows looks likely to decrease in the future, changes in the big ones are a lot less certain.

However, East Coast Lows are very variable in frequency and hard to predict. So far, there hasn’t been any clear trend in the last 50 years, although East Coast Lows may have been more frequent in the past.

As for extreme rainfall, studies have found little influence of climate change on Australian extreme rainfall so far. Climate variability, such as El Niño, currently plays a much larger role. This doesn’t mean climate change is having no effect; it just means it’s hard to tell what impact a warming world is having at this stage.

So did climate change cause this weekend’s storms? No: these events, including intense ones, often occur at this time of year.

But it is harder to rule out climate change having any influence at all. For instance, what is the impact of higher sea levels on storm surges? And how much have record-warm sea temperatures contributed to rainfall and storm intensity?

We know that these factors will become more important as the climate system warms further – so as the clean-up begins, we should keep an eye on the future.

Acacia Pepler receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Blencathra, Lake District In the whole time I tread its slopes and ridges this evening, I don’t see another soul

In a bright, breeze-ruffled Derwentwater, a shoal of swimmers moves towards the shore. Dozens of wet-suited arms arc rhythmically above the water like small sea serpents, churning the lake as they go. A gauzy light filters down through high streaks of cirrus and ranks of towering cumulus look like smoke thrown up over the fells from a giant cannon salvo.

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Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 9 June 1916

June 8
“I came across six dead herons tied to a tree in the Goyt Valley,” writes a friend of mine. Some of them were quite young, evidently not having left the nest, and all had been killed about the same time. One reader of the “Manchester Guardian,” if he sees this note, will be especially annoyed; he has watched the birds here for years, even before he was certain that a small heronry had been established. Now some law-breaking keeper or water bailiff has apparently waited until the young birds were hatched to murder the whole brood; it was on the Cheshire side, and the heron is a protected bird in Cheshire. Much good protection seems to be! The sportsman, or the sportsman’s agents, appear to care nothing about the law, unless a sportsman of another type, usually called a poacher, is the offender.

The object of wild bird protection was to prove that wild birds were public or rather national property, but probably the excuse would be that it does not matter in war-time. Many of our finest sportsmen, however, have refused to preserve game during the war, but they, or at any rate some of them, observe the law and protect the scheduled birds.

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Scientists in the United States are trying to grow human organs inside pigs.

US scientists try to grow human organs inside pigs to solve the transplant shortage by injecting human stem cells into pig embryos.

Western Australia Department of Fisheries sets drum lines to catch and kill shark reported to be be between three and six metres long

A great white shark suspected of killing a 60-year-old diver in Perth’s north is being hunted.

The woman was diving with a 43-year-old man one kilometre offshore from Mindarie marina just before midday on Sunday when she was mauled.

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Drink containers are the biggest contributors to rubbish in Australia. Litter image from www.shutterstock.com

Australians are serial wasters. For every 1,000 square metres (or about four tennis courts), Australians litter about 49 pieces of rubbish. The biggest culprits are drink containers, making up five of the top nine recorded pieces of litter by volume.

One way to reduce this litter is to refund people when they deposit drink containers for recycling through container deposit recycling (CDR) schemes. South Australia and the Northern Territory have CDR schemes. In May this year, New South Wales Premier Mike Baird announced a CDR scheme for his state, to begin in July 2017.

Under the scheme most drink containers over 150ml will be eligible for a 10c refund through state-wide depots and reverse vending machines. This has re-ignited an ongoing debate, largely driven by the drinks industry, which – as previously debated on The Conversation - vociferously opposes these schemes.

Refunds work

As part of the NSW process, we at BehaviourWorks Australia at Monash University recently reviewed research and data from 47 examples of CDR schemes or trials around the world. This work was commissioned by, but independent of, the NSW Environment Protection Authority.

The 47 CDR schemes recovered an average of 76% of drink containers. In the United States, beverage container recovery rates for aluminium, plastic and glass in the 11 CDR states are 84%, 48% and 65% respectively, compared with 39%, 20% and 25% in non-CDR states. The figures are similar in South Australia, one of the longest-running CDR schemes in the world: 84%, 74% and 85% for cans, plastic and glass compared with national averages of 63%, 36% and 36%.

Some CDR schemes donate the refund to charity, but people are more likely to return a container for a refund. And the greater the refund, the greater the return rates. Most schemes refund 5-10c; the 11 schemes in Canadian provinces include those with refund rates as high as 40c for glass containers over 1 litre in Saskatchewan.

CDR schemes reduce litter overall. Data from seven US states show 69–83% reductions in container waste and 30–47% reductions in overall waste.

Finally, government CDR schemes are sustainable. The 40 government schemes worldwide have operated for an average of 24.8 years and all except two are still going.

Industry opposition

CDR schemes work, so why do they face continued opposition from the drinks industry?

The first major argument against is cost – to the public, to producers, to jobs and to government via, for example, a reduction in alcohol tax revenues due to reduced sales.

We found little published evidence to support these claims. The few studies identified were either funded by the beverage industry or theoretical arguments without any empirical data. Manufacturers and consumers will share the costs of the NSW CDR scheme, with consumers paying an estimated A$30 into the scheme annually should they not redeem any deposits.

The most robust cost data, the Packaging Impacts Decision Regulation Impact Statement, was prepared for the Australian government in 2014. This found that CDR schemes were more expensive than other packaging recovery and recycling options, but reduced litter the most.

The question of whether the cost is worth the return is an important aspect of the debate, and one that should be considered not just by the beverage industry but by all stakeholders, including the wider community.

Can industry do the job?

The second argument against government CDR schemes is that industry can recycle containers itself. Examples to support this argument are sparse and unconvincing.

In 2010, Coca-Cola launched a reverse vending machine scheme in Dallas Fort-Worth, Texas, with a target of 3 million beverage containers recycled per month. The scheme folded in October 2014, having achieved roughly a quarter of this target.

PepsiCo’s ongoing Dream Machine initiative of college-based reverse vending machines commenced in April 2010 with the goal of increasing the US beverage container recycling rate from 34% to 50% by 2018. It reported collection of over 93 million containers by 2012. Although an impressive-sounding yield, achieving the target of a 50% recycling rate would require multiplying this effort 400-fold.

These examples illustrate that industry-based CDR schemes appear either unsustainable or lack realistic targets.

Replacing recycling?

Thirdly, it is argued that CDR schemes will cannibalise existing kerbside recycling programs. The evidence suggests that the effect, if any, is the reverse – marginal increases in kerbside recycling have been noted following introduction of CDR legislation.

This may be linked to the “spillover effect” where people are more likely to do one thing if they are already doing something similar. The data from CDR schemes suggest that people may be more inclined to use kerbside recycling simply by buying a drink with a container deposit, not just getting the refund. As an example, South Australia’s overall recycling rate in 2008–2009 was 67%, against a national average of 51%.

Behavioural research also tells us that convenience is a major factor in CDR schemes, particularly how close collections are to people’s homes. Vending machines are perceived as convenient but data on whether they work are mixed.

There is also robust evidence that clean environments are likely to remain cleaner (than otherwise would be the case) and that littered environments are likely to attract more litter.

This underlines the findings from research that CDR schemes not only increase beverage container recycling, but reduce litter. Ongoing CDR debate should be informed by research evidence and involve all stakeholders in this multifaceted issue.

BehaviourWorks Australia received funding for this commissioned review from the NSW Environment Protection Authority. This funding was paid to Monash University, not any of the authors personally.

BehaviourWorks Australia received funding for this commissioned review from the NSW Environment Protection Authority. This funding was paid to Monash University, not any of the authors personally.

BehaviourWorks Australia received funding for this commissioned review from the NSW Environment Protection Authority. This funding was paid to Monash University, not any of the authors personally.

Huge swells and strong winds batter the New South Wales coastline in Australia, causing flooding and dangerous conditions in Sydney and the surrounding areas. Evacuation notices have been issued in areas including Lismore, the Cooks River and Chipping Norton amid heavy rainfall, with the stormy conditions set to continue into Monday

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