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Two coders will share a $55,000 prize for what a Nasa official calls the "ultimate 'geek' dream assignment.

After Trump’s revival of the Keystone XL pipeline project, some communities along its route are getting ready to fight back. Others see the US president keeping his promise to ‘make America great again’. The Guardian drove along the proposed route of the pipeline, through three red states – Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska – to hear what those who will be affected have to say about it

• Keystone defiance triggers assault on a constitutional right
• Life on the Keystone XL route: where opponents fear the ‘black snake’

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The Jali Ardhi, or ‘care for the land’ project, studies the impact of soil erosion on Maasai communities and their grazing lands. Photojournalist Carey Marks captures the changing landscape, its people – and the challenges they face

• The exhibition is at Plymouth University from 22 May to 2 June
  

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An electricity market "about as bad as you can get" has helped put household solar – and storage – back in the spotlight of Australia's renewables shift, prompting forecasts of "massive growth."

Scientists are counting albatrosses on remote islands from satellite images.

Greens challenge Labor to get new modelling to justify its support for an emissions intensity scheme, as attention turns to what's next for energy policy now that the renewable critics have egg on their face over predictions the RET could never be met.

Tesla shares fall after a bigger than expected Q1 loss. But revenue was up, and Elon Musk has his mind on other things...

Wolsingham, Weardale We were about to give up when we spotted the first morel, its convoluted, toffee-coloured, cap not much larger than a golf ball

Every winter this gently sloping bank on the outside of a bend in the Wear is swept clean by flood water. When spring arrives buried plant life reasserts itself through layers of sandy silt deposited when the river has swirled through the alders.

First the snowdrops spear through the surface. Last time we passed this way yellow star of Bethlehem flowers had appeared among emerging wild garlic leaves. On this day, less than a month later, the vegetation was a waist-high mosaic of butterbur, sweet cicely, ground elder and cranesbill leaves.

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Super-sharp images from a US satellite are keeping track of remote bird-breeding sites.

Energy Action today announced the launch of the Energy Action mobile app.

At the free to attend exhibition and workshops, more than 50 exhibitors and sponsors will showcase the latest energy storage products and emerging technologies that are shaking up the energy market.

New study finds there never was an unexpected lull in climate change but says the science community needs to communicate better

People don’t talk about how global warming has stopped, paused or slowed down all that much any more – three consecutive hottest years on record will tend to do that to a flaky meme.

But there was a time a few years ago when you couldn’t open your news feed without being told global warming had stopped by some conservative columnist, climate science denier or one of those people who spend their waking hours writing comments on stories like this.

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Germany reaches record level of 85% renewable energy over long weekend, but days like this expected to be common by 2030.

Pioneering work that extracts information from audio of gunshots could help solve criminal cases.

Australian scientists are using recycled denim to create more environmentally friendly jeans.

James Gleeson's Delenda est Carthago offers a striking visualisation of a collapsing civilisation.

What does climate change look like in Australia? Are we already seeing our landscapes shift before our eyes without even realising it?

Perhaps thought-provoking art can help us come to terms with our changing world, by finding new ways to engage, inform and hopefully inspire action. For hasn’t art always been the bridge between the head and the heart?

With that aim, the ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2017 festival, organised by CLIMARTE, features 30 specially curated exhibitions running from April 19 to May 14 in galleries across Melbourne and regional Victoria, following on from their previous award-winning festival in 2015.

Changing landscapes

One of the festival’s exhibitions is Land, Rain and Sun, featuring more than 100 landscapes dating from the 19th century to today, curated by gallery owner Charles Nodrum and captioned by us to offer a climate scientist’s perspective on the works. We also collaborated with CLIMARTE directors Guy Abrahams and Bronwyn Johnson to bring the idea to life.

The exhibition, featuring Australian artists including Sidney Nolan, James Gleeson, Eugene Von Guerard, Louis Buvelot, Russell Drysdale, Fred Williams, Michael Shannon and Ray Crooke, is designed to help start a conversation about what climate change might look like in Australia.

Curating an exhibition of artworks as seen through the eyes of a climate scientist poses a challenge: how can we help make the invisible visible, and the unimaginable real?

As we sifted through scores of artistic treasures, there were a few works that confronted us in unexpected ways. The first was Cross Country Skiers, painted in 1939 by renowned South Australian artist John S. Loxton. It depicts the Victorian High Country heavily blanketed in snow, as two skiers make their way through the beautiful wintery landscape.

John S. Loxton, Cross Country Skiers, Victorian High Country, c. 1935. Watercolour on paper. Charles Nodrum Gallery, Author provided

When we saw this image, we realised that in decades to come this work might be considered a historical record, serving as a terrible reminder of a landscape that vanished before our eyes.

Average snow depth and cover in Australia have declined since the 1950s as temperatures have risen rapidly. Under high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, climate models show severe reductions, with snow becoming rare by late in the century except on the highest peaks.

The Australian ski season could shorten by up to 80 days a year by 2050 under worst-case predictions, with the biggest impacts likely to be felt at lower-elevation sites such as Mt Baw Baw and Lake Mountain in Victoria.

As temperatures continue to rise, our alpine plants and animal communities are in real danger of being pushed off mountain tops, having nowhere to migrate to and no way of moving from or between alpine “islands”.

James Gleeson’s surreal apocalyptic painting Delenda est Carthago is a provocative work that got us thinking about a future marred by unmitigated climate change. The title refers to Rome’s annihilation of Carthage in 149 BC. According to the ancient historian Polybius, the conquering Roman general, Scipio Aemilianus, famously wept as he likened the event to the mythical destruction of Troy and to the eventual end he could foresee for Rome.

James Gleeson, Delenda est Carthago, 1983. Oil on linen. Charles Nodrum Gallery, Author provided

As climate scientists, we are disturbingly aware of the threats to society not only here in Australia, but all over the world. Unmitigated human-induced climate change could potentially see the planet warm by more than 4℃ by the end of the century.

In Australia, inland regions of the country could warm by more than 5℃ on average by 2090. In Melbourne, the number of days over 40℃ could quadruple by the end of the century, causing extreme heat stress to humans, wildlife, plants and infrastructure, especially in urban areas.

Warming of this rate and magnitude is a genuine threat to our civilisation. Gleeson’s artwork made us consider that the unimaginable may happen, as it has in the past.

On a more optimistic note, Imants Tillers’ work New Litany highlights the importance of communities taking a stand for environmental protection. Over our history Australians have fought against logging of native forests, nuclear power, whaling, and for the restoration of dammed river systems like the Snowy.

Imants Tillers, New Litany, 1999. Synthetic polymer paint and gouche on canvas. Charles Nodrum Gallery, Author provided

Public concern in Australia about climate change reached a peak in 2006, largely in response to Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth and Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers. Yet the decade since then has brought political turmoil, and national greenhouse emissions continue to rise.

The recent March for Science is a reminder that the stakes are now higher than ever before, and that many people really do care about the future.

The science is telling us that our climate is changing, often faster than we imagined. The range of CSIRO’s latest climate change projections reminds us that the future is still in our hands. We can avoid the worst aspects of climate change by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we need to act now.

Art has always been a powerful portal to understanding how we feel about our world. Let’s hope it helps safeguard our climatic future.

Joelle Gergis receives funding from the Australian Research Council

While at CSIRO (1989-2014) Penny Whetton's research team received federal government funding for climate projections research.

Facts, truth and opinion, always at the heart of journalism, are now the cause of an existential crisis over why it exists

Right after the election of Donald Trump, a man widely considered a fake and a fool by many of its writers, the New York Times issued an extraordinary statement promising to “strive always to understand and reflect all political perspectives”.

In April, amid criticism that the Times, along with others in the mainstream media, had ignored the concerns of the American masses, the paper appointed a conservative columnist known for controversial views on climate change, race and gender. Welcoming Bret Stephens, the opinion page editor said that Times’ subscribers “want their views to be challenged.”

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Amur tigers were nearly driven to extinction, but conservation work in Russia is helping them bouncing back slowly.

After Trump’s revival of the Keystone XL pipeline project, some communities along its route are getting ready to fight back. Others see the US president keeping his promise to ‘make America great again’. The Guardian drove along the proposed route of the pipeline, through three red states – Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska – to hear what those who will be affected have to say about it

• Keystone defiance triggers assault on a constitutional right
• Life on the Keystone XL route: where opponents fear the ‘black snake’

Continue reading...

Queensland environment department says it is considering action against mining giant with fines of up to $3.8m possible

Adani faces a possible multimillion-dollar fine for environmental breaches over floodwaters released from its Queensland coal port after Cyclone Debbie.

The Queensland environment department said it would consider “compliance action” against Adani over discharges of water containing more than eight times the level of sediment allowed from Abbot Point terminal.

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