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CEC throws support behind proposal to buy out premium feed in tariffs in exchange for a battery storage device, and says storage does not need new subsidies, but widespread reform to bring the country's energy market into the 21st Century.

There are concerns about the security of the samples in the world's "doomsday" seed vault that holds a back-up collection of more than 900,000 of seeds from across the globe.

Viable mouse sperm stored in space gives hope for sperm banks on the Moon, a Japanese team says.

In the first of a series of videos on critical issues confronting regional Australia, Gabrielle Chan investigates the proposed Narrabri gas project in New South Wales. The oil and gas company Santos proposes 850 wells in the Pilliga and some locals see the opportunity for jobs. But others warn of the potential damage to the land and the water supply. Now it’s up the NSW government to decide

In Narrabri, everyone has a stake in the farming v mining fight

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In the first of a series of investigations into issues facing regional Australia, we report on how locals in a north-western New South Wales town are bracing to learn the fate of the state’s last coal seam gas project

Country towns are, by their nature, conservative. Change happens slowly and traditions are not discarded easily.

The conservative thinker Edmund Burke wrote that we must act as trustees of the world – what he called “temporary possessors and life renters”, rather than its “entire masters”.

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REUTERS/David Gray

2016-17 has been a great year for Australian farmers, with record production, exports and profits. These records have been driven largely by good weather, in particular a wet winter in 2016, which led to exceptional yields for major crops.

Unfortunately, these good conditions go very much against the long-term trend. Recent CSIRO modelling suggests that changes in climate have reduced potential Australian wheat yields by around 27% since 1990.

While rising temperatures have caused global wheat yields to drop by around 5.5% between 1980 and 2008, the effects in Australia have been larger, as a result of major changes in rain patterns. Declines in winter rainfall in southern Australia have particularly hit major broadacre crops (like wheat, barley and canola) in the key southeastern and southwestern cropping zones. There is strong evidence that these changes are at least partly due to climate change.

Climate change is affecting farm productivity

A recent study by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) confirms that changes in climate have had a negative effect on the productivity of cropping farms, particularly in southwestern Australia and southeastern Australia.

In general, the drier inland parts of the cropping zone have been more heavily affected, partly because these areas are more sensitive to rainfall decline. Smaller effects have occurred in the wetter zones closer to the coast. Here less rain can have little effect on – and can even improve – crop productivity.

Key southwestern and southeastern agricultural zones have been especially impacted by climate change. ABARES Farmers are reacting

However, it’s not all bad news. The study finds that Australian farmers are making great strides in adapting to climate change.

Much has been written about the fact that farm productivity in Australia has essentially flatlined since the 1990s, after several decades of consistent growth. The ABARES research suggests that changes in climate go some way towards explaining this slowdown.

After controlling for climate, there has been relatively strong productivity growth on cropping farms over the past decade. However, while farms have been improving, these gains have been offset by deteriorating conditions. The net result has been stagnant productivity.

ABARES

Furthermore, there is evidence that this resurgence in productivity growth is a direct result of adaptation to the changing climate. Our study found that over the past decade cropping farms have improved productivity under dry conditions and minimised their exposure to climate variability.

This contrasts with the 1990s, when farms focused more on maximising performance in good conditions at the expense of increasing their exposure to drought.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that winter cropping farms have made a range of changes over the last decade, to better exploit soil moisture left from the summer period. The most obvious is the shift toward conservation tillage during the 2000s, where some or all of a previous crop’s residue (such as wheat stubble) is left in a field when planting the new crop.

It seems that farmers are adapting to new seasonal trends of rainfall, which for most cropping farms means less rain in winter and more in summer.

Is the Australian cropping belt moving south?

Previous research has suggested that the zone of Australia suitable for growing broadacre crops, known as the cropping belt, appears to be shifting south.

Our study found evidence to support this, with ABARES and ABS data showing increased cropping activity in the wetter southern fringe of the cropping belt in Western Australia and Victoria. At the same time, there have been declines in some more inland areas, which have been heavily affected by the climate downturn.

The cropping belt appears to be moving south. The blue represent increases in cropping farms in the 2000s relative to the 1990s, and red represents decreases. ABARES, Author provided

These shifts may be partly due to other factors – such as commodity prices and technology – but it’s likely that climate is playing a role. Similar changes have already been observed in other agricultural sectors, including the shift of wine grapes into Tasmania in response to rising temperatures.

What does this mean for the future?

At present there remains much uncertainty over future rainfall patterns. While climate models and recent experience suggest a clear direction of change, there is little agreement over the magnitude.

On the positive side, we know that farmers are successfully adapting to the changes in climate and have been for some time. However, so far at least, farmers have only been able to tread water: improving productivity just fast enough to offset the decline in climate. To remain competitive, we need to find ways to improve productivity faster, especially if current climate trends continue or worsen.

Neal Hughes is Director, Water and Climate, at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy.

Neal Hughes is Director, Water and Climate, at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences. ABARES funded the research this article is based on.

Nepalese mountain guides have a physiology that uses oxygen more efficiently lowlanders.

EPA plan to focus on hazardous areas that pollute air and water, often near low-income communities and minorities, was dashed by president’s budget proposal

Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt’s vow to shift the agency back towards the “vital” work of dealing with toxic sites that pollute air and water has been dashed by a White House budget plan that would slash funding for the clean-ups.

Donald Trump’s 2018 budget plan proposes severe cuts to clean-up programs targeting some of the most toxic sites in the US, which are invariably situated near low-income communities and minorities, despite a push by the EPA to prioritize these hazardous areas.

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大象的DNA里可能藏着抗击癌症、延年益寿的秘密，哪怕为了人类自身，我们也该好好对待大象。(翻译：子明/chinadialogue)

• Why the Guardian is publishing its elephant reporting in Chinese
  

现在或许正是大象种群最黑暗的时代。中国正在取缔国内象牙贸易，欧盟也将着手对付象牙走私，但偷猎者们还在继续他们的血腥交易。与此同时，森林正遭到破坏，象群的迁徙路线被截断，人类和大象之间围绕土地、食物和水源的竞争愈演愈烈。

所以，现在必须让大家明白：保留大象的生存空间对人类自身益处多多。并且人类根本不需要特别做什么，大象自会找到自己的领地。

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A waste disposal firm claims that plastic drinking straws are "the ultimate in human wastefulness".

One is up a river estuary, the other is awaiting removal from a beach.

Experts are warning against feeding and getting too close to wild animals after a sea lion pulled a young girl underwater.

The nest in the Cairngorms in which three osprey chicks had hatched now appears to have been abandoned.

What does it say about the Trump administration that the president was fooled by a dumb, long-debunked climate myth?

As Politico reported, Trump’s deputy national security adviser, KT McFarland, gave him a fake 1970s Time magazine cover warning of a coming ice age. The Photoshopped magazine cover circulated around the internet several years ago, but was debunked in 2013. Four years later, McFarland put the fake document in Trump’s hands, and he reportedly “quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy … Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it”.

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The Arnavon Islands are the largest rookery for the critically endangered hawksbill turtle in the South Pacific.

Tammi Riedl and her partner believe ‘chemtrails’ are damaging our health. They prove conspiracies have gone mainstream – and aren’t just for the right wing

Standing between beds of golden beets and elephant garlic in the garden of Lincoln Hills, a small organic farm in Placer County, California, Tammi Riedl looks up and points to a stripe of white haze running across a cloudless blue sky.

“See that?” she asks, raising her eyebrows. “What do you think that is?”

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Agency says it has not received a submission on the rail line from Queensland government and has not conducted any cost-benefit analysis

Infrastructure Australia has not identified a proposed rail line linking the controversial Adani coalmine with the Abbot Point port as a priority, and it has not consulted the body which is expected to stump up a concessional loan.

The chief executive of Infrastructure Australia, Philip Davies, told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday that the rail line – which has been pushed assiduously by the federal resources minister, Matt Canavan – was not “something we’ve currently identified” as a priority project.

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Australia has numerous opportunities to cut emissions at a “cost saving” to investors, including distributed solar PV, fuel efficiency and forestry.

Clougha Pike, Forest of Bowland Once forbidding and forbidden, ringfenced for shooting, this is still a secret, silent place

Find a big map and you’ll see there’s a monstrous, heart-shaped blank in the middle of north-west England. You’ve passed it probably, but the big roads skirt it with such circuitous subtlety you don’t notice you’re orbiting something. For years, unless you paid to shoot things, it might well have remained more a brooding feeling than a sight, its extent out of view beyond this brow or that.

But then wildest Bowland became the poster-place for the second access revolution. The first was Kinder Scout, for its trespass in 1932,which legitimised the case for national parks. Bowland epitomised the unfinished business: the Countryside Rights of Way Act.

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The energy rule-maker's dystopian view of our immediate energy future underlines the growing divide on the future of renewables. There are those who see them as key to a smarter, cheaper, cleaner and more reliable grid. And other who simply believe it can't be done.