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The 'Prof of Goth' Nick Groom on the origin of the vampire

After years of battling psychological demons, Jake Dorothy took the radical decision to go and work in an elephant sanctuary

One of the most significant moments in my life came one afternoon about five months ago, when I was volunteering in an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. I was tidying the park as part of my duties when I came across a beautiful, solitary elephant with a badly deformed front leg. Concerned as to why she was alone and curious about her physical health, I asked a guide.

Kabu was 26 years old, like me. She had been rescued about a year before but sadly never settled with a herd. She had been used for the illegal logging trade since infancy, pulling huge weights up and down steep mountain ravines. During one of these tortuous journeys, a log came loose, rolled into her and badly broke her leg. Forced to continue working, her injury never healed. When Kabu was finally rescued she was weak and traumatised. When she arrived at the park she had tears rolling from her eyes – from relief, said the guide.

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The organisation’s stance puts it at odds with its members and conservationists and misses the opportunity to be the decisive voice in the debate

MPs will on Monday debate a ban on driven grouse shooting following a petition signed by more than 120,000 people. But there will be one missing signature that could have swayed the argument decisively behind a ban: that of the RSPB.

As a former employee and lifelong member I have become increasingly frustrated with the society’s desire to protect hen harriers by arguing for new laws to licence moors but not supporting a ban. It is a position which I strongly believe many of its 1 million-plus members now also find untenable.

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Climate denial often centers around myths about the importance of coal in alleviating poverty

A dozen international poverty and development organizations published a report last week on the impact of building new coal power plants in countries where a large percentage of the population lacks access to electricity. The report’s conclusions are strikingly counter-intuitive: on the whole, building coal power plants does little to help the poor, and often it can actually make them poorer.

Delivering electricity to those in energy poverty is certainly important. For example, household air pollution killed 4.3 million people globally in 2012; many of those lives could be saved and health improved with the use of electric stoves to replace burning wood or charcoal. However, the question remains whether coal is the best way to deliver that electricity.

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Planting trees is a cost-effective way to tackle urban air pollution, which is a growing problem for many cities, a study suggests.

Australian Howard Bamsey has been selected to head the $100 Billion Green Climate Fund.

These days, after an extreme weather event like a cyclone, bushfire, or major storm, it’s common to find people asking: was it climate change?

We also often hear people saying it is impossible to attribute any single weather event to climate change, as former prime minister Tony Abbott and the then environment minister Greg Hunt said after the bushfires in New South Wales in 2013.

While this may have been true in the 1990s, the science of attributing individual extreme events to global warming has advanced significantly since then. It is now possible to link aspects of extreme events to climate change.

However, as I describe in an article co-written by Susan Hassol, Simon Torok and Patrick Luganda and published today in the World Meteorologcal Organization’s Bulletin, how we communicate these findings has not kept pace with the rapidly evolving science. As a result, there is widespread confusion about the links between climate change and extreme weather.

Evolving science

The science of attributing individual extreme weather events to climate change dates back to 2003, when a discussion article in Nature raised the question of liability for damages from extreme events. The idea was that if you could attribute a specific event to rising greenhouse gas emissions, you could potentially hold someone to account.

This was soon followed by a 2004 study of the 2003 European heatwave, which caused more than 35,000 deaths. This analysis found that climate change had more than doubled the risk of such extreme heat.

These early studies laid the foundations for using climate models to analyse the links between specific extreme weather events and human-induced climate change. Many studies since then have focused on putting numbers to the risks and likelihoods of various extremes.

Attribution science has now evolved to the point where it is possible to analyse extreme events almost as they happen. The World Weather Attribution project is an example of an international effort to sharpen and accelerate our ability to analyse and communicate the influence of climate change on extreme weather events.

This project examined the major flooding in France and nearby countries in 2016. The floods – which forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes and caused damage estimated at more than a billion euros in France alone – were made about 80% more likely by climate change.

Lost in translation

The communication of this science outside the research community has, with a few notable exceptions, not fully reflected these scientific advances. This confusion about the state of the science comes from many sources.

The media, politicians and some scientists outside this area of research still often claim that we can’t attribute any individual event to climate change. In some countries – including Australia – the causes of specific extremes can be seen as a politically charged issue.

In the aftermath of an extreme event such as a fire or flood, it can be seen as insensitive or overly political to discuss the human-induced causes of loss of life or property. The views of political and media leaders can be influential in shaping public opinions about extreme climate events.

It doesn’t help that confidence and uncertainty are widely misunderstood concepts outside the scientific community.

Another part of the problem is that for a long time, many scientists themselves repeated this message because of the complexity of the climate system. All extremes take place in a naturally variable and chaotic climate system, which complicates event attribution.

Attribution scientists have the greatest clarity and confidence in attributing heat events that occur over large areas and extended time periods. For example, two separate studies found that the 2013 extreme heat in Australia would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.

Rainfall events are trickier. This complexity can create confusion about the extreme events that are better understood, and lead to missed communication opportunities.

The need for better communication

Understanding the precise causes of recent extreme weather and climate events isn’t just an academic pursuit.

Extreme event attribution has become a research avenue with important benefits to the public. Society’s beliefs about which events are caused by climate change will influence decisions about how to adapt to those changes. Poor decisions in this area can jeopardise infrastructure and human health.

For example, if we dismissed the link between climate change and the 2003 European heatwave without scientific analysis, we would be poorly prepared for protecting vulnerable people from heat stress in the future under further global warming.

Any assessment of future climate risk and preparedness requires a scientific basis. It should not be based on opinions formed from personal perceptions, media reports, or politicians’ comments.

A community responsibility

Changes in extreme weather and climate events are the primary way that most people experience climate change. While scientific discussions around global average temperatures are useful for understanding the wider issue, you don’t experience “global average temperature”. Yet we all have some direct experience of extremes.

We argue that scientists need to communicate accurately the scientific links between extremes and global warming, so that people can make informed decisions about actions to limit the risks posed by these events.

We propose several simple guidelines for clear communication around extremes:

• Lead with what the science does understand and save the caveats and uncertainties for later. For example, start by explaining the impact of global warming on heatwaves and then discuss the specifics of an individual event.

• Use metaphors to explain risk and probabilities. For instance, discussion of global warming as “loading the dice toward more rolls of extreme events”, or “stacking the deck” in favour of extremes, are examples of accessible language.

• Avoid loaded language like “blame” and “fault”.

• Use accessible language for conveying uncertainty and confidence. For example, scientists often use the word “uncertainty” to discuss the envelope of future climate scenarios, but to the public, “uncertainty” means we just don’t know. Instead, use the word “range”.

• Try to avoid language that creates a sense of hopelessness. For example, rather than calling further increases in some extreme weather “inevitable”, we can discuss the choice we face between a future with increases in extreme weather, and one with less.

These guidelines may also help the public evaluate the accuracy of reporting about weather extremes. If the link between an extreme event and climate change is rejected outright without an attribution analysis, it probably doesn’t represent the evolving science.

Conversely, if an extreme is presented as evidence of climate change, without discussion of nuance and complexity, it is equally unlikely to reflect up-to-date attribution science.

If scientists get better at communicating their work, and readers get better at assessing what’s accurate and what’s not, we will all be better informed to make choices that can hopefully stave off a future with more extreme weather.

This article is based on an analysis published today in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Bulletin, led by Susan Hassol and Simon Torok.

Sophie Lewis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Gelt Woods, Cumbria The modern river has sunk down into a narrow channel, carving the rock into strange shapes like rolling muscles or slumped candle wax

The sides of the river Gelt glow with beech leaves, flat ovals of burnt orange sticking to wet ledges. We take the footpath into the woods at Low Geltbridge, crossing the little Powterneth beck where it joins the main course. Vines of honeysuckle drape the trees, their scarlet berries vivid in the flat light. Acorns pummel our shoulders and lie splattered across the path. On hearing voices, a dipper skims downstream.

As the trees lose their cover it becomes clearer how the Gelt twists its way along the bottom of this U-shaped gorge. The very first river here ran as meltwater under ice, carrying with it boulders and debris as it funnelled its way down to the Solway, scouring out the bedrock known as the Triassic St Bees sandstone. During the last ice age there was a massive confluence in this area, with Scottish glaciers moving south, those forming the Tyne Gap lumbering west and those creating the Eden valley pushing north.

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Despite Beijing having ratified the Paris climate change agreement, Patricia Adams says China is still 'chugging along the smoky path to prosperity'.

Shane Rattenbury to replace Simon Corbell as ACT climate minister, marking second time a Greens member appointed in any Australian ministry.

NSW parliamentary secretary Adam Marshall says solar households in NSW should have the ability to trade electricity that they generate from their rooftops.

The mid-west American state of Iowa is rapidly gaining on South Australia, with 36% wind energy, headed to 40% by 2020.

Infigen Energy attributes 56% lift in revenue to strong winds and higher merchant electricity prices in SA and NSW, and higher LGC prices.

Car industry decline may explain falling volumes. Meanwhile, renewable advocates should prepare for price backlash on renewable closures; and what's behind a change of view on regulatory decisions?

At double the capacity and almost half the cost/kWh, Tesla's Powerwall 2 illustrates the break-neck speed at which battery storage is evolving.

Global study reveals huge number of children breathing toxic fumes more than six times over safe limits, while billions are affected by air pollution that exceeds guidelines

Three hundred million of the world’s children live in areas with extreme air pollution, where toxic fumes are more than six times international guidelines, according to new research by Unicef.

The study, using satellite data, is the fist to make a global estimate of exposure and indicates that almost 90% of the world’s children - two billion - live in places where outdoor air pollution exceeds World Health Organisation (WHO) limits.

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If Hazelwood departs the market, as one of the cheapest generators in the NEM, it seems logical that electricity prices will increase. So what can we expect to happen?

The world is moving in fits and starts but with gathering momentum toward a more diversified, low-carbon energy mix.

Victoria's famous river red gum wetlands get a good soaking; Bec Bovell is Cygnet's mushroom lady; we go behind the scenes at the Weengallon ladies day; and Stan Heausler calls last drinks at the Grove Hill Hotel.

The IEA has once again been accused of ignoring the reality of solar PV's cost reduction and pace of installation in its latest report.