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A fishing ban extension is said to be the best hope for the world's most endangered marine species.

Australia’s first business accelerator program dedicated to developing clean energy startup companies has opened applications for its second intake less than two months after launching.

The London-based satellite operator puts up a fourth spacecraft in its global broadband network.

PLASTIC PILE UP: The beaches of World Heritage-listed Henderson Island are littered with more plastic debris than anywhere else in the world, a survey of the remote South Pacific wilderness finds.

Mostly the solar panels are on houses, hardly any are on blocks of flats - where more than two million of us live. However a new project in Melbourne is using a new technology that overcomes this barrier.

Cocaine traffickers’ efforts to launder profits by creating agricultural land results in loss of millions of acres, researchers say

Cocaine traffickers attempting to launder their profits are responsible for the disappearance of millions of acres of tropical forest across large swaths of Central America, according to a report.

The study, published on Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that drug trafficking was responsible for up to 30% of annual deforestation in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, turning biodiverse forest into agricultural land.

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Australia is a land of extremes. We’ve experienced all manner of climate extremes over the past few years, from heatwaves (both on land and over the Great Barrier Reef), to droughts and flooding rains.

We can already link some of these recent extreme events to climate change. But for others, the link is less clear.

So far we have had about 1℃ of global warming above the average pre-industrial climate. So how will extreme weather events change with more warming in the future? Will they become more frequent? Will they become more severe?

We have investigated these questions in our new research, published today in Nature Climate Change.

Climate targets

The Paris Agreement, brokered in 2015, committed the world’s governments to:

Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2℃ above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.

It is vital that we understand how climate extremes in Australia might change if we limit global warming to either 1.5℃ or 2℃, and what the implications might be of pursuing the more lenient target rather than the more ambitious one.

In our study we used state-of-the-art climate model simulations to examine the changing likelihood of different climate extremes under four different scenarios: a natural world without any human-caused climate change; the world of today; a 1.5℃ warmer world; and a 2℃ warmer one.

Heat extremes are here to stay

First, we looked at hot Australian summers, like the record-breaking “angry summer” of 2012-13.

We already knew that human influences on the climate had increased the likelihood of hot summers. Our results show that this trend would continue with future warming. In fact, in a world of 2℃ global warming, even an average summer would outstrip those historically hot ones like 2012-13.

Australian summer temperatures are strongly related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, with hot summers more likely to occur during El Niño events, and cooler ones during La Niña episodes.

In the past, a summer as hot as 2012-13 would have been very unlikely during a La Niña. But our modelling predicts that with either 1.5℃ or 2℃ of global warming, we could expect similarly angry summers to occur during both El Niño and La Niña periods.

We already know that the sea surface temperatures associated with mass bleaching of much of the Great Barrier Reef in early 2016 would have been virtually impossible without climate change. If the world continues to warm to either the 1.5℃ or 2℃ levels, very warm seas like we saw early last year would become the norm.

High sea temperatures linked to coral bleaching in Great Barrier Reef will become more likely in a warmer world. Author provided

In fact, our research suggests that with 2℃ of global warming, the future average sea temperatures around the Great Barrier Reef would be even hotter than the extremes observed around the time of the 2016 bleaching.

Less change for heavy rains and droughts

In December 2010 Queensland was devastated by severe flooding following very heavy rainfall. Our analysis suggests that this kind of event is highly unusual, and may well continue to be so. There isn’t a clear signal for an increase or decrease in those events with ongoing climate warming.

Natural climate variability seems to play a greater role than human-driven climate change (at least below the 2℃ threshold) when it comes to influencing Australian heavy rainfall events.

The Millennium Drought across southeast Australia led to water shortages and crop failures. Drought is primarily driven by a lack of rainfall, but warmer temperatures can exacerbate drought impacts by increasing evaporation.

Our results showed that climate change is increasing the likelihood of hot and dry years like we saw in 2006 across southeast Australia. At 1.5℃ and 2℃ of global warming these events would probably be more frequent than they are in today’s world.

Heat extremes are much more common at 2℃ than 1.5℃ Author provided Not a lost cause

It is clear that Australia is going to suffer from more frequent and more intense climate extremes as the world warms towards (and very likely beyond) the levels described in the Paris Agreement.

If we miss these targets, the warming will continue and the extremes we experience in Australia are going to be even worse.

With either 1.5℃ or 2℃ global warming, we will see more extremely hot summers across Australia, more frequent marine heatwaves of the kind that can cause bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, and probably more frequent drought conditions too.

The more warming we experience, the worse the impacts will be. The solution is clear. To limit global warming, the world’s nations need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions – fast.

Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Ben Henley receives funding from an ARC Linkage Project and is an associate investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

David Karoly receives funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and an ARC Linkage grant. He is a member of the Climate Change Authority and the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

Swansea University researchers are using the models to understand how best to use tidal power.

Henderson Island, part of the Pitcairn group, is covered by 18 tonnes of plastic – the highest density of anthropogenic debris recorded anywhere in the world

One of the world’s most remote places, an uninhabited coral atoll, is also one of its most polluted.

Henderson Island, a tiny landmass in the eastern South Pacific, has been found by marine scientists to have the highest density of anthropogenic debris recorded anywhere in the world, with 99.8% of the pollution plastic.

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The privatisation of public space through redevelopment is the main culprit, writes Michael Ball. Plus additional letters from Marie Paterson, Professor Steven Rose and Beryl Wilkins

Re Ian Jack (We hardly notice them. But street trees are monuments to city life, 13 May), part of the Victorian heritage of the public realm were 8 million trees, greening public streets which had formerly been private roads on great land-owning estates. Ian Jack sets out the threat to this heritage, from disease and pollution to overzealous council pruning. But the most urgent threat is the re-privatisation of public realm through redevelopment. Local councils are offloading maintenance costs of streets and trees by granting permission for estates where the developer retains ownership and responsibility for upkeep. And private developers prefer “architect’s trees” – small, shaped, boxed, contained – rather than the sprawling London plane.

But there is hope. The ultimate symbol was the garden bridge – a private bridge across a public river and public realm, with 30 mature South Bank trees facing the axe to make way for private designer trees in planters. Thankfully, the mayor of London has pulled the plug on this landgrab. Is the tide turning?
Michael Ball
Thames Central Open Spaces

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Readers question farmers’ claims that they are proud and environmentally sound custodians of the countryside

Robin Milton, chairman of the NFU Uplands forum, and sheep farmer Louise MacArthur (Letters, 13 May) completely misunderstand the point George Monbiot is making (The Lake District as a world heritage site – what a disaster that would be, 10 May) in resisting the designation of the Lake District as a world heritage site. This landscape is totally artificial and manmade: it is a “sheepwrecked landscape” which could not be resurrected if designated as a world heritage site. Louise MacArthur’s “glorious fells” should, except for the highest ground, be partially forested, and would be but for the depredations of free-ranging sheep which prevent natural tree growth. Hence the relative paucity of forest in the British Isles, compared with almost all of our European neighbours. Of course, it is not all down to sheep. In the highlands of Scotland, deer are also significant players (as is heather-burning to sustain grouse). A major problem is that most Britons have no idea that the bare upland areas that dominate Scotland, much of Wales and the higher Pennines were once extensively clothed in trees. Our Neolithic stone-axe-wealding ancestors started the tree felling, a job that was completed during the industrial revolution.

If anyone doubts this scenario, just take a look at the richly forested countries of northern and eastern Europe or Canada. You will be hard put to match the huge expanses of bare moorland that characterise these British Isles. If sheep in Lakeland were confined to the lower valleys, where most are concentrated anyway, but excluded from the higher, steeper slopes, the landscape would revert to its true ecological state and beauty.
Alan Woolley
Weybridge, Surrey

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Global inventory of nitrogen oxide emissions shows highly polluting diesel cars are ‘urgent public health issue’

The global human health impact of the diesel emissions scandal has been revealed by new research showing a minimum of 38,000 people a year die early due to the failure of diesel vehicles to meet official limits in real driving conditions.

Researchers have created the first global inventory of the emissions pumped out by cars and trucks on the road, over and above the legal limits which are monitored by lab-based tests. Virtually all diesel cars produce far more toxic nitrogen oxides (NOx) than regulations intend and these excess emissions amounted to 4.6m tonnes in 2015, the team found.

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If climate change heats world by more than 1.5C, damaged buildings are likely to increase by over 50% across Midlands, Yorkshire and Northern Ireland

The UK is set to reap the whirlwind of climate change with the huge damage caused by wind storms expected to increase sharply, according to new analysis.

Even the minimum global warming now expected – just 1.5C – is projected to raise the cost of windstorm destruction by more than a third in parts of the country. If climate change heats the world even further, broken roofs and damaged buildings are likely to increase by over 50% across a swathe of the nation.

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The iguana chase won Planet Earth II the Bafta for Must-See Moment.

How different Earth's history might have been if the space rock had struck a different location.

A pod of orcas make several close passes of a fishing boat off the coast of Orkney.

Torrential downpours in Louisiana led to catastrophic flooding in August 2016, submerging entire communities and displacing thousands of residents. Volunteers did whatever they could to help – rescuing stranded people, organising food and shelter and providing security. In their own words, members of the self-styled ‘Cajun army’ tell the inspirational story of how a natural disaster made their community stronger

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Reforms touted by Queensland government would mandate targets and ratios for progressive rehabilitation of land

Adani may be forced into an expensive revamp of its Queensland coal plans if mining rehabilitation reforms touted by the Palaszczuk government prevail after the next state election.

The environmental group Lock The Gate says Adani now plans a “lowest cost” program to rehabilitate its Carmichael mine, including waiting 39 years to start on rehabilitation of huge open-cut pits that will leave more than 3,300 hectares “completely un-rehabilitated”.

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Tokamak Energy thinks its mini fusion generators will allow the company to test ideas faster than their competitors.

We sit transfixed, watching the Great Barrier Reef bleach, while our leaders brandish lacquered lumps of coal and energy policy is shaped by tweets.

Each day reminds us of the line credited to the US poet Dorothy Parker: “what fresh hell is this?”

Her contemporary Antonio Gramsci, got it about right when he wrote:

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

We are (we hope) in the middle of a “socio-technical transition”. “What’s that?” I hear you ask.

A transition has been defined as a “radical transformation towards a sustainable society as a response to a number of persistent problems confronting contemporary modern societies”.

It’s “socio-technical” because there are going to have to be some rather dramatic and rapid changes in how we do things, both in our societies and our technologies (the two are intertwined).

How does a transition happen?

One recent strand of work that hits the sweet spot (in that it keeps academics in grant funding and lattes while also being of actual use to civil society) is the study of who does what in a transition – the so-called “structure/agency/power issue”.

Classically, overarching theories of long-term change overlook the power of individuals and small groups to shape history, focusing instead on whole social classes or new technologies. But the reality is that we are not (usually) dupes, victims of impersonal social forces. As academics Frank Geels and Johan Schot wrote in 2007:

…actors try to make sense, change perceptions as they go along, engage in power struggles, lobby for favourable regulations, and compete in markets.

Academics who study social power have endless chicken-and-egg debates about structure and agency – how much wiggle room do “entrepreneurs” have to change the system from within?

The typical answers to these questions can leave even the geekiest academic punch-drunk. But to misquote Steve Winwood, we have to “role with it” , by which I mean think about the roles that individuals and groups perform in any social transition. Let’s have a look at some of them.

The controversial author Malcolm Gladwell has argued that three types of people can speed an idea through society: connectors, mavens, and salesmen.

• Connectors are people with lots of friends and acquaintances who spend time maintaining these connections, leveraging the strength of weak ties.

• Mavens gather information, evaluating the messages that come through the network and amplifying those they like.

• Salespeople are persuaders who are capable of propagating messages using the force of their character.

Recently, two researchers at Melbourne University’s Sustainable Society Institute produced a very readable (and freely available!) report) called “They make the change: roles of actors in transitions”.

In it they suggest four particular social roles (they have others in mind too – stay tuned):

• Frontrunners are “geared towards making alternative solutions known and available early on” and “act upon their own personal values”. In other words, these people are the pioneers, the dreamers who want to build something better.

• Connectors (in agreement with Gladwell above) do two forms of connective work. They connect solutions to systems, and also try to embed them (finding ongoing budget streams, creating constituencies) and secondly connect actors with other actors, creating alliances and coalitions (for [advocacy of policies, technologies and so on.)

• Topplers introduce change and “phase out institutions to make way for alternative solutions”. They “articulate the values that connect allies and coalitions”, or in layman’s terms, they have the gift of the gab.

• Supporters are not transformative themselves but when they start using (buying, sharing) solutions proposed by frontrunners, this “provides the legitimisation, and expresses the societal need for the new solutions and changed systems”. Think baby-boomers buying solar panels in their millions.

Nice and neat, isn’t it? But as these authors would tell you, there are many caveats. Three will do for now, all fairly obvious.

First, academics warn that there is never merely one actor (or one type of person) driving a transition.

Second, things change. As two academics recently wrote:

Agents are not “just there” with a stable, uncontested identity, instead they constantly need to (re)define who they are and why they are a relevant voice in a policy discourse.

Other academics concur:

…instead of being predefined and static, roles such as policymaker or citizen seem to always be in the process of being constructed, deconstructed, reconstructed, contested, as well as enacted, made and used.

Third, what of hybrid identities like “prosumers”? And what about those who are just trying to maintain the status quo?

Academics, always hedging, will tell you that everything is in flux, so there are no hard and fast rules. That’s true, but only up to a point – don’t expect Malcolm Roberts and Adam Bandt to be teaming up any time soon.

So far, so abstract. But how does all this play out in Australia’s great energy transition?

Well, you have pugnacious entrepreneurs - “topplers” - trying to undermine the traditional norms (hello Richard Denniss and the Australia Institute).

Some “frontrunners” switch from advocacy to opposition (hello, Prime Minister) or, conversely, from digging up coal to powerful climate evangelism. Some outlive their funding, if not their usefulness - the soon-to-be defunct Climate Institute was a “connector” par excellence.

Of course, this is a problem we should to be solving quicker than we are causing, and we need to be more “transruptive”. Therefore, I have two questions for you, gentle reader.

First, what kinds of people - besides those trying to throw sand in the gears - are missing from the above typology? And second, how can those pushing for change - the frontrunners, the connectors, the social movers – sustain and escalate their pressure, and meet not just the scale of the challenge, but also its speed?

Answers in the comments, please.