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Our national parks need protection
‘For us, the land is sacred’: on the road with the defenders of the world’s forests
Of the many thousands of participants at the Bonn climate conference which begins on 6 November, there will arguably be none who come with as much hope, courage and anger as the busload of indigenous leaders who have been criss-crossing Europe over the past two weeks, on their way to the former German capital.
The 20 activists on the tour represent forest communities that have been marginalised over centuries but are now increasingly recognised as important actors against climate change through their protection of carbon sinks.
Continue reading...Climate change: US report at odds with some in Trump team
Coral bleaching badly affected reefs of Kimberley, study finds
Up to 80% of Kimberley’s inshore reef bleached in El Niño heatwave of 2016, with about 29% of the coral at Rottnest, off Perth, also affected
Up to 80% of coral in inshore reefs in the Kimberley was bleached during the global mass bleaching event that also affected 93% of the Great Barrier Reef in the summer of 2016-2016, according to new research.
Led by scientists from the University of Western Australia and published in Scientific Reports this week, the research found between 57% and 80% of corals in the Kimberley, particularly at Montgomery Reef, the largest inshore coral reef in Australia, were bleached in April 2016.
Continue reading...Country diary: a storm here is a spectator sport of the utmost drama
Castlemartin, Pembrokeshire To see how many features I once climbed have been battered away by wave and wind is a salutary lesson in human ambition
Meadowsweet still flowered along lanes through an obscenity of tank ranges; grasses riffled and glistened in the verges; far offshore, Lundy dipped in and out of view. Nowhere’s better in stormy weather than south Pembrokeshire’s Castlemartin peninsula. Here the elemental interplay of land and sea is slow-motion spectator sport of the utmost drama.
I was there when Storm Ophelia was at her raging height, to watch sculpting forces of weather at work on massively bedded, malleable limestone. In my decades as a rock climber, pioneering routes on this coast obsessed me. To look east from the Green Bridge of Wales and see how many of the features I had climbed have been battered away by wave and wind is a salutary lesson in human ambition.
Continue reading...Tasmania is the roadkill capital of the world
Living with drought in Australia
US report finds climate change 90% manmade, contradicting Trump officials
Major report by government agencies goes against senior members of Trump administration and finds evidence of global warming stronger than ever
A comprehensive review by 13 US federal agencies concludes that evidence of global warming is stronger than ever and that more than 90% of it has been caused by humans.
The conclusion contradicts a favorite talking point of senior members of the Trump administration.
Continue reading...A last refuge for Europe's blighted killer whales
Ahead of Bonn we look at a 3C world, plus climate change and a new species of ape – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Millions of fruit bats, migrating cranes and a new species of orangutan are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...What do Jellyfish teach us about climate change? | John Abraham
A new study shows that the biological effects of two ecosystem changes can be greater than their individual impacts
What do Jellyfish teach us about climate change?
A lot. At least that’s what I learned after reading a very recent paper out in the journal Global Climate Change. The article, “Ocean acidification alters zooplankton communities and increases top-down pressure of a cubazoan predator,” was authored by an international team of scientists – the paper looks at impacts of climate change on life in the world’s oceans.
Continue reading...Palaszczuk says she will veto federal Adani loan as she accuses LNP of 'smear'
Queensland premier says the LNP ‘intends to smear me and my partner’ over his work for PwC on Adani’s application for funding through Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility
The Queensland government will veto Adani’s application for a $1bn commonwealth loan to build a rail line for its massive Carmichael mine, Annastacia Palaszczuk has said.
Palaszczuk said the dramatic move, amid her campaign for re-election, came in response to what she believed was a federal Coalition plan to “smear” her and her partner, Shaun Drabsch, over his role in Adani’s loan application to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (Naif).
Continue reading...From Miami to Shanghai: 3C of warming will leave world cities underwater
An elevated level of climate change would lock in irreversible sea-level rises affecting hundreds of millions of people, Guardian data analysis shows
Hundreds of millions of urban dwellers around the world face their cities being inundated by rising seawaters if latest UN warnings that the world is on course for 3C of global warming come true, according to a Guardian data analysis.
Related: The three-degree world: the cities that will be drowned by global warming
Continue reading...Lincolnshire's coast and farms will sink with 3C of warming
As sea levels rise, the county’s low-lying farm plains and coastline would flood, changing the entire shape of eastern England forever
Lincolnshire’s flat, low-lying agricultural plains, which stretch north from the fens, curling around the Wash to Skegness and Grimsby, have long been a frontline of mankind’s battle to claim and protect food-producing land from the sea.
But with sea levels rising, a managed retreat is underway that threatens to become a full-scale rout if global temperatures rise by 3C. The UN warns that they will unless governments take far more drastic action to reduce emissions.
Continue reading...Dramatic rise in plastic seabed litter around UK
Average of 358 items per square kilometre found in 2016, of which more than three-quarters were plastic
There has been a dramatic rise in the amount of litter found on the seabed around Britain, according to new government data.
An average of 358 litter items were found per square kilometre of seabed in 2016, a 158% rise on the previous year, and 222% higher than the average for 1992-94.
Continue reading...Forget turning straw into gold, farmers can turn trash into energy
Country diary: ancient associations surface in church by the Wharfe
Ilkley, Wharfedale, West Yorkshire It is tempting to see the outward beauty and lethal potential of the river in the oversized eyes of a weathered stone relic
On this darkening evening, the sky above Wharfedale is wild and oceanic, and the river Wharfe is its turbulent likeness, swollen with rain and surging urgently eastwards. An excoriating wind, the kind that makes you grimace, whips brass, bronze, and copper foliage into the water for the current to swallow, hastening winter’s approach with every gust.
The sound and fury is suddenly muffled as I enter the centuries-brewed silence of Ilkley’s All Saints church. In the church’s collection of Anglo-Saxon crosses is an altar stone on which a figure is carved out of rough millstone grit. She wears a pleated robe and holds what appear to be two snakes in her hands. Her oversized eyes may have looked out on the world for almost two millennia.
Continue reading...Why are talks over an East Antarctic marine park still deadlocked?
Bonn voyage: climate diplomats head into another round of talks
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