The Guardian

Rothiemurchus, Strathspey Rustlings and flittings amid the calls hint at the rich biodiversity of the moor and pine forest

To me, at least, the Highlands dishes up its treats in small portions. On the first morning I stepped out of the lodge and heard the clucking undulations of a springtime black grouse somewhere to the south-east. I followed the noise but didn’t see him.

Instead the sparse pine forest offered up a bright pair of crossbills. Their “fools’ colours” – him in red, her in green – were crisp in the early light.

We continue to plan for the future as if climate scientists don’t exist. The greatest tragedy, Clive Hamilton writes, is the absence of a sense of tragedy

After 200,000 years of modern humans on a 4.5 billion-year-old Earth, we have arrived at new point in history: the Anthropocene. The change has come upon us with disorienting speed. It is the kind of shift that typically takes two or three or four generations to sink in.

Our best scientists tell us insistently that a calamity is unfolding, that the life-support systems of the Earth are being damaged in ways that threaten our survival. Yet in the face of these facts we carry on as usual.

Chairman Peter Coates says company’s plan is ‘consistent with good value’, but experts call it ‘a breathtaking failure to come to grips with a world in transition’

The oil and gas company Santos has admitted its business plans are based on a climate change scenario of a 4C rise n global temperatures, at odds with internationally agreed efforts.

Its chairman, Peter Coates, made the comments at an AGM in Adelaide on Thursday, telling shareholders it was “sensible” and “consistent with good value”.

As CO2 levels rise, controversial techniques including carbon capture and storage, enhanced weathering and reforestation may be solutions

In the 2015 Paris climate agreement, 195 nations committed to limit global warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels. But some, like Eelco Rohling, professor of ocean and climate change at the Australian National University’s research school of earth sciences, now argue that this target cannot be achieved unless ways to remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are found, and emissions are slashed.

This is where negative emissions technologies come in. The term covers everything from reforestation projects to seeding the stratosphere with sulphates or fertilising the ocean with iron fillings.

Challenged by climate change, our most secretive butterfly could soon be getting a helping hand if a new campaign takes off

Recent very butterfly-unfriendly icy winds remind me of an insect that endures horrendous weather every summer. The mountain ringlet is our only montane butterfly, meaning that you have to climb a mountain – or at least 400 metres up a Lake District fell – to see it.

Some mountain ringlet caterpillars may live for two years so slowly do they grow, chewing grass in the most capricious British conditions, while the butterfly itself only survives for a few days in June and July.

Survey shows 41% of people support bank’s decision to rule out funding Adani’s Queensland mine, with only 14% against, as the resources minister vows to switch banks

Almost three times as many people support Westpac’s decision to rule out funding Adani’s Queensland mine than disapprove of it, a survey has found.

But at least one Westpac customer is set to dump the bank over its new climate policy, which precludes helping open up a new coal region with Australia’s largest proposed coalmine.

Human noises are often 10 times that of background levels, impairing our enjoyment of natural parks and impacting animal behaviour, scientists have found

The sounds of the natural world are being overwhelmed by the blare of human activity, even in protected wildlife areas, new research has revealed.

The racket is not only harming people’s enjoyment of natural havens, which are known to have significant benefits for both physical and mental health, but it is also affecting wildlife, with animals less able to escape predators and birds less able to find mates.

Researchers behind study, which may have helped cement case for banning microbeads, found guilty of scientific misconduct

A landmark paper claiming to show the devastating impact of microplastics on fish has been retracted after an investigation found the authors guilty of scientific misconduct.

The study, published in the prestigious journal Science, claimed that fish became “smaller, slower and more stupid” when exposed to tiny plastic fragments in the marine environment. It also suggested that perch larvae favour eating plastic over their natural prey “like teenagers eating junk food”.

Arrival of a female wolf, that trekked 500km from Germany, means the pack could have cubs by spring

A wolf pack is roaming wild in Denmark for the first time in more than 200 years after a young female wolf journeyed 500km from Germany.

Male wolves have been seen in Denmark since 2012 and the new female could produce cubs this spring in farmland in west Jutland after two wolves were filmed together last autumn.

Exclusive: Legal challenge on behalf of asthma sufferers could see ministers pay out compensation for failure to clean up illegal levels of pollution

Lawyers are preparing to mount an unprecedented class action against the government over its repeated failures to clean up illegal levels of air pollution from diesel traffic.

The legal challenge on behalf of asthma sufferers could see ministers paying out significant compensation for allowing the nation’s air to exceed legal limits for so long.

Dick Potts, who has died aged 77, did more to bridge the gap between conservationists, farmers and the game shooting fraternity than any other figure. He combined his training as a scientist, his background as a farmer’s son and his passion for birds to help save the threatened grey partridge.

From small beginnings in a Portakabin on a farm in West Sussex in 1968, Dick developed a long-term study into the ecology of the partridge, one of Britain’s most distinctive farmland birds. Even then, numbers of this attractive gamebird were beginning to fall and Dick was charged with finding out why.

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’

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
  

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.

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.

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.”

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’

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.

A new study argues the 97% climate consensus estimate is too low, while deniers claim it’s too high

Four years ago, my colleagues and I published a paper finding a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature on human-caused global warming. Since then, it’s been the subject of constant myths, misinformation, and denial. In fact, last year we teamed up with the authors of six other consensus papers, showing that with a variety of different approaches, we all found the expert consensus on human-caused global warming is 90–100%.

Most of the critiques of our paper claim the consensus is somehow below 97%. For example, in a recent congressional hearing, Lamar Smith (R-TX) claimed we had gone wrong by only considering “a small sample of a small sample” of climate studies, and when estimated his preferred way, it’s less than 1%. But in a paper published last year, James Powell argued that the expert consensus actually higher – well over 99%.

Environmental consultant says light-touch approach is leading to record levels of waste crime, costing £600m a year

Regulatory failings are contributing to fly-tipping and waste crime costing more than £604m a year, according to an investigator who was able to license a dog as a rubbish collector.

A report by an environmental consultancy, Eunomia, says “systematic failure” to regulate the more than 180,000 waste carriers, brokers and dealers is leading to record levels of crime.