The Guardian

Sun Bank, Teesdale Snow has a magical effect when the shadows emphasise features of this post-glacial landscape

If there was a league table for roadside laybys, ranked according to the grandeur of the landscape that they overlook, then this one, on the B6282 two miles east of Middleton-in-Teesdale, would be a strong contender.

It’s perched on the edge of a steep escarpment, high above the river Tees. With the valleyblanketed in snow, the bare branches of birch, alder and ash below stood out in minute detail, as if drawn on a blank canvas.

Opponents of Pilliga state forest wells raise doubts about economic and environmental claims in fact sheet

Doubts have been raised about claims made in the environmental impact statement for Santos’ controversial plans to drill 850 coal seam gas wells in and around the Pilliga state forest.

The full statement has not been publicly released yet but questions are being raised about the economic and environmental claims in it, which are summarised in a “fact sheet” released by Santos.

South Australia’s energy minister, Tom Koutsantonis, responds to the federal government’s push for clean coal generation as an energy source for Australia’s future. He says ‘clean coal is a fairytale, clean coal doesn’t exist’, following calls by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull and his deputy, Barnaby Joyce

The Coalition could use the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to finance new coal power stations but it wouldn’t be cheaper than renewables

Just a few months ago, the idea that a new coal power station would ever be built in Australia seemed laughable. Banks, energy companies and even the Turnbull government seemed to accept the inevitable decline of the coal industry.

But, since then, the Turnbull government has been furiously talking up the idea of “clean” coal. And while no bank is likely to finance the building of a new coal-fired power station here, Turnbull and his ministers have been indicating the government might themselves fund them.

After reading your article (Weighing in to fight waste in the kitchen with a measuring spoon – and an app, 28 January) I felt so guilty I went and dug out from the compost bin two very brown soggy bananas I had thrown away earlier and made them into a banana loaf. Apart from the satisfaction of the loaf, I was also able to knock 252g/9oz off my somewhat nerdy tally of food wasted in January. I decided at new year to record how much food we wasted in an effort to reduce it – a paper version of the app in the article. It’s made us really conscious about not wasting food, because we hate to be the one who has to “put it in the book”. I thought the bananas were beyond hope – but I’ve just had a delicious slice and will live to tell the tale. Now for the sugar angst.
Patricia Golding
London

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This viral picture of VIP birds of prey en route to Saudi Arabia came as no surprise to Bryn Close, breeder to the sheikhs

Bryn Close was not surprised by the picture flying around the web this week showing 80 falcons on an airline flight to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The birds of prey sit on boxes on the middle-row seats, apparently ignoring the safety talk. “To me that’s totally normal, we do it all the time,” he says from a Doncaster industrial estate, where he breeds the fastest birds in the world. “But when we do it they normally send a private jet over here to pick them up.”

There is big money in falcons, nearly all of it circling around the deserts outside Middle Eastern cities. For centuries, tribesmen in the region used the birds to hunt. Today, as cities including Jeddah as well as Dubai and Abu Dhabi have exploded, falcons have become economic as well as cultural status symbols.

Eco-friendly urinals have been set up at the busy Gare de Lyon in Paris to combat unpleasant odours caused by street urination. The Uritrottoir has a slot for urine, which leads to a compartment filled with straw, which eventually makes compost. Their designer Laurent Lebot says they are more ethical than chemical urinals

EU looks set to meet its 2020 goal of using 20% of energy from renewable sources but the UK is one of three member states to increase reliance on imported energy

The European Union is on track to meet its renewable energy targets but the UK is one of only three member states to become more dependent on imported energy in the last decade.

A report from the European commission boasts of good progress towards the goal of using 20% of final energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020.

With grey winter skies still dominating the northern hemisphere and the southern still enjoying the summer heat, what sort of wildlife will you discover?

The shortest month of the year is upon us and, while the fog and mist might be clearing slightly in the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere is still basking in the summer sunshine. So what sort of wildlife will we all discover on our doorsteps? We’d love to see your photos of the February wildlife near you.

Share your photos and videos with us and we’ll feature our favourites on the Guardian site.

Four-month consultation on possibility of fracking in Scotland runs until end of May with dedicated website at talkingfracking.scot, reports BusinessGreen

The Scottish government has launched a public consultation over whether to allow unconventional oil and gas extraction – including fracking – to take place in Scotland.

The four-month consultation runs until the end of May and the Scottish government then plans to make a recommendation that will go before MSPs for a vote towards the end of the year.

From elephant skins as a remedy for eczema, to otters’ sex organs as a natural aphrodisiac, a $20bn-a-year global wildlife trade operates under the shadow of Myanmar’s Golden Rock buddhist pilgrimage site

Wenlock Edge This sycamore isn’t native either, and neither are the people who planted them, or who look at them now

The squirrels look as though they make everyday life into a game; they have the kind of mischievous intelligence once attributed by folklore to hidden, supernatural creatures such as fairies, elves, goblins and the like. These grey and ginger squirrels are tricky. To some people they are a delight to watch; to others they are an anathema, interlopers blamed for the demise of the native red squirrel.

A group of half a dozen – I imagine them as a family or tribal gatherers – are foraging for seeds under a big old sycamore. It’s a bit parky, the frost only just going off will soon return with the breath of darkness when the sun, all syrupy gold at the moment, slides behind trees.

From small-scale traders to a company processing hundreds of tonnes of e-waste, we explore Nairobi’s relationship with a burgeoning waste stream and visit the people turning it into a resource

Oil and gas concession overlaps 1.3m hectare “protected area” inhabited by indigenous peoples in “isolation”

One of the almost 100 resolutions adopted by the World Conservation Congress (WCC) held in Hawai’i in September 2016 was that “protected areas” such as national parks should be “no go” for mining, oil and gas operations, agriculture, dams, roads and pipelines. Another resolution was that indigenous peoples’ territories overlapped by “protected areas” should be recognised and respected, calling upon International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) members, non-member States and others to do so.

While it might not seem particularly significant or startling to demand that “protected areas” should be, er, protected from such damaging activities as oil operations, and while WCC resolutions aren’t legally-binding on anyone, such calls do urgently need to be made. Take as an example Peru, the country that, according to the IUCN, established more “protected areas” than any other in 2016. Undoubtedly its most important conservation achievement in recent years has been the creation of the 1.3m hectare Sierra del Divisor National Park, although approximately 40% is included in an oil and gas concession ultimately controlled by a Canadian-headquartered company, Pacific Exploration and Production.

‘Silent pandemic’ of air pollution affects UK children and there is no indication protection against toxic waste will be retained after Brexit

Air pollution is a crisis that “plagues” the UK, particularly children, according to the UN’s special rapporteur on hazardous substances and wastes.

Baskut Tuncak, who was appointed by the UN human rights council and completed a 15-day mission to the UK on Tuesday, said there was an “urgent need for political will by the UK government to make timely, measurable and meaningful interventions”.

Orangutan Samboja will be shown males on a touchscreen in experiment aimed at learning more about mating choices

A Dutch zoo hopes to increase the breeding chances of a female orangutan by seeing if she will choose a preferred mate on a touchscreen before they are introduced.

In a four-year experiment it has called “Tinder for orangutans”, the Apenheul primate park in Apeldoorn will show Samboja, an 11-year-old female, pictures of possible partners from an international great ape breeding programme.

Land totaling the size of Connecticut has been targeted in a new bill in the Republican House, uniting hunters and conservationists in opposition

Now that Republicans have quietly drawn a path to give away much of Americans’ public land, US representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah has introduced what the Wilderness Society is calling “step two” in the GOP’s plan to offload federal lands.

The new piece of legislation would direct the secretary of the interior to immediately sell off an area of public land the size of Connecticut. In a press release for House Bill 621, Chaffetz, a Tea Party Republican, claimed that the 3.3m acres of national land, maintained by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), served “no purpose for taxpayers”.

Long treated as a bottomless resource pit, over-exploitation of the ocean, pollution and rising sea levels are having a catastrophic impact on life in the bay

The Bay of Bengal’s basin contains some of the most populous regions of the earth. No less than a quarter of the world’s population is concentrated in the eight countries that border the bay1. Approximately 200 million people live along the Bay of Bengal’s coasts and of these a major proportion are partially or wholly dependent on its fisheries2.

For the majority of those who depend on it, the Bay of Bengal can provide no more than a meagre living: 61% of India’s fisherfolk already live below the poverty line. Yet the numbers dependent on fisheries are only likely to grow in years to come, partly because of climate change. In southern India drought and water scarcity have already induced tens of thousands of farmers to join the fishing fleet3. Rising sea levels are also likely to drive many displaced people into the fishing industry.

The Trump Administration keeps trying to go after scientists, and being forced to retreat

During the George W. Bush Administration, political appointees censored climate science reports from government agencies, and mostly got away with it by gagging the scientists. A survey found that nearly half of 1,600 government scientists at seven agencies ranging from NASA to the EPA had been warned against using terms like “global warming” in reports or speeches, throughout Bush’s eight-year presidency.

Unaccustomed to being strong-armed by their own administrators, some government scientists reacted with what former US Climate Change Science Program senior associate Rick Piltz called “an anticipatory kind of self-censorship.” As a result, the Bush Administration’s efforts to smother scientific findings concerning global warming in government reports were remarkably effective.

Controversial statements angered environmentalists who insist courts have an obligation to recognize the science about manmade climate change

A Washington state judge has sparked outrage for remarks questioning the existence of climate change and the role of humans in global warming.

During the high-profile trial of Ken Ward, a climate activist facing 30 years in prison for shutting down an oil pipeline, Judge Michael E Rickert said: “I don’t know what everybody’s beliefs are on [climate change], but I know that there’s tremendous controversy over the fact whether it even exists. And even if people believe that it does or it doesn’t, the extent of what we’re doing to ourselves and our climate and our planet, there’s great controversy over that.”