The Guardian

The strongest El Niño on record reached its peak in the final months of 2015, but its devastating impact on global food and water supplies continues to be felt

In Europe’s ‘bleak midwinter’ of 1430-1440, medieval society made dramatic changes in response to food shortages and famine caused by exceptional cold. What lessons can we learn from history?

Sat in the centrally heated school Christmas concert, I sang, like countless others, In the Bleak Midwinter, not knowing the half of it. Christina Rossetti’s mournful, yearning poem, later set to music by Gustav Holst, was written in 1872, but speaks of a “bleak midwinter, long ago”, relocating the nativity to a chill northern landscape where, “Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.”

The 2016 US presidential election wasn’t the first case of a successful email hacking faux scandal

A batch of stolen emails was released to the public, with evidence pointing towards Russian hackers. The media ran through the formerly private correspondence with a fine-toothed comb, looking for dirt. Although little if any damning information was found, public trust in the hacking victims was severely eroded. The volume of media coverage created the perception that where there’s smoke, there must be fire, and a general presumption of guilt resulted.

The year was 2009, and the victims were climate scientists working for and communicating with the University of East Anglia. The story was repeated in 2016 with the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

After years of record temperatures, the Arctic is melting. The Northwest passage had an ice-free summer in 2016, allowing cruise ships into one of the world’s most remote places. Join our environmentally friendly Arctic tour, and witness the consequences of human behaviour

The largest city in the Russian Arctic expects global warming to change its trading fortunes with the revival of the northern sea route

It’s noon in Murmansk, but the sky is dark. Chunky silhouettes can just be made out scurrying along Lenin Street, swaddled in furs. This is a polar night, and it will be more than a month before anyone here sees the sun again.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, this city – by far the world’s largest settlement within the Arctic Circle – went into steep decline, its population tumbling from nearly half a million to barely 300,000.

The bank’s private sector arm is accused of subsidising loans that funded the Indian firm’s Queensland exploration bid

Adani’s Carmichael mine has been “covertly funded” by the World Bank through a private arm that is supposed to back “sustainable development”, according to a US-based human rights organisation.

Adani Enterprises acquired exploration rights for Australia’s largest proposed coalmine in 2010 with a US$250m loan from banks including India’s ICICI, which was in turn bankrolled by the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, a report by Inclusive Development International says.

Aberystwyth, Wales The larch added welcome colour, but single species planting has brought an almost industrial look to the Welsh hills

My first indication that the local landscape was about to change dramatically came after dark. In an area with only a scattering of houses and a solitary street lamp, the sudden appearance of an extra light is a significant event – and a flickering source moving through the trees certainly makes a rural observer stop and take note.

In daylight the explanation became clear. Across the valley, on the shoulder of a hill forming a buttress at the westward limit of the Cambrian mountains, a stand of mature larches was being felled. Working outwards from the old track that loops sinuously across the hillside, heavy machinery was quickly and efficiently removing the trees, leaving the profile of the hill oddly rebalanced. Within a week or so the familiar dull orange of autumn foliage was gone, leaving a briefly scarred residue from which the woodland will regenerate or be replanted.

Official data quietly released before Christmas shows emissions rose 0.8% in the year to June and will miss 2030 goal based on current policies

Australia’s emissions are rising, and projected to keep doing so to 2030, meaning Australia will fail to meet its 2030 emissions targets, according to government figures.

The official quarterly figures, showing growth in year-on-year emisssions, confirms independent projections from NDEVR Environmental, released earlier this month by Guardian Australia, which predicted Australia’s emissions would be rising.

Queensland government examines three alleged cases of illegal fishing for the protected reptiles over past two months

The Queensland government is investigating “disturbing” reports of people in the state’s far north trying to catch crocodiles with baited fishing lines, including one who advertised their efforts on Facebook.

The Department of Environment and Heritage Protection is examining three alleged cases of illegal fishing for the protected reptiles over the past two months in Douglas, Hinchinbrook and Whitsunday shires.

Matt Canavan attacks the broadcaster for being one-sided and says Australia’s biggest coalmine would improve the environment

The federal resources minister has accused the ABC of reporting fake news and thrown his weight behind the energy giant Adani, amid Indian finance ministry investigations into the company.

Matt Canavan attacked the ABC for what he described as one-sided coverage of Adani’s plans to build Australia’s biggest coalmine and accused the national broadcaster of having a massive blindspot when it came to the project.

Trump has installed people in key environmental protection positions who seem to care more for profits than people. Now we fear for our safety

Corpus Christi, Texas, calls itself the “sparkling city by the sea”. But lately it doesn’t feel very sparkling. The city imposed a four-day ban on consuming any tap water last Wednesday. No one could drink the water, shower, bathe, do dishes, wash laundry, hands, faces or children with it. There were fears that a corrosive asphalt emulsifier Indulin AA86 had snuck all the way from the city’s industrial district into our homes due to a “back-flow incident”. There was water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

On 1 December, the Corpus Christi city hall received the first report of dirty water from Refinery Row. On 7 December the city hall received their second, on 12 December their third. By then the water was shimmery, sudsy – just the kind of sheen we would soon fear creeping into our commodes.

Temperatures in parts of the Arctic are expected to rise above 0C for the second winter in a row

Scientists are forecasting ice-melting temperatures in the middle of winter for some parts of the Arctic for the second year in a row. And analysis shows such recent record temperatures there would have been virtually impossible without human greenhouse emissions.

Rodrigues fruit bats and Amur tigers are among the species supported by WCS, which operates five wildlife parks in New York City and works to save wildlife and wild places in nearly 60 countries and all the world’s oceans

Reducing wood-burning, gas-flaring and global diesel emissions would be ‘quick win’ in combating irreversible climate change, scientists say

World leaders should redouble efforts to cut soot emissions because it is the cheapest and fastest way to combat climate change, climate scientists and advocates have told the Guardian.

Deposits of soot – unburned carbon particles – have stained parts of the Arctic black, changing the ice from a reflector of sunlight to an absorber of heat, and accelerating the melting of ice and snow, which itself is starting to alter global weather patterns.

The haze caused by industry’s reliance on coal and emissions from old, inefficient cars is affecting nearly half a billion people

US promised US$3bn towards fund, which was part of historic Paris agreement, but so far has transferred only $500m

More than 100 climate and development organisations, along with 70,000 people, have called on Barack Obama to help secure the future of the Paris agreement by transferring the remaining $2.5bn committed by the US.

The Green Climate Fund was a key aspect of the historic Paris agreement signed in 2015, which aims to keep global warming “well below” 2C and aspires to keep warming to 1.5C.

Under Norway’s endangered predator laws, only 15 lone wolves proved to pose a threat to livestock

The Norwegian government has issued a last-minute reprieve for 32 of the 47 wolves that had been earmarked for a cull to protect sheep flocks.

The plans to kill two-thirds of the country’s wolves caused outrage among conservationists at home and abroad when they were announced by local predator management boards in September, with warnings the cull would be disastrous for the species.

Officials have asked for more proof of microbead damage to marine life in move to extend cosmetics ban to all products washed down drain

The government is exploring whether its ban on tiny pieces of plastic in cosmetics should be extended to other household products, to protect fish and other marine life.

Ministers promised earlier this year to ban microbeads in personal care products such as toothpaste and face scrubs by the end of 2017, but stopped short of pledging to ban them in other products.

A new report finds strong support for clean energy, international climate agreements, and cutting carbon pollution - across the political spectrum

It’s almost an accepted dogma that in the United States (and in several other countries), liberals are much more in favor of taking actions to curb climate change whereas conservatives block such actions. That’s certainly true within the halls of power. For instance, in the United States, it has become a litmus test for Republication candidates to deny humans are causing climate change, to try to claim that it isn’t important, in many cases to demonize the messengers (the scientists), and to work to halt climate science so we won’t know how bad the problem is.

Conventional wisdom – and in fact the seemingly obvious message from this past election – is that this denial is good politics. If you want to get elected as a conservative, you have got to be anti-science.

Friends of the Earth and Frack Free Ryedale lose bid to stop fracking in village of Kirby Misperton

Fracking will go ahead at a North Yorkshire site after environmentalists lost a legal challenge they had brought on climate change grounds.

On Tuesday, the high court ruled against Friends of the Earth and Frack Free Ryedale, who had argued that North Yorkshire county council had failed to properly consider the environmental impact of burning gas when it approved the fracking this year.