The Guardian

In the report on the stranding of a fin whale on Holkham Beach (Rare fin whale washed up on Norfolk beach, 22 October), Dr Ben Garrod of Anglia Ruskin University states that “you never get [fin whales] in the North Sea”. I certainly saw one six miles off Hartlepool in about 1978. There was flat calm and hot sun, and there were great rafts of seabirds. The whale jumped clear of the water six or seven times, mostly through the rafts of birds. I estimated the whale to be as long as our 12 metre yacht. Later I mentioned this to a fisherman at Hartlepool, who told me that this only happened on days like I described. He was obviously familiar with the sight.
John Lart
Great Smeaton, North Yorkshire

• Hawaiian Airways’ plan to weigh their passengers (Report, 24 October) is a good idea. Skybus planes from Cornwall to the Scilly Isles have always done so. As you board the eight-seater Islander, they tell each passenger (by name) where to sit so the weight is evenly distributed. The process is very discreet; the check-in desk incorporates scales. On one occasion, our combined weight was so great that the luggage had to travel separately on the next flight. They never divulged who had caused the overload, but we knew!
Melanie White
Reading, Berkshire

Annual funding for local air quality management in England has been restored to previous levels, reversing a chronic decline, reports The ENDS Report

The government has stumped up £3m to fund English local authorities’ work to monitor and improve air quality.

The air quality grant for 2016/17 was announced on 6 October and is six times greater than the amount allocated for the current financial year. It is the first funding round to be managed by DEFRA and the Department for Transport’s Joint Air Quality Unit.

Carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million on average during 2016 and will not dip below that mark for many generations, experts say

The world is in a new era of “climate change reality”, with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaching a symbolic threshold which it will not fall below for many generations, scientists have said.

In 2015, for the first time, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were at 400 parts per million (ppm) on average across the year as a whole, the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) annual greenhouse gas bulletin reveals.

To paraphrase Donald Trump, this is radical atmospheric change and Republicans won’t even mention the words

Climate change’s impacts on extreme weather and society are becoming increasingly clear and undeniable. While we are making progress in solving the problem, we’re still moving too slowly, and one of the two political parties governing the world’s strongest superpower continues to deny the science. This led astrophysicist Katie Mack to make the following suggestion, related to a common refrain from Donald Trump and Republican Party leaders:

Maybe governments will actually listen if we stop saying "extreme weather" & "climate change" & just say the atmosphere is being radicalized

Environmental artist J Henry Fair captures the beauty and destruction of industrial sites to illustrate the hidden impacts of the things we buy – the polluted air, destroyed habitats and the invisible carbon heating the planet

John Vidal takes to the skies with US photographer J Henry Fair on an aerial toxic tour of south Wales

The small Cessna plane banks steeply and J Henry Fair of Charleston, South Carolina, hangs his camera out of the small window to film straight down the chimneys of the Lafarge Tarmac cement plant in Aberthaw, south Wales.

“Man, look at the gunk coming out of that guy. He’s burning rubber as fuel! That’s really environmental, huh?” he shouts as the 25-knot, force six wind whips off the sea and tosses the light aircraft around.

A selection of prizewinning images from the Take a View 2016 photography awards

Car industry successfully lobbied for loopholes to dilute EU laws limiting toxic particulates emissions for new cars, the Guardian has learned

New European cars with petrol engines will be allowed to overshoot a limit on toxic particulates emissions by 50% under a draft EU regulation backed by the UK and most other EU states.

Campaigners say that a simple €25 (£22) filter could drastically cut the pollution, but the Guardian has learned that car-makers have instead mounted a successful push for loopholes and legislative delay.

Barnack Hills and Holes, Cambridgeshire The quarrying has left a strange, toy landscape of ridges and valleys not a kilometre square. Nature has taken it back

Hills and Holes. A name like that, it had to be a manufactured place for kids and dog walkers, I thought. On hearing what locals called it – Hills and Hollows – I decided to look closer at the funny space on the edge of this village near Stamford.

Turns out it was manufactured, but not by anyone we knew. The place with the playground name once built cathedrals. A Jurassic seabed turned medieval quarry, its limestone was used in the extravagant churches of Ely and Peterborough. Now it’s a meadow, and important again.

The low-profile Australian group Sunrise Project hits back at coal lobby after being criticised over funding sources shown in hacked US Democratic emails

The head of a usually quiet environmental group in Australia has hit back against News Corp and coal lobby attacks after hacked emails revealed it was partly funded from overseas.

Two emails forwarded to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta – and published by WikiLeaks – show that one of the funders of the Sunrise Project is a large US-based charitable trust, the Sandler Foundation.

Utility company Engie say no decision has been made regarding the future of Australia’s most polluting coal-fired power plant despite reports in Les Echos

French utility Engie has decided to close down Victoria’s coal-fired Hazelwood power station – Australia’s most polluting – at a meeting between the board and executives last week, according to a report in the French newspaper Les Echos.

However the company told Guardian Australia that no decision had been taken so far regarding the future of the plant.

Arachnophobes, look away now. Footage has emerged from Queensland, Australia, that appears to show an oversized huntsman spider with a dead mouse in its clutches. The vision was shot by Jason Womal, who explained on Facebook that he was about to leave for work in the early hours of the morning when a neighbour asked if he wanted ‘to see something cool’. His video has been viewed more than 5.7m times in the 32 hours since he posted it. File it under ‘only in Australia ... ’

Attack on beach between Suffolk Park and Broken Head in northern NSW follows a weekend protest against plan to install shark nets in the area

A man has escaped a run-in with a shark on the New South Wales north coast with just a few teeth marks on his thigh.

He was taken to Byron Bay hospital by a friend about 7.30am after suffering the bite while surfing on a beach between Suffolk Park and Broken Head on Monday morning.

Press Association study suggests flood protection funding formula tilts system towards richer households and areas

The system for allocating taxpayers’ money to flood defence schemes favours protecting wealthy families and those in the south-east, analysis suggests.

The government has said it applies a strict economic formula to deciding where funding should be spent. But an investigation by the Press Association reveals the methods to determine where funding goes focus on the value of assets protected – which could tilt the system towards richer households and those in parts of the country where house prices are higher.

Sir Howard Davies, of the Airports Commission lends backing to expanding UK’s largest airport instead of Gatwick

The case for Heathrow expansion is now “overwhelming”, according to the man who led the government commissioned review of airport capacity.

Sir Howard Davies, chair of the Airports Commission, said Brexit underlined the need for a “clear strategic decision” in favour of Heathrow by ministers.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 27 October 1916

Surrey, October 27
Things change more rapidly in their appearance now in one day than they did in two a fortnight ago, but this is seen mostly in the valleys and the greater woods which border the streams. Under the trees you walk ankle deep in fallen leaves, thick-stemmed sycamore and chestnut, that are heavy enough to impede your way; beech in heaps in the remoter parts where a few squirrels, almost disdaining at first to move, presently scurry up a trunk and along the limbs, their bushy tails showing now on this side and then on the other; oaks as green as in September on the top but turning yellow in the bottom branches; ash drooping with the weight of late autumn; and birch becoming bare but silvered to the extremity of its hanging stems. Overhead the change which you most note is that whereas a few weeks ago daylight scarcely penetrated these recesses, misty beams now shoot through. Wood-pigeons, whirring out of the tree-tops, are as blue nearly as the sky. Then clouds come over, and when rain falls it is as if winter had suddenly closed in.

Higher on the heath there is new life rather than decay. The fume bears fresh yellow bloom, scented faintly, and where the full flower is not open there are buds under the green spikes. Red bryony, standing out of the hedges which mark off parts of the downs, has leaf buds too on the lower branches. Chaffinches fly in small flocks, and presently a hare “lops,” as the farmers say, from her form to the higher ground. Her speed increases in higher leaps as she goes, until her white tuft disappears in the tall brown grass which lines the ridge. She has gone into the turnip-field on the other side.

The rosemary beetle arrived in Britain over twenty years ago, and is chewing its way through our culinary favourites – heading north at an alarming rate

If you discover your favourite aromatic plants and herbs are looking chewed this autumn the culprit is almost certainly the rosemary beetle (Chrysolina Americana), an unwelcome new addition to the UK’s gardens – thanks to climate change.

Despite its name, Americana, its original home is the Mediterranean and North Africa, but the increasing warmth of the British climate means it can now survive and thrive here. It was first seen London in 1994 and after a slow start it has rapidly spread in England and now reached Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The government’s decision to greenlight aviation expansion (Chris Grayling: decision on airport expansion to be made on Tuesday, theguardian.com, 23 October) is a predictable failure, but not an acceptable one. With the scrapping of vital decarbonisation policies and funding, the UK is already way off-track to meet our climate change commitments. The impacts of any new runway will be devastating to people’s lives and to the planet. Locally it will see the demolition of hundreds of homes, result in increased noise pollution, and illegal levels of air pollution – already responsible for almost 10,000 premature deaths in London every year.

But the biggest tragedy of the government’s failure is a global one. Only around 5% of the world’s population flies at all, yet the impacts of climate change – droughts, floods and heatwaves – are already hitting poorer communities in the global south, who are the least likely to ever set foot on a plane.

Transport secretary denies government has already decided which plan it will back in choice between Heathrow or Gatwick

The government’s decision over which London airport expansion scheme it will finally choose is expected to come on Tuesday, after the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, said the decision would be made at a cabinet committee meeting that day.

Grayling said that the government had still not decided which option to choose and would make the final decision on the day. He is expected to announce the choice to the House of Commons as soon as it has been made.

Transport secretary Chris Grayling denies government has already decided which plan to back at Heathrow or Gatwick, during an appearance at BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, adding that a decision will be made on Tuesday during a cabinet committee meeting. The committee will meet amid predictions that the government has already opted to push for expansion at Heathrow

• Read: Chris Grayling: decision on airport expansion to be made on Tuesday