The Guardian

The changing size of mother whales is being tracked after the southern white whale came back from the brink of extinction

After being hunted to near extinction and threatened with climate change, drones are giving southern right whales in the Great Australian Bight a much-needed health check.

Sponsored by WWF-Australia, researchers at Murdoch University are measuring the size of individual whales and monitoring how that changes during the calving season, with plans to track their weight each year.

Climate Home: Nick Hurd waved away suggestions the government could be taken to court over a shortfall in policy to meet binding emissions targets

The UK’s world-leading Climate Change Act has been “dangerously neglected”, leaving the government open to lawsuits.

That is the view of environmental lawyers at Client Earth, in a report published on Tuesday.

My sister Christine Howson, who has died of ovarian cancer aged 61, was a highly respected marine biologist and diver who undertook survey work in the UK and around the world.

Christine was well known in the sports diving world; she was one of the first female divers to attain the First Class grade. She trained divers and other instructors, and organised national events and conferences. Committed to developing swimming for young people, she worked tirelessly at her local swimming club in Tranent, East Lothian, where she was a committee member and coach.

Relentless poaching is decimating Africa’s elephants. But the world’s largest land mammal could have a powerful, new champion if Hillary Clinton becomes president of the U.S.

When asked by Ellen DeGeneres what her spirit animal is, Hillary Clinton had a surprising answer: the elephant.

Although the symbol of the GOP, Clinton spoke on the Ellen DeGeneres Show this May with rare passion about the need to protect real elephants from a poaching crisis that has killed at least 110,000 of them over the past decade, pushing the world’s largest land animals – especially forest elephants – closer to extinction.

World Energy Council warns of potential gap in energy supply due to government’s lack of clarity and myriad changes

The UK has fallen out of the top 10 of a respected international league table of countries’ energy sectors for the first time.

The World Energy Council blamed the government’s lack of clarity and myriad changes which it said have left the country facing a potential gap in energy supply.

Findings highlight how US is in grip of significant environmental changes driven by warming temperatures in different ways to processes that fuel hurricanes

The frequency of floods of the magnitude of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated parts of New York City in 2012, is rising so sharply that they could become relatively normal, with a raft of new research laying bare the enormous upheavals already under way in the US due to climate change.

These findings and two other fresh pieces of research have highlighted how the US is already in the grip of significant environmental changes driven by warming temperatures, albeit in different ways to the processes that are fueling hurricanes.

Warren Entsch tells party room dugongs and sea turtles are being subjected to cruelty and being hunted commercially

The Turnbull government is considering greater regulation of Indigenous Australians’ hunting of dugongs and sea turtles.

Malcolm Turnbull has asked the environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, to investigate serious complaints that vulnerable and endangered animals are being subjected to great cruelty by some Indigenous families and killed merely for commercial purposes, not cultural purposes.

New technology is a significant step towards the creation of virtual power stations that would enable smarter electricity use by homes and businesses

Data has been transmitted across a national electricity grid for the first time, in what could be a significant step towards the creation of virtual power stations, where many thousands of homes and businesses combine to manage electricity use more smartly.

The new technology could lead to lower energy bills for consumers who allow small variations in the energy consumption of their appliances, such as water heaters or freezers.

Waltham Brooks, West Sussex Around the pool’s edges, snipe drill into the mud as the sun sinks towards the horizon

The air is noticeably colder, and the blue sky above the Brooks seems empty. The swallows and martins that had been following the river Arun south to the sea, in an almost continuous stream for the past month, have gone. Only jackdaws and rooks fly over, croaking to each other, heading towards the woods and back to their evening roosts. The sinking sun casts a warm glow across the large pool, where recent arrivals – a flock of wigeon – are paddling, dipping into the muddy water to feed alongside the regular mallard and shoveller.

Around the pool’s edges, snipe bob their dark brown-striped heads up and down, drilling their long bills into the mud in hurried sewing-machine movements. More snipe sit by the reeds, preening or sleeping, their heads turned and their bills tucked into the feathers on their backs. I walk on through the wet grass, listening to the cries of the coot, water rail and ducks, and watch my footing.

The transition to a low carbon economy is already happening, but is at risk when residents of Australia’s capital go to the polls in local elections

The transition to a low carbon economy is already happening … in the Australian Capital Territory, where the local Labor government has legislated for a 100% renewable energy target by the year 2020.

But this major achievement is at risk on Saturday when residents of Canberra go to the polls for territory elections.

For the first time, researchers from the Queensland University of Technology studying bleaching have captured footage of coral from the Great Barrier Reef spewing out the algae that lives within it in response to heat stress. Using a microscope and digital camera to record time-lapse videos, the researchers demonstrate precisely how coral reacts to rising water temperatures

Caroline Lucas and dozens of campaigners and scientists call on museum to drop Statoil backing of children’s gallery

More than 50 prominent scientists, campaigners and politicians have signed a letter calling on the Science Museum to drop its oil sponsorship.

Despite choosing not to renew its previous sponsorship deal with Shell following criticism and campaigning, the Science Museum decided to accept sponsorship from Statoil, a Norwegian multinational oil and gas company, for its revamped children’s gallery, which the letter’s signatories describe as an “unconscionable” decision.

On Tuesday, the Science Museum will launch its new interactive gallery for children – Wonderlab: The Statoil Gallery. Despite securing sponsorship from an oil and gas company that is recklessly planning to drill seven new wells in the fragile Arctic, the London museum has also introduced an entry charge, restricting access to those visitors able to pay.

It is unconscionable that in 2016 a museum of science is handing a fossil fuel company legitimacy by allowing it to sponsor a gallery designed to inspire the next generation. Statoil is pursuing new sources of oil that must stay in the ground if there is to be any hope of leaving a safe climate for the children that are to visit this gallery. And from the Norwegian Arctic to the Great Australian Bight, Statoil’s plans are opposed by local communities and indigenous peoples who want the company off their lands and out of their waters.

Windsor and Maidenhead council looks to increase budget for fighting expected government go-ahead for third runway

Theresa May’s local authority is prepared to spend £50,000 on a judicial review if her government approves the expansion of Heathrow next week, documents released on Monday reveal.

The papers underline the scale of resistance that the prime minister will face from residents in her Maidenhead constituency, which she has represented since 1997, if she agrees to allow the third runway to go ahead.

Bill Mollison, who has died aged 88, was one of the co-creators of permaculture, an agricultural system that works with, rather than against, nature, on the basis that the natural world holds the key to stable and productive systems. Having developed the concept, he then travelled from his native Tasmania for 30 years to embed his approach worldwide. His ideas have spread widely – permaculture is practised in more than 140 countries and by more than 3 million people – even though in the 1970s the idea was considered, in Mollison’s words, “the highest form of sedition”.

Much of what he espoused was based on his great respect for the wisdom of subsistence farmers around the world, who have long used sustainable methods to grow their crops. In agricultural terms, this means planting diverse sets of crops, using perennial species to form productive stable systems, and ensuring the conditions for soils to be regenerated.

Meeting in Rwanda seeks amendment to Montreal protocol to eliminate manufacture of the chemicals used in fridges, air conditioners and inhalers

Governments will address the law of unintended consequences when they meet this week to revise a global treaty and try to eliminate the use of a group of greenhouse gases used in fridges, inhalers and air conditioners.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) were hailed as the answer to the hole in the ozone layer which appeared over Antarctica in the 1980s because they replaced hundreds of chemical substances widely used in aerosols which depleted the thin layer of ozone which protects the Earth from harmful rays of the sun.

Black, African and Caribbean people are exposed to higher illegal nitrogen dioxide levels than the percentage of the population they account for

Black communities in London are disproportionately more likely to breathe illegal levels of air pollution than white and Asian ones, new research seen exclusively by the Guardian shows.

The study for the mayor of London shows black, African and Caribbean people account for 15.3% of all Londoners exposed to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels that breach EU limits, but they account for just 13.3% of the city’s population.

A new book Plant: Exploring The Botanical World celebrates the beauty and diversity of plants from around the world across all media - from murals in ancient Greece to a Napoleonic-era rose print and cutting-edge scans

The new book by Mitch Hescox and Paul Douglas is a marriage of science and faith

Most of you are aware of a growing movement amongst persons of faith to bring more action on dealing with climate change. The argument is powerful for the faithful – the Earth is God’s gift to humanity. We should care for it accordingly.

From within this movement, there are huge voices, widely respected by both the scientific and faith communities. Perhaps the best known is Dr. Katherine Hayhoe, a top climate scientist who is also an evangelist Christian. There are other persons and organizations who work similarly to connect these two world viewpoints in a powerful yet common-sense way.

Ben Damh, Wester Ross Each stag is ready to fight to the death for his chance to mate – and he only has only a short window to take his opportunity

Ben Damh means “hill of the stag” in Gaelic. You can see why. In the season of the rut the hill is alive with the sight, sound and smell of red deer. Even before we reach the ridge we can hear roaring, like the sound of a distant lawnmower. As we stalk down onto the western slopes above Loch Damh, past musky puddles of peat where the stags will wallow, we are entering the centre of an unfolding drama with enough sex and violence to rival Game of Thrones.

Each stag is ready to fight to the death for his chance to mate – and he only has only a short window to take his opportunity. On such poor ground as this, the hinds are in oestrus for just four short weeks around the beginning of October. They gather on the high greens to graze while the feeding is good, and the males soon follow.