The Guardian

Commitments from other countries push accord forward and is set to be activated on 4 November after the EU, Canada and India ratify the agreement

Barack Obama has said the Paris climate deal could prove a “turning point” in the effort to avoid dangerous global warming, after a flurry of commitments by nations pushed the agreement into force.

The climate accord is set to be activated on 4 November after the European Union, Canada, Nepal and India all formally ratified the deal. The latest ratifications mean that 73 nations accounting for nearly 57% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are fully committed to the process, meaning the two key thresholds to the agreement have now been met.

Warming temperatures and uncertain rainfall mean if more isn’t done to slow climate change, droughts lasting 35 years could blight western states, study says

The harsh drought currently gripping California may appear trivial in the future as new research shows that the south-west US faces the looming threat of “megadroughts” that last for decades.

California is in its sixth year of drought, which was barely dented by rains brought by the El Niño climate event and sparked a range of water restrictions in the state. But warming temperatures and uncertain rainfall mean that if more isn’t done to slow climate change, droughts lasting 35 years are likely to blight western states by the end of the century, according to the study, published in Science Advances.

Emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas from coal, oil and gas are up to 60% greater than previously estimated, meaning current climate prediction models should be revised, research shows

The fossil fuel industry’s emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas are dramatically higher than previously thought.

Researchers who pulled together the biggest database yet of worldwide methane emissions found that, after natural sources were discounted, emissions from gas, oil and coal production were 20-60% greater than existing estimates.

A major meeting on the regulation of trade in endangered species is drawing to a close in Johannesburg - here are seven of its key hits and misses

Pangolin

Sadly for the pangolin, the tough brown scales that so neatly tile its body are in huge demand for medicinal purposes, while the flesh that they protect is also appreciated as a delicacy in Vietnam and some parts of China. Earlier this month, conservationists warned of the devastating decline in pangolin populations. Cites followed up by putting all pangolin species into the highest category of protection.

Unexpected move reverses a trend that has seen increasing numbers of large carnivores shot by hunters each year since Romania’s accession to the European Union

Romania has banned all trophy hunting of brown bears, wolves, lynx and wild cats in a surprise decision that gives Europe’s largest population of large carnivores a reprieve from its most severe and immediate threat.

The move on Tuesday reverses a trend which has seen the number of large carnivores being shot by hunters grow year on year since Romania’s accession into the European Union in 2007. In 2016, the largest hunting quotas yet gave hunters the mandate to shoot 550 bears, 600 wolves and 500 big cats over 12 months.

Nottinghamshire county council to vote on iGas Energy’s plans for exploratory drilling on former RAF bombing range in Misson

Anti-fracking campaigners are protesting outside a town hall where councillors are deciding whether to approve plans to open a UK shale gas exploration frontier in the east Midlands.

Nottinghamshire county council will vote on Wednesday on iGas Energy’s plans to drill two wells on a former RAF bombing range in the village of Misson.

Scientists say the sounds cod make with their swim bladders to communicate differ from region to region – and may be vulnerable to noise pollution. Cod often use the sounds to attract mates and warn of nearby predators. But if the sounds are disrupted by human marine activity it may affect cod’s breeding by inhibiting integration and reproduction

• Cod may have regional accents, scientists say
  

Wind power is projected to more than double in developing countries and increase by one-third in developed nations by 2030

As we close out a summer marked by uncertainty in news and events, one trend for which analysts voice increasing certainty is the accelerating pace of the clean-energy transformation reshaping how the world generates electricity.

With increasing speed, global energy markets are turning away from fossil fuels and towards wind and other renewable sources, not just because they’re clean but because they’re cheaper, more competitive energy choices and offer a level of long-term certainty more price-volatile fossil fuels just can’t match.

As wildlife continues to decline around the world, conservation has become a bleak calling. Can a new Optimism Summit help reframe the mission to save life on Earth?

Want to hear a sad story? You could read this article of mine about the first mammal lost to climate change. Or this one about how there are only 60 vaquita left on the planet. Or here’s my piece on how forest elephants are being decimated even as scientists debate if they are worthy of being called a distinct species. As an environmental journalist, I sometimes feel it’s my job to simply document the decline of life on planet Earth. The word ‘depressing’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.

For many of us – myself included some days – the desperate state of our environment leaves us numb with sadness and, frankly, lost in hopelessness. We don’t act, because we don’t know what to do; we don’t act, because there’s only so much negativity we can swallow before we throw up our hands and go back to playing Pokemon Go. Without any dose of hope, we feel ourselves succumbing to despair.

Matt Canavan cites leaked 2011 ‘disrupt and delay’ anti-development strategy of NSW environmental group as clear ‘abuse of our legal system’

The resources minister, Matt Canavan, says the abuse of Australia’s legal system by green groups seeking to delay mining projects warrants a “fundamental” review of environmental law.

Canavan on Wednesday used a Queensland Media Club luncheon speech to take aim at activists who harbour an anti-development ideology.

A collection of zoological wonders from September 2016, featuring gambling wolves, friendly tits and happy bees

Cornish fish moving north with climate change may struggle to understand Scouse counterparts, study says, making it harder for them to mate

Scientists are attempting to discover if Cornish cod moving north with climate change will be able to understand the accents of their Scouse counterparts.

Experts believe the fish, which make sounds with their swim bladders to attract mates, may have regional accents – and if males cannot “chat up” females who speak a different dialect it could threaten their ability to breed.

Wenlock Edge Elder is a ‘culture follower’, a plant that travelled with people, who scattered its seeds and encouraged it around their settlements

Elderberries glisten like the eyes of mice. Small and glossy black, the drupes on their purple-stemmed umbels hang for the plucking, each with a glint of autumn sunlight and filled with summer’s juice, waiting to be snaffled. I taste one or two, but they always remind me that I once ate so many elderberries I was sick. Rabbits don’t like them either.

According to weather lore English summers begin with elder flowers and end with elder berries. The elder has been venerated, in an off-hand informal way, as one of the most popular trees or shrubs in European magic and folklore.

Giant collection of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items called a ‘ticking time bomb’ as large items crumble into micro plastics

The vast patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean is far worse than previously thought, with an aerial survey finding a much larger mass of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items than imagined.

20-year study of deep reefs finds algae meadows and swaths of continuous coral with the highest rate of species found nowhere else in Earth’s seas

The “twilight zone” of Hawaii’s deep coral reefs are home to vast algae meadows and support the highest rates of species found nowhere else in Earth’s seas, scientists have discovered.

A 20-year study of the archipelago’s poorly-explored mesophotic – middle light – coral zone also found the deep-reef habitats are home to many unique and distinct species not found on shallow reefs with vast areas of 100% coral cover.

Leonardo DiCaprio joins President Barack Obama at the White House ahead of a screening of his new documentary, Before the Flood. The actor says: “If you don’t believe in climate change, you don’t believe in facts, and science, and empirical truths,” he says. “And, in my humble opinion, [you] should not be allowed to hold public office.” The words were interpreted as a slight against presidential candidate Donald Trump

• Leonardo DiCaprio: climate change deniers should not hold public office

A paper from the prominent Nasa climate scientist James Hansen reminds us of the debt young people face if we continue our high fossil fuel emissions

The past is a different country – take the USSR during 1988 which was being convulsed as Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika swept through the nation. A nation that three years later would no longer exist. The world’s greatest experiment with communism was coming to an end.

In June that same year, a scientist would testify to the United States Senate that another experiment was well underway. In explaining this experiment he presented evidence that painted a future as dystopian as any conjured up by the then President Ronald Reagan about the dangers of communism.

Cites votes for new measures to control the trade in silky and thresher sharks, hunted for their fins, and devil rays, whose gills are prized as a medicinal ‘cure’

Silky sharks, thresher sharks and devil rays all won new protections at a global wildlife summit late on Monday.

Sharks are the ocean’s top predators and play a vital role in many ecosystems but many species have been decimated by uncontrolled fishing, particularly the trade in fins which are used in soup in Asia.

More power came from solar panels than from Britain’s ageing coal stations from April to September this year, report shows

Electricity generated by solar panels on fields and homes outstripped Britain’s ageing coal power stations over the past six months in a historic first.

Climate change analysts Carbon Brief found more electricity came from the sun than coal from April to the end of September, in a report that highlighted the two technologies’ changing fortunes.

Vikos Gorge, Greece Wrapped right around our planet from Alaska to Vladivostok, these migrant birds are draining south now among us all

This extraordinary Epirot valley is claimed to be the world’s deepest gorge, and from a spot called Beloi it seemed a reasonable notion. Yet it must be said that reason is the part of human equipment least appropriate to this experience. For, just to get there, you had to descend through a scramble of boulders and use all four limbs in tandem to map the next small awkward advance. Until finally, at the canyon rim, where a chest-high wall enclosed a small soil-floored cup with standing room for five, you looked out and it hit you.

How bizarre, you reflected later, that, poised on the edge of all this nothing – the guard wall balanced above a chasm of 700m – and with only the exquisite liquid quality of Greek light between you and mountains perhaps 20km away, you had suddenly felt lost for air.