The Guardian

Cocktail of Saharan dust and diesel fumes prompts officials to issue health warning for Saturday as unseasonably warm weather continues

A further spell of air pollution caused by a cocktail of Saharan dust and diesel fumes is expected to hit England and Wales on Saturday as temperatures remain unseasonably warm.

Parts of eastern, central and southern England are already being affected by a moderate pollution episode on Thursday, causing officials to warn adults and children with lung problems to reduce physical activity outdoors.

The public are being enlisted to read through detailed logs of whaling ships which include records of ice flows and weather conditions

Maritime historians, climate scientists and ordinary citizens are coming together on a project to study the logbooks of 19th-century whaling ships to better understand modern-day climate change and Arctic weather patterns.

The crew of whaling ships kept meticulous daily logbooks of weather conditions during their often years-long voyages searching the globe for whales, valued for their light-giving oil, said Michael Dyer, a senior maritime historian at the New Bedford whaling museum in Massachusetts, which is supplying much of the data.

Older people, asthma sufferers and those with breathing difficulties are most at risk as pollution levels expected to rise

A Saharan dust cloud is expected to settle over parts of the UK on Thursday, prompting health experts to issue warnings to elderly people and those who suffer from breathing problems.

High levels of pollution are expected over southern and central England, with Lincolnshire bearing the brunt of the cloud.

Cartoon in News Corp paper by veteran Bill Leak described by critic as ‘shocking ... and unequivocally racist, drawing on base stereotypes of third world people’

A cartoon in the Australian depicting starving Indians chopping up and eating solar panels sent to the developing nation in an attempt to curb carbon emissions has been condemned as “unequivocally racist”.

Drawn by the veteran cartoonist Bill Leak, Monday’s cartoon was his response to the climate deal signed in Paris at the weekend. India is the world’s fourth-largest greenhouse emitter.

Two decades of talks have come to this: an ambitious agreement to hold states to emissions targets – but already low-lying countries are worried

Governments have signalled an end to the fossil fuel era, committing for the first time to a universal agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change.

After 20 years of fraught meetings, including the past two weeks spent in an exhibition hall on the outskirts of Paris, negotiators from nearly 200 countries signed on to a legal agreement on Saturday evening that set ambitious goals to limit temperature rises and to hold governments to account for reaching those targets.

The goal of 1.5C is a big leap below the 2C agreed six years ago in Copenhagen. Here’s what the agreement means for global emissions and the future of the planet

Governments have agreed to “pursue efforts” to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels: something that would have seemed unthinkable just a few months ago.

The former Nasa scientist criticizes the talks, intended to reach a new global deal on cutting carbon emissions beyond 2020, as ‘no action, just promises’

• John Kerry rejects scientist’s claim Paris talks were ‘fraud’

Mere mention of the Paris climate talks is enough to make James Hansen grumpy. The former Nasa scientist, considered the father of global awareness of climate change, is a soft-spoken, almost diffident Iowan. But when he talks about the gathering of nearly 200 nations, his demeanour changes.

Related: John Kerry rejects leading climate scientist's claim Paris talks were 'fraud'

A Siberian tiger called Zolushka is filmed in the Bastak nature reserve in east Russia playing with two young cubs. Zolushka was found orphaned in 2012 and after a year of rehabilitation was retuned to the wild. Now it seems Zolushka has given birth to cubs in the wild. The Siberian tiger is one of the most endangered species in the world with as few as 500 left in the wild

Scientist who features in BBC series says Australia’s positions on reef and coal are incompatible, but environment minister Greg Hunt fails to address contradiction at Paris screening

A leading scientist who features in David Attenborough’s new series about the Great Barrier Reef has told the Australian government it cannot expand coal exports and continue to claim to be protecting the reef.

The government is planning a big tourism campaign to run at the same time as the new series screens around the world.

Committee on Climate Change had warned in October that the government must take action to protect homes from risk of flooding

The UK government was warned by its official climate change advisers in October that it needed to take action on the increasing number of homes at high risk of flooding but rejected the advice.

The decision not to develop a strategy to address increase flooding risk came just a few weeks before Storm Desmond brought about severe flooding in Cumbria, Lancashire and other parts of the north west causing an estimated £500m of damage.

Millionaire behind adventure brand and Esprit, who ploughed fortune into saving South American ecosystems, suffers hypothermia from falling into lake

Douglas Tompkins, co-founder of the North Face outdoor company who poured millions into conservation, has died after falling into near-freezing waters during a kayak accident in southern Chile.

Tompkins, 72, was taken with acute hypothermia to a hospital in Coyhaique after high winds flipped his adventure kayak during a trip across Lake General Carrera in Patagonia on Tuesday, reports said. He died about six hours after arriving at hospital in the regional capital.

From rapid ice melts to calving glaciers and a snow terrain poked by dark patches, Daniel Beltrá’s stunning images show how rising temperatures and global pollution are literally leaving their dark imprints on Greenland’s pristine landscape. ‘Climate change is having its biggest and most visible impact in Greenland. It is like the canary in a coal mine; what is happening there will affect us all,’ he says

Photographs by Daniel Beltrá/ Courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery

The draft negotiating text for a global deal is in. These are some of the people who will now decide the outcome of the talks

As ministers from countries around the world fly in for the crunch second week of the UN climate talks in Paris there are still significant areas of disagreement, but also optimism at the talks that a deal can be done. The negotiating text has been pared back to just over 20 pages – a much better position than at the equivalent point at the Copenhagen talks in 2009. Here are some of the key individuals who will decide the outcome of the talks.

Norway’s geography is ideal for hydro power. But clean energy schemes have cut reindeer grazing habitats by up to 40%

It’s cold. Minus 10, 12 perhaps, and getting dark; the butter-fingers of a rising moon evident on the eastern horizon. Ill-equipped (the forecasts were for minus five), my ears start to hurt, and I pull in my hood. By the time you read this it will be colder still. And there are still no reindeer to be seen.

Olav hands me his binoculars and tells me to focus on a hillside about three miles away across the snowy vastness of Norway’s Forollhogna National Park, a tract of ancient, ice-scoured mountains and mire, three hours’ drive inland from Trondheim.

Former New York City mayor charged with helping companies gauge exposure to global warming costs

Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, is to head a new global taskforce aimed at highlighting the financial exposure of companies to the risk of climate change.

Investors, insurers, banks and consumers will be provided with more information under plans for a voluntary industry-led code announced by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the G20 body that monitors and makes recommendations about the financial system, at the COP21 Paris climate change conference on Friday.

Puffins and kittiwakes on Unesco world heritage site are at risk from warming seas, National Trust for Scotland findings show

The survival of seabirds including puffins and kittiwakes on St Kilda – the island archipelago home to one of the world’s most important seabird populations – is being threatened by climate change, striking new evidence shows.

Naturalists have discovered that the kittiwake, a small migratory gull with ink-black wing tips, is on the brink of disappearing from St Kilda. The remote cluster of Scottish islands in the eastern Atlantic is the UK’s only place with two Unesco world heritage site listings – for its culture and natural history – and one of only 24 sites with a dual listing worldwide.

The real issue – global warming caused by aircraft emissions – calls on us to act. But focusing on ‘chemtrails’ absolves people of the responsibility to do so

You spend years trying to get people to take an interest in aircraft emissions. Then at last the issue gets picked up – but in the most perverse way possible.

The pollutants spread by planes are a major issue. They make a significant contribution to global warming, yet they are excluded from international negotiations, such as the conference taking place in Paris. As a result, aviation’s expansion is unchecked by concerns about climate change.

US federal prosecutors have ended the government’s pursuit of criminal charges over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 which resulted in 11 deaths

US federal prosecutors have dropped manslaughter charges against two BP employees connected to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, making it highly unlikely that anyone will ever serve prison time over the far-reaching calamity.

Related: Louisiana five years after BP oil spill: 'It's not going back to normal no time soon'

In less than 10 years the country has slashed its carbon footprint and lowered electricity costs, without government subsidies. Delegates at the Paris summit can learn much from its success

• Read this article in Spanish
  

As the world gathers in Paris for the daunting task of switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy, one small country on the other side of the Atlantic is making that transition look childishly simple and affordable.

In less than 10 years, Uruguay has slashed its carbon footprint without government subsidies or higher consumer costs, according to the country’s head of climate change policy, Ramón Méndez.

Licences for more than half of the Kgalagadi transfrontier park, one of Africa’s largest conservation areas, have been granted to drill for shale gas

The Botswana government has quietly sold the rights to frack for shale gas in one of Africa’s largest protected conservation areas, it has emerged.

The Kgalagadi transfrontier park, which spans the border with South Africa, is an immense 36,000 sq km wilderness, home to gemsbok desert antelope, black-maned Kalahari lions and pygmy falcons. But conservationists and top park officials – who were not informed of the fracking rights sale – are now worried about the impact of drilling on wildlife.