The Guardian

Amid ‘scary outside time’ and cursed early Christmas promotions, there will at least be some good days for drying the washing

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the birdies is. Well, wonder no more because at any given moment a magpie is planning an attack on you, talons out, sharp beak at the ready, protective instincts in full flight. Luckily, cowering publicly in fear of a bird is just one of the many joys of the current season! Join me in celebrating the annual experiences of spring.

UN meteorological body finds health experts have access to heat warning services in only half of affected countries

The climate crisis threatens to roll back decades of progress towards better health and governments are ill-prepared to stop it, the World Meteorological Organization has said.

Three-quarters of national weather agencies send climate data to their country’s health officials but less than one in four health ministries use the information to protect people from risks such as extreme heat, the report found.

Experts at Royal Horticultural Society conference argue for change of focus as many saplings are dying

Tree establishment should replace tree planting in government targets, experts have said.

Billions of pounds of taxpayer money could be being wasted planting trees that end up dying because government tree targets are focused on planting rather than survival, they argued, amid concern that saplings were dying because they are often neglected.

International funding to shield people from heatwaves, floods and droughts only 5-10% of what is needed, report finds

The world is “woefully” underprepared for the escalating impacts of the climate crisis that is already hitting billions of people across the globe, a stark UN report has warned.

International funding to protect communities against heatwaves, floods and droughts is just 5-10% of what is needed today and actually fell in recent years, just as extreme weather hit even harder.

On one small Argentine farm, Alessandra Sanguinetti captured the lives of the animals – from birth to their sometimes grizzly demise. Warning: graphic content

Volcanoes, northern lights and midnight sun are all on offer at this haven, which locals want to preserve

“Look at this wave,” says Mathis Blache, pointing to the sea from the shore’s black rocks as a swell rolls in. “It’s just perfect.” Despite air and water temperatures in the single digits, the 27-year-old student and surfer points out two other surfers – and a couple of seals – delighting in the conditions at Þorlákshöfn in south-west Iceland.

This spot, where surfers can enjoy either the midnight sun or the northern lights depending on the time of year, has in recent years become the heart of Iceland’s rapidly growing surfing community.

Exclusive: Drop in compliance visits in England described as ‘incredibly detrimental to water resources’

The Environment Agency has slashed its water-use inspections by almost a half over the past five years, it can be revealed.

Environment Agency (EA) officers visited people and businesses with licences to abstract, or take, water from rivers and aquifers 4,539 times in 2018-19, but this dropped to 2,303 inspections in 2022-23, according to data obtained by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations.

Study delivers dire warning although rate of increase is debated by some scientists amid a record-breaking year of heat

Global heating is accelerating faster than is currently understood and will result in a key temperature threshold being breached as soon as this decade, according to research led by James Hansen, the US scientist who first alerted the world to the greenhouse effect.

The Earth’s climate is more sensitive to human-caused changes than scientists have realized until now, meaning that a “dangerous” burst of heating will be unleashed that will push the world to be 1.5C hotter than it was, on average, in pre-industrial times within the 2020s and 2C hotter by 2050, the paper published on Thursday predicts.

It’s good to see some things never change

The echinoderms more closely resemble disembodied heads than multi-limbed creatures, experts have discovered

Starfish may appear to have a plethora of limbs, but it turns out the creatures actually resemble something akin to a disembodied head.

Experts say it has long been a conundrum how starfish, sea urchins and other animals with a fivefold body plan, known as echinoderms, evolved from an ancestor with twofold symmetry – a body plan common today in animals including insects, molluscs and vertebrates.

Handling of the 2030 and 2034 tournaments undermines Fifa’s environmental commitments, but it doesn’t have to be like this

There has been a lot of criticism of Fifa’s plans to host the 2030 men’s World Cup across six countries (Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) and to relax the minimum number of existing stadiums required to host the 2034 tournament, a key decision that will inevitably lead to a successful Saudi Arabia bid. These have quite rightly raised eyebrows – climate has clearly not been at the heart of the decisions.

If fan travel makes up roughly 70% of football’s carbon footprint, how can Fifa plan to halve its emissions in the same year it hosts a tournament in three continents? And given that infrastructure is a big source of emissions around mega-events, what commitment is Fifa showing to the planet when it encourages more building in Saudi Arabia by reducing the minimum number of compliant existing stadiums from seven to four but keeping the final number of suitable stadiums at 14?

Households have continued to use state help that was first created more than a decade ago

For a brief period over several weekends this spring, the state of South Australia, which has a population of 1.8 million, did something no other place of a similar size can claim: generate enough energy from solar panels on the roofs of houses to meet virtually all its electricity needs.

This is a new phenomenon, but it has been coming for a while – since solar photovoltaic cells started to be installed at a rapid pace across Australia in the early 2010s. Roughly one in three Australian households, more than 3.6m homes, now generate electricity domestically. In South Australia, the most advanced state for rooftop solar, the proportion is nearly 50%.

In an era when clubs have become the playthings of billionaires, fans are left pondering the question: how do you prefer your sportswashing?

When Qatar’s Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani withdrew from the race to buy Manchester United last month, you could almost hear the sighs of relief emanating from the press department on Sir Matt Busby Way.

A Qatari takeover, despite the appeal and simplicity of Sheikh Jassim’s all-cash offer, would be sure to face fierce criticism – not only on the basis of Qatar’s enduringly appalling human rights record, but as further proof of oil money’s deepening incursion into global soccer’s most sacred places. With this ethical conundrum out of the way, the path is now clear for a much easier publicity sell: Manchester United looks set to fall into the care of a footballing humanitarian who presents the unique advantage of being both obscenely rich and unimpeachably English. Finally, the self-styled biggest club on the planet will be yanked away from the pesky Americans, snatched from the slick hands of the Gulf, and come to nestle at the top of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s corporate crown – pending a final buyout of the Glazers remaining 75% stake. A victory, at last, for clean money, good money, English money.

Dr Gail Bradbrook found guilty of criminal damage to Department for Transport building in 2019

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The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has been found guilty of criminal damage for breaking the window of a government department in a protest against the environmental impact of HS2.

Dr Gail Bradbrook was convicted on Wednesday by a jury after 45 minutes, after a two-day trial at Isleworth crown court.

Failure to identify commercial risks could constitute a breach of duty of care and diligence, according to new legal opinion

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Company directors who fail to foresee the impacts their companies have on nature, and the commercial risks those effects pose, can be held personally liable and fined, according to lawyers.

A new legal opinion advises that company directors need to identify anywhere their business is dependent on or has an impact on nature and consider the potential risks this poses to the company.

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Mid-air fights, jabbering gang-gangs and villainous magpies are some of the 68 finalists from more than 6,000 entries in this year’s competition, with the winner to be announced in November. All proceeds go towards bird conservation across the country

Danish company’s CEO cites escalating costs in global offshore wind industry as shares fall

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Denmark’s Ørsted has cancelled two big offshore windfarm projects in the US at a cost of more than £3bn amid surging costs facing the global wind industry.

Shares in the world’s biggest wind power company fell 20% on Wednesday after it told investors it had no choice but to take a 28.4bn Danish kroner (£3.3bn) impairment charge and stop the developments off the New Jersey coast.

Attendance in UAE confirmed a year after Truss government advised Charles not to attend Egypt event

King Charles is to attend the opening ceremony of the Cop28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates, one year after he was advised by Liz Truss’s government not to attend the Cop27 summit in Egypt.

Charles will deliver the opening address at the world climate action summit, a gathering of global leaders at the start of Cop28, in his first major speech on the climate crisis since becoming monarch.

Removing leaves will mean they can be replanted or shredded for animal feed and could reduce emissions

The pineapple has been dethroned: Sainsbury’s has announced it will start selling a crownless version of the tropical fruit from Wednesday.

The spiky, green leaves that grow from the top of the plant are a unique feature of the exotic fruit. But, says the supermarket, they are typically thrown away by customers, contributing to up to 700 tonnes of food waste a year.

Kevin Jordan, whose home is 5 metres from the cliff edge in Norfolk, says government’s shortcomings breach his human rights

When Kevin Jordan bought his seaside home in Hemsby, Norfolk, he was told it would be safe for a century. In the decade since, 17 of his neighbours’ homes have had to be demolished, or have been swept away into the waters of the North Sea. His is now just 5 metres from the fast-crumbling cliff, isolated and unreachable by car after part of the road collapsed into the North Sea.

The people of Hemsby would seem to be natural beneficiaries of official policies to adapt to the climate crisis. Under the Climate Change Act 2008, the government is required to produce a national adaptation programme every five years, setting out plans protect communities in the UK from the extreme heat, flooding and coastal erosion expected as the climate breaks down.