The Guardian

A collapse would bring catastrophic climate impacts but scientists disagree over the new analysis

The Gulf Stream system could collapse as soon as 2025, a new study suggests. The shutting down of the vital ocean currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) by scientists, would bring catastrophic climate impacts.

Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years owing to global heating and researchers spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021.

Party’s environment lobby group wants forestry policy focused on restoring native forests, arguing they have more value as a carbon and biodiversity sink

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More than 300 Labor branches have backed a push by the party’s environmental arm for the Albanese government to fund an expanded, publicly owned plantation industry to ensure the country gets the timber it needs and end native forest logging.

A report by the Labor Environment Action Network (Lean), the ALP’s largest internal lobby group, calls for the party’s national conference next month to support an industry policy focused on restoring native forests. It says they have greater value if treated as a carbon and biodiversity sink than if logged to produce mainly low-value products such as woodchips, pallets and power poles.

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Increased public funding for forest protection and restoration, recognising that scientists have estimated $1.69bn a year is needed to arrest species loss.

Training and support for existing native forest industry workers and Indigenous custodians to work in new conservation and plantation roles.

A government-owned national natural capital corporation to manage the national plantation estate and help farmers take part in carbon and biodiversity markets.

A nationwide restoration program focused on 252 ecosystems identified as having less than 30% of vegetation remaining. It says this would require 13,000 workers for 30 years.

Investment in a national landcover database and vegetation mapping, based on the system used in Queensland, which has reported higher levels of land-clearing than reflected in national accounts.

A plane deployed to extinguish wildfires on the Greek island of Evia has crashed, shortly after dropping water on the blaze. Footage captured on the Greek news channel EPT shows the plane spraying water before turning into a valley and disappearing out of sight. Moments later, the camera catches a ball of fire. Greek authorities said a helicopter had been deployed to assess the crash site and confirmed both pilots died in the crash. Firefighters from several countries have been sent to Greece to fight the wildfires that have spread across a number of islands, including Evia, Rhodes and Corfu, with thousands of residents and tourists evacuated

Palermo's airport, on the Italian island of Sicily, was forced to shut for a few hours on Tuesday morning as firefighters battled a blaze at its perimeter. Areas of southern Europe have been hit by another heatwave, with temperatures rising to 47.6C in some parts of Sicily. Fires were visible from residential buildings in Palermo in a video shared on social media. Firefighters said 30 teams were also fighting blazes in Sicily's eastern city of Messina

• Italy wildfires encircle Palermo as temperatures hit 47C

• ‘It’s brutal’: Europeans tell of sleepless nights and dizzy spells in heatwave

Project close to bird sanctuaries in Outer Hebrides gets go-ahead after no objections from Scotland’s environment agencies

Plans to build a spaceport on the small Hebridean island of North Uist, close to heavily protected bird sanctuaries, have been given the green light despite significant local opposition.

The proposed spaceport at Scolpaig Farm, on the north-west coast of the island in the Outer Hebrides, will host up to 10 launches a year, firing small sub-orbital rockets out over the Atlantic.

Tory former minister and chair of Climate Change Committee condemns ‘absolutely unacceptable’ attacks on Labour stance

Labour should counter “absolutely unacceptable” and “ignorant” Conservative attacks on its climate policies by offering a cross-party consensus on climate action, to bring forward measures this parliament to meet net zero, the outgoing chair of the Climate Change Committee has urged.

Lord Deben, a former Tory environment secretary and minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, strongly criticised Grant Shapps and Suella Braverman, cabinet ministers who have led vitriolic attacks on Labour as “the political wing of Just Stop Oil”. He called on the government instead to heed the message of climate protesters.

At least 50 pilot whales have stranded on Cheynes beach, east of Albany in Western Australia. Almost twice that number of whales had been seen massing off the beach since Monday, according to the owner of Cheynes Beach Caravan Park, Allan Marsh. 'Probably about half an hour ago they beached themselves,' he said about 4pm local time on Tuesday. 'They're pretty alive still … they're able to push a few out.' WA Parks and Wildlife Service officers are on the beach

• Dozens of pilot whales beached in mass stranding east of Albany in WA

We already know the damage that mining can cause on land. It could be devastating to the deep sea

Thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean, so deep that sunlight can’t penetrate, magma seeping through the Earth’s crust mixes with cold saltwater and creates a chemical reaction. The resulting hydrothermal vent spews water at temperatures upwards of 500F. Surrounding the vent – and other underwater landscapes – are small knobs containing copper, cobalt and other minerals precious for renewable energy batteries.

This spring, scientists embarked on a search for new underwater formations aboard the Falkor (too), a research vessel operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which one of us co-founded. Zooming in on three newly discovered hydrothermal vent fields with an underwater robot, the scientists found something unexpected.

As the barrage of bad news from places like Greece continues, all we can be certain of is there are many surprises lying ahead

Over the past few decades, climate scientists have made huge strides in understanding the future climate. But after recent weeks of extreme heat and devastating floods it’s clear that, although climate models have provided good information about overall rising temperatures, they can’t be sure what level of destruction each notch on the thermometer will bring.

Climate modelling is extremely complex, but its fundamentals rely on basic physics – X tonnes of emissions will bring Y increase in temperature, with some error bars. Supercomputers have been able to factor in shifts in land use that will change the reflectivity of the Earth’s surface. Improved temperature records helped verify their findings.

Whales grouped in pod off Cheynes beach before stranding event with wildlife officers hoping to rescue as many mammals as possible

At least 50 pilot whales have stranded on Cheynes beach east of Albany in Western Australia.

Almost twice that number of whales had been seen massing off the beach since Monday, according to the owner of Cheynes Beach Caravan Park, Allan Marsh.

Levelling up secretary calls for scrutiny of green policy but says ban on sale of new petrol and diesel cars is ‘immovable’

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Britain’s plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 are “immovable” but it is time to review proposals for homeowners to replace gas boilers with heat pumps, Michael Gove has said.

Asked on Times Radio if the petrol and diesel ban was an immovable target, the levelling up secretary said: “Yes.” But, on the question of targets to install heat pumps in new homes, he said: “That is one area that I do think that we need to review … it’s important that new homes meet net zero standards but one of the challenges that we have is with our existing housing stock.”

Labour’s path to victory lies in sticking to its guns. Any allies who argue for a green retreat should be shown the door

Perversely, a spectacular week for Labour somehow ended up with an assault on the party’s green policies, amid hints of internal wobbling. Despite a record Labour trouncing of a Tory majority in Selby and Ainsty, a 7% swing to Labour in Uxbridge and South Ruislip became a story about Labour in trouble, over a seat not even won in Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide.

Labour always struggles to make its narrative heard against the wall of sound from the massed foghorns of the Tory media, but the party needs more nimbleness to duck being defined by the enemy. Keir Starmer’s public rebuke to Sadiq Khan to “reflect” on his Ulez policy was a badly pitched red-on-red news story. Instead, they should have publicly agreed more generous car-scrappage schemes so that the cost of cleaning up child-killing pollution doesn’t have to fall on lower-paid drivers. Having also lost a council seat in Cambridge this month to a Conservative who stood on a platform of fighting a proposed congestion charge, Labour knows its green policies need to fall fairly on the broadest shoulders. Instead, it has allowed the Uxbridge result to distract from an electoral success that would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

All-party climate group says backing away from green policies would be catastrophic for the economy

A cross-party group of influential politicians has urged Rishi Sunak to set an example by attending the UN climate summit this November, as both major parties come under pressure over their net-zero policies.

The group of MPs and peers wants him to commit to attending Cop28 in Dubai, and to appoint a secretary of state as special envoy for the climate ahead of the UN general assembly in September, where preparations will be made for Cop28.

PM sees short-term advantage in smothering green policies while studiously ignoring signs of climate collapse

After Uxbridge, le deluge. In Manchester at least. In parts of Greece it was wildfires. For Rishi Sunak it was just a bonfire. A bonfire of green policy. The world was not quite warm enough. What the UK needed was a culture war.

Who would have guessed that the result of one byelection in west London could have such far-reaching consequences? The message Labour took from Uxbridge was that maybe Sadiq Khan would like to rethink his Ulez scheme with a general election due in less than 18 months. When it should have maybe pointed out during the byelection campaign itself that the clean air scheme had actually been introduced by the Tories. And that the then transport secretary, Grant Shapps, had written to Khan to enforce it. Instead, Labour had tried to disown it entirely, hoping voters would ignore it. Go figure. Let the public die.

Activist had pleaded not guilty on grounds she acted out of necessity at demonstration that blocked oil trucks in Malmö

Greta Thunberg has been fined by a Swedish court after she was found guilty of disobeying a police order to leave a climate protest.

The 20-year-old climate activist, who from 2018 became the face of the youth climate movement, had admitted taking part in the protest in Malmö in June, but pleaded not guilty on the grounds she had acted out of necessity.

Licences UK has approved in last two years will result in carbon dioxide matching annual emissions of Denmark, Greenpeace finds

New oil and gas licences for the North Sea that the UK government has approved in the past two years will produce as much carbon dioxide as the annual emissions of nearly 14m cars, or the entire yearly emissions of Denmark, analysis has shown.

This amount – about 28m tonnes of carbon dioxide over the lifetimes of the fields – will be increased more than eightfold, if potential licences under consideration are also granted, according to data from public sources analysed by Greenpeace.

Wasps have taken over my shed and are a wonder to behold – especially since I worked out how to live with them in harmony

My tiny, wonky shed has new owners. I have never had a garden shed before, so I wasn’t expecting to give it away so quickly, but once they moved in I accepted it was rightly theirs – for this summer at least. I have never had such a good view of a wasp nest. I peer in most weeks to marvel at its progress.

It is quite exquisite in its grey, papery layers. Where there was once a solitary queen, now there are many more insects building and foraging, so the nest is only going to grow in size. These are common wasps, Vespula vulgaris, and the colony will survive into early autumn, until the first queen dies. At this point, in a fit of genetics and anger, the worker bees will revolt against the collective and start to lay their own eggs.

Discovery of dark bordered beauty males where caterpillars were released raises hopes species can be revived

A moth on the brink of extinction in Britain and reared for the first time in captivity has been found flying at a site where its caterpillars were released.

The dark bordered beauty is clinging on in just three places in Britain but its numbers are being increased by a conservation project to establish new populations in the Scottish Highlands.

New suit charges that the EPA disregards ethanol production’s impact on endangered species as it is directed to study under law

The US biofuel program is likely killing endangered species and harming the environment in a way that negates its benefits, but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is largely ignoring those problems, a new federal lawsuit charges.

The suit alleges the EPA failed to consider impacts on endangered species, as is required by law, when it set new rules that will expand biofuel use nationwide during the next three years, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which brought the litigation.

Footage from the Greek island of Rhodes shows a huge fire and thick plumes of smoke rising, which has forced 19,000 people to flee and threatened resorts and coastal villages. Firefighters were struggling to contain 82 wildfires across the country, 64 of which started on Sunday, the hottest day of the summer so far

• Greece: wildfires break out on Corfu and Evia as 19,000 flee Rhodes blazes