The Guardian

Leak of potent greenhouse gas is currently small but further research is urgently needed, say scientists

The Siberian heatwave of 2020 led to new methane emissions from the permafrost, according to research. Emissions of the potent greenhouse gas are currently small, the scientists said, but further research is urgently needed.

Analysis of satellite data indicated that fossil methane gas leaked from rock formations known to be large hydrocarbon reservoirs after the heatwave, which peaked at 6C above normal temperatures. Previous observations of leaks have been from permafrost soil or under shallow seas.

ExxonMobil and Suncor face lawsuits in the western state but big oil’s apologists say the US consumer is to blame for emissions

More than a decade after the Fourmile Canyon blaze drove even the firefighters out of Gold Hill, blackened hillsides and scorched trees attest to the Colorado mountain town’s close shave with destruction.

“Because of the wind and the dryness, it took off,” said Chris Finn, who volunteers as the town’s fire chief when he’s not running the local inn. “That day in 2010, I felt that my business and my house might not be here any more.”

We need products we can repair, reuse and recycle – not ones deliberately built to become obsolete

Never have we wanted, owned and wasted so much stuff. Our consumptive path through modern life leaves a wake of social and ecological destruction – trainers barely worn, ignored AI-powered digital assistants gathering dust, and forgotten smartphones languishing in drawers. By what perverse alchemy do our newest, coolest things so rapidly transform into meaningless junk?

Related: From fashion to field: shredded cotton clothing used to help grow future crops

Scientists, ecologists and artists have collaborated to showcase global work to protect seeds in an exhibition at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & art gallery (Ramm) in Exeter.

Seedscapes: future-proofing nature runs until 5 September

Lemon, blacktip, bonnethead and nurse sharks retreat from sea as state struggles to contain pollution problem

• Florida red tide: is fertilizer plant spill making it worse?

Hundreds of coastal sharks have taken refuge in a Florida canal, apparently to escape the effects of a toxic red tide outbreak killing hundreds of tons of marine animals.

Related: Sexy secret life of basking sharks uncovered in Hebrides

Researchers find fragments in innards of species that have adapted to develop in open ocean, which has highly polluted areas

Young marine turtles are swallowing large quantities of plastic, with ocean pollution changing habitats that were once ideal for their development into a risk, researchers have found.

The impact of plastic on wildlife is a growing area of research, and studies have revealed harrowing cases of marine animals sustaining injuries or dying after ingesting such material or becoming entangled in it.

Allegra Stratton says carbon emissions must change ‘right now’, as UK moves towards 2050 goal

The UK’s goal of tackling the climate crisis by reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 is “too far away”, the prime minister’s climate change spokesperson has said.

Allegra Stratton, Boris Johnson’s former press secretary, said the “science is clear” that the UK must change its carbon emission output “right now”.

Exclusive: Green group decries infrastructure department’s ‘dodgy offset’ plan to use government site that already had protections

Federal environmental department officials questioned the credibility of a government plan to use heritage-listed land it already owned as the main environmental offset for the western Sydney airport.

Documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws show officials asked the federal infrastructure department to justify the use of Defence Establishment Orchard Hills to offset the destruction of more than 100ha of critically endangered Cumberland Plain woodland and other habitat.

Investment in flood defences is overdue. But progress on climate resilience requires confronting vested interests too

Nothing about the climate crisis is easy. The challenge of adapting to global heating and the climate disruption it causes is particularly hard. It forces us to reckon with harms that cannot be undone and is sometimes viewed as jeopardising progress on reducing emissions, by drawing away resources and political will. After all, if we can adapt to climate chaos, why bother trying to prevent it?

Since this argument is a staple of climate deniers, such fears are well founded. But unless we are prepared to stand by as people’s lives are destroyed by extreme weather, adaptation is required. For the relief and protection that they will bring to large numbers of people living in flood-prone areas, last week’s announcements of record funding for new defences in England, along with new guidance and insurance rules, must therefore be welcomed. Disastrous floods in Belgium, Germany and China, and the horror of the North American “heat dome”, have alarmed scientists and focused minds.

We feel besieged and imperilled, and the Johnson government is seizing the chance to weaken our most fundamental liberties

If you were wondering when the widely predicted post-Brexit dystopia might move beyond the imaginings of TV scriptwriters and into the real world, we suddenly seem to be a lot of the way there. Supermarket shelves are either understocked or completely empty. The populist loudmouths who now try to make the political weather have been taking aim in the past week at the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and its supposedly “woke” lifesavers.

Meanwhile, the Johnson government’s descent into whip-crack law enforcement continues apace. Last week’s announcement of a new “crime reduction plan” was centred around the permanent relaxation of restrictions on “suspicionless” (in other words, often arbitrary) stop and search, which had a clear performative aspect: ministers blithely batting away the fact that black people are a staggering 18 times more likely to be searched than white people under these specific powers, presumably to demonstrate a wretched kind of toughness. Johnson also launched plans for chain gangs dressed in hi-vis jackets.

Rewilding projects reveal rare species preserved in buried ancient wetlands

The fertile land of Norfolk is home to a host of stately homes, rare wildlife and more ponds than any other county. Now, estates in the area are trying to hunt down ancient “ghost ponds” in the hopes of reviving centuries-old seeds and discovering long-lost plants.

Botanists believe that this will lead to new plant discoveries; seeds can survive for centuries under layers of leaves and mud so once they are given water and exposed to sunlight the plants will grow. Already, six plants of the endangered wetland flower grass-poly have been found at the edge of an old cattle-watering pond on the Heydon estate in north Norfolk. The species had not been seen in the county since the early 1900s.

We need to decarbonise and fast. But ‘adaptation’, the ways in which we protect people from the crisis, is not a dirty word

It won’t be enough. It can’t be. From here, even an astonishing pace of decarbonisation will still deliver us a warmer world than we have today, full of more eye-opening extremes and more deeply disruptive disasters of the kind, we are learning this summer, that even the wealthiest and most climate-conscious countries are unprepared for. No one is.

That is what Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, meant when he wrote, with the capital inundated, that the city was now on the frontline of the climate emergency and it is the central lesson of the Met Office’s annual report on the state of the UK climate, which found that mild British weather was already a relic of a bygone era. The Climate Crisis Advisory Group, led by Sir David King, recently declared that greenhouse gas levels were already so high that they foreclosed a “manageable future for humanity”. “Nowhere is safe,” King said, provoking a host of headlines.

The art director JP Boneyard ’s favourite park is Montana’s Glacier national park. “It’s breathtaking, I’m smiling just thinking about it ,” he says. For his screen-print project Fifty-Nine Parks, now collected in a book, he asked modern artists to reinterpret America’s classic national park posters, commissioned by the government in the 1900s.

“I hope they inspire people to visit the parks and connect with nature, but, heck, it’d be awesome if the book inspired folks to pick up a squeegee and start printing too,” he says.

• The Art of the National Parks is published by Insight Editions (£33)

Drone footage shows the Corfo lagoon in the Chubut province, which has been tinted pink because toxic waste from fishing has been dumped into it. Experts and activists say the pollution is caused by a chemical used to preserve prawns for export. The colour is caused by sodium sulphite, an antibacterial product used in fish factories. Local residents have complained about the foul smells and pollution concerns around the Chubut River that feeds into the Corfo lagoon. In protest against the continued pollution, locals have blocked roads used by fish waste trucks from entering the area

If we work together to create new sanctuaries or restore old habitat, the butterflies will have a fighting chance

It looks like an indifferent year for butterflies from where I’m standing although I’ve seen large numbers of possibly immigrant red admirals around the Norfolk coast.

We won’t know the season we’re having until we see data from the annual scientific survey and the Big Butterfly Count, which is now under way and will hopefully beat last year’s incredible statistic: 111,628 citizen scientists took part.

Biffa convicted of exporting filthy rubbish marked as waste paper for recycling in India and Indonesia in breach of ban

The UK’s largest waste company, Biffa, has been fined £1.5m after exporting filthy rubbish marked as waste paper for recycling in India and Indonesia, in actions a judge called “reckless, bordering on deliberate”.

Last week, the company was convicted of sending more than 1,000 tonnes of household waste to India and Indonesia, in breach of a ban on sending such waste to developing countries after a two-week trial at Wood Green crown court .

• Data shows ice sheet lost 8.5bn tons of surface mass on Tuesday
• All-time record temperature of 19.8C in region on Wednesday

Greenland’s vast ice sheet is undergoing a surge in melting, with the amount of ice vanishing in a single day this week enough to cover the whole of Florida in two inches of water, researchers have found.

The deluge of melting has reached deep into Greenland’s enormous icy interior, with data from the Danish government showing that the ice sheet lost 8.5bn tons of surface mass on Tuesday alone. A further 8.4bn tons was lost on Thursday, the Polar Portal monitoring website reported.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a released frog, rescued kestrel chicks and frisky sharks

Most urban areas were laid out many decades ago, but projects worldwide show change is possible

Around the globe many cities are redesigning themselves for the 21st century, but will the UK be left behind?

Pressures on the UK’s urban environments are likely to increase, according to a report from the Environment Agency. Eight out of 10 people call these areas home and urban populations are expected to be 18% greater by 2036 than they were in 2011. Although the air that we breathe in our towns and cities has improved hugely since the 1950s, progress on particle pollution has stalled in recent years. In 2019, three-quarters of the UK’s reporting zones still failed legal limits for nitrogen dioxide that were set in 1999.

In the city, they fly along routes that mirror roads

Every evening in Sydney, clouds of bats move across the sky. They time their trip so that there is just too little light to make out anything more than a silhouette – which is just enough light so that you can see, very clearly, the outlines of their legs and feet knocking together – an entrechat – as they flap their wings.

I’m not sure that I will ever stop having the exact same thought about this: “Oh my God, you can see their feet knocking together. Oh my God.”