The Guardian
Great Barrier Reef could face 'most extensive coral bleaching ever', scientists say
This year’s bleaching likely to be widespread although less intensive than previous outbreaks, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says
The Great Barrier Reef could be about to experience its most widespread outbreak of mass coral bleaching ever seen, according to an analysis from the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
But the analysis, seen by Guardian Australia, says while bleaching could hit the entire length of the world heritage-listed reef, the impacts may not be as intense as previous major outbreaks.
Continue reading...Morrison’s roadmap to emissions reduction could turn out to be pap – but it’s not a terrible idea | Katharine Murphy
Some in the government do want to shift on climate policy, but it remains to be seen whether they have the guts
Given the Coalition’s unconscionable track record, it is very, very hard to assume the Morrison government will approach anything in climate change policy from a position of good faith.
But brace yourself, because I’m going to say something that might surprise you. I don’t think it’s dumb for Scott Morrison to be arguing that the Coalition should develop a roadmap before settling on a long-term emissions reduction target.
Continue reading...The Guardian view of Boris Johnson: neglecting the nation | Editorial
He ignores the floods while pursuing immigration plans and an attack on the BBC, which are destructive and divisive. The prime minister does not care
Two weeks after Storm Ciara rolled across Britain and Ireland and a week after Storm Dennis did the same, extensive parts of rural Britain remain under many feet of flood water. Heavy rains in the last 48 hours have prolonged the misery. The floods extend from Surrey to Cumbria, and from the Scottish Borders to the Welsh Marches. The counties in the Wye, Severn, Trent and Yorkshire Ouse watersheds are again hard hit. As the climate crisis deepens, such events are likely to be both increasingly common and increasingly severe.
People are extraordinarily resilient in the face of this kind of emergency. But human hardiness, community solidarity and individual kindness are not enough when floods repeatedly lay waste to homes, livelihoods, land, infrastructure and services. Ultimately it is only the state, both at local and national level, that can ensure the scale of preventive and responsive measures necessary to show that the whole nation is committed to enabling diverse ways of life to continue with reasonable security.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on the blue whale’s comeback: an ocean’s glory restored | Editorial
“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.” Captain Ahab’s splenetic, dying declaration of defiance, as Moby Dick destroys his whaling ship and sends it below the waves of the Pacific Ocean, is among the most famous passages in Herman Melville’s extraordinary novel.
In reality, such triumphs of the hunted over the hunter were a fantasy in the brutal world of industrial whaling. The biggest cetacean of them all, the blue whale, had all but disappeared from the Southern Ocean by the time a ban on hunting it was introduced in 1967.
Continue reading...JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race
Leaked report for world’s major fossil fuel financier says Earth is on unsustainable trajectory
The world’s largest financier of fossil fuels has warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document.
The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including chinstrap penguins and a koala up a tree
Continue reading...Dams, wellies and sleepless nights: life in flood-hit Yorkshire
Residents in the Calder Valley are always on high alert – but for many, it’s a price worth paying
Kelly Ramsden hardly sleeps a wink when heavy rain is forecast. Last Saturday, when the army was deployed to Yorkshire’s Calder Valley to build flood defences in preparation for Storm Dennis, the 39-year-old was up half the night fretting.
She doesn’t have to wait for flood sirens to know if she needs to switch from slippers to wellies. The window of her attic bedroom looks up towards the moors and she can gauge how soggy her kitchen will be by the amount of water rushing down the hillside towards the cobbled alley at the back of her house. From her living room, she can guess whether the River Calder, speeding along just 15 metres away behind a waist-high wall, is going to cause problems downstream in Hebden Bridge or Mytholmroyd.
Continue reading...As Nobel prize winners, we demand Justin Trudeau stop the Teck Frontier mine | Nobel prize winners
All new projects that enable fossil fuel growth are an affront to our state of climate emergency. It is a disgrace Canada is considering them
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Freeland,
The year 2020 has already become one defined by devastating impacts of climate change. While we celebrated the ambition of countries – including Canada – that demanded the enshrinement of 1.5C in the Paris climate agreement, it is increasingly clear that even this is a compromise with deeply tragic implications for the world’s climate-vulnerable regions.
Continue reading...Himalayan wolf lopes towards recognition as distinct species
Animal’s unique adaptation to low-oxygen life can be basis for protection, say researchers
Wolves living in the Himalayas are to be recognised as a subspecies of the grey wolf, with researchers predicting that the animals will soon be declared a unique species.
The wolves surviving at high altitudes in Nepal and on the Tibetan plateau possess a genetic adaptation to cope with the lack of oxygen which is not found in any other wolf, a study reports.
Continue reading...When the storms hit, will Johnson and co help you? It’s the new postcode lottery | Jonathan Watts
This government’s response to the climate crisis appears to be: some of you will have to fend for yourselves
As British high streets and farm fields lie under water this week, Boris Johnson has repeatedly been urged to put on his wellies, go out and listen to flood victims.
So far though, his response has been more about tin ears than rubber boots: during Storm Dennis the prime minister was reportedly holed up in a 17th-century mansion in the Kent countryside.
Continue reading...House coal and wet wood to be phased out by 2023 to cut pollution
Wood burning stoves and coal fires are the single largest sources of PM2.5
The sale of the most polluting fuels burned in household stoves and open fires will be phased out from next year to clean up the air, the government has said.
Plans to phase out the sale of house coal and wet wood have been confirmed as part of efforts to tackle tiny particle pollutants known as PM2.5, which can penetrate deep into lungs and the blood and cause serious health problems.
Continue reading...The government's sudden passion for climate technology is newfound and insincere | Simon Holmes a Court
The call for technology before action is a specious distraction designed to paper over the plan to take no action
If you’re committed to the Paris agreement – to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below two degrees above pre-industrial levels, and pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees – then at a minimum, logically, scientifically, you’re committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
So far, at least 77 countries have committed to the target, as has every state and territory in Australia. The fact that prime minister Scott Morrison is pushing back hard against the calls for such a target sends yet another strong signal that his government still denies the need to tackle climate change.
Continue reading...Flood insurance cover does not protect thousands of new homes
Thinktank says 70,000 new builds in high risk areas are not covered by government-backed scheme
Tens of thousands of families who bought new homes in flood-risk areas are facing “crippling” financial costs, as they are ineligible for cover under a government-backed insurance scheme, a study has found.
Research by the liberal conservative thinktank Bright Blue found that 70,000 homes had been built on land at the highest risk of flooding in England since 2009, including 20,000 that were not protected by flood defences.
Continue reading...Colorado River flow shrinks from climate crisis, risking ‘severe water shortages’
Millions of people rely on the 1,450-mile waterway as increasing periods of drought and rising temperatures reduce flow of river
The flow of the Colorado River is dwindling due to the impacts of global heating, risking “severe water shortages” for the millions of people who rely upon one of America’s most storied waterways, researchers have found.
Increasing periods of drought and rising temperatures have been shrinking the flow of the Colorado in recent years and scientists have now developed a model to better understand how the climate crisis is fundamentally changing the 1,450-mile waterway.
Continue reading...Rajendra Pachauri obituary
To stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis – already being felt in the form of extreme weather, fires and floods – we have only about a decade to cause greenhouse gas emissions to peak and then fall rapidly. That we know this is largely thanks to one global organisation, a loose collection of hundreds of academics around the world that has amassed our knowledge of the climate for more than 30 years.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, convened in 1988 by the UN and the World Meteorological Organization, is made up of the world’s leading experts on climate science, who draw on thousands of academic papers to prepare comprehensive assessment reports about every five to seven years. Those reports are the gold standard, representing the summation of our knowledge of how the climate system works, and how we are affecting it.
Continue reading...Meat company faces heat over ‘cattle laundering’ in Amazon supply chain
Brazil’s JBS says it can’t trace the origins of all stock, as concern grows over deforestation linked to beef industry
The world’s biggest meat company has frequently been accused of links to deforestation. Now JBS is facing growing pressure from Brazilian politicians and environmentalists to address the information gaps and transparency failings in its supply chain.
Critics say these deficiencies mean JBS is unable to ensure it does not buy cattle from farms involved in illegal deforestation over a decade after promising to do so.
Continue reading...Grouse moors owners threaten government with legal action
Ministers were planning to ban environmentally harmful practice of burning old heather
Owners of large grouse moors threatened to take legal action against government ministers who had started developing plans to ban repeated heather burning, Whitehall documents have disclosed.
The landowners issued the threat after ministers started working on producing a law to ban them from carrying out the environmentally damaging practice on their moorland estates. The old heather is burned to expose new shoots – a source of food for grouse, whose numbers are boosted. The estates then charge people who want to shoot grouse.
Continue reading...Fates of humans and insects intertwined, warn scientists
Experts call for solutions to be enforced immediately to halt global population collapses
The “fates of humans and insects are intertwined”, scientists have said, with the huge declines reported in some places only the “tip of the iceberg”.
The warning has been issued by 25 experts from around the world, who acknowledge that little is known about most of the estimated 5.5 million insect species. However, enough was understood to warrant immediate action, they said, because waiting for better data would risk irreversible damage.
Continue reading...Great Barrier Reef on brink of third major coral bleaching in five years, scientists warn
If ocean temperatures don’t drop in the next two weeks, heat stress could tip reef over into another widespread event
The Great Barrier Reef could be heading for a third major coral bleaching outbreak in the space of five years if high ocean temperatures in the region do not drop in the next two weeks, scientists and conservationists have warned.
Heat stress is already building across the world’s biggest reef system, with reports of patchy bleaching already occurring. But a major widespread event is not currently taking place.
Continue reading...'They define the continent': nearly 150 eucalypt species recommended for threatened list
Scientists’ call follows national assessment that finds gum trees in Western Australia wheat belt suffering worst rate of decline
An iconic Western Australian eucalypt, known for the size of flowers, is among almost 150 eucalpyt species scientists have recommended be listed as threatened under national environment laws.
The eucalyptus macrocarpa, commonly known as mottlecah, has the largest flowers of all eucalypt species. The bright red flowers can measure up to 10cm in diameter.
Continue reading...