The Guardian
Myanmar's ruby gems mining - in pictures
Burrowing deep underground, thousands of informal miners risk their lives to find gleaming red gems as a law change spurs opportunity in Myanmar’s “land of rubies”.
Continue reading...Wildlife Photographer of the Year: stories behind classic portraits
Past images are presented here in extracts from a book by Rosamund Kidman Cox, published by the Natural History Museum
The watchful pelican
by Helmut Moik
Seas rise, hope sinks: Tuvalu's vanishing islands – in pictures
One of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries is already suffering floods, droughts and coral bleaching
All photographs by Sean Gallagher
Continue reading...Downplaying the danger of Chernobyl | Letters
Tom Allan’s report of his holiday inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone (Nuclear reaction, Travel, 25 May) was both misleading and dangerous in its assertions. He gives the impression that the radiation dangers are minimal: “less radiation risk than on a single transatlantic flight”, according to his ornithologist Belarusian guide, Valery Yurko.
The problem around Chernobyl is not average radiation exposure but the millions of highly radioactive hotspots of radioactive particles spewed from inside the destroyed Chernobyl reactor core. The entire exclusion zone area has suffered from serious forest fires in the 33 years since the catastrophe, re-suspending these hot particles into the atmosphere and spreading them around.
Continue reading...Scientists call for volunteers to help pre-empt deadly plant disease
Britain free of Xylella fastidiosa, known as cuckoo spit, but experts are on high alert
Scientists are calling for thousands of keen-eyed volunteers to report findings of frothy spittle, often called cuckoo spit and found on plants across the UK, in a pre-emptive strike against a deadly plant disease.
Xylella fastidiosa, is described by the European commission as “one of the most harmful pathogenic bacteria worldwide”. It arrived in Europe six years ago and has already struck several countries, devastating olive groves in southern Italy, and spreading to other EU countries including parts of France and Spain.
Continue reading...Climate protesters stage 'die-in' at Queensland Museum's dinosaur exhibit
Hundreds of Extinction Rebellion demonstrators, many dressed as endangered animals, rally in Brisbane
Around 250 environmental activists have laid down among the dinosaurs at the Queensland Museum on Sunday, in the first large Extinction Rebellion event in Brisbane.
Protesters, many dressed as endangered animals, laid on the floor of the museum’s Lost Creatures exhibit amid fossils and dinosaur reconstructions, including the state’s famous Muttaburrasaurus.
Continue reading...Snake mistake: CSIRO says it's a myth that Australia is home to world's deadliest species
Australian science agency says there are a ‘negligible number of human deaths’ from snake bites in Australia
The popular suggestion that Australia is home to the world’s deadliest snakes is largely a myth, with the risk of bites and death far greater across Asia, Africa and South America, the nation’s science agency has said.
Herpetologist Ruchira Somaweera from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said the myth was born a few decades ago and came out of a study of the relatively high toxicity levels found in Australian species, such as brown snakes.
Continue reading...Shami Chakrabarti warns police over Extinction Rebellion prosecutions
Shadow attorney general condemns Met’s plans to to charge 1,100 protesters
Shami Chakrabarti, the shadow attorney general, has accused police of stepping out of line by announcing plans to push for the prosecution of more than 1,100 Extinction Rebellion protesters.
Deputy assistant commissioner Laurence Taylor said on Friday that the Metropolitan police had a team of 30 officers preparing cases against those arrested during the protests over Easter, and that he anticipated putting “all of those [cases] to the Crown Prosecution Service for decisions”.
Continue reading...Clive Palmer takes aim at WA premier after court rules mine owes him millions
A stalemate over iron ore waste has the mining magnate and Mark McGowan at loggerheads and 3,000 jobs on the line
Clive Palmer’s millions may not have bought him a seat in Parliament, but the eccentric billionaire is still firing political barbs across the nation.
This time his target is not Canberra, but Western Australia, where, on the back of his election defeat, he claimed a legal victory over his Chinese business partners.
Continue reading...Weatherwatch: more El Niño events expected in future
Research shows type of events will change and they will become more frequent in central Pacific
New research in Nature Geoscience looks at coral records to show how the pattern of El Niño events has altered over the last four centuries.
El Niño, considered one of the most important climatic phenomena globally, involves a warming of the Pacific Ocean’s surface. The Spanish term for “The Boy”, referring to the infant Jesus, as El Niño’s effect may be most evident around Christmas. There are two types of El Niño, those in the eastern Pacific, close to South America, and those further out in the central Pacific.
As expected, the report found El Niño events have become more frequent. It also showed a change in the type.
“We used to have roughly the same number of central and eastern Pacific events,” says the lead researcher, Mandy Freund, of the University of Melbourne. “Most recently, we only have one eastern Pacific event and nine central Pacific events.”
Both types of events mean reduced rainfall in Asia and Australia, but the eastern Pacific version brings heavy rainfall and flooding in the Americas, while central Pacific events produce dry conditions. El Niño events also affect other weather phenomena around the globe, including cyclones and colder British winters.
The research will enable scientists to create better models to predict the effects of future El Niño events.
Schoolchildren go on strike across world over climate crisis
Hundreds of thousands walk out of lessons in 110 countries demanding urgent action
Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren across the world have gone on strike in protest at the escalating climate crisis.
Students from 1,800 towns and cities in more than 110 countries stretching from India to Australia and the UK to South Africa, walked out of lessons on Friday, the organisers of the action said.
Continue reading...What ‘rewilding’ really means for forestry and heather moorland | Letters
The Forestry Commission was established 100 years ago to create a “strategic reserve of timber” after Lloyd George stated “Britain had more nearly lost the war for want of timber than of anything else”. The UK is 50% self-sufficient in food, but only 20% self-sufficient in wood, so we still want timber more than anything else.
Any call to redirect subsidies to restore woodlands is welcome (Use farm subsidies to rewild quarter of UK, urges report, 21 May). The Rewilding Britain report states: “Commercial conifer plantations should not be eligible, except where they are removed and replaced with native woodland.” This approach is understandable if the aim is to increase habitat for wildlife. However, plantations are an excellent way to combat climate breakdown, because the growing trees sequester carbon and the forests store it, just like in more natural woodlands, but harvested wood products also provide a carbon substitution effect when used instead of concrete or steel.
Continue reading...Student climate strikes around the world
Hundreds of thousands of young people walk out of lessons around the world as the movement snowballs
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Albatross lovebirds, white storks in England and a walrus mother and baby
Continue reading...Send us your questions for climate activist Greta Thunberg
Got a question for the Swedish 16-year-old who started a youth climate revolution? Here’s your chance to ask her...
On 20 August 2018, Greta Thunberg, then aged 15, did not attend her first day back at school after the summer holidays. Instead, she made a sign that read “School strike for climate change” and stood in front of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm, demanding the government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris climate agreement.
Her protest sparked the international movement Fridays for Future, in which schoolchildren around the world skip class to insist their governments take urgent action to halt the ongoing climate crisis. Since then, Thunberg has given a TED talk on the subject, been named one of the world’s most influential teens by Time magazine, and been nominated for the Nobel peace prize. After she addressed the Houses of Parliament in April, MPs endorsed Jeremy Corbyn’s call to declare a climate emergency, aiming to “set off a wave of action from parliaments and governments around the globe”.
Continue reading...School climate strikes expected to be largest yet – live coverage
Students around the world are walking out of lessons to demand politicians take urgent action on climate change
11.44am BST
Hundreds of school children have gathered outside Parliament in London for the latest school climate strikes. By 11am Parliament Square was packed with young people waving homemade placards and chanting.
Among them was 14 year old Ivy from Surrey. “I am here because I believe there is no point having an education if there is no future... I am so frustrated the only people who really care about this are the ones who can’t vote.”
11.35am BST
School pupils living in the Western Isles have come up with a smart compromise today, as this climate strike falls on the day of their annual Mod, the Gaelic language festival involving competitions in music, song and dance. While competing in the Mod they wore “I’m with Greta!” badges, designed by 12-year-old Méabh Mackenzie, who attends Daliburgh Primary on Uist and has led previous strikes.
Mackenzie said: “We want to show our solidarity with other young people who are on climate strike, and to show our continuing concerns for the threats to our home from climate change.
Continue reading...Media outlets follow Guardian to reconsider language on climate
Use of terms ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’ prompts reviews in other newsrooms
The Guardian’s decision to alter its style guide to better convey the environmental crises unfolding around the world has prompted some other media outlets to reconsider the terms they use in their own coverage.
After the Guardian announced it would now routinely use the words “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” instead of “climate change”, a memo was sent by the standards editor of CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster, to staff acknowledging that a “recent shift in style at the British newspaper the Guardian has prompted requests to review the language we use in global warming coverage”.
Continue reading...On the arsonist’s trail: inside Australia’s worst bushfire catastrophe
One day in 2009, fires swept across Victoria, leaving 173 dead. It became known as Black Saturday. When it emerged that not all of these disasters were natural, local detectives sprang into action. By Chloe Hooper
The patient had been in a coma for 12 days. Strange dreams were all he could remember. He dreamed he was in a red room, then a green room, and when, finally, he woke, the walls were orange. There was flame even in the paint colour, and he knew without being told that his wife was dead. He checked his hands and was surprised to find that his fingers – put back together now, bandaged – had been saved.
His children sat next to his bed while a young police officer had positioned his chair further away, towards the back of the hospital room. All of them were waiting to hear what had happened to him two weeks earlier, on the day of Australia’s worst recorded natural disaster. It would become known as Black Saturday: 400 separate fires had burned across the southern Australian state of Victoria, giving off as much energy as 1,500 atomic bombs.
Continue reading...Adani coalmine environmental approvals given three-week deadline
New timeframe for controversial Carmichael mine is ‘good news’, Queensland premier says
The Queensland government has placed a three-week deadline on the final environmental approvals for the controversial Adani Carmichael coalmine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.
The assessment and management plan for the endangered black-throated finch is due next week, on 31 May, and a decision on the groundwater management plan is due on 13 June.
Continue reading...Latest global school climate strikes expected to beat turnout record
Organisers say more than 1.4 million young people are set to protest about the climate crisis
Hundreds of thousands of children and young people are walking out of lessons around the world on Friday as the school strike movement continues to snowball.
Climate strikes are planned in more than 1,400 cities in more than 110 countries. Organisers say the number of young people taking part is set to top the 1.4 million people who participated in the global day of strikes in March.
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