The Guardian

The Trump administration published a major report on climate change the day after Thanksgiving. We will explore the major findings each day this week

Donald Trump doesn’t believe his own government’s major report on climate change – which the administration tried to bury over the Thanksgiving break. It warns that rising temperatures are already harming America and will cause huge damage globally. The Guardian will explore key findings from the report each day this week.

Environment secretary says climate change will make flooding more likely and severe

People may have to be moved away from high-risk areas as climate change makes flooding more likely and more severe in the UK, the government has said.

Announcing the biggest review of climate change in Britain for nearly a decade, the environment secretary, Michael Gove,said flooding was one of the key ways in which changes would become manifest in the UK.

The shortfin mako is at risk due to failure to halt overfishing, with EU ‘most to blame’

The world’s fastest shark may be swimming towards disaster after a major fisheries body failed to address continued overfishing of the highly vulnerable species, conservationists have warned.

The shortfin mako – which can reach speeds of up to 43mph – is fished worldwide but is not subject to any international fishing quotas. It is considered exceptionally vulnerable in the North Atlantic, where scientists have recommended all landings be reduced by at least two-thirds to prevent overfishing.

More than 140 pilot whales have died after they became stranded on a remote beach on Stewart Island. Marine strandings are common in New Zealand, the country being a 'hotspot' according to the Department of Conservation

Prime minister is labelled ‘out of touch’ after he says let the politicians not schoolchildren deal with the issue

•Answer all your climate change questions with our ask the experts live blog

Scott Morrison has been labelled “out of touch” for angrily condemning a national student strike to protest government inaction on climate change.

The prime minister implored children to stay in class rather than protesting things that “can be dealt with outside of school”.

Without Jones, the world might have lost the Mauritius kestrel, the pink pigeon, the echo parakeet and more – but the biologist’s methods are controversial

The last surviving bird of prey on Mauritius seemed doomed. In 1974, there were only four Mauritius kestrels left in the wild and attempts to breed them in captivity were failing. Extinction was “all but inevitable”, in the words of Norman Myers, one of the world’s leading environmental scientists.

Carl Jones, a biologist who arrived on the island in the 70s as an idealistic 24-year-old, remembers his employers, the charity that became BirdLife International, instructing him to “pull out elegantly” and leave the kestrel-saving to Mauritius government officials. “That actually meant closing it down, because the Mauritians didn’t have the resources or capacity for doing it,” he says.

Team will collect samples in the Antarctic to prove role of mammal in function of the oceans

Most people go out of their way to avoid even the faintest whiff of excrement, but a team of scientists is now preparing to voyage for seven weeks to the Antarctic so they can collect blue whale faeces and examine its impact on biodiversity and climate change.

“The most detailed whale poo expedition ever,” as the participants have dubbed it, aims to test a theory that waste from the world’s biggest mammal plays a far more crucial role in maintaining the productivity of southern oceans than previously believed.

On Tuesday 27 November, Guardian Australia will be running a live Q&A on our site, allowing school students and young Australians to ask experts about climate science, policy and what action young people can take.

Email your question to myclimatequestions@theguardian.com or ask on Twitter or Instagram using #MyClimateQuestions. Then visit the Guardian Australia site from 4pm-6.30pm to follow the blog

Guardian Australia runs live online Q&A as hundreds of school students plan to strike over environmental inaction

Young Australians are frustrated about inaction on climate change – more so when the older generations don’t appear to be doing much about it.

Related: Passing the baton: will young people take up the fight to save the planet?

A hiker camping in remote Stewart Island alerted authorities to the discovery

More than 140 pilot whales have died on a remote New Zealand beach, the latest in a recent string of whale strandings and deaths in the country.

On Saturday night the Department of Conservation [DoC] was informed of a mass whale stranding in Mason Bay on Stewart Island.

• Conservationists record unusually high number of strandings
• Many of turtles are critically endangered Kemp’s ridley species

An unusual number of sea turtles have washed ashore in New England in the recent cold snap, many dead and appearing to have been “flash-frozen”.

Related: Manatees in peril as toxic red tide tests Florida's resources for rescued animals

Democrats ramp up pressure to act in wake of most sobering government analysis yet

• Report: climate change ‘will inflict substantial damages on US lives’
  

The Trump administration attempted to downplay the stark findings of its own climate change assessment, as Democrats sought to pressure the White House to avert looming economic and public health disaster.

The US National Climate change assessment, the work of 300 scientists and 13 federal agencies, was released on Friday afternoon. It found that wildfires, storms and heatwaves are already taking a major toll on Americans’ wellbeing, with climate change set to “disrupt many areas of life” in the future.

Swedish minister Isabella Lövin found fame in a jibe aimed at the White House. Now she aims for change beyond Twitter

In February last year, a week after Donald Trump had signed an anti-abortion executive order surrounded by seven men, Isabella Lövin posted a photograph of herself on Twitter signing a climate change bill alongside seven other women.

Sweden’s then deputy prime minister remained enigmatic as the picture went viral and she was asked whether she had been “trolling” the US president. “It is up to the observer to interpret the photo,” she was quoted as saying. “We are a feminist government, which shows in this photo.”

Demonstration organised by Extinction Rebellion aims to highlight government failure on the environment

Dozens of environmental campaigners blocked the roads around Parliament Square to highlight concerns about the environment on Saturday.

About 50 activists from Extinction Rebellion, a direct action group that has been coordinating a campaign of civil disobedience which has brought areas of the capital to a standstill in recent weeks, risked arrest by standing defiantly in roads in front of queueing traffic.

Schools introduce walk-to-school initiatives and stock up on asthma medicine

Schools across the UK are taking ever more drastic steps in an effort to mitigate the effects of air pollution on their pupils’ health.

Amid growing concern about the long-term implications of toxic air on young people’s development, the Guardian has found one London school is raising money for face masks for its pupils, while a growing number are installing air purifiers in classrooms and thousands more are trying to deter parents from using their cars on the school run.

Nearly 8,000sq kms lost in the year to July amid alarm new president Jair Bolsonaro will make situation worse

Brazil has released its worst annual deforestation figures in a decade amid fears that the situation might worsen when the avowedly anti-environmentalist president-elect Jair Bolsonaro takes power.

Between August 2017 and July 2018, 7,900sq kms were deforested, according to preliminary figures from the environment ministry based on satellite monitoring – a 13.7% rise on the previous year and the biggest area of forest cleared since 2008. The area is equivalent to 987,000 football pitches.

Report points particularly to important habitats in Queensland and NSW where land clearing is prevalent

Australia is failing to meet international targets to protect nature in parts of the country where land clearing and habitat destruction are widespread, according to data in a major new United Nations report.

The UN report on protected areas, released at the Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties in Egypt, examines progress by countries to meet global conservation targets.

• ‘Impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country’
• Draft outlines claim current response to crisis is insufficient

Climate change is already harming Americans’ lives with “substantial damages” set to occur as global temperatures threaten to surge beyond internationally agreed limits, a major US government report is set to warn.

The influence of climate change is being felt across the US with increases in disastrous wildfires in the west, flooding on the east coast, soil loss in the midwest and coastal erosion in Alaska, a draft of the US national climate assessment states.

Prosecution based on secret footage obtained by rights charity Animal Equality at Fir Tree farm in Lincolnshire

Two men pleaded guilty today to charges of animal cruelty while employed at a pig farm, Fir Tree in Goxhill, Lincolnshire.

Artis Grogprkevs, 31, and Troy Wagstaff, 30, have appeared at Grimsby magistrates court charged with causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal between 2-27 April this year.

A family of roe deer and the bignose unicornfish are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world