The Guardian

As climate scientists predicted, glaciers are vanishing due to rapidly warming temperatures.

With global warming, we can make predictions and then take measurements to test those predictions. One prediction (a pretty obvious one) is that a warmer world will have less snow and ice. In particular, areas that have year-round ice and snow will start to melt.

Alpine glaciers are large bodies of ice that can be formed high in mountains, typically in bowls called cirques. The ice slowly flows downwards, pulled by gravity, and is renewed in their upper regions. A sort of balance can occur where the loss of ice by melting or flowing at the bottom is equal to the gain of snow and ice by precipitation.

Some 79% of seafood range is sustainable, according to survey which shows supermarkets are selling more ‘blue label’ products than ever

The discount grocer Aldi has been named the best British high street supermarket for sustainable fish, according to a new league table.

Some 79% of the seafood range stocked by the fast-growing German discounter is certified sustainable, the annual survey from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) found. This year’s results also show that supermarkets are selling more sustainable seafood than ever before – a 60% rise over the last two years.

Kaveh Madani had been seen as symbol of Rouhani government’s attempt to reverse brain drain

A top Iranian environmental scientist wooed by Hassan Rouhani’s administration to return home from the UK has left Iran amid a crackdown on environmentalists and pressure from hardliners.

Kaveh Madani had been persuaded to leave his position at Imperial College London last year to serve as the deputy head of Iran’s environment department.

UK’s largest coffee shop chain has pledged to recycle up to 500m cups a year by 2020 – a fifth of the total used in the country

The UK’s largest coffee chain is to become the first to commit to recycling the same volume of takeaway cups used by its customers every year in a bid to stop hundreds of millions needlessly ending up in landfill.

Costa Coffee has pledged to recycle up to 500m coffee cups a year by 2020 – the equivalent of its entire annual use of takeaway cups and one-fifth of the total 2.5bn takeaway coffee cups used in the UK each year.

The Indonesian national park boasts some of the world’s best dive sites and spectacular marine life, but illegal fishing and unsustainable tourism is threatening its Unesco status

It was the unusual thrashing on the water that caught their attention. As those onboard the dive boat in Indonesia’s Komodo national park drew closer, it became clear it was a green turtle entangled in rubbish and thick fishing net.

The divers managed to lift it out of the water, cut the blue bind from its shell and then set the turtle free, but dive operator Ed Statham says it is just one of the increasing and alarming signs the Unesco heritage site is fast being destroyed.

Party announces it will campaign for application to be made to Unesco in bid to stop drilling

The Greens have launched a campaign to give the Great Australian Bight world heritage protection – but such a move would need the government’s support.

The party announced on Wednesday it would campaign for an application to be made to the Unesco to place the bight on the world heritage list.

Environmental and legal groups warn of potential huge effects on Indigenous people and the environment

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The “new global gold rush” over deep-sea mining holds the same potential pitfalls as previous resource scrambles, with environmental and social impacts ignored and the rights of Indigenous people marginalised, a paper in the Harvard Law Review has warned.

A framework for deep-sea mining – where polymetallic nodules or hydrothermal vents are mined by machine – was first articulated in the 1960s, on an idea that the seabed floor beyond national jurisdiction was a “common heritage of mankind”.

Scientists in Britain and the US say they have engineered an enzyme that eats plastic, a breakthrough that could help in the fight against pollution. The enzyme is able to digest polyethylene terephthalate, or PET. The team from the University of Portsmouth and the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory hope to one day produce the enzyme on an industrial scale

Data compiled from rubbish collected by volunteers aims to encourage industry to control plastic pollution at the source

Australians are battling against a tide of millions of pieces of discarded plastic debris at beach clean-up events all across the continent, according to two years of data analysed by Guardian Australia.

Some 2,651,613 pieces of debris were collected from beaches and recorded in a database during 2016 and 2017, with about three-quarters of items made from plastics.

The 56,000 sq km reef is thought to contain dozens of undiscovered species, in an area where a French company intents to drill for oil

Scientists aboard a Greenpeace ship have discovered a massive and unique coral reef near the mouth of the Amazon, in an area where the French company Total intends to drill for oil.

The 1,000km long and 56,000 sq km Amazon coral reef is a biome thought to contain dozens of undiscovered species that environmentalists say would be irreparably damaged if drilling for oil began – a vision at odds with the wish of oil companies hoping to explore the area’s vast estimated reserves.

Tucking in to less popular meats could help preserve those breeds, according to a farming charity. Here are six varieties it thinks might benefit

When you think about Britain’s endangered animals, hedgehogs, small tortoiseshell butterflies and puffins may spring to mind. But rare breeds of farm animals and horses face extinction, too.

The Rare Breed Survival Trust (RBST) published a list of endangered breeds this week. At a critical point are vaynol cattle, with only 12 breeding females remaining. The suffolk horse is similarly threatened, with 80 breeding females left. Many breeds of cow, sheep and pig make the list. The solution? According to the RBST, we should eat them.

Daniel Webb accrued a mountain of plastic – including many packets of Hula Hoops – and made it into a mural, now on display at Dreamland in Margate. We are overproducing and overconsuming, he says, and recycling is not the answer

We all know, in theory, that we ought to use less plastic. We’ve all been distressed by the sight of Blue Planet II’s hawksbill turtle entangled in a plastic sack, and felt chastened as we’ve totted up our weekly tally of disposable coffee cups. But still, UK annual plastic waste is now close to 5m tonnes, including enough single-use plastic to fill 1,000 Royal Albert Halls; the government’s planned elimination of “avoidable” plastic waste by 2042 seems a quite dazzling task. It was reported this week that scientists at the University of Portsmouth have accidentally developed a plastic-eating mutant enzyme, and while we wait to see if that will save us all, for one individual the realisation of just how much plastic we use has become an intensely personal matter.

One early evening in mid-2016, Daniel Webb, 36, took a run along the coast near his home in Margate. “It was one of those evenings where the current had brought in lots of debris,” he recalls, because as Webb looked down at the beach from his route along the promenade he noticed a mass of seaweed, tangled with many pieces of plastic. “Old toys, probably 20 years old, bottles that must have been from overseas because they had all kinds of different languages on them, bread tags, which I don’t think had been used for years …” he says. “It was very nostalgic, almost archaeological. And it made me think, as a mid-30s guy, is any of my plastic out there? Had I once dropped a toy in a stream near Wolverhampton, where I’m from, and now it was out in the sea?”

Anti-palm oil campaigner Nazildo dos Santos Brito is the third victim in four weeks as land conflicts increase in the country’s Pará state

Brazil’s Amazonian state of Pará has added to its reputation as a killing ground for land activists with the murder of an anti-palm oil campaigner.

Nazildo dos Santos Brito – a leader of a Quilombo Afro-Brazilian community formed by runaway slaves – was killed at the weekend. It was the third assassination in four weeks in the north-eastern corner of the state, which also saw more killings over territory and the environment than any other last year.

Energy use for air conditioning, refrigeration and other cooling appliances expected to jump 90% on 2017 levels

A burgeoning middle class and a warming world will result in energy demand for cooling overtaking that for heating by the middle of the century, researchers have predicted.

Energy use for air conditioning, refrigeration and other cooling appliances will jump 90% on 2017 levels, experts estimated, posing a challenge for energy grids and efforts to curb climate change.

The UK’s climate laws forged a path for others to follow. But as progressive nations commit to zero emissions, it must reclaim its leading role, writes Sweden’s deputy prime minister

What does it mean for a nation to be a “climate leader” in 2018?

At the very least, it must mean having a firm plan in place to deliver your nation’s fair share of the Paris agreement. During that stunning fortnight in December 2015, 195 governments freely and willingly committed not only to keep global warming well below 2C, but to aim for the safer level of 1.5C. And they committed to bring net greenhouse gas emissions down to zero.

The government pledged in 2016 to enshrine a zero target in law to meet its Paris commitments, but has yet to pass any legislation

The UK is to review its long-term target to cut climate emissions as part of global efforts to curb rising temperatures, the government has announced.

The announcement by clean growth minister Claire Perry during the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) raises the possibility the UK could implement a target to reduce emissions to “net zero” by 2050, tightening the existing goal to cut greenhouse gases by 80% by that date.

Judge dismisses claims by Polish government that logging was necessary to protect ancient forest from outbreak of bark beetles

The EU’s highest court has ruled that Poland’s logging of the ancient Białowieża forest is illegal, potentially opening the door to multi-million euro fines.

At least 10,000 trees have been felled in Białowieża, one of Europe’s last parcels of primeval woodland, since the former Polish environment minister, Jan Szyzko tripled logging limits there in 2016.

Claxton, Norfolk: Intense blue spikes have covered half the lawn – but we can claim little credit for this

This spring I’ve been amused by our wild violets, which have spread suddenly across one half of the lawn. For anyone who has never met them, they are an absolute joy. Each flowering spike bears an asymmetrical corolla that comprises five petals of the most intense purple. Down the throat of the central spur is a delicious little nectary that bees apparently find irresistible.

If I crouch to sniff, it also yields this gentle odour, from which I judge them to be sweet violets, Viola odorata, the one common species in the family that has such a scent. It is highly evocative, bringing to mind my childhood when we used to buy those tubes of purplish sugar known as Parma Violets (a Derbyshire speciality, manufactured in New Mills).

Poorest are hardest hit with many developing countries falling behind on cleaning up toxic air pollution

More than 95% of the world’s population breathe unsafe air and the burden is falling hardest on the poorest communities, with the gap between the most polluted and least polluted countries rising rapidly, a comprehensive study of global air pollution has found.

Cities are home to an increasing majority of the world’s people, exposing billions to unsafe air, particularly in developing countries, but in rural areas the risk of indoor air pollution is often caused by burning solid fuels. One in three people worldwide faces the double whammy of unsafe air both indoors and out.

First exploration fracking expected next year but national parks and conservation areas will be protected

The Northern Territory government has lifted a ban on hydraulic fracturing of onshore gas that will open up more than half of the territory’s land mass to the controversial practice.

The first exploration fracking by petroleum companies is expected to occur early next year after the implementation of a regulatory regime and new laws, which the government insists will be strict.