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Rare eastern osprey chick hatches in South Australia, captivating birdwatchers around the world
The chick hatched on a high platform built by conservationists to keep nests safe from foxes which swim to Tumby Island from the mainland
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Birdwatchers from around the world have celebrated the arrival of a rare eastern osprey chick in South Australia.
Fran Solly, secretary of the Friends of Osprey conservation group, says everyone in Tumby Island and Port Lincoln knows about the chick that hatched last Thursday. But the livestream has captivated bird watchers from as far away as the UK, America, South Korea and Russia.
Continue reading...Rare eastern osprey chick hatches on Tumby Island, outwitting egg-eating foxes - video
South Australia has less than 50 breeding pairs of the endangered eastern osprey, and recent surveys point to a rapid decline in the population of the species. Conservation efforts have included setting up high nesting platforms on Tumby Island to keep eggs safe from foxes who swim across from the mainland. Video of the new chick hatching was broadcast across Facebook and YouTube to viewers around the world. Fran Solly, secretary of the Friends of Osprey conservation group, says the arrival of the chick is 'fantastic news, because it means the platform is working'
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Rare eastern osprey chick hatches in South Australia, captivating birdwatchers around the world
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Australian hydrogen company boss joins PM on Biden visit to explore US clean energy opportunities
Paul Barrett says company working to produce commercial-scale electrolysers could achieve one gigawatt of capacity within years
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The chief executive of an Australian company that builds commercial-scale electrolysers to split water into hydrogen and oxygen will join a business delegation accompanying the prime minister’s four-day official visit to the US to explore clean energy opportunities created by the Biden administration’s US$369bn Inflation Reduction Act.
Paul Barrett, the chief executive of Hysata, says the company expects to ramp up to as much as one gigawatt of capacity annually within years.
Continue reading...Death Valley visitors delight in rare ephemeral lakes left behind by storm
Shimmering bodies of water have appeared in the sand dunes of the recently reopened national park after a summer deluge
After months of closure, visitors to Death Valley national park are being greeted by stunning new features, including lakes left behind by a ferocious summer deluge.
The park reopened last week after being shuttered in August, when a record-breaking tropical storm unleashed a year’s worth of rain in a single day.
Continue reading...‘We can’t live in this’: the tightknit Chesterfield street devastated by flooding
Neighbours speak of heartbreak from row of terraces where Maureen Gilbert, 83, was found dead after Storm Babet
Almost every square inch of the houses along Tapton Terrace in Chesterfield is covered in a thick layer of wet brown mud.
Inside the homes, brown lines across the walls show that water levels reached a height of 1.5 metres (5ft).
Continue reading...Rapid ice melt in west Antarctica now inevitable, research shows
Sea level will be driven up no matter how much carbon emissions are cut, putting coastal cities in danger
Accelerated ice melt in west Antarctica is inevitable for the rest of the century no matter how much carbon emissions are cut, research indicates. The implications for sea level rise are “dire”, scientists say, and mean some coastal cities may have to be abandoned.
The ice sheet of west Antarctica would push up the oceans by 5 metres if lost completely. Previous studies have suggested it is doomed to collapse over the course of centuries, but the new study shows that even drastic emissions cuts in the coming decades will not slow the melting.
Continue reading...Lobby groups fought ‘hard and dirty’ against EU ban on caged farm animals
Legislation now appears to be on hold after ferocious pushback from powerful farming lobbies
Meat lobby groups fought a “hard and dirty” war against a planned EU ban on caged hens and pigs that has now been shelved, the Guardian can reveal.
In 2021 EU politicians took the radical step of agreeing to phase out the use of cages for rearing farmed animals, including hens, broilers, pigs, calves, rabbits and quails, after receiving a petition signed by more than a million people. The measures, which were supposed to go through by the end of 2023, have the support of 89% of European citizens, according to an EU survey released last week.
Continue reading...Four dead after Storm Babet wreaks destruction across UK and Ireland – video
Four people have died and further danger to life warnings have been issued in the aftermath of Storm Babet. Nottinghamshire county council declared a major incident, with at least 200 properties evacuated as the River Idle reached record levels. Cleanup operations are under way in Derbyshire, one of the worst-hit areas. An 83-year-old woman in Derbyshire was found dead by her son after her home was inundated by flood water. In Scotland, Brechin was only accessible via boat after an evacuation order for the entire town. Authorities say the death toll could rise further
Continue reading...Surging renewable energy sees record supply to Australia’s electricity grid
At one point in September nearly 100% of eastern Australia’s demand could have been met by renewables, says energy operator Aemo
For a half hour in the middle of a Saturday last month, enough renewable energy was available to meet all but 1.4% of eastern Australia’s entire electricity demand – the closest to reaching 100% clean power in the grid’s history.
Renewables also supplied 38.9% of average demand across the national electricity market (Nem) in the September quarter, the most for any third quarter, according to a report by the Australian energy market operator (Aemo).
Continue reading...Zoos are the opposite of educational: they construct fictions about their captives | Martha Gill
Every afternoon at London Zoo until the early 1970s a table laid with cups, saucers and a teapot would be set out for the chimpanzees. An amusing set piece was anticipated: chimps throwing crockery at each other and jumping on chairs. But there was an early complication.
Chimpanzees are exceptionally good at mastering tools. They quickly learned to use the pot correctly and would sit politely at the table, taking afternoon tea.
Continue reading...Killer crabs with cute claws, bedbugs and evil AI. It’s all out of the mould of misery | Bidisha Mamata
So, this is how the world ends – not with a bang but with the cold clicking of claws belonging to the 10-inch-wide mitten crabs that are terrorising the freshwater population of England. These rapidly proliferating creatures have cute fuzz-sheathed pincers that look like Victorian ladies’ winter muffs, but they can pin down a prawn and rip off its shell with nary a tremor. Before the mitten crabs, the scare was about bedbugs. Before that it was evil AI and killer robots. This is all in the past three weeks.
It’s as if the sheer misery, violence and horror of the headlines have infected us with such despair that we’re fixating on anything, big or small, that can do us harm, because it’s all feeling just a little bit like the Third World War, isn’t it?
Continue reading...Hydrogen boiler push to continue despite verdict of UK watchdog
Government and gas-focused industry body resist conclusion that heat pumps are ‘only viable’ option for heating UK homes
The government and sections of UK industry will continue to back the prospect of using hydrogen for home heating, despite a clear verdict against the technology from the UK’s infrastructure watchdog.
The National Infrastructure Commission advised this week, after an exhaustive investigation of the technology, that hydrogen was not suitable for heating homes. The report was unambiguous: “The Commission’s analysis demonstrates that there is no public policy case for hydrogen to be used to heat individual buildings. It should be ruled out as an option to enable an exclusive focus on switching to electrified heat.”
Continue reading...Billions of Alaska snow crabs likely vanished due to warm ocean, study says
The crabs starved to death en masse because the change in water temperature increased their caloric needs, according to the NOAA
Warmer ocean temperatures have likely caused the sudden and shocking disappearance of billions of snow crabs in Alaska, which had previously baffled scientists and environmentalists, a new study has shown.
The eastern Bering Sea snow crabs, once thought to be overfished, actually starved to death en masse because the change in water temperature “increased their caloric needs considerably”, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in the study.
Continue reading...Ex-officials at UN farming body say work on methane emissions was censored
Pressure from agriculture lobbies led to role of cattle in rising global temperatures being underplayed by FAO, claim sources
- ‘The anti-livestock people are a pest’: how UN food body played down role of farming in climate change
- Analysis: Impact of farming on climate crisis will be a key Cop topic – finally
Former officials in the UN’s farming wing have said they were censored, sabotaged, undermined and victimised for more than a decade after they wrote about the hugely damaging contribution of methane emissions from livestock to global heating.
Team members at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tasked with estimating cattle’s contribution to soaring temperatures said that pressure from farm-friendly funding states was felt throughout the FAO’s Rome headquarters and coincided with attempts by FAO leadership to muzzle their work.
Continue reading...Weather tracker: Storm Babet leaves trail of destruction across Portugal
As front moves north to batter UK coasts, Storm Aline brings more heavy rain and strong winds to Iberian peninsula
Although Storm Babet has been battering the coasts of the UK during the second half of this week, it had already left behind a trail of destruction across Portugal as it developed out in the Atlantic. Strong winds and torrential rain on Monday night into Tuesday resulted in flooding, with streets swamped underwater and the drainage system at Faro airport in south Portugal unable to cope under the deluge.
Holidaymakers and local people were left running for cover as ceilings in the airport terminal building collapsed when they could no longer hold back the rainfall.
Continue reading...John Vidal, former Guardian environment editor, dies aged 74
Pioneering journalist will be remembered for passion for social justice and putting people at centre of stories
John Vidal, the Guardian’s former environment editor, has died aged 74. He died peacefully in hospital on Thursday where he was being treated for cancer.
Vidal reported on the environment for the Guardian for almost three decades until retiring in 2017, calling it “the greatest job on Earth”. Afterwards, he continued to report from around the world with his trademark energy and enthusiasm and published a book, Fevered Planet: How Diseases Emerge When We Harm Nature, in June this year.
Continue reading...Wild birds gain immunity to avian flu in ‘encouraging sign’ amid deadly outbreak
Scientists find antibodies in Scottish populations of northern gannets and shags as poultry infections in Britain fall dramatically
Some birds have developed immunity to avian flu, according to scientists who say there are “encouraging signs” that the deadly virus could kill fewer birds this winter.
The current H5N1 bird flu outbreak, which started in 2021, has been the worst recorded, and is thought to have killed millions of wild birds. Mortality rates appeared to be very high among wild birds, but it was not known how many survived and gained immunity.
Continue reading...Scorsese tells half the story in Killers of the Flower Moon: here’s what happened next to the Osage people | Greg Palast
Hundreds of Native Americans were murdered for their oil in the 1920s. They’re still fighting the US government for what is theirs
This week, director Martin Scorsese releases his film Killers of the Flower Moon: the true story of the mass murder of Osage Native Americans and the plot to steal the tribe’s oil wealth. The film is a powerful telling of what came to be known as the Reign of Terror, a period that resulted in the deaths of as many as 200 Osage. But the story didn’t end there. For the past 27 years, I have been reporting on what happened afterwards. My documentary Long Knife – produced by George DiCaprio, with his son Leonardo’s encouragement – recounts, in the words of the Osage people, what happened in the century since the killings portrayed in the film, from the Terror to oil thievery to today’s fight for sovereignty.
Over the past century, the Osage Nation has continued to suffer massive oil thievery, impoverishment and oil sludge poisoning on their Oklahoma reservation. “It’s not over,” Osage principal chief, Geoffrey Standing Bear, tells me. “It’s still happening.” At the heart of it is legal control of Osage native land by the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, an entity the Osage call the Ma-he-tah, or the Long Knife. Standing Bear, a lawyer himself, likens the arrangement to a military occupation.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including rescued baby squirrels, a capped langur and battling deer
Continue reading...Migrant workers toil in perilous heat to prepare for Cop28 climate talks in UAE
Report highlights evidence of workers from Africa and Asia labouring in 42C heat in Dubai to build conference facilities
Migrant workers in Dubai have been working in dangerously hot temperatures to get conference facilities ready for world leaders attending this year’s international Cop28 climate talks, according to a new investigation.
FairSquare, a human rights research and advocacy group, obtained evidence of more than a dozen migrant workers from Africa and Asia labouring outside at three Cop28 sites in early September as temperatures hit 42C (107F) in Dubai – the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
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