The Guardian

Scientists say global heating is driving ice loss and warmer water, as ice cover falls short of 50-year average of 18%

The average ice cover over the five Great Lakes was just 6% last month, placing it among the least icy Januarys since records began 50 years ago, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

The Great Lakes – Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie and Ontario – are located at or near the US-Canada border, and are connected by a network of smaller lakes and rivers that span a combined surface area of 95,000 sq miles, making it the largest freshwater system in the world.

Investor-State Dispute Settlements are legal, huge and often hush-hush – and fossil fuel firms and others are using them to hold the planet to ransom

• How a US mining firm sued Mexico for billions – for trying to protect its own seabed

What do you get if you cross the planet’s richest 1%, a global legal system adapted to their investment whims, and the chance to squeeze billions from governments? The answer is “Investor-State Dispute Settlements”, or ISDS, alternatively dubbed “litigation terrorism” by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist. ISDS is a corporate tribunal system, where a panel of unelected lawyers decides whether a company is owed compensation if the actions of national governments leave its assets “stranded”.

In hearings, which are often held behind closed doors, ISDS documents, claims, awards, settlements – even the content of cases – need not be made public, regardless of any public-interest considerations.

The consultation and planning around the energy rollout has been lacking – so let’s knock the edges off and get investment that works for our communities

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I recently discovered the chest freezer in our shearer’s huts had blown up in a lightning strike. The power had been out for two weeks. It felt like a CSI plot: I’m the woman with the torch, pushing the creaky shed door open to find a cloud of blow flies hovering around a bad smell.

The little bastards had found a tiny breach in the freezer seal. I did my best rendition of Brad Pitt in Se7en – What’s in the box? When I opened the lid, even the maggots had gone to fly heaven. The vestiges of splendid homegrown lamb were a grey mush at the bottom of the freezer.

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The huge leaks of the potent greenhouse gas will doom climate targets, experts say, but stemming them would rapidly reduce global heating

• ‘It’s impossible to breathe’ – life by Delhi’s towering landfills

There have been more than 1,000 huge leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane from landfill waste dumps since 2019, the Guardian can reveal.

Analysis of global satellite data from around the world shows the populous nations of south Asia are a hotspot for these super-emitter events, as well as Argentina and Spain, developed countries where proper waste management should prevent leaks.

Migrating animals are at risk from pollution, the spread of invasive species and the climate crisis, first report of its kind reveals

More than a fifth of migratory species under international protection are threatened with extinction, including nearly all nomadic fish, according to the first UN expert assessment.

From humpback whales to Dalmatian pelicans, each year, billions of animals journey with the seasons over oceans, on land and in the skies. But a new report by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) has found that many migratory species are at risk of disappearing, threatened by human pollution, the spread of invasive species and the climate crisis.

From this week, developments must result in more or better natural habitat than before, in a move hailed as one of the world’s most ambitious

England is launching a biodiversity credit scheme this week that attempts to force all new road and housebuilding projects to benefit nature, rather than damage it.

The “nature market”, called biodiversity net gain (BNG), means all new building projects must achieve a 10% net gain in biodiversity or habitat. If a woodland is destroyed by a road, for example, another needs to be recreated. This can happen either on site or elsewhere.

Australia’s largest oil and gas producer stands accused of distracting from credible action to cut emissions by greenwashing its fossil fuel plans

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Australia’s largest oil and gas producer, Woodside Energy, has expanded its focus on fossil fuel exploration and increased its direct greenhouse gas pollution since announcing it had an “aspiration” of reaching net zero emissions.

Woodside’s spending on looking for new oil and gas reserves was $160m in 2019 and dipped to $96m in 2021 – a year affected by the Covid-19 pandemic – before rising to $418m in 2022, according to a report by the Australian Conservation Foundation.

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Agency’s draft report backs paraquat’s safety but lawsuit’s plaintiffs say EPA ignored evidence of Parkinson’s risk

The US Environmental Protection Agency is doubling down on its controversial finding that a toxic herbicide is safe for use across millions of acres of American cropland, despite what public health advocates characterize as virtual “scientific proof” the product causes Parkinson’s disease.

The agency in 2021 reapproved paraquat-based herbicides for use, but a coalition of agricultural and public health groups sued, charging that the EPA had ignored broad scientific consensus linking the substance to Parkinson’s.

An alligator snapping turtle, with a jaw experts say can break through bone, was spotted living by a lake in Cumbria.

The animal is native to swamplands of the southern US such as Florida, has a hard and rugged shell as well as a sharp and wide jaw.

Vets said despite not being used to the cooler climate in the UK, the turtle, who has been named Fluffy, was relatively healthy, although a little lethargic when first brought in. The turtle will soon be moving to a specialist wildlife centre in Cornwall

• Fluffy the alligator snapping turtle with ‘nasty bite’ found in Cumbrian tarn

This sorry saga is not encouraging if it is a precedent for how Labour will handle the hard choices that it will face in government

I know a dead pledge when I see one, and I’m looking at one now. Labour’s green prosperity plan is history. It’s kicked the bucket, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-pledge. It has suffered the same fate as the Norwegian Blue in Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch.

The abandonment of the commitment to invest £28bn a year to accelerate the transition to a carbon-free economy is not a routine political volte-face. This was Sir Keir Starmer’s signature pledge, one launched with tremendous fanfare as his flagship policy in 2021. There has not been a larger, more contentious or more excruciating U-turn during his time as Labour leader.

With the royals as ambassadors for these luxury cars, there’s little hope for the rest of us

If you have tears – that is, any not used up on MPs struggling to get by, parents forced to choose between skiing and private schools, second homeowners who feel unwelcome, Etonians shut out of Oxbridge, and people cut adrift with unusable city wood burners – prepare to shed them on the latest affluent but afflicted minority: Range Rover owners unable afford their car insurance.

Thanks in large part to the Daily Mail, which has been prioritising their plight, a series of distressing cases has recently come to light. One owner, it reports, gave up after being quoted £14,000 to insure his £100,000 Range Rover Sport, and instead “bought himself a new Mercedes GLE”. Insurers, who say the vehicles are too likely to be stolen, seem to be deaf to the suffering of owners whose only fault was to buy an obese status symbol coveted by many hard-working criminals, as well as by Prince Andrew.

The species can climb waterfalls and reaches back to Gondwanaland – but there are fears polluted runoff has proven fatal

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A “miracle fish” may have been snuffed out in its Sydney habitat by bungled construction work at a nearby government high school, local environmentalists fear.

The climbing galaxias (Galaxias brevipinnis) belongs to a species line reaching back to Gondwanaland. It was only identified in the Manly Dam region in Sydney’s north – the fish’s most northerly known location in Australia – in 1998.

Inspired by French action, British campaigners say they will continue slow tractor protests after Dover roads were blocked

Farmers say there will be further French-style blockades following a slow tractor protest at Dover against low supermarket prices and cheap food imports from post-Brexit trade deals.

Around 40 tractors and other farm vehicles blocked roads around the Kent port for several hours on Friday evening by driving slowly and carrying signs with slogans such as “No More Cheap Imports”.

EVs heavily subsidised by Beijing are flooding Europe and the globe. If we don’t watch out, it could start a major trade war

Whenever people learn that I have an electric vehicle (EV) the conversation invariably turns to whether I suffer from “range anxiety” – the fear of running out of charge. The answer is that generally I don’t, though I might if I were contemplating a drive across the Highlands of Scotland to Aviemore, say. But otherwise, no. Why? Because I am able to charge the car overnight at home, and most of my trips are much much shorter than the vehicle’s 300-mile range.

In that sense I am statistically normal. Government estimates are that 99% of car journeys in England are of less than 100 miles. So if you can charge at home, then most of your problems are over, which probably explains when the last time the Department for Transport did a survey, 93% of the country’s EV owners had home charging.

Gordon Pointe is going for a snip at $295m – but set in a location particularly vulnerable to sea-level rises, buyers should beware

Reality deniers with big pockets are sought by a family of Floridian property developers hoping to sell the most expensive home in the US: a waterfront property on the market for $295m (£234m). The compound squats on Gordon Pointe peninsula, a spit of beachfront in south-west Florida, extending perilously into the Gulf of Mexico. The late financier John Donahue bought the land for $1m in 1985, when it was a beautiful remote nature spot, protected by mangroves, with a small fisherman’s cottage on it. He soon razed this and replaced it with McMansions with de rigueur swimming pools and lawns. Offered for your $295m are three houses with parking for yachts and other conveniences for the wealthy sea-level-rise gambler. The Donahue family is selling at the right time. This is one of the parts of the world most vulnerable to climate impacts, with sea levels rising three times faster than the global average, and increasing risk from hurricane damage. The whole neighbourhood, Port Royal, has been categorised as at “extreme risk of flooding” over the next 30 years, and is regularly hit by weather disasters, making it very expensive to get home insurance. Buyer beware, as Canute might say. Diminishing returns…

Organiser of go-slow protest says farmers in Europe have ‘shown us what can be accomplished’

The organiser of a protest in which tractor-driving farmers caused traffic jams around the Port of Dover has said there could be more demonstrations.

Road traffic in and out of the coastal town in Kent was disrupted by the go-slow demonstration on Friday night.

Housebuilders and campaigners warn of cold, damp homes and UK missing legally binding targets

Labour’s slashing of proposed spending on home insulation will leave millions of people on low incomes in cold, damp homes and could prevent the UK meeting its legally binding carbon targets, campaigners and housebuilders have warned.

The Federation of Master Builders criticised the drastic scaling back of Labour’s low-carbon policies, announced by Keir Starmer on Thursday after months of speculation.

The Focus exhibition at the National Archives of Australia contains pictures drawn from its collection of almost 11m images. Government photography is usually associated with politics but the photographers also documented the lives and work of well-known and everyday Australians

Collapse in system of currents that helps regulate global climate would be at such speed that adaptation would be impossible

The circulation of the Atlantic Ocean is heading towards a tipping point that is “bad news for the climate system and humanity”, a study has found.

The scientists behind the research said they were shocked at the forecast speed of collapse once the point is reached, although they said it was not yet possible to predict how soon that would happen.

Scientist wins award against conservative writers who said his work was ‘fraudulent’ and that he ‘molested and tortured’ data

The high-profile climate scientist Michael Mann has been awarded $1m by a jury in a defamation lawsuit against two conservative writers who compared his depictions of global heating to the work of a convicted child molester.

The case stretches back 12 years. In a statement posted on Mann’s X account, one of his lawyers said: “Today’s verdict vindicates Mike Mann’s good name and reputation. It also is a big victory for truth and scientists everywhere who dedicate their lives answering vital scientific questions impacting human health and the planet.”