The Guardian

Prof Frank Kelly says fewer not cleaner vehicles are needed, plus more cycling and walking and better transit systems

Cars must be driven out of cities to tackle the UK’s air pollution crisis, not just replaced with electric vehicles, according to the UK government’s top adviser.

Prof Frank Kelly said that while electric vehicles emit no exhaust fumes, they still produce large amounts of tiny pollution particles from brake and tyre dust, for which the government already accepts there is no safe limit.

Green Alliance calls for making retailers take back bottles and cans to significantly reduce plastic pollution in seas

Plastic marine litter could be cut significantly if the government adopted a bottle deposit scheme as part of five key actions to tackle pollution of the oceans, a green thinktank has said.

The single most effective action to reduce plastic pollution in the seas would be a container return scheme along the lines of those run in large parts of Europe, north America and Australia, according to a new analysis by Green Alliance. In such schemes, a small tax is added to recyclable and reusable containers at the point of sale, which consumers can reclaim by returning them.

Plymouth, Devon A busy harbour is not a place you’d expect to find much in the way of wildlife, so that bubble trail in the water is intriguing

This is a place of arrivals and departures, a centuries-old harbour where few stop for long. From hosting the steamships and trans-Atlantic liners of the past to today’s colossal cross-channel ferries, Plymouth’s historic Millbay dock has served the comings and goings of countless travellers.

On work lunch breaks I regularly walk beside the innermost basin, now transformed into a marina as part of the area’s regeneration. Solid harbour walls designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel provide shelter for luxury yachts neatly berthed along wooden pontoons.

Dedicated searches have revealed a rare butterfly back in its former Kent stronghold and gaining other territories

Britain’s most charismatic and elusive butterfly, the purple emperor, has a habit of turning up unannounced. This powerful, treetop, butterfly lives at low densities in the landscape but has been spotted in many new places thanks to the combination of a fine mid-summer and some astonishingly thorough searches by devotees.

Related: Interesting times for lepidopterists

Government research finds drastic drop in people backing drilling for shale gas since the study was launched in 2012

Public support for fracking has reached a record low, according to the latest government research.

A survey by the Business and Energy Department showed just 16% supported the controversial process of shale gas extraction, down from 21% last year and the lowest since the study was launched five years ago.

The interoceanic canal and its ‘murky legal framework’ was also criticized by former model Bianca Jagger, who called the canal ‘an insane project’

Nicaragua’s former revolutionary leaders have led a campaign of harassment and persecution against communities opposing the construction of a controversial canal that threatens the homes and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people, according to Amnesty International.

Plans to construct a $50bn shipping canal 175 miles long and 500 yards wide have provoked a mix of anger, fear and defiance not witnessed since the civil war between the Sandinista government and US-backed Contra rebels ended in 1988.

VW, BMW, Opel and Daimler’s promise to fix 5 million cars not enough to undo the damage done by emissions scandal, say campaigners

Major car makers are being accused of clutching at straws after they agreed to fit software to 5m diesel vehicles in Germany to reduce harmful emissions by up to 30%.

VW, Daimler, BMW and Opel made the decision at a summit with leading politicians in Berlin. They have been under pressure since the diesel emissions scandal two years ago exposed how VW and – it is suspected – other manufacturers have been cheating the testing regime.

Scott Pruitt claims change is testament to responsiveness but makes no mention of legal challenge over Obama-era rules to lessen ground-level ozone

One day after getting sued by 15 states, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief, Scott Pruitt, reversed his decision to delay implementation of Obama-era rules reducing emissions of smog-causing air pollutants.

Pruitt presented the change as his agency being more responsive than past administrations to the needs of state environmental regulators. He made no mention of the legal challenge filed against his prior position in a federal appeals court.

Over four decades of exploration and extraction have caused an environmental and health crisis in indigenous communities

Who is going to clean up Peru’s northern Amazon after decades of companies spilling oil and dumping billions of barrels of toxic production waters? Certainly not US company Occidental which ran the biggest concession, Lot 1-AB, until 2000, nor, it would seem, Petroperu, which ran the other major concession, Lot 8, until 1996 and operates the rusty, leaking North Peruvian Pipeline to this day.

Nor Pluspetrol, a company founded in Argentina and now registered in the Netherlands which took over both Lot 1-AB and Lot 8, if its actions to date are anything to go by. Nor the China National Petroleum Corporation, which bought 45% stakes in both concessions in 2003. Nor the subsidiary of a Canadian company now called Frontera Energy which, in 2015, when Lot 1-AB’s name was effectively changed to Lot 192, bought 100% of operations in a two year temporary contract.

Deforestation and climate change appear to be amplifying droughts in the Amazon

If you are like me, you picture the Amazon region as an ever lush, wet, tropical region filled with numerous plant and animal species. Who would imagine the Amazon experiencing drought? I mean sure, if we think of drought as “less water than usual,” then any place could have a drought. But what I tend to envision with respect to drought is truly dry.

People who work in this field have a more advanced understanding than I do about drought, how and why it occurs, its frequency and severity, and the impact on natural and human worlds. This recognition brings us to a very interesting paper recently published in Scientific Reports, entitled Unprecedented drought over tropical South America in 2016: significantly under-predicted by tropical SST [sea surface temperature]. So, what did this paper show?

Researchers are racing for answers after at least 10 deaths of north Atlantic right whales, marking the deadliest year since tracking began

Researchers are scrambling to figure out why one of the world’s most endangered whale species is dying in “unprecedented” numbers, after at least 10 north Atlantic right whales have been found floating lifelessly off the coast of Canada.

The first whale carcass was reported in early June. Within a month, another six reports came in, leaving researchers reeling. This week, after several carcasses washed up on the shores of western Newfoundland, Canadian officials confirmed that the number of whale deaths had risen to at least 10, making 2017 the deadliest year for the marine mammal since researchers began tracking them in the 1980s.

Hamsterley Forest, Weardale Their visual sensitivity challenges us and their ability to track small fast objects is unparalleled

Much of Hamsterley forest lay in deep shadow and the scent of conifer resin hung in the still air between the spruces. No one had passed this way this morning; there were intact spiders’ webs stretched across the path high above Spurleswood beck.

And there we found a female golden-ringed dragonfly, Cordulegaster boltonii, clinging to rushes, still grounded by the lingering chill of the night. It’s the largest and, with its jet-black and yellow markings, the most startling, dragonfly species in the north Pennines.

National Trust chief says seamless transition in funding is vital post-Brexit to protect countryside from short-termism

British farmers are returning to intensive measures that deplete wildlife and damage the environment as a vacuum in government policy leaves them facing an uncertain future after the Brexit vote, the director general of the National Trust is warning.

In an outspoken message to ministers, Dame Helen Ghosh says action is needed now to create a seamless transition of subsidies and green incentives for farmers after the UK leaves the EU in order to avoid creating a decade of uncertainty in the countryside.

If warming is not tackled, levels of humid heat that can kill within hours will affect millions across south Asia within decades, analysis finds

Extreme heatwaves that kill even healthy people within hours will strike parts of the Indian subcontinent unless global carbon emissions are cut sharply and soon, according to new research.

Even outside of these hotspots, three-quarters of the 1.7bn population – particularly those farming in the Ganges and Indus valleys – will be exposed to a level of humid heat classed as posing “extreme danger” towards the end of the century.

Climate science workforce needs to grow by 77 positions over the next four years, according to report prompted by CSIRO redundancies

Australia has a critical shortage of climate scientists, leaving it at serious risk of not delivering essential climate and weather services to groups like farmers, coastal communities and international organisations, a report has found.

The report into the nation’s climate science capability by the Australian Academy of Science found the climate science workforce needed to grow by 77 full-time positions over the next four years, with 27 of those positions urgently required.

Council apologises for ‘serious errors’ in air quality readings over three years and says it is reviewing planning applications

A local authority has admitted its air pollution data was deliberately manipulated for three years to make it look cleaner.

Cheshire East council apologised after “serious errors” were made in air quality readings from 2012 to 2014.

Two recently fledged night herons have been seen at Westhay Moor nature reserve, Somerset, which suspects climate change drew their parents north

Night herons are among the most mysterious of birds, and for the first time in recorded history they have been spotted breeding in the UK.

Long-distance photographs captured the adult pair and one of their two offspring at the Westhay Moor national nature reserve, run by Somerset Wildlife Trust. The young birds have recently fledged, having been born either on Westhay Moor or the nearby Avalon Marshes.

Video from Dr Greg Skomal shows the moment a curious white shark took a GoPro camera in its mouth. The fish, seen off the Monomoy national wildlife refuge in Massachusetts on Monday, is believed to have been 12ft (3.6 metres) long. Skomal works for the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy

• Watch the video on the AWSC’s social media
  

Animals across the globe are struggling to survive the perils of the Anthropocene era. Writer and environmental campaigner Ceri Levy introduces the much-loved artist’s portraits of these embattled beasts

• Buy Critical Critters at the Guardian Bookshop
• An exhibition of Ralph Steadman’s signed prints from the book will run at the Goldmark Gallery from 2 September
• Ralph Steadman, Ceri Levy and poems about climate change – books podcast

Researcher says emissions from fracking in the basin could be ‘far bigger than everything you’d get’ from the proposed Queensland mine

Fracking the McArthur basin could release four to five times as much greenhouse gas emissions as the proposed Adani Carmichael mine, a leading researcher has said.

Tim Forcey, a chemical engineer with 30 years experience in the petrochemicals industry, appeared before a Northern Territory inquiry on Wednesday, also giving evidence that a gas shortage on the east coast was highly unlikely.