The Guardian
When media sceptics misrepresent our climate research we must speak out
Our climate paper underlined that strong action towards the 1.5C Paris goal is perhaps more valid than ever, but reading some of the media coverage you might think the opposite was true
On Monday, we published a paper in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience that re-evaluated how much carbon dioxide we can still afford, collectively, to emit into the atmosphere and still retain some hope of achieving the ambitious goals of the Paris climate agreement to “pursue efforts” to keep global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The carbon budget we found, to yield a two-in-three chance of meeting this goal, was equivalent to starting CO2 emission reductions immediately and continuing in a straight line to zero in less than 40 years: a formidable challenge.
Formidable, but not inconceivable. The distinction matters, because if it were already completely impossible to achieve the Paris ambition, many might argue there was no point in pursuing those efforts in the first place – or that the only option left is immediately starting to cool the planet with artificial volcanoes.
Continue reading...Land defenders call on UN to act against violence by state-funded and corporate groups
Fight to protect natural resources has become too dangerous in the face of violence from state forces, private security groups and state-sponsored vigilantes, say groups from 29 countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia
Land rights defenders from 29 countries have written to the UN asking it to act against violent corporate and state-sponsored groups which they say are threatening their lives and trashing the environment.
Thirty nine grassroots groups from Africa, Latin America and Asia, many of whose leaders have been killed or forced to flee for protesting the theft of land, big dams mines and forest destruction, say their fight to protect natural resources is becoming too dangerous.
Continue reading...Scientists discover unique Brazilian frogs that are deaf to their own mating calls
Pumpkin toadlet frogs are only known case of an animal that continues to make a communication signal even after the target audience has lost the ability to hear it
Humans trying to chat each other up in a noisy nightclub may find verbal communication futile. But it appears even more pointless for pumpkin toadlets after scientists discovered that females have lost the ability to hear the sound of male mating calls.
Country diary: Slowworm's escape from jaws of disaster
Blanchland, North Pennines Seemingly in a trance, the reptile lay outstretched on the road with predator bites near its head
When I was a child there was a sheet of rusting corrugated iron lying on the sunny bank of my grandmother’s allotment. If I lifted it quickly I could often find a slowworm resting underneath. It would lie there, startled by the sunlight for a moment, then glide away, like a flowing column of mercury, into the hedge.
I have been an inveterate lifter of rusty corrugated iron sheets ever since, but although they are well recognised hiding places for these elegant reptiles I’ve rarely been lucky.
Continue reading...Bureau of Meteorology attacks pushed by 'fever swamp' of climate denial | Graham Readfearn
Rob Vertessy, who retired as the BOM’s director in 2016, has hit back at ‘time wasters’ and ‘amateurs’ who are given a forum by the Australian
For Rob Vertessy, the attacks on his government agency became tedious and time-consuming and no less irritating because they were coming from a motivated group of “amateurs”.
Vertessy spent a decade at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. He retired in April 2016 after five years as the agency’s director.
Continue reading...Former weather bureau chief says agency debilitated by climate deniers' attacks
Rob Vertessy says attacks such as the claim the bureau was ‘fabricating temperature records’ are dangerous and wrong
Misleading attacks on Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology by climate deniers in the Australian are “debilitating” to the agency and limiting its ability to predict risks and protect the community, the former head of the bureau has told the Guardian.
Rob Vertessy, who retired as director of the BoM in April 2016, said climate deniers’ attempts to confuse the public about the science of climate change were dangerous, in an interview for the Guardian’s Planet Oz blog.
Continue reading...Nuclear is not the way to a clean energy future | Letters
In Agneta Rising’s defence of nuclear generation (Letters, 19 September), she claims that nuclear plants have to occasionally stop for repair and maintenance. But jellyfish also get into seawater inlets, as at Torness in 2011, causing week-long shutdowns. Seaweed can block inlets shutting reactors, and operator incompetence shuts reactors and compromises radioactive cores. Torness was even narrowly missed by a crashing RAF Tornado jet. Most worrying are not such transient manageable events but risks of systematic flooding of nuclear sites.
Nine UK plants are assessed by Defra as currently vulnerable to coastal flooding (Report, 7 March 2012), including all eight proposed new UK nuclear sites and numerous radioactive waste stores, operating reactors and defunct nuclear facilities. EDF claims on its website that “to protect the Hinkley Point C station from such events, the platform level of the site is set at 14 metres above sea level, behind a sea wall with a crest level of 13.5 metres”. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 produced a maximum storm surge of 8.5 metres. It is predicted that sea levels may rise by a metre by 2100. The UK government cannot actually have believed in climate change or surely they would not put future generations at such risk? I bet they believe in it now. The question is: do they care? Is it really too late to stop a retrograde, potentially catastrophic and already unaffordable UK nuclear future?
Emeritus Professor Sue Roaf
Oxford
Channel Islands' buried porpoise is not the first such mysterious find
A porpoise jawbone, discovered in the Hebrides by a 1950s schoolboy as part of an ancient treasure hoard, raises similar questions about the significance these animals held for earlier people
The strange discovery of a porpoise skeleton interred in a medieval religious grave in the Channel Islands is evocative of a deep cultural connection between humans and cetaceans which we are only just beginning to understand.
It speaks to a different, historical relationship to the natural world – one which now appears to be coming full circle.
Continue reading...Melting Arctic ice cap falls to well below average
• This summer’s minimum is the eighth lowest on record
- Shrinking ice cap increasingly linked to extreme weather events around the world, say scientists
The Arctic ice cap melted to hundreds of thousands of square miles below average this summer, according to data released late on Tuesday.
Climate change is pushing temperatures up most rapidly in the polar regions and left the extent of Arctic sea ice at 1.79m sq miles at the end of the summer melt season.
Continue reading...It takes just 4 years to detect human warming of the oceans | John Abraham
Our new paper illustrates the rapid, consistent warming of Earth’s oceans
We’ve known for decades that the Earth is warming, but a key question is, how fast? Another key question is whether the warming is primarily caused by human activities. If we can more precisely measure the rate of warming and the natural component, it would be useful for decision makers, legislators, and others to help us adapt and cope. Indeed, added ocean heat content underlies the potential for dangerous intense hurricanes.
An answer to the “how fast?” question was partly answered in an Opinion piece just published on Eos.org, the daily online Earth and space science news site, by scientists from China, Europe and the United States. I was fortunate enough to be part of the research team.
Continue reading...Exotic pet owners of Beijing – in pictures
A dramatic rise in owning exotic pets in China is fuelling global demand for threatened species. The growing trade in alligators, snakes, monkeys, crocodiles and spiders is directly linked to species loss in some of the world’s most threatened ecosystems
Continue reading...Barn owls don't lose their hearing with age, scientists find
Findings leave researchers hopeful that understanding hearing preservation in birds could lead to new treatment possibilities for deaf humans
If ageing humans had ears like those of barn owls they would never need hearing aids, scientists have shown.
The birds, whose sensitivity to sound helps them locate prey, suffer no hearing loss as they get older. Like other birds – but unlike mammals, including humans – they are able to regenerate cells in their inner ears.
Continue reading...'River lorries' float us back on the tide of history
Cotehele Quay, Tamar Valley Songs and shanties celebrate Cornwall’s fishers and farmers and raise funds to restore the barge Shamrock
Tide floods between mud banks and wind-blown purple reed flowers as the audience carry chairs into Shamrock’s shed. Earlier, high water washed debris across the quay and into the gig club’s yard, and the possibility of more rain precludes the outdoor venue of tonight’s concert by the Polperro Fishermen’s Choir.
Inside the lofty slate-roofed building, beneath block and tackle sorted as stay, main and mizzen, we are entertained with songs and shanties; money raised will go towards repairs and maintenance of Shamrock, a renovated Tamar sailing barge.
Continue reading...We must act now to counter ash dieback | Letters
It’s not just in North America where ash trees face extinction (Report, 15 September). It’s now five years since ash dieback was first confirmed in the UK. The disease has now been recorded at more than 1,300 locations and is expected to kill many thousands of trees. The spread of emerald ash borer is already a growing concern in Europe. But positive steps are being taken. Planting more trees now, using a greater diversity of tree species, will help bolster the landscape against future losses. The Woodland Trust aims to plant 64 million trees over the next decade. The public can also help scientists detect the arrival of new pests. Observatree is a project by conservation bodies that has trained more than 200 volunteers UK-wide to do just that.
Austin Brady
Director of conservation, Woodland Trust
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
Continue reading...Duncan Huggett obituary
My friend and colleague Duncan Huggett, who has died aged 52 of a brain tumour, kept his love of the natural world to the fore in his work with the RSPB, the Environment Agency and the Marine Conservation Society.
At the Environment Agency he was the man people turned to when flood risk management ran into conflict with conservation, and his work there was fundamental in establishing a solid scientific base for future investments in natural flood management.
Continue reading...Poorest London children face health risks from toxic air, poverty and obesity
Schools in capital worst affected by air pollution are in most socially deprived areas with high levels of obesity, finds study
Tens of thousands of the poorest children in London are facing a cocktail of health risks including air pollution, obesity and poverty that will leave them with lifelong health problems, according to a new report.
The study found that schools in the capital worst affected by the UK’s air pollution crisis were also disproportionately poor, with high levels of obesity.
Continue reading...Can we turn the Whitechapel fatberg into biodiesel?
The human-waste bomb recently found clogging up a London sewer has an unlikely admirer – a Scottish renewable energy company
For a 130-tonne mass of grease, bound as hard as concrete by thousands of tampons, wipes and used tissues, the Whitechapel fatberg is in surprisingly high demand.
Last week, the Museum of London announced it wants to display a chunk of the human-waste bomb, recently unearthed in east London, as a way “to raise questions about how we live today”. Now, a Scottish biodiesel company is taking a piece to turn into fuel.
Continue reading...Spider and bee battle offers a moral dilemma
Claxton, Norfolk Though I admire – and fear – spiders, I love bumblebees. To see this one so enmeshed required an effort of will not to intervene
I saw them as I went to the bin. In the web of a female garden cross spider, a worker common carder bee hung upside down. The two were plainly engaged in combat and I crouched to observe the drama more closely.
Yet there were more emotions at play in this encounter than mere curiosity. For although I admire spiders, I absolutely love bumblebees. To see this insect so enmeshed and at risk of being eaten required an effort of my will not to intervene. In his gloriously funny 1950 book The Spider, John Crompton admitted that he freed bees from webs without further ado.
Continue reading...10 national monuments at risk under Trump's administration
The US interior secretary has identified a total of 10 national monuments to reshape or repurpose in order to allow for logging, mining and grazing
A total of 10 US national monuments are in the Trump administration’s sights to be either resized or repurposed, in order to allow activities such as mining, logging and grazing within their borders. Environmental groups have vowed legal action to stymie any alterations to the protected areas. Here are the 10 national monuments identified for change by Ryan Zinke, the secretary of the interior.
Related: The Trump administration's national monuments 'review' is a sham | Brian Calvert
Continue reading...More national monuments should be opened for exploitation, Zinke says
In leaked memo, Trump interior secretary recommends 10 protected areas be modified to allow for ‘traditional uses’ such as mining, logging and hunting
The Trump administration faces a fresh legal battle from environmental groups after the interior department recommended that 10 national monuments be resized or opened up to mining, logging and other industrial purposes.
Related: The Trump administration's national monuments 'review' is a sham | Brian Calvert
Continue reading...