The Guardian

When Aric Harding, a Houston pastor and musician, returned to fetch some belongings from his home after it was flooded by Harvey, he wanted to show his son that their piano still worked. So Harding sat in the knee-deep water and played a few chords as a friend recorded the moment.

• Texas flooding: 100,000 homes damaged by Harvey – as it happened

Students from New Taipei City collected samples from urban rivers, creeks and ports which they then froze in moulds and preserved in resin. ‘We hope when more people see this they can change their lifestyles,’ said one of the group

August rains wiped out the promise of a long-awaited bumper summer for birds, insects and plants, say experts, though autumn will be good for fungi

The summer holiday washout wiped out a much needed bumper season for wildlife across the UK, according to wildlife experts at the National Trust.

A normal winter and balmy spring provided ideal conditions for birds, insects and plants but the heavy rains that rolled in during August dampened the promised bonanza. However, the weather patterns should see a good autumn for fungi and some nuts and berries.

Chew Valley Lake, Somerset Redshank, mud-wort, cudweed and crowfoot – their names are peasant-simple – rise from the mud like miniature Grendels

The lake in late summer is brimming with life. Swallows and martins sweep through rafts of duck, coot and gulls, sometimes dipping to sip flies from the surface. The shoreline is lush with plants and wet with drizzle. We push through shoulder-high bushes of water mint and spires of gypsywort and golden dock.

This is the seasonal outburst of the inundation community, the plants that spring up on the mud of the lake edge. The vegetation may have a grand title but the plants themselves have earthy, Old English names, mud-savoury and peasant-simple.

A herd of elephant hawkmoth caterpillars is trooping across my garden to pupate

Caterpillars are on the march. In the past week I’ve found several elephant hawkmoth caterpillars trooping across my garden. These are arguably the most subtly beautiful of the charismatic hawkmoth grubs. They are deep brown and charcoal grey with four arresting “eyes” of black, brown and silver – part of an armoury of deterrents against voracious birds, which includes the sudden switching into “snake” mode when disturbed, to discombobulate predators.

The adult moth takes its name from the caterpillar’s trunk-like snout, although its bewitching pink hued wings are also the colour of a cartoon elephant.

Experiment in the Bellingshuan Sea reveals temperature rise has more alarming implications for biodiversity in polar waters than previously thought

Marine life on the Antarctic seabed is likely to be far more affected by global warming than previously thought, say scientists who have conducted the most sophisticated study to date of heating impacts in the species-rich environment.

Growth rates of some fauna doubled – including colonising moss animals and undersea worms – following a 1C increase in temperature, making them more dominant, pushing out other species and reducing overall levels of biodiversity, according to the study published on Thursday in Current Biology.

Rising sea levels pose a serious threat to cites like Boston, New York and Miami Beach. So what are they doing to protect themselves?

Tropical storm Harvey may have bared its teeth at Houston, but other cities in the US have felt the pangs of nervousness. Several cities are vulnerable to the fiercer storms and sea level rise that are being fueled by climate change.

Cities, by their very nature, struggle during flood situations. Water that would have been soaked up by grass and other vegetation washes off the concrete and asphalt of urban areas and, if not properly diverted away, can inundate homes.

Rescue operations continue to save people across Texas stranded by tropical storm Harvey. Though rainfall is slowing and wind speeds have dropped, officials say the flooding will take longer to subside. Harvey weakened as it moved inland over Louisiana on Thursday, leaving behind record flooding

• Houston flooding: two explosions take place at Texas chemical plant
  

Protests planned after president suggests Roșia Montană Unesco application could be withdrawn, potentially enabling the return of a controversial mining project

Romania’s prime minister has suggested his government will seek to withdraw an application to have the former gold mining area of Roșia Montană declared a Unesco world heritage site, potentially paving the way for the return of a controversial mining project.

A climate “red team” is just a polite way to describe bailing out scientific losers

Climate contrarians, like Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, don’t understand how scientific research works. They are basically asking for a government handout to scientists to do what scientists are should already be doing. They are also requesting handouts for scientists who have been less successful in research and publications – a move antithetical to the survival of the fitness approach that has formed the scientific community for decades.

The helping handout would be through a proposed exercise called a “red team/blue team” effort. It is a proposal that would reportedly find groups of scientists on both “sides” of the climate issue (whatever that means), and have them try to poke holes in each others’ positions. I will explain why this is a handout but first let’s talk about the plan and how it interferes with the scientific process.

Winning and shortlisted images from this year’s competition, from awe-inspiring action shots to charming portraits, featured in a new book celebrating some of the best bird photography of the year

Rescue workers in Mumbai are searching for people feared trapped beneath a collapsed building following two days of torrential rain in India’s commercial hub. At least 1,200 people have died across south-east Asia as a result of flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains, and millions of people are estimated to have been affected

• Mumbai building collapses in monsoon rains as South Asia floods wreak havoc
  

Skipjack tuna from the western Pacific is common on supermarket shelves, but a new coalition argues its certification as sustainable is illusory

Consumers of tuna from the world’s biggest fishery are are being “betrayed” over its sustainability, according to a coalition of scientists, retailers, politicians and campaigners, including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

The vast Western and Central Pacific fishery provides about half of the world’s skipjack tuna, the type most commonly found in cans on supermarket shelves. Some is certified as sustainably caught by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and carries the group’s “blue tick” logo. But the same boats can also use, at other times, unsustainable methods to catch uncertified fish, a contradiction seen as unacceptable by the new On The Hook coalition.

Llanbedr, Gwynedd With sadness I realised a proposed road, improving access to the planned spaceport, would cut across the floodplain I had just explored

The train along the Cambrian coast route stops at Llanbedr only by request, and on this occasion I was the only passenger to alight. To the west fields of wet grassland, divided by drainage channels brimming with rushes, spread towards the sea.

Related: Snowdonia fears impact of UK spaceport decision

Australian government’s draft Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan provides new water quality targets, but has very few other concrete changes

Australia’s draft plan to improve water quality on the Great Barrier Reef has ignored official government scientific advice, which was published by the Queensland and federal governments alongside the new plan this week.

The draft Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan is an update to the plan released in 2013, and provides new water quality targets for specific parts of the reef, but has very few other concrete changes overall.

Judge says president Michel Temer went beyond his authority in issuing decree to dissolve Renca, after fury from activists

A Brazilian court has blocked an attempt by the president, Michel Temer, to open up swaths of the Amazon forest to mining companies after an outcry by environmental campaigners and climate activists.

The federal judge Rolando Valcir Spanholo said the president went beyond his authority in issuing a decree to abolish Renca, an area of 46,000 sq km (17,760 sq miles) that has been protected since 1984.

Critics say authorisation of supplementary culls shows the programme, which began four years ago, is not working

Another 1,000 badgers are set to be killed this autumn and winter in the two UK counties where the controversial cull began four years ago.

Natural England confirmed on Wednesday that supplementary culls had been authorised in Gloucestershire and Somerset.

Are American lives simply worth more, wonder Lynne Edwards, Peter Williams, and Susan Howe. Plus letters from Bob Pike and Sheila Rigby

While I have the greatest sympathy for those who have lost friends, family, pets or property in the Texas floods (Report, 30 August), I am disgusted at the relative number of column inches and amounts of airtime devoted to its coverage. During precisely the same period huge areas of Bangladesh, Nepal and India are suffering an even greater catastrophe, with 1,200 plus lives lost and millions made homeless. Let’s get some balance here. America is a rich country and will cope, despite inept leadership. Or are we saying that American lives are worth more?.
Susan Howe
Ross on Wye, Herefordshire

• The contrast between the coverage of floods in Texas and floods in South Asia is stark. Live updating of trivia as well as important events from Houston; the odd report from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and elsewhere. There are probably many more people of South Asian heritage in this country than American. The implicit message is that they, and their relatives, are far less important than a pet in Houston. I don’t want Texas coverage reduced, but please take more notice of the rest of the world.
Lynne Edwards
New Quay, Ceredigion

After being criticised by Canberra, South Australia is leading the race, with ACT and Tasmania close behind, says Climate Council

Australian states and territories are powering ahead, developing policies that will meet the federal government’s internationally agreed greenhouse gas emission targets, with South Australia, the ACT and Tasmania leading the race.

Despite being chastised by the federal government for unilateral action, South Australia is leading the race, with the ACT and Tasmania not far behind, according to a report by the Climate Council.

Beulah Johnson, an evacuee, films the inside of a shelter in Houston that has been overwhelmed by water in the wake of tropical storm Harvey, forcing about 100 weary people to retreat to bleacher seats with their belongings. Marcus McLellan of Jefferson County sheriff’s office said on Wednesday that the Bowers Civic Center in Port Arthur had been inundated overnight, owing to rainfall and an overflowing canal nearby

• Tropical storm Harvey – live updates