The Guardian

The new study also confirms the planet is warming 20 times faster than Earth’s fastest natural climate change

Earth’s last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. The warmer and more stable climate the followed allowed for the development of agriculture and the rise of human civilization. This important period encompassing the past 12,000 years is referred to as the Holocene geological epoch. It also created a “conundrum” for climate scientists, because global temperatures simulated by climate models didn’t match reconstructions from proxy data.

To be specific, the overall temperature change during the Holocene matched pretty well in reconstructions and models, but the pattern didn’t. The best proxy reconstruction from a 2013 paper led by Shaun Marcott estimated more warming than models from 12,000 to 7,000 years ago. Then over the past 7,000 years, Marcott’s reconstruction estimated about 0.5°C cooling while model simulations showed the planet warming by about the same amount.

Report shows 14 people died following attacks between 2005 and 2014, compared with 10 deaths in the 33 years to 2004

The number of people being killed by crocodiles in the Top End is on the rise, new data shows.

A study by the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre, Royal Darwin Hospital and the Menzies School of Health Research has found croc-related deaths have jumped since hunting was outlawed in 1971.

Vesuvius in Italy and volcanoes in northern Tanzania, lights going out in Syria, and flooding in Sri Lanka are among images captured by Nasa and the ESA this month

A vertical view of Vesuvius in southern Italy, taken by the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet from the International Space Station. The Proxima mission is named after the closest star to the sun, continuing a tradition of naming missions with French astronauts after stars and constellations. The mission is part of the ESA’s plan to use Earth-orbiting spacecraft as a place to live and work while preparing for future voyages of exploration further into the solar system.

Ivory poaching is the most immediate, urgent threat to Africa’s elephants. But even if that can be tackled, they will have to fight humans for land, food and water

It is the dead of night. The day’s red-dust heat has given way to a cooling breeze. A hundred frogs chirp urgently. Tim and his crew are preparing for another stealth raid. Their mission is highly dangerous and now there’s a new threat: armed men are following them.

This is the scene repeated nightly on the eastern fringes of Amboseli national park in Kenya, close to the border with Tanzania. Tim is an elephant who, along with a group of up to 12 other males, has developed a taste for the tomatoes and maize growing on local farms on the outskirts of the park. The armed men are park rangers who have been tasked with keeping him from the crops – and saving his life.

Clean air signposts and online walking maps to sidestep diesel fumes would benefit public health, finds study

Taking a side street route when walking through a city cuts a person’s air pollution exposure by half, according to a new study.

Signposting these clean air routes and providing online maps would keep people away from heavily polluted main streets and would benefit their health, the researchers said. In fact the UK group behind the research have developed a new interactive map of London that allows people to put in any route and be shown a low-pollution walking option.

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire There is in them a curious combination of industry and decadence, fun and devotion

There’s something Elizabethan about the ashy mining bees. The females are 10mm long, black with a bluish reflection, a ruff of grey hair, a further grey ring around the thorax and a furry white facial mask. The males are smaller, squatter and less strikingly marked.

Andrena cineraria is one of 67 species in Britain and Ireland belonging to the mining bee genus. They are hairy little sprites with pollen baskets on their back legs, short tongues and pointed antennae, and the most effective of pollinators. They excavate nests underground in all kinds of soils.

UK leads trend away from coal, with use down 52.5%, while China continues to consume less of the dirtiest fossil fuel

Global demand for coal has fallen for the second consecutive year, according to a BP study, helped by the US and China burning less of the dirtiest fossil fuel.

The UK was described as the “most extreme example” of the trend away from coal, which has resulted in use of the fuel returning to levels not seen since the start of the industrial revolution.

Improvements aim to ensure the vault’s role as an impregnable deep freeze for the world’s most precious food seeds after a recent flooding by melting permafrost

The Global Seed Vault, built in the Arctic as an impregnable deep freeze for the world’s most precious food seeds, is to undergo a multi-million dollar upgrade after water from melting permafrost flooded its access tunnel.

No seeds were damaged but the incident undermined the original belief that the vault would be a “failsafe” facility, securing the world’s food supply forever. Now the Norwegian government, which owns the vault, has committed $4.4m (NOK37m) to improvements.

West Sussex The male calls three times, then segues into a short, complex phrase of tweets and whistles

The wind crashes through the tree tops, like the sea breaking on the shore, the great pines and silver birches that encircle the heathland swaying and shimmering. A red admiral butterfly rises from the heather, but it is snatched up by the wind and tumbles away too quickly for me to follow it.

I walk along the muddy track that threads between the trees. Where only last week the ground had been dry and parched, offering very little moisture to thirsty animals and birds, now all the pools are replenished with just one day’s heavy rain. I stop to watch three goldfinches drink from a puddle in front of me.

Energy minister Josh Frydenberg eventually offers a wry smile after opposition MP Mark Butler makes a joke about Labor’s strategy on the clean energy target during Q&A. Butler says the plan is “to get Josh to do all the hard work. Then lose [the election] and hand it over.” The pair were on ABC TV program to discuss Australia’s energy future.

The Finkel report offers glimpse of opportunity for consumers and businesses to play the electricity market

To illustrate the impact of battery storage on the electricity network in Australia, Prof Guoxiu Wang likes to compare it to the invention of refrigeration.

“Before people invented the fridge, we produced food, we consumed food immediately,” says Wang, director of the Centre for Clean Energy Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney. “With the development of appropriate electricity storage technology, the electricity is like our food – you can store it and whenever you need that electricity, you can use that immediately.”

India’s energy minister, Piyush Goyal, says the country would be self-sufficient in coal, except that power plants had been designed to run only on imports

India now has “sufficient coal capacity” to power itself without Queensland’s Carmichael mine project, thanks to the increased productivity of domestic mines, cheaper renewables and lower than expected energy demand, the country’s energy minister has said.

But Piyush Goyal said India would be forced to keep importing coal, including from the proposed Queensland mine, because too many Indian power plants had been designed to run on foreign coal.

Interior secretary Ryan Zinke urges president to shrink 1.3m-acre national monument as administration continues push against federal public lands

Ryan Zinke, the US interior secretary, has recommended to Donald Trump that Bears Ears national monument in Utah be reduced in size to the “smallest area compatible” with its conservation.

Canada’s PM is a counterfeit progressive who champions war-planes, pipelines and privatization - look across the pond for economic and environmental justice

Their depiction in the international media couldn’t be more different.

You know Justin Trudeau from the Buzzfeed photo-spread or the BBC viral video: the feminist Prime Minister of Canada who hugs refugees, pandas, and his yoga-mat. He looks like he canoed straight from the lake to the stage of the nearest TED Talk — an inclusive, nature-loving do-gooder who must assuredly be loved by his people.

US says it will not join other six nations in reaffirming 2015 Paris pact but will take its own action to reduce carbon footprint

The US has refused to sign up to a G7 pledge that calls the Paris climate accord the “irreversible” global tool to address climate change.

The G7 environment ministers issued a final reportafter their two-day meeting in Bologna, the first since the US announced it was withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.

Slowing demand for oil and forecasts of rapid growth in green power pose risk to core business, says analyst

More than a fifth of investment by the largest oil and gas companies could be in wind and solar power in just over a decade, according to analysis of how global changes in energy will reshape the sector.

Slowing demand for oil and forecasts of rapid growth in renewables posed both a threat and and opportunity BP, Shell and Total among others cannot ignore, said research group Wood Mackenzie.

Mule deer, pronghorn and other animals rely on unbroken migration routes for food and survival, a necessity now in jeopardy as Trump pushes for development

The life of a Wyoming mule deer is a tough one. In order to survive, thousands of the deer undertake an arduous 150-mile migration twice a year to find food. Manmade and natural hazards abound on this two-month trek.

“It’s not just about getting from point A to B, they have to forage all along the way,” said Matt Kauffman, a University of Wyoming zoologist. “These animals are slowly starving to death all winter. If winter is long enough or they are held up, the animals will die.”

Collapsing ice shelves will further accelerate global sea level rise

Very soon, a large portion of an ice shelf in Antarctica will break off and collapse into the ocean. The name of the ice shelf is Larsen C; it is a major extension from of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and its health has implications for other ice in the region, and sea levels globally.

How do we know a portion is going to collapse? Well, scientists have been watching a major rift (crack) that has grown in the past few years, carving out a section of floating ice nearly the size of Delaware. The speed of the crack has increased dramatically in the past few months, and it is nearly cracked through.

Exclusive: Walking or cycling to school is better for children’s health as cars are ‘boxes collecting toxic gases’ says David King

• Opinion: Smoking in cars is banned. But children still inhale toxic fumes in backseats

Children are at risk of dangerous levels of air pollution in cars because exposure to toxic air is often far higher inside than outside vehicles, a former government chief scientific adviser has warned.

Prof Sir David King, writing for the Guardian, says walking or cycling to school would be much better for children’s health. The warning comes as the UK government faces a third legal defeat for failing to tackle the country’s illegal levels of air pollution. Air pollution is known to damage children’s developing lungs but recent research also indicates it harms children’s ability to learn at school and may damage their DNA.

Epping Forest Yellow rattle steals nutrients from grasses, releasing butterfly-friendly plants from the oppression of shade

The poet John Clare crossed here 180 years ago seeking the “furze and clouds” of Buckhurst Hill, but I’m happy to linger on Whitehall Plain amid its dazzling drifts of buttercups. Natural grasslands are now rare in southern England – 98% of them were destroyed in the 50 years after 1945 – and too often seen as easily replicated green space. Not here in Epping Forest, though. Beneath its surface gloss of buttercups, this old pasture, which straddles London’s boundary with Essex, is complex and dynamic.

Related: Yellow rattle: the meadow-maker's helper