The Guardian

The hands of the Doomsday Clock currently stand at two-and-a-half-minutes to midnight. Professor Ray Pierrehumbert of Oxford University and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists explains why support for science and the global March for Science on 22 April is crucial

March for Science on 22 April will see scientists and supporters at more than 500 locations stand up for evidence-based thinking

Scientists and science supporters will take to the streets in a global March for Science on 22 April . What began as a small Facebook group in the US capital, Washington DC has spiralled into a global phenomenon that will now see marches and other events in more than 500 locations around the world, from Seattle to Seoul.

It is great news that so many people are prepared to stand up and defend the need for evidence-based thinking and the scientific method. But it is also a sad comment on our times that a March for Science is needed at all. Post-truth populism has infected democracies around the world, scientific objectivity is under threat from multiple sources and there seems a real danger of falling into a modern dystopian dark age.

Scientists are ditching their labs for the streets in a mass protest against the Trump administration’s war on facts, but will the effort resonate with skeptics?

On Saturday, thousands of scientists are set to abandon the cloistered neutrality of their laboratories to plunge into the the political fray against Donald Trump in what will likely be the largest ever protest by science advocates.

The March for Science, a demonstration modeled in part on January’s huge Women’s March, will inundate Washington DC’s national mall with a jumble of marine biologists, birdwatchers, climate researchers and others enraged by what they see as an assault by Trump’s administration upon evidence-based thinking and scientists themselves.

Claxton, Norfolk At Thorpe Hall near Haddiscoe, 340 pairs of rooks once nested, but this spring there is not one

Assessing the rook population in the Yare valley has long been a favourite ritual of my springs. Since the nests are coarse bundles of sticks in the bare treetops it is easy to combine the serious census work with the season’s wider pleasures: the sounds of first chiffchaffs or blackcaps, the lemon wings of male brimstone butterflies, and the year’s first glamorous colour from primroses, marsh marigolds and walls of blackthorn blossom.

However, by the time I reached the third of my 30 rookeries, I sensed that this year would be different. A site that had once held 100 nests was completely empty. Thereafter, each old place revealed the new story of absence.

Conservation charity warns that almost half of world heritage sites designated for importance to nature are at risk

Almost half of the Unesco world heritage sites designated for their importance to nature are threatened by the illegal wildlife trade, a WWF report has said.

Poaching, illegal logging and fishing, and the trafficking of rare species are plaguing 45% of the world’s most precious natural areas, the report from the conservation charity said.

Humans are changing Earth’s climate at an alarmingly fast rate

A new study published in Nature Communications looks at changes in solar activity and carbon dioxide levels over the past 420 million years. The authors found that on our current path, by mid-century humans will be causing the fastest climate change in approximately 50 million years, and if we burn all available fossil fuels, we’ll cause the fastest change in the entire 420 million year record.

Seventeen-year-old in critical condition after being mauled at Kelp Beds, near Wylie Bay in Esperance

A 17-year-old girl has been attacked by a shark in Western Australia’s south.

Monday’s attack happened at Kelp Beds, near Wylie Bay in Esperance just before 4pm, police said.

Fancy ripping out your plumbed-in lavatory and replacing it with a bucket, some pine needles and sawdust? This is Paul Kingsnorth’s new environmentalism: less concerned with arguing for grand political gestures that won’t prevent Earth’s “sixth mass extinction” in any case, rather, arguing for small change in the immediate world around us. Last year, Kingsnorth published the second instalment of his earthily brilliant Buckmaster fictional trilogy and Confessions is akin to its nonfiction companion: a collection of essays that often act as both a paean to a landscape we are losing and a mournful realisation that little that can be done about it now. The title piece is Kingsnorth at his best, a tremendous combination of the personal and the political. His views on the past and future of environmentalism are perhaps over-rehearsed over the course of a book, but taken as a collection to dip into rather than read from cover to cover, there’s plenty to enjoy, learn from and even inspire.

• Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist by Paul Kingsnorth is published by Faber (£14.99). To order a copy for £11.24 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

Authors of Can Clean Air Make You Happy? say exposure to nitrogen dioxide can be as damaging as ‘big-hitting’ life events

The effect on wellbeing of exposure to nitrogen dioxide, a gas mostly produced in diesel fumes, is comparable to the toll from losing a job, ending a relationship or the death of a partner, research suggests.

The study found a “significant and negative association” between life satisfaction and levels of the pollutant, which causes lung problems. These effects were “substantive and comparable to that of many ‘big-hitting’ life events,” according to the researchers behind Can Clean Air Make You Happy?.

Afon Rheidol When I reached the Rheidol falls it was clear that the river was in spate from the recent rains

A narrow-gauge steam railway winds across the steep southern side of the Rheidol valley, slowly climbing the route from Aberystwyth to Devil’s Bridge. While walking deep in the valley beside the river, I was convinced I could hear the train coming and hurried out of the trees to see it pass. The noise persisted, drifting in and out of my hearing as though the engine were rounding the rocky spurs and disappearing into wooded side valleys, yet no train appeared.

Slowly, awkwardly, I realised that the sound was that of the low set of waterfalls further up the valley, distorted and modulated by the strong east wind that was straining the still bare branches of the trees. When I reached the Rheidol falls, having taken the sloping path from just beyond the old chapel, it was clear that the river was in spate from the recent rains, with substantial volumes of water pouring over and between the rocks.

On a cold day on Cairn Gorm there was little to occupy the attention – until the appearance of a ring ouzel signalled the return of spring

Go-back, go-back, go-back! A red grouse was calling just above the car park, at the bottom of the path to the summit of Cairn Gorm. For a moment I was tempted to heed his advice and retreat to the nearby café.

But my children were uncharacteristically enthusiastic about the idea of walking up the mountainside; buoyed, no doubt, by the prospect of playing in the snow. And so we headed up the path.

More people than ever are coming to see the reef and those who make a living showing it off want the world to know it’s still a natural wonder. But they worry about its future, and that of their 64,000-strong industry

In the dark clouds gathering over the future of the Great Barrier Reef, there has been a small silver lining for the people who make their living showcasing the natural wonder.

When the reef was rocked by an unprecedented second mass bleaching event in the space of a year, the coral hardest-hit by heat stress lay mostly in the tourist-heavy latitudes between Cairns and Townsville.

Celebrities and pressure groups warn UK prime minister against entering into ‘environmental race to the bottom’ to secure post-Brexit trade deals

Leading environmental campaigners have warned the government against scaling back on commitments to tackle climate change and end the illegal market in wildlife in order to secure post-Brexit trade deals.

Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth and high-profile figures including Andy Murray and Will Young are among those who have signed a joint letter to the prime minister urging Theresa May not to engage in an “environmental race to the bottom” after withdrawal from the EU.

Researchers estimate there are 150,000 urban foxes in England, with Bournemouth having the highest concentration

The number of urban foxes in England has quadrupled in the past 20 years, according to a study that estimates there are nearly 150,000 in England, or about one for every 300 urban residents.

While the number of foxes is declining overall in the UK, the study by Brighton and Reading universities has found that Bournemouth tops the charts with the highest concentration of urban foxes in the UK at 23 per square kilometre.

Around 13% of cache of ice cylinders extracted from glaciers in Canadian Arctic exposed to high heat in new storage facility at University of Alberta

Within them sits some 80,000 years of history, offering researchers tantalising clues about climate change and the Earth’s past. At least that was the case – until the precious cache of Arctic ice cores was hit by warming temperatures.

A freezer malfunction at the University of Alberta in Edmonton has melted part of the world’s largest collection of ice cores from the Canadian Arctic, reducing some of the ancient ice into puddles.

Cycling has the power to transform urban transport. But access to bikes is key to getting more of us on to two wheels

Imagine the huge improvement in air quality if we shifted to pedal power. In Groningen, in the Netherlands, almost two-thirds of trips are made by bike, making it one of the most cycle-friendly cities in the world. It’s no accident that the Dutch city also has great air quality. The UK manages a meagre 2% cycling rate overall. And we all know about the air quality here.

If, by the way, your wheels are redundant, please pass them on to the Bike Project to match with someone who desperately wants one.

Perched on the telegraph wires in my Somerset village, is a swallow – all the way back from its winter quarters in Africa. In my back garden, orange-tip and small tortoiseshell butterflies are searching for nectar. And everywhere I look, spring foliage is filling the countryside with green.

This has been a vintage spring for wildlife watchers. Thanks to a spell of fine, settled weather at the end of March and the beginning of April, bluebells carpet forest floors, the dawn chorus is reaching its peak, and living creatures – from natterjack toads to great crested newts, bumblebees to badgers – are out in force. What more could we wish for on Easter weekend?

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 21 April 1917

Surrey, April 19
The bush harrow has been at work in the meadows, and light rain, dewing the grass tops, glistens even under the clouds along broad green paths which extend from end to end of the field. The blackbirds have been very active these past few days, scurrying noisily about the hedges and piping in regular notes up among the trees. There is a nest in a hollow of the hedge bottom, built where a thorn begins to branch out from the roots, plastered inside as if with a delicate tool and then lined with tops of dead grasses and a few driblets of wool which have clung to the hedge as the down sheep have straggled about near the thorns. Buds have begun to take the shape of leaves. There is just a glimpse of new colour along the top of the distant wood; a momentary glint of sun gives the impression and no more of pale golden green, which dies as the sky leadens again. Underfoot the most notable thing is the growth of small clover. Stalks have lengthened and leaves broadened out well above the ground.

One of our rivers, which takes a very winding course down to the Thames, runs through a thicket of willows, with older trees pollarded along each bank. This evening, when the clouds dispersed, a pair of kingfishers chased under the yet bare branches, going at regular intervals and returning, not together but one after the other in the same way. There is more life in the water and more insects were playing below the still boughs. A warbler was singing – just a few notes, and then a long silence before he broke it again.

New Forest Clustered around two trees, and shaded by them, is a narrow-leaved lungwort, unreported in the area for nearly 20 years

We head into the forest in search of a scarce plant. Nine years ago almost to the day, I chanced upon a single stem of narrow-leaved lungwort (Pulmonaria longifolia), and I want to find out if it is still there. Then, it had been growing in the shelter of a young bramble, with primroses alongside.

Before setting out, I check with Martin Rand, the botanical recorder for south Hampshire. When he tells me that he hasn’t had a report of its presence in this area since the turn of the millennium, I regret not having given him a note of my find before.

Standing in a dark pine forest surrounded by bioluminescent mushrooms is as magical and mysterious as it sounds – and worth the midnight trek into the mountains three hours out of Sydney

It’s just before midnight and we’re in the middle of an eerie pine forest in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, dodging leeches and lugging heavy camera equipment.