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Costa Rica already has close to 100% renewable power for electricity. Its newly elected president now promises to replace petrol and diesel in the transport system.

Global warming of 1.5°C is imminent, likely in just a decade from now. That’s the stunning conclusion to be drawn from a number of recent studies.

The robot connects to the internet so web users can control it and donate to pay maintenance costs.

The Russian capital has no recycling programme and its expanding rubbish landfills are causing health problems.

Has Australian weather always been this way or is the increasing frequency of bushfires, storms, floods, and drought due to climate change?

Scientists have been developing a technique to count animals that is usually used to map stars.

It's understandable to want to shield children from the impacts of disasters. But research suggests that they should be given a voice in disaster planning and a role in reducing the risks. Christine Eriksen, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research, University of Wollongong Avianto Amri, PhD Candidate, Macquarie University Briony Towers, Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University Emma Calgaro, Sydney Research Fellow in Sustainability Science, University of Sydney John Richardson, Honorary Fellow, Beyond Bushfires Research Team, University of Melbourne Katharine Haynes, Snr Research Fellow, Department of Geography and Planning, Macquarie University Scott McKinnon, Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Wollongong Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A dozen black holes may lie at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, researchers say.

Five years after the implementation of the Murray-Darling basin plan, our great river system is under stress. Follow our 3000km journey along the rivers, travelling from inland Queensland to the Murray mouth, to understand where the plan has failed those who live and work on this land

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The Coalition’s backbench group of coal fans have a history of attacking climate science

There seems to be three rules for membership of the Coalition’s new backbench Monash Forum that wants taxpayer subsidies for new coal fired power stations.

Firstly, you have to really love the life-giving and not-really-all-that-deadly rock from the late Permian and Carboniferous which, if they made it into a snack bar, you would totally want to eat it and then rub the bits left sticking to the wrapper all over your naked form.

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More than five years and $9bn since the basin plan began, the Murray-Darling river system is in crisis. In a series of in-depth features and articles this week, Guardian Australia will explore what’s gone wrong

Kate McBride stands on the banks of the Lower Darling river as it flows past her family property, Tolarno, south of Menindee in New South Wales. She surveys the stagnating waterholes that were once a river. They are turning an alarming shade of chartreuse, thanks to blue-green algae.

The sometimes mighty river has ceased to flow again this summer – an increasingly regular occurrence in these reaches of the Murray-Darling system.

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Andy Stirling and Phil Johnstone reply to criticism of their analysis of the government’s infatuation with nuclear power

Thanks to Mike Clancy (Letters, 2 April) for responding to our analysis that intense UK government attachments to civil nuclear power are (to a significant – but dangerously undiscussed – extent) aimed at supporting the national industrial base underpinning nuclear submarine capabilities. He accuses us of “speculation”, yet fails to address any of the strong evidence that we cite. We show at length that UK nuclear attachments do not reflect economic performance. A host of ways to manage intermittency are routinely priced at a small fraction of the growing cost advantage of renewable energy. As a member of the UK Nuclear Industry Council (itself with a dual civil/military remit), Mr Clancy could assist much-needed factual scrutiny by addressing the points we raise. As a union leader, he might help democratic debate by explaining why his own organisation – and UK unions more generally – are so much more supportive of jobs in the nuclear than in the renewable sector.
Professor Andy Stirling and Dr Phil Johnstone
SPRU, University of Sussex

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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Two Suffolk punch horses are being put forward for a charity's breeding programme.

They were patrolling off the South Australian coast when they noticed something behind them.

Monash family appalled by Coalition's use of name to push "anti-science" and "anti-intellectual" arguments for technology of the "horse and buggy era."

Friends of the Earth demands the oil firm move away from fossil fuels to comply with Paris deal

The global flurry of legal campaigns against “big oil” has widened, with Royal Dutch Shell being threatened with legal action unless it steps up efforts to comply with the Paris climate agreement.

Friends of the Earth Netherlands on Wednesday demanded the Anglo-Dutch company revise plans to invest only 5% in sustainable energy and 95% in greenhouse-gas emitting oil and gas.

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Photographer Francesco Bosso travelled to Greenland to capture images of the melting icebergs, which he describes as ‘gems of nature in danger of extinction’. The results are presented in his new book, Last Diamonds

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Lune Estuary, Lancaster: Some oystercatchers piped the first bars of their call and then, as if a signal that dawn had broken, a curlew summoned sunrise

It was becoming light, but not light yet. Water, salt marsh, sky: these were names for things that did not exist in the dark before dawn. Then the glim of something, maybe a moon-piece, as befits the Lune, made its way in to where it was possible to look but not go. There was the cold, face-wash quiet of the air and the slight rub of dry sedge trodden on the road. There was frost, if that smells of silver. A spectral breath returned inside after exhalation, setting the mind afloat. There was a slow opening in the east and then the nets of river fog filled with gold.

As shoals of light swam through the air, the river and the land floated in banded layers of colour, none of which lasted longer than a few seconds. This was a weightless landscape, at liberty and so insubstantial that any ripple could disperse any or all parts of it to drift away in different directions. As the sky blued into being, a bow of geese flew northward and a jack snipe lifted from somewhere indefinable between marsh and water, jinking bat-like out of and back into the mist. Far off, some oystercatchers piped the first bars of their call and then, as if a signal that dawn had broken, a curlew summoned sunrise, its song a weir of keening but without grief.

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The City of Suzhou in eastern China has deployed a fleet of electric workboats powered by Torqeedo motors as part of a program to clean up its canals and waterways.

Will Tesla's improved Model 3 production stats keep the professional short-sellers at bay as new competitors loom?