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Climate
Britain Is the First Major Economy to Stop Using Coal. It’s a Risky Experiment.
Scientists criticise UN agency’s failure to withdraw livestock emissions report
Academics say there has been no serious response from FAO to their complaints of ‘serious distortions’ in report
More than 20 scientific experts have written to the UN’s food agency expressing shock at its failure to revise or withdraw a livestock emissions report that two of its cited academics have said contained “multiple and egregious errors”.
The alleged inaccuracies are understood to have downplayed the potential of dietary change to reduce agricultural greenhouse gases, which make up about a quarter of total anthropogenic emissions and mostly derive from livestock.
Continue reading...End of an era as Britain’s last coal-fired power plant shuts down
UK’s 142-year history of coal-fired electricity ends as turbines at Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant in Nottinghamshire stop for good
Britain’s only remaining coal power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire will generate electricity for the last time on Monday after powering the UK for 57 years.
The power plant will come to the end of its life in line with the government’s world-leading policy to phase out coal power which was first signalled almost a decade ago.
Continue reading...Nepal Flooding and Landslides Kill at Least 170 People
Hurricane Helene’s ‘historic flooding’ made worse by global heating, Fema says
It will be ‘complicated recovery’ in North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia, says head of Fema
The head of the US disaster relief agency has called Hurricane Helene, which has killed at least 64 people so far, a “true multi-state event” that caused “significant infrastructure damage” and had been made worse because of global heating.
“This is going to be a really complicated recovery in each of the five states” of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, the Fema administrator, Deanne Criswell, said.
Continue reading...Our leaders are collaborators with fossil fuel colonialists. This is the source of our communal dread | Tim Winton
The lassitude that distinguishes our moment is born of sorrow and buried rage. We act like colonial subjects because, in effect, that’s what we are
“Kids these days are such snowflakes! So flaccid and self-involved, so doomy and anxious. If it’s not the drugs, it’s the screen time, right? I mean, what’s their problem?”
I try to sidestep conversations like these. Engaging saps so much time and energy. But avoiding them leaves me feeling dirty. Not because I’ve foregone an opportunity to win an argument, but because I know I’ve failed to defend those who need and deserve my solidarity.
Continue reading...Melting glaciers force Switzerland and Italy to redraw part of Alpine border
Two countries agree to modifications beneath Matterhorn peak, one of Europe’s highest summits
Switzerland and Italy have redrawn a border that traverses an Alpine peak as melting glaciers shift the historically defined frontier.
The two countries agreed to the modifications beneath the Matterhorn, one of the highest mountains in Europe, which straddles Switzerland’s Zermatt region and Italy’s Aosta valley.
Continue reading...This winding LA highway is notoriously treacherous. Extreme weather is making it worse
‘The Grapevine’, which connects the metropolis to the state’s agricultural hub, now serves as a window to the effects of climate crisis
Wildfires. Snowstorms. Falling boulders. DC Williams has long given up on predicting what the day will bring on Interstate 5 near Tejon Pass, an eight-lane stretch of highway that winds through the steep mountains north of Los Angeles.
Williams has been an officer with the California Highway Patrol and worked in this area for 11 years. On a chilly day this spring, he wore a thick black jacket even as he sat inside his Ford Explorer on a bridge overlooking the highway.
Continue reading...Leonard Leo-linked group attacking efforts to educate judges on climate
Rightwing US thinktank claimed in report that non-profit holding trainings is ‘corruptly influencing the courts’
A rightwing organization is attacking efforts to educate judges about the climate crisis. The group appears to be connected to Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightwing takeover of the American judiciary who helped select Trump’s supreme court nominees, the Guardian has learned.
The Washington DC-based non-profit Environmental Law Institute (ELI)’s Climate Judiciary Project holds seminars for lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. It aims to “provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation”, according to ELI’s website.
Continue reading...Force companies to report their food waste, say leading UK retailers
More than 30 businesses have written to the environment secretary calling for mandatory reporting of wasted food
Food companies should have to report how much they throw away as a first step towards reducing the vast amounts of edible food squandered in the UK, a group of prominent businesses have said.
About a third of the food produced globally every year is binned, much of it before it reaches the consumer at a cost of almost £22bn annually to the UK economy.
Continue reading...The UK will get hotter and drier for plants... except in Manchester
Thanks to the city’s famously rainy climate, trees suffering in the south can be moved, says the Royal Horticultural Society
The climate is changing British gardens everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. The Royal Horticultural Society has modelled how global heating will affect its property until 2075 and discovered that summers will be hotter and drier in all its gardens – except in Manchester.
Greater Manchester’s renown as a rain trap – there is even a website tracking rainfall, called Rainchester – means that the RHS Bridgewater garden in Salford is being earmarked for species that thrive in a cooler, wetter climate.
Continue reading...At Least 66 Die as Persistent Monsoon Rains Inundate Nepal
Brazil’s ‘Paradise’ on fire: ‘The forest is burning. Animals are burning. Everything’s burning’
Along the Madeira river basin, in the Amazon, locals blame climate change and human greed for the wildfires
“All of that up there is Paradise,” said Maria Moraes de Souza, gesturing to the string of villages among which she lives along one of the Amazon’s most important waterways.
But lately life in this supposedly Arcadian community has taken a toxic turn, as the River Madeira’s waters have fallen to their lowest level since the 1960s and the skies overhead have filled with smoke from wildfires that are raging across Brazil.
Continue reading...Could pawpaw, the US-native fruit, become the new kiwi or mango?
Pawpaw, a tree fruit that can help farmers and the environment, stays resilient in face of a climate crisis
About five years ago, Matt Feyerabend, co-owner of an Arkansas ice-cream business, wanted to explore new flavors and use more native fruits, so while delivering a batch of product to a restaurant in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, he asked if anyone knew a grower of pawpaws, a tree fruit native to the United States with a flavor described as a mix between a mango and a banana.
A server said her father, a veterinarian, had trees on his property. Feyerabend and his wife, Meghan, now annually purchase hundreds of pounds of the fruit from the vet and other growers and sell pawpaw ice-cream and other treats containing the fruit and its seeds.
Continue reading...Power Outages Hamper Assessment of Landslides From Helene
If Trump wins the election, US parks and wildlife will face a new age of mining
Intense heat in the north, epic rains in Miami, fires in New Mexico and California. Trump plans for ‘energy dominance’, removing protection from mining and drilling on public lands
This article was produced in partnership with the non-profit newsroom Type Investigations, with support from the Wayne Barrett Project.
‘We don’t think about energy bills any more’: how a heat pump changed a couple’s lives
Living in an energy-efficient zero-carbon home with an air source heat pump has cut energy bills drastically
This Monday, it will be two years since Julian and Juliette Rayner moved into their new zero-carbon home on a development about 20 minutes drive from Bristol.
The property boasts a range of new technologies that makes it highly energy-efficient and enable the couple to generate their own electricity and live a greener lifestyle.
Continue reading...UK climate envoy to keep role at charity whose founders invest in fossil fuels
Supporters rally to Rachel Kyte after criticism of appointment over link to investment firm Quadrature Capital
The UK’s new climate envoy will retain her role on the board of a charity whose founders made a multimillion-pound donation to the Labour party and have investments in fossil fuels, the Guardian has learned.
Rachel Kyte, the former World Bank climate chief who was announced as the UK’s special representative on climate this week, is on the climate advisory board of Quadrature Climate Foundation, a charity set up by the founders of the Quadrature Capital investment company.
Continue reading...Grim new death records as brutal heat plagues US south-west into the autumn
September has offered little reprieve after a sweltering summer, with Las Vegas on 102nd day of temperatures above 100F
Brutal heat continues to plague the south-west US, with excessive heat alerts lingering long into September as parts of the region set grim new records for deaths connected to the sweltering temperatures.
Autumn has offered little reprieve for cities that have already spent months mired in triple-digit temperatures. This week, Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; and Palm Springs, California, are all grappling with severe weather, with highs that have pushed over 100F (38C). More than 16 million people in the US were under heat alerts on Friday, according to the National Weather Service, mostly clustered in the southern tips of Nevada, Arizona and California.
Continue reading...