The Guardian Climate Change

Climate Change Committee advised Ed Miliband to cut level by 81% but activists want bigger promises

Climate campaigners have urged ministers to make steeper cuts in the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions after the government’s statutory adviser on the climate gave its verdict on new targets.

The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government, has written to Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, to advise cuts of 81% in the UK’s emissions, compared with 1990 levels, by 2035, if emissions from aviation and shipping are excluded.

Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, a total blackout in Cuba, tributes to Liam Payne and the US election: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Lack of time, difficulties with scientific rigour, an uninterested public … television meteorologists open up about why they’re so quiet about the reasons for extreme conditions

Why do TV and radio forecasts rarely contextualise extreme weather events in terms of the climate crisis? After all, the latest data suggests Britain is getting hotter, wetter and stormier. The number of “very hot days” of 30C or more, according to the Met Office’s latest climate report, has trebled over the last few decades. Last year was the second warmest on record since 1884, with only 2022 warmer.

“If you believe, as I do, that climate change is the most fundamental challenge facing humanity,” says Sunil Amrith, history professor at Yale’s School of Environment, and author of the forthcoming book The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Past 500 Years, “any contribution to making its causes and effects more widely known will have a role to play”.

Families cope as experts say learning disruptions caused by hurricane can set children back for years

When Elizabeth Steere’s two sons were little, the family watched The Wizard of Oz and its famous tornado scene that whips Dorothy through the air.

Steere, who lives in Asheville, North Carolina, assured her kids, now 11 and 13, not to worry. “I remember saying, very glibly, ‘That’s not something you guys have to worry about,’” Steele recalled.

Kevin Jordan and two other claimants argued the country’s climate adaptation plans were insufficient and unlawful

An East Anglian man who lost his home to coastal erosion has lost his high court challenge against the government’s climate adaptation plans.

Kevin Jordan was one of three claimants who argued the government’s plans for adapting to the existing and predicted impacts of climate change, known as the National Adaptation Programme 3 (NAP3), were insufficient and unlawful.

Researchers criticised and gaslighted after sharing fears with Guardian say acknowledging feelings is critical to their work

Climate scientists who were mocked and gaslighted after speaking up about their fears for the future have said acknowledging strong emotions is vital to their work.

The researchers said these feelings should not be suppressed in an attempt to reach supposed objectivity. Seeing climate experts’ fears and opinions about the climate crisis as irrelevant suggests science is separate from society and ultimately weakens it, they said.

Subtle temperature difference between ‘ocean skin’ and water beneath found to drive more CO2 absorption

A sliver of cool surface water less than 2mm deep helps oceans absorb carbon dioxide, a British-led team of scientists has established after months of voyages across the Atlantic painstakingly measuring gas and temperature levels.

The subtle difference in temperature between the “ocean skin” and the layer of water beneath it creates an interface that leads to more CO2 being taken in, the scientists observed.

The Siberian republic of Sakha in the Russian far east is one the coldest inhabited regions in the world. The photojournalist Natalya Saprunova spent almost two months documenting the daily lives of the people in the community of Oymyakon

Oymyakon in north-east Siberia is the coldest permanently inhabited place in the world. The village is located at the “Pole of Cold” on the left bank of the Indigirka River in Sakha, a republic in Russia’s far east, and is connected to other rural localities such as Khara-Tumul and Bereg-Yurdya, Tomtor, Yuchyugey and Aeroport, which gets its name from the local airport. The area sits on the Oymyakon plateau and has about 2,000 inhabitants.

A man rides a snowmobile through Oymyakon.

With electric car demand soaring, peak oil may be near – and not a moment too soon for the climate

Oil states and companies such as BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are intent on exploiting new oilfields despite the clear evidence that the world is rapidly cruising through its carbon budget.

However, investors should perhaps note that the International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting that peak oil is at hand. In other words, supply will soon outstrip demand, making investment in new oilfields unlikely to be profitable.

Advocates vow to sue, saying plan, crucial to Biden’s clean energy agenda, will drive Tiehm’s buckwheat to extinction

For the first time under Joe Biden, a federal permit for a new lithium mine has been approved for a Nevada project essential to his clean energy agenda, despite conservationists’ vows to sue over the plan, which they say will drive an endangered wildflower to extinction.

Ioneer Ltd’s mine will help expedite production of a key mineral in the manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles at the center of the president’s push to cut greenhouse gas emissions, administration officials said Thursday in Reno.

Leaders are eager to fill us with positivity, but research shows people in distress are more likely to take collective action

If despair is the most unforgivable sin, then hope is surely the most abused virtue. That observation feels particularly apposite as we enter the Cop season, that time of United Nations megaconferences at the end of every year, when national leaders feel obliged to convince us the future will be better, despite growing evidence to the contrary.

Climate instability and nature extinction are making the Earth an uglier, riskier and more uncertain place, desiccating water supplies, driving up the price of food, displacing humans and non-humans, battering cities and ecosystems with ever fiercer storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts and forest fires. Still worse could be in store as we approach or pass a series of dangerous tipping points for Amazon rainforest dieback, ocean circulation breakdown, ice-cap collapse and other unimaginably horrible, but ever more possible, catastrophes.

King Charles III took part in a traditional kava-drinking ceremony before a line of bare-chested, heavily tattooed Samoans and was declared a 'high chief' of the Pacific island nation. The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa – the first major trip overseas since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year. The peppery, slightly intoxicating root drink is a key part of Pacific culture and is known locally as 'ava'. Australia’s former deputy prime minister was hospitalised after mistakenly drinking too much of a local brew at a similar ceremony in Micronesia in 2022. The royal couple later visited the village of Moata’a, where Charles was made 'Tui Taumeasina', or high chief

• King Charles becomes Samoan ‘high chief’ and drinks narcotic kava at welcoming ceremony

• Selfies, hugs and protests: King Charles’s new approach in spotlight during ‘fast and furious’ royal tour of Australia

Means to stop catastrophic global heating exist, says UN chief, but political courage is needed to end world’s fossil fuel addiction

The huge cuts in carbon emissions now needed to end the climate crisis mean it is “crunch time for real”, according to the UN’s environment chief.

An unprecedented global mobilisation of renewable energy, forest protection and other measures is needed to steer the world off the current path towards a catastrophic temperature rise of 3.1C, a report from the UN environment programme (Unep) has found. Extreme heatwaves, storms, droughts and floods are already ravaging communities with less than 1.5C of global heating to date.

Pace of growth helps maintain renewable energy when weather conditions interfere with wind and solar

Faced with worsening climate-driven disasters and an electricity grid increasingly supplied by intermittent renewables, the US is rapidly installing huge batteries that are already starting to help prevent power blackouts.

From barely anything just a few years ago, the US is now adding utility-scale batteries at a dizzying pace, having installed more than 20 gigawatts of battery capacity to the electric grid, with 5GW of this occurring just in the first seven months of this year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Even temporarily passing the Paris 2015 limit will mean severe storms, heatwaves and floods

In 2015, world leaders in Paris put great hope in keeping the rise in average global temperatures at or below 1.5C. But global temperatures continue rising relentlessly. The world is now on the brink of overshooting the 1.5C target, and then – what? The hope was to stop pumping out CO2 and also remove it from the atmosphere to avoid a cataclysm, but that would need 400 gigatonnes of CO2 to be removed by 2100, using new and as yet untested technology on a vast and economical scale.

A recent report shows that even temporarily overshooting 1.5C will still allow climate change to build up over the next several decades. And that means severe storms, intense heatwaves, deluges of rain and many other disastrous outcomes will carry on increasing.

No wonder some members of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting had that sinking feeling

• See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here

Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary, says ex-president ‘not fit for office’

The Labour party has put out a statement rejecting allegations that it broke US election law because activists and staff members have been volunteering to help the Democrats.

A Labour spokesperson said:

It is common practice for campaigners of all political persuasions from around the world to volunteer in US elections.

Where Labour activists take part, they do so at their own expense, in accordance with the laws and rules.

We said that because working people had already paid the burden under the last government, we wouldn’t increase the taxes, the main taxes that working people pay, so income tax - all rates - national insurance and VAT. So those taxes that working people pay, we’re not increasing those taxes in the budget.

We go into this budget with a number of challenges - the £22bn black hole just this year, in the public finances, the unfinanced company compensation schemes, for example on infected blood and Horizon, it’s really important that we honour but they weren’t in the forecasts from the previous government.

The fact that the previous government had baked in austerity to our public spending settlements in the years to come, and we committed to not return to austerity.

With no power, no water and soon-to-spoil food, Asheville residents fired up their grills and emptied their freezers for communal meals

Erin Kellem’s Asheville, North Carolina neighborhood is a short drive from the city center, but feels remote. The Haw Creek area’s culs-de-sac are fronted by spacious yards and surrounded by thick woods that give the illusion of isolation.

Hurricane Helene changed that, dropping an ocean of rain on the southern Appalachian mountains. Floods of biblical proportions killed dozens. Power outages left thousands without electricity for at least two weeks in most places. There was no gas or cellphone service for days following the storm, and most of the city is still without potable water. Roads disappeared under rushing water and mud. The help that was on its way had no way in, and those stranded in their homes had no way of checking on loved ones.

Residents of Las Vegas have endured a string of record-breaking heatwaves in summer with a very warm fall

By now, the canvassers at Make the Road Nevada know how to prepare themselves for the record-breaking heat.

Members of the progressive group – which focuses on mobilising Black and Latino voters – layer on white, UPF-protective shirts, and sweat-wicking performance wear. They fill their 50-quart coolers with ice-cold water. And they pack lots and lots of chips – barbecue Lays, and Cheetos and Doritos – for the road. The salt helps stave off dehydration.

US readers are responding to the reality of the climate crisis by adapting their homes, from insulation as a refuge from heat to removing yard debris in case of wildfires

Rose, 62, was living in a remote area of Washington, west of Seattle, when the scorching “heat dome” of 2021 hit the Pacific north-west. As the house Rose shared with her then 93-year-old mother grew hotter, and their two air conditioning units struggled to make any dent on the wall of heat, Rose’s heart rate climbed, and she watched as all the rubber bands in the house liquefied.

The heat dome – which broke local records to reach highs of 120F (49C) – buckled roads, melted electrical cables and caused about 600 excess deaths, and research showed it was “virtually impossible” without climate change. It’s just one example of a worsening picture for US extreme weather driven by human caused global heating: including more frequent hurricanes, wildfires and devastating floods.