Feed aggregator

While the Line fire burns in Southern California, what can we learn from how a changing climate has affected an expanding fire season?

Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa want international criminal court to class environmental destruction as crime alongside genocide

Three developing countries have taken the first steps towards transforming the world’s response to climate breakdown and environmental destruction by making ecocide a punishable criminal offence.

In a submission to the international criminal court on Monday, they propose a change in the rules to recognise “ecocide” as a crime alongside genocide and war crimes.

Continue reading...

Chongqing authorities say cloud seeding to break heatwave did not cause winds that sent laundry flying

It was the talk of the town. After the authorities sought to break a long-running heatwave in Chongqing by using cloud-seeding missiles to artificially bring rain, the Chinese megacity was blasted by an unusual weather event – an underwear storm.

Termed “the 9/2 Chongqing underwear crisis”, an unexpected windstorm on Monday brought gusts of up to 76mph (122km/h), scattering people’s laundry from balconies on the city’s high-rises. Douyin, China’s sister app to TikTok, was filled with videos of pants and bras flying through the skies, landing in the street and snagging on trees.

Continue reading...

Climate crisis is driving key predators from their homes and threatening an already embattled ecosystem

Sharks are deserting their coral reef homes as the climate crisis continues to heat up the oceans, scientists have discovered.

This is likely to harm the sharks, which are already endangered, and their absence could have serious consequences for the reefs, which are also struggling. The reef sharks are a key part of the highly diverse and delicate ecosystem, which could become dangerously unbalanced without them.

Continue reading...

Even a majority of Republicans support efforts to hold manufacturers accountable for allegedly deceptive claims

Concern about the fossil fuel and plastics industries’ alleged deception about recycling is growing, with new polling showing a majority of American voters, including 54% of Republicans, support legal efforts to hold the sectors accountable.

The industries have faced increasing scrutiny for their role in the global plastics pollution crisis, including an ongoing California investigation and dozens of suits filed over the last decade against consumer brands that sell plastics.

Continue reading...

Research shows a public less nationalistic, less ideological, with its own sense of national pride – and a media and political class out of sync

Once again the gap between politics and media, on one hand, and the general public, on the other, continues to be revealed in its scale. Survey after survey bring us the news that things are changing. That the British public is becoming more progressive in attitude towards refugees and asylum seekers, immigration, unions and industrial action, net zero targets and, most recently, British history.

The National Centre for Social Research’s British social attitudes survey shows a country that has become less nationalistic and jingoistic and, most sharply, less “proud” or “very proud” of British history. Along with that, there were also declines in pride in Britain’s democracy, its political influence and its economic achievements. The only two spheres where pride remained constant and high were sport, and art and literature.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

Uluru, the Daintree and Bondi beach among iconic Australian locations that could be impacted if planet hits even 2C of warming by 2050

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

South Australia’s wine regions shrouded in bushfire smoke, the Daintree rainforest cut off by flooding and tourists marooned at major airports because of violent storms. This snapshot is the potential chaotic future for Australia’s tourism industry, a new report has warned.

At least half of 178 tourism assets around the country – from national parks to city attractions and airports – are already facing major climate risks, the analysis showed. And as the heat rises, so do the disruptions. Many of the country’s 620,000 tourism jobs will be under threat, according to the report from insurance group Zurich and economic analysts Mandala.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Continue reading...

My instinct to minimize what is happening in much of the world was robbing my sons of a sense of urgency that demands their attention.

The Persian Gulf nation has instituted rolling blackouts to cope with surging summer electricity demand, stirring frustration among citizens.

An African penguin who left many offspring in his long life, he belonged to the largest colony of the aquatic bird species in North America, according to the zoo.

The system by Saturday had been dousing Texas and Louisiana with heavy rains for days

A tropical depression may form next week in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Hurricane Center.

In a forecast on Saturday afternoon, the NHC said that an area of low pressure had formed over the Bay of Campeche in the southern area of the Gulf of Mexico. It had been producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms.

Continue reading...

Heat waves are America’s deadliest weather events. It’s time we name them.

After two devastating storms hit Stonington in January, plans are multiplying to raise and fortify wharves, roads and buildings. But will that be enough?

A small team in a remote corner of Colombia is surveying every tree in an effort to better understand how much planet-warming carbon the Amazon actually stores.

Pope Francis is visiting Papua New Guinea, which has been exploited for its natural resources and is imperiled by rising sea levels.

Hottest summer on record continues, with millions from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Seattle under heat alerts

An intense heatwave across the US west has brought unusually warm temperatures to the region – some of the highest of the season – and broken heat records.

Millions of Americans from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Seattle are under heat alerts. Even before this latest bout of extreme weather, which began on Wednesday and is expected to last through the weekend, summer 2024 was already considered the hottest summer on record.

Continue reading...

Soggy summers and warmer winters are hitting sales as climate crisis blurs seasons

When the season switched from summer to autumn, like clockwork clothing stores would swap out the racks of floaty frocks and fill them with heavy coats and jumpers.

Now, as the nights draw in, retailers are having to rejig seasonal ranges as the UK’s unpredictable weather calls for summer jackets and lighter knits.

Continue reading...

This year will more than likely end up the warmest humanity has measured, reports European climate service

Summer 2024 sweltered to Earth’s hottest on record, making it even more likely that this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, the European climate service Copernicus reported on Friday.

And if this sounds familiar, that’s because the records the globe shattered were set just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Niño, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.

Continue reading...

Post-Covid hunger for travel is taking a heavy toll on the environment amid race to net zero, say experts

For some people, summer holidays are a relaxing break from daily life, a blissful chance to hit the sunbed and lie flat for as long as humanly possible. Other people are on the hunt for new places and adventure – plummeting down a hill on the back of a bike or tied to flimsy fabric and pulled through the air. Others still are on a quest for culture, cuisine or enlightenment – or, ideally, all three and then a nap. Travel is, most people seem to feel, amazing.

The result has been an economic boon for some parts of the world that has shifted money across oceans and into impoverished communities. But it has come at a cost to the planet that travellers have long overlooked.

Continue reading...

Donald Trump gets everything wrong about the climate crisis. The results of the vote in November could reverberate for a million years

Here is the biggest thing happening on our planet as we head into the autumn of 2024: the Earth is continuing to heat dramatically. Scientists have said that there’s a better than 90% chance that this year will top 2023 as the warmest ever recorded. And paleoclimatologists were pretty sure last year was the hottest in the last 125,000 years. The result is an almost-cliched run of disasters: open Twitter/X anytime for pictures of floods pushing cars through streets somewhere. It is starting to make life on this planet very difficult, and in some places impossible. And it’s on target to get far, far worse.

Continue reading...