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The week around the world in 20 pictures
Wildfires in Athens, Israeli bombardment in Gaza, Ukraine’s offensive in Russia and Snoop Dogg at the Olympic Games handover: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
• Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing
Continue reading...Chair of Nuclear for Australia denies that calling CO2 ‘plant food’ means he is a climate denier
Dr Adi Paterson’s statements are apparently at odds with the group’s official position, which says nuclear is needed to tackle the climate crisis
The chair of a leading Australian nuclear advocacy group has called concerns that carbon dioxide emissions are driving a climate crisis an “irrational fear of a trace gas which is plant food” and has rejected links between worsening extreme weather and global heating.
Several statements from Dr Adi Paterson, reviewed by the Guardian, appear at odds with statements from the group he chairs, Nuclear for Australia, which is hosting a petition saying nuclear is needed to tackle an “energy and climate crisis”.
Continue reading...Climate activists in frame for £1m costs of protest bans run up by UK’s biggest law firm
DLA Piper seeking to recover costs in relation to injunctions it secured for National Highways and HS2, records show
Britain’s biggest law firm has sought more than £1m from climate protesters to cover the cost of court orders banning them from protesting, an investigation has found.
The multibillion-pound City law firm DLA Piper has been trying to recover costs from activists for work done on behalf of National Highways Limited (NHL) and HS2 Ltd – both public bodies – obtaining injunctions banning protests on their sites.
Continue reading...Tax credits in Biden’s landmark climate law disproportionately benefit well-off
Analysis of Inflation Reduction Act suggests working-class Americans missing out on renewable energy transition
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed exactly two years ago, was pitched as a policy that puts the “middle class first”. But the spending bill’s residential tax credits have so far disproportionately benefited wealthy families, new data indicates.
That’s a major challenge for the efforts to decarbonize the US economy in time to avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Heat inequality ‘causing thousands of unreported deaths in poor countries’
Friederike Otto, of World Weather Attribution, says poor people and outdoor workers are dying around the world
Heat inequality is causing thousands of unreported deaths in poor countries and communities across the world, a leading analyst of climate impacts has warned, following global temperature records that may not have been seen in 120,000 years.
Sweltering conditions act as a stealthy killer that preys on the most economically fragile, said Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution, in an appeal for the media and authorities to pay more attention to the dangers.
Continue reading...‘The place I love is in flames’: the people living and working in extreme heat
From a firefighter to a fruit farmer, from Greece to Thailand, the Guardian speaks to people in places hit hardest by the climate crisis
Extreme heat records have been broken around the world this year, and scientists say 2024 is likely to be the hottest year in human history. With the climate crisis causing droughts and wildfires and having devastating effects on crops and animals, the Guardian has spoken to people living in some of the places that have been hit the hardest
Continue reading...How Air-Conditioning Made Us Expect Arizona to Feel the Same as Maine
‘The new reality’: Athens wildfire victims vow to adapt and stay put
People say they are determined and that prevention will be key to mitigating the effects of the climate crisis
“I used to talk to them every day.” Dimitris Petrou takes in the creatures that were once his fluffy chicks but now look like coals. The buckled cage with its carbonised birds is part of the cataclysmic scenery left behind by the fire that bore down on Athens after raging across the Attica plains consuming everything in its path.
The 72-year-old retiree and his wife, Frosso, though red-eyed and fatigued, are “somehow still going” but are profoundly shocked.
Continue reading...How Air-Conditioning Conquered America
Extremist or mainstream: how do Tim Walz’s policies match up globally?
As Minnesota governor he took action on school meals, climate, family leave, guns and more – how does that compare with other developed countries?
Within hours of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, being chosen by Kamala Harris to be her Democratic presidential running mate, Donald Trump and team began attacking him as a “dangerously liberal extremist”.
Trump surrogates seized on Walz’s record of expanding voting rights for former felons, combatting the climate crisis, and other measures as proof that Harris-Walz would be the “most radical ticket in American history”.
Continue reading...Zigzag patterns on walls could help cool overheated buildings, study finds
An architectural zigzag design can limit how much heat is absorbed by buildings – and emitted back to space
Incorporating zigzag patterns into building walls could help cool overheated buildings, research has found.
Buildings are now responsible for approximately 40% of global energy consumption, contributing more than a third of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Continue reading...Affluent Norway has third highest per-capita domestic flight emissions
Rich countries dominate the ratings for the most aviation emissions, with the USA and China topping the table
At this peak holiday season the contrails crisscross the skies, and greenhouse gas emissions from international aviation reach their annual maximum. Emissions of carbon dioxide and the water vapour emitted by jet engines account for about 5% of climate heating and research shows this continues to grow.
It is no surprise that rich countries dominate the ratings for most aviation emissions, measured by the airports from which the aircraft start their flights. Britain with Heathrow and other international airports comes third behind the United States and an increasingly affluent China. Fourth is Japan and fifth the United Arab Emirates, achieved with its massive transit airport at Dubai.
Continue reading...The Other 2024 Races with Big Climate Stakes
Last month marked the world’s hottest July on record, US scientists say
This year could beat 2023 for the hottest year on record as 15-month heat streak extends, according to Noaa
The world just had its hottest July ever recorded, elongating a string of monthly temperature highs that now stretch back for 15 consecutive months, US government scientists have announced.
Last month was about 1.2C (2.1F) hotter than average across the globe, making it the hottest July on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said on Thursday. This means that every month for the past 15 months has beaten its previous monthly record.
Continue reading...Government drops appeal over climate activist who held sign outside UK court
Judge had thrown out case against Trudi Warner, whose sign told jurors they had a right to acquit ‘according to conscience’
The government has dropped an appeal against a judge’s decision to throw out a contempt case against a woman who stood outside a climate activist trial holding a placard about jury rights.
In an email sent on Thursday, a lawyer from the government legal department, led by Richard Hermer, who was recently appointed attorney general, said they had “further considered this case and decided not to pursue the appeal”.
Continue reading...Revealed: Shell oil non-profit donated to anti-climate groups behind Project 2025
Foundation says it ‘does not endorse any organizations’ while funneling hundreds of thousands to rightwing causes
A US foundation associated with the oil company Shell has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to religious right and conservative organizations, many of which deny that climate change is a crisis, tax records reveal.
Fourteen of those groups are on the advisory board of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint proposing radical changes to the federal government, including severely limiting the Environment Protection Agency.
Continue reading...Wind Beat Coal Two Months in a Row for U.S. Electricity Generation
If We Want Coral Reefs to Survive Climate Change, We Should Freeze Them
German climate activists stop air traffic after breaking into four airport sites
Police arrest Letzte Generation protesters who cut holes in fences and glued themselves to asphalt
Climate activists have broken into four German airport sites, briefly bringing air traffic to a halt at two of those before police made arrests.
Protesters from Letzte Generation – Germany’s equivalent to Just Stop Oil – gained access on Thursday to airfields in areas near the takeoff and landing strips of Cologne-Bonn, Nuremberg, Berlin Brandenburg and Stuttgart airports at dawn. Air traffic was suspended for a short time at Nuremberg and Cologne-Bonn due to police operations.
Continue reading...‘We should have better answers by now’: climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating
The leap in temperatures over the past 13 months has exceeded the global heating forecasts – is this just a blip or a systemic shift?
In a remarkably candid essay in the journal Nature this March, one of the world’s top climate scientists posited the alarming possibility that global heating may be moving beyond the ability of experts to predict what happens next.
“The 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth’s climate system,” wrote Gavin Schmidt, a British scientist and the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
Continue reading...