Environment

“When El Nino develops, we’re likely to set a new global temperature record,” Woodwell’s Francis said in an email. “‘Normal’ was left in the dust decades ago. And with this much heat in the system, everyone should buckle up for the extreme weather it will fuel.”

From Brazil’s cattle pastures to Indonesia’s palm oil plantations, so-called green European funds that claim to combat climate change are financing companies involved in deforestation and rising emissions.

“The persistence and extent of the high, which also extended over the North Sea, making room, as it were, for the large volume of water flowing out of the Baltic Sea, is responsible for the scale of the phenomenon,” he says. “We are talking about 275 cubic kilometres of water! This exceptional situation did not happen in isolation from the large-scale processes we observe in the Earth’s atmosphere. The most important of these in this context is the disintegration of the polar vortex, a circulation of air in the upper layers of the atmosphere (10-50km) which, colloquially speaking, is responsible for keeping the Arctic cold. This vortex is linked to the jet stream, the rapidity of which and the course of this current are responsible for the migration of lows and highs. Hence, deviations such as blocked highs, Arctic frost waves or heat waves in the north are the result of disturbances to this jet stream, and hence the warming of the Arctic.”

The paper is here

Archived copy of the article

Z, who asked to be identified only by her first initial for her safety, has been sheltering at home for about a month. Friends drop off groceries and, occasionally, art supplies, and days are spent indoors. She finds herself scrolling on social media. “All you see online are protests,” she said. “I can’t go out and protest, but I feel the anger. I’m like, what can I do?”

For much of the 2010s, Nordic governments adopted a wait-and-see approach to platform work. Gig companies were framed as technological innovations rather than labor market actors. When regulation came, it often focused on markets rather than labor relations. Only recently have governments begun to address misclassification, proposing legal changes to strengthen the definition of employment. These efforts remain incomplete, contested, and slow — while platforms are already deeply embedded.

Cuba’s government, helped by Chinese financing and equipment donations, has installed upwards of 1,000 megawatts of solar generation in the past year, and promises to double that capacity in the coming years. But some private citizens have taken matters into their own hands.

Still, most of the prewar Fallout elites end up down in the doomsday bunkers. As Douglas Rushkoff’s Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires discusses, this is a very real, widespread, and completely illogical desire among our contemporary elites. As Rushkoff writes, “Their extreme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migration, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us.”

No gift link right now; just an archived copy of the article

Going-against-the-grainers have attained some degree of moral autonomy – an autonomous, direct responsiveness to the relevant moral considerations. Sensitivity to audience is crucial for responsiveness to the full range of moral considerations, but it is not sufficient. The first reason is that some genuine moral considerations are absent from or in conflict with the expectations of an actual moral audience. The second reason is that responding to audience feedback – acting to avoid blame or garner praise – does not equate (or necessarily lead) to being moved by the moral consideration.

As the Atlantic warms, many fish along the east coast of North America have moved northward to keep within their preferred temperature range. Black sea bass, for instance, have shifted hundreds of miles up the coast.

Be your own conservationist. A great project to do with kids. If you have a backyard, whether you’re a home owner or renter, a lizard lounge 🦎 is easy to set up and requires little to no maintenance depending how basic or elaborate you want it to be. There’s lots of videos online but here’s two:

Nature lovers across the North East are being urged to wrap up warm and head out at dusk, as starling murmuration season continues.

“Crazy numbers” of lapwings have been reported by the RSPB along the Humber estuary.

The green forest hoverfly, distinctive for its metallic green and golden body and bright orange wings and legs, has increased in numbers that have far exceeded previous records.

And while there were some significant areas in which Joe Biden seemed to learn from his former boss’s mistakes, the need for a more robust campaign of accountability was not one of them. Despite the ample reasons to launch investigations and obtain redress for past corruption, Attorney General Merrick Garland did little more than attempt to radiate an ambient virtue, perpetually endeavoring to shield his agency and the Biden administration from the perception that they were seeking purely political prosecutions.

Our review’s key conclusion is that empirical evidence for multilevel selection is abundant, refuting the misconception that MLS lacks empirical support. Rather than being rare or marginal, MLS appears frequently across biological systems and hierarchical levels. MLS is a useful conceptual and analytical framework for understanding trait evolution and natural selection overall.

Like many US soft-power initiatives, the programme was imperfect, morally complex and at times at odds with the policies of other governments. Yet it is one foundation of what the internet is: a global commons. Today’s online world is dominated by large tech platforms and awash with illegal content and misinformation. But it is still a structure in which facts, ideas and information accessible from London are largely accessible from Delhi, Johannesburg and São Paulo as well.

In a context of growing international attention on Greenland—both due to rapid changes in the physical environment and cryosphere and the resulting geopolitical implications—the study findings take on special relevance. Bonsoms, the article’s lead author, says that “the rapid transformation of the ice sheet not only has global environmental consequences, such as sea level rise and possible alterations in ocean circulation, but also places the Arctic at the center of new strategic, economic and territorial dynamics.”

A Nobel laureate’s environmentally friendly invention that provides clean water if central supplies are knocked out by a hurricane or drought, could be a life saver for vulnerable islands, its founder says.

In short: the agency will no longer be able to regulate carbon pollution or greenhouse gases—though a couple of scenarios might prevent President Trump from getting his way.

A groundbreaking wildlife bridge is under construction in Gloucestershire, with completion expected for 2027. The Gloucestershire Way bridge, set to be the UK’s largest wildlife crossing, is part of the A417 Missing Link project, an initiative designed to build new roads while preserving the Cotswolds ' natural beauty and wildlife.

Antarctica plays a crucial role in Earth’s climate system by reflecting solar radiation back into space. The large white ice surfaces and clouds play a decisive role in this process. However, how clouds actually form in Antarctica, how they interact with the atmosphere and what role aerosols play in this process has not been sufficiently researched to date. Engaging in the SANAT flight campaign, the Alfred Wegener Institute, the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry aim to help close this knowledge gap. The flight-based aerosol measurements conducted in Antarctica are the first of their kind in 20 years and also the first to extend deep into the interior.

The answer, particularly in the US, is with breathtaking ease. The president, Donald Trump, has ramped up his attacks on climate policy in recent weeks – quitting the Paris agreement again and repealing a finding that underpins pollution controls – while going global with his “drill, baby, drill” policy. Chris Wright, the US energy secretary and former fracking executive, has pressured Europe to roll back methane standards and sustainability rules that could threaten American exports of liquefied natural gas. On Wednesday, he urged spreadsheet-wranglers at the International Energy Agency to “drop the climate” from its models.

“It is also worth noting that such a framing would have been far harder to impose 15 years ago,” he said. “Its effectiveness today reflects a transformed media environment in which certain outlets – notably those within the Groupe Bolloré sphere – have normalised narratives about ‘left-wing violence’ and provided platforms that amplify and legitimise these interpretations. This media ecosystem lowers the cost of generalising blame and accelerates the politicisation of violent events.”

I’ll note the contrast with how the New York Times covered this

A bid to recognise Cambridgeshire’s chalk streams as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site will be put before parliament by a local MP.

The dog walker looked confused. ‘The reaves? I’m sorry. I’ve no idea what they are.’ He spoke with the kind of Devon accent that indicated a lifetime spent out on the hills of Dartmoor. ‘But, if it’s the Bronze Age settlement you’re looking for, then it’s up there on the top of that there hill,’ he said, pointing towards the summit of a boggy hillside swept in cold drizzle.

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“The federal government has struck a ‘deal’ with Alcoa that allows the mining giant to continue clearing the Northern Jarrah Forest, despite findings that it illegally destroyed habitat for nationally protected species between 2019 and 2025.

In global terms, 2025 ranked as the third-warmest year on record, following the unprecedented temperatures observed in 2023 and 2024, the latter being the warmest year on record. The global average temperature reached 14.97°C, which was 0.59°C above the 1991–2020 average and 1.47°C above the estimated 1850–1900 pre-industrial level.

Particulate pollution fell 41% nationwide in the decade from 2014, and average life expectancy has increased 1.8 years, according to the University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index (AQLI).

Gatti emphasised the role of international commodity demand in sustaining deforestation: “It’s hypocritical to blame Brazil alone for failing to combat deforestation while countries such as the United States, those in Europe, China, the UK, and others continue to buy products linked to deforestation.

The move appeared to undercut the Make America Healthy Again movement led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a onetime campaigner against mercury pollution.

The Environmental Protection Agency rolled back limits on mercury and other toxic air pollutants for coal- and oil-fired plants.

“This river is our road. It is our source of food, the home of our fish, and essential to the balance of the forest and the climate. How can this richness be turned into a corridor for soy? And worse, without listening to the peoples who live in and from it? That is why we are here — because we want Brazil to respect ILO Convention 169 and consult us before decisions are made. This decree was signed first, and now they want to discuss how to consult us? That is not consultation; it is an attempt to legitimize what has already been decided. And decided by whom? For whom? To benefit a handful of foreign companies, like Cargill, that profit from human rights and environmental violations in the Amazon,” said Auricélia Arapiuns, a leader from the Lower Tapajós region.

The proposed electrification fee would apply to natural gas appliances in new homes, in order to encourage all-electric new construction, which avoids dumping CO2 and unburned methane into the atmosphere.

Research has pointed to the dangers of heavier and wetter snowfall, even as the number of snowy days decreases overall in California’s Sierra Nevada.

As the Trump administration cracks down on climate change activism, members of environmental groups like Extinction Rebellion fear they are being targeted.

Anyone surprised?

Why don’t we celebrate this day?

Considering we need 100% of nature to live (just start with air), one per cent doesn’t seem a lot to ask.

The Marine Biological Association (MBA) welcomes the news that the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement has now become UK law, having received Royal Assent. This marks the completion of the UK legislative process required to ratify and implement the landmark High Seas Treaty.

It will be much easier to shoot deer in England under government plans that aim to curb the damage the animals are doing to the country’s woodlands.

The Trump administration ordered a Michigan plant to stay open just days before it was set to retire. Now, ratepayers are likely to foot the bill.