Environment news

• Agricultural research looks at dugouts as absorbing carbon dioxide

  17-03-2017 14:09 via feedproxy.google.com
  Three researchers at the University of Regina have been awarded a provincial research grant to study the role of agricultural dugouts in greenhouse gas capture.Dr. Kerri Finlay, Dr. Peter Leavitt, Dr. Gavin Simpson of the biology department, along with Dr. Helen Baulch of the University of Saskatchewan, were recently awarded $255,030 from the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture's Agriculture Development Fund.
  
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• High winds during El Niño could be deadly for England’s stressed trees, say experts

  01-09-2026 16:00 via theguardian.com
  Head of tree collections at Kew ‘very worried about this autumn’ as hot, dry summer has caused brittlenessHigh winds associated with El Niño could cause widespread mortality among tree species already weakened by a prolonged period of extreme heat and drought, experts have warned.This summer much of Europe has been scorched by a series of record-breaking climate crisis-induced heatwaves. The impact is notable across much of England’s countryside, where once green land ha
  
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• Could humans ever communicate with whales? - podcast

  01-09-2026 15:57 via theguardian.com
  Ever since the earliest known recording of whale song was made in 1949, researchers have been captivated by the wails, rumbles, clicks, grunts and squeals of their communication. As technology improves, scientists are decoding the intricate patterns that make different species’ vocalisations distinctive. Madeleine Finlay hears from Emma Bryce, a journalist who has spent months investigating human efforts to understand whale song. She explains how this knowledge could help us better protect
  
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• Nepal-Tibet floods: millions at risk from glacial floods in Himalayas in years to come, UN warns, as death toll passes 1,000 – latest updates

  01-09-2026 15:52 via theguardian.com
  ‘Technology cannot move fast enough to prevent loss’, official says, as rescue efforts for the 4,500 still missing continueNepal last week turned down foreign ​involvement in general search and rescue but said it needed specialised services and advanced technological support in areas such as life-detecting machines, large refrigerators and pre-fabricated bridges.Aid worth more than $42m has poured into the country and Nepal is now working with experts from other countries to he
  
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• ‘They take the water, the springs dry up’: fear as Guatemalan goldmine plan is revived

  01-09-2026 14:00 via theguardian.com
  After lying dormant for years, the Era Dorada project in Asunción Mita resumed this year and villagers say history is being repeated, despite promises of changeIn the community of La Lima in Guatemala, Elda Dinora Ramírez, 58, looks towards a small well at the back of her home. Dusty wooden planks lie across the opening, concealing the faint gleam of water far below. “The well is drying up again,” she says.Ramírez’s home lies less than a mile from Era Dorad
  
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• Nepal-Tibet floods: warning signs visible before glacier collapse, report says, as death toll passes 1,000 – latest updates

  01-09-2026 13:45 via theguardian.com
  Scientists say better early-warning system could have saved lives, as rescue efforts for the 4,500 still missing continueNepal last week turned down foreign ​involvement in general search and rescue but said it needed specialised services and advanced technological support in areas such as life-detecting machines, large refrigerators and pre-fabricated bridges.Aid worth more than $42m has poured into the country and Nepal is now working with experts from other countries to help with rescue
  
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• Nepal’s glacial collapse foreshadowed a future of climate disaster | Michael Mann

  01-09-2026 11:00 via theguardian.com
  The deluge capped a summer of extreme climate events, from deadly heatwaves to wildfires. We must take action nowFor millennia, the high peaks of the Himalayas were held together by an invisible, frozen cement – permafrost and glacial ice that bound ancient rock into seemingly unshakable fortresses. But as the planet continues to warm, this alpine glue is liquefying.The glacial collapse and deluge in Nepal and Tibet was not a freak weather event; it was the structural failure of a mountain
  
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• Could this humble sea sponge clean up the world’s ports?

  01-09-2026 10:00 via theguardian.com
  The chicken liver sponge has sailed through a test of its ability to filter pollutants in a harbour in Spain’s Costa BravaIn the polluted waters of Marina Palamós on Spain’s Costa Brava, Manuel Maldonado, a sponge biologist, noticed something unusual last month: red starfish had started settling in the area.Nearly two years earlier, the Spanish National Research Council scientist and his colleagues had begun transplanting sea sponges into the port to study whether they could s
  
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• ‘The mountains are changing’: What the floods tell us about the future of India’s Himalayas

  01-09-2026 08:30 via theguardian.com
  As families await news of missing loved ones, the disaster is a stark reminder of how the climate crisis is creating a fast-growing threat. Plus, the town considered India’s ‘Jurassic Park’It has been hard not to despair while watching the ruinous floods swallow parts of Nepal, and harder, still knowing that the agony compounds each passing day for dozens of Indian families whose members remain unaccounted for.Social media is awash with desperate pleas, photos and details of th
  
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• Solar cuts ‘at least £400 from bills in even the cloudiest British areas’

  01-09-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Savings grow as energy prices in Great Britain rise and cost of panel installation falls, analysis findsHouseholds in Great Britain’s cloudiest regions could still save more than £400 a year on their energy bills by installing rooftop solar panels, research has found.Rising wholesale energy prices mean the potential savings from a home solar panel system have climbed in recent years, as the cost of installation has continued to fall, leading to increased demand. Continue reading...
  
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• Cities sweltering and the smell of the middle ages: has the climate crisis killed Instagram’s Euro summer? | Brigid Delaney

  01-09-2026 07:03 via theguardian.com
  Who dreams of having a Euro summer now when staying in an ancient, uncooled building in the Old Town is like trying to sleep in a wood-fired pizza oven?This week the Euro summer comes to an end – and so does a certain type of posting on Instagram.Waiting at the bus stop in the grey winter dawn, a slanting rain soaking your trouser leg, you can warm yourself by scrolling your feed and seeing pictures of Australians enjoying a Euro summer. There it is again – azure Greek coves, plates
  
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• The Nepal and Tibet flood is a warning: melting snow and ice will bring more disasters around the world | Bill McGuire

  01-09-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  In Alaska, the Himalayas, the Andes, Greenland, and perhaps also the Alps, deadly chain reactions are just waiting to be triggeredYou may not have felt it, but the earth beneath our feet is getting twitchier, and global heating is to blame. As temperatures surge and climate breakdown accelerates, interactions between climate and geology are becoming ever more apparent – as marked by last week’s horrific events in Nepal and Tibet. We still have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to t
  
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• Clicks, grunts and squeals: the wonders of whale communication – podcast

  01-09-2026 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Ever since the earliest known recording of whale song was made in 1949, researchers have been captivated by the wails, rumbles, clicks, grunts and squeals of their communication. As technology improves, scientists are decoding the intricate patterns that make different species’ vocalisations distinctive. Madeleine Finlay hears from Emma Bryce, a journalist who has spent months investigating human efforts to understand whale song. She explains how this knowledge could help us better protect
  
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• Ben Jennings on the end of the UK summer – cartoon

  31-08-2026 17:12 via theguardian.com
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• The datacentre power spat highlights a hidden truth: we’re not building renewables fast enough to meet our needs | Alison Reeve

  31-08-2026 17:00 via theguardian.com
  A battle over datacentre power sources is only part of the picture. Australia needs a much bigger electricity system to meet all future demandAnthony Albanese has been clear that he wants a set of national standards to ensure datacentre growth accelerates Australia’s push to renewables and keeps a lid on power prices. At the centre of his desired policies was a “BYO power” requirement – a condition that all new datacentres would be powered by 100% renewable electricity.Bu
  
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• Readers reply: If all car tyres were filled with CO2, would this cut atmospheric carbon significantly?

  31-08-2026 15:00 via theguardian.com
  The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions considers a change that might help the environmentThis week’s question: Would equal pay create a better society?If all the vehicles on the planet had their tyres pumped up with CO2, would this lock up enough carbon to lower the amount in the air significantly? Would there be other issues, such as the carbon cost of trapping it all into the tyres? Chris Coldwell, LancasterSend new questions to [email protected].
  
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• How a South African town cleaned up its polluted river using stones, wood and sand

  31-08-2026 15:00 via theguardian.com
  Scientists say system to treat contaminated wastewater offers a model for ensuring food security in a fast-warming climateAll it took to turn the murky, heavily polluted waters of South Africa’s Stiebeuel River into a resource clean enough for irrigating a community’s vegetable plots was a collection of stones, heat-treated wood and sand.Without chemicals and using renewable energy, researchers from the University of Cape Town are cleaning 36,000 litres of water, polluted by sewage,
  
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• It’s time to get shirty about the short life of the football top

  31-08-2026 12:00 via theguardian.com
  With millions of club shirts going to waste every season, a radical recycling rethink is neededWhen Joanna Czutkowna buried a Manchester United jersey, a cotton T-shirt and a wool-cotton jumper in her Lancashire farm and dug it up a year later, the video went viral. The T-shirt had disappeared, apart from the seams (sewn with polyester thread), the jumper was 80% gone, but the United shirt remained – grubby but indestructible. (Insert joke here)The big reveal was not a surprise, certainly
  
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• Bhutan hosts first ‘conscious food summit’ amid threats to global supplies

  31-08-2026 10:38 via theguardian.com
  Organisers say people must revive spiritual relationship with food amid double threat of climate crisis and conflictMending the broken food system under the threat of climate-driven weather extremes will require more than economic fixes and intensive agriculture, according to the organisers of a pioneering summit this week, who say the world must revive its spiritual relationship with food.Delegates from more than 60 countries and the UN will gather for the next five days in Paro in the tiny Him
  
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• Weather tracker: Warm Yellow Sea strengthens storms in South Korea

  31-08-2026 09:57 via theguardian.com
  
  More than 200mm of rain forecast in parts of South Korea, while parts of southern Europe to be 10C above averageSouth Korea’s prime minister, Han Seong-sook, met officials to prepare for heavy rain expected this week, with rainfall totals across central and northern parts of the country forecast to exceed 200mm in some areas.South Korea was battered by heavy rainfall earlier this month and some areas were particularly hard hit. Over the weekend further thunderstorms pushed into the region
  
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• ‘Breakthrough’ as Turkmenistan starts fixing ‘mindboggling’ methane mega-leaks

  31-08-2026 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Secretive state begins repairs on ageing facilities after being revealed as worst country for leaks of potent greenhouse gasTurkmenistan has started plugging the mega-leaks of methane that spew from its ageing oil and gas facilities, the latest UN data shows, in a move hailed as a breakthrough.Methane, also called natural or fossil gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. It traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide and causes 25% of global heating today. Stopping leaks can be quick and cheap and, be
  
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• The Nepal floods seem a world away – but make no mistake, climate breakdown will affect us all | Nesrine Malik

  31-08-2026 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Richer countries might have more resources to deal with catastrophe, but this problem grips the entire planet, however much leaders may want to deny itClimate breakdown is happening on one Earth, but two different worlds. In one, its impacts increasingly encroach on everyday life; longer periods of discomfort and shorter periods of sharp pain. Endless, hotter summers, and within them sudden wildfires, evacuations, homes burned to cinders in a matter of hours. In another, catastrophe. This summer
  
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• 'A giant leap forward': Nasa launches powerful new space telescope

  30-08-2026 20:53 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The US space agency's telescope is starting a multi-year mission to create a new map of the universe and learn more about dark energy and dark matter.
  
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• The datacenter backlash is bringing the entire political spectrum together – against Big Tech billionaires

  30-08-2026 18:08 via theguardian.com
  The movement against datacenters is uniting Americans because they perfectly illustrate how a few individuals hold all the power to control decisions that impact our livesBryce Gustafson has been knocking on doors in Indiana for more than a decade. The lead organizer with Citizens Action Coalition (CAC), a consumer and environmental organization, he usually encounters a mix of reactions when he’s out canvassing; whatever issue he’s talking about, there’s always at least a few p
  
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• Nicola Jennings on Donald Trump, fossil fuels and climate disaster – cartoon

  30-08-2026 17:36 via theguardian.com
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• The datacenter fight could permanently transform US politics. Which party will seize advantage?

  30-08-2026 15:00 via theguardian.com
  The movement against datacenters are uniting Americans because they perfectly illustrate how a few individuals hold all the power to control decisions that impact our livesBryce Gustafson has been knocking on doors in Indiana for more than a decade. The lead organizer with Citizens Action Coalition (CAC), a consumer and environmental organization, he usually encounters a mix of reactions when he’s out canvassing; whatever issue he’s talking about, there’s always at least a few
  
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• Flooding devastated swathes of Indiana but response is hampered by politics

  30-08-2026 14:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Record inundations wrecked homes and took seven lives but Trump has not approved emergency aid and the state has cut funds for environmental agenciesIt’s been 10 days since the floodwater receded from Cambridge City’s main street and yet signs of disaster are all around.Abandoned cars, toilets and bathtubs are strewn across parks and side streets on a recent visit to the city. Garages have been lifted from their foundations and moved by the rushing water. Dumpsters up and down the st
  
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• Charity thanks inmates for work to save hedgehogs

  30-08-2026 08:12 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Prisoners in HMP La Moye make feeding and nesting boxes for Jersey Hedgehog Preservation Group.
  
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• ‘Tiny bit of rain and the sewage comes’: Brighton swimmers vent fury at sea pollution

  30-08-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Checking for sewage spills has become as normal as checking the weather forecast, say swimmers on East Sussex beachesSouth West Water has worst environmental record in England, analysis shows“I’m furious,” says Jo Armstrong, 75, sitting on Brighton beach with her daughter and granddaughter.Armstrong lives in Lewes, a town 8 miles from Brighton, and usually goes swimming in nearby Seaford in East Sussex every day. But over the past week the water there has been too polluted to s
  
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• South West Water has worst environmental record in England, analysis shows

  30-08-2026 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Exclusive: Friends of the Earth finds greatest sewage discharge in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset‘Tiny bit of rain and the sewage comes’: Brighton swimmers vent fury at sea pollutionSouth West Water is doing more harm to the environment than any other water company in England, according to new analysis, with more sewage discharged in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset than anywhere else.Friends of the Earth analysed water companies’ environmental performance in six cate
  
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